Hydrogen FAQs
*Hydrogen can be derived from multiple feedstocks. This "fuel versatility" is seen as a major advantage, policy-wise.
[Ref: DOE press release,
"U.S./Japan to Work Together on Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Research", R-04-001, January 9, 2004]
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Hydrogen news
October 25, 2006
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ORNL gets $4.5M for hydrogen work
Knoxville News Sentinel
August 6, 2005
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Chemist Tries to Solve World's Energy Woes
Brian Bergstein, AP/The New Albany Tribune (IN)
Caltech chemist Nathan Lewis calculates that power demands in 2050 will be so great that just to keep carbon dioxide emissions at twice preindustrial levels, a nuclear plant would have to be built every two days. There's not enough room on the planet's surface for other widely touted solutions such as wind and biomass to have much impact. Only the sun is the answer, Lewis argues. Enough energy from sunlight hits the earth every hour to supply the world for months. The challenge is harnessing it and storing it efficiently, which existing solar technologies do not do.
The central figure in this article is another U.S. chemist, Daniel Nocera, 48, who is working on using sunlight to split water into its basic components, hydrogen and oxygen. The elements could then be used to supply clean-running fuel cells or new kinds of machinery. Or the energy created from the reaction itself, as atomic bonds are severed and re-formed, might be harnessed and stored. "This is nirvana in energy. This will make the problem go away," Nocera said one morning in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the Grateful Dead devotee has a "Mean People Suck" sticker on his window. "If it doesn't, we will cease to exist as humanity." Lots of people have explored this challenge, but Nocera had a big breakthrough when he used light to coax multiple hydrogen atoms out of liquid. The key was figuring out the right chemical catalyst. Nocera's 2001 paper on the process in the journal Science, written with graduate student Alan Heyduk, turned heads. Venture capitalists rang his phone off the hook offering to fund him in an alternative-energy company. The achievement, and its revolutionary prospects, won Nocera this year's Italgas Prize, a $100,000 award given annually by an Italian utility to a top energy researcher. "Dan is even-money (odds) to solve this problem," says Harry Gray, a renowned California Institute of Technology chemist who was Nocera's graduate adviser. Nocera believes it might be 20 years before engineers might design systems based on his work. And he frets that too few scientists are exploring the problem, with many top minds instead focused on biomedical research.
Many energy technologies being explored -- including improved ways of storing electricity and different kinds of fuel cells. Critics of dire projections say some will come online in the next few decades and throw off today's extrapolations about the future. Arno Penzias, who won the Nobel Prize for confirming the Big Bang and now invests in alternative energy startups for New Enterprise Associates, contends there are dozens of ideas more promising than ones involving hydrogen. When told about Nocera's project, Penzias gets heated, saying it is unlikely to be practical. "It is so far from being revolutionary that it's not even worth mentioning," Penzias says. "It will be a big yawn."
* 2005-03-29: Hydrogen or electricity? A nuclear fork in the road
IAGS
* 2005-03-27: Hydrogen gains steam
Robert S. Boyd, St. Paul Pioneer Press
* 2005-03-25: Hydrogen-powered vehicle shackled by many elements
Robert S. Boyd, Fuel Cell Works
* 2005-03-08: GM, federal lab show off hydrogen storage research
MSNBC
* 2005-03-03: NHA Annual Hydrogen Conference 2005 Conference Highlights
Earthtoys
May 24, 2004
Hydrogen - silly to expect total replacement for gas and coal
... the opinion that hydrogen will totally replace gas and coal with time are "silly and naive," specialists say.
[Source: Itar-Tass/ACSNA/IRNA, "Russia, France step up cooperation in ITER project", Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), May 24, 2004]
November 24, 2003
Pebble Bed suitability for hydrogen production touted
The Nuclear Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) Company believes it is streets ahead of the rest of the world in a bid to win a $1.1 billion contract from the US government for a hydrogen energy project at the Idaho National Environmental and Energy Laboratory...
Phumzile Tshelape, a nuclear physicist and general manager of corporate services at PBMR, said the pebble bed reactor was uniquely suited to provide the energy needed for the thermo-chemical water splitting processes that could produce large quantities of hydrogen without carbon emissions.
More importantly, the locally developed reactor was about five years ahead of the research of any other high temperature nuclear reactor in the world that could conceivably be able to produce hydrogen.
Tshelape said different consortiums, all of which had to be led by US companies, would submit bids to participate in the project by January 2004.
Two competing technologies would be selected, one of which would be selected a year later. He said PBMR was setting up a consortium in the US, where it was envisaged that PBMR would provide the nuclear technology, while another company would provide the hydrogen technology.
He said the US project could become the second major sale for PBMR. The first sale would be to Eskom for a demonstration reactor plant to be built at Koeberg, pending government approval.
However, participation in the US project would not only expedite the licensing of PBMR in the US, but holding the licence rights in the US would make PBMR nuclear technology acceptable to about 80 percent of the world's other nuclear markets.
[Source: Edward West, "Pebble Bed bullish on $1.1 billion deal", Business Report (South Africa), November 24, 2003]
November 11, 2003
Lovins' conflict of interest, hydrogen-wise
Lovins has a financial and emotional interest in seeing hydrogen succeed as a fuel. His Hypercar concept3 requires hydrogen fuel to meet all of its objectives. Much of the consulting activity of the Rocky Mountain Institute centers on hydrogen...
[Source: John Wilson (a veteran chemical and materials engineer who now runs his own Detroit consulting company, The Management Group), quoted in The Electricity Daily, "Lovins, Wilson Spar over Future of Hydrogen Economy", v21 n92, November 11, 2003]
October 1, 2003
Lots of hydrogen fuel, perhaps from Generation IV nuclear plants
This fall, the US Congress is expected to start funding a $1.1 billion project to build a new breed of nuclear reactor -- safer, less vulnerable to terrorism, and able to both generate electricity and crank out hydrogen, the presumptive automobile fuel of the future. An international panel of scientists, dubbed the Generation IV Forum, began the process in 2001 by evaluating hundreds of futuristic reactor concepts and whittling the list down to six. This fall, the US Dept of Energy will choose one for a demonstration plant, to be built at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
None of the designs is a slam dunk, says the lab's nuclear energy director Ralph Bennett, but the clear favorite is the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). As its name implies, the VHTR is designed to generate intense heat: cooled by helium, it would operate at 1,000¡C Ñ twice as hot as today's water-cooled reactors. In addition to turning turbines to make electricity, the intense heat generated by the VHTR reactor will also power an adjacent hydrogen plant, where one of two chemical processes will produce 10 tons of hydrogen an hour, Southworth says. (The demo plant will kick out a modest 2 tons.) Since extreme heat is required to snap the chemical bonds of various compounds and release hydrogen, the reactor is ideal for producing the new fuel, says Finis Southworth, the DOE's VHTR expert.
Thanks to the configuration of its uranium fuel, the VHTR would be meltdown-proof, claims nuclear engineer Andrew Kadak of MIT. In today's reactors, the uranium is stuffed into hollow rods of zirconium, a metal that catches fire if the coolant is somehow drained off, resulting in a potentially disastrous radiation release, like the one at Three Mile Island. In the VHTR, the uranium will be either in the form of "pebble beds" Ñ stacked pellets of uranium covered in graphite Ñ or "prismatic blocks" Ñ uranium encased in 3-foot-high, 2-foot-wide hexagons of graphite.
Using graphite instead of zirconium to cradle the uranium means a Three Mile Island-style accident is impossible; instead of combusting in the absence of coolant, graphite allows nuclear heat to radiate away faster than it is produced. This "passive" safety system requires no frantic scrambling by personnel to save the day, making the VHTR more difficult to sabotage.
These reactors produce nuclear waste, which may cause some folks not to support the nuclear approach. But these reactors also avoid production of carbon dioxide, which may cause some folks to support the nuclear approach. A demonstration reactor will take years to build; the DOE hopes to flip the switch in 2015, just in time for the anticipated rollout of hydrogen-fueled automobiles.
[Source: Bob Ivry, "Next-generation reactors: Nuclear power heats up (again)", Popular Science, October 2003, p. 33]
September 30, 2003
Savannah River sees potential in hydrogen R&D
The South Carolina Hydrogen Coalition is working on ways to better store hydrogen for long-term use. The coalition includes the Savannah River Site, which has developed a hydrogen-powered bus, the Aiken and Edgefield counties' Economic Development Partnership, and USC in Columbia. The project has attracted interest from more than 10 companies. For example, the guest speaker at the development partnership's annual meeting tonight is the director of General Motors' hydrogen fuel cell research, Dr. Jim Spearot, who is set to discuss the use of hydrogen in the automotive industry. "He's here because the Savannah River Site and the Savannah River Research Center has the world's greatest expertise in hydrogen-related issues," said Tom Hallman, the chancellor of the University of South Carolina Aiken, which has applied for grant money to help promote hydrogen research.
[Ref: Josh Gelinas (Augusta Chronicle, South Carolina Bureau), "Business group pushes SRS; Officials tout hydrogen projects during slump", Augusta Chronicle, September 30, 2003]
* Hydrogen - Canada would need 18 n-plants to fully convert the current vehicle fleet
* Hydrogen - environmentalists hit US plan for not being green enough