Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Pretty Good News for the Earth
Since about 1978, I've been an advocate of using solar power cells to split water into hydrogen and oxygen so you can later use the hydrogen for heat (or electricity in a fuel cell) at night or on cloudy days. Burning hydrogen of course produces water and nothing else, which is as clean as it gets. You can alternatively strip out hydrogen from natural gas but then you have CO2 left over. What would be the point?
Hydrogen is actually pretty bad for a fuel, (but at least we'll have it) and the most important drawback is that it's expensive. The solar cells are expensive, the storage system is expensive--everything is expensive
Science to the rescue. Money quotes:
Researchers at GE's Global Research lab in Niskayuna, NY, have developed a system that produces hydrogen at a fraction of the [current] cost and could be available commercially in just a few years.
[...]
GE's breakthrough comes from a proprietary material called Noryl, a highly chemical- and temperature-resistant plastic developed by the GE labs, that lowers the cost of hydrogen production to hundreds of dollars per kilowatt...The goal of the project... is to bring down equipment costs enough to take the cost of hydrogen from $8 per kilogram to $3 per kilogram--comparable in energy and price to a gallon of gasoline.
Hydrogen as cheap as gasoline. It's like a dream come true.
Now we're cooking with gas.
Hydrogen is actually pretty bad for a fuel, (but at least we'll have it) and the most important drawback is that it's expensive. The solar cells are expensive, the storage system is expensive--everything is expensive
Science to the rescue. Money quotes:
Researchers at GE's Global Research lab in Niskayuna, NY, have developed a system that produces hydrogen at a fraction of the [current] cost and could be available commercially in just a few years.
[...]
GE's breakthrough comes from a proprietary material called Noryl, a highly chemical- and temperature-resistant plastic developed by the GE labs, that lowers the cost of hydrogen production to hundreds of dollars per kilowatt...The goal of the project... is to bring down equipment costs enough to take the cost of hydrogen from $8 per kilogram to $3 per kilogram--comparable in energy and price to a gallon of gasoline.
Hydrogen as cheap as gasoline. It's like a dream come true.
Now we're cooking with gas.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:29 PM 
Comments:
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DHMO* is the principle atmospheric greenhouse gas, scary comments about CO2 notwithstanding. It's also a particularly vigorous solvent, directly responsible for hundreds of deaths every year, and indirectly for thousands more. I await with bated breath the outcry from the usual suspects about the creation of a toxic waste plume by using a new and insufficiently tested technology.
* See www.dhmo.org for a particularly unserious examination of the problems of this toxic byproduct. (But it really is the major greenhouse gas.)
* See www.dhmo.org for a particularly unserious examination of the problems of this toxic byproduct. (But it really is the major greenhouse gas.)
Dihydrous monoxide, right. I fully expect things to be both muggier and greener when we run out of oil. Mold might increase too. Apparently that's not so good. But we will have a fuel.
Doug,
What was the solvent that athletes were using about 20 years ago? DMSO?
Please give me a chemistry lesson here.
T
What was the solvent that athletes were using about 20 years ago? DMSO?
Please give me a chemistry lesson here.
T
# posted by 
: 7:48 PM
: 7:48 PM
DSMO, I think. If you got a drop on your hand you would taste it a few seconds later in your mouth. I never tried it thoug. Di hidrous monoxide is H2O. It's a joke because it sounds worse when you reverse the chemical formula.
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