Hydrogen fuel storage solved

DamianB · Post by **DamianB** » 07 Sep 2005, 23:07

No link I'm afraid....

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.
With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

?Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank?, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.

Dr. Tue Johannessen

The hydrogen tablet is safe and inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other hydrogen storage technologies. You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a ?shot? of ammonia and it is ready for use again.

?The technology is a step towards making the society independent of fossil fuels? says Professor Jens N?rskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He, Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and Rasmus Zink S?rensen are the five researchers behind the invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are numerous. It is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy sources, e.g. wind power.

?We have a new solution to one of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel. And we need new energy technologies ? oil and gas will not last, and without energy, there is no modern society?, says Jens N?rskov.

Together with DTU and SeeD Capital Denmark, the researchers have founded the company Amminex A/S, which will focus on the further development and commercialization of the technology.

Contact persons:

Prof. Claus Hviid Christensen, Center for Sustainable and Green Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Building 206, Technical University of Denmark, phone: +45 45252402, chc@kemi.dtu.dk

Prof. Jens K. N?rskov, Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark

Building 307, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark, phone: +45 4525 3175, norskov@fysik.dtu.dk

Dr. Tue Johannessen, CTO of Amminex A/S, Kemitorvet, Building 206, DK-2800 Lyngby, phone: +45 22546242, tj@amminex.com

Bandidoz · Post by **Bandidoz** » 07 Sep 2005, 23:52

Hmmm, more use for electricity

OK, I'll put the "Richard Duncan" stick away.....

PowerSwitchJames · Post by **PowerSwitchJames** » 08 Sep 2005, 12:28

We wait to see the ultimate EROEI.
And the scalabilty.

PowerSwitchJames · Post by **PowerSwitchJames** » 15 Sep 2005, 12:12

From what I've read this hydrogen tablet requires amonia.

Isn't that produced via the Haber-Bosch process?

Doesn't it use natural gas for the extraction of the hydrogen?

Although it solves the storage problem, doesn't the problem of clean green hydrogen production remain?

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 15 Sep 2005, 12:36

PowerSwitchJames wrote:
Isn't that produced via the Haber-Bosch process?

Doesn't it use natural gas for the extraction of the hydrogen?

This is what wiki says:

Production
Because of its many uses, ammonia is one of the most highly-produced inorganic chemicals. Before the start of WWI most ammonia was obtained by the dry distillation of nitrogenous vegetable and animal products; by the reduction of nitrous acid and nitrites with nascent hydrogen; and also by the decomposition of ammonium salts by alkaline hydroxides or by quicklime, the salt most generally used being the chloride (sal-ammoniac) thus

2NH4Cl + 2CaO → CaCl2 + Ca(OH)2 + 2NH3
It has also been obtained by decomposing magnesium nitride (Mg3N2) with water,

Mg3N2 + 6H2O → 3Mg(OH)2 + 2NH3
Today the Haber process is the most important method for production of ammonia. In this process, nitrogen and hydrogen gases combine directly on an iron catalyst at a pressure of 200 bar (20 MPa, 3000 lbf/in?) and a temperature of 500?C to produce ammonia.

N2 + 3H2 → 2 NH3
Compared to older methods, the feedstocks of the Haber process are relatively inexpensive?nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere, while hydrogen can be readily produced from natural gas.

PowerSwitchJames · Post by **PowerSwitchJames** » 22 Sep 2005, 17:46

http://www.americanscientist.org/templa ... etid/45942

More about how Hydrogen tablets work...I've got a feeling it is still going to be, ultimately, a negative EROEI.

Eth666us · Post by **Eth666us** » 03 May 2008, 13:22

This is a new industrial process(lca process) to produce ammonia...
It's highly efficient... (around 65%)

Mt is for Metric Tonne = 1000 kg

With this process 1 kg of ammonia totally requires about 8.12 kwh of energy... (ouput energy/input energy = around 0.65 )

Links:

http://www.psaplants.com/fertilizer-industry.html
http://www.iffco.nic.in/applications/if ... enDocument

Eth666us · Post by **Eth666us** » 03 May 2008, 15:41

PowerSwitchJames wrote: Although it solves the storage problem, doesn't the problem of clean green hydrogen production remain?

Ammonia containes around 3000 kwh/m3... so variable energy sources(wind, sun, variable hydro energy, etc...) have the possibility to be converted directly to ammonia fuel...
The North of India has a lot of seasonal hydro energy that can be used to produce directly ammonia as fuel...

This is a river discharge database
http://www.sage.wisc.edu/riverdata/

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 19 Jul 2008, 00:00

hhogen wrote:
PowerSwitchJames wrote:Although it solves the storage problem, doesn't the problem of clean green hydrogen production remain?
Producing hydrogen directly from solar or wind power gets my vote. With T. Boone Pickens wind power plan just unveiled what is missing is talking about storing the extra wind energy as hydrogen.

Yes that's a great combo but does Our Man In Carlsberg have a (predicted) figure for round-trip efficiency?