PowerSwitch

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ncy.energy

Maybe this will help. But phosphorus? Isn't this going to be another food vs. fuel conflict?

Scientists have found an inexpensive way to produce hydrogen from water, a discovery that could lead to a plentiful source of environmentally friendly fuel to power homes and cars.

The technique, which mimics the way photosynthesis works in plants, also provides a highly efficient way to store energy, potentially paving the way to making solar power more economically viable.

Hydrogen is a clean, energy-rich fuel that many experts believe could become important as nations attempt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The gas can be produced by splitting water but current techniques are expensive, use harsh chemicals and need carefully controlled environments in which to operate.

Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed a catalyst made from cobalt and phosphorus that can split water at room temperature, a technique he describes in the journal Science. "I'm using cheap, Earth-abundant materials that you can mass-manufacture. As long as you can charge the surface, you can create the catalyst and it doesn't get any cheaper than that."

He said the discovery could have major implications for the uptake of solar photovoltaic technology. One of the reasons, he said, why solar panels have not penetrated the consumer market properly is that no one has found a way to store energy in a way that, when the Sun is not shining, people still have electricity. "You can't think about an energy economy or a global energy system only when the sun is out."

Batteries could do the job but they cannot store anywhere near as much energy per unit mass as chemical fuels. Nocera's technique would allow the storage of excess energy from sunlight during the daytime. "You could imagine, during the day you have a photovoltaic cell, you take some of that electricity and use it in your house, then take the other part of that electricity for my catalyst, feed the catalyst water and you get hydrogen and oxygen."

At night, the hydrogen and oxygen could be recombined in a fuel cell to produce an electrical current to power a home or recharge an electric car. "So I've made your house a gas station and a power station. It's all enabled because we can use light plus water to make a chemical fuel, which is hydrogen and oxygen."

Converting an Olympic swimming pool of water into hydrogen and oxygen per second would create 43 terawatts of power. "In the next 50 years, the world needs 16 terawatts. By the end of the century, we'll need around 30," said Nocera. "There's a heck of lot of energy stored in chemical bonds."

For a home, Nocera said that it would be enough to split a few litres of water per day into hydrogen and oxygen. The water would be reformed when the gases were put through the fuel cell.

There is much work to be done in converting Nocera's idea into a commercial product. At the moment, his catalyst can only accept small amounts of electrical current at once, meaning that it would be an inefficient way to quickly store large amounts of energy. But Nocera is certain that engineers will iron out the issues and produce commercial-scale products within a decade.

James Barber, a leading researcher in artificial photosynthesis at Imperial College London, said Nocera's work was a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy. "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."

Converting an Olympic swimming pool of water into hydrogen and oxygen per second would create 43 terawatts of power.

Abandon hope all yea who enter here. Another moron journalist. It's just a battery, you numskull. It's not creating anything.

So this is a hydrogen battery then? That uses phosphorus and cobalt?

He's invented a new battery. We still need the power to store in them though don't we???

Half a battery I think - maybe I'm misreading it but I think you need to feed the Hydrogen into a fuel cell. Plenty of those around capable of powering a house. Doh!

I remain sceptical about the use of hydrogen in ground vehicles for all the energy economics and materials issues that have been discussed before. I do think that there may be a role for hydrogen as one of the storage medium technologies we could use to even out supply-demand differences in a renewables-based grid; despite it's poor overall, round-trip, energy efficiency: ca. 30%. Maybe this technology, if it works and if deployed selectively, would improve that efficiency?

The article is a bit short on technical detail, but as far as I can tell it is simply a proposal to split water into into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis, using power from PV modules.

Nothing new or radical here, use of a new catalylst may make the process a little more efficient, but the energy contained in the hydrogen will always be less than the energy used in producing it.
Additional losses will occur in the fuel cell used to turn the hydrogen back into electrcity.

Hydrogen is very bulky to store unless compresed or liquified, both of which require expensive equipment, that also requires substantial energy input.

For small scale storeage batteries are simpler and probably cheaper and safer.
For grid scale use, the idea just might be worth pursuing, but pumped storage, hydro electric power, wind power, demand management, and the limited use of NG at times of no wind/solar input, all appear more viable.

All for better batteries, against sloppy and misleading journalism. Still dubious about the 'Hydrogen economy' due to the difficulties associated with transportation and storage of Hydrogen. Evil stuff. Putting aside the carbon emissions thing, I'd much rather have a bottle of propane or butane in the cupboard outside my back door (as at present) than a bottle of Hydrogen.

skeptik wrote:All for better batteries, against sloppy and misleading journalism. Still dubious about the 'Hydrogen economy' due to the difficulties associated with transportation and storage of Hydrogen. Evil stuff. Putting aside the carbon emissions thing, I'd much rather have a bottle of propane or butane in the cupboard outside my back door (as at present) than a bottle of Hydrogen.

Indeed, and also remember that the bottle of butane or propane contains liquid under a relativly low pressure, which vapourises as used.

Hydrogen can not be liquefied by pressure, therefore the amount that can be stored in a cylinder is very limited indeed, unless a very expensive ultra high pressure cylinder is used.

More from the Boston Herald:
http://news.bostonherald.com/business/t ... ition=also

In what is being hailed as a major breakthrough in solar energy, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to use the sun’s abundant, non-polluting rays as a power source even when the sun isn’t shining.

“What we’re doing allows you to use (solar panels) 24/7, because you can use the fuel that they generate any time you want,” said Daniel Nocera, MIT’s Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and one of two men behind the discovery.

As the world’s demand for energy has grown, scientists have long looked toward the sun as a source of free, clean power.

Yesterday, Nocera and MIT postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan unveiled a low-cost, highly efficient way to use the sun’s energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The technology then recombines the oxygen and hydrogen inside a fuel cell to create carbon-free electricity, which may be used, even after dark, to heat or power a home.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications,” said energy expert James Barber of Imperial College London.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s discovery is a new catalyst that produces oxygen from water; another catalyst produces hydrogen.

The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water.

When electricity runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen from water, the system can duplicate the water-splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

“It’s simple, easy to implement and cheap,” Nocera said.

He predicted that it could be household technology in 10 years.



Not sure where he gets the idea that cobalt & platinum are cheap and plentiful from....................

adam2 wrote:For grid scale use, the idea just might be worth pursuing, but pumped storage, hydro electric power, wind power, demand management, and the limited use of NG at times of no wind/solar input, all appear more viable.

Absolutely. Hydrogen will be worth pursuing only in this context, where other more energy efficient means of managing supply and demand are not practicable or are not sufficiently scalable. In a grid where there is mixture of technologies to store "electricity", the more efficient ones could be drawn on first, with hydrogen, as one of the less efficient storage modes, being drawn on when more efficient ones are not available or are "empty".

Umm, and how much phosphorus is there...

Quoting the definity of Wikipedia :

In 2007, at the then current rate of consumption, the supply of phosphorus was estimated to run out in 345 years.[13] However, scientists are now claiming that a "Peak Phosphorus" will occur in 30 years and that "At current rates, reserves will be depleted in the next 50 to 100 years."[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus

And more...

Phosphate rock, which is partially made of apatite (an impure tri-calcium phosphate mineral), is an important commercial source of this element. About 50 per cent of the global phosphorus reserves are in the Arab nations.[11] Large deposits of apatite are located in China, Russia,...

Umm...

Pennsif

Pennsif wrote: And more...

Phosphate rock, which is partially made of apatite (an impure tri-calcium phosphate mineral), is an important commercial source of this element. About 50 per cent of the global phosphorus reserves are in the Arab nations.[11] Large deposits of apatite are located in China, Russia,...

This is how a lot of it gets to market. The worlds longest conveyor belt. Zoom back slowly. Impressive. Amazing how the dust blowoff from all that jiggling rock is visible from so far out into space in the rocky desert areas.

http://www.satellitesights.com/satellit ... ern_Sahara

They'll be able to mine the blow off in the future!

Revolt in a Tunisian mining town

Le Monde Diplomatique

7th July 2008

http://mondediplo.com/2008/07/07tunisia

The phosphate mines of Gafsa in Tunisia were discovered in the French colonial era and have been run since for the benefit of a few, with much of their output sent to France. Since the start of this year, local people in Redeyef have protested, despite state persecution, at the way things have always been done. They want jobs, fair pay and a basic infrastructure.

By Karine Gantin and Omeyya Seddik

The angry women of Redeyef in the Gafsa mining belt of Tunisia ordered a general evacuation on 7 May, saying: "If they want our town so badly, let them have it." Many left the town protesting against police harassment, taking to the road with just a few goods and chattels. They were cautioned by the police that if they got as far as a mountain towards the nearby Algerian border, they would be arrested and charged with treason, as neighbouring villagers who had asked for political asylum in Algeria had been a few weeks earlier. The women approached the mountain but eventually turned back, persuaded by negotiators from a perplexed local authority obeying a clear logic: stay put and continue the fight.

Since early this year the inhabitants of this working-class redoubt 400km southwest of Tunis, who have a history of rebellion, have become legendary, staging a proud and angry revolt against state tactics that surround them with police, and against the total media control that stifles any dissent.

The flashpoint was 5 January, when results of a recruitment competition by CPG (Gafsa Phosphates Company), the region's only major employer, were published - and declared fraudulent. Unemployed youths occupied the regional trade union office in Redeyef and were joined by miners' widows and their families, who pitched camp in front of the building. The situation moved fast. Workers and those out of work, students and other locals called meetings for strike action. There is both deep poverty and escalating prices here, and protest targeted the system's corruption and nepotism, and its unjust employment practices.

Like other towns in Gafsa's mining belt (Oum Laarayes, Metlaoui, El Mdhilla), Redeyef has been in thrall to the CPG since the company was established in 1897 to mine phosphate deposits discovered by Philippe Thomas, a veterinary surgeon, warden of the local prison and amateur geologist. Extraction of underground riches was, from the start, typically colonial: a brutal land-grab from indigenous people; intensive exploitation of resources; work practices that did not value human life and produced huge amounts of polluting waste; destruction of the ecosystem and of the social fabric; production volumes exported for France's benefit; organisation of a workforce based on patronage, clan and family ties (caidat) outside the civil authority; heavy, exhausting work with a high mortality rate; the institutionalised import of replacement labour; a hierarchy based on ethnic lines with a few salaried workers and a high proportion of labourers without job security; a controlled but weak formal and informal economy run to keep wage levels below the cost of retaining and training manpower.

From the colonial era

Just about all of these practices survived the colonial era. The company, which merged in 1996 with GCT (the Tunisian Chemical Group), remains the region's major employer. During the past 25 years modern production methods and the closure of deep-shaft mines in favour of open casting have made the work less physically demanding with fewer mortalities. But modernisation, which brought structural change, disposed of 75% of the workforce. Today only 5,000 are directly employed. They enjoy a status and work conditions that are the envy of a region where unemployment officially stands at 30%, double the national rate. The many sub-contractors surrounding the company use workers who are badly paid with no job security.

Outside CPG the only other employment is in small businesses often trading across the Algerian border. Things are so bad that some risk their lives trying to migrate across the Mediterranean while others move to the poorer outskirts of towns along the littoral, the Tunisia that "works".

The 5,000 company jobs, together with funds set aside for reconstruction, are managed in close collaboration with the UGTT (the regional union of Tunisian workers). Until recently, regional stability was maintained by meagre handouts from the enormous profits generated by the phosphates industry, keeping a subtle balance between the clans and families favoured by the union branch and by the ruling party, the RCD (the Constitutional Democratic Party). Local managers were used as go-betweens with the main tribes, the Ouled Abid and the Ouled Bouyahia. But continual contraction of funds, plus widespread corruption, destroyed this balance, even when the price of phosphate on world markets rose spectacularly. The UGTT's regional office became the centre of a parasitic network ensuring that the phosphate bonus went only to friends and close relatives. The union is the most powerful local representative of what people now see as an unjust foreign power.

"We, the mining community, are never unjust, but if people are unjust to us then..." runs the banner across one of the roads into Redeyef - the slogan ends in a curse. This is a poor and marginalised area, scene of recent skirmishes with the police, where the protest has continued since January. Action by unemployed graduates is backed by strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins involving the whole community. Families of those injured or killed working at the mine join sacked workers. Women whose sons or husbands were imprisoned after the first demonstrations have called for a general strike. At night young people patrol Redeyef in small groups for self-protection, sounding the alarm by beating stones against a metal bridge - "the drums of war" - and sharing what food they have. There's an impressive solidarity that the forces of law and order can't break. Despite state control of media outlets, the protests have become the longest-lasting, most powerful and best-organised social uprising in Tunisia's recent history.

Brutal repression

The response has been to counter the protest with brutal repression: at least two have died, many have been wounded or detained. Families have been bullied and humiliated, their possessions destroyed. Army paramilitary units joined the siege during June. Live bullets are now being used, more young people snatched for interrogation and detention, and military squads comb the mountains looking for those in hiding to avoid torture. Several groups of young people have already been hauled before the courts; sentences vary in harshness from one trial to another, a sign that the authorities are unsure what strategy to follow.

Opposition politicians in Tunisia (as well as support groups in Paris, Milan and Nantes, where there is an immigrant community originally from Redeyef), are fighting to break the information blockade. But their organisation is indecisive. Civil society in Tunisia is politically battered, flattened long ago by a hyper-repressive regime, and struggles to respond adequately. The authorities say little about the events and accuse "disruptive elements"; perhaps that is why the uprising has not reached other regions or the nearby town of Férianain in Kesserine province.

Right in the town centre of Redeyef, under the nose of the neighbouring sub-prefecture, the local UGTT office was taken over by protestors for a headquarters; UGTT heavies attempted to reclaim it and padlocked the doors, but the people broke back in. The ground floor café, where meetings take place, hums with visitors. Activists posted on the first floor balcony welcome those arriving for rallies on the huge terrace below. At meetings there's a striking female presence. Across the street, supporters hand out pamphlets and opposition newspapers. Boubaker Ben Boubaker, known as the Chauffeur, had his vegetable stall here; he is an out-of-work graduate well known for sending an amusing letter to the education minister with advice on solving unemployment. His stall was ransacked by police, who then broke into his family home. He fled to the mountains.

Adnan Hajji, general secretary of Redeyef's primary teachers' union and a charismatic figure, has been able to maintain the movement's unity in the face of local rivalries and the clan structure. He is outstandingly popular, particularly with women and children. He knows that the dream has already come a long way and that any attempt to force a climb-down could have uncontrollable consequences. During the night of 20 June, he was arrested at home and police are looking for his colleagues.

To Hajji the key issue remains at a regional level. He has said: "We must achieve a positive result. People must know that peaceful struggle is not in vain. Anything else would be a catastrophe." It's true that billboards proclaiming "Ben Ali 2009" for the presidential elections have been removed since the start of the protest (when not altered to read "Ben Ali 2080" or "Ben Ali 2500"). But the organisers forbid political slogans at rallies and meetings.

The area's people no longer believe that attitudes will change from the top. The only way to free them is a strong national and international campaign or extension of the struggle to other regions of Tunisia. Meanwhile their movement wants repression to end, and negotiations aimed to resolve the crisis. The recruitment competition should be declared void, replaced by a programme to hire out-of-work graduates. State involvement in industrial projects should respect international environmental norms. Public services - electricity, running water, education, health care - should be provided for the poorest. The movement's aim is determination and dignity.