Cella Energy - Hydrogen fuel pumped like a fluid... $1.50 gallon

[True Earthling]

Cella has developed ‘micro beads’ – 30 times smaller than a grain of sand – that can trap and release hydrogen when heated. And because the beads are small enough to flow like liquid, refuelling could even be done at any gas station.

What’s more at $1.50 per gallon, and with one tank capable of powering an average car for 300-400 miles, the benefits don’t stop at the environment. “In some senses hydrogen is the perfect fuel,” says Professor Stephen Bennington, head of the scientific team behind the fuel. “It has three times more energy than gasoline per unit, can be used in a standard combustion engine, and when it burns it produces nothing but water.” The micro beads can also be used as an additive to conventional gasoline. Because so much hydrogen production occurs at oil refineries it would be possible to seamlessly integrate Cella’s technology into the supply chain for conventional fuels. The micro-beads can even be returned to oil refineries where they could be refuelled using existing hydrogen production facilities.

The fact that water is the only by-product of burned hydrogen means that once the first commercially viable technology is ready, it will completely revolutionize the world’s transport industry – over the next 20 years 90% of the increase in oil demand will come from the transport sector. Cella boss Stephen Voller believes his micro bead technology could be for sale at gas stations in less than five years, keeping the world’s oil reserves deep underground where they belong.

http://inhabitat.com/uk-firm-develops-hydrogen-micro-beads-that-could-fuel-cars-for-1-50-per-gallon/

The patented technology uses a technique called coaxial electrospinning to safely encapsulate complex hydrides using nanostructuring techniques. The result was a hydrogen fuel that could be handled quite safely in the open air and pumped like a fluid. In early 2011 Cella Energy Ltd was formed as a spin-out company from RAL with the exclusive rights to the IP. Funding has been provided by Thomas Swan & Co. Ltd, a UK chemical company established in 1926.

The hydrogen fuels will be rolled out in two stages. The first stage will be as a fuel additive, enabling lower emissions without any change to the fuelling infrastructure or to regular vehicles. The second stage would require changes to vehicles, but this would provide a pure hydrogen solution with zero carbon emissions.

Cella won the Shell Springboard Award in 2011.

http://www.cellaenergy.com

[Richardo]

1. ...zero carbon emissions from the *car*.

You have to burn methane to produce the hydrogen, though. So the carbon emission is moved upstream from the car.


BUT - I like this development :thumbsup:

[Statistical]

16. You can also produce hydrogen from electricity.

You could also break hydrogen down from water directly by heat. It requires tremendous heat but there are nuclear plants that can do that.



Rather than water as a working fluid (which converts to steam at 280 deg Celsius even when under 75 atmospheres of pressure) healium can be heated to 1000 degrees (actually much higher than that) with just 1 atmosphere of pressure. By using helium gas instead of water as your working fluid you can increase the output heat. This result in higher efficiency turbines (for electricity) or the ability to break water into hydrogen directly. A plant could even be built to produce both. When electrical demand is high it produces electricity when it is low it produces hydrogen.

[drm604]

2. This talks about producing the hyrdrogen at oil refineries.

Isn't the point of alternative fuels to replace oil?

What are the "micro beads" made of and what happens to them if they're used as an additive to regular gasoline? Do they end up in the environment?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. I wouldn't be surprised if they were bucky balls, soccer ball shaped so to speak

spheres of carbon molecules.

[drm604]

5. That makes sense.

If so then it seems like they would be burned in the process, creating CO2.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. I read years ago that you can store (it will actually soak it up) hydrogen in carbon

fiber nanotubes up to some ridiculous multiple of their weight with hydrogen. It can be done at atmospheric pressure and temperature iirc and can be expelled with a slight positive pressure, what ever happened to that I don't know.

[Statistical]

17. I would hope they wouldn't be burned up. Hydrogen fuel cell doesn't burn anything.

Likely something (temp change, pressure change, catalyst) releases hydrogen from the balls. Once all the balls in the tank are empty you would "refill" by exchanging spent balls for hydrogen loaded ones at the "gas station".

[LARED]

3. Very nice, very interesting.

I wonder what the cost to produce H2 beads is presently. I bet it still very high.

And car engines are in not way equipped to handle mircobeads. That's is not a show stopper, but needs to be figured out for a production car.

[aquart]

6. Bucky balls friendly. Hydrogen fuel not so much.

I would need lots of really impressive convincing.

[kristopher]

7. The energy penalty has been one of the major problems. I would want to see stats. NT

[aquart]

8. I have no idea what an "energy penalty" is.

I am concerned about the HYDROGEN EXPLODES penalty.

[kristopher]

10. That isn't a real issue.

The energy penalty is the amount of extra energy it costs to use a given technology for, in this case, storage. IT would be a catchall for the minuses in a "well to wheels" analysis of different potential energy sources for various applications.


I can demonstrate its effect on decision-making with the case of compressed hydrogen and cars powered with hydrogen fuel cells (hfc).

If we were to convert our personal auto fleet to hfc the amount of generation the nation would require would be about 50% more than if we switch to lithium battery powered electric vehicles.

I have a good chart somewhere that demonstrates it, I'll look for it and post it if possible.

[wtmusic]

12. Exhibit A: Fukushima #3. nt

[kristopher]

20. Hydrogen or gasoline, the explosive risk is comparable.

I don't support H but explosive risk isn't even on the radar as a problem.

[hunter]

9. Not quite yet...

From their site:

"Our current composite material uses ammonia borane NH3BH3 as the hydride and polystyrene as the polymer nano-scaffold. Ammonia borane in its normal state releases 12wt% of hydrogen at temperatures between 110°C and 150°C, but with very slow kinetics. In our materials the accessible hydrogen content is reduced to 6wt% but the temperature of operation is reduced so that it starts releasing hydrogen below 80°C and the kinetics are an order of magnitude faster. Although ideal for our proof-of-concept work and potentially useful for the initial demonstrator projects it is not currently a viable commercial material: it is expensive to make and cannot be easily re-hydrided or chemically recycled."

http://www.cellaenergy.com/index.php?page=technology

===============================

I don't think this will save the automobile culture. Nor will electric cars.

Gasoline and diesel will become increasingly synthetic and more expensive, made directly from natural gas, from heavy oil, tar sands and similar, or from (shudder) coal.

This will make everything more expensive, and fewer and fewer people will be able to afford automobiles of any sort.

[kristopher]

11. What limitation do you see with battery electric electric autos? nt

[wtmusic]

13. +1. What comes out, must go in.

How could the amount of energy required to pack H2 molecules in nanotubes be less than simply compressing it, which already makes H2 a less efficient fuel than gasoline?

Smells bad.

[Statistical]

18. Because compressing is inefficient.

Also it is very hard to contain H2, compression just makes the transportation losses even higher. When you combine the losses in compression with the losses in transport you have a good margin to work on improving.

Not saying this invention is legit or will even be economical but the theory is at least sound. When you compress hydrogen ~20%-35% of the energy is lost as heat/friction. Given the small size of hydrogen atoms they bleed out of containers meaning you lose some in transport and storage. Lastly for economics and safety the pressure H2 is stored at is limited this limits the amount of potential fuel and the range of the vehicle.

Now making it economical is another thing. Say you could store h2 in nano-particles with only 5% energy overhead. Sound great but if the cost in $ to store, and transport is 10x higher than transporting compressed hydrogen then it doesn't really make sense. Still IF (a huge unproven IF) you can get costs down there is huge room for potential improvement.

[wtmusic]

19. Whether they're packed in nanoparticles or not

H2 molecules repel. They repel if they're compressed, or sprinkled with pixie dust. Everything I know about physics (which is just enough to embarrass myself in some instances) says that the amount of energy required to overcome this repulsion in nanoparticles would exceed that of simply compressing it. This is strangely reminiscent of the "tech" that takes plain old water and produces energy-rich hydrogen from it, unconsciously/intentionally ignoring the first law of thermodynamics. The energy required to pull water apart is exactly the same which is released when it's put back together. Plus inefficiency, which of course make it a non-starter.

Absent some newly discovered quantum-tunneling phenomenon in "coaxial electrospinning" - a physical shortcut - this smells bad. I would have made the same conclusion about superconductivity and been very wrong, but the route those game-changing discoveries take is different. They begin with a discovery in a lab on an atomic, not microscopic, level.

The guy behind this, Stephen Bennington, has real cred and he has issued several disclaimers that it's currently impractical, and is little more than an idea. So it's very possible that the announcement has been oversold by the media and not him.

onedit: a Google of "coaxial electrospinning" shows it's a proven technique to create the hollow fibers. We're still left with the tech of how to coax H2 molecues inside.

[NickB79]

14. What exactly costs $1.50/gallon, the beads before or after impregnation with hydrogen?

Because hydrogen right now goes for around $3/gallon in the few refueling stations that sell it.