Scientists develop new hydrogen reactor(no fossil fuel -just ethanol)

[papau]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/02/13/hydrogen.reactors.ap/index.html

Scientists develop new hydrogen reactor
Friday, February 13, 2004 Posted: 12:19 PM EST (1719 GMT)

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AP) -- Researchers say they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars.

The development could help open the way for cleaner-burning technology at home and on the road.

Current methods of producing hydrogen from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels, the University of Minnesota researchers said.

The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power.

"This points to a way to make renewable hydrogen that may be economical and available," said Lanny Schmidt, a chemical engineer who led the study. The work was outlined in Friday's issue of the journal Science. <snip>

The Minnesota researchers envision people buying ethanol to power the small fuel cell in their basements. The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home.

[NeonLX]

1. Yeah, but how they gonna make the ethanol?

Gotta distill that corn or whatever--and that takes lots of heat (from fossil fuels?).

[Taeger]

2. Catch-22

Thats the big catch-22 in ethanol. It take more energy to MAKE than it gives. It's an OK battery technology I guess. But they're making HYDROGEN from it. Why not simply break water up, it will take a LOT less energy.

Seriously, someone has to figure out a way to generate power from those mega-shit tanks that pork farms produce. I'm certain that the excess gas would burn.

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Mostly methane from poop

And it does, indeed, burn.

[tridim]

5. Hemp seed oil

is the key.. But it gets you high and turns you into a "librul" so we can't use that.

[junker]

4. The issue of hydrogen from water has to do with 'inherent' energy....water

water is the resultant of the burning of hydrogen, that is, it is the waste product from that combustion. The hydrogen within the ethanol has much more energy available than the hydrogen within water (basically cause there is more hydrogen atoms NOT encumbered by the oxygen bond - a hard one to break that takes more energy to break than it yields -)


hydrogen is basically (and especially within the water molecule and even with the h30 (hydronium) molecule) an energy carrier. So as noted previously in post above, it is basically a battery. Or a way of storing energy.

What is really sad is that the sun sends enough energy every day to earth in the form of light to support the entire human energy consumption for 1.2 years (updated from Bucky Fullers original calcs in the 50s). AND the sun delivers 11 times as much electricity to the earth daily as it does light. All the electricity is available through higher energy particle interaction with the ionosphere and higher levels of the atmosphere. This can be extracted as has been demonstrated by Tesla and Reich (the govt destroyed all of the Reich papers/docs it could get its hands on, and secreted away all of tesla's later work).

Even Maxwell (pre-Heavyside reductionist rewriting of his quadrion equations) realized in 1850s that the earth was and always could be energy self-sufficient from solar induced electricity alone NO MATTER HOW MANY HUMANS MIGHT BE USING THAT ENERGY....

Ethanol is a political gimmick, not the answer to peak oil which occurred in 2000.

Let's look to real value for our brain noodling on this topic by examining energy at its highest levels (pun intended chuckle chuckle) and see the sun/solar system for what it really is...

[NNadir]

6. This device is a reformer, not really much new.

CNN is just doing breathless science (of the type the mainstream media usually does) reporting here.

Most fuel cells that use fuels other than pure hydrogen have a reformer in the line, because most fuel cells actually use hydrogen as an intermediate in the oxidation process. Compact reformers have been designed for methane, methanol, and even gasoline. The problem with many of them is that they are expensive, that they often require high temperatures and usually have short lifetimes. Often they are intolerant of impurities that poison the catalytic surfaces.

Without having actually read the report, I'd guess that this one is simply an improvement in being more compact, and perhaps more efficient. I also guess that it's really not though, a breakthrough conception, if that's what's being implied.

[papau]

7. economical and available non-fossil fuels renewable hydrogen

that is not only cheap, but is a net increase in energy resource


Since breaking up water so as to get some energy as it reforms is a lose lose energy use reduction idea, this seems to be a way to get on the positive side of the fossil fuels used less goal.