A chemical process that combines 3 parts of cheap (and plentiful) sub-bituminous coal with 1 part of petroleum coke creates hydrogen with nearly zero carbon emissions. The hydrogen can then be used to generate clean electricity. What CO2 that is generated in the process is captured and injected into oil wells for enhanced oil recovery. The other byproducts include various fertilizer products that can be shipped to local farmers. This is the plan of Hydrogen Energy California. However appealing the plan sounds, it faces an uphill fight for approval, as the State of California government has been trying to force all power suppliers – even those based out of state – to cease the use of coal in electricity generation. The trick here for HEC is to convince regulators that the actual feedstock is hydrogen, and not the coal that goes into creating the hydrogen. If this process is allowed to go ahead and it proven to be cost effective, it could be a game changer even greater than the hydraulic fracturing revolution has been.
Archive for the ‘hydrogen’ Category
2012 Outlook for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology
February 16, 2012A rare free report from Pike Research (login required) on the outlook for hydrogen fuel cells in 2012. While it remains an approach with much promise, the technological hurdles to a hydrogen economy are as great today as they were when the National Academy of Science produce it’s much-commented-upon report back in 2004. Personally, I remain convinced that carbon fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) will continue to dominate the global energy picture for at least the first half of this century. The global financial situation will constrain governments for years to come, and alternative energies are going to have to earn their market share without resort to government subsidies.
The nexus of fuel cell technology, wastewater treatment and electricity generation
August 19, 2011from PhysOrg.com: “Yanbiao Liu and his colleagues from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, have succeeded in building a device capable of both cleaning wastewater and producing electricity from it.”
Meanwhile, in California, Greenbang reports on a tri-generation fuel cell that clean wastewater, generates electricity, and provides hydrogen to fueling stations for hydrogen powered vehicles.
Hydrogen breakthrough?
August 11, 2011The vision of a hydrogen-based economy has been a tantalizing dream for over a decade. The promise of a clean, cheap and plentiful fuel – domestically available and producing only water vapor as an exhaust – seems too good to be true. And, alas, it has been. Although in theory hydrogen provides an easy way to convert electrical energy into chemical energy – and thus to make it both storable and transportable – it has not proven easy to do so cheaply. However, a new process using plentiful and cheap iron and nickel might provide the long sought breakthrough, according to research published in the journal Science today. Subscription is required for the article, which is a technical article and not intended for the general public. However, BBC News has a very good overview:
Fuel cells need a catalyst to speed up the chemical reactions that change hydrogen into water and electricity. Platinum is very good at this but it is famously expensive and rare.
Some microbes, though, have known for a billion years how to make enzymes that can do the job using cheap and abundant nickel and iron.
These natural enzymes are unfortunately difficult to obtain and do not do so well outside the microbe.
Now researchers have managed to make a synthetic, toughened-up version.
Real-world viability
So far, they have looked at just one step in the complex reaction, where two hydrogen atoms taken from water are snapped together to make hydrogen gas.
But their new synthetic enzyme is performing surprisingly well, in fact it’s 10 times faster than the natural one, making 100,000 molecules of hydrogen gas every second.
As always, read the whole thing.
