South Koreans make hydrogen solid for a brighter fuel cell future

While storing hydrogen as a solid by fusing it to titanium isn't an entirely new idea, a team of South Korean scientists look to be the first to find a reliable and efficient method of doing so. The solid-state storage of hydrogen has long been a goal of fuel cell systems, since it does away with those nasty explosive notions of storing hydrogen at a high pressure and low temperature. Apparently the new method being unveiled by the team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology not only manages to bind hydrogen with titanium into the form of a stable solid that has much less requirements for pressure or temperature regulation, but it takes "absolutely no energy input" to store as such, and "relatively small amounts of energy" to extract. The process still needs further testing, but hopes are high for this discovery to lead toward fuel cell vehicles that are a bit less of a bomb-on-wheels, and more efficient to obtain energy for -- which was the idea all along, right?

[Jeff @ Aug 23rd 2006 12:55AM]

Too bad it takes more energy to convert water to hydrogen than what it yields.

[Mike @ Aug 23rd 2006 12:58AM]

This is great news, hope to hear about this more in the coming future. Wonder how long lobbyists can keep this from the American public.

[zuricher @ Aug 23rd 2006 1:01AM]

well just hope this team of scientists wasn't led by hwang

[Edward @ Aug 23rd 2006 1:01AM]

lol yeah because of the laws of thermodynamics. one of them states that the yeild of energy from a system will be less than the amount of energy put into it

[kjorup @ Aug 23rd 2006 1:46AM]

I'm sorry to say so - but they are not the first to get there:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.htm

[pushlatency @ Aug 23rd 2006 1:57AM]

This has nothing directly to do with fuel cells or producing hydrogen.

Quit your whining and leave your beef with thermodynamics aside.

The materials in question are called metal hydrides and I've been researching them for the past 2.5 years. They store substantial amounts of hydrogen in terms of volume but you must the substantial amount of weight this storage system adds.

For instance, magnesium (hydride) has a storage capacity of 7.6%. In other words, 100 kg of magnesium will store about 7.6 kg of hydrogen at full capacity. Anywhere between 3-7 kg of hydrogen is considered to store energy equivalent to a typical gas tank. To make things worse, Mg hydride for many reasons isn't suitable for cars. In this case we use LaNi5 with storage of capacity of ~1.5%

So as opposed to 60 lbs of fuel sitting in the back of your car, consider over 450 kg of metal powder sitting in the back of your car.

I'm with Colin Chapman here, we take away weight whenever possible, not add it.

Oh, any the reason this article is on "Platinum Today" is that platinum is used as a catalyst to dissociate hydrogen molecules for both fuel cells and metal hydride research.

[Jeff @ Aug 23rd 2006 2:19AM]

The point is that hydrogen isn't a cure to the energy crisis. You still need to use power generated by fossil fuel or nuclear power stations to render it.

[Dogbert @ Aug 23rd 2006 2:51AM]

Why is Engadget always late with their news?

This one is over a week old.

[MPG @ Aug 23rd 2006 2:58AM]

"The point is that hydrogen isn't a cure to the energy crisis. You still need to use power generated by fossil fuel or nuclear power stations to render it."

That is of course nonsense. I can have solar panels on my roof and generate my own hydrogen. Can you generate your own gasoline?

[MPG @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:01AM]

"Um, Hydrogen, in any form, is still x10 safer then Gasoline."

Very true. I would expect a bit more from a site like Engadget than uninformed statements about "bombs-on-wheels". But I guess it's more important to have articles that sound hip and interesting as opposed to being correct.

[pushlatency @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:21AM]

Well, the truth is that the energy crisis is much bigger then hydrogen.

To solve the energy crisis many things must happen: But what I understand as the central point is renewable sources must take over from our fossil fuel and nuclear based power plants. The same goes for how our buildings will be heated.

One of hydrogen's main selling points is its versatility of production, being that it can be made from nearly anything. Its role is as an energy carrier, not as a fuel. Think of its idealized purpose as akin to power lines...it’s intended to transmit and secondly "store" electricity.

In the most basic set up we have a wind turbine that produces electricity throughout a windy day; some of that electricity can be "packaged" up and put in our car through hydrogen. No one expects the process to be 100 or greater then 100 percent efficient.

The loses are expected, and it beats relying on a continually diminishing supply of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the feedstock of choice at present because they provide the lowest cost for the research community working on hydrogen. I cannot say for sure if nuclear will be part of the future equation, but no one in there right mind expects fossil fuel produced hydrogen to be a viable solution.

The point is, in terms of the energy crisis solution - hydrogen, solar, wind, tidal and even hyper-turbo-reverse cold fusion research all depend on each other’s success.

[pushlatency @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:34AM]

Okay, I’ve probably started sounding like a jackass by now, but I'll chime in about the 10x safer then gasoline line.

Its not really accurate to say that, the two are just different, that's probably the most truth assessment you can make.

For instance hydrogen is much much much easier to ignite then gasoline - a lower ratio of hydrogen atom in air will cause ignition in comparison to gasoline.

However this is offset by how light it is and how quickly it diffuses upwards into the sky. Gasoline fumes are heavy and stay low to the ground. Therefore in terms of a slow leak on a disabled car, gasoline could be reasoned to be more dangerous.

Now if you have a car going 180mph straight into a brick wall, it’s anybody's guess. But i'm going to say the boom from hydrogen will be bigger. - ssuming is stored in a cylinder.

[Jeff @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:38AM]

You forget that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If you put solar panels up, that's energy not being absorbed by the Earth to create radiant heat or by trees for photosynthesis. Windmills take energy away from wind currents, which means that moisture won't be moved in-land for rainfall.

[pushlatency @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:48AM]

"You forget that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If you put solar panels up, that's energy not being absorbed by the Earth to create radiant heat or by trees for photosynthesis. Windmills take
energy away from wind currents, which means that moisture won't be moved in-land for rainfall."

Oh geez...seems your right with that one, damn our desire to innovate and improve the human condition...sounds like we're SOL

So what's our choice now? Mass suicide or a career change to hunter-gathering?.

I always figured that college education was a waste.

[Jeff @ Aug 23rd 2006 4:07AM]

There is no solution. The population is continually growing and resources are continually dwindling. Luckily neither of us will be around when it becomes /real/ problem.

[John @ Aug 23rd 2006 4:23AM]

And what about Hydroelectric power? How is that hurting the environment? The water still gets to where it was going in the first place, it merely gets held up in the process. Also, windmills do no more to hamper the wind than any other solid object. Adding windmills on top of hills is hardly going to turn the mid-west into the Sahara... Solar panels on top of houses would merely absorb energy that is normally wasted in heating our roof. Photosynthesis wouldn't be disrupted at all, unless your attaching solar panels to your trees.

[Patrick @ Aug 23rd 2006 5:05AM]

"But I guess it's more important to have articles that sound hip and interesting as opposed to being correct."

Thank you for summing up the last 200 years of journalism. (insert smiley face here)

[Kevin @ Aug 23rd 2006 6:01AM]

Jeff, although you're right that energy can't be created or destroyed, you're neglecting the fact that it can be stored and released. Although the solar energy would be "absorbed", it would be released later when the generated fuel was used.

You could perhaps look at it another way: Maybe we *should* put solar panels up, especially in the mountains as heatsinks to reduce some of excessive meltwater which is contributing to rising sea levels, and the energy can be released somewhere else. It might make an interesting thesis for somebody, "Rebalance the climate by redistributing solar energy."

[MPG @ Aug 23rd 2006 6:30AM]

"You forget that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If you put solar panels up, that's energy not being absorbed by the Earth to create radiant heat or by trees for photosynthesis."

Actually, I don't even think you're serious about this. If I put solar panels on my roof, they absorb energy that otherwise would have been transformed into heat. No plant would have ever used this energy for photosynthesis. Sure, that heat is not being transferred into the atmosphere, but that happens later when the hydrogen is used in the car. So this is probably the most artificially constructed argument I've ever seen.

But like I said, I don't think you were serious in the first place.

[Perry @ Aug 23rd 2006 8:17AM]

titanium, in the amounts necessary to store a useful amount of hydrogen, might be pretty expensive.

[Dejan @ Aug 23rd 2006 9:14AM]

Apart from hydropower, wind, ..., Geothermal sources are clean way to produce hydrogen, just look at how Iceland is doing. Almost all energy is produced from geothermal sources. And yes there are hydrogen buses and hydrogen Shell fuel station ;)

[Ken @ Aug 23rd 2006 9:58AM]

"titanium, in the amounts necessary to store a useful amount of hydrogen, might be pretty expensive."

Titanium as an element is actually very much available, being the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. The costs you see normally associated with titanium are usually derived from the difficulties in welding, machining, rolling, and other processing techniques.

[macona @ Aug 23rd 2006 1:49PM]

John, the problem with hydro is that is isnt exactly "fish friendly" I did some work on the dams along the columbia river and it is amazing how much effort and expense has been used to make sure the fish get through the dam safely.

Nuclear is the way to go in the long run. Use of breeder type reactors which regenerate their own fuel would give abundant cheap electrical power but the enviromentalists will have nothing of the sorts.

here is an interesting article about reactor viability:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1999/pdfs/wilson.pdf#search=%22fission%20vs%20breeder%20reactors%22

[pushlatency @ Aug 23rd 2006 3:08PM]

Pop some huge solar panel satellite collectory-thing into space. Oh wait, we might be stealing solar energy meant for burgeoning alien life on Europa. Crap

Anyway, these aren't realistic problems. Yes research needs to be done, but I believe we can sustain our society and minimize the damage we cause.

I was living in Iceland until about a year ago. The hydrogen bus system there is part of a larger EU project involving 11 other european cities, just add 'CUTE' to your search. One time one of the H2 buses broke down and people flipped their shit, someone got it in their head that a huge explosion was imminent, so the passengers went ahead with a plan to start clearing a 2 km radius by knocking on people's doors and telling them to evacuate.

--

Right, Ti isn't expensive or rare at all. Its kinda of expensive to process into a pure form, and preparing it for hydrogen storage (alloying it, powdering it to small particle sizes, adding platinum or palladium catalysts) adds some cost too.

[google drone @ Aug 29th 2006 4:25AM]

great!!! asia and the west is all the world needs we keep inventing and making the world better.. fuck off useless muslims south americans and africa.. complete useless garbage mexico so dam proud of there useless culture what have they done for us?? nothing! get out of our country and bring smart people over here.. nobody needs a stupid culture who doesn't give a crap about education..

[Jake @ Sep 7th 2006 3:23AM]

I am a bit late on this feed, but so are the Koreans.
There is a company by the name of Ovonics that created
a metal hydride hydrogen storage tank years ago.
I haven't looked at the site for some time, but I think one of the oil companys, "Shell" owns them or soemthing.

Interesting.

It is also interesting that Honda is going into prodouction of Solar cells. Not Solar cells that compete with resources that are normally associated with solar celss. Instead, Honda is doing it with R&D.
Keep it simple. Or as they used to say, "We make it simple."

There is perhaps a lot of less than optimistic views and web sites out there concerning the decline of oil.

But leaderships takes a leader.

Jake.

[Robert @ Sep 2nd 2007 10:12PM]

Let's all just get along:) I had to say that ...

The answer is simple:
Extract hydrogen from water via electrolosis with your solar-cell collector stationed in the backyard. Grab a tank or two of hydro for the car whenever you need one, and hit the road. It could be as easy as loading the car with your groceries. So what if the cylinders take up lots of space. Build bigger cars! No need to drive around little rice rockets anymore cuz the fuel crunch and pollution problems would be over. That's why we started driving those dinky thing in the first place wasn't it?

Cylidars are dangerous? Yeah yeah yeah they hold a lot of pressure so just drive safer then if it's a big worry to you. If you looked at the stats, that fear of driving a "rolling bomb" would probably play a very unlikley role in deaths per year caused by cylinder explosions. Sure you get a few deaths but I'd rather blow up instantly than suffer in the flames of gasoline.

I think the idea of solid hydrogen is cool. Hydrogen clinging onto some compound for dear life ... huddled together with the potential force of a Normandy landing. The ramp comes down and the Hydro molecules march right into my fuel cell to return home as water drenched troops only to do it all over again. Hmmmm ... I'm nuts ... lets get magnetics involved and sound waves too for hydro separation ... why is everything so two dimensional around here. It may require a comprehensive solution not just this or that.

Hydro is almost here!