A new discovery is being hailed as a major breakthrough in hydrogen fuel cell development which overcomes previous limitations requiring water and continuous hydration in hydrogen fuel cells, simplifying design and reducing costs. The breakthrough promises to enhance the safety, efficiency, and energy density of hydrogen-based energy solutions, marking a significant step towards a viable hydrogen energy economy.
Brian Westenhaus for OilPrice.com:
Researchers led by Genki Kobayashi at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan have developed a solid electrolyte for transporting hydride ions (H−) at room temperature.
Its a breakthrough that means the advantages of hydrogen-based solid-state batteries and fuel cells are within practical reach, including improved safety, efficiency, and energy density, which are essential for advancing towards a practical hydrogen-based energy economy.
The study paper was published in the scientific journal Advanced Energy Materials.
For hydrogen-based energy storage and fuel to become more widespread, it needs to be safe, very efficient, and as simple as possible. Current hydrogen-based fuel cells used in electric cars work by allowing hydrogen protons to pass from one end of the fuel cell to the other through a polymer membrane when generating energy.
Efficient, high-speed hydrogen movement in these fuel cells requires water, meaning that the membrane must be continually hydrated so that it does not dry out. This is a constraint that adds an additional layer of complexity and cost to battery and fuel cell design that limits the practicality of a next-generation hydrogen-based energy economy…
Kobayashi noted, “In the short-term, our results provide material design guidelines for hydride ion-conducting solid electrolytes. In the long-term, we believe this is an inflection point in the development of batteries, fuel cells, and electrolytic cells that operate by using hydrogen.”
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds promising!
See also:
• Apple turns to Bloom Energy’s fuel cell technology – June 24, 2016
• Apple exploring hydrogen fuel cell technology that could power devices for weeks – September 4, 2015
• Meet the hydrogen-powered Apple iPhone that runs for a week per cartridge – August 24, 2015
• Apple Car: Forget ‘electric,’ think hydrogen fuel cells – February 20, 2015
• Apple working with Intelligent Energy on fuel cell technology for mobile devices, sources say – July 14, 2014
• North Carolina regulators approve Apple’s 4.8-megawatt fuel cell facility at Maiden data center – May 23, 2012
• New aerial images of Apple’s planned NC fuel cell, solar farms published – April 7, 2012
• Apple’s massive fuel cell energy project to be largest in the U.S. – April 4, 2012
• Apple patent application reveals next-gen fuel cell powered Macs and iOS devices – December 22, 2011
• Apple patent app details highly-advanced hydrogen fuel cells to power portable devices – October 20, 2011
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is the inital conversion from water to hydrogen. It’s a highly inefficient and costly process. The same amount of kWh needed to move a car costs 3 times more for an hydrogen car than for an electric car because of that conversion. The solution described in this article doesn’t solve that problem. It’s good to keep this in mind. That being said, any improvements in welcome as hydrogen will find it’s way in some use cases. Just don’t hold your breath for a hydrogen car.
Wasted sunlight, wind, and…. nuclear!
When it’s all said and done hydrogen will probably the fuel of the future. However, that’s at least 50 years away. The current way of turning water into hydrogen is nearly 10:1 . Ethanol used to be 5:1 and we finally got it to around 1:1 but it took time and still ethanol isn’t used as a main fuel source just an additive because it burns so much hotter.
When you say 10:1 are you saying that it takes 10 units of energy to produce 1 unit of hydrogen? Can you cite where you get that ratio? According to sources like Wikipedia it’s actually closer to 5:3 or at worst 2:1 for electrolysis (50–55 kWh input for 40 kWh hydrogen).
“As of 2020, the cost of hydrogen by electrolysis is around $3–8/kg.[41] Considering the industrial production of hydrogen, and using current best processes for water electrolysis (PEM or alkaline electrolysis) which have an effective electrical efficiency of 70–82%,[42][43][44] producing 1 kg of hydrogen (which has a specific energy of 143 MJ/kg or about 40 kWh/kg) requires 50–55 kWh of electricity. At an electricity cost of $0.06/kWh, as set out in the Department of Energy hydrogen production targets for 2015,[45] the hydrogen cost is $3/kg.”
First you must rip the hydrogen away from the oxygen……that requires a great deal of energy……electric energy.
Then you must transport the hydrogen….requires cooling to minus 240 deg C. At standard atmospheric pressure. Critical pressure is 13 Atmospheres.
So a lot of very costly high pressure and low temperature infrastructure is required. This all requires a lot of energy to accomplish.
Then you must drive to a station to fill your car which also requires a high pressure low temperature tank that will be explosive in a head on collision.
By the time you use it to get back the electricity that was originally used to produce the hydrogen the efficiency is below 50%.
Or you can just plug your car into a socket at home and forget about this h2 dumbness.
Honda’s on-site produced hydrogen fueling stations are a step in the right direction to remedy your first two points of energy need and transportation of fuel. The storage device for your vehicle does not need to be pressurized tanks. There has been work done to create solid state ‘sponges’ that store hydrogen in the solid and releases when the solid is heated. Given a ‘safer’ method of creating and storing hydrogen in such a solid state system could lead to at-home hydrogen generation and storage via electrical grid or home alternative power systems.
How much does distillation of crude cost? Transport? Cost of wars to maintain supply chain? Human cost? CO2?
Some folks kinda accidentally discovered that there’s a lot of free hydrogen in oil and gas wells. In the past, they’ve just ignored it, as it had no economic use.
Now, however, there is a big search going on for so-called “white hydrogen”, as it would mean we don’t need to get it by cracking methane or by electrolysis, which would obviously be a big boost for a hydrogen-based economy. Here’s a nice article about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/prospectors-hit-the-gas-in-the-hunt-for-white-hydrogen
Talking about the explosion hazards of pressurized hydrogen tanks ignores the very real and much more dangerous tank of gasoline that it replaces. It’s a specious argument. And if renewable energy like wind and solar is used to crack the water then it’s being produced cleanly. Plugging your exploding Tesla into a socket to charge it is not very green if the lions share of the electricity is generated by fossil fuels. Your just displacing your tailpipe emissions to a different county
Not to mention if a hydrogen tank in something so small as a car relative to the Hindenburg happens to rupture and explode, the resulting fire/flash is seconds in length compared to gasoline burning longer and igniting other materials that need to reach ignition temperatures.
For those worried about driving around pressurized tanks of hydrogen, I suggest reading the “Chemical Storage” section of the Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage
Hydrogen is the GREEN DREAM answer!
Don’t allow skeptics, politicians and paid consultants to tell you otherwise.
Hydrogen was published in the late 1800s the positive effects of energy production with little side effects…