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Title: This New Recipe For Cheap Hydrogen Fuel Uses Light And a Few Simple Ingredients
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URL Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/this-ne ... t-and-a-few-simple-ingredients
Published: Sep 5, 2017
Author: DOM GALEON, FUTURISM
Post Date: 2017-09-05 08:08:04 by Tatarewicz
Keywords: None
Views: 270
Comments: 2
Sci-alert... Perhaps among all clean energy alternatives, nothing can be as clean as hydrogen. Burning hydrogen in fuel cells produces only water as a byproduct. In that sense, it's also truly renewable. Yet, manufacturing hydrogen fuel cells on a larger scale hasn't been that easy, primarily because fuel cells require rather complex and, until recently, expensive materials. A team of researchers working at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, together with scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), have discovered an alternative way of producing hydrogen as fuel. The key is to produce hydrogen from water using a combination of sunlight and photosensitive lipids. Their work was published in the journal ACS Nano. This new research offers a potentially more efficient and cost-effective way of producing hydrogen fuel. Accordingly, it's possible to get hydrogen from water through solar power, using special compounds like titanium dioxide to act as photocatalysts. The US and Russian team of researchers inserted a photosensitive protein into nanodiscs - made from circular fragments of cell membrane composed of a lipid bilayer - to mimic a natural cell membrane called bacteriorhodopsin. hydrogen fuel lipid nanodiscs membrane proteins clean energyMIPT To induce photocatalysis, they dissolved the nanodiscs into water together with titanium dioxide. They also added platinum into the mix, to make the reaction more effective. Their setups involved green and white light, with the latter producing 74 times more hydrogen. In both cases, however, hydrogen emission was maintained at an almost constant rate for some two to three hours. "Our laboratories working with membrane proteins, in particular with nanodiscs, are mostly focused on biophysical and medical issues," MIPT's Vladimir Chupin, whose work is usually in anti-aging research, said in a press release. "However, the recent joint study with our US colleagues shows that by bringing together biological and technical materials, nanodiscs can be used to obtain hydrogen fuel." This article was originally published by Futurism.
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#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Since it is not reversable, it requires more energy to extract hydrogen from water then the energy obtained by using hydrogen as fuel.
Every form of energy used requires energy to obtain it. Fracking requires a crew of 10-40+ people making $50K+/yr, chemicals, drills, trucks, pipes etc. But Hydrogen can be made using electricity from renewable energy. How much does a Kilogram of Hydrogen cost when made with electricity from solar panels or windmills that have already paid for themselves? Something to ponder from Bjørn Simonsen of Nel Hydrogen: If you charge your car from your rooftop solar at home, it’s obviously more efficient than converting it to hydrogen first, but you won’t see people driving their electric vehicles to a solar farm far from their homes to charge whenever it’s really nice and sunny outside. That is why the two technologies will live side by side and complement each other...FULL ARTICLE: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/08/30/future-pv-the-feasibility-of-solar-powered-hydrogen-production/ Huge news: China has begun the mass production of fuel cells
#2. To: DWornock (#1)
it requires more energy to extract hydrogen from water then the energy obtained by using hydrogen as fuel.
The entire efficiency question loses importance with the energy regime we’re moving into. We’re coming from a mentality where we are used to thinking about energy as a limited resource. If you have a barrel of oil, it’s extremely important to use it efficiently. However, you can use it across several days or years. Whatever you don’t use one day, you still have it for the next day. Whereas when we look at renewables, you have to use them when they’re there. We have to look at energy with new eyes. What matters is what does it cost? It’s not necessarily all about the total efficiency. Prices are low enough to make hydrogen and distribute it to fueling stations at costs that are comparable to what we’re used to today with gasoline and diesel.
https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/sinohytec-opens-china%E2%80%99s-first-automated-hydrogen-fuel-cell-engine-factory 
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