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How do you feel about the decline of petrol vehicles?


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Making fuel cells for a fraction of the cost
New material creates fuel cell catalysts at a hundredth of the cost
Date:
January 22, 2018
Source:
University of California - Riverside
Summary:

Researchers now describe the development of an inexpensive, efficient catalyst material for a type of fuel cell called a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, which turns the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity and is among the most promising fuel cell types to power cars and electronics.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180122091301.htm
 
There's a whole industry whose prime function is (A) extracting money out of venture capitalists, and/or (B) extracting money out of government research and development initiatives. The internet, and the availability of software to make slick-looking presentations and realistic-looking renderings on websites, has made this more prevalent than it ever was.

The issue with fuel cells isn't the catalysts or anything to do with the fuel cells themselves. If the hydrogen exists, we know how to use it. The issue, is the hydrogen itself - and the laws of thermodynamics are not in its favor compared to the alternatives.
 
It attracts not only funding but more important commercial development. News spreads incredibly fast. We were on the site of what might have been a terror attack in London.

London museum crash 'not terror-related', police say | The Independent
www.independent.co.uk › News › UK › Home News
Oct 7, 2017 - Police have confirmed the car crash outside the Natural History Museum this afternoon where a number of pedestrians were injured was a road traffic accident and not ... The Prime Minister was kept informed of developments as speculation swirled online that the incident was a terrorist attack. The arrested ...

We were up the street a 100 meters and watched people fleeing.
Walked by the guy pinned on the ground.

That was interesting but the most interesting part was the speed at which it propagated around the world was astonishing. It was on most major newspapers front page ( online ) by the time we got to our hotel an hour or so later. Having an exact timeline and watching it move around the world just floored me.

Dry science papers don't attract much attention ....it's the "spin" that does. The other amusing aspect is the " I don't beleive it" phenomena .....people declaring the "hoverboard" as fake.....sounds like some "hydrogen" skeptics here ;)

[video=youtube;rNKRxsNyOho]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKRxsNyOho[/video]
 
I’m not a sceptic of hydrogen cells, I’m a sceptic of initial research papers before they have been looked at by multiple groups these days. In the past two years alone I’ve seen several “game changing” developments published in my field that were anything but. It may well generate buzz and publicity for those involved but after a while you get to a “crying wolf” scenario and that has the possibility to obscure genuine advancements.
 
This paper was not pulled out of thin air. Research into less expensive catalysts is very broadbased.
They are only claiming low cost with equivalent performance to platinum.

Kisailus and his team, collaborating with scientists at Stanford University, determined that the new materials performed as good as the industry standard platinum-carbon systems, but at a fraction of the cost.

This is an easily testable claim. It's only one of hundreds of approaches to a low cost catalyst. What "crying wolf is there"?

There are many other aspects to hydrogen that are works in progress...most notably solid state storage.
Scientists knock down barriers a bit at a time.
 
its normal human nature to be dismissive of "new" technology, or in this particular case, Hydrogen and fuel cells.

carry on with the naysaying, I'll get a chuckle at this thread in a few years when when it really starts to take off.
 
Dry science papers don't attract much attention ....it's the "spin" that does. The other amusing aspect is the " I don't beleive it" phenomena .....people declaring the "hoverboard" as fake.....sounds like some "hydrogen" skeptics here ;)

As I said before, I'm not a hydrogen "Skeptic", I'm a realist.

And trumpeting "spin" as a benefit for scientific papers is a slippery slope. Reputable scientists don't use spin, almost always it's the general public or the media does.

And that's where things go off the rails. I remember what was almost certainly a decade ago there was massive spin about supercapacitors - there was whispers of some secretive company that had made over-the-top breakthroughs which would make it possible for people to charge up a few cheap supercaps overnight and then run their house all day long on them. They were in hush-hush talks with the government for military applications to begin with. Electric cars would have 1000KM ranges inside a few years, and you could charge them up in mere minutes.

And here we are 10 years later and none of it has come to fruition.

The issue with fuel cells isn't the catalysts or anything to do with the fuel cells themselves. If the hydrogen exists, we know how to use it. The issue, is the hydrogen itself - and the laws of thermodynamics are not in its favor compared to the alternatives.

Exactly. Again, I'm not a skeptic. I know hydrogen fuel cells exist, and I know they offer lots of advantages IF the fuel was more widely available (a very big reality that some here still want to stick their head in the sand about), but the realist in me comes full circle to the fact that creating hydrogen is still the main stumbling block.

The current system is very Rube Goldberg - taking the electricity coming into your home, using it only to turn a giant fan in your back yard that in turn spins a wind turbine, which then converts that wind power to 12 volts, then using an inverter to convert it back to 120v to actually use for your house again. Every step is wasteful and energy is lost versus if you had just used the electricity directly versus having all the wasteful steps in between. In a nutshell, this is what's happening with Hydrogen right now.

The "But the manufacturers include free hydrogen!" argument is also silly. They aren't going to do that forever, and when they don't, people are going to forced with the reality that it's twice to three times as expensive as gas on a per kilometer basis, and an order of magnitude many times more expensive than electricity on a per kilometer basis. Will some technological breakthrough reduce that? Impossible to say, and any good critical thinker isn't going to base a purchase decision on a huge unknown like that.
 
As usual, the europeans will lead in the hydrogen race. north americans, will just stick with their north american thinking til they catch on.


in case you missed the link, worlds largest hydrogen plant by Shell is in the works. the ultimate goal is to produce hydrogen with renewable electricity.


its ok though, it won't happen, all those experts quoted in the article and all that money invested, they must be wrong. *sigh*

http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/worlds-largest-hydrogen-electrolysis-in-shells-rhineland-refinery
 
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remember Ballard Power?

Canadian hydrogen fuel cell pioneer
20 years ago you couldn't turn on the news without hearing of them

looks like they're still around
but most activities centered in China
 
its normal human nature to be dismissive of "new" technology, or in this particular case, Hydrogen and fuel cells.

carry on with the naysaying, I'll get a chuckle at this thread in a few years when when it really starts to take off.

Oh for ****'s sake, I need to chime in on this.

Your "I'm completely right without a lick of clue with regards to what I'm talking about" attitude is disgusting; it's okay to be confident about something you know well, it's another to be confident but completely ignorant. It's down right embarrassing reading the bravado you've been spewing.

I did a presentation about peak oil more than 14 years ago in high school. One of the alternative energy sources was hydrogen fuel cells. That was 14 years ago.

You know what other problem I found 14 years ago when doing research on this? Brian P has mentioned it numerous times; hydrogen is not readily accessible as a natural resource. I mean, sure, the sun is 70% hydrogen but how the **** do you think we're gonna harvest that?

So where is hydrogen most naturally found? In water molecules. Except water is pretty stable. So how do you break the 2H from the Os? You literally shock it. Shocking water takes energy, and unless things have changed, the net output results in loss of energy.

Now admittedly I have not followed every post here regarding fuel cells but if I'm wrong with the above, point me to peer-reviewed journal article stating otherwise.
 
油井緋色;2543827 said:
Oh for ****'s sake, I need to chime in on this.

Your "I'm completely right without a lick of clue with regards to what I'm talking about" attitude is disgusting; it's okay to be confident about something you know well, it's another to be confident but completely ignorant. It's down right embarrassing reading the bravado you've been spewing.

I did a presentation about peak oil more than 14 years ago in high school. One of the alternative energy sources was hydrogen fuel cells. That was 14 years ago.

You know what other problem I found 14 years ago when doing research on this? Brian P has mentioned it numerous times; hydrogen is not readily accessible as a natural resource. I mean, sure, the sun is 70% hydrogen but how the **** do you think we're gonna harvest that?

So where is hydrogen most naturally found? In water molecules. Except water is pretty stable. So how do you break the 2H from the Os? You literally shock it. Shocking water takes energy, and unless things have changed, the net output results in loss of energy.

Now admittedly I have not followed every post here regarding fuel cells but if I'm wrong with the above, point me to peer-reviewed journal article stating otherwise.

But they must be right.They read it on the internet.
 
You are not wrong ... hydrogen fuel cell will be the future. The problem is it will stay always in the future.

What people cannot do, for some silly reason, is to separate hydrogen and fuel cell. Fuel cell technology is perfectly fine and perhaps will have broad applications in the future.

Hydrogen based fuel cell, not so, for the reasons mentioned thousands of times before, including your argument. The debates always start something like this ... "Hydrogen, the most abundant element in universe ...." ... such a sexy line, yet quite unrealistic to be put into a real commercial solution usage ... who will buy 1 kg of commercially made H2 for 15-20$/kg???? ... today's cars need roughly 5kg of it. Maybe the price will come down to half and maybe the efficiency can get better by half as well ... but still somewhere down the line you will be asked to pay, like you are for gasoline, only more .... Why would I want to do that??? ... at any rate, by the time you can actually buy 1 kg of H2 for 5$ and use only 2 kgs of it to travel 500km, the pure electric EV's will run circles around it, for much less per 500km traveled , including 5-10min charging. People forget all the time that electric EV's development will continue fast forward, it will not be waiting for H2 get caught up.
 
And none of you H skeptics bother to read what counters your embedded wisdom regarding hydrogen... so you stay stuck in what you think you are certain of :rolleyes:
You sound exactly like EV skeptics a decade or so ago ...

•••••

Pity the sports car producers

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And none of you H skeptics bother to read what counters your embedded wisdom regarding hydrogen... so you stay stuck in what you think you are certain of :rolleyes:
You sound exactly like EV skeptics a decade or so ago ...

•••••

Pity the sports car producers

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and that leaves out the handling of the roadster, which should be wayyyyyyyy more fun than the chiron
 
Tho weight is an issue...

For the Li fans ....it's a limited resource just like oil

An analysis by Motley Fool’s Maxx Chatsko looks at whether there is enough lithium supply to meet Tesla’s Gigafactory demand by 2020 and concludes that it’s unlikely that there will be enough increase in supply in the next few years to even support Tesla’s single factory, let alone the many, many other factories like it that will have to be built to meet demand if the EV revolution really gets underway in the next decade or two.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...rowth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m#gs.1hzsnEg

and

Lithium batteries: To the limits of lithium

https://www.nature.com/articles/526S93a

There is no limit to hydrogen supply - there is practically no limit to solar conversion to hydrogen.

The current bottleneck is solid state storage.

For cars ...yeah EV for now ....long term ...many are betting on H

'Light, environmentally friendly' liquid hydrogen proposed as aircraft ...
https://eandt.theiet.org/.../its-light-and-environmentally-friendly-so-why-not-use-liqui...
24 Feb 2017 - Using hydrogen to fuel passenger aircraft deserves serious consideration as a potential solution to the problem of emissions, according to Dutch physicist Professor Jo Hermans, who compared the energy efficiency of modes of transport ranging from bikes to flights. In a paper published in the journal MRS Energy and ...


Hydrogen Aircraft Engine to Debut at MAKS-2017 Airshow - Mil.Today
mil.today/2017/Science11/
9 May 2017 - The Institute of Chemical Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences is developing an auxiliary power plant for aircraft. The engine uses electrochemical power production method based on hydrogen-air fuel cells. The project is implemented under the More Electric Aircraft (MEA) concept. First trials of the auxiliary ..
 
According to a 2011 study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, the currently estimated reserve base of lithium should not be a limiting factor for large-scale battery production for electric vehicles because an estimated 1 billion 40 kWh Li-based batteries could be built with current reserves[SUP][92][/SUP] - about 10 kg of lithium per car.[SUP][93][/SUP] Another 2011 study at the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Company found enough resources to support global demand until 2100, including the lithium required for the potential widespread transportation use. The study estimated global reserves at 39 million tons, and total demand for lithium during the 90-year period analyzed at 12–20 million tons, depending on the scenarios regarding economic growth and recycling rates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium


 

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