Hydrogen Fuel Balls from a Gas Pump?

navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."

Government patents and other considerations.

[sbaker]

Isn't is a bit disturbing that the government files patents to prevent us from using stuff that we paid them to invent?

So what happens to all the bits of glass and palladium after it releases its hydrogen load?
I guess ideally, it would get saved somewhere for recycling - but presuming that doesn't happ
en - is it going to be OK to breath microsopic bits of that stuff?

Re:Government patents and other considerations.

[Spasemunki]

How do you know that that is why the government filed for the patent? It could instead be a defensive measure; the DOE doesn't want a private organization to build off of its research and then file their own patent, preventing a wider field from employing the technology. The DOE can file a patent to prevent this sort of abuse, and then decline to charge any licensing fee for companies or individuals that want to employ the technology. Doing it this way avoids future court battles over who gets to profit from the results of government research. It's all in how the patent is used. I imagine that there is some official government policy on how these things are done; I doubt that this is the first time that a government body has taken out a patent on new technology.

who said high gas prices were bad?

[p51d007]

Well, at least it's got some people THINKING about alternatives. Now, if anything pans out, that is another thing...

Re:Not being a chemist

[Kadin2048]

True, but every car on the road today in the U.S. (or at least the great, great majority of them) have a fairly substantial mass of palladium already: in the catalytic converter. I'm not sure exactly how much palladium a car would need in order to hold a full charge of hydrogen, but I think if you started recycling the stuff that's in catalytic converters, you'd have a good start towards the amount you'd need to start using it as a hydrogen carrier, at least to start out.

Also, from an environmental standpoint, the fact that it's valuable and rare is probably better than if it were currently cheap, since it keeps it from be being implemented as a throwaway, and creating shortages and problems later on. At least this way, we'll implement the full reclamation cycle from the beginning.

Re:How Safe are These Glass Balls?

[aXis100]

Better not walk on a white sand beach then, it's practically the same thing.

Re:Not being a chemist

[localman]

why bother, when any meaningful contributions will succumb so soon to entropy?

Heh. That's a pretty reasonable question to ask about life itself :) Nonetheless, I take part. Both in life and Wikipedia.

Cheers.

Hybrids (See April Sci Am)

[Flying pig]

An article in April 2006 Sci Am puts the case that hybrid vehicles are far more cost effective and feasible than a hydrogen economy. Ni metal hydride and LiIon batteries are already commercial whereas fuel cells have been just around the corner now for 50 years (if it's true that fuel cells for notebook computers are coming very shortly, why does a 100W marine fuel cell cost $6000?). The cost of NiMH has fallen 50% in the last 8 years, and the excess weight has halved. And NiMH doesn't need palladium.

The argument is that hydrogen uses a completely new infrastructure for transport,storage, generation and end user while hybrids only need incremental improvements to battery technology. Hybrids also create the huge distributed electrical storage grid that allows conventional generator capacity to be used more efficiently (in the US, power stations have spare capacity at night in summer because of the need to meet daytime air conditioning load, and this capacity can be used to charge hybrid vehicle batteries. Smart chargers such as the ones already in long term marine use could be remotely controlled to supply current according to spare capacity, meaning that generators can run at constant output.)

Hydrogen is popular, I suspect, because it is a technical fix that appeals to some engineers (gee whiz, new technology) and to the oil industry because they get to retain control over the power infrastructure instead of those boring electrical utilities. Whereas a vehicle economy running mainly on electrical utility power and biofuel would take away a good part of the power over consumers currently enjoyed by Exxon and the like. A farm cooperative could easily produce its own biodiesel and bioethanol with a surplus for sale.

Every time I make this point I get banged on by somebody who claims that the likes of Exxon only do what they do to make shareholders happy. It's good to know that oil industry PR people can not only read but can navigate Slashdot, but at the end of the day a hydrogen economy just hands over too much power to the technocrats, whereas a mixed hybrid electric/biofuel economy leaves far more power in the hands of communities. The shareholders are happy when they can see no way that their monopoly can be challenged or dismantled, because it guarantees a continued revenue flow. If that means distorting markets, they are all for it.

Health risks?

[Shivetya]

What happens if you inhale these little suckers? You know it will happen. How do they break down over time and how do they break down in a catastrophic accident? Spill cleanup? Do I just vacumn them?

Lots of promise but all the negatives are curiously missing. This sounds more fantasy than real, the old "patent the idea" and then try to make it work.

Re:H2 in balls doesn't make it not a boondoggle

[fluffy666]

"hey, wait a minute, why are we spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a technology which will never work in the marketplace, which no one will ever use outside of experimental vehicles?"

Well, it's a great way to LOOK like you are doing something whilst being sure that nothing actually changes. After all, one of the few reasons to use hydrogen is the high energy density per unit mass - binding it to a heavy metal such as palladium removes even this advantage. I strongly suspect that it would be more efficient (not to say much cheaper and simpler) just to have a battery powered car.

Of course, if your average 2-car family converted to one battery powered runaround for short/local trips and one modern diesel for the longer journeys, then you would make some serious fuel savings with minimal/no lifestyle sacrifice. But that would be far too easy..

Re:Government patents and other considerations.

[smchris]

Being one of those who thinks hydrogen is a shuck -- an energy storage medium instead of an energy source -- my initial thought was about how much more energy is consumed as overhead creating, charging and transporting the extra weight of this "refined" storage medium.

But, yes. My second thought was noting that after the hydrogen has been sucked out of the medium, you are left with a tank of hi-tech doped glass -- and the article doesn't get into the excretion side of things.

Presumably, before you next fill up at the station, you have to take a dump. And the medium has to be transported back for recharging or proper disposal. And it better be recharging. How large would the disposal facility become if every tank of "gas" used by the nation created a tank of worthless glass? If it is recharged -- how many times can it be recharged before it becomes a tank of worthless glass?

Just another article that adds weight to my feeling that hydrogen is a con.

The article also comes off as insincere fearmongering about the explosive danger of hydrogen. 35 of 97 people died on the Hindenburg -- mostly from jumping. Compare that with:

"As dozens of scorched corpses awaited collection, grim-faced rescue workers swung others into a mass grave.

Gasoline gushing from a ruptured pipeline exploded Friday as villagers scavenged for fuel, setting off an inferno that killed up to 200 people in this oil-rich country of mostly poor people. It appeared some victims tried to flee the unfolding disaster only to be overtaken by flames spreading across the fuel slick.

More than 1,000 people in Nigeria, Africa's oil giant, have died in recent years when fuel they were pilfering from pipelines caught fire - and officials said it would likely happen again."

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/05/13/100wir_a 3pipeline001.cfm [heraldnet.com]

Re:Government patents and other considerations.

[sacrilicious]

It could instead be a defensive measure; the DOE doesn't want a private organization to build off of its research and then file their own patent, preventing a wider field from employing the technology. The DOE can file a patent to prevent this sort of abuse, and then decline to charge any licensing fee for companies or individuals that want to employ the technology.

The government should simply document it so that denial of prior art would subsequently be ridiculous. I agree w grandparent post, their filing for a patent smells weird.

Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths

[ivan256]

is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts

If you're being pedantic about it, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that we are currently aware of to generate electricity from ANY SOURCE without leaving toxic byproducts. Yes, I'm including solar and wind in that.

Who cares if it creates toxic byproducts? As long as we're not pumping them into the atmosphere, I'm okay with that.

Re:Government patents and other considerations.

[cuantar]

It is the property of the public, by virtue of having been developed with their money and by their direct agency. Yes, you're absolutely correct. If the government didn't patent the idea, they would have two options: keep it secret, or allow others to use it who might then patent it themselves. If the government owns the idea, some thieving corporation does not stand to get rich by leeching off of the taxpayers' money that developed it.