Catalytic Carbon Extraction in Fuel Cell Production? 58
garyebickford asks: "I've been following the discussions in the media regarding fuel cells & hydrogen fuel. I have an idea (really a set of ideas) for handling the CO2 issues, which could make fuel cells a better solution. Perhaps someone who know about such things can tell me whether it's workable or not. Speculating wildly, if the carbon could be retained in the process (in a discharge tank, for instance), then it might even be useful as a feedstock for plastics, for example. How might a fuel cell process (both production and use), possibly multistage or incorporating a catalytic pre-process, emit carbon in non-gaseous form? What about a fuel cell that just converted ethanol or higher weight hydrocarbons to methanol, or perhaps a nitrite or another byproduct? Consumers could then recycle this waste to the fuel station at the next fill-up. Even this incomplete process can provide more energy per weight or volume than hydrogen, in theory. Would such a process be possible, or feasible?"
"Many fuels can be used in fuel cells, including hydrogen, methane/methanol, ethanol, and ammonia. One of the problems with all these, in fact any system that consumes hydrocarbons (either biomass or petroleum), is that at some point in the process the carbon is released as carbon dioxide. For H2 and NH3 the problem is in the production facility; for hydrocarbon fuels the fuel cell itself emits carbon in some form. Perhaps fuel cell research has tended to think in terms replacing the existing combustion model, with the given that output will be H2O and CO2. Is anyone studying the possibility of fuel cells that have other output chemistry?"
My solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Do it so I can plug my computer and display into it, and power them too, and I'll buy two.
Re:My solution (Score:3, Informative)
Check here [wikipedia.org] for more info.
What is it with laymen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thankfully this doesn't happen in computer science very often. It does happen though. I remember having a long conversation with a guy who thought he had a great idea for a replacement for floppy disks (this was pre-USB). His idea was that the monitor could read the data from a device people carry around. At first I thought I misheard him. Then I calmly explained to him that monitors are output devices, not input devices. Then he asked what the difference was. Eventually he turned red and asked how you could do it. We had a discussion about flash memory and interface standards and then he got bored and went away.
Which is typically the flow of these conversations, so excuse me for not entertaining your brilliant idea.
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1, Troll)
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Neither can most architects.
It doesn't preclude me coming up with a clever floorplan and asking an architect to turn it in to a usable blueprint.
But that doesn't prevent him from knowing the Romans already tried that; and why we don't do it much anymore (or, conversely, why we should start doing it again. Roman radiant heating systems had a lot going for them).
I'm not saying "don't try." I'm saying "research." It may save your architect a lot of grief.
Or
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
Meh. That's what I pay him for.
that doesn't prevent him from knowing the Romans already tried that; and why we don't do it much anymore
If my idea isn't workable I want him to do a good enough job explaining why not that I can make a rational choice about whether to rework the idea or abandon it and start fresh. I'm not asking him to make that choice; I'm asking for enough information so that I can make that choice.
Certainly I'll be better off for the experience. And
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
I hope he's on salary, otherwise he may have justification for not agreeing with that.
. .
Have you looked at modern buildings? This is not their problem.
. .
And I'm prepared to offer you an explanation of why, but if you don't have a foundation in High School algebra first I'm going to have to
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
And I'm prepared to offer you an explanation of why, but if you don't have a foundation in High School algebra first I'm going to have to ask you to sign up for classes, because it's going to take an inordinate amount of my time otherwise.
"The rate of time varies in according to an equation versus the constant speed of light. It gradually changes such that you can never quite reach the speed of light. This means that anything moving relative to your current
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Well, we're on the same page about something then.
KFG
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
If you're a physicist and can offer some genuine critique do so. Don't tear the guy apart just because he is smart enough to ask for someone more knowledgeable to evaluate his ideas.
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Physics/chemistry and math are not the same thing. Math is not a science. And engineering requires a sound base in physics and math, along with a lot of engineering specific rules-of-thumb that let you predict the behavior of complex systems without actually building them.
And note none of those kids game up with new solutions to anything. Everything they did we already knew how to do. It's just they came up with different, and possibly better, ways of figuring it out. Which is an amazing accomplishment, bu
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Math is not a science. Math is a system of rules, but it is not a system of rules derived by obvservation and experimentation. It's no more science than the rules of tic-tac-toe are, even if it is much more useful.
And, frankly, I wasn't aware anyone even even vaguely considered math a science. At no point in math is the scientific method used. Once you start running experiments, you're reached physics or chemistry or something, not math. Math operates on an entirely different concept called 'proofs', and y
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Tell it to the magnets are magic people - please! I'm tired of doing it.
. . . then he got bored and went away.
Because the magnet nuts never get bored or go away. They can fiddle with their "free energy" devices for frickin' ever. Their capacity to absorb failure (without ever absorbing a clue about why they fail) seems boundless. I've taken to calling them Weebles.
Thankfully thi
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
You should also pick a better example the next time you want to flame someone.
CRT's were originally used as storage devices.
(e.g., see http://www.cedmagic.com/history/williams-tube.htm
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
And yet, physics seems to slowly evolve with new idea. And a number of these ideas are from outsiders such as say a patent clerk.
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:1)
Re:What is it with laymen? (Score:2)
Yes, and every physicist was at some point a layman prior to educating himself. It's never wrong to ask questions - I probably have more respect for them than the ones that think it's stupid for doing so.
What is it with cocksure eggheads? (Score:2)
Doesn't Work - Follow The Energy (Score:5, Informative)
Combining Carbon with Oxygen or Hydrogen with Oxygen produces energy - but splitting up a chain of carbon and hydrogen to get the individual atoms to do that with requires some energy, though it's a lot less than burning the C and H will provide. Catalytic Converters on cars [wikipedia.org] take the unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust, split them and burn them before they get out the exhaust pipes, and take partially burned carbon monoxide and finish burning it. It's a waste of energy, but it was going to be wasted anyway - the reason to do this is that hydrocarbons and CO lead to air-pollution problems including smog. (They also split various nitrogen oxides to give nitrogen and oxygen; I don't know if this is exothermic or if it's using heat generated by the other reactions.)
You can't split the CO2 up into C and O2 without putting back the energy you got out of that reaction, so a catalytic converter won't help you. You could do things like combine it with calcium oxide to make calcium carbonate, and store that, but the usual way to make calcium oxide is by heating calcium carbonate to get rid of the CO2, so that's really no help.
Re:Doesn't Work - Follow The Energy (Score:2, Funny)
Damn! It's already patent-pending!
Re:Doesn't Work - Follow The Energy (Score:1)
"...and take partially burned carbon monoxide and finish burning it."
To the best of my knowledge, a chemical reaction that "burns" must include a hydro
Re:Doesn't Work - Follow The Energy (Score:2)
When you burn CO (carbon monoxide) you actually 'burn' carbon in it - CO becomes CO2.
Nope (Score:2)
Not at all. Hydrogen is not a hydrocarbon. Ever see a shuttle launch?
"Burning" is an exothermic reaction. You don't even have to have oxygen. You can burn Hydrogen with fluorine and get a pretty good flame and a lot of heat.
Yes CO burns very well. It was a common component of coal gas that was used for lighting in the 1800s. You can also burn a diamond in a pure oxygen atmosphere. You can even burn steel. Take some fi
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
The real problems facing fuel cells-the reasons why fuel cells aren't widely used-are the cost of producing them, and the difficulties in creating fuel. You're not trying to address either of those issues. In addition, you advocate replacing hydrogen fuel cells by fuel cells based on different chemisty. Making hydrogen fuel cells cheaply is hard. Now you're adding in a different, potentially brand new chemistry - you ca
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Could you write that really, really big across that wall over there, the one with the forehead dents in it?
Thanks, 'preciate it.
KFG
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
There's a long list of reasons why we may want to use fuels other than ethanol for our fuel cells.
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Because (Score:2)
Capturing carbon from the air is the hard part. If you can keep hold of that carbon and recycle it without diluting it by three thousand to one and re-concentrating it, you've saved yourself a huge amount of effort (and not having to discard the entropy saves a huge amount of energy).
Switchgrass is far less efficient than PV panels, and some schemes yield photolytic hydrogen. If you can turn e.g. methanol and oxygen into CO2 and H2O at one end, and CO2 and hydrogen into methanol and H2O at the other, you'v
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Why? Because two (or more) ways of skinnning a cat are better than one.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Biomass energy is not a panacea.
Think for a moment. The "zero net CO2" claim is only valid if you are burning biomass at the same rate as you are growing it. Burning fossil fuels would also be "zero net CO2" if there were some process by which we were coverting solar energy and atmospher
It's called reduction (Score:2)
Plate the carbon w/ ion engine? (Score:1)
Re:It's called reduction (Score:2)
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Mod parent up - the first poster to actually answer the submitter's question!
Energy levels (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Energy levels (Score:1)
Brilliant! (Score:2, Informative)
While I don't see much good in utilizing hydrogen-carrying fuels over non-carbon-emission methods including hydrogen itself, since one set of methods creates Carbon Dioxide and another se
an answer from a semi-expert (Score:2, Informative)
Re:an answer from a semi-expert (Score:1)
But I do wish you lots of luck with you science it would be nice if somthing like this can be don.
However I think if we get into a H2 economy, it's most likely we will gonna see some nuclear plants who create H2 in mass (as it's a verry green way to create massive amounts H2 with no CO).
Plastic? (Score:2, Funny)
Let's making diamonds!
Fuel cells are bunk anyway (Score:1, Flamebait)
Hydrogen fuel was proclaimned to be dead 2 weeks ago [thewatt.com] at the Lucerne Fuel Cell conference because it is not sustainable (since EVs are 3 ti
Different idea (Score:3, Funny)
We will call this miracle chemical "Bio-Diesel".
45-50 mpg in the VW TDI, and my exhaust smells like french fries, baby!
Further reading (Score:1)
Fischer-Tropsch synthesis
Bosch reaction
Sabatier process
All have decent Wikipedia entries.
Chemically, I think the proposed process would be possible (i.e., you can do it in the lab.) Economically, it's probably a non-starter for this type of application. The biggest challenge in these areas is making it small, mobile, low to zero maintence, yet still inexpensive.
Short answer, "No" (Score:2)
It is, by all practical purposes the lowest energy state you can have with those items in mixture (Carbon, Oxygen).
This is due to the fact that Oxygen likes to bond to stuff.
Getting the carbon apart then, will take energy. Which without additional fuel additives means a catalyst won't work. The heat of oxidization of the carbon has been released and you can't re-pack heat energy w
Depends on the carbon source (Score:1)
Recyclable battery juice? (Score:2)
If only someone were to devise a fuel cell that has a fresh liquid input and used liquid output, or even a Part A and a Part B mixing in the cell, and spent Part A+B coming out that could be reversed bac
I make planar SOFC's (Score:1)