http://cellaenergy.com/
These guys had an article in my Mech Eng mag this month, that is not yet picked up by the net it seems.
They have done a deal with an airline to test the use of a material that releases hydrogen when heated. It is cheap to make, and hold 3 times the power my weight as a lithium battery.
QuoteCella's production process takes a material with one of the highest useable hydrogen contents by weight, and turns it into a hi-tech composite by incorporating polymer. The material forms a microporous plastic-like solid which can be pressed, shaped or extruded into any form and to fit any space. The material production uses commercially scalable methods and Cella is currently capable, through toll manufacture, of making many tons of the material per year.
Each gram of Cella material produces up to 1 litre of hydrogen gas, giving it a very high specific energy (energy per unit weight), making it ideal in mobile or portable applications where weight is crucial. The material can be packaged into a cartridge that, combined with a fuel cell, has two to three times the specific energy of a lithium-ion battery, or to make a system comparable to 700 atmosphere compressed hydrogen but without the same safety concerns or cost of infrastructure.
With our proprietary processes, the material can be pelletised to form a solid fuel with fluid properties. This overcomes the challenge of transporting large quantities to filling stations and gives drivers a similar filling experience to the liquid fuels of today. One of the biggest challenges facing the roll-out of hydrogen cars is the investment in high-pressure filling stations. With a fluid-like transport system for Cella fuels, existing pump and tanker technologies can be used with minimal alterations.
Our hydrogen storage technology:
Does not need high pressure
Does not need cryogenic temperatures
Has high specific energy (energy per unit weight)
Has stability at room temperature
Can be shaped into any spare volume in a vehicle
Has no harmful emissions
I think that is amazing. Hydrogen storage solved if its right. Any one making power, at any time could theoretically make these pellets. I Know it is still a way to go, its made small scale in a plant at the mo, but.....
Interesting stuff. So it sounds like this substance is depleted and then needs to be replaced. This makes me have a few questions. What happens to the non-hydrogen part of this plastic-like compound? Does it go up in vapor? I am curious to know what is in it and how safe it is for the user and the environment. If it stays in a solid form how is it discarded? The composite needs to be heated up, how much energy does that take in relation to the energy that is released? How much energy in needed to make the compound?
I know a lot of people wrongly think of hydrogen as an energy source when they should be thinking of it as a means of storing and using energy, but it would make sense that this process would have a bigger overhead than using compressed hydrogen gas. So, I'd be curious to know if it is just a small difference or much higher.
@LM, from their website:
QuoteTechnically Cella's material is based on a chemical hydride which means it has excellent performance but it requires a chemical process to recycle it back to its pristine state.
Our scientists and engineers are working hard with chemical industry partners to take the known recycling methods and scale them into a cost effective industrial process.
The use of Cella material's in pellet form that can be pumped like a fluid makes it easy to use simple inexpensive pumps, like those used in a vacuum cleaner, to move the material into and out of a vehicle and to transport it by tanker to and from the recycling plant.
Time will tell whether they're legit.
The make-or-break question will be how much energy it takes to create the pellets versus how much the pellets can deliver.
I believe compressing hydrogen takes about 30% of its energy FWIW. The idea of finding a compound to store it in is to reduce that overhead in part. Also you can store more hydrogen in something like this than you can as a liquid I believe.
Airbus announces concept designs for hydrogen-powered airplanes
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/airbus-announces-concept-designs-for-hydrogen-powered-airplanes-.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/09/24/first-hydrogen-powered-plane-takes-flight/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-54350046
Wow!
The problem with hydrogen for 'retail' consumption is the lack of fueling stations, but for carriers like trains/planes/ships that load up on bulk fuels, it will take far fewer hydrogen stations.
Rust to riches: Swiss iron reactors store hydrogen 10x cheaper, safer, longer
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/rust-to-riches-swiss-iron-reactors-store-hydrogen-10x-cheaper-safer-longer/ar-AA1pEjxe
Interesting. Using a stainless steel container with walls only 6mm thick, the Swiss stored 10 megawatt hours of hydrogen as rust for months without any appreciable energy loss
They are planning on building a 2000 cubic meter storage facility that will store 4 GW hours.
So let's see, that's 20m tall by 11.2m in diameter.
Basically a big battery to store excess power produced by solar and wind. If it as cheap and effective as advertised, that is a game changer.
Sometimes I really wish I was a chemistry major. This is fascinating.
QuoteAt these temperatures, hydrogen extracts oxygen from iron oxide or rust, making water and iron. This is much like charging a battery, where energy is stored in water and iron and can be retained for months without major losses.
In winter months, when energy demand is high, researchers can run hot steam into these reactors. This reverses the process, forming rust and releasing hydrogen gas. The hydrogen can be used to generate electricity in a fuel cell or even burned as fuel to move a turbine.
I didn't know rust could be
unmade, I'd like to see a demonstration of how hot steam could do that. I'd like to know the overhead of energy required to steam up the rust to get the energy out in the form of hydrogen. I'd imagine it isn't a small percentage. This is simple and brilliant though.
Electrolysis of rust releases hydrogen & oxygen
https://youtu.be/1l3Dt5-zxPs?t=414
Thanks RC, that video is pretty cool, but I don't know if that is the same process. The article makes it seem like the rust can form and unform on the same bits of iron, vs how it is moved to another in the video. It also mentions steam as the catalyst.
> I don't know if that is the same process
No, I was just showing a related process.
Found a chemistry class vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNmFqMPo7VM&t=786s
Iron Reacting with Steam - YouTube
That's a nice demo. Thanks.
The oil and gas people are very pro hydrogen: oil molecules have a LOT of hydrogen.
Found this in the article:
QuoteThe technology's drawback is that it loses up to 60 percent of energy in the conversion steps.
Thats a lot. So its cheap to set up, but not so cheap to run. however if there is excess elec being made, it does not matter.
compressors I guess will cost to maintain as well as the losses, and the high cost of making the kit.
Its apparently old tech, so surprising to me in a way its taken to now to get this far.
Exciting.
Quoteloses up to 60 percent of energy in the conversion steps.
Meanwhile, assuming that we store our solar energy in form of compressed dead ferns and dinosaurs stored deep underground...
QuoteTypical thermal efficiency for utility-scale electrical generators is around 37% for coal and oil-fired plants, and 56 – 60% (LEV) for combined-cycle gas-fired plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station
And that doesn't include losses related to extraction, transport, refinement, transport again.
A human on a bicycle, by the way, is only 10-20% efficient, with the rest of the energy being lost to heat.
So, yes, you just need to have a lot more energy than you plan to use whether that energy is coming
- from the sun and getting converted into electricity and then into rust, or...
- from the sun via a highly convoluted and inefficient process of being made into ferns and dinosaurs and being converted underground under massive heat and pressure then extracted millions of years later or..
- from the sun via chlorophyll making solar energy into glucose and creating bananas (or in a two-step process whereby it then gets converted very inefficiently into grass then into burger storage units) and having the bicycle power plant eat them and convert them to fat and glycogen. We're talking h-bikes here, obviously, as g-bikes and e-bikes fall into the first two scenarios.
Yes, but that 60% loss is just the storage.....
Yes but in this case there is hardly any transmission loss of the battery is close to the wind/solar source
Remember that the efficiency of the turbine facility does not include the energy use in extraction, processing and transport of the fuel.
Fair point.
It would be interesting to see the complete losses and costs compared.