Posted on 07/16/2008 10:17:07 AM PDT by DGHoodini
Nisshinbo Industries Inc. (TSE:3105) has worked with the Tokyo Institute of Technology to develop the technology to use carbon instead of expensive platinum as the electrode catalyst for fuel cells.
The company hopes to have a practical version of the new catalyst ready in fiscal 2009, and will start by commercializing a product for the electrodes of residential fuel cells. Later, it will develop and commercialize a version for automotive fuel cells.
(Excerpt) Read more at tradingmarkets.com ...
Very interesting.
At least, when you read all these stories that's what they're telling us..
In other words, this is vaporware. Next.
Indeed! Hugh and Series, too!
All kidding aside, if this pans out it just changed the whole energy equation.
This years jack-up of oil results in could move forward by years technology that will cause Saudi Arabia’s biggest export to be sand.
Oh yes, now, as the article says, all that’s left is to develop the non-existent hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
With the Platinum being a major part of the higher cost of a fuel cell vehicle, it still would surprise me, if using ten times more carbon in the catalyst, would come close to the 1/10th of the cost that using platinum does. I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure carbon is a cheap and plentiful substance.
Everybody has hydrogen production capability. It’s called a battery, two electordes, and water.
“hydrogen fueling infrastructure’
And it’s got be safe enuff so that doofusses like dynachrome won’t blow themselves and the neighborhood to bits!
(I’ve worked with hydrogen. I don’t like.)
ping
But yoy still have to split the H from the O2 and that takes energy.
It begins with the first station, in the first pilot city.
And that has allready happened..in a couple of cities.
Sure you have yto have a supporting infrastructure, but then even horse driven cabs and the Overland and pony express, needed to build out their support structure.
There will be pilot cities, and the fuel cell cars will be sold there, then there will be highway corridors between the pilot cities...then there will be more cities and more corridors with hydrogen refilling stations...just the same way the original gas station networks were built up, only much, much faster.
That’s what nuclear reactors are for. The new “pebble” reactors, are smaller, cheaper and faster to build, will use standard parts and a boilerplate design, so that any employee can go from one site to the next, and not have to re-learn everything,about the new plant, the way the ones we have now are, as they were all “custom built” and have many more faiilure points than the newer safer “pebble” reactors.
Or not. Carbon has been used for a long time in electrode stacks. It's reducing the amount of expensive rare catalytic metals like platinum that's important and would bring these things into the affordable range.
There is a lot of research going on in this area and several different methods for reducing cost and improving electrode efficiency such as carbon nano tubes.
Direct methanol fuel cells will probably be the first fuel cells you see in autos because of their high power output- if they can get the cost of the fuel cell down.
I agree that nuclear is the way to go. Proven technology for sixty years. Once we have cheap and plentiful electricity again, we can free up natural gas for transportation fuel which is now being burned in powerplants, and petroleum for the petrochemical industry.
The oil producing nations may be raking it in now, but that goose they’re savoring now..is their proverbial golden egg laying gander.
Except it isn't cost effective. It takes more energy to make hydrogen than the energy produced by using that hydrogen in a fuel cell.
Methanol fuel cells are more cost effective because methanol is cheaper to produce.
using regular gasoline in a fuel cell would be even cheaper, but because "fossil" fuels has sulpher in it it poisons the cell eventually.
Why use gas in a fuel cell you say? because the fuel cell converts it into energy many times more efficiently than burning it does, and it does it much cleaner.
Methanol is a better fuel for a fuel cell because it has no sulfur in it.
I would have guessed 1/100th as much at Pt.
Carbon’s funny stuff. The price goes from about $300/ton to about $35,000,000,000/ton.
(Charcoal to diamond)...
Yes, but there is value in converting from a wire tied to a fixed source to portable.
I wouldn't say that. You can bet your last dollar that gasoline will be the most used fuel in an automotive fuel cell. They'll just refine it better to remove all the sulpher so it doesn't poison the cell. Using gasoline in a fuel cell is ok, because it's not being burned,thus producing pollutants like carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, sulfer dioxide etc. They will be just as 'clean' as ethanol or hydrogen.
Sulfur and lead poison Pt catalysts. Do they poison nanosphere carbon catalysts?
Orange county California runs the Bus system using CNG....from his source...
Also the Long Beach Harbor has a Fuel Station..
News:
T. Boone Pickens' $2 Billion Bet on Wind Energy
************************EXCERPT******************
By Jennifer Yousfi
T. Boone Pickens made his fortune in oil. But now the Dallas oilman and famed former corporate raider is betting $2 billion that he can have the same success with a new source of energy - wind.
Pickens’ Mesa Power LLP yesterday (Thursday) unveiled the first phase of an eventual $10 billion alternative energy project that has the potential to become the world’s largest wind farm.
"You find an oilfield, it peaks and starts declining, and you’ve got to find another one to replace it," Pickens, who once operated one of the largest independent oil-and-gas production companies in the country, said of the deal. "It can drive you crazy. With wind, there’s no decline curve."
Mesa Power will purchase 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. (GE). Each turbine can produce 1.5 megawatts of electricity. The first phase of the project will produce 1,000 megawatts, enough energy to power 300,000 homes. GE will begin delivering the turbines in 2010, and current plans call for the project to start producing power in 2011.
Not likely. The earth is literaly bursting at the seams with the stuff. Coal mining is here to stay. The coal mine in Northern Alberta because of it's purity and low sulpher content is used mainly for making carbon electrodes for smelting plant furnaces and a whole lot of other carbon based products.
fyi
T. Boone isn’t heavily invested in uranium mining or reactor fabricators.
He’ll push what’s profitable for himself.
Yeah?
Look bud, I checked the prices before I posted.
Find charcoal at a price significantly different than $300/ton, or premium gem quality natural diamonds at a price significantly different than $6000/carat (2268 carats/pound, 2204 pounds/metric ton - do the math) and get back to me.
>>
In 5 to 10 years we’ll have so many proven technologies to choose from we won’t know what to do.
<<
Nothing cures high prices like high prices.
Fuel cells, however, need “fuel”, and the issue then become price which translates to cost per KWh of fuel cell output.
If the carbon catalyst can be made cheap enough, they won't have to. If it would be cheaper to just replace the catalyst and recycle it with each oil change instead of removing the sulfur from the gasoline, then that's another option
And how we got to where we are....
thanks, bfl
“Best Danged Buggy Whip” ping. Thanks Ernest.
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