Posted on 05/30/2013 7:07:36 PM PDT by neverdem
A catalyst made from soybeans could overcome a major barrier to cheap hydrogen fuel by replacing the platinum catalyst used in the electrocatalytic production of hydrogen, claim scientists in the US.
For hydrogen to be competitive with petroleum fuels, the US Department of Energy has estimated that its cost must be reduced from $4–5/kg to $2–3/kg. The platinum catalyst used to make hydrogen via water electrolysis is a significant part of the cost, so the search is on for cheaper catalysts that are just as efficient.
Now, James Muckerman, Wei-Fu Chen and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, have produced a catalyst made from molybdenum – an abundant transition metal, around 1500 times cheaper than platinum – and ground soybeans.
The team already knew that molybdenum carbide-based catalysts could be used for hydrogen evolution, but they are unstable in strong acid, which is vital for the production process. While looking for new ways to stabilise molybdenum carbide catalysts, Wei-Fu Chen was supervising two high school students, twin sisters Shilpa and Shweta Iyer. Chen tasked the sisters to find an inexpensive source of carbon and nitrogen that could be combined with molybdenum. ‘The students were excited about using familiar materials from their everyday lives,’ says Muckerman. ‘They brought various samples of leaves, stems, flowers, seeds and legumes to the laboratory for testing.’ This led to the group discovering that soybeans made good catalysts when mixed with molybdenum.
Carbon and nitrogen from the soybean proteins combined with molybdenum to make molybdenum carbide and molybdenum nitride, respectively. ‘Molybdenum carbide itself is active but not stable in acidic solution, while molybdenum nitride is corrosion resistant but not suitable for hydrogen production. Synergy between the two gave a stable composite material,’ explains Muckerman. The cheap and easy to prepare material has excellent long-term durability and it catalyses hydrogen production at efficiencies comparable to a platinum catalyst.
‘Platinum-free catalysts are powerful tools for generating molecular hydrogen as a sustainable fuel source,’ says Henrik Junge, an expert in electrocatalysts for hydrogen production at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, Rostock, Germany. He also wonders if other precursors could be used to generate the catalyst. ‘This would avoid discussions about the competitive usage of biomass for food versus chemical feedstocks.’
Muckerman and the team are currently investigating if they can synthesise the catalyst directly onto large-area electrodes to further reduce costs for industrial application.
W-F Chen et al, Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, 6, 1818–1826 (DOI: 10.1039/c3ee40596f)
The use of hydrogen as a “stationary battery” for smoothing out supply/demand issues might be even more attractive with this.
Joule claims they can produce diesal & ethanol for “as little as $1.28 per gallon and $50 a barrel, respectively. This price structure excludes subsidies for producing alternative fuels.” “In fact, the company’s new plant in New Mexico is very close to a power plant, and Joule is discussions with them about becoming partners to provide some of the carbon dioxide,”
Read more: http://www.wickedlocal.com/bedford/news/x1058224793/Bedfords-Joule-Unlimited-may-change-ethanol-market#ixzz2UqGQ2RZW
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Joule now is trying to scale up in Hobbs New Mexico with a 1000 acre plant. (they’re not up to 1000 acres yet. But that’s their plan.)
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2013/04/joule-renewable-gasoline-jet-fuel.html
Oil will not be cheap again until we stop printing money and remonitize our debt and markets....fat chance of that. we are going in to QE infinity and beyond.
............
imho the fed will stop their QE sometime in the next year.
Mostly because of rising oil production. The USA has been churning out about 800,000 barrels @ day more per year for the last three years. Projections are that the same thing will happen this year through 2017 at which time the USA will be oil independent.
This will push the dollar upwards and underpin the US economy yielding steady if slow growth. (this could turn to fast/normal growth if the supreme court declares obamacare unconstitutional later this year.)
Here’s a ten year chart of the dollar. Notice how its been going mostly sideways since 2008.
http://bit.ly/K1ENOe
My wag is that because of rising US oil production —the break out will be to the upside. (Why? even incompetently run countries like brazil have strong currencies because they are oil independent.)
I didn’t believe this would happen until I read reports of the cline shale formation in the permian basin of west texas plus just loads of other smaller plays all over the country. The magnitude of the technological breakthrough has not quite sunk in. Basically there’s now about 3-4 times more oil available in the USA (& worldwide)for markets than has been produced since the beginning of oil drilling for kerosene under Rockefeller during the 1860’s or 1870’s. Why? Well previously the only place they could get oil was under salt domes or similar formations where oil percolated upwards from deeper formations. This represented only about 10% of the oil underground. Now Current technology enables them to get at about 35-45% of the the source rock oil in the deeper formations. (10-20 years from now that percentage will rise.)
we are on the backside of the first 1973 OPEC oil embargo (& watergate hearings of the same year).
imho 2 years from now oil prices in the USA will be $70@ barrel range & ten years from now there will be a profound oil glut.
This pattern of oil supply tightness followed by oil supply glut to tightness again — takes about 20 years and has been going on since the beginning of oil.
Has anyone done this on a much larger scale yet? How could we harness the energy I wonder? Only obvious thing I could think of is using the process to boil off water for steam production?
well you might also be able to use it to dewater salt concentrates at desalination plants.
Thank you for the informative post. I’ll check this out in more detail later. Interesting...
Keeping them at subsistence level is the raison de etre for the Left.
http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/
Personally, I'm not all that comfortable with knowing that Mexicans are having food riots because the world price of corn has gone up in response to U.S. farmers and agro corporations pulling corn off the market so it can be used for a half-assed "alternative fuel" solution. I would also point out that the current drought in the U.S. is already increasing the price of most of the food that you eat, and that turning corn and soybeans into fuel will only continue to jack up those prices.
Maybe when your family is having trouble finding food, I shouldn't be concerned about you, either. After all, I've already got mine.
No, if you had read all my posts in context, you would have found it was me originally expressing concern, because corn ethanol caused the world price of corn went sky high. It’s part of the reason for riots in parts of the Middle East.
When I said they can eat rocks, it was in response to a Freeper who had said he didn’t care about what our actions have on the rest of the world.
Note to self: Read more; write less.
here’s another one.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512996/a-cheaper-way-to-make-hydrogen-from-water/
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