Interesting article just came across Toyota's Pressroom about Fuel Cell Vehicles: http://pressroom.toyota.com/photo_library/...ml?id=20040519a
Very cool, especially this part: "The SES is designed to safely and reliably generate fuel cell grade hydrogen. Based on the Company's proprietary Vandenborre IMET¨ cell stack and intelligent fuel station technology, the SES uses electricity to efficiently separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. When renewable sources of electricity are used in the electrolysis process, such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power, the SES solution becomes a zero-emission infrastructure solution for industrial, power and transportation applications. " I had heard probably a week ago or so that there was talk about having found a much easier way of taking H2O and without much energy splitting off the two elements. Sounds to me like Toyota already has a form of this in works, good for them! -m.
That process requires lots of energy to make the sodium hydroxide and the aluminum metal in the first place; they're not lying around on the ground waiting to be picked up (and if you do have lots of aluminum metal lying around waiting to be picked up it's much more energy-sensible to recycle it as metal and not turn it back into aluminum oxide). This is also a lousy way to store and transport hydrogen because the reactants and a safe reaction vessel for them are heavy. Electrolysis at the point of sale (the SES approach) is probably the least bad way to make hydrogen for small vehicles. All we need now is lots of cheap energy for electrolysis and compressing the resulting gas (for example, from those cheap efficient Solar cells that don't quite exist yet). But I betcha this would mean the end of self-serve fuelling stations; I shudder to think of Joe Twelvepack transferring hydrogen at 5,000 PSI.
oh really?? hmm there is plenty of it around here and everywhere else ive ever lived too for that matter.
