Hydrogen has been on my mind for about 4 years now, as I put together a venture capital forum for the National Hydrogen Association in 2003 to help support emerging technologies and companies in the Hydrogen energy space. The conclusion I came to is that Hydrogen is currently another form of fossil fuel, since a large percentage of the current feedstock of hydrogen made by major corporations is fossil fuel in the form of natural gas.
The core idea is to produce sustainable hydrogen. Simply, the process of making hydrogen out of natural gas or other fossil fuel has a carbon byproduct. It can be sequestered, but that is a cost that is sometimes not considered, until now with carbon credits... yet that is another story for another day.
Long story short, you want to produce sustainable hydrogen - ideally by electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen "H2" from water "H2O."
According to the following article, scientists cited below have found a way to send sound waves through salt water and produce energy by literally burning the Hydrogen that is released from the water.
Fascinating!
I'd love to learn the chemistry behind this one! More to follow....
Here's the article:
"Radio Frequencies Help Burn Salt Water
ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
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Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
-- Found on Google News - 751 Headlines...
Photo by Birdfarm found on Flickr
1 comment:
From my friend John Hanson at www.cinergie.com
Very cool discovery! I think the potential uses for the sound/vibration technology is of greater significance than the basic separation and combustion of known flammable elements (although there are many beneficial applications possible). I am particularly interested in finding pathways that steer us away from combusting and into more balanced and intelligent forms of natural and biomimetic technologies.
My concerns specifically related to the combustion side are…
1) Still combusting (playing with burning things)…
a) What are the offgases or by products?
b) Is it pure burning?
2) My concerns about the h2o and o2 side are…
a) What is happening to the molecules?
b) Are we destroying h2 and o2 molecules?
c)If we transform the h2 and o2 molecules…
i) How do we convert that finite terrestrial source back to the essential life sustaining molecules we need (h2 & o2: o2 for breathing and h2o for water).
ii) This is a similar delemma we face with fossil fuels into co2, et al. (converting one form into another without the ability to sequester and return it to it's original state)
The oceans are a needed system…we cannot deplete them.
Fresh water is already a resource in growing scarcity and being fought over by both tribes, nations and corporations. If we salinize freshwater and burn it for fuel where, then, do we acquire, or what technology do we have to create or sequester our essential drinking and agricultural water? Are current atmospheric condensation technologies practical, economical or available?
My thoughts are that the process might better be used in arid or drought blighted coastal areas or islands to separate the h2 and utilize that with fuel cells which combine the h2 with atmospheric o2 to make pure water (h2o) and high volumes of electricity through zero-emission electro-chemistry (not combustion) that can be used for basic or growth needs while sequestering the co2 out of the atmospheric air and using it to feed greenhouses or algeal production for animal feedstocks, organic fertilizer, habitat restoration, etc. which could then be combined into living eco-machine systems that also treat wastewater, support food production and increase local sustainability and economic development while repairing agricultural soils, allowing for further watertable retention…and the loop continues…
Another option is to electrolize h2o (which separates water into h2 and o2) and use the hydrogen for fuel cells (which bind h2 and o2 back together again) to make pure water (h2o) and electricity. In this process nothing is lost (or converted into an unusable or toxic form) and the only by-product is electricity.
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