Swanz

At the site you posted the author starts off with the statement "Say goodbye to fossil fuels"...then goes on to say "Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is abundantly available everywhere and just needs to be extracted from a source like natural gas, gasoline or water"....

Swanz

New Solar Power Technology Harnesses the Heat
By Sarah Davidson
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 15 November 2004
7:00 a.m. ET
Applying the most efficient solar technology available, researchers are building a new power plant that utilizes the heat from sunlight to generate electric power.

The solar dish, as it’s known, is a joint project between Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. (SES) and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia National Laboratories.

Based in New Mexico, the prototype contains 82 mirrors that focus the Sun’s rays, transmitting the heat energy to an engine filled with hydrogen. As the gas expands and contracts from heating and cooling, this motion drives pistons which power a generator that creates electricity.

Before January, five additional solar powered dishes and their engines are planned to boost the electricity production of the prototype to 150 kilowatts of electricity a day, enough to power 40 average households, according to researchers.

"A farm 100 miles by 100 miles in the southwestern U.S. hypothetically could provide as much electricity as is needed to power the entire country," said SES general manager Bob Liden.

The current project is not an abstract possibility for the future, however, and is actively selling electricity to power companies.

"These systems are currently grid-connected," Chuck Andraka, of Sandia Laboratory told LiveScience, "and are designed to offset peak power demands at the utility."

Commercial electricity providers use grids to supply power to regions of the country, and the grids are interconnected. Power can be fed in at practically any point and shared between providers.

Secured behind a fence to deter people and animals from approaching the test field, the mirrors have been vigorously tested to withstand vandalism. The dish is capable of operating in winds up to 35 mph. In addition to its robust design, the automated dish-engine systems are able to turn themselves off when there is no sunlight.

"These systems produce when the Sun shines only," Andraka said. "Maximum production is determined by the brightness of the Sun and ambient temperature. The more light, the more power."

Researchers hope to lower the cost of the $150,000 prototype to levels where the electricity produced by the solar dishes are comparable to that of other energy sources.

"Coal and nuclear cost 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour. Natural gas can cost anywhere from 6 to 50 cents per kilowatt hour," Andraka said. "Consumers are typically charged in the range of 8-10 cents per kilowatt hour. SES has a goal to get the cost of generation to about 6 cents per kilowatt hour."

Ideally suited for regions with sustained sunlight, 20,000 solar dish engine systems could provide electricity to utility companies throughout the southwestern United States, Andraka said.

"This is the perfect type of electricity generation for the Southwest," Liden said. "It’s a renewable resource, its pollution free, and the maintenance of a solar farm is minimal."

Now if a small bird were to nest on a collector, there could be some problems. A large bird like a condor would just blot out the sun away, like Mothra or Rodan.

Interesting that a 100x100 mile "farm" of these babies would supply 100% of US electrical power. Coal industry wouldn't like that too much but me thinks it would be a fair trade to rid the air of mercury, CO2, particulates, etc....even with the fried birds on the side. Also, sounds like the hydrogen isn't consumed by this method but rather used like hydrolic fluid (in a sense) to drive the moving parts via expansion/contraction cycling.

So how about you folks down there in AZ/NM area? Y'all wanna give up a big chuck of desert space for the rest of US? Maybe we can work out a deal - free electricity for your states so the rest of us can breath easy and save fossil fuels for other uses. vgkg

I've never heard anyone fighting solar power on account of bird issues. If there are such idiots, they should be tarred and feathered.

First, the image on my computer isn't adequate to make that pronouncement so I'll take your word for it.

Second, it's irrelevant because multiple lenses with a concave mirror would accomplish the same thing as a fresnel lens.

Third, we have been talking about a hypothetical situation. I will leave it to you and Monte to discuss whether such stupidity actually exists (or if it does how widespread it might be), I just wanted to clarify a technical point.

Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: November 28, 2004

ASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, raising the possibility of using nuclear power to indirectly wean the transportation system from its dependence on oil.
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The development would move the country closer to the Energy Department's goal of a "hydrogen economy," in which hydrogen would be created through a variety of means, and would be consumed by devices called fuel cells, to make electricity to run cars and for other purposes. Experts cite three big roadblocks to a hydrogen economy: manufacturing hydrogen cleanly and at low cost, finding a way to ship it and store it on the vehicles that use it, and reducing the astronomical price of fuel cells.

"This is a breakthrough in the first part," said J. Stephen Herring, a consulting engineer at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, which plans to announce the development on Monday with Cerametec Inc. of Salt Lake City.

The developers also said the hydrogen could be used by oil companies to stretch oil supplies even without solving the fuel cell and transportation problems.

Mr. Herring said the experimental work showed the "highest-known production rate of hydrogen by high-temperature electrolysis."

But the plan requires the building of a new kind of nuclear reactor, at a time when the United States is not even building conventional reactors. And the cost estimates are uncertain.

The heart of the plan is an improvement on the most convenient way to make hydrogen, which is to run electric current through water, splitting the H2O molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. This process, called electrolysis, now has a drawback: if the electricity comes from coal, which is the biggest source of power in this country, then the energy value of the ingredients - the amount of energy given off when the fuel is burned - is three and a half to four times larger than the energy value of the product. Also, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions increase when the additional coal is burned.

Hydrogen can also be made by mixing steam with natural gas and breaking apart both molecules, but the price of natural gas is rising rapidly.

The new method involves running electricity through water that has a very high temperature. As the water molecule breaks up, a ceramic sieve separates the oxygen from the hydrogen. The resulting hydrogen has about half the energy value of the energy put into the process, the developers say. Such losses may be acceptable, or even desirable, because hydrogen for a nuclear reactor can be substituted for oil, which is imported and expensive, and because the basic fuel, uranium, is plentiful.

The idea is to build a reactor that would heat the cooling medium in the nuclear core, in this case helium gas, to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The existing generation of reactors, used exclusively for electric generation, use water for cooling and heat it to only about 300 degrees Celsius.

The hot gas would be used two ways. It would spin a turbine to make electricity, which could be run through the water being separated. And it would heat that water, to 800 degrees Celsius. But if electricity demand on the power grid ran extremely high, the hydrogen production could easily be shut down for a few hours, and all of the energy could be converted to electricity, designers say.

The goal is to create a reactor that could produce about 300 megawatts of electricity for the grid, enough to run about 300,000 window air-conditioners, or produce about 2.5 kilos of hydrogen per second. When burned, a kilo of hydrogen has about the same energy value as a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline. But fuel cells, which work without burning, get about twice as much work out of each unit of fuel. So if used in automotive fuel cells, the reactor might replace more than 400,000 gallons of gasoline per day.

The part of the plan that the laboratory and the ceramics company have tested is high-temperature electrolysis. There is only limited experience building high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, though, and no one in this country has ordered any kind of big reactor, even those of more conventional design, in 30 years, except for those whose construction was canceled before completion.

Another problem is that the United States has no infrastructure for shipping large volumes of hydrogen. Currently, most hydrogen is produced at the point where it is used, mostly in oil refineries. Hydrogen is used to draw the sulfur out of crude oil, and to break up hydrocarbon molecules that are too big for use in liquid fuel, and change the carbon-hydrogen ratio to one more favorable for vehicle fuel.

Mr. Herring suggested another use, however: recovering usable fuel from the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada. The reserves there may hold the largest oil deposits in the world, but extracting them and converting them into a gasoline substitute requires copious amounts of steam and hydrogen, both products of the reactor.

posted: 26 April, 2005
7:00 a.m. ET

A newly developed process that uses bacteria to consume human waste and other biomass produces four times more hydrogen than previous efforts.

Some scientists and politicians envision an economy of the future fueled by hydrogen rather than fossil fuels. Others say that idea is rubbish.

The new technique won't by itself create a hydrogen economy, but it could help make wastewater treatment less costly.

"While there is likely insufficient waste biomass to sustain a global hydrogen economy, this form of renewable energy production may help offset the substantial costs of wastewater treatment as well as provide a contribution to nations able to harness hydrogen as an energy source," said Penn State Professor Bruce Logan.

The process is, well, shocking.

Bacteria already produce hydrogen. But this fermentation process has a limit. In the new study, Logan and his colleagues juiced the bacteria with a tiny amount of electricity, about 0.25 volts -- a small fraction of what's needed to run a cell phone. The supercharged bacteria could then break down acetic acid into carbon dioxide and hydrogen -- a step they could not make on their own.

A year ago, Logan's team used a microbial fuel cell for the first time to generate electricity from wastewater and the bacteria already in it.

"Basically, we use the same microbial fuel cell we developed to clean wastewater and produce electricity," Logan said. "However, to produce hydrogen, we keep oxygen out of the [microbial fuel cell] and add a small amount of power into the system."

The technique, in theory, could obtain hydrogen from any biodegradable, dissolved, organic matter, including human, agricultural or industrial wastewater while simultaneously cleaning the wastewater, Logan said.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it is hard to capture and store, so producing it in a fuel cell could supply a constant stream, much like electricity is produce on demand.

Other researchers are working on ways to create new batteries using microbial fuels cells that generate power from yeast or algae.

The new work will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Stephen Grot, president and founder of Ion Power, Inc. is a co-author. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.