Intro to hydrogen
Well the hydrogen industry is coming into age and as paul anderson has said "it isn't if the hydrogen age is going to come, it is - is it going to be liquid or compressed?" so that is really what it comes down to. I know with all of my heart that hydrogen is the way to go for our earths energy carrier. There are many ways to use hydrogen from burning it as a heating fuel, making electricity for your home, using it in place of natural gas appliances, to using it an automobile down to a lawnmower and chainsaw. So really this is what we are shooting for.. hydrogen can solve many of the needs that we as humans need. We could send hydrogen to non-industrialized countries such as zyier and madagascar, including industrialized countries also. When hydrogen is used it can be sought after in a very effective way, an inexpensive way also, we could get to the point where we could have fuel for free (as far as dollars go... excluding staff wages/maintence etc...) from the sun or in solar setups.Hydrogen is also what is going to advance our thinking to a better cause if you will also. Since Hydrogen has a very high rating of energy (BTU's) it can be used very well, effieciently and it really easy to adapt to. Hydrogen is safer than many convential fuels we use today in our daily duties, propane, gasoline, natural gas, methanol, ethanol and kerocyne are no longer going to be need for these reasons. We can better utilize our energy for something with all due respect, to something thing that will actually get us somewhere. We are using over 1 billion barrels of oil a day, which is going to run out very soon, so I am not going to go into that part of this, because i feel that it is over played, and is doomsday way of thinking. I want to explain to you why hydrogen is the energy for us, and have you want to change, and not because you feel you have to. You will gain further knowledge and more aspiration to do something about it if you do it yourself. So why are you still sitting here go, go, go, wait, wait.. don't you want to know the plan before you rush off into this battlefield? I bet we are going to get absolutly nowhere if we all "do our own thing" and not understand that we are doing this as a team, not saying that we don't all have our own individual parts, but we must learn to work as one, from the man without his home, to the president, to the seaman, and so on.
The Plan
The first thing that needs to be implemented is the hydrogen. It is hard to have people realize in our gotta have it yesterday society, to relize our capabilities. People (as a mass) won't change unless they have a reason to or don't have the option to stay where they are. So like I said before, the hydrogen is going to be first. I would suggest either to do two things depending on your own spirit. You can either give to support building a hydrogen manufacturing plant or build one yourself.
If you are going to give to support a hydrogen plant, you should consider the AHA's Hydrogen plant that is in the process of being built. This would be a great way to support the hydrogen econonmy, you can also support a few other places such as shell hydrogen, and some local hydrogen plants. If you would like more information on donating to plants please write us.
If you decided like many of us, that we want to build our own hydrogen plants then lets go to the production side of this website.. I am going to give you a breif summary of each kind of production, and let you decide the way to go and let you wander through our library.
Production of Hydrogen
Now this is a huge topic, so bear in mind that you should read as much as possible to gain more knowledge, but remember that until you do it, it is all theoritical to you, even thoughn it is possible.
Methane reforming - I like the topic of methane reforming, because is suits the needs as an oregonian. In oregon we have probally about 85 percent vegitation on the west coast, and about 10 on the east. So there is much biomass that can be produced, which means when stuff is decomposing it is giving off gases, biogas. So what we need to do is first capture the bio product, you can do this in general by making a enclosed composter, which is called a mthane bio-digester. Seal it and drill a hole in the composter to relase the methane gas (CH4). Once you have you composter you then take the compost and stir it about once a week or so to keep the bacteria active, although without stiring it,they will still be active just in more of a dormant state. So after about 2-3 weeks you should have gas coming out, this is the fun part. Now take the gas and siphone it off into another section of the project the reformer.
The reformer - The reformer can be complicated sometimes so bear in mind you might wanna try some different ones out to see how they work. The first that comes to my mind is the steam reformer.
Steam reforming - what you do is have steam coming out into a chamber where the biogas is residing and when they come in contact with each other they will transmit heat and make hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Now this is one of the simplest ways of doing a reformer, but really isn't the way I like to percieve hydrogen. Using this techniqe can be just as hazardous to our environment as not using hydrogen fuel, so if you use this I suggest either taking your carbon dioxide and making driy ice or selling it to bottling plants or even better convert it into carbon and oxygen with about 300-500 C.
Hydorcracking - Hydrocraking means that when you take the methane gas out of the digester you will heat it up over 800 C to split the methane into Carbon and Hydrogen. This is a great way of using methane and is the way I prefer to use, because you get all of the gas into hydrogen form and have to usable products that will support the hydrogen economy. To learn more on carbon see the library. Now this way can also have its set backs because you need this high heat which can cause many troubles of trying to do this with little money involved unfortually.
Solarcracking - Solar cracking uses the same principal as the hydrocracking, but instead you have a set up so that the biogas comes along a in a pipe and stops at a wall of paladium or thermo multilayer ceramic. Once the gas stops at the wall the sunlight can be used to crack it at a high concentration of mirrors concentrating at this focal point, once it heats up to the point of being cracked the hydrogen will flow through and the carbon will stay. The paladium would e more useful due to the fact that it would be able to purify the gas as it travels through it. One down side to this kind of cracking is that it can be expensive, and maintence seems to be higher.
Electrolysis - Electrolysis is a really simple hydrogen producing tool. It consists of 1 anode, 1 cathode, water, an electrolyte (such as salt or potassium hydroxide), electricityand a way to seperate the gasses. Hydrogen is contained in water, along with oxygen (H20) so therefor we are able to extract this due to the fact that this bond is weak, and is easily transferable. To set up electrolysis there are many ways.
2 seperators - The two seperator is one of the easiest ways where you are able to have 1 large container and another container that resides in the center of this larger one (bottom cut off) then it is sealed at the top, both seperators must be sealed at the top so that the gasses cannot move into the other container. Now drill 4 holes into the lid. 2 holes in the center container and to in the outter. if possible make the electrodes farthest away from each other. Now take your electrodes and seal them into the container with the ends going to about 3/4 or the way down from the bottom of the large container and take your tubes coming from it and attach and seal them to the lid. now add water about 3/4 and add your electroylte until it looks "cloudy" and then attach a Dc power adapter (about 1.25 V) to the electrolyser and there you have it... let is sit for about 5 minutes and reap your benefits.
Spiraled electrolysis, now this one just introduced to me just a bit ago, this consists of 1 container and a spiral latex plastic to wind along side the container. You would need to wrap you latex in two seperate spirals though, as two coils. One would need a cathode at the far side of the container. on the other side of the container exactly opposite would be your anonde with your tubing coming off right above each pole. higher voltage may be needed to attract the gasses.
Membrane electrolysis - Now this is a similar to the other types of electrolysis, although this one doesn't need a electolyte. What this consists of your anode, cathode, fuel lines, water, electictiy, but the membrane is used as a seperator, needing not an electrolyre. If you set your electrolyser up into a cell rather than singe containers you can add effiecy to electrolysers, so if you have your membrane consisting of a conductive mesh very close to each other you can make a electolyser sandwich. You would hook up the anode to one mesh and place another mesh very close to this one about 2-3 mm and then on the other side of the mesh add another mesh also about 2-3 mm respectavly. Now line the cells up side by side in a battery box (battery boxes make great electrolysers!) Now dril your holes above each of you polarized cells for the conducters and the tubing and add water and seal the battery. Add your DC transformer and let it go...
So you heard me say batteries make great electolysers well they do! If you take a regular old car battery apart, clean the plates and add the sulfurc acid agian you can either do two things use it as a battery again or use it as an electolyser!
So now I bet you are thinking wow, electrolysers are really that similiar to batteries, so can you store electricity in hydrogen, well kind of hydrogen gas can be converted into electrical energy, in a device called a fuel cell, as I will talk about below.
After this to lead to the creation of the fuel cell/electrolyser is a solid electoylte compound electrolsyer. Now a idea came about of a solid electolyte such as General Electrics, perfluorinated sulfonic acid polymer, you can have 1 cell consisting of the electrolyte as the membrane like above and water on both sides of the electrolyte (that is .1 mm thick) along with the anode and cathode on opposing ends respectivly. Now that is what the big guys use, but you could actually use this for about 260-350 a kWH, which is about 1/14.5 of h2/LB so about 1/29 GGE per hour (Gaseous Gasoline Equivalent of H2).
So from this now, they made the Fuel Cell/Electrolyzer which when water is added one way will make hydrogen and oxygen and when hydrogen is fed to it the other way it will produce electricity and exaust steam. These set ups are generally the same as the solid polymer setups. Although recently the Roy McAlister, President of the American Hydrogen Association has produced a fuel cell/electrolyzer that doesn't require the solid polymer. For informatin please visit our library or come to a class in Arizona for the AHA.
There is another type of electrolzer and that is the chemical electrolyzer. This is done by havign one container, the anode and cathode and one tubing. How this is done is you add the water add about one part sulfur for every 4 parts of water and add the sulfer to the anode (+) side of the electrolzer, now seal it and tap your holes, seal and your ready to go.. now what happends in this is a little different you get S + 4H20 --> H2SO4 + 3H2 , so in the process of this reaction you make sulfuric acid, so be careful when handling it. One nice thing about this reaction is that it produces no oxygen so it is easier to maintain and you have less parts involved.. it would be better if the sulfur is doped to the anode for more effiency.
Solar production - One of the most common ways to produce solar hydrogen is from water. So what would happen if we heated water up, would it release steam or hydrogen and oxygen. Well actually both, at about 230 F water turns to steam, now if that temperature were to rise to 2300 F this water would then be turned into hydrogen and oxygen. But once it is split then what do we do with gasses how do we seperate them so they don't containminate each other? Well one method is to use a memberane that will let hydrogen flow through it and not an oxygen atom (due to its size difference). Another way is to use electromagnets to pull the gasses toward their poles. Hydrogen would go to the cathode side, the negative and the oxygen would go to the anode side the positve. These techniques are fairly simple. Other ways to split the water is to use black piping and run them along in a very hot place (arizona, new mexico etc..) and then just have the solar energy split the water, which is somewhat ineffiecent but cost effective. This might appeal to the homebuilder to produce their fuel for potentially free, note that this technique can be used for methane reforming too. Photosynthesised cracking - This catagory is starting to appeal to more and more people, because of it's massive uses. What this is reffering to using solar energy in conjunction with other materails to yeild a more effiecent product. One example is to use Silinium doped on the electrolysers conductive poles so that when the sun would come out the metal would raise its conductivity 1000 times than in the dark increasing the output due to lack of resistance. There are many other photoconductors that can be used for these parts including all of the appove traditional methods of creating hydrogen. Another way is to utilize a plants photosyntesising itself.. when a plant makes food it makes glucose for itself extracting the water, using the hydrogen along with carbon, and exausting oxygen. So if we were able to get the plant to make hydrogen, by reducing the amount of glucose it was making than the tree would grow the percentage less and produce hydrogen and food at the same time, now I am deffently saying this is only in theory at this time, and will only be used as a greenhouse production facility, but this is a very interesting possiblity, especially for space travel and sustainable livlyhood.
The next is Space production - Now this type of production would use spaces ease of inertia, lack of gravity, abundance of hydrogen (coparitavly to Earth by percentage), and its ability to create a large magnetic feild. A space tether is a long cable used to couple spacecraft to each other or to other masses, such as a spent booster rocket, space station, or an asteroid. Space tethers are usually made of thin strands of high-strength fibers or conducting wires. The tether provides a mechanical connection that enables the transfer of energy and momentum from one object to another, so then electrical and magnetic energy can be produced.