Good news! Could this be a breakthrough towards a hydrogen powered future?
The research article is actually about separating hydrogen in crude hydrogen from its impurities and not really about storage.
Never forget the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 when it comes to hydrogen! One spark is all it takes (e.g. as you may remember chemistry lessons in high school).
The demagogues of hydrogen power never fail to mention that burning hydrogen converts only to water. What happens if you do this at a large scale?
"As a fuel, hydrogen has one major attraction. When it burns or powers a fuel cell, it creates only water—and no climate-warming carbon dioxide. After that, the caveats start. To ship it or store it, the gas must be crushed under intense pressures or liquefied at ultracold temperatures, which raises costs. Now, researchers report the discovery of a cheap catalyst that adds hydrogen atoms to oil-like molecules that are liquid at ambient temperature and pressure. That means hydrogen could be stored and shipped in existing tanks, trucks, and pipelines, much like gasoline. ..."
From the abstract:
"Industrially, hydrogen production often relies on carbon-based resources, necessitating the separation of hydrogen from impurities such as CO, CO2, hydrocarbons and N2. Traditional purification methods involve complicated and energy-intensive sequential conversion and removal of these impurities.
Here we introduce a reversible catalytic cycle based on the interconversion between γ-butyrolactone and 1,4-butanediol over an inverse Al2O3/Cu catalyst, enabling efficient hydrogen separation and storage from crude hydrogen feeds.
This process could transform crude hydrogen feeds containing over 50% impurities into pure hydrogen at low temperature. The low impurity affinity and high dispersion of inverse Al2O3/Cu facilitate catalytic crude and waste hydrogen separations previously considered unachievable. This approach avoids the need for expensive pressure swing adsorption or membrane systems in liquid organic hydrogen carriers, showing great potential for large-scale applications in crude hydrogen or industrial tail gas utilization processes. By providing a low-risk, energy-efficient alternative, this strategy supports the global transition from grey/blue hydrogen to green hydrogen."
No comments:
Post a Comment