[extropy-chat] Hydrogen cells

[Robert Bradbury]

On 2/17/06, Peter K. Bertine, Jr <pkbertine at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know of practical hydrogen cell technology that could be
> utilized for off the grid home power?


Your best bet is solar to DC electric to split H2O and then use the H2
directly.  Appliances that can run off of methane (natural gas) can probably
run off of H2 as well.  You just have to be more careful about the
connections so it doesn't leak.  H2 also has the nasty property that it
embrittles metals that are not designed to specifically transport it.

Alternatively you can use anaerobic bacteria (methanogens) to convert most
biomaterial (animal waste, garbage, etc.) into methane and use that.

If you are talking *just* the fuel cells, then I believe a number of
companies off them.  FuelCellWorks.com looks like a good portal, see:
http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Companies.html

Google lists something like 1.8 million pages for "Hydrogen fuel cell
prices" so you may want to refine your search criteria as much as possible.

It is worth noting that most hydrogen production is now done from methane
which comes out of the ground.  That makes the hydrogen both expensive and
dependent upon a unsustainable (and potentially global ecology damaging)
resource.

The best resource would be solar + H2O + CO2 directly to methane or solar +
H2O directly to hydrogen but genome engineering isn't quite up to that task
yet.  The major flaws in the U.S./DOE push towards hydrogen are (1) the
current non-sustainable production methods and (2) the complete lack of
infrastructure (e.g. tanks, pipelines & trucks) capable of storing or
transporting it.  Even if a miracle of nanoengineering results in
inexpensive solar splitting of water to yield H2 one *still* hasn't solved
the storage and transport problems.  Methane from solar is absolutely the
way to go because it can go directly into existing pipelines or be converted
into propane or even octane and use existing infrastructure.

Robert
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