Possible Hydrogen Breakthrough

[Fla._Deadheader]

 Here

[Toolman]

Interesting,

Thanks for sharin that

[Left Coast Chris]

Interesting.  Might have some real promise.

On the humorous side, I especially liked the "Winogradsky Institue of Microbiology" reference.  Maybe a wine savoring grad school fostering uninhibited creativity?  Maybe worth checking out.   

[Bill]

Interesting way to get hydrogen - the holy grail of energy

Many current projects fail because when converting energy from one form to another it ends up taking more energy then you get out ( inefficiencies like friction, wasted heat, etc ). Hydrogen is one of these that had no cheap source of production.

These new microbes need heat and cellulose. Wonder how long to figure out why it works. and how long to figure out how to make a factory to produce hydrogen. Oh and a way to make sure it doesn't go boom in your back yard. Easy compared to getting the hydrogen to start with - but years till production and a distribution network are available.

[judochop]

Found this site a few weeks ago.
Its the national ignition facility in the US,
its a long time project still in the works
as far as I know- I think its to be
completed in 2009.
Sounds like they are very confident
in their goals, if they are successful
I hope they don't "shelve" their findings
like other significant advancements have
been in the past.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/

If you don't have the time to give that site
a read some interesting quotes from there.

The general idea these people are working on
is to shoot lasers at pin-head sized metal that is
coated with some special stuff.
The out come is a lot of energy.

"The target factory must produce a continuous supply of high-quality targets at an acceptable cost – typically 25¢ for a target that produces 300 megajoules of energy."

"If the power plant operates at five shots a second, the target factory will have to produce more than 400,000 targets a day."

So what they are saying is 120000000 megajoules of energy
a day.
120000000 MJ = 33333333333 Wh

Anyway I only gave it a quick scan myself and dont
understand the full effects of quantity and value but looks
promising.

As far as fusion goes it is not very effecient now due largly to the ammount of neutron radiation produced.
The reaction chamber lining is broken down in a very short time by the neutron bombardment and is extremly costly to replace.
There have been discussions of using helium 3 instead of hydrogen as a fuel source, very clean by comparison
with only simple he2 as the product of the fusion process. Helium 3 is very rare on earth due to our vanallen
belts and our atmosphere, but large quantities can be found on the moon. It was stated that a kg of He3 can generate
enough power for a city like NewYork for a year.   8)

[judochop]

Found this other link http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
Has to do with mixing an aluminium alloy to extract hydrogen from water... kinda cool.

[smoothED]

there's a russian entrapenure raceing to get to the moon for helium 3. other countrys are working on it too.

[judochop]

Didn't know that.
Do you know how they will collect or mine it? Or how much they think
they could return with per trip?

[smoothED]

They did'nt say,i'm sure they'll be tight lipped on detailes 'cuz the first one there would become a gazillionare.

[judochop]

Gazillionare is right!

[SPIKER]

an interesting note to this is china expects to be on the moon shortly.  it was part of the Olympic opening statements where they had 2 china astronauts in the shot (or what ever they called them)  they floated up and out of the stadium and was quite cool !  loved the torch lighting and one of the best opening shows I ever seen for the Olympics!

Mark M

[Thermodecking]

Excuse me, do you mean this video?  ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBL98p0wZ7g&feature=related

[SwampDonkey]

At the University they have been making strides toward safe storage of hydrogen. I don't have any details or link. Our news likes to just feed us morsels and no details.  :

[slowzuki]

Hey swampy, they are developing a low pressure metal matrix storage medium.  They finally got it to store more per lb than high pressure cylinders.  Is basically like a sponge to absorb the hydrogen at high pressure.

[pineywoods]

Hey swampy, they are developing a low pressure metal matrix storage medium.  They finally got it to store more per lb than high pressure cylinders.  Is basically like a sponge to absorb the hydrogen at high pressure.

Called metal hydrides, and can in fact store a bunch of hydrogen in them, they soak it up like a sponge. The catch 22 is you have to heat the metal to get the hydrogen out. Takes a bunch of heat. One of the setups NASA had used the exhaust heat from an internal combustion engine to heat the hydrides. The engine then ran on the hydrogen.  Don't ask me how they got it started  :