https://www.ecoticias.com/en/hydrogen-engine-united-states/1088

The engine that is turning the United States upside down: it is 80 years old and runs on a fuel that we have just invented

Several well-known car brands are developing ambitious projects based on the use of hydrogen as an engine fuel. These initiatives range from the development of more advanced hydrogen vehicles to the creation of large-scale hydrogen refueling and distribution infrastructures. In addition, some brands are exploring the use of hydrogen in industrial and commercial applications.

A great twist on the most promising fuel of the moment

Hydrogen has gained significant importance as a fuel in recent times due to its numerous benefits for both consumers and the environment. Compared to conventional gasoline or diesel vehicles, hydrogen cars offer a cleaner and more efficient drive, with reduced emissions of polluting gases and a longer range.

In addition, hydrogen is an attractive option for large manufacturing industries, as it offers opportunities for innovation and expansion in a growing market. Its growing relevance is driving innovation and investment in this sector, with the potential to transform both the automotive industry and other key sectors.

The redesign of a century-old device by hydrogen engineers and specialists is a significant milestone in the evolution of propulsion technology.  By using hydrogen as a fuel instead of gasoline or diesel, this engine offers the promise of improved power and more efficient performance.

Moreover, it significantly reduces the environmental footprint. The brand wanted to make a residency to improve the performance of hydrogen, especially at low temperatures, a challenge that this fuel can overcome much better than electricity.

Innovative engine brings the automotive industry to a standstill

In this context, Achates Power, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, has focused on developing internal combustion engines optimized to run on hydrogen. These engines offer improved efficiency and reduced emissions, making them an attractive option for a wide range of industrial and commercial applications.

Achates Power’s redesign of opposed-piston engines represents a significant advance in the propulsion industry, especially in the context of the transition to cleaner, more sustainable energy sources. These engines, invented more than a century ago, have been adapted to run on clean hydrogen as fuel.

The main objective of the project is to match or even exceed the efficiency, power density and torque of conventional diesel engines. This is essential to ensure that vehicles equipped with these opposed-piston engines can compete in performance and functionality with their traditional counterparts, while reducing exhaust emissions.

Significant funding for this project

This milestone was made possible by funding and support provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Vehicle Technologies. With an allocation of $133 million for research into advanced vehicle technologies, the project has been able to conduct extensive testing and demonstrate the feasibility of using hydrogen as a fuel in vehicle engines.

Thanks to the financial support provided to the project, Argonne scientists have been able to devote substantial resources to research and development of this innovative technology. This financial investment has provided a solid foundation for the exploration of new approaches, extensive testing and continuous process improvement.

In addition, it has facilitated collaboration with experts from various disciplines and the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment, which has further strengthened the team’s research capabilities, including the demonstrated ability of the impeller to run on hydrogen, the team has been able to generate power with a higher power output than conventional engines.

What can we draw from this impressive discovery? When we use a futuristic fuel together with an engine that is 80 years old, we can see firsthand the viability of hydrogen, even in older prototypes. Of course, this is an experiment that has shown how the residue of an old enginecan be a boost for the mobility of the future, with zero-emission fuels that surpass even electricity.

One of the sites more scientific minded would be welcome to provide their insight. Personally, the alternatives of solar panels and wind turbines seem unlikely to provide sufficient energy.

First of Its Kind Discovery in Mali: Vast Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Gas

Andy Corbley for Goodnewsnetwork.org

In the beautiful West African country of Mali, a huge discovery has a town drawing a flammable gas from the earth that produces loads of electricity without CO2 emissions.

The town called Bourakébougou was prospected by Malian energy entrepreneur Aliou Diallo, who believed the mysterious gas which in the daytime shone with a blue color like sparkling ocean water, and at night like golden dust, could represent a fortune.

In 2012, he recruited Chapman Petroleum to determine what the gas was. It was 98% hydrogen. Months later, Diallo’s firm Petroma had installed a pilot unit to turn the gas into electricity that produced water as an exhaust product, and transformed the village into one with reliable, plentiful electricity.

In the decade since, belief that a potential inexhaustible natural energy source that’s zero emissions saw scientists and energy companies fly into action, scouring academia and the world for more information on underground hydrogen reservoirs

In 2018, a science team published a paper on the Bourakébougou hydrogen well, which concluded from evidence obtained from a dozen exploratory wells in the vicinity that it was “possible to confirm the presence of an extensive hydrogen field featuring at least five stacked reservoir intervals containing significant hydrogen that cover an estimated area well superior to 8 km in diameter.”

Furthermore, the study found that the current estimate of its exploitation price is much cheaper than manufactured hydrogen, either from fossil fuels or from electrolysis.

Cratons and cash

It was long believed, a feature in Science Magazine details, that hydrogen gas reservoirs were extremely rare. It’s rare to find them in places where energy companies drill for oil and natural gas, true, but if one knows where to look, they’re more common.

One such place are Earth’s “cratons,” the oldest and stablest parts of the tectonic plates. Some continents have more than one craton, others like the North American craton, are much larger and so cover most of the continent.

Unlike oil and gas which need thousands of years to form from decomposing organic matter, hydrogen gas is constantly being made underground as water interacts with iron minerals at high pressures and temperatures.

Among these iron minerals is olivine, which through a chemical reaction called serpentinization, steals an oxygen molecule from water percolating down from Earth’s surface to transform olivine into serpentinite, and the water into hydrogen gas.

Deposits of olivine are richest in an underground, cratonic feature called a “greenbelt.” It’s thought that these greenbelts, because of their high concentration of olivine, act as Earth’s hydrogen gas engine.

Hydrogen fuel has huge potential to transition off fossil fuels as it’s the best currently perceived alternative for diesel or kerosene-based transport such as semi-trucks, jet aircraft, and cargo ships.

Currently, the Malian wells could produce hydrogen gas at 50 cents per kilo, one-tenth of the cost of hydrogen created through electrolysis with solar, wind, geothermal, or other green energies.

Ian Munro, CEO of Helios Aragon, a startup pursuing hydrogen in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, told Science his break-even costs might end up between 50 and 70 cents, adding that would revolutionize energy production.

As for Diallo, he started a new company called Hydroma, which now produces electricity for the area via the hydrogen reservoir, and is looking into using it as a means to create green hydrogen via electrolysis.

As it currently stands, the Biden administration policy is to decimate the US energy sector. Their green policies only seem to focus on two alternative energy sources. They never mention nuclear or hydrogen.

This afternoon, you can have new green science information.

Researchers Make ‘Giant Leap’ to Produce Affordable Renewable Hydrogen
Good News Network Mar 18, 2022

An Australian company has invented a totally new electrolyzer to expand use of hydrogen fuel, which they say represents the first real revolution in the technology in 200 years.

Separating water into hydrogen gas and oxygen through electrical current, known as “electrolysis,” is both the chief method behind green hydrogen energy, and expensive and inefficient.

Yet for long-haul trucking, steel manufacturing, and more, hydrogen could be the only input available in green energy’s arsenal to replace petroleum products. The Swedish company SSAB is already making steel a bit greener by using hydrogen power to replace coal as a carbon input.

The Australian firm Hysata has changed the design of the major component to make the cost of pure hydrogen fuel competitive with fossil fuels by decreasing the heat and resistance generated through separating hydrogen.

“What we did differently was just to start completely over and to think about it from a very high level,” Gerry Swiegers, Hysata’s chief technology officer and a professor at the Univ. of Wollongong, New South Wales, toldthe Guardian. “Everyone else was looking at improving materials or an existing design.”

In a scientific paper, published in Nature, demonstrating their new electrolyzer’s potential, they first outline the problem with the old ones—namely that even state-of-the-art water electrolyzers typically require ~53  kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 1 kg of hydrogen, which contains 39.4 kWh of energy: a deficit of ~12.

Bubble Trouble

Before we can understand why that deficit exists, it bares a short explanation of how these devices work.

An electrolyzer consists of an anode and a cathode separated by a sponge-like membrane. H2O is sent into the anode, where its electrons are stripped and turned into electricity, powering whatever it’s connected to. Its positively charged protons then cross through the membrane into the cathode, where oxygen is pulled into. There, the protons, reunited with their electrons post-electricity harvest, combine with the oxygen to form water and heat: the only emissions.

Where Hysata break from long tradition is that in their electrolyzer’s circular shape, the hydrophilic membrane sits immersed only a little in an electrolyte reservoir in the same place as where the water enters. The membrane continuously pulls up the water and the electrolyte in steady amounts that allow electrolysis to occur without the formation of hydrogen gas bubbles typical of electrolyzers which house the anode and cathode entirely within the hydrogen reservoir.

These gas bubbles block physical access to the catalyst on the anode and cathode, reducing efficiency. The elimination of the gas bubble problem results in Hysata’s efficiency rate of 95%, or 41.5 kWh per kilogram of hydrogen.

Hysata aren’t just scientists however, and the economics of their electrolyzer make sense. The membranes are easy to manufacture and the process can be automated at scale.

The International Renewables Energy Agency set a target of 2050 to invent new methods of electrolysis that will reduce the kWh required per kilogram produced to 42. Hysata are now the only entity on Earth to have achieved that, and if a long-haul trucking sector required 1 million tons of hydrogen per year, generating that with Hysata’s technology would save $3 billion.