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Turning Water into Hydrogen Fuel Monday, June 28, 2010 - Ehud Rattner Home >> News >> Physics   
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Materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently announced a new way to harvest small amounts of waste energy, thus harnessing it to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel. The new process provides many benefits including simplicity, efficiency, and the ability to recycle otherwise-wasted energy into a useable form.
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The next stage was to try and bend the fibers. The team found that asymmetries in their crystal structures generated positive and negative charges; the result was the creation of an electrical potential. This phenomenon, called the piezoelectric effect, has been well known in certain crystals for more than a century and is the driving force behind quartz clocks and other applications. Piezoelectricity is the ability of some materials (usually crystals and certain ceramics) to generate an electric field or electric potential in response to applied mechanical stress. The effect is closely related to a change of polarization density within the material's volume. If the material is not short-circuited, the applied stress induces a voltage across the material. Xu and his colleagues applied the same idea to the nanocrystal fibers. "The bulk materials are brittle, but at the nanoscale they are flexible," he said, like the difference between fiberglass and a pane of glass. Since smaller fibers bend more easily than larger crystals, they also produce electric charges easily. So far, the researchers have achieved an impressive 18 percent efficiency with the nanocrystals, higher than most experimental energy sources. "Because we can tune the fiber and plate sizes, we can use even small amounts of [mechanical] noise, like a vibration or water flowing,” says Xu. He explains that the purpose is “to bend the fibers and plates; with this kind of technology, we can scavenge energy waste and convert it into useful chemical energy." While other scientists might have tried to harvest this electrical energy directly, the team took a different approach: they used the energy to break the chemical bonds in water and produce oxygen and hydrogen gas. "This is a new phenomenon, converting mechanical energy directly to chemical energy," Xu says excitingly, calling it a piezoelectrochemical (PZEC) effect. According to the study, the chemical energy of hydrogen fuel is more stable than the electric charge; it is relatively easy to store and will not lose potency over time. With the right technology, the team envisions this method being useful for generating small amounts of power from a multitude of small sources. For example, walking could charge a cell phone or music player and breezes could power streetlights.
The new paper, which is co-authored by graduate student Kuang-Sheng Hong, research scientist Hiromi Konishi, and mechanical engineering professor Xiaochun Li, all at UW-Madison, “provides a simple and cost-effective technology for direct water splitting that may generate hydrogen fuels by scavenging energy wastes such as noise or stray vibrations from the environment," the authors say. The research is supported by grants from the UW-Madison Graduate School, National Science Foundation, NASA Astrobiology Institute, and the U.S. Department of Energy. While the research’s future is unknown, the team is optimistic. "This new discovery may have potential implications in solving the challenging energy and environmental issues that we are facing today and in the future," they conclude. TFOT has also covered a new catalyst that makes efficient fuel cells feasible, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the development of a biofuel based on wood and straw that could sell for as little as 0.50 Euros per liter. Other related TFOT stories include the Sony Hybrid Fuel Cell exhibited at the Fifth International Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Expo (2009), and the production of hydrogen from aluminum and water made at Pennsylvania State University and Virginia Commonwealth University. For more information about turning water into hydrogen fuel, see University of Wisconsin-Madison’s press release. |
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It is breakthroughs in technologies such as this that will eventually get us off of our fossil fuel dependency. |
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We can do all the Waste you normally Landfill and make High Quality Fuel from it, cheaper, Better, Cleaner! We at Green Power Inc for now over 2 Years built and operate a Full Scale System converting all forms of Waste which have Hydro Carbons in it, so nearly everything you throw away with the exception of Metal, Glass and stones into High Quality Fossil Free Fuels. The Fuel can be straight filed into cars and engines, Airplanes etc. no modifications needed. Now you will ask why is this not all over, because of one Beaurocrat in Spokane Washington Ecology Office as he stops us all the way. Other Countries are contracting with us, but in US we are still not allowed to operate full time. We had to lay people off and are asked to move manufacturing overseas, we don’t want to but the local Government actions may force us to do so, so we would lose here in US cheap local Fuel out of waste and the Jobs as well. It feels very bad as we did not take any Government funding to build our syst |
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Use of nanocrystal fibres to split water into hydrogen and oxygen; no need of high temperature dissociation of water, electrolysis of water or high temperature electrolysis! The success of this piezoelectrochemical technology(growing of nanocrystals on a large scale, availability of materials etc.) will depend on yield of hydrogen, productivity and overall techno-economic viability as well as thorough analysis of technological constraints. |
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this is very confusing! all i freaking want to know is how to make something that will change water into hydrogen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! god you people are stuped... this is bull poop |
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gursh how confusing you guys are you use big words for tinsy winsy things i just wanna know how you turn water into hydrogen!!!!!! this makes me wannna barf on science !!!!!!!!!! -bleek |
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Hello there, I found your web site via Google while sarnchieg for a related topic, your web site came up, it looks great. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks. |
