Description :
An interesting twist on the Hydrogen production system using sunlight and water to react with copper and aluminium oxide that when heated to 200 Degrees Celsius and combined with “catalytic nanoparticles” initiate a chemical reaction to quickly release the stored hydrogen. The Hydrogen is then fed into a Fuel cell battery to provide a constant source of power to a household.
The idea basically being that all the hydrogen for one day can be created quickly from the chemical reaction and then temporarily stored in holding containers reliving the necessity to permanently store hydrogen which is a major obstacle for a Hydrogen based economy.
If the demonstration system can confirm the suggested results from the preliminary modelling this would be a handy way to provide a constant source of energy to a household without having to worry about battery replacements every few years and could be built into every house.
The hybrid device contains series of copper tubes coated with a thin layer of aluminum and aluminum oxide and partly filled with catalytic nanoparticles. A combination of water and methanol flows through the vacuum-sealed tubes.
“This set-up allows up to 95% of the sunlight to be absorbed with very little being lost as heat to the surroundings,” Hotz said (Nico Hotz, Engineer on Duke University). “This is crucial because it permits us to achieve temperatures of well over 200 ºC within the tubes. By comparison, a standard solar collector can only heat water between 60 and 7 ºC.”.
Once the evaporated liquid achieves a high enough temperature, tiny amounts of a catalyst are added. The combination of high temperature and catalysts produces hydrogen very efficiently, Hotz said. The hydrogen can be immediately directed to a fuel cell to provide electricity to a building during the day, or compressed and stored in a tank to provide power later. Read more about this system on Solar Novus Today.
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*by andreascy*
