What’s The
Alternative?
What
are the similarities between your current automobile and a plant? Some of you
might be saying, “Well, my car’s green. Is that what you’re talking about?” or,
“Well my interior smells like a Rose, so I get it.” Truth is, there are no
similarities. It’s a gas chugging, environment killing, and squirrel squashing
road hog. But the University of Wollongong (UOW) in Australia is looking to
change that once and for all.
We’ve
been talking about alternative fuel sources for a long, long time now. It’s no
secret to consumer’s that gas prices are through the roof and almost
unbearable. Sustainable and alternative fuel sources wouldn’t just be nice to
have as an option, it’s going to be the necessity of the future.
There
are several theories on fossil fuels. Some believe that oil reserves are drying
up. Others believe that the petroleum is created in the core of the Earth and
the pressure is pushing the new stuff back up and refilling the wells. Biogenic
theorists argue that fossil fuels are the decomposing remains of carbon based
life-forms. Abiogenic theorist’s counter that the organisms found in the crude
oil is surface contamination and oil is a mineral created within the core of
Earth.
Whatever
side you fall on, there is one thing that is certain.
Something’s
gotta give.
Hungry, Hungry Humans
The
United States is responsible for 1,000 barrels of oil being consumed a day.
That’s one country in a very big, very developed world. You expand on that to
include everyone and suddenly we’re burning through 89 million barrels
worldwide, on a daily basis. That’s nuts, because once you expand on that to factor
in a year of consumption, you now have 32 and a half billion barrels being
munched down. Each barrel has 42 gallons in it. You do the math, but I shouldn’t
need to tell you, that’s a ton (not literally…) of oil.
So
you can see why scientists thought we were running out. See, in the 1970’s
throngs of experts told the governments of the world that we reached the peak
of our oil supply. Now it’s suddenly running out. I don’t know why everyone
decided to hit the panic button and spike the prices (other than corporate
greed…) before doing their research, but they said we’d be out of fuel in
fifteen years. It’s well past 1985 and we’re burning the midnight oil faster
than ever.
Not
to mention our other fuels. We’re fracking away to get at Natural Gas under the
surface. This has detrimental effects to the environment whether these major
companies would like to admit it to the public or not. But we need the natural
gas. Crude oil creates environmental pollution problems as well, and nuclear
energy…I don’t even feel the need to explain that. So what do we do? How do we
get the trillions of gallons of fuel per year we need to run as a nation?
Hydrogen.
I
know what you’re saying. “Oh duh, of course, but didn’t they try that before?”
Well of course silly. But the Wright brothers didn’t build a Boeing 747 for
their first flight. Hell, their first craft would have been a blessing to have
been held together by duct tape! Everything starts somewhere, and when we
started hearing about fuel cells being all the rage a decade ago, they were
just putting the thought into the general public’s ear.
The
reality of making hydrogen cheaply, efficiently, and safely remains a huge
concern, but as I mentioned above Australia is changing all of that. In order
to understand what UOW is accomplishing you have to understand where it came
from. Let’s quickly explore how they convert water into a usable fuel source.
*I cannot stress this
enough, unless under the supervision of a professional NEVER and I do mean
NEVER attempt to make hydrogen gas at home. Hydrogen in small quantities is
fairly harmless; however, in larger quantities it can be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! Hydrogen is explosive.
Chlorine gas can also be inadvertently produced using this method. This, unlike
Hydrogen is dangerous in ANY quantity. Do NOT try this at home*
The
old method for hydrogen gas extraction wasn’t very practical. Only around
50-70% of the hydrogen was extracted in the process. The rest escaped in the
form of heat from the electricity. Here’s how it works.
Salt
water is placed into the containers with separate chambers. An anode (negative
connector) is placed in one chamber and a cathode (positive connector) is in
the other. As the charge surges through the H2O molecules it separates them
into two different gases. The oxygen and hydrogen are collected separately. On
a small scale this doesn’t produce enough hydrogen gas to be effective, plus
there is a nasty byproduct.
Chlorine
gas. Ever heard of World War I? Chlorine gas was introduced as chemical
warfare. When breathed in, it basically liquefies your lungs and you die
painfully, convulsing, bleeding from every orifice and vomiting up your
internal organs. (Humans…what a lovely bunch of folk we are…)
This
happens because of the salt. Water, electricity, and table salt (NaCL) have the
potential to make it. (Study your chemistry ladies and gentlemen!) Now on an
industrial scale this method, while costly, could produce enough fuel to run a
few countries, but we need to run the world. So how did the UOW make this
possible?
Here Comes The Sun
Yep,
you guessed it, photosynthesis, and no, I haven’t lost my mind.
See
there are all these little critters living on the surface under the ocean and
just beneath it. Kelp, plankton, algae, all these organisms rely on the sun to
produce energy. But what if that energy could be harnessed? That’s exactly what
researchers at UOW intended to find out.
Using
artificially developed chlorophyll and a conductive plastic polymer film, the
researchers have begun splitting water molecules from its valuable energy. So
far, the team hasn’t witnessed the production of the deadly chlorine gas. The plastic
film acts as a catalyst to enact the energy producing process. The technical
name for this process is a light-assisted, polymeric water oxidation catalyst that
selectively oxidizes seawater with a low onset potential. In other words, turns
water into hydrogen gas without electricity and harmful byproducts.
What
are the benefits to this? Well first off, hydrogen fuel for our vehicles is a
wonderful idea. Currently our vehicles pump carbon dioxide, amongst other
terrible carcinogens, into our environment. Some scientists say this is leading
to global warming. I think it just makes the air stink. But what’s the
byproduct of hydrogen fuel?
Water.
That’s
right, you drive 100 miles and all you spit out the back of your tailpipe is
harmless water. That water is sucked back up by evaporation and deposited back into
the oceans to undergo the process all over again. Talk about renewable sources!
Want
to know the best part? Using this process, it only takes five gallons of sea
water to run a converted house and an electric car per day. Think about it, that’s
35 gallons a week. Around 140 gallons per month, and around 51,000 per person a
year. Considering over 75% of our planet is water, AND the byproduct gets
recycled back into the environment, theoretically we would never have to touch
gasoline ever again!
Magnetic
Personalities
But
that’s not the only new method currently being looked into. Researchers in
Berkley, California, United States have accidentally developed a welcome new
way of extracting hydrogen as well. Originally the program was intended to
develop molecules that behaved like magnets, but what they got was something
more interesting.
They
were trying to combine metal atoms with organic molecular groups (called PY5)
to produce new molecules with the properties of bulk magnets. What happened was
one of the Molybdenum-oxo complex was exhibiting some peculiar behavior. Turns
out it was able to transfer electrons. This process is the main ingredient to
splitting hydrogen atoms from oxygen molecules.
“The molybdenum compound was so
successful it could work on seawater or pure water without
additives. The compound is stable due to five bonds holding the molybdenum in
place. Long said the molecule is stable for long periods in aqueous solutions,
and they saw no degradation in catalytic activity over their
three-day experiment. The molecule remains stable even when impurities, such as
those found in seawater, are present. This would further reduce the cost since
no organic acids or solvents are needed.
The compound’s stability makes it more
durable than the nickel and iron compounds used previously, but it is slower
than the natural hydrogenases and needs a higher electric voltage to operate.
The group is now experimenting with different metals and "tweaking"
the PY5 groups to see if they can improve the speed and efficiency and reduce
the energy requirements. They are also looking at the possibility of coupling
the system to solar-generated electricity to make it even more viable.” – From Phys.org
This
means that even if one technology isn’t available in one part of the world (say
the safe and easy production of plastic polymer’s created by UOW, or Mo isn’t
readily accessible in their region) we have other options for producing
hydrogen gas. Moving forward in a green world this is going to become our
future if we want to continue to have a planet.
We
only have one Earth…for now. So let’s not muck it up in the meantime.
-Ryan
Sanders
For further information on alternative
fuel sources and the production of them you can follow any of the links below.
As always thanks for reading and feel free to share this article around if you
enjoyed it! Happy learning!
<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com">www.Hypersmash.com</a>
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