2400 Suns Solar makes Cheap H2 and Solid Carbon from Methane

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/28890h.pdf
Thermal Dissociation Of Methane Using A Solar Coupled Aerosol Flow Reactor
Abstract A solar-thermal aerosol flow reactor has been constructed, installed and tested at the High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "Proof-of concept" experiments were successfully carried out for the dissociation of methane to produce hydrogen and carbon black. Approximately 90% dissociation of methane was achieved in a 25-mm diameter quartz reaction tube illuminated with a solar flux of 2400 kW/m2 (or suns). Preliminary economics for a 1,000,000 kg/yr solar-thermal hydrogen plant were evaluated using a discount cash flow analysis that required a 15% Internal Rate of Return (IRR). If either product is the sole source of revenue, the required selling price for hydrogen was $27/MBtu ($0.092/kWhr or $25.6/GJ) and for carbon black it was $0.55/lb ($1.21/kg). If both products are sold, and carbon black is sold for $0.35/lb ($0.77/kg), the required selling price for hydrogen was $10/MBtu ($9.47/GJ or $0.034/kWhr). Both the experimental and economic results are very encouraging and support further work to address the technical issues and to develop the process.
-------------------
3.4 cents per kWhr H2 = $1.14 per kilogram H2 = ~$1.05 per gallon gasoline equivilient.
In a Fuel Cell vehicle getting 3X efficiency over Internal Compbustion Engine (ICE) per miles travelled per Fuel Energy contents = $0.35 a gallon of gasoline equivilent with no carbon exhaust products.

What about the reaction CH4 => 2H2 + carbon nanotubes?
I've been asking chemists to design that reaction for several months now and apparently no one is listening.
You make SUVs that only weigh 55 pounds with the nanotubes. Not only do you get better gas mileage, but if it breaks down you just fold it up and stuff it into your back pack.
Bret Cahill

In article , "H2-PV NOW!!!" writes:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/28890h.pdf
Thermal Dissociation Of Methane Using A Solar Coupled Aerosol Flow Reactor
Abstract A solar-thermal aerosol flow reactor has been constructed, installed and tested at the High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "Proof-of concept" experiments were successfully carried out for the dissociation of methane to produce hydrogen and carbon black. Approximately 90% dissociation of methane was achieved in a 25-mm diameter quartz reaction tube illuminated with a solar flux of 2400 kW/m2 (or suns).

This is making hydrogen from natural gas. Natural gas prices have already tripled over the last few years because of increased demand for power production and depleting supplies. So what value is a technology that requires methane (natural gas) as a source material for hydrogen?
If they could do that with water I'd be impressed. But with solar you always have the energy density issue. And while I believe in areas where there is a lot of sunshine year round, running a house on solar is practical, running an electric vehicle limited miles may be practical. I don't believe solar generated hydrogen is going to be practical as a complete replacement for all transportation applications.
We need to be able to run not only automobiles and trucks, but also farm equipment, trains, ships, and airplanes. I don't think there is enough land area to do this with solar hydrogen.
I think to accomodate future growth in world energy demands we really need to get controlled nuclear fusion online quickly. Probably initially this means deuterium - tritium fusion in a tokomak style magnetic confinement reactor. In the longer term, perhaps we can move to some anutronic fuel cycle such as he3 or hydrogen-boron, but at present we don't have an economic way of getting he3 from the moon to earth and we don't have a practical way of achieving the temperature/density/confinement time requirements of hydrogen - boron, but we do have deuterium and tritium readily available (and lithium to breed tritium from) and we do have the technology to achieve the required temperature, density, and confinement times to fuse deuterium-tritium in a manner that is commercially useful.
What is left at this point is more material science and engineering issues, will the proposed materials stand up to long term extremely high neutron fluxes? Can the diverter designs currently in use function at commercial power levels? These are questions that ITER will answer if it ever gets built.
In the meantime, we should be maximizing the use of every renewable resource we have, wind, PV, thermal-solar, passive-solar designs, geo-thermal, thermal depolymerization of many current waste streams from sewage to turkey guts to municipal wastes to old tires, (which produces oil), bio-fuels, hydro where it can be done in environmentally acceptable ways, wave motion power, tidal power, probably many others I'm omitting.
The point being there is no good reason to place all our eggs in one basket when so many alternative sources are available, and the energy that hydrocarbons provide us globally requires that we exploit every one of these alternatives to their fullest.
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In article , "Bret Cahill" writes:

What about the reaction CH4 => 2H2 + carbon nanotubes?
I've been asking chemists to design that reaction for several months now and apparently no one is listening.
You make SUVs that only weigh 55 pounds with the nanotubes. Not only do you get better gas mileage, but if it breaks down you just fold it up and stuff it into your back pack.
Bret Cahill

I'm curious how you come up with the 55 lb figure. Even if you can get the structural elements to under 55 lbs, you can't make ALL of the vehicle from carbon nano-tubes.
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H2-PV NOW keeps pushing the envelope.
I don't want to be outdone.
Bret Cahill

You are not supposed to think of that. Already being done at the refineries with the solar being the only new twist in a 100 year old idea. Since,the solar is so peachy fuzzy ......
"Nanook" wrote in message

In article , "H2-PV NOW!!!" writes: http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/28890h.pdf
Thermal Dissociation Of Methane Using A Solar Coupled Aerosol Flow Reactor
Abstract A solar-thermal aerosol flow reactor has been constructed, installed and tested at the High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "Proof-of concept" experiments were successfully carried out for the dissociation of methane to produce hydrogen and carbon black. Approximately 90% dissociation of methane was achieved in a 25-mm diameter quartz reaction tube illuminated with a solar flux of 2400 kW/m2 (or suns).
This is making hydrogen from natural gas. Natural gas prices have already tripled over the last few years because of increased demand for power production and depleting supplies. So what value is a technology that requires methane (natural gas) as a source material for hydrogen?
If they could do that with water I'd be impressed. But with solar you always have the energy density issue. And while I believe in areas where there is a lot of sunshine year round, running a house on solar is practical, running an electric vehicle limited miles may be practical. I don't believe solar generated hydrogen is going to be practical as a complete replacement for all transportation applications.
We need to be able to run not only automobiles and trucks, but also farm equipment, trains, ships, and airplanes. I don't think there is enough land area to do this with solar hydrogen.
I think to accomodate future growth in world energy demands we really need to get controlled nuclear fusion online quickly. Probably initially this means deuterium - tritium fusion in a tokomak style magnetic confinement reactor. In the longer term, perhaps we can move to some anutronic fuel cycle such as he3 or hydrogen-boron, but at present we don't have an economic way of getting he3 from the moon to earth and we don't have a practical way of achieving the temperature/density/confinement time requirements of hydrogen - boron, but we do have deuterium and tritium readily available (and lithium to breed tritium from) and we do have the technology to achieve the required temperature, density, and confinement times to fuse deuterium-tritium in a manner that is commercially useful.
What is left at this point is more material science and engineering issues, will the proposed materials stand up to long term extremely high neutron fluxes? Can the diverter designs currently in use function at commercial power levels? These are questions that ITER will answer if it ever gets built.
In the meantime, we should be maximizing the use of every renewable resource we have, wind, PV, thermal-solar, passive-solar designs, geo-thermal, thermal depolymerization of many current waste streams from sewage to turkey guts to municipal wastes to old tires, (which produces oil), bio-fuels, hydro where it can be done in environmentally acceptable ways, wave motion power, tidal power, probably many others I'm omitting.
The point being there is no good reason to place all our eggs in one basket when so many alternative sources are available, and the energy that hydrocarbons provide us globally requires that we exploit every one of these alternatives to their fullest.
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On 25 Nov 2005 06:52:15 -0800, "Bret Cahill" wrote:

H2-PV NOW keeps pushing the envelope.
I don't want to be outdone.
Is this a "race to the bottom"?

Regards,
Bill Ward

bwardREMOVE@ix.netcom.com (Bill Ward) wrote in news:43875b7a.260902255@localhost:

On 25 Nov 2005 06:52:15 -0800, "Bret Cahill" BretCahill@aol.com> wrote:
H2-PV NOW keeps pushing the envelope.
I don't want to be outdone.
Is this a "race to the bottom"?
Regards,
Bill Ward

Don't worry, your position is safe down there -- you have nobody gaining on you.

Hey Guy, SHEC Labs is already on top of this. www.sheclabs.com. Thank you for your support.

Nonook, thank you for an excellent and informed post well stated.
I agree with essentially all of your points, except I would add conventional nuclear fission to your list of alternative energy sources. Controlled nuclear fusion will no doubt be achieved someday, but that day may well be 25, 50, or 100 years into the future, or possibly even next week. No one really knows.
Possibly surprising to some, I also agree with you that the utilization of present waste product stream for its energy content would be a fertile area on which to apply research funding, in preference to wasting dollars on what I consider to be ridiculous hydrogen programs. Realize that many of the posters on this newsgroup are not sufficiently educated to realize that elemental hydrogen is extremely rare here on earth, and the liberation of hydrogen from hydrogen bonded compounds consumes more energy than the hydrogen produced can yield.
Sadly, your excellent words will be wasted on the crowd of wishfully dreaming hydrogen advocates that currently dominate the majority of posts on this newsgroup, and those others who attempt to employ junk science in their fraud schemes. Still, thank you for making the effort of trying to educate others on the reality and limits of the physical world.
Kindest regards, Harry C.

Maybe H2 doesn't do a whole lot of fact checking or serious calculating but I like a lot of wacky ideas. Even if there aren't many good ones in the lot a bad one could still indirectly lead to a good one.

Bret Cahill

Nanook wrote:

In article , "H2-PV NOW!!!" writes: http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/28890h.pdf
Thermal Dissociation Of Methane Using A Solar Coupled Aerosol Flow Reactor
Abstract A solar-thermal aerosol flow reactor has been constructed, installed and tested at the High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "Proof-of concept" experiments were successfully carried out for the dissociation of methane to produce hydrogen and carbon black. Approximately 90% dissociation of methane was achieved in a 25-mm diameter quartz reaction tube illuminated with a solar flux of 2400 kW/m2 (or suns).
This is making hydrogen from natural gas. Natural gas prices have already tripled over the last few years because of increased demand for power production and depleting supplies. So what value is a technology that requires methane (natural gas) as a source material for hydrogen?

The arctic where you write from has abundant methane. The melting tundras are full of it. This method not only turns it into carbonless H2 fuel, but sequesters the carbon as high-value solid carbon, suitable for making carbon-fibers to replace a lot of the steel industry.
(The steel industry requires lots of high temperatures which give off CO2 emissions. It produces a product four times heavier than carbon-fibers, yet only one fifth the tensile strength, a 20x inferior product for a lot of instances. Carbon fibers fabrics can be shaped into complex forms at ordinary room temperatures with simple hand tools -- try doing that with steel. When married with geopolymers, carbon-fiber articles are fireproof to temperatures beyond where steel structurally weakens. Because geopolymer-carbon artices are so light and strong, fireproof without off-gasing toxic smoke, they have been rigorously tested for aircraft cabin fixtures to replace hazardous flamible plastics.)

If they could do that with water I'd be impressed. But with solar you always have the energy density issue.

There is no "energy density issue". You are brainwashed. One acre of mid-grade PV can generate 19,710 kg H2 per year. At an equivilent price to gasoline today of $2.50 a gallon, that is $50,000 per acre worth of H2 harvested. Farmers who grow grass seeds for the lawn market (don't laugh -- it is a big industry) get about $300 an acre per year, and need farms up to 5,000, 8,000 acres to be successful as a "family farm".
Your argument applies equally to strawberries: they have low density, only about one pound per year per square foot with a market value of a dollar a pound at peak of season. That's why nobody in the whole world grows strawberries -- because the density of production is too diffuse, right.
You have been drinking the Rush Limbaugh Borg Collective Kool-aid again.
With ANU CHAPS (look it up) you can harvest a theoretical 97,236 kg H2 per year per acre. At $2.50 a gallon equivilent that's a quarter million bucks gross from an acre of hay pasture or scrub desert badlands. The average farmer gets less than $4,000 per acre on produce, less on commodity grains -- very-high value crops get $30,000 per acre. Those grass seed farmers have to work 8,000 acres of land @ $300/ac to make gross the same quarter million.
STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID and run the figures through the calculator yourself. Do your own thinking. The Borg Collective is puppet-mastered from the Wall Street Kremlin who just soaked the world for $39,000,000,000.00 in profits last quarter selling dirty oil.

And while I believe in areas where there is a lot of sunshine year round, running a house on solar is practical, running an electric vehicle limited miles may be practical. I don't believe solar generated hydrogen is going to be practical as a complete replacement for all transportation applications.

Nobody much cares what you "think", because you just spout "groupthink" that you are told. You don't question your sources. You don't investigate the net for independent facts verifying or disproving assertions. You don't run the numbers. You don't process the data. YOU DON'T THINK.
You never learned the word "synergy", or how to operate synergtically. Likewise you have no authentic concept of "exergy", or you wouldn't waste it like the gluttonous pig Lancaster wastes exergy.

We need to be able to run not only automobiles and trucks, but also farm equipment, trains, ships, and airplanes. I don't think there is enough land area to do this with solar hydrogen.

You are WRONG. The whole world's present gluttonous wasteful consumption of oil can be replaced by one huge PV farm that would disappear in the Sahara desert.
http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/africa/exhibit/sahara/ "... As the world's biggest desert, the Sahara covers a third of the African continent-an area about the size of the United States. ..."
Not that I am proposing it, because I have consistantly advocated decentralized, EVERWHERE, production of H2-PV.
The amount of land space required for total H2 production from mid-grade PV has been cmputed elsewhere...
http://tinyurl.com/do8f9 H2-PV Basic Facts: One acre of sunlight can generate 21 acres of PV panels per year.
http://tinyurl.com/arwyv "... Reconstructiong the math:
* 139,060,800,000 kWh/day gasoline equivilent. * 139,060,800,000 / 0.78 = 178283076923.077 m^2 * 1 mile = 2,589,988 m^2 * 178283076923.077 divided by 2589988 = 68835.5 miles^2

http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/nv_geography.htm Total Area: Nevada covers 110,567 square miles, making it the 7th largest of the 50 states. ..."
From this you can learn that it takes a tiny fraction of global earth surface to harvest 100% of the energy contents derived from polluting

destructive Global Warming carbon-based oil fuels.
If you want to talk about DIFFUSE: Canada's Tar Sands, ecologically destructive conversion to oil, occupies a land area larger than the state of Florida. Just one leasehold area is 77,000 km^2 (29,729.87 miles^2) ... http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_projects/M.Sexton/
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/BusinessNF.asp?ArticleID=192050 "... The oilsands are undoubtedly a vast resource. Located in three main deposits across an area the size of Florida, they are estimated by the US Department of Energy to contain 175 billion barrels of oil. ..."
http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/fl_geography.htm "... Total Area -- Florida covers 65,758 square miles, making it the 22nd largest of the 50 states. ..."
Drinking the EXXON KOOL-AID again, you are willing to sacrifice 65,758 square miles to the oil god when 68,835.5 miles^2 will set you free from the oil vampires teeth in your neck forever and ever and ever.

I think to accomodate future growth in world energy demands we really need to get controlled nuclear fusion online quickly.

We already have this, and have had it for 4.7 billion years now and still counting. It is at the safest distance you ever want to get to a dirty fusion reactor, 93,000,000 miles, preferably with two thick radiation belt shield and over 10 miles of protective atmosphere filtering out the worst of the deadly radiation particles.
Ironically, your choice of fusion requires HYDROGEN FUEL.
<snipped the rest of the ignorant blather.>

Ohhh Look!!! It's the man delivering the fresh batch of Borg Collective Groupthink Kool-Aid, Harry Conover...
hhc314@yahoo.com wrote:

Nonook, thank you for an excellent and informed post well stated.
I agree with essentially all of your points, except I would add conventional nuclear fission to your list of alternative energy sources. .... <snipped snake oil> ...

> Kindest regards, Harry C.

In article , hhc314@yahoo.com writes:

Nonook, thank you for an excellent and informed post well stated.
I agree with essentially all of your points, except I would add conventional nuclear fission to your list of alternative energy sources. Controlled nuclear fusion will no doubt be achieved someday, but that day may well be 25, 50, or 100 years into the future, or possibly even next week. No one really knows.

I was really trying to think of things that were either renewable or essentially unlimited. And that list was quite frankly a quickie off the top of my head and in no way exhaustive.
With fusion, the supply of deuterium in the oceans and lithium in the earths crust is sufficient to supply our energy needs at our present level of consumption for approximately 15 billion years. Of coarse our rate of consumption is likely to continue to increase. But if we actually ran out of earthbound deuterium we could go to the moon and mine He3 for He3-H fuel cycle, etc.
With fission it we used it to replace our hydrocarbon consumption the uranium supply would last less than 25 years, effecient breeder reactors and thorium fuel cycle reactors might stretch that out to a couple of hundred at best, and we still haven't figured out how to safely get rid of the waste.
But I agree, in the short-term, nuclear fission is something we need to tap to a greater degree; if we do it safely. To my way of thinking, pebble bed reactors using fuel pebbles that have silicon carbide and NOT graphite as the outter layer would be safe. Unfortunately, graphite is more commonly the outer layer, and in that situation if you have a breech of the containment vessel or fuel hopper, and air gets in, you've got chernobyl II.
I really wish the industry would go with what is actually safe instead of what is actually cheapest because accidents like chernobyl ruin the reputation of the nuclear industry (even though the actual number of deaths attributed to chernobyl was rather small and mostly plant workers) and probably pales to the number of people that die from air pollution from coal burning.
So we end up burning more coal instead, dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of mercury into the environment over time.., not to mention radium and other nasties.
I would rather see boiling water reactors though than pebble bed reactors if graphite is the outer layer of the fuel pellets. At any rate, I do agree with you that in the short term at least it's a necessary part of the mix.
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As I stated previously Nanook, real information and facts are totally wasted on the crowd of wishfully dreaming hydrogen advocates who currently dominate the majority of posts on this newsgroup.
QED... Harry C.