Truly astounding!

The scientific illiteracy in this press release.
"...developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases."

Hmmm, well it's called electrolysis isn't it, first developed in 1800?

"Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials"

"Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water,"

Platinum abundant?  It is rare and extremely expensive.  Catalytic converters are now being stolen from cars for the Platinum.  The thieves get 100 bucks from scrap dealers for the 1000+ dollar items.

"In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source"

That has already happened.  Solar concentrating PV/heat cogeneration and solar concentrating furnaces with heat storage have acomplished that.

"MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine."

This has too.  With concentrating solar furnace molten salt base load power.

No need to proceeed, there doesn't seem to be one thing that the reporter got right in this article.  I'm afraid to watch the video out of fear that the researcher will follow suit.

A complete hydrogen powered home was featured a year or two ago.  The storage tanks, electrolyzers, and fuel cells cost 300,000 bucks if I remember correctly.

But have no fear, thanks to this huge breakthrough...  "...within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell."

No problem, just wait 10 years.  Instead of going solar now.

Damn, I did it, watched the video.  Is duuhbya appointing research professors at MIT now?  This guy actually had a diagram where oxygen was stored to feed the fuel cell.  

So you compress the hydrogen and the oxygen?  Oxygen that any other fuel cell design (except in airless space) gets from the air?  The energy to store the compressed gas defeats the efficiency of this design with hydrogen compression alone.  

But compressing the oxygen needlessly?  Yur doin' a heckuva job Nocera..ie.

What has happened to our scientific and research community that this can happen?

You want a hydrogen storage breakthrough MIT?  Try nano tech metal hydride if you really want to do something useful.  

Recent nano tech methane storage has nearly reached the energy density of liquid fuel.  And because of the high efficiecy of solid oxide fuel cell/tubines (that don't use expensive elements like Platinum), 5 times that of an ICE, a plugin hybrid with this nano tech fuel storage will beat gas guzzlers all hollow on energy density.  Look for methane powered airplanes soon.

You could do that with hydrogen, at least the nano tech storage part.  But hydrogen fuel cells are built with Platinum, which is prohibitively expensive.  And so does producing the hydrogen.

Methane is naturally ocurring and can also be derived from biogas, at a huge offset of GHG if it is made from waste.

I smell majical hydrogen economy diversionary tactics in this.  Delay, divert, and keep on guzzlin', neeehaaaaww!   The old texas (corporate lobbyist) oil shill three step.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I can see why you would be worried about such a discovery, as it decreases the need for a lot of the things you and Al Gore hope to make your money on in the next 10 years.

With storage, we need fewer solar panels.

With storage, we need fewer wind turbines.

With storage, plus the new superconducting ribbon cable, we may find that the most efficient distribution system involves a highly networked grid (rather than tinshack style panels on everyone's roof) with hydrogen as the common currency.

With hydrogen, cars can be lean and well built.  Kludgey hybrids become 8-track players of the 00's.   You can even use basic ICE V-8s and V-6s with hydrogen.   People can go back to buying SUVs and trucks like they want to.   And quite frankly, they could get a great bargain now and convert their SUVs to hydrogen for a few hundred dollars later.

With this class of discovery, there's no more arguing about CO2.   It goes away.  

With this class of discovery, the best "carrier" is private enterprise and startups -- in other words, capitalism trumps Government programs and argument...which become unnecessary.

So, if you go carrying pictures of Albert Gore, you ain't gonna make with anyone anyhow.

This is a peaceful, quiet revolution...silently powered by...hydrogen.......whoooshh....

...superconducting ribbon cable"

Say what?

Of your brain switching off, and wing nut talking points taking over.

"..whoooshh...."

Majical hydrogen economy, take us away...ahhhh, what a relief to forget all about the daunting task of saving the climate with real renewable energy and conservation.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

superconducting ribbon cable...

Cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen for it's entire length... Sure sounds like a solution to me.

Just like batteries, they are ways of storing energy.

They can be a fossil-fuel economy, or a solar economy, or a nuclear economy. But there cannot be a hydrogen economy. This is one of the dirt clouds that float in the media ether.

We would always need to store energy. We can build Lithium ion batteries, or heat rocks and store them in a sealed environment, or lift up large lakes in barrages, or compress air, or create hydrogen, or ...

Each one of these technologies has its own +s and -s. There are several factors to consider in evaluating them (a) the energy capacity per volume (b) the energy capacity per weight (c) the energy loss during conversions (d) the cost of raw materials for making them (e) the environmental side-effects.

Apparently, the MIT guys made a discovery which will improve factor (c) of using Hydrogen fuel cells. i.e, they use lesser energy for making Hydrogen. Okay, cool.  But as usual, the media hype blows it out of proportion and makes it look like something else.

Dr. Romm and Dr.X don't like Hydrogen for storing energy. They don't like centralized grid for distributing energy. They don't like nuclear power for generating energy. They don't like ...

But instead of mixing up all their likes and dislikes into one huge conglomerate, why don't they stick to the point in question ? Please limit criticism on Hydrogen to where it belongs - that is within the domain of energy storage.

I believe I did criticize the majical hydrogen economy on storage terms Vak.  And even proposed a solution that MIT could work on.  Nano tech metal hydride storage.  It is working for methane storage.

But why limit this critique to storage?  The majical hydrogen economy is vulnerable on overall efficiency, practicality, cost, and it's obvious use by denier and delayer industry shilling as well.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

It may be that storing hydrogen, as a gas, will kill any of these ideas, unless you can get the hyrdogen immediately into a different form (I have no information on nanotechnology).

As Romm sort of ran through with his sarcastic comments about being 50 feet from a building with hyrdrogen, hydrogen is very explosive.  I'm not using the Hindenburg as an example, my father ran a physics lab for a few decades, and according to him any lab with stored hydrogen has to train the people who use it, the procedures to use it are very careful, you have to be -- well, very careful, because if it blows up, and according to him, it's worse than a gasoline explosion.  

That's on top of the leakage problem -- since it's the world's smallest molecule, it can get through just about anything.  That's why there's little in the atmosphere, it escapes into space.

So for anything lesser than a big building with trained staff, and a whole bunch of precautions, stored hydrogen won't work (nevermind compressed hydrogen, multiply everything plus cost).

Whether you can feed hydrogen directly into fuel cells I don't know, and I don't know if that makes sense anyway.

Man, the Green Aristocracy is out in full force to suppress this discovery!   Sorry boys, but we don't need your billion dollar master plans and landscapes littered with solar panels and wind turbines.

Let's answer the critics:

1) Dangerous.  Hydrogen is more volatile and also packs the most energy per cubic liter of any other fuel.  True.  But more dangerous?   Remember what hydrogen is: a gas...it floats!   Once the storage unit is ruptured, what happens?  Right...it goes up.  

What about gasoline?  Nope...it stays on the ground and burns.  

So hydrogen is far safer than any other fuel...imagine if Bin Laden had crashed a zeppelin into the WTC...the fuel would have evaporated instantly instead of dripping into the building and burning.

Hydrogen: Safer!

2) Platium: As many of the articles have noted, the amount of platinum needed in the new process is trivial compared to the electrolysis of the "1800s" that you seem familiar with...perhaps, Rip Van Winkle, you should read a few of the articles in detail before taking pixel to screen.

New Process: Cheaper!

3) It's Only a storage medium.

Gee, this one must be funded by Pickens or something...WTF is that supposed to mean?  Oil is "storage medium".   Now they're saying that fuel cells, whose only purpose is to produce, not store, energy, are "storage mediums".  Stick it boys...it just ain't true.  Hydrogen is a fuel...it powers the FCX Honda and the BMW Hydrogen 7.

Hydrogen: Your grandchild's fuel...

There is certainly a need for education here. Jabailo seems to be an interesting specimen.

It's amazing they were able to keep him alive:

The energy is in the H2 inside the H20 molecule.   The catalyst helps separate the H2 from the 0.   But -- the energy holding the H2 to the 0 is not proportional to the energy available in the H2!

(Actually, it is.)

i realized none of these articles/press releases/puff pieces were going to be worth doody when i saw that they all addressed generating oxygen and generating hydrogen as though they were two separate processes.

is not leaking, it's if the stuff gets near a flame, it explodes with more force than gasoline.  It's used by labs exactly because it is so hot.   You're right, if not exploded it will float away, an advantage over gasoline.

But you also need particularly dense tanks to hold the stuff or it will leak away, the other side of that coin.  If there was a way to get the hydrogen into the fuel cell without first storing it as a gas, that would improve the safety problem considerably, as far as I know.

Thanks for the levity, though I am sure you have disappointed many who were hoping that living in a big house with the a/c cranked up, watching the 100" plasma tv would soon be carbon neutral.

This one won't last forever. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to know what's out there? And thing of how the human being will morph......... with centuries of humans evolving in different directions under different environments........ new, more warlike species of humans roaving the galaxy............. But I think we've gotten off topic.

Victory in Pattani

What about large machines like airplanes, locomotives, 18 wheelers, space craft, and construction equipment?  Isn't hydrogen a "battery" that could work for these machines?  I cant imagine enough Lithium-Ions for a 747.

Also, although I am aware of some of these problems for hydrogen, and that energy is lost during the process of storage, but how does it compare to even the best batteries today?  Is there a comparison chart?

Why be so negative about a battery that doesn't lose its charge over long periods of time and can be used as a "currency"?  So home use may not be ideal -- so why throw the baby out with the bath water?  I could see large 18 wheelers and trains using the fuel at special stations in industrial sectors.

And if our PV and solar thermal and wind are becoming so much more efficient and powerful, then perhaps they WILL provide more than what is needed at peak day times.  Why not store it then?

These are sincere questions from me as an environmentalist.  I certainly do not participate in this strong pro/con game around hydrogen and don't understand the political references made here around it.  How can one be politically biased about a battery?  It either works better or worse than other carbon free  techniques and one chooses the most efficient.

@christophersj

You are right on the point. Hydrogen has some advantages - such as energy efficiency per weight. It also has some key disadvantages - like flammability.

My hunch is that Hydrogen, along with other fuel cells, could be useful for large vehicles, particularly airplanes which cannot be electrified.

Some methods of energy storage will take heat as input. Hydrogen production can get a boost from a lot of heat. Energy intensive biofuel cultivation can also take heat as input. Water desalination can also use heat as input.

Nuclear energy produces a lot of waste heat. Currently this waste heat is considered as a disadvantage and ecologically harmful (usually this heat is dissipated through fresh water from rivers, which is a terrible idea). But instead, this heat can be redirected to one of the above methods (hydrogen/desalination/..). This puts nuclear energy at an advantage . People who are categorically opposed to nuclear power oppose Hydrogen for this reason. Welcome to the world of environmental politics.

In reality, Hydrogen is innocent. Its merits should be judged purely based on its capacity as an energy carrier.