Catalytic Hydrogen

“The Art of Splitting Water,” a great trick if we can copy nature’s process of photosynthesis that takes place all around us.

Photosynthesis uses solar energy, the photons to first split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then split CO2 to yield O2 and carbohydrates. Both steps move the equation to a higher potential energy level. The first part of this reaction, yielding ionized hydrogen, H+, is highly desirable as a source of free hydrogen.[1]

A promising new family of synthetic iridium catalysts brings new opportunity for engineering solutions to our energy challenges.[2] A previously known complex of ruthenium was limited as a catalyst requiring energy to activate.[3] If we can but mimic photosynthesis, extend and improve upon the catalytic power of chlorophyll, we might both replace hydrocarbon fuels and sequester carbon in the process.

Tetsuno Hiraga, a scientist with Shimadzu, a Japanese instrument company, developed a two step hydrogen generator using waste food products and bacteria. 1Kg of bread crust will produce 200 L of hydrogen in step one and 250 L of methane in step two.[4] Again it is the first step that seems attractive in that the reaction’s residual acetic acid sequesters carbon in a form that yet yields energy in the cycle of intermediary metabolism for higher animals.

Reviewing these experiments begs for a further look at the big picture, the overall pathway of energy utilization in the natural world. It involves the whole Earth, well at least the surface oceans, atmosphere plants and animals. From solar-generation: photosynthesis of CO2 and water - to O2 and carbohydrate, and then from animal metabolism back down the energy ladder to CO2 and water. We have added further the oxidation of carbonaceous fossil fuels, producing yet more CO2, thus over loading the bottom half of the natural global energy cycle.

Many, maybe corporate farming interests, suggest that bio-fuels will solve the carbon problem of petroleum. Economically this may well be, but they contribute yet the same end product of CO2 to the atmosphere. (And acidification of oceans, which in itself may inhibit photosynthesis) Animal fat for bio-diesel begs the same question.

Maybe we in the US should harvest animal fat from Lipo-Suction. “Your girth can save the Earth!” or “From your rump to the pump.” The argument that bio-fuels are carbon neutral seems fallacious; because the same product un-harvested would continue synthesizing O2 then sequester its carbon in the soil for the next generation. It is as difficult to distinguish big farming interest from science as it is to make that distinction as in the case of big oil.

It may take a long northern winter night to view energy in this perspective, but think for a moment of the energy heating your house, the internal combustion engine and animal metabolism as all more or less the same lower half of the solar energy cycle. Of course here in Alaska, most of us are still burning wood. This is the lower half from the energy standpoint and the dirty half at that. The cleaner energy source, the richer more efficient half we touch only with hydro-electric, solar and to a lesser extent geo-thermal, tide, and wind generation. If we can extract hydrogen directly with energy from the sun by catalysis or photosynthesis of plants or bacteria, then we would have a very cheap high energy source indeed.

Furthermore, if we can store the hydrogen in its ionic form as protons, then we overcome the storage problem of highly compressed containers of still large volume and or very cold liquefaction. The energy required for either constitutes the main expense of hydrogen as a fuel.
As a gas, one molecular weight of H2 occupies one cubic meter of volume at standard temperature and pressure. Despite its high energy by weight, there is much less energy per volume than say methane. A hydrogen ion, free of its electron, however, is a proton, a sub atomic particle. The hydrogen ion, now naked as a proton, no longer behaves like a gas. It no longer demands a cubic meter of space per gram molecular weight.

Look to the bio-chemistry of our plant and animal world. We pack many protons within a single cell of our bodies. We pack them into the mitochondria in a manner not unlike against the membrane of a fuel cell. Thus confined, the photons act as a battery; they do so within our own cells in great concentration. This hydrogen ion weighs roughly 1/14th that of a carbon atom; it occupies much less space, yet oxidizes with greater energy.

There may be an engineering challenge, but it sounds like researchers are close to controlling the solar conversion of water to hydrogen ions. Combined with the fuel cell, the direct solar generation of hydrogen ions might make a very small, very powerful source of, for all intents, free electricity. The storage of the protons, as within our own cells will be critical in such a device. If achievable the device might power cars, trucks, trains even aircraft. The whole mechanism might be quite compact with the operating range enormously extended. Just add water, and away we go.

So, if hydrogen ions, protons, can be generated directly from sunlight and water like plants, and stored as efficiently as higher animals do it, within their cells, as protons or chemically bound,[5] then solar cells could work as fuel cells directly. If you have produced a hydrogen ion, you have produced an electron.

Robert Boucher launched a solar powered remote control aircraft as early as 1974, called the Sunrise I. Glossamer Penguine was the first manned solar-powered aircraft, designed by Paul MacGready, it flew 3 kilometers. A successor, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel in 1981. NASA’s long flexible flying wing, Helios, with 14 electric motors and a 75 meter wingspan, reached record altitudes in 2001 but broke up over the Pacific Ocean in 2003. A solar-powered glider crossed the US in 1990 flying in stages, daytime only. There are others, including S10 an electric motor auxiliary powered glider with a retractable propeller and military remote control observation aircraft. More recently remote solar powered aircraft supporting communications prove less costly and more efficient than satellites. Andre’ Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard plan to pilot the all solar-powered Impulse[6] in an around the world non-stop attempt. The challenge will be to store enough energy in current batteries to stay aloft all night. Piccard holds the record for a non-stop balloon flight around the world.

It is a matter of engineering, but hydrogen is a better battery than lithium or lead, containing far more energy and less weight, once we perfect the technique of storing the proton, H+ and not the molecule, H2. The new family of catalysts, reported in Nature, open new possibilities, but the report also raises the potential of bio-science contributing to the challenge of proton generation, because plants and animals already do it.

Can we overcome “Daddy Warbucks” political economics and take the leap? If we have to ask it, the answer is probably no. There is an economic point to be made, however. That is, the free energy potential of free hydrogen ion lives at such a much higher level of energy potential that it is crazy to keep looking back at familiar concepts of energy as some kind of combustion of fuel from a tank with noise, heat and smoke. Grasping the old and familiar displaces the opportunity of the future. We cannot afford to prop up fossilized institutions as our guiding solution to the challenges thrown at us by the rising toxic and deleterious levels of CO2.

We are in a race for the future, whether we can see our competitors or not. We are racing towards an endpoint, where or when population overpowers the resources of sustainable life. The endpoint can only be extended by technological development.

Political solutions will fail. It is in our DNA to hunt our food supply into extinction and to kill off competing life forms, intelligent or not. We cannot afford to be on the trailing end of a future technological solution that might leave us as the less adapted competing life form ourselves.
As a Nation or at least as Western Civilization, we cannot afford to lose the race for limitless free energy! As convenient byproducts, we could disarm our enemy economically --- and even end starvation.





[1] Thomas Meyer: Nature 451, 778-779, 2008
[2] McDaniel, et al: Amer Chem Soc 130, 210-217, 2008
[3] Gilbert: J Amer. Chem. Soc 107, 3855-3864, 1985
[4] Hiraga, T.: 15th World Hydrogen Energy Conference, June 27- July 2, 2004 and Nature 451, xvi advert. Feature bio-fuel.
[5] ATP, Adenosinetriphosphate, constituent of intermediate metabolism, the Krebs cycle.
[6] Nature: 451, 884-885