An accidental discovery by researchers at Northwestern University has led to an MOF (metal-organic framework) that is natural, biodegradable and even edible plus it stores hydrogen. In case you didn’t catch the title, one of the ingredients is Everclear which is a very high proof alcohol (which I once sipped as a teenager).

The other ingredients (pictured above, though a larger chart is on the Northwestern website) include metal (nickel, zinc, copper or cobalt), plus salt and sugar plus this structure forms into a crystal metal lattice at a nanoscale in which 54-percent of the structure is porous.

MOF’s have been around since 1999 and were developed using petroleum products. This MOF is different in that it uses no petroleum products whatsoever and uses kitchen products instead to form the crystalline metal structures.

According to Northwestern, “Metal-organic frameworks are well-ordered, lattice-like crystals. The nodes of the lattices are metals (such as copper, zinc, nickel or cobalt), and organic molecules connect the nodes. Within their very roomy pores, MOFs can effectively store gases such as hydrogen or carbon dioxide, making the nanostructures of special interest to engineers as well as scientists …

“…For their edible MOFs, the researchers use not ordinary table sugar but gamma-cyclodextrin, an eight-membered sugar ring produced from biorenewable cornstarch. The salts can be potassium chloride, a common salt substitute, or potassium benzoate, a commercial food preservative, and the alcohol is the grain spirit Everclear.”

Now what could this mean for the hydrogen industry? It could mean lighter tanks than metal hydride and H2 stored a low pressures. This would solve two problems including increasing mileage in hydrogen cars due to less weight and more safety due to storing hydrogen at low pressures compared to 5,000 psi or 10,000 psi.

This could also be a boon for hydrogen fueling stations because of the safety features of storing hydrogen at lower pressures. This accidental discovery may have far reaching implications for the hydrogen industry as well as the gas storage industry in general. Plus, when you’re done with the tank, just have it for supper.

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Students and faculty from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) won the 2010 Asia Shell EcoMarathon with a hydrogen fuel cell car. The car was able to attain approximately 1,400 miles per gallon equivalent to capture the $1,000 USD prize.

I’ve talked about the Shell EcoMarathon several times in the past and have been to one of their events. The cars don’t look at all like consumer automobiles as they are small, cramped, lightweight one-person vehicles geared towards squeezing out gas mileage.

In the winning Asian EcoMarathon car was a Horizon fuel cell. According to the company, “This year’s leading teams are now looking forward further developing and optimizing their power systems for next year’s race while Horizon Fuel Cell continues its development of higher performance, highly efficient fuel cell technologies. The company’s evolving hydrogen fuel cell technologies offers an attractive technological alternative that brings winning results to Eco-marathon competitors: ultra-light fuel cells with limited peripherals, increasing simplicity, reducing weight, and improving overall vehicle efficiency.”

It’s likely that some of the student engineers working on these hydrogen fuel cell cars will in the very near future graduate and go on to develop the next generation hydrogen cars that the rest of us will be driving.

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Two days ago I talked about a hydrogen fueling station in Rochester, NY catching fire and this would mean that hydrogen haters would be coming out in droves. Over at Jalopnik there is an example of fanning the flames (so to speak) of the hydrogen haters (plus to be fair a few defenders) to come out and show their true colors over the safety of hydrogen fuel.

The hydrogen haters are showing their ignorance by talking about the Hindenburg explosion (of course). But also someone posted a picture of a nuclear explosion as well. Another person speaks of Hiroshima.

Yet, there is another person talking about hydrogen being stored at 1,000 psi in cars inside steel tanks prone to hydrogen embrittlement. It’s not hard to conceive that a small group of people are spreading misinformation and fear-mongering about hydrogen to move along their own agendas.

As an analogy, in this country 25-percent of the population believe that President Obama is a Muslim and a large percentage say he was born outside the U. S. This is due largely do to a small group of people spreading misinformation and fear-mongering.

Hydrogen has enough technical issues right now in regard to widespread rollout of cars. But, because of this kind of ignorance and fear being disseminated to the public, the largest hurdle for hydrogen cars may be education and public relations.

The hydrogen deniers and delayers have their own agendas to stall the spread of hydrogen vehicles and fueling stations and the example I’ve posted is just a microcosm of what hydrogen advocates must overcome in order to assure widespread public acceptance of H2.

By the way, in case you’re interested here are some videos of some traditional gasoline station related fires and explosions:

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Video 5

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I always like talking about the Formula Zero racing go-kart events. They are a fun, fast & furious venue in which to talk about the merits of hydrogen powered vehicles.

At The Hague, the Netherlands, the Technical University Delft’s Greenchoice Forze hydrogen fuel cell race team won, beating a gasoline powered go-kart. And not only did it win, but it did so with zero emissions.

The Dutch students who built the Greenchoice Forze set a record time for the last lap of 22.91 seconds. The demonstration of the racing go-karts shows that hydrogen can be used in a wide range of vehicles, ranging from ultra high mile cars such as the ETH Zurich Pac Car II to other hydrogen race cars which have more oomph to everything in-between such as hydrogen powered go-karts.

Formula Zero is a fun event that gets hydrogen fuel vehicles out before the public eye. And the fact that they can kick the butts of gasoline powered vehicles is just icing on the cake.

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Late last week two Praxair hydrogen tanks at a hydrogen fueling station in Rochester, NY partially exploded and caused a fire. The person closest to the explosion is in the hospital in satisfactory condition and another person was treated for minor ear pain and released.

Now, if you’re a hydrogen detractor as they apparently are at Cars.com you’ll run a headline such as this: “Hydrogen Explosion Deals Blow to Fuel Cell Advocates”. Of course they relate this event to the Hindenburg fallacy that so many hydrogen haters will latch onto.

According to Cars.com, “During a swap of hydrogen tanks by a company that supplies GM with tanks for its fuel-cell fleet, one tank exploded, and the resulting fire led to a second tank exploding.” Now, this sounds pretty bad, having two hydrogen tanks fully exploding creating all sorts of fire and chaos such as a mini Armageddon. People must have been running to and fro yelling about the End of Days, getting on their cell phones and telling friends and relatives to leave town, now.

But, here is another report about the same event from 13wham.com, “Friday morning, Praxair crews were on the scene surveying their tanks and beginning the process of emptying those tanks of the remaining hydrogen gas. Upwards of 2,500 pounds of compressed gas remained in the tanks and it was slowly released through a small hose.”

They go onto say, “A preliminary investigation conducted by Monroe County Fire Officials and Praxair is giving a lot of credit to a one-inch thick steel plate that separates the hydrogen tanks from the manifolds nearby. That plate and other safety features on the trailers prevented potentially much more serious, and subsequent, explosions according to fire officials.”

So, who to believe? Do we believe Cars.com with the apocalyptic view that the sky is falling for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and this is the last gasp for this industry? Or do we believe a neutral news agency without an agenda who reports that yes, there was an explosion, no one died and in fact the person closest to the explosion will survive and the event could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the safety features in place to prevent further explosions?

Cars.com failed to report was that there was a substantial amount of hydrogen left in the tanks that did not explode or catch on fire because of the safety features. What they also failed to report is that gasoline carrying trucks and gasoline fueling stations do experience fires and explosions which can be much more devastating than this incident. In fact in the 5-plus years I’ve been writing about hydrogen this is the first time I’ve come across a story about an explosion at a hydrogen fueling station.

Here is a video of the explosion taken from a security camera at the nearby Rochester, NY airport. The explosion and fire are in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The video seems a bit shocking when you play it for the first time and not so shocking the second time. You’ll see the camera shake from the shock wave of the explosion and some fire that quickly shuts down. Trucks, cars and other vehicles continue to drive by.

I don’t want to understate that hydrogen has the potential to catch fire and explode because it does. It is both combustible and flammable. I also don’t want to hype hydrogen incidents such as this are akin to the Hindenburg explosion with fear mongering that says “Oh, the Humanity” this could shut down the entire hydrogen industry.

Chalk this one off to yes, fuel sometimes does catch fire and explode. Yes, we need to be careful in handling fuel. Yes, hydrogen fuel like any other fuel needs safety precautions in place for handling, storage and transportation.

And because of this false paranoia by some of the public and detractors about hydrogen, the manufacturers of hydrogen fueling equipment have created safety features that far exceed that for other fuels. The incident that happened in Rochester should be a wake-up call that handling hydrogen fuel will have accidents and incidents.

But these accidents and incidents will be no scarier than those involving other fuels. In fact, there are so many safety features in place, such as automatic shutoff valves and one-inch thick steel plates, that one would expect the incidents that do happen will be of a much smaller scale that incidents involving other fuels.

So, to recap, the whole fuel cell industry is not in jeopardy because of this one incident. The one person closest to the flames is in the hospital in satisfactory condition. Another person was treated and released for minor hearing problems after the explosion. There is nothing more to see here folks, now let’s move on.

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In January, I first talked about SunHydro and Proton Energy Systems teaming up to build an East Coast Hydrogen Highway System from Portland, Maine down to Orlando, Florida. Now, SunHydro has added Toyota as a partner as well.

Wallingford, Connecticut is the headquarters of Proton Energy Systems and is the site of the first SunHydro solar-hydrogen fueling station. Ten Toyota FCHV-adv hydrogen hybrid SUVs will be donated temporarily to this facility for testing. Toyota is in the process of rolling out 100 of these vehicles over the next three years for testing as a preamble for full production starting in 2015.

What is interesting to me is that on the West Coast it took politicians such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plus officials in Oregon and Washington to map out a hydrogen highway system there running from northern to southern borders.

On the East Coast, however, the politicians are not doing nearly as much as a single entrepreneur with his own grassroots movement to make the hydrogen highway system happen. Tom Sullivan, who owns both SunHydro and Lumber Liquidators, has decided to put part of his entrepreneurial fortune to work by building solar-powered hydrogen fueling stations up and down the East Coast with many of them planned in the parking lots of his Lumber Liquidator stores.

The next step in the building of the hydrogen highway could use a reversal of sorts. The West Coast could use an entrepreneurial grassroots movement to further build the hydrogen highway system in this location. On the East Coast, we need more politicians involved, joining together in the public sector to complement the work that SunHydro is doing to further expand the hydrogen highway system in this location.

It will be with this partnership between government and private sector that we will see the quickest and most robust results in building out a nationwide hydrogen highway system. Hopefully, with more major players getting onboard the East Coast Hydrogen Highway bandwagon, this will inspire others to do their parts in making this happen now rather than later.

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Previously, Hyundai has stated that they will beat the $50,000 price tag that Toyota has stated they will start selling their fuel cell vehicles for in 2015. Once again Hyundai has upped the ante with more specifics.

According to a published report Hyundai now says they will start producing 500 FCVs as early as 2012. The Independent states, “…the Korean automaker plans to produce 10,000 units of the vehicle annually by 2015, starting slow in 2012 with between 500 and 1,000 units.”

Two of the key elements that potential drivers of hydrogen cars want to know are the price tags for the vehicles and when are they going to start rolling out. Hyundai has now hinted at the price and stated directly that they will jump the gun on the 2015 date that the other major automakers have set for rolling out FCVs.

Hyundai may rollout these first 500 cars as leases as they have previously stated. But, from there the gloves are off and other automakers need to take note. Even though battery electric cars are in vogue now, once the hype wears off and reality sets in many people will take a second good look at hydrogen vehicles as a viable alternative for zero emission cars.

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Today I would like to talk about how hydrogen fuel cells are going organic. Specifically I would like to talk about how some hydrogen fuel cells use organic human waste for power and another H2 fuel cell simulates a human organ.

I’ve talked about pee-power for hydrogen fuel cells before. The scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK have a new take on using pee (urea) to power fuel cells and they have come up with a couple of different ideas for doing so.

First, the Heriot-Watt scientists report, “…they had been able to generate hydrogen from urine using an electrolytic cell with cheap nickel-based electrodes running at only 0.37 volts – much less than the 1.23 volts it takes to split water.” Apparently the urea acts to loosen the bond between hydrogen and oxygen found in pure water.

The second idea is to bypass creating hydrogen entirely and develop a fuel cell that runs directly on urea. While this doesn’t have quite the energy content as pure hydrogen it has enough to power a fuel cell and could be used in some farm settings where the cattle pee is flowing freely.

Now, the next fuel cell I would like to talk about is one that is shaped like a human organ. A modern day version of the iron lung that your great grandpa may have been using to breathe has been developed as a fuel cell instead.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo is developing a fuel cell that mimics the intricate structure of a human lung to increase surface area and use less platinum (the most expensive material in a fuel cell).

Both of these leading technologies I’ve mentioned have their advantages. Each also needs more development to become practical in everyday usage. One day soon the future will be now and these leading edge technologies will no longer be leading edge but integrated into the mainstream of our everyday lives.

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Hydrogen fueling stations have not been standardized yet though there is a push to do so in order that hydrogen cars may start to rollout commercially within the next 5 years. On the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CaFCP) website there are a couple of pages outlining what the current hydrogen fueling stations look like and how they work.

Some of the hydrogen fueling stations in California are prototypes used as demonstration models and thus not open to the public. However, there are also some hydrogen pumps such as the one in downtown Los Angeles at a Shell station that sells retail hydrogen to the public.

CaFCP lists three different types of hydrogen fueling stations including those that create their own hydrogen onsite, those that have hydrogen delivered in liquid form and those that deliver hydrogen as a gas. There is also a fourth type of station which is a mobile hydrogen refueler which can easily be moved from one location to the next.

In regard to those stations that create the hydrogen onsite there are also a couple of types. The first type uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then captures and compresses the hydrogen for use in cars.

The second type uses natural gas and reforms this into hydrogen which can be used to refuel cars as well as heat the home. Check out this link and this link from the CaFCP for more details.

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Recently I’ve been receiving some emails from concerned citizen Stephen W. who lives on top of some of the richest natural gas fields in Pennsylvania. Stephen is concerned about the environmental impact of drilling (contaminated drinking water) and thinks hydrogen may be the answer.

After seeing the movie trailers from the documentary Gasland about hydraulic fracturing used in the natural gas wells and the concern over one of the biggest targets of Marcellus Shale drilling being Northeastern Pennsylvania, Stephen decided to write me a series of emails outlining his concerns.

Here is an excerpt of those emails:

“I’m just writing you today to thank you for keeping the hydrogen economy cause going strong. Since the last time we spoke, two new glaring issues have surfaced that should make the push to put a hydrogen economy in place throughout this country and the world all the more compelling. One has been the recent massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and echoed by one similar in China, and the other is all the current controversy surrounding natural gas exploration, its downsides particularly accented by the not-so-long-ago documentary, Gasland …

“I think the general public now is in a state of mind that while I think they would like to see a switchover to a hydrogen economy, what good is this want on their part if our government’s not willing to support it? That said, I wonder how much the government officials in the Gulf States are aware of hydrogen’s potential? For they certainly have a motive to get behind it now if they didn’t before …

“As a regular everyday U.S. citizen, I discuss hydrogen’s potential with people I meet at every turn. But unfortunately, as I’ve pretty much learned the hard way, a regular everyday U.S. citizen’s voice these days can only carry so far. I compare the dilemma to that Joni Mitchell song, “For Free.” If credibility is to be had, people want to see hydrogen’s potential presented in a totally professional manner, that is, with an actual show of what’s being talked about to back up the pitch. Otherwise, it amounts to interesting conversation, but really none other than that. And this for a technology that from my understanding has pretty much been proven since Francois Rivaz patented the first internal combustion engine automobile in 1809. That is, how can we get that tortoise to run just a little bit faster?”

Stephen W. also writes to his local Senator, “I am writing to you today out of grave concern for the natural gas exploration that is being proposed for our state in the portions of it that are part of the Marcellus Shale Formation. This Associated Press article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer for Monday, August 16, 2010 — http://www.philly.com/philly/business/100745139.html — I find to be extremely disturbing. Particularly if the recent documentary Gasland, about the horrific downsides of hydraulic fracturing, is to be believed.”

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens wants to replace drilling for oil with drilling for natural gas but is this really the answer? Getting off our dependence of foreign fossil fuels is one step. But as the BP Oil Spill has taught us and perhaps the contaminated drinking water from hydraulic fracturing of native natural gas reserves, the answer is to get away from fossil fuels altogether.

Is hydrogen the answer? Most likely it is one of the answers including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and other alternative energy and alternative fuel options. We need to voraciously pursue the alternatives with government, alternative energy companies and a grassroots movement in order to make sure another fossil fuel disaster is averted in this country and that we have clean energy for the future. The future starts now, so let’s use our voices and keep pushing the hydrogen message forward among the largely uninformed public and government officials. As public support grows so will the pressure to do the right thing.

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