11 ms·

Powerpaste, a hydrogen technology for small vehicles

167 points by apsec112 6y ago

h2odragon 6y ago
> Onboard the vehicle, the POWERPASTE is released from a cartridge by means of a plunger. When water is added from an onboard tank, the ensuing reaction generates hydrogen gas in a quantity dynamically adjusted to the actual requirements of the fuel cell. In fact, only half of the hydrogen originates from the POWERPASTE; the rest comes from the added water OK sounds great! so this stuff is more sensitive to moisture than LiPo batteries and yet has to be dispensed somehow; that's going to be fun. I'd like to see the reaction, here... We talking a little steam or dropping sodium chunks into a pond?
- amluto 6y ago
  Sodium is boring. Potassium is much better! Seriously, though, this sounds like a horrible technology. Synthesize fancy goo that is unstable when wet. React with water to make hydrogen (itself moderately dangerous). Produce some kind of slush containing magnesium hydroxide (presumably) and miscellaneous organic crud as waste. What, exactly, happens with the waste? At least magnesium hydroxide is not as nasty as sodium or potassium hydroxide, but you still don’t want to get it on your skin if you can avoid it.
  - WJW 6y ago
    It's not like petroleum is all that nice though, it's just that the handling around it has been pretty much perfected over the decades. You can collect spent sludge at the same place a scooter has to come anyway to refill and then re-hydrogenate the sludge into fresh paste.
    - zdragnar 6y ago
      The big difference, of course, is that petroleum doesn't explode or combust when rained on. Aside from sparks or ignition sources, it can sit in a bucket or puddle and be happy staying put.
      - WJW 6y ago
        Neither does this substance though. It releases hydrogen when in contact with water, not explode or combust. It might, of course, explode if sparks are introduced but the same thing can happen to hydrocarbon based fuels. In any case, what a substance does when rained on is not very relevant for a fuel that is kept in a fuel tank at all times. By the time it's exposed to the weather, the vehicle must have crashed and in such a circumstance most safety guarantees are out of the window anyway.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        No hydrocarbon fuels aren't oxygenated. Put a spark plug in your gas tank, run it day and night - nothing. Has to be oxygen in there.
        WJW 6y ago
        The same happens in a pure hydrogen atmosphere? Not sure what you are trying to convey here.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Sorry, that comment about a spark being a problem prompted my comment. I must have misunderstood.
  - DaniFong 6y ago
    "miscellaneous organic crud" i figure you would recycle all of it in an environment where the slurry is saturated with hydrogen gas at high temperature and pressure, and what happens is the water reacts to make magnesium oxide, back to hydride
allanrbo 6y ago
In 2005 there was similar hype around efficiently storing hydrogen, but using ammonia. Can't find any sources on why that didn't go anywhere though. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.h...
- hannob 6y ago
  Ammonia is currently considered as one of the more promising options for future shipping fuels. There are a number of projects planning to create green ammonia at scale, e.g. this: https://asianrehub.com/ https://asianrehub.com/ Ammonia is already made from hydrogen today, making that green is pretty straightforward, you just need enough clean electricity. Just get the hydrogen from electrolysis, the ammonia synthesis process itself is well established technology.
  - corty 6y ago
    Ammonia is one of the less pleasant chemicals one could use. I'd rather have Hydrogen-exuding paste than Ammonia in an accident. The Hydrogen might explode. But the Ammonia definitely will hurt you.
    - kaliszad 6y ago
      Ammonia is quite ok. You can smell it :-) You can put it into water, where it is quite stable. We know how to handle it at industrial scale because of fertilizers.
      - diggernet 6y ago
        Yes, you can smell it, when drastically diluted in water (which, as you say, is stable) such as for a household cleaner. But in a concentrated form such as that required for use as fuel, if you smell it, it will kill you. Quickly.
        corty 6y ago
Animats 6y ago
Storage of hydrogen in a solid has come around a few times already. University of New South Wales. (2020) [1] Lawerence Livermore Lab (2018) [2] University of Salford (2006) [3] Older approaches involved lithium hydride chips. Not ICs, just chips of metal. The University of New South Wales system used titanium and other secret ingredients. That one is being offered as a product for stationary storage, Real Soon Now.[4] Original article said it would ship by the end of 2020, but it has slipped to June 2021. You can pre-order the "launch edition" now. It's not a Kickstarter, but it's close. Unclear if this is a good idea, or the next Bloom Energy Server. [1] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of-energy-breakthrough-offers-mass-hydrogen-storage-options-20200702-p558dj.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of... [2] https://str.llnl.gov/2018-01/wood https://str.llnl.gov/2018-01/wood [3] http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/16768/5/Hydrogen_storage_paper_for_vacuum.pdf http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/16768/5/Hydrogen_storage... [4] https://lavo.com.au https://lavo.com.au
- plun9 6y ago
  What's wrong with Bloom Energy Servers?
tomas789 6y ago
Solving hydrogen storage has great implications. Hydrogen has high gravimetric energy density (1 kWh worth of H2 is light) but very low volumetric density (1 kWh takes up a large volume). Easy solutions are compressed hydrogen (H2 is a small molecule and easily escapes even through a material, steel embrittlement and energy for compression are big issues), cryogenic cooling (energy intensive and cryocoolers have significant capex) and metal hydrids. To put it simply the crystalic structure of the metal acts as a high pressure storage tank. H2 is typically released by heating the material up. One thing they didn’t mention is energy used for round trip per unit of H2 and cost of the material itself. Neither was discussed there. Many similar materials exist already. Many CO2 neutral pathways with other molecules exist. Amonia, methanol, ethanol, DME, urea, formic accid and so on. PS: If you’re into this stuff, keep an eye on the Fraunhoffer institude. They have many cool projects. (I am not affiliated with them in any way)
- usrusr 6y ago
  > One thing they didn’t mention is energy used for round trip per unit of H2 and cost of the material itself. I also did not see anything about recycling the carrier materials which seems suspiciously odd in a context so closely related to environmentalism. But the big picture news is that this is another datapoint that shows how, like you said, the solution space for what I like to call "bound hydrogen" is apparently not exhausted at all yet. In recent months I have seen (all on hn) power-to-ammonia, that Dutch group that proposes iron powder as a heat fuel of roughly coal performance that is recycled by reducing the returned iron oxide powder with hydrogen (and started to fuel a brewery as a pilot) and now this "powerpaste" which sound like straight out of the back to the future future. The claimed energy density is absolutely amazing! If the required infrastructure hardware is small enough it could be a gamechanger for BEV: size the battery to be sufficient for 80% of driving days and install the "1000 miles extra" block where it can be accessed for replacing, e.g. where an ICE car would have it's engine. Chances are the extra miles fuel won't be cheap, but you'll surely be able to buy a lot of RX refills for the battery cost saved if a strong majority majority of your driving can be done on battery only. I always considered the term "hydrogen economy" silly because of how annoying H2 is to deal with at scale, but "bound hydrogen" can change that in so many ways. It's almost as if hindsight was trying to win a bet or something wrt how we look back at George W. Bush, first him appearing so unexpectedly presidential compared to a certain successor, then suddenly hydrogen economy ceases to be a joke. What's next, discovery of actual WMD so they could have well stayed honest had they just looked a little harder? Harris becoming president after "pretzel incident 2"? Bound hydrogen is the most exciting technology field since many years.
zhengyi13 6y ago
In '99, while working at a solar hydrogen startup as a recent grad, I was exposed to a fellow who proposed to transport H in the form of H2O, and his solution for cracking it was to make purple ping pong balls filled w/ Na. He'd deliver a hopper of Na ping pong balls, and a machine filled with water. Feed balls into the machine, which would then use a ram to split the balls underwater, and siphon off the resulting H2 gas to feed to your fuel cell. The racket it made, with a loud kerchunk splitting the balls, and the hissing immediately following, was just slightly terrifying. This paste seems a good deal saner in comparison.
- ksdale 6y ago
  Not that internal combustion engines are the model to aspire to... but they're just a metal contraption full of explosions. Being terrifying isn't necessarily a disqualifier, haha.
  - jonsen 6y ago
    Full of combustions, not explosions. “The speed of the reaction is what distinguishes an explosive reaction from an ordinary combustion reaction.” - Wikipedia on explosion. “An internal combustion engine nominally operates on a controlled rapid burn.” - WP on combustion.
    - jackyinger 6y ago
      Internal combustion engines do in fact attempt to burn fuel and oxidizer at maximum stoichiometric efficiency, and they also are trying to burn it as quickly as possible to capture all of the heat rather than exhausting a partially burnt mixture and wasting fuel. Effective explosives have the exact same chemical goals and nearly the same thermodynamic goals. If that isn’t a carefully controlled explosion I don’t know what is. I mean, come on, a piston moving up and down thousands of times per minute isn’t explosive enough for ya?
      - jonsen 6y ago
        > ...trying to burn it as quickly as possible... No, the speed of burn in an internal combustion engine is not explosive: “Knocking (also knock, detonation, spark knock, pinging or pinking) in spark ignition internal combustion engines occurs when combustion of some of the air/fuel mixture in the cylinder does not result from propagation of the flame front ignited by the spark plug, but one or more pockets of air/fuel mixture explode outside the envelope of the normal combustion front.” - WP on engine knocking, which is undesirable and may damage the engine.
choeger 6y ago
I know this sounds awfully complicated to handle (and recharge), but I think the market for practical applications of H fuel is existing, so these ideas can be evaluated in practice. Also, not every invention has to save the world. So this paste might become useful for drones or in spacecraft. Depending on the energy density it might even be very usable for electrified air travel.
- usrusr 6y ago
  If storage losses are sufficiently low and the converter hardware is small/cheap enough maybe the process could also find a market as a sealed system, a factory-recyclable single use battery. How about a 3HU rack form factor that if installed in groups automatically coordinates depletion to oldest-first? Main market would be what is currently served by rarely refueled backup generators but it could have a huge long tail of undiscovered use cases wherever power density of batteries is insufficient and diesel generators suffer from noise or bad maintenance, but where fuel price isn't the main concern. Pricing model could be as easy as implementing effectively fuel + rent with a deposit that shrinks over time (blockchain the device log if it makes you feel better somehow). Once established for server rooms, fishing cabins and whatever other niche it will find it might even end up mainstream with BEV that opt for just offering an RX rack over killing range anxiety with half a ton of extra rechargeable that is never really needed. Approaches like this are usually made impossible by chicken/egg problems, but if it starts in a niche both technology and distribution can grow organically. Remember how Tesla was "the laptop battery car" while incumbents insisted on starting all their BEV projects (they did exist) by reinventing the battery?
goda90 6y ago
The military has worked on a similar concept with a metal powder + water to produce hydrogen on the fly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-based_nanogalvanic_alloys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-based_nanogalvanic_a...
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I've wondered if aluminum powder could be used in this way. It's the most common metal in the world, cheap and available.
gioscarab 6y ago
1) What happens to the waste? 2) How much energy is required to make the paste?
frankus 6y ago
I'm trying and failing to come up with a use case where this is more practical than a rechargeable (and/or swappable) battery in a scooter. Refueling something like this would be faster than recharging, but if "quick recharge" is part of your requirements then it's straightforward to make a scooter battery swappable and maybe even standardized across brands. Power outlets are ubiquitous, and these things just don't use enough energy to be more than a rounding error on anyone's electric bill (100 (scooter) km worth of energy is roughly the difference between washing your hands in hot water instead of cold water for 30 seconds). There might a weight savings but lithium ion is something like 60 grams per kilometer of range for a light, slow vehicle. So a reasonable range battery is not prohibitively heavy even for a vehicle that you have to carry. I'm sure there's a use case for this stuff, and scooters are trendy right now, but I don't think the two are a good match.
- airstrike 6y ago
  From the article, one other use case are drones, in which case even minor weight savings can be extremely valuable.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  Based on the article and some guesses, potential advantages to swappable batteries might be: weight (as you mention); cheaper/more environmentally friendly materials; lower risk of spontaneous combustion; less dangerous stuff leaking out when the unit is breached.
  - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
    LFP is as safe as it comes, and the density is hitting sweet spot for scooeter distances.
- lovemenot 6y ago
  What is a scooter? A skateboard with a handle or a small motor bike? I suspect Fraunhofer is talking about the latter, and you the former.
beyondcompute 6y ago
Really exciting news! I am a big believer in both small electric vehicles as the future of urban transportation and hydrogen as a better energy storage mechanism than lithium batteries. :)
ohiovr 6y ago
Is the waste product Magnesium Oxide?
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
- small vehicles aren't taken far (otherwise it's exhausting), so easily achievable 50-100 mile ranges are just fine - small vehicles will have small, quickly, easily, cheaply rechargeable batteries, likely easily recharged from even plain old wall sockets - LFP batteries will probably get good/cheap/dense enough to handle almost all 50-100 mile small vehicle ranges, its doubtful a hydrogen engine will get cheap enough soon enough - and again, LFP and EV/battery tech is in the mainline of economies of scale, buildout, production, and cost cutting, and will be for a decade more. This stuff will need to compete at a price point 50% lower or less than today's. - and it still has the sourcing problems. green hydrogen still smacks of the "clean coal" whitewash with a different label
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Ah chemistry is pretty neat. Presumably there is a process to take the left over magnesium hydroxide and convert it back into metallic magnesium? Their explainer[1] doesn't say much about that part of the process. (note it looks like you can bake it at 332 degree C to get magnesium oxide. (can you tell I'm not a chemist?) I think it would be helpful to have the entire fuel cycle laid out somewhere. That said, the operational infrastructure requirements for this seem to be much easier to satisfy with off the shelf technology than hydrogen storage which, frankly, is really really hard. [1] https://www.zess.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/zess/documents/POWERPASTE_WHITE_PAPER_2019.pdf https://www.zess.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/zess/documen...
- s0rce 6y ago
  There are a few industrial processes used to convert magnesium oxide to metal, for example the Pidgeon process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgeon_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgeon_process) which I still remember learning about in my Materials Science undergrad in Toronto. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium I suspect some variation of these processes could convert the spent fuel back to metal and then the hydride form or something like that.
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    Thank you. That is excellent information. I wonder if anyone has looked into concentrated solar as the heat source for small batch magnesium production using that method.
    - s0rce 6y ago
      Appears so: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652619319134 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596... Although, looks like much of this is done with hydroelectric processes (same with Aluminum production).
      - ChuckMcM 6y ago
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Used to work at the Leibniz institute in Dresden, near where this research at the Fraunhofer institute on POWERPASTE is happening. Not sure why they are trying to brand in all caps, but highly recommend adding Dresden to your bucket list post Covid. Most beautiful city I have experienced.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  ... and all built since 1945, an as-exact-as-possible copy of the city that had previously existed, in the same place, in 1943. It took decades of devoted work by thousands of people who loved their city, and needed to realize it again before they took their memories to the grave.
oh_sigh 6y ago
Why don't we "just" synthesize hydrocarbons similar to what are present in gasoline/diesel/etc? We already have all the infrastructure for using, handling and distributing it.
- ma-int 6y ago
  Because the well-to-wheel efficiency of internal combustion engines isn't that good to begin with. Add lossy synthesation and it gets even worse. If we had unlimited, clean power (hello fusion!) it might be viable.
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    It is called solar. Wonder it is not allowed er Sahara or other desert.
Tepix 6y ago
So, creating the Powerpaste is the hard thing?

167 points by apsec112 6y ago

> Onboard the vehicle, the POWERPASTE is released from a cartridge by means of a plunger. When water is added from an onboard tank, the ensuing reaction generates hydrogen gas in a quantity dynamically adjusted to the actual requirements of the fuel cell. In fact, only half of the hydrogen originates from the POWERPASTE; the rest comes from the added water OK sounds great! so this stuff is more sensitive to moisture than LiPo batteries and yet has to be dispensed somehow; that's going to be fun. I'd like to see the reaction, here... We talking a little steam or dropping sodium chunks into a pond?

amluto 6y ago
Sodium is boring. Potassium is much better! Seriously, though, this sounds like a horrible technology. Synthesize fancy goo that is unstable when wet. React with water to make hydrogen (itself moderately dangerous). Produce some kind of slush containing magnesium hydroxide (presumably) and miscellaneous organic crud as waste. What, exactly, happens with the waste? At least magnesium hydroxide is not as nasty as sodium or potassium hydroxide, but you still don’t want to get it on your skin if you can avoid it.
- WJW 6y ago
  It's not like petroleum is all that nice though, it's just that the handling around it has been pretty much perfected over the decades. You can collect spent sludge at the same place a scooter has to come anyway to refill and then re-hydrogenate the sludge into fresh paste.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    The big difference, of course, is that petroleum doesn't explode or combust when rained on. Aside from sparks or ignition sources, it can sit in a bucket or puddle and be happy staying put.
    - WJW 6y ago
      Neither does this substance though. It releases hydrogen when in contact with water, not explode or combust. It might, of course, explode if sparks are introduced but the same thing can happen to hydrocarbon based fuels. In any case, what a substance does when rained on is not very relevant for a fuel that is kept in a fuel tank at all times. By the time it's exposed to the weather, the vehicle must have crashed and in such a circumstance most safety guarantees are out of the window anyway.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        No hydrocarbon fuels aren't oxygenated. Put a spark plug in your gas tank, run it day and night - nothing. Has to be oxygen in there.
        WJW 6y ago
        The same happens in a pure hydrogen atmosphere? Not sure what you are trying to convey here.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Sorry, that comment about a spark being a problem prompted my comment. I must have misunderstood.
- DaniFong 6y ago
  "miscellaneous organic crud" i figure you would recycle all of it in an environment where the slurry is saturated with hydrogen gas at high temperature and pressure, and what happens is the water reacts to make magnesium oxide, back to hydride

allanrbo 6y ago

In 2005 there was similar hype around efficiently storing hydrogen, but using ammonia. Can't find any sources on why that didn't go anywhere though. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.h...

hannob 6y ago
Ammonia is currently considered as one of the more promising options for future shipping fuels. There are a number of projects planning to create green ammonia at scale, e.g. this: https://asianrehub.com/ https://asianrehub.com/ Ammonia is already made from hydrogen today, making that green is pretty straightforward, you just need enough clean electricity. Just get the hydrogen from electrolysis, the ammonia synthesis process itself is well established technology.
- corty 6y ago
  Ammonia is one of the less pleasant chemicals one could use. I'd rather have Hydrogen-exuding paste than Ammonia in an accident. The Hydrogen might explode. But the Ammonia definitely will hurt you.
  - kaliszad 6y ago
    Ammonia is quite ok. You can smell it :-) You can put it into water, where it is quite stable. We know how to handle it at industrial scale because of fertilizers.
    - diggernet 6y ago
      Yes, you can smell it, when drastically diluted in water (which, as you say, is stable) such as for a household cleaner. But in a concentrated form such as that required for use as fuel, if you smell it, it will kill you. Quickly.
      - corty 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

Storage of hydrogen in a solid has come around a few times already. University of New South Wales. (2020) [1] Lawerence Livermore Lab (2018) [2] University of Salford (2006) [3] Older approaches involved lithium hydride chips. Not ICs, just chips of metal. The University of New South Wales system used titanium and other secret ingredients. That one is being offered as a product for stationary storage, Real Soon Now.[4] Original article said it would ship by the end of 2020, but it has slipped to June 2021. You can pre-order the "launch edition" now. It's not a Kickstarter, but it's close. Unclear if this is a good idea, or the next Bloom Energy Server. [1] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of-energy-breakthrough-offers-mass-hydrogen-storage-options-20200702-p558dj.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of... [2] https://str.llnl.gov/2018-01/wood https://str.llnl.gov/2018-01/wood [3] http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/16768/5/Hydrogen_storage_paper_for_vacuum.pdf http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/16768/5/Hydrogen_storage... [4] https://lavo.com.au https://lavo.com.au

plun9 6y ago
What's wrong with Bloom Energy Servers?

tomas789 6y ago

Solving hydrogen storage has great implications. Hydrogen has high gravimetric energy density (1 kWh worth of H2 is light) but very low volumetric density (1 kWh takes up a large volume). Easy solutions are compressed hydrogen (H2 is a small molecule and easily escapes even through a material, steel embrittlement and energy for compression are big issues), cryogenic cooling (energy intensive and cryocoolers have significant capex) and metal hydrids. To put it simply the crystalic structure of the metal acts as a high pressure storage tank. H2 is typically released by heating the material up. One thing they didn’t mention is energy used for round trip per unit of H2 and cost of the material itself. Neither was discussed there. Many similar materials exist already. Many CO2 neutral pathways with other molecules exist. Amonia, methanol, ethanol, DME, urea, formic accid and so on. PS: If you’re into this stuff, keep an eye on the Fraunhoffer institude. They have many cool projects. (I am not affiliated with them in any way)

usrusr 6y ago
> One thing they didn’t mention is energy used for round trip per unit of H2 and cost of the material itself. I also did not see anything about recycling the carrier materials which seems suspiciously odd in a context so closely related to environmentalism. But the big picture news is that this is another datapoint that shows how, like you said, the solution space for what I like to call "bound hydrogen" is apparently not exhausted at all yet. In recent months I have seen (all on hn) power-to-ammonia, that Dutch group that proposes iron powder as a heat fuel of roughly coal performance that is recycled by reducing the returned iron oxide powder with hydrogen (and started to fuel a brewery as a pilot) and now this "powerpaste" which sound like straight out of the back to the future future. The claimed energy density is absolutely amazing! If the required infrastructure hardware is small enough it could be a gamechanger for BEV: size the battery to be sufficient for 80% of driving days and install the "1000 miles extra" block where it can be accessed for replacing, e.g. where an ICE car would have it's engine. Chances are the extra miles fuel won't be cheap, but you'll surely be able to buy a lot of RX refills for the battery cost saved if a strong majority majority of your driving can be done on battery only. I always considered the term "hydrogen economy" silly because of how annoying H2 is to deal with at scale, but "bound hydrogen" can change that in so many ways. It's almost as if hindsight was trying to win a bet or something wrt how we look back at George W. Bush, first him appearing so unexpectedly presidential compared to a certain successor, then suddenly hydrogen economy ceases to be a joke. What's next, discovery of actual WMD so they could have well stayed honest had they just looked a little harder? Harris becoming president after "pretzel incident 2"? Bound hydrogen is the most exciting technology field since many years.

zhengyi13 6y ago

In '99, while working at a solar hydrogen startup as a recent grad, I was exposed to a fellow who proposed to transport H in the form of H2O, and his solution for cracking it was to make purple ping pong balls filled w/ Na. He'd deliver a hopper of Na ping pong balls, and a machine filled with water. Feed balls into the machine, which would then use a ram to split the balls underwater, and siphon off the resulting H2 gas to feed to your fuel cell. The racket it made, with a loud kerchunk splitting the balls, and the hissing immediately following, was just slightly terrifying. This paste seems a good deal saner in comparison.

ksdale 6y ago
Not that internal combustion engines are the model to aspire to... but they're just a metal contraption full of explosions. Being terrifying isn't necessarily a disqualifier, haha.
- jonsen 6y ago
  Full of combustions, not explosions. “The speed of the reaction is what distinguishes an explosive reaction from an ordinary combustion reaction.” - Wikipedia on explosion. “An internal combustion engine nominally operates on a controlled rapid burn.” - WP on combustion.
  - jackyinger 6y ago
    Internal combustion engines do in fact attempt to burn fuel and oxidizer at maximum stoichiometric efficiency, and they also are trying to burn it as quickly as possible to capture all of the heat rather than exhausting a partially burnt mixture and wasting fuel. Effective explosives have the exact same chemical goals and nearly the same thermodynamic goals. If that isn’t a carefully controlled explosion I don’t know what is. I mean, come on, a piston moving up and down thousands of times per minute isn’t explosive enough for ya?
    - jonsen 6y ago
      > ...trying to burn it as quickly as possible... No, the speed of burn in an internal combustion engine is not explosive: “Knocking (also knock, detonation, spark knock, pinging or pinking) in spark ignition internal combustion engines occurs when combustion of some of the air/fuel mixture in the cylinder does not result from propagation of the flame front ignited by the spark plug, but one or more pockets of air/fuel mixture explode outside the envelope of the normal combustion front.” - WP on engine knocking, which is undesirable and may damage the engine.

choeger 6y ago

I know this sounds awfully complicated to handle (and recharge), but I think the market for practical applications of H fuel is existing, so these ideas can be evaluated in practice. Also, not every invention has to save the world. So this paste might become useful for drones or in spacecraft. Depending on the energy density it might even be very usable for electrified air travel.

usrusr 6y ago
If storage losses are sufficiently low and the converter hardware is small/cheap enough maybe the process could also find a market as a sealed system, a factory-recyclable single use battery. How about a 3HU rack form factor that if installed in groups automatically coordinates depletion to oldest-first? Main market would be what is currently served by rarely refueled backup generators but it could have a huge long tail of undiscovered use cases wherever power density of batteries is insufficient and diesel generators suffer from noise or bad maintenance, but where fuel price isn't the main concern. Pricing model could be as easy as implementing effectively fuel + rent with a deposit that shrinks over time (blockchain the device log if it makes you feel better somehow). Once established for server rooms, fishing cabins and whatever other niche it will find it might even end up mainstream with BEV that opt for just offering an RX rack over killing range anxiety with half a ton of extra rechargeable that is never really needed. Approaches like this are usually made impossible by chicken/egg problems, but if it starts in a niche both technology and distribution can grow organically. Remember how Tesla was "the laptop battery car" while incumbents insisted on starting all their BEV projects (they did exist) by reinventing the battery?

goda90 6y ago

The military has worked on a similar concept with a metal powder + water to produce hydrogen on the fly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-based_nanogalvanic_alloys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-based_nanogalvanic_a...

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

I've wondered if aluminum powder could be used in this way. It's the most common metal in the world, cheap and available.

gioscarab 6y ago

1) What happens to the waste? 2) How much energy is required to make the paste?

frankus 6y ago

I'm trying and failing to come up with a use case where this is more practical than a rechargeable (and/or swappable) battery in a scooter. Refueling something like this would be faster than recharging, but if "quick recharge" is part of your requirements then it's straightforward to make a scooter battery swappable and maybe even standardized across brands. Power outlets are ubiquitous, and these things just don't use enough energy to be more than a rounding error on anyone's electric bill (100 (scooter) km worth of energy is roughly the difference between washing your hands in hot water instead of cold water for 30 seconds). There might a weight savings but lithium ion is something like 60 grams per kilometer of range for a light, slow vehicle. So a reasonable range battery is not prohibitively heavy even for a vehicle that you have to carry. I'm sure there's a use case for this stuff, and scooters are trendy right now, but I don't think the two are a good match.

airstrike 6y ago
From the article, one other use case are drones, in which case even minor weight savings can be extremely valuable.
tom_mellior 6y ago
Based on the article and some guesses, potential advantages to swappable batteries might be: weight (as you mention); cheaper/more environmentally friendly materials; lower risk of spontaneous combustion; less dangerous stuff leaking out when the unit is breached.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  LFP is as safe as it comes, and the density is hitting sweet spot for scooeter distances.
lovemenot 6y ago
What is a scooter? A skateboard with a handle or a small motor bike? I suspect Fraunhofer is talking about the latter, and you the former.

beyondcompute 6y ago

Really exciting news! I am a big believer in both small electric vehicles as the future of urban transportation and hydrogen as a better energy storage mechanism than lithium batteries. :)

ohiovr 6y ago

Is the waste product Magnesium Oxide?

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

- small vehicles aren't taken far (otherwise it's exhausting), so easily achievable 50-100 mile ranges are just fine - small vehicles will have small, quickly, easily, cheaply rechargeable batteries, likely easily recharged from even plain old wall sockets - LFP batteries will probably get good/cheap/dense enough to handle almost all 50-100 mile small vehicle ranges, its doubtful a hydrogen engine will get cheap enough soon enough - and again, LFP and EV/battery tech is in the mainline of economies of scale, buildout, production, and cost cutting, and will be for a decade more. This stuff will need to compete at a price point 50% lower or less than today's. - and it still has the sourcing problems. green hydrogen still smacks of the "clean coal" whitewash with a different label

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Ah chemistry is pretty neat. Presumably there is a process to take the left over magnesium hydroxide and convert it back into metallic magnesium? Their explainer[1] doesn't say much about that part of the process. (note it looks like you can bake it at 332 degree C to get magnesium oxide. (can you tell I'm not a chemist?) I think it would be helpful to have the entire fuel cycle laid out somewhere. That said, the operational infrastructure requirements for this seem to be much easier to satisfy with off the shelf technology than hydrogen storage which, frankly, is really really hard. [1] https://www.zess.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/zess/documents/POWERPASTE_WHITE_PAPER_2019.pdf https://www.zess.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/zess/documen...

s0rce 6y ago
There are a few industrial processes used to convert magnesium oxide to metal, for example the Pidgeon process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgeon_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgeon_process) which I still remember learning about in my Materials Science undergrad in Toronto. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium I suspect some variation of these processes could convert the spent fuel back to metal and then the hydride form or something like that.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Thank you. That is excellent information. I wonder if anyone has looked into concentrated solar as the heat source for small batch magnesium production using that method.
  - s0rce 6y ago
    Appears so: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652619319134 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596... Although, looks like much of this is done with hydroelectric processes (same with Aluminum production).
    - ChuckMcM 6y ago

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Used to work at the Leibniz institute in Dresden, near where this research at the Fraunhofer institute on POWERPASTE is happening. Not sure why they are trying to brand in all caps, but highly recommend adding Dresden to your bucket list post Covid. Most beautiful city I have experienced.

ncmncm 6y ago
... and all built since 1945, an as-exact-as-possible copy of the city that had previously existed, in the same place, in 1943. It took decades of devoted work by thousands of people who loved their city, and needed to realize it again before they took their memories to the grave.

oh_sigh 6y ago

Why don't we "just" synthesize hydrocarbons similar to what are present in gasoline/diesel/etc? We already have all the infrastructure for using, handling and distributing it.

ma-int 6y ago
Because the well-to-wheel efficiency of internal combustion engines isn't that good to begin with. Add lossy synthesation and it gets even worse. If we had unlimited, clean power (hello fusion!) it might be viable.
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  It is called solar. Wonder it is not allowed er Sahara or other desert.

Tepix 6y ago

So, creating the Powerpaste is the hard thing?