Thread: production of h2

With Hydrogen being called the next big fuel, we have obviously to find a more efficient way to produce it than the thermodynamically useless and wasteful electrolysis of water. I waS thinking about the free radical splittng of HCl gas as used in the chlorination reactions of alkanes. BUt for that we need UV light which isblocked by the ozone layer. So is there any way to convert low frequency IR or visible light into UV light?

You can turn IR in to UV but it is very inefficient and you need a very intense IR source, like a laser and a special crystal to to the photon adding. I used to turn the output of my 1063nm (IR) YAG into 532nm (green) then into 360nm (UV) to pump my dye laser at 460nm (blue) (The wavelengths are approximate and just came from memory.)

Bottom line tunning IR into UV is not the way to go for getting H.

But keep thinking because we need good ideas.

Energy's add and energy is proportional to

In the crystal I add two IR photons

Then I add one IR with one green

So the UV photon I got was 355.67nm not 360nm like I wrote earlier.

I think generally it's extracted from oil. See wiki. Of course, that's sort of like curing herpes with more herpes

I think one should regard hydrogen more like an energy storage agent than a prime fuel. In this way, one could use solar energy to dissociate water and then ship the hydrogen just like it is being done with crude oil.

Originally Posted by saaz

thermodynamically useless and wasteful electrolysis of water

No it's not when you've got practically free & unlimited electricity in certain regions and can ship the H-fuel - unlike power grid - without transmission loss.

The regions are Chile and coastal British Columbia. They are already connected to the largest solar collector on Earth: the oceans. The energy flows as water falling onto mountain ranges, stores up in lake batteries, then is focused intensely down rivers.

No other scheme can compete.

yep, nature is still way ahead of human knowldge and intellegence.

But humans want to believe different, and are quite arrogant while nature doesn't care, just does its job.

H2 is only a fuel if its already there ready to be grabbed, like oil, but it isn't like that, we have to create it first, witch takes as much and most of the times even more energy as it will give back when its used again.

Just like a battery.

And Boifuel, is no sollution either, oil is also biofuel and its the problem, not the awnser.

Biofuel can be a solution. The idea with biofuel is that it's made from living plants that take much less time to grow than the millions of years it takes to make petroleum. Since plants basically grow with sunlight and carbon dioxide this can work out pretty well. (Of course, nothing's perfect, but it's much better than the mass release of carbon that's been trapped for eons.)

using biofuel just shifts the problem from global warming to teritorial and food wars, simply because thats already a problem and massive use of biofuel demands huge areas for crop grownt for this bioenergie, areas that otherwise would be used for people (and offcourse other flora and fauna) to live and eat out of.

Biofuel is only a good thing if you use useless biological waste products like food waste and such stuff.

But probably it will be possible to find/create bacteria that can produce H2, that could be a first step te create a real praktical kind of biofuel.

But i think it will take at least some 20 years for something like that to happen.