Importance of Turning to Renewable Energy Resources with Hydrogen as a Promising Candidate and on-board Storage a Critic
- PDF / 282,110 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 92 Downloads / 181 Views
0895-G05-03.1
Importance of Turning to Renewable Energy Resources with Hydrogen as a Promising Candidate and on-board Storage a Critical Barrier A.C. Dillon*, B. P. Nelson, Y. Zhao, Y-H. Kim, C. E. Tracy and S. B. Zhang National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd, Golden, CO 80401 *[email protected]
ABSTRACT The majority of the world energy consumption is derived from fossil fuels. Furthermore, the United States (US) consumption of petroleum vastly exceeds its production, with the majority of petroleum being consumed in the transportation sector. The increasing dependency on foreign fuel resources in conjunction with the severe environmental impacts of a petroleum-based society dictates that alternative renewable energy resources be developed. The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences are currently promoting a vehicular hydrogen-based energy economy. However, none of the current on-board storage technologies are suitable for practical and safe deployment. Significant scientific advancement is therefore still required if a viable on-board storage technology is to be developed. A detailed discussion of the benefits of transitioning to a hydrogenpowered automotive fleet as well as the tremendous technical hurdles faced for the development of an on-board hydrogen storage system are provided here. A novel class of theoretically predicted nanostructured materials that could revolutionize hydrogen storage materials is also presented.
INTRODUCTION Currently over 80% of the world’s energy consumption relies on fossil fuel resources. Furthermore, the United States now relies of foreign sources for the majority of the petroleum it consumes. Also, approximately one-half of the total world oil supply has already been consumed. It is therefore imperative for several reasons that renewable energy resources be developed. First, the environmental impacts of employing petroleum as a primary energy resource cannot be sustained. Also the increased dependence on foreign resources greatly threatens national security. Finally, if the current petroleum consumption rate is maintained all of the world oil supplies will be completely depleted. Thus the growing number of densely populated metropolitan cities with poor local air quality, and the increasing uncertainty associated with access to foreign fuel sources have spurred a Presidential initiative to implement hydrogen as an energy carrier for transportation needs. Hydrogen can be generated by a variety of means including the electrolysis of water using electricity derived from wind power, photovoltaics (PV) or by thermo-chemical processing of biomass. Hydrogen can then be reacted with oxygen in fuel cells to generate electricity, combusted in an engine to generate mechanical energy, or simply burned to generate heat. In each of these cases,
0895-G05-03.2
water is produced in a virtually pollution-free process. Thus, a hydrogen-based energy economy could supply a closed pollution-free cyc
Data Loading...
