Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A Better Way to Get Hydrogen from Water

Technology Review via EGO OUT

The basic approach in high-temperature water splitting is to heat up an oxidized metal to drive off oxygen, then add water. In Davis's case, the starting material is magnesium oxide, and the reactions are facilitated by shuttling sodium ions in and out of it. "Without the sodium, the temperatures would go up well over 1,000 °C," Davis says. With it, the reactions work at temperatures of 850 °C or lower.
If he gets the temperatures much lower, a LFTR could use its heat to make hydrogen directly without the need to produce electricity first.

You could then use the hydrogen to synthesize ammonia.  ( That may require electricity, though.)  Then, the ammonia could be transportable to where it can be sold.  It could be split back into nitrogen and hydrogen and then put in liquid form at the point of sale.  That method would obviate the need to construct special infrastructure to ship the hydrogen.  Just ship it as ammonia.

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