October 9, 2016

Black Mirror Official Trailer - Season 3 Starting October 21, Netflix

Black Mirror- the Twilight Zone for the 21st century

Black Mirror is a British television anthology series created by Charlie Brooker that features speculative fiction with dark and sometimes satirical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies.

In November 2012, Black Mirror won Best TV Movie/Miniseries at the International Emmy Awards. International Emmys are for TV series "produced and initially aired outside the US."



"The Future is Broken"

Only 12 more days...

October 7, 2016

Saturday 10.08 is National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day

2nd Annual National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day October 8, 2016

National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day was created to help raise awareness of a clean energy technology that is here now. October 8th (10.08) was chosen in reference to the atomic weight of hydrogen (1.008)

Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA), its members, industry organizations, and state and federal governments are commemorating National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day with a variety of activities and events across the country.



See the latest developments below:

Fuel Cell And Hydrogen Energy Association Partners With Toyota To Bring Mirai Fuel Cell Vehicle To Taste Of D.C. http://thetasteofdc.org/

Fuel Cell Vehicle Ride And Drive At San Francisco Fleet Week

FCHEA Thunderclap For National Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Day Reaches Its Goal

NREL's Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure Research: Year In Review

Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell Drivers Accumulate More Than One And One-Half Million Zero-Emission Miles In Celebration Of Second Annual National Hydrogen Day, October 8th



3 Questions With A ‘Founding Father’ Of Hydrogen And Fuel Cells: Byron McCormick

Nuvera Demonstrates Electrochemical Hydrogen Compressor For Premiere Fueling Event

Air Products To Display Hydrogen Fuel Vehicle At Da Vinci Science Center On October 8 To Observe National Hydrogen And Fuel Cell Day

U.S Senate Passes S.Res 573, Declaring Oct 8, 2016 National Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Day LINK

MORE: http://hydrogenandfuelcellday.org/

Get the latest news and updates:

#HydrogenNow

#FuelCellsNow

FCHEA is the trade association dedicated to the commercialization of fuel cells and hydrogen energy technologies. Fuel cells deliver clean, reliable power to leading edge corporate, academic and public sector users. For more information, visit http://www.fchea.org.





Wasserstoff und Brennstoffzellen = Jobs

October 6, 2016

Hydrogen-powered passenger ferry in San Francisco Bay is possible, study says

Phys.org, 10/6/16

Nearly two years ago, Sandia National Laboratories researchers Joe Pratt and Lennie Klebanoff set out to answer one not-so-simple question: Is it feasible to build and operate a high-speed passenger ferry solely powered by hydrogen fuel cells? The answer is yes.


An artistic rendering of the proposed San Francisco Bay Renewable Energy Electric Vessel with Zero Emissions (SF-BREEZE). A Sandia National Laboratories-led study found that a high-speed, hydrogen-fueled passenger ferry is feasible. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories

The details behind that answer are in a recent report, "Feasibility of the SF-BREEZE: a Zero Emission, Hydrogen Fuel Cell High Speed Passenger Ferry." SF-BREEZE stands for San Francisco Bay Renewable Energy Electric Vessel with Zero Emissions.

"The study found that it is technically possible to build a high-speed, zero-emission hydrogen-powered ferry. We also believe this can be done with full regulatory acceptance," said Pratt.

"In the course of the study, we examined over 10 major issues where feasibility was initially unknown. SF-BREEZE sailed through them all," added Klebanoff...snip

..."This is a game changer. We can eliminate environmental pollution from ships," he said. "This could have a major impact on every shipyard in the country."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-hydrogen-powered-passenger-ferry-san-francisco.html

Brennstoffzellen sind die Zukunft

October 3, 2016

Hydrogen could become the new fuel for cooking – here’s how

The Conversation, Evangelia Topriska - September 29, 2016 (Creative Commons License)

“Too much dirt,” says Justine about the difficulties of cooking with charcoal for her household of five. She’s a mother and market trader in the town of Sogakope in south-east Ghana, and referring to the soot that is produced because charcoal doesn’t burn completely. The reason she still uses it? “Cheap,” she shrugs.

Justine’s neighbour Janet is also complaining. She cooks with firewood but it produces too much smoke. It is a typical problem in a country where most cooking involves burning fuels like these. Women do most of the cooking and collect the fuel, and they are becoming more and more aware of the dangers of air pollution in the home.

As many as three billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South East Asia still primarily use fuels like these for cooking, and 4m die every year from indoor air pollution. It is the fourth highest cause of death after HIV/AIDS, lack of clean water and tuberculosis. That’s more than malaria, by the way.


Home on the range, Ghanaian style. Evangelia Topriska

To address these dangers and also the increasing costs and carbon emissions from such fuels, since 2010 I have been involved in research to develop and test an alternative: hydrogen gas produced by solar powered electrolysis.

Solar hydrogen

The vision is that countries would supplement or even replace central power plants that burn gas, coal or nuclear fuels by installing solar farms that collect the sun’s energy with arrays of photovoltaic panels. Some of the electricity would be diverted to large electrolysers that would produce hydrogen by passing electric current through water.

You then distribute the hydrogen to households for cooking. This could be by pipeline in a similar way to how countries like the UK receive natural gas at present. Or it could be through storage containers – compressed gas canisters or ideally low-pressure metal hydride tanks. Households would then use modified gas stoves adapted to safely burn the gas.

Hydrogen is a clean and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. It has no carbon emissions and offers important improvements in health and quality of life. It also reduces deforestation for firewood and charcoal. Basically, you are cooking with water.

We looked at how such a system would work in three countries where most cooking is done with fossil fuels: Ghana, Jamaica and Indonesia. Most Ghanaians cook with firewood, coal and animal dung, while a small percentage use LPG. Indoor air pollution is a particularly murderous problem, especially for poorer people. When households get wealthier, they swap charcoal and firewood for LPG.


Charcoal market in Ghana. Evangelia Topriska

In Jamaica, most households cook with LPG but have to endure high costs from importing it into the country. In Indonesia, most cooking is done by firewood, followed by LPG and kerosene. Energy poverty is a major social issue, with the poor forced to use both pollutant energy sources and inefficient traditional cooking devices.

In each country we envisioned a system where a small solar farm distributed electrolytic hydrogen to rural communities of 20 households. We were able to show that you could achieve very significant reductions in CO₂ emissions. Jamaica is now trialling a small-scale system using compressed hydrogen gas cylinders while there have been discussions about doing something similar in African countries.

The main drawback at present is the capital cost, particularly if you use metal hydride storage. It has the advantage of being safer than distributing hydrogen under high pressure, but is prohibitively expensive at present. By my calculations, the cost per household for this system in Ghana is £2,171 a year for everything including distribution, the stove, solar power and electrolysis. Setting up such a system would clearly require substantial state or organisational support. Use compressed hydrogen and it comes down to £404 a year – hence the Jamaican trial.

The good news is that costs should fall in the coming years as demand for hydrogen storage increases – witness the fall in the price of solar panels in the past decade. If the global shift towards a hydrogen economy becomes a reality, metal hydride technology will surely move in the same direction. The cost of electrolytic hydrogen is already projected to keep falling year after year, for example.

It may be between ten and 20 years before cooking systems like these can become a reality on a large scale, but the potential is clear enough: if we can overcome the cost issues, there is a viable way of tackling an age-old killer and making a big difference to the environment. Justine and Janet just need to hang on.

Source: https://theconversation.com/hydrogen-could-become-the-new-fuel-for-cooking-heres-how-66241

Republish this article

We believe in the free flow of information. We use a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives licence, so you can republish our articles for free, online or in print.

Evangelia Topriska
Assistant Professor in Architectural Engineering, Heriot-Watt University

Heriot Watt provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

Disclosure statement

Evangelia Topriska's study into alternative cooking systems was funded by the European APC and the Caribbean & Pacific Research Programme for Sustainable Development.

The potential to generate solar hydrogen for cooking applications: Case studies of Ghana, Jamaica and Indonesia
Evangelia Topriska http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116303627



Katika Afrika, Hidrojeni ni namba moja

October 2, 2016

Guardian: Hydrogen cars and electrolysers: the dawn of Australia's hydrogen economy?

Two large-scale hydrogen facilities in the ACT could mark a turning point in the use of clean tech for transport and heating

The Guardian, Sunday 2 October 2016

The hydrogen economy has been a long time coming. The use of hydrogen as a replacement energy source for oil and gas has been talked about since the early 1970s when the term was first coined by an engineer at General Motors in the US.


Tanks marked with O2 for oxygen and H2 for hydrogen, part of the electrolysis installations, at a hybrid power plant in Germany. Photograph: Bernd Settnik/EPA

It still hasn’t really arrived. And doubters remain. They point to the heavy infrastructure needed to support the technology, the huge amount of energy it consumes, and wonder how it can compete with the falling costs of wind and solar energy, and the surging interest in electric vehicles (EVs) .

Ironically, it is those very factors that are making the idea of a hydrogen economy appealing again. Wind and solar provide cheap energy, EVs are perfecting the drive trains [the power delivery system from engine to wheels] that hydrogen cars will use, and there have been significant technology breakthroughs making the hardware needed to make hydrogen much more cost-competitive.

Now it appears that in Australia, the hydrogen economy is going to have its first home in the Australian Capital Territory. Having put in place the architecture and the contracts to ensure that the equivalent of 100% of the electricity needs are sourced from wind and solar by 2020, the Labor government in the ACT is looking at how that clean energy can be used for transport and heating.

The environment and energy minister, Simon Corbell, recently announced that the two companies – Spain’s Union Fenosa and France’s Neoen – that won bids to provide electricity to build large wind farms to supply the ACT will invest $180m to develop hydrogen facilities...snip

...Heron says using electricity at low cost means fuel for hydrogen cars might be around 75c/litre....snip more:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/03/hydrogen-cars-electrolysers-dawn-australia-hydrogen-economy

~50 kWh = 1 Kg H2, 1 Kg H2 = ~70 Miles of range for one 4,000 lb car + 4 200lb adults. That's value.



Oz: H2 is #1