Rich Diver for President!
Sandia Does it Again: Solar/Stirling/Hydrogen manufacturing

It seems like these days I have a Sandia story a week! And they do kinda deserve it, looking at all the milestones pass, regularly.... And today it has been announced that Sandia researcher Rich Diver (6218) has invented a whole new way to make hydrogen to power automobiles and homes!! Way To Go!!

His invention, the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5, for short), splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a simple, two-step thermochemical process (it acutaly sounds a lot like a stirling engine version of that Rothman Technique i gushed over last year) It's a stack of rings made of a reactive ferrite iron oxide materials. Every other ring rotates in opposite directions. Concentrated solar heat is reflected through a small hole onto one side of the stack of rings. The side of the rings in the sunlit area is hot, while the other side is relatively cold. As the rotating rings pass each other in between these regions, the hot rings heat up the cooler rings, and the colder rings cool down the hot rings. This arrangement results in a conservation of heat entering the system, limiting the energy input required from the sunlight. Steam runs by the rings on the cooler side causing a chemical reaction to take place, allowing the ferrite material to grab oxygen out of the water, leaving the hydrogen. The hydrogen is then pumped out and compressed for use. Rich Diver says: “We are combining a mechanical engine with a chemical producing device — something not done before to produce hydrogen.” This is still in early stages.. They talk about high yields of hydrogen but the testing has just begun... Expect to only see this come online over the next couple of years, still a major step has been taken!!


[source:the always amazing FuelCellWorks]