A sustainable global silicon energy economy is proposed as a potential alternative to the hydrogen economy. This first visualisation of a silicon energy economy is based on largescale and carbon-neutral metallic silicon production from major smelters in North Africa and elsewhere, supplied by desert silica sand and electricity from extensive solar generating systems. The resulting “fuel silicon...

Increasing scarcity of fossil fuels makes the deployment of hydrogen in combination with renewable energy sources, nuclear energy or the utilization of electricity from full time operation of existing power stations an interesting alternative. A pre-requisite is, however, that the safety of the required infrastructure is investigated and that its design is made such that the associated risk is ...

In the Hydrogen based economy, distributed power generation systems using fuel cell technology require modularity. This modularity in power generation can be achieved by process intensification of the equipments involved. The water gas shift reaction is an integral part of hydrocarbon based Hydrogen generation and the reaction is kinetically limited and hence occupies the largest volume. Proces...

Recent years have witnessed renewed interest in the hydrogen economy, with emphasis n the metal/hydrogen system and its application to energy conversion efforts. Two ndustrially important aspects are emphasized, viz. the amount of hydrogen stored and the ate at which it can be transferred (absorbed/desorbed) because they are crucial factors in he design and construction of electrochemical energ...

Energy is an inescapable part of today’s society and economy. Accomplishment of every work depends on the sufficient and incessant supply of energy. But the conventional fossil energy sources like oil are ultimately limited. Moreover, the increasing demand and flinching supply of oil has made the sustainable energy supply more vulnerable. So this vulnerability of conventional source of energy c...

Hydrogen holds great promise to provide clean energy, produce major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce or eliminate dependence on foreign oil. Although a complete transition to a hydrogen economy is decades away, significant advances are currently being made toward affordable, safe, and non-polluting energy based upon hydrogen. Recent news reports suggest that widespread hydroge...

A novel methodology for the economic evaluation of hydrogen production and storage for a mixed wind-nuclear power plant considering some new aspects such as residual heat and oxygen utilization is applied in this work. This analysis is completed in the context of a Hydrogen Economy and competitive electricity markets. The simulation of the operation of a combined nuclear-wind-hydrogen system is...

This paper reports an innovative foresighting study which aimed to construct a small number of credible hydrogen futures and pathways to them, in order to inform the prospective transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy. Combining backcasting and multi-criteria appraisal the authors developed a novel participatory expert stakeholder-led methodology to build and appraise a set of visions, whi...

Fuel cells have unique technological attributes: efficiency, absence of moving parts and low emissions. The Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) has attracted much attention due to its potential applications as a power source for transportation and portable electronic devices. With the advance of micromachining technologies, miniaturization of power sources became one of the trends of evolution of ...

This article presents a critical analysis of all the major pathways to produce hydrogen and to utilize it as an energy carrier to generate heat or electricity. The approach taken is to make a cradle to grave analysis including the production of hydrogen, the conversion of hydrogen to heat or electricity, and finally the utilization of that heat or electricity for a useful purpose. This methodol...