[PLUG-TALK] Chemical hydride slurrys...

[Michael Robinson]

Lithium hydride slurry seems very interesting as a hydrogen 
distribution medium.  It can be transported through pipelines
at standard temperature and pressure and apparently stays 
stable for days and days.  If it can be transported in the 
current gasoline tanker trucks and it is truly safer than 
gasoline, what is stopping it's widespread use?  Another 
slurry, magnesium hydride slurry, is apparently being studied 
as well.  I suppose magnesium is more common than lithium and 
thus cheaper.

The popular alternative to solving the hydrogen distribution 
and production problems is to develop super high capacity 
lithium ion batteries.  Well, don't batteries no matter 
what type you are talking about have to be disposed of at 
some point?  Apparently, the cost of hydride slurries is 
competitive with the cost of manufacturing and transporting 
gasoline where fuel cells theoretically work forever as 
long as you can provide fuel.  Okay, current fuel cells
use too much precious metal and they don't last long 
enough to be practical for the price of their 
manufacture.  Still, Lithium is fairly rare if I'm not
mistaken where it is unlikely that enough will be mined
any time soon to produced a million PHEV's.  And really,
a million vehicles is what the auto makers need to be
talking about to make a real difference.

Yes, fuel cells have to come down in price.  In the 
meantime though, the internal combustion engine can be 
modified to run on a mixture of hydrogen and ethanol or 
hydrogen and gasoline.  If the production of hydrogen 
via renewable sources of energy takes off, this will 
really make sense.

The problem with the attached document is that it's 9
years old.  If there was so much success with a 
chemical slurry 9 years ago, where is the technology 
at now?  How are efforts to commercial chemical
hydride slurry progressing?  If the 300 mile barrier
can be broken for hydrogen only transport and it can
be done without a high pressure hydrogen tank, that's
good news.
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