The following letter sent to the President regarding his May 18, 2010, visit to Youngstown, Ohio, may have some relevance to this article:
Our Valley is honored you are coming to see us. You could not have come at a better time.
Yes, our unemployment is high and we have been doing rather badly economically ? but this started long before your administration.
Yet, we have remained hopeful and our hardship has brought us closer as a people and a community. Presently, we are optimistic. Some even dare to envision a future as bright as the days of our blast furnaces.
No, we do not make much steel here anymore, but God has blessed us with something almost as good: natural gas, and some 168 trillion to 516 trillion cubic feet of it in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. It is 1500 feet below our feet in a gas reserve known as the Marcellus Shale.
A drilling technique developed two years ago has double the production of gas wells. Indeed, it has even resurrected dead wells and brought them back to life at twice their original capacity.
To accomplish this we must pump a million gallons of water in each well. The problem is that when the water is pumped out, it is salty. Since we cannot dump the brine on the ground, we have been hauling it away for treatment. Some of it is treated here in Warren, Ohio, at the city?s water treatment plant.
Just two weeks ago, however, a ray of hope appeared. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst for generating hydrogen from
brine. This catalyst is 70 times cheaper than the finicky platinum one which is used now. For more information, see http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/catalyst-brings-cheap-hydrogen-f.html
It appears that this new catalyst can make it possible for us to turn the brine from our gas wells into hydrogen. The hydrogen in turn can be injected into ground-up woodchips, grass, or such other bio-matter to make diesel fuel. The hydrogen can also be mixed with other fuels to enhance their thermo efficiency. In the near future the hydrogen can even power our cars, trucks and trains. And let us not forget that presently the cheapest way to make hydrogen is from natural gas, of which we should soon have plenty.
There are legitimate concerns, however. Farmers near the gas wells fear that the new drilling technique will contaminate their water supply. We respect their worries and want no part of any contamination. We are thus seeking guidance from your Department of Energy to help us minimize the risk of this happening. After all, clean water is our most vital natural resource.
On the other hand we will be foolish not to utilize all available technology to tap into our enormous gas reserves. Doing so will provide jobs and fund our cities. Hopefully, it will also bring back our young people who have left for opportunities elsewhere. Our sons and daughters do not live here anymore. Neither do their friends. Yet, it was our schools and cities that invested in their education and upbringing.
To be sure, tapping our gas resources is important to all of us, young and old. It is also important to your Administration?s goal of energy independence. The Marcellus Shale holds enough natural gas to supply the entire United States for 20 years.
With the same dedication that we had made all kinds of steel the past hundred years, we are now ready to shift gears to make all kinds of energy -- from our very own soil, using our own wits and efforts.
Please join us.
Robert Dopp (right), a Marietta, Georgia researcher profiled here at SmartPlanet last fall, today announced a breakthrough electrolyzer that can produce hydrogen at less than the current cost of gasoline.
Dopp’s GridShift Inc is now backed by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures, He told SmartPlanet his unit can produce hydrogen for $2.51 per kilogram, using catalysts that cost just $58 per ounce. Most current units use platinum ,which costs $1,700 per ounce.
Dopp told SmartPlanet he was contacted by Khosla, who saw a white paper we linked to in our story, about a year before that article appeared in November. I was unable to interview Dopp at that time because he was in stealth mode, and instead linked to publicly-available information, including his Web site.
Unlike General Electric, which won a Popular Mechanics award for its 2006 electrolyzer design based on a technique called “sputtering,” Dopp says he has patented an electrochemical process to completely coat his highly porous electrodes with catalyst on all internal surfaces.
This allows hydrogen to be produced throughout the depth of the electrode, increasing efficiency and dropping production costs dramatically. For technical details, a whitepaper has been published at the Grid Shift Web site.
“That was the first step in getting the efficiency,” he told me. He’s now working on an alkaline fuel cell using the new electrodes, which will be followed by a complete hydrogen flow cell.
“The hardest part was the electrolyzer because it included the electrode coating process that will be used for the other segments of the project.”
Dopp has been working in this area all his life, having helped develop the zinc-air hearing aid battery during an 18 year career at Rayovac and acting as director of research for Electric Fuel Corp. before opening his own small lab in 2002. He has 37 issued patents and 18 more filed.
Khosla is a computer industry legend. He ran Sun until becoming a venture capitalist in 1983, and left Kleiner Perkins to open his own shop in 2006.
The implications of the work are enormous. Right now hydrogen is mainly produced with natural gas, meaning “green” fuel isn’t very green at all. India must also import petroleum to make ammonia for fertilizer.
Dopp hopes that, with a strategic partner’s help, which they are now seeking, GridShift can build units that could produce the raw material for ammonia, in India, using wind power and water.
He also foresees American consumers owning their own hydrogen generators the size of an office refrigerator. “Hydrogen is difficult to pipe or truck. The practical solution is to produce it at home.”
Dopp will discuss his patented technology with executives from other Khosla Ventures portfolio companies later this year at an annual conference the venture capitalist sponsors.
“Mr. Khosla has given us some guidance on the science, but mostly he has let us run with the ball,” Dopp concluded. “He’s an amazingly positive fellow.”
