New York company has a new way to make hydrogen

• New York City-based Signa says it has come up with a new--and fairly efficient--way to produce hydrogen, one of the vexing problems for boosters of the hydrogen economy.
• Conceivably, the company's technology could be incorporated into fuel cells that could generate enough electricity to run a cell phone for a week, or a car in emergency situations.
• The key is sodium, the ornery alkali metal that bursts into sparks when dunked in water.
• The sodium/water reaction can generate hydrogen (along with other byproducts).
• Signa has devised a way to mix sodium with silica gel or crystalline silicon to create a powder that essentially strips electrons from the sodium molecules in advance and stores them.
• More than 9 percent of a kilogram of the powder gets converted to hydrogen and little energy is lost through heat.
• "You toss it into water and it just bubbles," said Lefenfeld in an interview.
• It has delivered powders to chemical and drug manufacturers and is working with a fuel cell manufacturer to develop prototypes.
• Panasonic has started to conduct trials with hydrogen home-heating systems in Japan and Honda has obtained certification for a hydrogen car there.
• Others, however, note that the expense and energy involved in making and storing the gas can outweigh the benefits.
• It will first target a product--a powder that consists of sodium and crystalline silicon--at industrial chemical manufacturers who consume large quantities of materials, are intimately familiar with industrial chemical processes, and understand the promise (and pitfalls) of sodium.
• "Pharmaceutical companies will take several steps to get around using alkali metals.
• Currently, several companies have developed prototypes of methanol fuel cells and fuel cells that generate electricity by combining hydrogen with solid oxides.
• Methanol is flammable, and oxide fuel cells require a catalyst, which invariably reduces the efficiency of a reaction.