JP2020083745A - Creation of hydrogen from sand - Google Patents

Abstract

To provide: a substance, by searching for unknown substances for hydrogen generation; and a substance conversion device in which the yield is improved.SOLUTION: The problem is solved by: selecting unnecessary substances such as sand and wastes as substance for hydrogen generation; and adding electrostatic field and magnetic device to high temperature plasma device such as RF thermal plasma generator, solar light excited laser generator and plasma torch.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for producing hydrogen from sand or the like existing in a large amount in a desert or the like in order to enable a sustainable and renewable energy storage based on solar energy instead of conventional fossil fuel.

Mankind relies on fossil fuels for most of the energy it needs to sustain its current civilization. Since this fossil fuel emits a large amount of carbon dioxide, it raises the environmental temperature and causes environmental deterioration such as air pollution. Moreover, it is said that the fossil fuel reserves will not last for 100 years.

In the nuclear energy of light water reactors that do not emit carbon dioxide, uranium as a fuel also has a small reserve. Some experts have pointed out the need for a thorium molten salt reactor that uses thorium as an alternative energy source, but it has not been realized yet although it has been studied in China and India. (Tsukuba Economic Monthly Report, June 2018 issue, Masayuki Kumada)

Solar energy, wind energy, bioenergy, geothermal energy, etc. are being developed as alternative energy sources to fossil fuels in addition to nuclear power, but progress is slow except for solar energy in terms of quantity.

It is said that the power conversion density of solar energy falling on the earth is about 1 kW/m2. For example, the daily power generation in the Sahara Desert is about 6.7 kWh. The average value is about 6 hours of energy irradiation per day. The area of the Sahara Desert (Africa), the largest in the world, is about 10 million square kilometers = 10 x 10^12 m2, so if 1% of the land could convert from solar energy to electricity, the power generation capacity per hour is about 10 TW. Similarly, Arabian (Middle East) 2.6 TW, Gobi Desert 1.3 TW (Asia), Patagonia (South America) 0.7 TW, Great Patagonia (Australia) 0.7 TW, Kalahari Desert (Africa) 0. 6tw, Great Basin (North America) is 0.5TW. With a utilization rate of 1% in the major deserts, the total is 16 TW. By the way, about 1 GW is equivalent to one light water reactor. The total number of nuclear power plants in the world is 439, which is 11% of the total electric power ( http://feel-japan.net/?p=5511 ), so if there are about 4,000 nuclear power plants (or thorium reactors) Can supply electricity. This corresponds to 4TW. However, considering the amount of sunshine, if the weighting factor is set to 1/4 and the efficiency of the converter is set to 50%, the total power consumption can be covered if 32 TW of power can be generated. Since the energy of all vehicles is not included in this total power consumption, if this is the same energy as power, 64 TW is required as total energy=electric power energy+vehicle energy. When the utilization rate is 1%, the total amount of desert is 16 TW, so if we were to cover all the energy with sand energy, 4% of the area of the desert would be required.

The solar panel energy from solar energy has a short life of about 30 years, and the problem of disposal of used panels after the life is unsolved. Also, if the waste panel is left open, a voltage will be generated all the time, and there is a safety issue. Furthermore, since energy can be supplied only when there is sunshine, it is essential to store equal or more energy, but high-performance, large-capacity batteries (electric storage devices) are still in the developing stage. It is said that it will be 2100 when the reserves of lithium resources, which are the most advanced battery materials required for electric vehicles and mobile phones, will be exhausted, and it cannot be relied on. Currently, energy is a problem in terms of sustainability. In the first place, lithium batteries are charged with fossil fuels, and the reserves of lithium are limited, so the development of new batteries is essential.

On the other hand, legislation is being decided in the EU and China to replace cars that use fossil fuels as energy sources with electric vehicles due to the problem of carbon dioxide, which is a global warming gas, and most of the hydrogen itself supplied is fossil fuels. It is not made a solution at present under the condition that it is made using. Hydrogen production energy must be renewable.

Under the above circumstances, Takashi Yabe et al. devised a method of producing magnesium (reduction reaction) using a solar-excited laser of magnesium oxide (reduction reaction), reacting the produced magnesium with water to produce hydrogen, and actually developed a laser device prototype. Then, the sunlight was used to isolate magnesium and further commercialize the battery. The advantage of the method of US Pat. No. 5,124,728 is that the electric power for magnesium production can be directly supplied by renewable energy. Magnesium can be produced and regenerated from seawater any number of times. Drinking water can also be produced as a by-product.

According to Takashi Yabe's method, magnesium and water or an alkaline solution are prepared separately, and hydrogen can be generated when and where it is needed. Inconvenience is unavoidable in the plan of the present countries by supplying hydrogen to the user in the state of high pressure gas. The magnesium method was epoch-making in that it could solve the problem of hydrogen transportation. However, in the present invention, since magnesium oxide is separated from seawater and then pure magnesium is isolated by a laser, two steps are necessary.

The magnesium energy system is an excellent invention, but can we improve it further in this direction? Or is there another way to think of a better way? Is it possible to use magnesium as another substance and make it more nano-sized more efficiently? We thought. We have devised a one-step generation method in which the hydrogen generating substance is taken out by irradiating the sand with thermal plasma or by irradiating the sand with focused laser light. Since there are few generation steps, cost and time can be expected to be further reduced. Magnesium is also useful alone, but the difference is that desert sand was of little use value.

We noted that sand is considered to be a complex oxide mineral substance as a substance containing magnesium.

The material discussed by Yabe et al. does not contain silica (silicon dioxide) (Patent No. 5124728)). First, we added silica to the list of new substances for hydrogen evolution. As a result of the investigation, it was found that the nano-size of silica in rice husk may be high. The rice husk contained about 20% silica, and the formation of oxide silica was already known. Nano-sizing of minerals is essential for hydrogen generation. In particular, rice husk silica is even more advantageous because it can be less than 1 nm in size (undisclosed as know-how).

A further finding was that desert sands are silica-based but contain many magnesium and other minerals. Desert sand is a mass of minerals. In some cases, the sand is low in silica and high in calcium. When coral becomes sand, it is also a mineral and is included in the hydrogen generating substance. Sand has various components depending on the place. Many sands contain some multiple useful minerals. Most of the nano-minerals were found to generate hydrogen.

In the desert, solar energy and sand coexist. Sand is an oxide of complex minerals. By squeezing the luminous flux of sunlight, oxygen can be stripped off and only minerals can be isolated (separated). It is optimal as energy for electric vehicles because it can freely generate dense hydrogen and electricity by combining nano-minerals of water and sand when and where electricity is needed. It is important to note that water is not necessarily present in the desert as an energy store. It can be stored in the form of nano-minerals only.

The largest desert in the world (up to 10 million km2) Sahara (Morocco, Western Sahara, Moritania, Algeria , Republic of Mali, Niger, Tunisia, Libya, Chad, Egypt, Sudan) Of 11 countries).
The following is the Sahara desert sand.
The Sahara sand contains a small amount of CO3, but this is not a problem. Rather, carbon that is thermally decomposed and isolated is nanocarbon, so it may interact with minerals to assist hydrogen generation (NEDO Overseas Report No. 1094, 2013.4.17, http://www. nedo.go.jp/content/100522399.pdf).

As shown in the above table, the sand of the Sahara contains oxides of Si, Ca, Mg, Al, Na, etc. By heating these to high temperatures, nano-minerals with separated oxygen are formed. When this is reacted with water, hydrogen is generated.
The chemical formulas for the reaction of water with minerals isolated from the Saharan sand are shown below:
Since CO3 is decomposed and electrostatically separated, carbon dioxide gas is not generated.

Nanomaterials with a large surface area are excellent for enhancing the reaction effect. React with nano-minerals, not just with minerals and water. The physical properties of nanomaterials change not only with the increase in surface area but also with changes in voltage such as bandgap.

To generate various types of nano-minerals from oxidized mineral particles, the minerals that have been oxidized by high-temperature plasma are separated and rapidly cooled. This method is disclosed in the document "Technology for producing nanoparticles by high-frequency plasma method, October 2013 issue (Vol. 61 No. 10)". However, in these devices, many of the nanomaterials produced are removed from oxygen, isolated, and then returned to oxides upon cooling. To avoid this, at the plasma generation stage, the positive ions of minerals and the negative ions of oxygen are electrically separated by an electrostatic field immediately after the plasma is generated (the electrodes for that purpose are omitted in the drawing of the thermal plasma generator described later). I thought about the method.

It is desirable that the high temperature plasma generation part has a plasma temperature exceeding 10,000 degrees Celsius. An example of the functional diagram of an improved high-frequency plasma generator with excellent nano-mineral isolation function is shown in the figure. An outline will be given later in the section "Means for Solving Problems".

Three types of devices are used as prototypes to separate oxygen. Part 1: High-frequency thermal plasma heating Part 2: Takashi Yabe's solar-excited laser method, Part 3: Takayuki Watanabe's arc discharge plasma
line). These different heating methods are used properly depending on the target desert sand and the like. For example, glass is high-frequency thermal plasma, calcium is a solar-excited laser, and so on. Since sand has its own character, it is desirable to classify it by adding a desert name to the prefix. For example, sand sahara, sand gobi. Since all of these devices have the problem of recombination during cooling, it is necessary to separate positive and negative ions of plasma as in the electrostatic separation part of the present invention.

RF thermal plasma devices and plasma torch devices other than plasma generators such as solar-excited lasers are covered by electric power from a power company from the wall. Power companies will be supplied to the grid line from power generation such as solar panels. With the development of this equipment, the solar energy and sand energy containing various minerals of the present invention will be changed to all solar energy sources.

The present invention was devised to create hydrogen from sand, but this device is also effective for nanomineralization of rice husk silicon dioxide, waste glass, waste aluminum cans, zeolite, and the like. Discarded glass and aluminum cans have already been temporarily processed and require less additional energy. There is a special method devised by the author to make silica from rice husks even smaller than nano size (unpublished). Since this is a sub-nanomaterial that is not available, it is highly valuable. In addition, since zeolite and aluminum are the main components and zeolite is several tens of microns in size at the time of acquisition, it is cheap to handle. In addition, yellow sand as a pollutant originates from the desert, with 24-30% silicon, 7-12% calcium, 7% aluminum, 4-6% iron, 2-3% potassium, in descending order of mass. Magnesium contains 1-3%. The particle size of yellow sand is as small as a few microns, and it is also easy to make nanoparticles. A common element of all these substances is nanominerals.
From a broader perspective, the present invention can be restated as "creating electric power from sand" as "creating electric power from nano-minerals".

Means to solve the problem

The figure shows a schematic diagram of a nanoplasma generator from sand by thermal plasma. The sand raw material collected from the desert is supplied from the sand inlet 1. The same applies to other raw materials other than sand.

Plasma gas (Ar, O2/N2)/Carrier gas 2 is introduced into the heating part (RF plasma, solar-excited plasma or plasma torch) 3, and the sand is scanned into the high temperature plasma gas (the scanning mechanism and parts are shown in the figure. (Not shown) and heated to over 10,000 degrees Celsius. Scanning is a technology introduced in particle beam cancer treatment devices and the like, and a small-sized beam spot can be moved by a target and irradiated to irradiate a large area (2D) or volume (3D).
Minerals and oxygen are separated from the heated sand to maintain a high temperature. The boiling points of sand constituents vary:
The boiling point of magnesium oxide is 3600°C, the boiling point of aluminum oxide is 2977°C,
Boiling point of calcium oxide 2850°C, sodium oxide 1950°C, silicon dioxide 2230°C
Since magnesium has the highest boiling point, all other minerals can be isolated if magnesium can be isolated. According to Takashi Yabe, the inventor of the solar-excited laser of magnesium, a temperature several times as high as the boiling point is required to maintain the substance at a necessary temperature, and therefore, a plasma having a temperature of 10,000 degrees or more higher than the boiling point is required.

The water cooling chamber 4 rapidly cools the high temperature plasm to increase the production efficiency of the nanominerals 7. However, it is known that the isolated minerals are likely to be recombined and the production efficiency is lowered when the temperature is lowered. Generally, in the case of high-frequency thermal plasma, solar-excited laser plasma, and plasma torch, particle nano-formation and oxide formation cannot coexist. In order to avoid this difficult problem, electrodes are provided on the upper and lower parts of the heating part 3 so that an electric field can be applied (not shown in the figure), and the cations and anions of the plasma are spatially separated. Prevent recombination.

In this apparatus, a solenoid coil and a mirror coil, which are magnetic components, are installed in the heating unit 3 in order to further increase the density of plasma (not shown in the figure).

The isolated and cooled nanomineral 7 is captured by the mineral capture filter 6 while being exhausted from the vacuum exhaust port 5. The captured nano-minerals 7 of sand are taken out by a cassette type filter and placed in a storage container.

In the case where the basic structure of this device is a solar light pumped laser, the region of the ultra-high temperature part, which is the focus of the laser, is as small as about 1 mm and is considered to be almost a point. Since plasma is generated at points in an instant, the focus of the laser or the injected minerals is scanned to increase the interaction area of the laser and mineral oxides. As a result, the points can become faces and the generation efficiency can be increased.

Although the above explanation emphasized the composite nanominerals extracted from sand, it is possible to realize nanomineralization of silicon dioxide from rice husks, waste glass, waste aluminum cans, zeolite, yellow sand, etc. using the same method and the same device.

The invention's effect

According to the present invention, when sand in deserts and dunes of a barren land, which has been barren until now, becomes nanominerals and reacts with water, hydrogen is generated, which becomes a renewable battery to save energy. This will expand the renewable hydrogen supply method to fuel cells and open the possibility that the energy density will be several tens of times higher than the theoretical value of lithium batteries (Kansai University http://www.microwaveave). .Densi.kansai-u.ac.jp/face/framepage3.htm ). In particular, lithium has a small reserve, so composite nanominerals from sand will be essential as a substitute for lithium.

Major countries in the world (EC and China) have begun to legislate the conversion of fossil fuel vehicles to hydrogen energy vehicles, but there is no prospect of producing the required amount of hydrogen from renewable energy. Magnesium is an excellent proposal to answer this, but the complex minerals from the sand of the present invention are a variety of new ways to push this direction. In the present invention, sand, rice husk, waste aluminum, waste glass, etc., which have been useless until now, such as zeolite, which has been thought to be unrelated to energy, and yellow sand, which has been thought to be only harmful, are converted into nanomaterials. It is converted into a useful substance. The present invention allows transferable hydrogen generating materials to be used as renewable and sustainable energy. Moreover, it is a great advantage that its form is more compact than gaseous hydrogen, which is solid (nanomineral) and liquid (water).

In desert areas such as Africa and the Middle East, there is no residence or workplace as well as industry, but energy can be produced by sand, sunlight and water that have been material-converted by this device, and food, residence, food, etc. can be provided by air conditioning and plant factories. It will also be possible to create employment and provide a new place for people to live and work.

Hydrogen energy from the sand of the present invention is a new energy that can be replaced quantitatively by fossil energy (coal, oil, natural gas) and nuclear energy. Fossil fuels and uranium nuclear energy have only 100 years of life, but unlike the solar energy of the present invention, they can be stored and can be used as a power source while the sun is not irradiating.

In particular, the "sand battery" made of hydrogen from the nano-minerals from the sand of the present invention is likely to be the successor to the lithium battery, which has a small amount of resources and relies on fossil fuel energy together with the magnesium battery. Since electricity can be generated from sand, the sun, and water, it can be said that "electricity is generated from sand" in the present invention.

Method for producing nano-mineral using sand of the present invention

1, sand inlet 2, plasma gas (Ar, O2/N2)/carrier gas 3, heating part (RF plasma, solar light excited plasma, torch plasma)
4, water cooling chamber 5, vacuum exhaust port 6, nano-mineral capture filter 7, cooled nano-mineral

Claims (7)

A method of converting desert sand, which was infinitely long and useless, into hydrogen-generating nanomaterials using nanotechnology. Three types of high temperature plasma generators (RF heating, solar light excitation laser, plasma torch) that have been newly expanded/improved in order to efficiently realize claim 1. In order to cover the entire energy source of the high temperature plasma generator according to claim 2 with solar energy, a solar light pumped laser is used, or it is used as a power source for high frequency heating or a plasma torch after being converted into temporary power by solar power generation. , Two methods. The electrical method of claim 2 wherein an electrostatic electrode is added to prevent recombination of nanominerals with oxides. The magnetic method according to claim 2, wherein a solenoid or a mirror coil of a magnetic component is installed to increase the density and temperature of the thermal plasma. A method of increasing the interaction area by illuminating a surface from points by either scanning the focal point of the solar pumped laser of claim 2 or spatially scanning the jetted sand. The present invention provides a method for nanomineralizing silicon dioxide in rice husks, waste glass, waste aluminum cans, zeolite, and yellow sand, which is a pollutant, in addition to sand in deserts and dunes in the material selection of claim 1.