The (Possible) Future of Alternative Energy

Sponge! writes: "The stuff that turns oil into margarine. The stuff that made the Hindenburg float. The stuff that combines with oxygen to make water and with carbon to make methane. The stuff that sends the space shuttle skyward and could someday power your car, office building, house, cell phone, even your hearing aid. That "Stuff" is hydrogen, and according to Amory Lovins, it is the future of energy. Here is an interesting article on Lovins and his view of hydrogen as the number one fuel."

Comments

My thoughts about alternatives

[Kiro]

I love reading about alternatives to horribly invasive forms of energy we use today. This is a meta stop gap solution, a way of reducing peaking by bleeding compressed air to help the generators during peak usage. The crux of the issue remains, our power generation techniques are dirty and deprecated.
Most of quelling of useful technology is done by: the old boys club not wanting to give up on the profits, a lot of it is mis-information, and the remainder of the reason why we use horribly inefficient power sources is lack of attention (by our sheep like media).
I used to live near a nuclear power plant in Minnesota. I don't know why people are so afraid of good clean nuclear power. There used to be a lot of cancer there, and everyone jumped on the power plant, but it was shown that most of the cancers were not related to the power plant at all, there was solvents being dumped into the local water supplies that were causing intestinal cancer. People don't understand radiation cancers always occur in statistical rings, that certain percentage of the people a certain distance get some very specific cancers. Nevertheless, even after the nuclear power plant was vindicated - the media failed to report that the solvents killed the people, not the power plant.
Anyways, here we are burning coal and fossil fuels all day long. Fuel cells, gyroscope technology, ceramic engine and electric cars are getting the kibosh due to the retrofitting costs. And we burn, burn burn.
Today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2001, Coal and Utility companies are lobbying the ever-environment-hating White House to reduce the clean air rules on power plants. Cheney said the administration energy policy will focus on more output for oil and natural gas.
They can continue to sell us electricity at higher prices, cut the cost, pollute the air, and keep real technology from proliferating.
Some say time is the fire in which we burn. My time is running out

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Hydrogen as energy storage/transfer medium?

[Goonie]

That article was singularly uninformative, but it strikes me as possible that in the future instead of electricity transmission wires, electricity generation plants will simply electrolyse water, and we'll turn the hydrogen back to energy in domestic fuel cells.

The benefits are considerable:

• no transmission losses (except for leakage and pumping costs)
• the ability to deliver it in trucks to remote areas, or even ship it between continents, just like oil.
• No need for peak load generators, because you can just store a surplus of hydrogen during low-demand times and release it during peak periods.
• Very efficient at fuel-cell end - most of the waste heat runs the household hot-water system.

Is such a system ever going to be feasible?

He's fission and I bit

[Mandelbrute]

I don't know why people are so afraid of good clean nuclear power.

Chenobyl, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and that power station in France where all of those people died (from liquid sodium) during the decommisioning.

Three Mile Island particularly showed that the people who were in charge of the plant should probably not be trusted with anything as dangerous as a motor vehicle - the contractors x-rayed the same weld joint dozens of times (and changed the id numbers) instead of inspecting the whole plant because they knew that no-one would check up on them.

Fission is clean power to public relations people and a government that wants a good source of radioactive material for weapons, but to engineers it is very dirty power that needs to be very carefully contained in case it gets out and kills everything near the powerplant.

The financial cost of construction and decomissioning nuclear power plants is enormous - that price may come down after a few more have been decommisioned, but for now it is an expensive form of power over the life cycle of the plant. All of those rare earths and hi-tech materials are not cheap - and everything used in the steam cycle is going to be radioactive enough to cause storage problems for more than a lifetime. The environmental costs have been enormous in the Ukrane, and may be high in other places in the future.

Re:He's fission and I bit

[Mandelbrute]

Grond had some interesting points, and I replied:

First, engineers do not regard nuclear power as a dirty source of energy that must be contained, lest it kill everyone.

Perhaps I should remove the word "dirty" from that line to make it more accurate. Containment is, of course, vital in the context of nuclear fuel.

Those engineers regard nuclear power as an extremely safe, potentially cheap form of power

The ex-patriate Russian turbine engineer I've talked to a couple of times had very different views on the subject. In the ex-USSR there was occasionally dodgy state-run engineering, in the US you sometimes have an unsupervised lowest bidder during a recession - either way the lowest common denominator is not good in a very dangerous system. The Indonesian nuclear power station engineer that I talked to had some stories about some odd attitudes to radiation safety (doing a lot of radiography with neutron sources and things like that).

The total number of American deaths from nuclear power is incredibly small

Interesting that you qualified that statement by nationality, but yes, the total number of deaths is lower than that in the very large coal, oil and natural gas industries. Chenobyl, however, did affect a large number of people.

Second, nuclear power plants can be built very cheaply.

In comparison to what other forms of power? The exotic materials required push up the constuction cost, which is offset by the lower fuel costs, but the extremely high cost of decommissioning a plant adds in a major cost as well to produce something that is not very cost effective in terms of producing power. The decommisioning cost will most likely go down and perhaps someone will be funded again to solve the waste storage problem, but currently those problems push nuclear power generation into the catagory of a good idea that doesn't quite work. Nuclear power stations are only built by nations that want to be self-sufficent and don't have other resources, or nations that want to build atomic weapons. Britain cancelled the construction of a nuclear power plant a few years ago on economic grounds, you'll find something article about it in a 1996 "New Scientist" magazine (I wish they had put stuff on the web back then).

Nuclear power plants can be cheap

Example please. The only cost breakdown I've seen was for the unbuilt British plant listed in a "New Scientist" article - and that one was very expensive in comparison to a coal fired plant. They didn't really need it since they left the cold war early.

Third, the water used in the steam cycle is extremely clean.

True, it has to be or it destroys your pipework. I'm talking about the pipework that is exposed to the water that is heated by the rods (the radioactive steam cycle, for plants that are built that way) - eventually neutron sources (like that water that is converted to heavy water by radiation) irradiate the pipework, making it radioactive and a furthur waste problem. Similar things happen in plants with other liquids in the loop that is exposed to the fuel. Obviously the steam that goes through the turbines has never touched the fuel, and the cooling water that runs through the cooling towers doesn't touch the turbine.

After testing the water, the chemists would often wet their whistles with the excess

Probably safe, but very bad practice. In a lot of cases it is a good idea to add some things (hydrazine? can't remember) to reduce the corrosion rate of the pipework, and that may make the water toxic. The water may be "distilled" by definition (since it has condensed out of steam, but it is rarely pure, and you don't really want it to be.

The steam (water vapor, technically) put off by cooling towers is likewise incredibly pure

Yes, it's far removed from radioactive material, except for incidents like Sellafield where an accident happened.

Perhaps you meant the coolant itself?

Yes - that's the material that has become highly radioactive in the past (also creating other radioactive materials) and created problems with decommisioning. From what you said it looks like some advances have been made in that area.

The majority of your fears (and the public's fears) about nuclear power are unfounded.

There's a lot of hysteria, but I strongly dispute the discription of nuclear power as "clean".

An accident in a coal fired power station or oil refinery can kill a few people, but an accident in a nuclear power plant makes the entire continent worry - just ask a few europeans how "clean" they think nuclear power is.

Why do I feel justified in my opinion? I've read about the subject (a long time ago now) and talked to a couple of engineers from nuclear power stations - one that I was working with and another that I was teaching (about ceramics - so not much to with the subject). I'm not in opposition to nuclear reactors, since we need a source of radioactive materials for a variety of reasons (medical etc), and I've used an Iridium isotope to examine weld joints at an oil refinery, and thick welded test plates. I've talked to one of the people that worked on the "synrock" project for containing nuclear waste (it probably works, but we'll never know). I've also worked in coal fired power stations, alongside people that work in the research facility attached to my nations small reactor. What I do think is that using very large quantities of radioactive material is a dangerous and expensive exercise. Ask the Swedes and Fins how much they are spending to prop up the reactors in the old USSR - it's bound to be on public record somewhere. I've got no idea how much in US Federal government funds goes into propping up the US nuclear power industry - have you ever wondered why they pay so much for weapons grade materials if nothing else? It looks like a subsity to me to keep a weapons production system and some jobs.

He's 'fission' and you bit, but then I bit off of your line

Yes, it is a bad pun, but I don't consider any of this thread to be a troll - just offtopic.

Fission is not an alternative energy, and I am not convinced that a lump of plutonium is any more "clean" than coal or oil or the HF acid used in oil refining. If the HF gets loose people die. If the plutonium gets loose a lot of poeple die, and keep dying unless they stay away or until it's cleaned up. There's more to environmental issues in power generation than carbon dioxide, NOx and SOx.

Liquid fuels are far more practical

[cryptochrome]

For all it's good points, people often gloss over the one big dealbreaker - hydrogen is a gas. And a very, very small gas as well, which has a tendency to work it's way even through metal containers, making them brittle in the process. In a nutshell, it's difficult to store. Even if you overcome that with tanks on cars or buildings, what are you going to do for smaller devices like lawnmowers or whatnot? If you run out of gas on the road, you won't be able to just walk to the nearest station to fill up a tank.

The fact is, for practical purposes, gases are difficult fuels, even relatively easy ones like LPNG. We need a liquid alternative that we can make in a renewable fashion, even if it doesn't trigger as many buzzwords. Methanol would be ideal for most purposes. Alternatively, rather than using hydrogen and oxygen we could use the easier-to-store sytem of ammonium and nitrous oxide. That produces water and nitrogen as a byproduct.

Storage Systems

[SpeedBump0619]

The primary problem with Hydrogen as a fuel source is not generation (which can be accomplished in large facilities dedicated to the task), but rather in safe, efficient delivery.

One of the most interesting systems I have seen recently is the Powerballs system. It does appear to be a well considered, functional, and (most importantly) *available* system. I don't think this is anything (scientifically) extraordinary, but it is available now.

Hopefully the site will take a slashdotting, they deserve a little publicity, and I'd like to see what others think of the basic idea...I'm not enough of a chemist to understand the efficiency or practicality of their method.

Re:My favorite trait of H...

[mallie_mcg]

I wonder how much if at all a Hydrogen based enerygy system would alter the weather, think of all the cars, sure they are emitting 0 pollutants, (barring a bit of Ozone from the electric motors, possibly some lubricants too [less than IC engine i know]) but what effects to the weather could/would happen? Would cities become really really humid or would it all be A OK?

Also do these vehicles store the water, and plug into the power socket to charge? Or do you need to fill them up with water? Or just with H2 [02 comes from the air for the purpose of making h20]? Where do you get nice clean water from so that deposits dont build up in your tank?

Will cheaper fuel eliminate our need for Oil?

[T. Will S. Idea]

A quote from the article:

Imagine a world where ...
"OPEC is out of business because the price of oil has fallen to five dollars a barrel,"

Currently the vast majority of commodity chemicals are made from crude oil. That means most everything you own, the synthetic fibers in that cotton blend shirt, the plastic in your keyboard, the tires on your car, down to the aspirin that you take after staring at the computer screen all night; all of it is made from oil.

If oil prices dropped to $5 a barrel, the chemical companies would still crack the oil to get at the compounds that they are interested in, and we would be left with a lot of gasoline. What would we do with that? Burn it? Give it away?

This is why oil is such an integral part of our world. Finding a cheap alternative fuel source is only part of the solution.

Re:My favorite trait of H...

[Dyolf Knip]

I wonder how much if at all a Hydrogen based enerygy system would alter the weather, think of all the cars, sure they are emitting 0 pollutants

Very good question. Even the smallest effect from a Hydrogen car would be multiplied by the millions of vehicles out there. But really, fog from H2 cars is better than smog from gas cars any day.

Also do these vehicles store the water, and plug into the power socket to charge? Or do you need to fill them up with water? Or just with H2

It'd be really silly to have the car store water and then charge from a socket. The whole point is to use H2 as a battery to power the car. How you 'charge' that battery is up for grabs. I imagine that the most efficient thing to do would be do make the hydrogen at industrial or even home-based systems and then fill-er-up with fresh tanks of H2. That way, you can build more efficient water-breaking systems and not worry about making them portable. See the arguments about electric cars charged from the grid vs ones that generate their own oomph from gas or whatever.

However, if solar panels become reasonable useful, it might indeed be feasible to put everything in the car. Start off with a tank full of hydrogen and an empty one of water. As it uses the H2 to drive, the car uses solar power to break up the waste water and fills up the H2 tank. It's not quite a perfect system, since you may do a lot of night driving or park in a garage and thus end up with all water and no hydrogen, in which case you'd have to tank up with H2. The system would also leak a small amount of water, which I supose could be replaced from capturing rainfall. Depeding on the efficiency of the electrolysis and solar cells, it becomes something between a gas mileage enhancer and a true self-contained car. But still, being able to drive for a few thousand miles before having to stop for fuel would kick ass to an amazing degree.

Profitability

[Once&FutureRocketman]

Soory Greenies, that's the way it works. You want to save the enviroment, prove to someone with dollars that there is more dollars to be had and quickly.

Couldn't agree more. It's been done. Read Natural Capitalism by (among others) Amory Lovins.

Or, to paraphrase The Natural Step, every business, regardless of industry, produces only two things: Product, and non-product. Selling product makes money. Non-product is, at best, worthless and is frequently a liability.

The ratio varies by industry of course, but when you trace through the entire supply chain, usually only 5-10% of the materials stream winds up in product. Improving this figure is a huge opportunity to add money to the bottom line, and generally speaking, there is alot of room for improvement!

As far as the political process goes, the main thing the government needs to do is to:

1) Stop subsidizing waste.

2) Correct the legal structures that currently allow industries to externalze costs. Just to give a timely example, a gallon of gas would cost alot more than $1.50 if the oil companies had to foot, say, 25% of the nation's defense budget every year to preserve access to the oil (the ethical considerations notwithstanding, of course.) As it is, the taxpayers pick up the tab instead. A whole lot of "fringe" and "green" technologies would be much more in demand if the users of current technology had to pay the true costs of that technology.

Re:Hydrogen for free

[CaptainCarrot]

OTEC is fairly limited as an electrical generation plant, which is what it was originally conceived as, because it really needs to be situated in tropical waters to work well. There's an experimental plant off the coast of Hawaii, which admittedly doesn't produce any net power largely because it's made from parts designed for other purposes and so operates suboptimally. (Its primary purpose right now is to validate a particular design of heat exchanger.) But the location requirements imposes insuperable tramsmission obstacles. It's just not practical to transmit the electricity from tropical oceans to the industrialized countries that need the power.

Hydrogen doesn't have that limitation, but it's also not now a mainstream power source. If proton exchange membrane fuel cells come into common use, that will undoubtedly change. But as things are, it's just not profitable enough to make it worth the capital investment.