Slashdot Mirror
NASA Reports Vast Hydrogen Reserves in Earth's Crust
Garin writes: "The Vancouver Sun is reporting that NASA scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen stored in the Earth's crust while they were trying to explain the presence of living bacteria. Could this be the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil? I hope so."
If only the oil companies would allow it...
Do you not think that there would just be a new group of powerful companies selling hydrogen instead?
not a chance.. not for a long time at least.
Forcing huge and multiple industries to completely re-tool for a new fuel source will first cause gigantic resistance. The oil companies will scream no way, the car companies will scream no way, and finally the consumer will scream no-way-in-hell!
Why the consumer screaming? simple.. GM,Ford,Toyota,etc... will intentionally hike prices even higher due to the "forced changes" making you $17,000 budget sedan cost $36,000 and the stupid SUV's costs soar even higher..
it wont happen, not in our lifetimes, and possibly not in our grandchildrens lifetimes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why wait for hydrogen to relieve the dependence on foreign oil. In the states there are thousands of farmers who cannot afford to eat. Why haven't ethanol powered automobiles showed themselves? Corn products seem like a great way to help improve the economy by helping out the farmers, providing new jobs, and lowering the dependence on petrol? What gives? Why are there no ethanol cars?
This hydrogen is molecularly trapped in Granite! 1 cubic meter releases 1000 liters of gas. Even if it did, the energy required to completely mill one cubic meter of granite is most likely more than the energy value of the gas.
2nd problem. Isnt 1000 liters exactly equal to the volume of one cubic meter? So where is all the granite?
I am in Vancouver literally across the street from the Vancouver Sun. Nobody reads it for a reason....
Well, they do have synthetic oil for lubricants yuou know. Supposedly they work better but are more expensive, probably because the oil is brought up from the earth and sepparated into fuel lubricant and other forms so oil is cheaper now. That and the fact that synthetic lubricants aren't used as much so less is produced so it is a higher cost. IANAC (I Am Not A Chemist) but as far as I can figure, oil does not play a part in the synthetic oil lubricants, otherwise, why would they call it synthetic?
Offtopic, but there's something that's been bothering me for wa while: Perpetually the US Administration talks about reducing the dependence on foreign oil, promoting the opening up of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuges for drilling, and basically writing a blank environmental cheque for oil companies to sign. All of this is done under the pretense of being patriotic by reducing the countries strategic vulnerabilities (namely having a primary energy source externally controlled). Yet this is the same administration (I'm not talking about one particular party, or even one make-up of politicians, but I mean government momentum on a whole) that continually refuses to enforce basic fuel efficiency (NOT conservation. There's a difference between conservation and efficiency) directives. I don't have the metrics (nor have I ever looked), but the highways are full of grossly inefficient vehicles (not just large vehicles, either, but additionally inefficient small vehicles. The Chevrolet Cavalier is some ~25% less efficient than most comparably sized competitors). If people want to feel patriotic, they should forsake getting that new Expedition and buy themselves a Dodge Neon or a Toyota Corolla : You're doing a great service to your country.
As noted in this press release, similar hydrogen-consuming microbes may some day be discovered on Mars.
And if we ever did figure out a way of "mining" this trapped hydrogen, there would be a way to fill up your tank if you went planet hopping :)
That doesn't leave much room for the rock...
If we could realistically run everything on hydrogen and the US has a natural multi decade supply, that would screw the middle east and europe. It would screw the middle east because we wouldn't need their oil and their money supply would dry up fast seeing that they have no other resources. Also, europe would be screwed because they couldn't blame the US for the worlds polution and might have to look at home for the problems. Remember, oil pays terrorists.
Just to assuage public opinion, they'll have to drill far away from public places. That runs up the cost of packaging and transporting the hydrogen, making it tough to do this as "economically" as oil drilling today. (OK, nobody counts all the costs of oil drilling, e.g. smog control in all those cars, higher healthcare costs, etc.)
Another possibility would be to put electrical generation next to the H2 mines and take advantage of the electrical distribution grid.
Maybe we'll see H2 fuel when the oil supplies have dwindled far enough to force a look at alternative sources. Maybe.
If the primary product of combustion is CO2, you are OK becasue CO2 is a natural part of the carbon cycle--trees and phytoplankton turn it back into O2. So, as long as there are enough photosynthesizing organisms to complete the cycle, you can release all the CO2 you want.
I agree with the OP that H2 is another matter. Release twice the number of H atoms as there are O atoms, it all becomes water, and the only way to get the O2 back is by electrolysis or some other man-made process. As far as I know, there are no eletrolytic organisms or other natural process to get the O2 back, so we are screwed.
Of course there must be some natural process that liberates O2, otherwise the whole carbon cycle wouldn't have gotten set up in the first place. However, that O2 was probably liberated over a long period.
If we go to a H2 based fuel economy, perhaps we will need to have some kind of accounting for oxygen production. In other words, no license to produce H2 fuel unless you also release O2. This would be no problem for traditional H2 producers which (as far as I know) are using electrolysis and presumably putting O2 back into the system. It would only be a problem for "fossil H2" producers, who would have to find an O2 source.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Don't worry about oxygen. As others have pointed out, we have been engaging in "destroying" oxygen for many many years already, and there is still plenty of it. This is true for a reason:
Plants liberate O2 during photosynthesis.
In fact, the single biggest and most important biological and geological change in Earth's history was probably when plants first began to spew oxygen which, at the time, must have been HIGHLY TOXIC to most life forms. Prior to that time, almost everything on Earth was in an (electrochemically) reduced state. Over some geological period of time, everything converted to an oxidized state. Most organisms must have become extinct or relegated to marginal environments when this happened.
However, eventually a new class of organisms arose which was able to take advantage of the new, oxygenated environment with the use of aerobic respiration. The rest, as they say, is history.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
There's probably hundreds of times the earth's mass of methane in Jupiter, but that doesn't make it a viable energy source.
Detail #2: Water is a potent greenhouse gas.
Any New Englander knows that it's usually a good twenty degrees warmer in the winter when you have a good cloud cover. Of course, burning gasoline generates water too, so it's a win as a gasoline replacement. However, it is not an energy source that is limitless in the sense it can be used in any amount with no consequences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A main problem I see with this is that we could deplete our oxygen supply. Get ready to breath WaterVapor/Nitrogen mix. CO2 can return the O2 via plants. How can the cycle be completed returning O2 from H2O ?
There are hard limits to this feedback system imposed by thermodynamics. That is, when the energy cost of production of a unit of oil exceeds the energy value of that unit, no economic forces can make oil production (for energy use) sustainable.
There is a very real and techical difference between BigOilCo/Hydrogen and BigMusicCo/MP3.
MP3 is not only technically feasible, its proven itself a superior medium. Using MP3, I can put several analog audo CD's on a single data CD, or better yet, all of my audio CD's on hard disk. BigMusicCo ain't going there because (a) they're ignoring the fact that MP3 has vast advantages, (b) they're ignoring the fact that MP3 is *wildly* popular (in spite of BigMusicCo) and (c) they're ignoring the multitude of distribution and promotion channels that the features of MP3'd music offer... all because they're so goddam greedy that they want to harness the power of computers to do something they've never been succeeded at doing to date: control piracy.
Now, I'm not saying that BigOilCo isn't greedy. I *am* saying that using hydrogen to power cars and the like is not a technical practicality at this time. It's not a simple as carrying around a tank full of compressed hydrogen instead of a tank of gasoline; ever heard of the Hindenburg? Yeah, fuel cells have been around for a while and are getting better, but they're still bulky and expensive. The techno-economic changes necessary for us to be able to take advantage of huge stocks of H are the kind that come slowly, though it helps to keep the social/political pressure on.
It is nice to know that, should we become ready to use it, there's lots of Hydrogen to be had.
Too many people get confused. If you have 100J of energy, and it takes 150J of energy to pump a liter of oil out of the ground, even if I give you a million dollars for that liter, you can't get it out of the ground. Unless, perhaps, I give it to you in paper money that you can burn to get the extra energy. See the problem?
If this hydrogen can be extracted at a net energy profit, and there's as much as they say there might be, I'll start worrying about retirement savings again.
..don't panic
The reason for the bad Denver smog was thermal inversions where a layer of cold air near the ground was capped by warmer air above. That's why it could be sub-zero on the plains, but 20-30 degrees warmer if you went into the mountains.
We still have those inversions (and "no burn days"), but the bad smog was largely eliminated as newer, cleaner cars replaced the older fleet. Unfortunately we still have a stupid oxygenated fuels program in the winter months, and pollution levels are rising again (but still below Federal guidelines) due to large number of people who moved into Denver and insisted on big SUVs for the "lifestyle" nonsense.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
There's lots of problems with hydrogen:
;-)
a) its energy density is pitiful (about 1/14 IRC of gasoline, so you'd have to have a tank 14x bigger)
b) its best stored in liquified form for maximum energy density (liquid hydrogen needs incredibly high insulation values, and tends to freeze things solid, or condenses oxygen- trust me, either is very bad, and its density still sucks- check out the Space Shuttle main tank, its enormous!)
c) alternatively you store it in a pressurised tank. Pressurised tanks are heavy as heck. Or you can use a rare earth catalyst to store it in. However, the overall weight is about the same if you do so, TOO HIGH. So big deal.
d) Hydrogen can go bang (in an enclosed space the explosion can be awesome). Sure, gasoline does that too. However hydogen leaks out much more easily.
e) Hydrogen embrittles many kinds of metals, once that has occured the metal fails catastrophically.
f) Hydrogen escapes from just about any container; the molecule is just too small to keep in in most cases; still you can control it in most cases, but it's awkward.
All in all, hydrogen is at best a waste of space and at worst a waste of time. Yeah, so it doesn't make any CO2. So what? We've got this handy recycling system called plants. Please go out and grow some, so I can carry on burning my hydrocarbons
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Did anyone think that maybe the hydrogen was there for a reason? Maybe those billions of tonnes of bacteria need it to survive? Maybe their survival is necessary for everything else to also work correctly and that the wholesale removal of the hydrogen would ultimately kill us too?
As far as drilling in Alaska? Why not? The location is just frozen tundra, and if you *really* want to save the caribou then grill one up and see how it tastes. If it tastes good, people will want to eat them and you can start a caribou ranch. Maybe they taste as good as venison.
,over the past 25 years or so the herds have more than doubled. As a result the herds have widened their range and have been assimilating the domestic herds the local Inuit tribes raise, in some cases destroying the family business.
I saw a special on tv a while back ( I think it was on the Discovery channel) about the Alaskan caribou herds in the region of the pipeline. IIRC it was predicted that the pipeline would decimate the caribou as a result of its detrimental effect on the environment. In fact
Fuel cells will be the likely candidate for replacing our oil habits. Hydrogen IS the most common element that we know of (now) and can be produced rather cheaply. When we begin converting to fuel cells we can dip into so many other fuels beyond hydrogen like boron (less ignitable).
s en ic.html
Regarding solar cells: I think they have a long way to go and they use poisons such as gallium arsenic.
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/arsenic/ar
The best that could come out of this is the removal of the strangle-hold the middle-east has over us because they have most of the oil.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Further studies showed that atmosphere with extra carbon dioxide only results in increased plant yields if the soil is also enriched beyond the normal soils - the plants in place are already evolved for maximum efficiency of carbon dioxide use given the current fertility of the natural soils. So you can get a boost in plant growth if you fertilize - which requires vast amounts of oil and results in serious downstream pollution; but as far as, say, forests go, you get virtually no gain from extra atmospheric carbon dioxide.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton