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A Hydrogen-Based Economy
Glog writes "Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of Wired magazine have written an amazing article explaining why we need to transition to a hydrogen economy. Lots of info there, estimated cost and benefit ... very good solid reasoning for whatever floats your boat - national security, environment, super-duper-charged automobiles."
I'm sure that Bush and everyone who actually matters will read this and say "Good golly this is a great idea! We should do it right away, oil companies be damned!"
I'm not cynical.
I want a car that pollutes only by emitting clean H20.
Just think. Drive for a mile, have a nice glass of water at the end of your ride.
Cars that burn up, like the Hindenburg?
Because the rich and powerful Oil Barons say so.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
what about the benefits of a molybdenum based economy?
The hydrogen economy needs trillions of dollars in investment to get it going. This won't happen in our "returns-in-six-months-or-else" system we have at present, beacuse it is more cost-effective in the short term to do what we're doing right now. When the global energy system becomes dire - which it WILL, eventually, and sooner than you think - the hydrogen economy will take off, because if it doesn't the human race is quite literally doomed.
But it's not doomed for more than six months. The accountants won't let the investment happen. It's not too late... yet.
-Mark
While eventually we probably will move to a hydrogen based economy, there is a flaw here. Currently and in the foreseeable future, extracting the vast amounts of hydrogen that we'll need requires...wait for it...hydrocarbon based fuels like oil and coal! That's right, in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, we need energy. How do we produce most of our energy? Hydrocarbons.
Increased nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power generating capacity would help solve this problem of course. However, it will be a long, long time before we can wean ourselves off of hydrocarbon based fuel sources.
Help me, I'm confuzzled!
This post is prezactly on-topic! Honest!
(okay, stop ignoring now
A hydrogen-based economy would be awesome! If we could generate all our power from water ... we'd have an almost infinite supply! woo!
Except for that nasty using-up-all-the-oxygen thing ... ah well. I'm sure we can adapt. Nitrogen works, right? :)
It seems like it would be difficult to carry around little canisters of hydrogen to pay for everything.
I don't get it.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Is there a reason it looks like a pelvis? Aren't we obsessed enough about our cars already? Now we have to sexualize the PUMP? Oh -- I get it. Nevermind, carry on...
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
I think the biggest problem is that you have these special interest people for Oil that mess things up. Hydrogen sounds so appealing, but......way can't we just "DO IT"???
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
My, now famous, Hydrogen Powered Jeep totally rocks! It is so nice to see the rest of the world catching up with me for a change!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This is all well and good, but why can't we promote hybrid cars in the meantime? I for one was pissed when I found out the Bush Administration was ending the programs for hyrbrid cars and shifting the money to hydrogen cars that won't be around for at least 10 years.
How much you wanna bet the funding for those end just before we get to the point where they might be useful, so that we can persue the next big thing in energy efficiency (all the while sticking with the crappy methods we use now)?
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Here are some criticisms of the Hydrogen Economy...
9
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=1523
Unfortunatly like many hydrogen fans, they're ignoring the realities of the world. For example, under the creation of hydrogen, they're suggesting that you should use electrolosis of water to produce it, because steam reformation of methane releases CO2. No-one does electrolosis for a reason, it's horribly inefficent. You then have to deal with moving a dangerous and hard to deal with molecule around, which is going to reduce the efficency even more, and then what do they do at the end? Use it in a fuel cell to produce electricity! If you've got electricity produced by any method and want to make best use of it, then KEEP it as electricity. Using it to make hydrogen is just throwing it away.
Conspicuously missing from the article, where the hydrogen comes from.
We dont know how to make hydrogen a commercially viable alternative. As soon as it's profitable, it'll take off in a big way.
It's the simplest element, it's everywhere in the universe, we'd never run out of it, but we dont know how to get it without putting more energy into the extraction than we would get from it as a fuel.
Why not just write an article on how a pixie-dust based economy is the wave of the future? Or another one about rocket cars and living in giant plastic bubbles under the ocean?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Hey, to all those who may either have kids or maybe you're a big kid yourself. I saw a cool science kit over at Frys that has a small refillable fuel cell used to run a little car included in the kit so you can have some fun learning about these guys. The fuel cell housing/wall itself is see-thru. It was $30 at the one here in Dallas. Not too bad. Might make a nice gift for the geek in your life.
But then who would we go to war with? Last time I checked, there aren't any countries that are richer than others in hydrogen.
Hydrogen + fuel cell is just hoped to be either better for storage of electricity than batteries, or cleaner than hydrocarbons (still has to be converted somewhere, generating pollution and CO2), eventually. That's all, until we can use the planet as a Bussard collector.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
That said, burning hydrocarbons up for vehicles should be stopped. No problem with that.
Color me stupid, but how are vast vast quantities of hydrogen produced? How is it distributed? Are there huge plants, that require a ton of electricity to power, that bottle all this hydrogen?
"Peter Schwartz s a partner in the Monitor Group and chair of Global Business Network... [and] a former futurist for Shell Oil"
h tml,
I think I better trust the motives and analysis of the MIT folks. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article1205.
We probably wouldn't be carrying hydrogen canisters. After all, we don't carry gold in our supposedly-gold-backed economy. We'd probably have hydrogen credits instead, and everything would operate much the same. With, of course, the splendid difference that laypeople could manufacture hydrogen, in exactly the way thathome alchemists have NOT (to my knowledge) been able to manufacture gold...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Salon has an article that is more realistic - or cynical, as the case may be.
Switching over to Hydrogen definitely changes oil politics... the Middle East would ease back into irrelevancy, and the US could start ignoring them again like Osama bin Laden wants. But do you think those countries will be happy once we've pulled their major revenue source out from under them? They haven't been able to use their oil wealth to make any other significant industries in their countries.
I seriously doubt switching from oil to hydrogen will stop terrorist attacks.
You know, the 100 billion dollars it took to put a man on the moon really has nothing on the trillion dollar tax cuts we keep hearing about.
So, do you want another $300 in your next tax return or an efficient, non-pollutant fuel source?
Okay, maybe I missed something here, and I'm certainly no physics major, but from what I understand, hydrogen is created through the process of electrolysis, where it an oxygen are seperated from water. Also, from what I understand, this is a fairly energy-intensive process.
:-)
So, the question is, where are we going to get the energy to create the hydrogen? From... oil burning electricity generating plants? That would kind of defeat the purpose of switching to hydrogen for our cars, wouldn't it? In fact, it would require more electricity to generate the hyrdogen, which would in require more oil! And if folks say, "build more nuclear plants for electricity generation", I'm sure that's going to go over really well with the environmentalists in California. They'll just love that idea.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hydrogen powered cars, but it seems like we're playing a shell game here, moving the oil from the cars to the electricity generation.
(If my assumptions about generation of hydrogen are wrong, someone please correct me!)
Agreed. An effort like this may have to wait until a Dem is back in office or in controll of Congress.
Daily Shenanigans
car talk
"A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy,
which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With
a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome
obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first
car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and
pollution-free." President Bush said these words during his State of the Union
address, introducing the FreedomFUEL proposal--which is really how the White
House spells it. The president wants to spend $1.2 billion over the next five
years to research the production of hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline in
automobiles.
Someday men and women will probably drive cars running on "fuel-cell"
motors that have no pistons, consume hydrogen, and emit no pollutants,
including no greenhouse gases. Between the zero-pollutants advantages of
hydrogen and the fact that its supply is in principle inexhaustible, the
world's petroleum-based economy will probably eventually yield to a
hydrogen-based economy--to everyone's benefit. Republicans relentlessly mocked
Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by
something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
The attraction of hydrogen is great, since hydrogen-based transportation
would both be environmentally benign and reduce the need for the United States
to import petroleum. But Bush's proposal joins a new convention of
rhapsodizing about hydrogen-powered transportation--Jeremy Rifkin numbers
among current hydrogen zealots--while skipping over the small matter of where
we get the hydrogen. Worse, the White House plan offers a long-term
distraction from a short-term need: While the administration dreams big about
our hydrogen-powered future, it does little to improve fuel-economy standards
today.
here are many impediments to a future in which fuel-cell automobiles
dominate America's roadways. What form--gaseous, liquid, or mixed with
metallic dust to prevent explosion should there be an accident--would the
hydrogen we pump into our cars take? How would the hydrogen be moved in
commercial quantities to those filling stations? Could average motorists pump
hydrogen themselves, considering it is now handled only by specialists? But
these are engineering questions and presumably can be answered.
Unfortunately, a cost-effective answer to the question of how to obtain
hydrogen may prove more elusive than answers to questions about how to handle
it. At first glance, this issue would seem simple. After all, our world
contains gargantuan amounts of hydrogen--two-thirds of the oceans, for
instance, are made up of this element. But the pure form of hydrogen needed to
power fuel-cell cars does not occur naturally on Earth, where hydrogen is
chemically bound to other elements, such as oxygen in the case of the oceans.
And, while the stars contain an almost inexpressible amount of hydrogen in its
pure form, stellar material will not be on sale at your local filling station
anytime soon, or ever.
Because pure hydrogen does not occur naturally on Earth, any pure hydrogen
for use as fuel must be manufactured. Today, pure hydrogen is most often made
using natural gas as a feedstock, but that means fossil fuels are still being
consumed: Basically, the process turns a fossil fuel, methane, into something
that seems not to be a fossil fuel, hydrogen. Pure hydrogen can also be
manufactured using petroleum or coal, which of course are the very fossil
fuels whose grip we wish to loosen. And, while pure hydrogen has been
manufactured from agricultural products--plants contain hydrogen bound as
carbohydrates--at the research level, it remains to be seen whether this could
work commercially. Enviros rhapsodize about making hydrogen from seawater. But
there's a catch: Making hydrogen from water requires loads of
electricity, far more electricity than the energy value of the hydrogen that
is obtained, and something--be it a coal-fired power plant or an atomic
reactor--must provide the electricity. Indeed, the big misconception about
hydrogen is that it is a "source" of energy. Pure hydrogen is not an energy
source, except to stars. As it will be used in cars or to power homes and
offices, hydrogen--like a battery--is an energy medium, a way to store
power that has been obtained in some other way. Hydrogen makes an attractive
energy medium because its "fuel-cycle" calculations--the sum of all steps of
manufacture and use--show reductions in greenhouse gases compared with any
automotive fuel burned today. But hydrogen is going to be an expensive energy
medium and, in the early decades at least, will be a medium either for natural
gas, a fossil fuel, or for atomic power.
Today, the most practical means to make pure hydrogen is a process called
"steam reforming" of natural gas. A natural-gas molecule has one atom of
carbon and four atoms of hydrogen; "reforming" strips off the carbon atoms,
leaving pure hydrogen. But not only is a fossil fuel--natural gas--the raw
material of this process, energy must be expended for the "reforming" itself,
meaning a net loss of BTUs. Using Department of Energy estimates, the White
House says pure hydrogen from natural gas is currently "four times as
expensive to produce as gasoline."
Applied engineering and commercial-scale production would surely bring
down the price. The most optimistic credible projection I have seen comes from
Jesse Ausubel, a specialist in "industrial ecology" at the Rockefeller
University, who thinks commercial-scale hydrogen made from natural gas could
be produced for about 40 percent more than the price of gasoline. That's
within striking distance of a good deal. But there is a catch to this catch:
Optimistic estimates for hydrogen from natural gas are based on the current
low selling price of natural gas. Significant new demand for natural gas might
raise its price. And, while natural-gas supplies are steady at the moment, who
knows what the effect on supply would be if hydrogen manufacturing caused
natural-gas consumption to skyrocket?
So maybe the hydrogen should be made from coal or petroleum. Fuel-cycle
calculations show that using coal or petroleum to manufacture hydrogen would
lead to some reduction in greenhouse gases but not to a big cut; moreover,
we'd still be digging coal and importing petroleum. Maybe hydrogen should be
made from agricultural products-- "biomass," in energy lingo. But biomass
feedstocks might be grown using fertilizer, which is made mainly from fossil
fuels, and again the fuel-cycle calculations show only a moderate gain in
pollution reduction for the large capital costs entailed in establishing an
agriculture-hydrogen economy. (All hydrogen schemes, it should be noted,
involve large capital costs.) Owing to these concerns, John McCarthy, a
Stanford University professor emeritus of computer science, has written, "The
large-scale use of hydrogen depends on using either nuclear or solar
electricity." Otherwise, it's just repackaging fossil fuels.
But solar power on the scale required is far from practical. It is
possible to imagine a green-dream-come-true energy cycle that uses solar
collectors to generate electricity to crack hydrogen out of water: zero
greenhouse gases and endlessly renewable. For the moment, solar collectors are
much too expensive. The Worldwatch Institute, a much-admired, left-leaning
environmental organization, recently rated sources of electricity by combining
their capital cost and true social cost--that is, taking into account
"externalities" such as pollution and entanglements with the Gulf states.
Solar power finished last, much more expensive than coal-generated
power, even when coal's external costs are factored in. An indicator:
Solar-derived electricity currently wholesales for around ten times as much
per kilowatt-hour as coal-fired watts.
Even if the price of solar power fell by orders of magnitude, there would
be the not-so-little problem of where to put the solar collectors. To replace
the petroleum we use to power our cars with hydrogen split from water might
entail doubling America's electricity-generating capacity. Doing that with
solar collectors could require covering a land area roughly the size of
Connecticut with photovoltaic cells. In theory, the collectors could be put in
space, where sunlight has eight times as many watts per square meter as on the
ground and where no one's land need be taken. Figures in a recent study in
Science magazine suggested that doubling the electricity-production
capacity of the United States would require placing approximately 40
photovoltaic collector dishes, each the size of Manhattan, into orbit. Even if
capital cost were no object and society possessed the technical means to build
objects in space the size of Manhattan, such a project would take a century.
hich brings us to atomic power, the energy source everyone loves to
hate. In theory, lots of new atomic stations could be built to make
electricity to manufacture hydrogen, and the stations could use new,
"inherently safe" reactors designed so that they cannot melt down. (In
inherently safe reactors, the atomic chain reaction is initiated in such a way
that, if safety systems fail, the chain breaks; researchers have deliberately
turned off all cooling and safety systems of inherently safe prototypes and
nothing happens.) But political opposition to atomic reactors is intense, and
capital costs here would be high as well. Some estimates also suggest that, if
a significant number of new reactors were put into service, uranium--currently
plentiful--would become scarce after a few decades. This could be avoided by
building "breeder" reactors that make more fuel than they consume. But
breeders work by breeding plutonium, and most nations, including the United
States, have suspended construction of breeder reactors because such machines
would increase the risk of plutonium being diverted for nuclear weapons
production.
Many researchers continue to believe that "fusion" reactors, which mimic
the internal process of the sun, someday will be perfected. Over the long
term, fusion reactors might solve all global-energy questions, oddly, by using
hydrogen to make hydrogen! In a fusion reactor, tiny amounts of hydrogen
isotope are fused into helium, generating heat. (The sun fuses hydrogen into
helium for its luminescence, and nuclear bombs get much of their force from
fusing a small amount of hydrogen isotope.) Heat from a fusion reactor would
drive turbines to make electricity; the electricity would crack hydrogen out
of water in large quantities; the hydrogen would power cars or be turned back
into electricity in individual fuel cells in people's homes. Though a
hydrogen-to-hydrogen energy cycle might sound like a perpetual-motion machine,
it could end up being the technology that someday makes global-energy needs a
solved issue.
But this is all blue sky because fusion reactors barely function in the
laboratory--there is nothing remotely close to a commercial prototype. And,
even if a grad student ran from a laboratory tomorrow yelling, "Eureka!" and
clutching the secret of an unlimited-energy-fusion future, it would be another
century-long project to convert the world to an energy economy based on
machines that simulate the centers of stars.
Realistically, these concerns dictate that, for the next few decades,
hydrogen would be manufactured either from natural gas or by using power from
a new generation of atomic reactors. The most cost-effective combination, some
researchers think, might be natural gas heated directly by atomic reactors,
whose high operating temperatures turn out to be ideal for the reforming of
hydrogen from natural gas. But that means our miracle zero-emission hydrogen
will be produced from fossil fuels via an intermediate stop at a nuclear
reactor--not exactly what the Sierra Club had in mind.
All these drawbacks do not rule out hydrogen as a fuel, they merely
represent problems to be overcome. Hydrogen is sure to enter common use
someday, perhaps during the lifetimes of children now being born. After all, a
century ago, smart engineers and economists would have sworn it physically
impossible--to say nothing of impossibly expensive--for the world to consume
75 million barrels of oil per day, as we do today, at affordable prices. But
there is almost no chance hydrogen will make a dent in energy-use patterns
during a two-term Bush administration. Even the White House concedes that the
earliest a significant number of service stations could offer pure hydrogen
would be 2020.
-- john
Lucky for us all that the Japanese auto makers are working on hydrogen fuel cell engines and have been for quite some time. Check out the Toyota FCHV.
Stop using "transition" as a verb. "Change" works just fine.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
This is already a passed station. Due to the problems with hydrogen (explosive, gaseous, high pressures), hydrogen is not ideal as a energy carrier.
The article is not invalid though, most of the story also goes for methanol, which is only slightly behind in technology (fuel cells, synthesis from photo cells etc) on hydrogen.
So we're just looking at hydrogen as a storage mechanism? Well, that sucks. The Wired article talked about the different options for carrying hydrogen around, from (very pressurized) gas, to liquid, to solid. Are any of those that much better than batteries?
I remember there was some talk that flywheels might be one way of storing electricity kinetically, and then powering our cars with that...carefully counterbalanced to counter any nasty gyroscopic effect I'd imagine. And then there's the what happens when there's a crash factor. I imagine car accidents could get a lot more interesting, if something stops the flywheel from rotating relative to the car, then I guess the car relative to everything else might be in for a spin.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
as someone else posted:
"Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. "
George W. Bush, State of the Union 2003.
How much did Clinton propose? Oh he didn't?
In my sporadic but sometimes intense investigations of alternate energy sources, I was always the most taken with hydrogen.
It is very clean. It is relatively efficient. I'd prefer a liquid fuel, but then again, I'd prefer a non-volatile, non-toxic fuel, too. You can't always get what you want.
The attractive things about hydrogen are its real abundance. There are so many interesting possibilties for how to make it. I saw a fascinating series of papers (curse me for not being able to find the original links - although you can get familiar with the ideas with some simple google searches, i.e. this conference poster) on the use of genetically engineered bacteria that produce hydrogen when eating various things, even waste products.
"Electric" has massive drawbacks both in storage and distribution, which are both dirty and highly inefficient. Methanol/Ethanol are probably even dirtier, though potentially renewable, but there are questions about how sustainable, for instance, corn power really is. Geothermal and hydro are obviously limited in place and abundance... Solar, wind and tides are ideal but unpredictable and expensive. I'm excited to hear about big improvements in solar power systems, but the big stuff (70%+ efficiencies) still seem a ways away for commercial use.
To me, that leaves good old hydrogen (in combustion? in a fuel cell?) - attractive both for its unparalleled cleanliness and the interesting potential sources. Why not?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Did'nt think so.
The busses will be delivered in july 2004. The three test buses, each worth about $3 million, will operate in a variety of settings including hilly areas, on trunk lines that carry more than 20,000 riders a day through densely populated neighborhoods, and on the Transbay Express service to San Francisco, where speeds can reach 65 mph. This should give a good indication of the state of fuel cell technology.
during summertime. Not economic theory, but rather gas laws.
When reading the article, one part in particular jumped out at me:
Is the Prius really a radically different automobile from the view of the consumer? It has the same sort of range as a traditional car, and you still have to fuel it up like other cars. The only radical differences I can see are its gas mileage (which is not always what it's cracked up to be) and the higher cost of repairs. I'm hesitant to extrapolate from its acceptance to the acceptance of a car that runs on entirely different fuel, and requires a now-nonexistent fuel infrastructure.
"whatever floats your boat.."
Unless making money off an oil based economy is what floats your boat.
Personally, Bouyancy floats my boat.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think this is a good idea, but I don't really think it'll happen. First of all, as most posts have already mentioned, there's no way the oil companies will allow this to happen; they have too much at stake to want to change the way things work.
Secondly, and maybe more importantly, is public perception of these types of vehicles. I know just about nothing about the workings of hydrogen-powered cars, which lumps me in with (I'd wager) over 95% of the rest of the country. When people like me hear the term 'alternative-energy automobiles,' we think 'expensive and underpowered.' And what does the average consumer look for in a vehicle? A low price and lots of horsepower.
I'm not saying that hydrogen-powered (or solar-powered or whatever) vehicles are incapable of costing little or being able to tow your boat; I'm just claiming that the average American thinks along those lines, and as long as this perception exists then there will be no demand for alternative-fuel cars.
What I think we need is a huge marketing campaign which essentially hammers people over the head, and beats into them the advantages of hydrogen power. There are economic advantages, environmental advantages, and even simply the coolness that can come from owning something the neighbors don't. It could even be explained that their views of hydrogen-fuelled vechicles are wrong, and that they really can have the horsepower and cost in addition to an environmentally-friendly car. A huge marketing blitz could be undertaken relatively cheaply and have the effect of greatly boosting demand, which in turn would cause corporations to invest capital and make this actually happen. That, along with tax credits or some sort of incentive program, would generate demand with consumers and put the whole alternative-fuel concept on the right path.
the coolest club on
Hydrogen power is a neat idea, but it's pie in the sky for now. The main problem is that it takes so much energy to make the hydrogen, and we're short of that already -- let alone getting it from clean sources. We can talk about converting our transportation fleets to hydrogen only after we've converted the rest of our energy needs to clean power, with a considerable surplus.
Hydrogen is very abundant in nature.
There are many interesting ways people may be able to produce it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
as someone else posted:
"Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. "
George W. Bush, State of the Union 2003.
How much did Clinton propose? Oh he didn't?
Gee... I guess since you didn't read the article I posted you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. water + catalyst + ENERGY.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
I claim ownership of the Sun!
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Humm? There are not huge H2 deposits in the earth to tap. Electrolysis of H2O is hugely inefficient. You could take the light hydrocarbons and steam crack them to form H2 and C02, but this does not reduce our dependance on foreign oil!
Sheesh, it would be nice if these guys would pull their heads out of their butts and have a logical though for once. But wait, if that happened then their heads might explode.
Kent
Whatever increases in technology occur, there will always be a market for oil, and it will always have an impact economically/politically.
Set aside the fact that it's (one of) the cheapest sources of energy that we know of. It's positively REQUIRED for production of various items, most prominently all sorts of plastics.
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
Gold does not back our economy, it's our faith in the government. That's why currency says "In God We Trust", because there isn't anything tangible backing our money.
Sorry, but how is hodrogen a source of energy ?
It is more of an energy vector, as electricity is not a source of energy.
And what do you need to have energy ? Diesel. Or nuclear. Or coal. That is, either natural fossil energy or atomic one. Problem not solve, return to work on fusion.
This is mindless bunck. Hyrdrogen is just a way of transferring energy from point A to B, just like electricity. 2/3 of the cost of your electric bill is the cost of maintaining the infrastructure (lines, linemen, power plants). 1/3 is the cost of the fuel to MAKE the electricity.
Unless someone can explain to me how using hydrogen will result in a more efficient power distribution infrastructure, I think the case for hydrogen is hopeless.
Obviously if Americans gave a shite about our dependance on foreign oil they wouldn't be driving SUVs around.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The hydrogen economy has lately gotten lots of press, but much of it mistates role that hydrogen can play.
Hydrogen will not, can not, be a primary energy source for our society. Current hydrocarbons provide net energy (at least in a temporal sense) because the energy that was consumed in their creation was used millenia ago. There are no similar, vast reserves of hydrogen waiting to be exploited.
While other posters here (and many others in varied other media) talk of a supply of hydrogen gained from splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, they have forgotten that this process requires energy, thus necessitating some other primary energy source. Some suggest that source may be solar or wind or hydro--but then they are the actual source of the energy, hydrogen is merely an intermediate storage device.
It is much more likely that any 'hydrogen economy' that emerges in the next 3-4 decades will be based upon the extraction of hydrogen from methane, either at a large scale, or in fuel cells at the point of generation.
I'm not saying that hydrogen has no place or not interesting, but in our excitement, let's not forget the law of conservation of energy.
--my $0.02
I wonder if I'm the only one whose first thought, upon reading the headline, was of Operation Overkill II's storyline (though not quite this URL)...
A Car for the Distant Future...
The United States and the rest of the industrialized world is currently so dependent on oil it's ridiculous. International lust for oil has fueled much diplomatic unease and has indirectly ignited the flame of terrorism.
Moving away from nonrenewable fuels like oil is crucial to the future of the United States and elsewhere. The problem is that hydrogen, or some other renewable fuel, must be extracted in a way that does not waste more energy. If the U.S. starts extracting hydrogen using energy supplied by local but nonrenewable energy sources, that is a good first step away from Middle Eastern oil independence, but the next step cannot be forgotten: switching to a completely renewable source.
Even with significant government aid and corporate and academic cooperation, it seems unrealistic to expect cultural and technological changeover in a decade.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
To get from here(oil based energy production) to there(hydrogen based) we need one or more intermediate steps. These would include fuel cell technology compatible with tradtional energy sources at first. There would follow all kinds of shifts in technology and social changes, years in the development. Energy consumption would decrease somewhat in this phase once the fuel cell technology matured and became dominant, the fuel cell's inherent advantage in efficiency would come into play. A 20% decrease in fuel consumption would be a nice plateau for the world to sit on. Fuel cell technology would easily adapt to whatever fuels were available and we could see different fuel sources become dominant on a regional basis, whatever is cheaply available, be it hydrogen, methanol, gasoline, diesel - they can all operate more efficiently in a fuel cell engine. I will not be solely hydrogen for some time if ever.
What's their 0-60 times...
The article's a nice read. Unfortunatly, the author seems to just be throwing out numbers. Ten Billion for this, five billion for that. That's all fine and good. Unlike most people involved in journalism today, the author can divide a number like 100 into smaller equal parts.
What he fails to do is support why each step in the process warrents the money he's allocating. Why would five billion dollars be sufficient to convert some or all of our gas stations to offer hydrogen? That figure could be way high, or it could be far to low.
It's fun conjecture, but there's not a lot of substance. he did point out some interesting initiatives, such as UPS and FedEx phasing in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the niext five years. But other than that he's just re-enacting my fifth grade "how I would spend One million dollars" essay.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
...is a hydrogen powered high definition television (that flies.)
In order to produce hydrogen you need to spend energy - lots of it, some 2.5 times more than in hydrogen itself.
Where is that energy going to come from in the "clean" hydrogen economy?
Most likely = from burning of fossil fuels! Coal burning plants, oil buring plants, etc.
So the whole thing will be just a dramatic shift where all the pollution, noise, etc happens somewhere in the desert/poor areas and not downtown.
What?
Um, I'm guessing that you just got out of a timecapsule from the 19th century. Welcome to the twenty first century! Now, you will probably find this strange and scary but one of the many "innovations" we currently deal with is money that is officially backed in... wait for it... nothing!
Now, to be truthful, this isn't really the case. Currently, the only way to buy oil, which we use to fuel our automobiles is with good old American greenbacks (although some countries were switching to Euros to buy or sell oil, we call them "the axis of evil"). So, while American currency is unbacked, governments have to have it to buy oil, which everyone needs.
If we switched to a hydrogen economy, that would do terrible things to the value of the dollar, so I can only imagine that the people suggesting it are "evildoers."
Unless the economy turns around, all I'll be able to afford is a hydrogen-petrol Yugo
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I already explained what I think the answer is earlier today.
Trouble transitioning to alternative fuels? My concept of a standards-based component engine approach solves that too. If you're carrying multiple fuel->electricity converters under the hood, and if you have smaller, redundant converters, it's much more practical to build a dual-fuel vehicle. It's also easier to innovate in the fuel technology... heck, what will it take industry to see this? Maybe if we explain to them that it would make it possible to sell proprietary fuel technologies, just as we have proprietary OSs... ummm... better not give them any bright ideas.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If we are going to dream pie-in-the-sky energy sources, why the hell not cold fusion? If it ever becomes a reality it would make hydrogen (and coal/gas/...) a blip on the road to free energy and mankind.
doug
It seems that almost everyone that is worried about the limit of energy, has forgotten about hydroelectric. It has a near-limitless potential for supply of energy.
I hear solar power, and wind power mentioned, but these methods seem much less consistent. From what i've heard, the hydroelectric plants that now produce electricity are only running at 10 or less perent capacity.
The only thing we would need to upgrade is the infrastructure of the power grid in order to port such high levels of current to all over the country.
It would be good if GM could be convinced to bring it out, but use the new turbine/generator developed down in NM. < 80 lbs for an engine. The generator would add weight, but if the car is designed right, they could be replaced in the future with fuel cell/storage tank combo. This would start the conversion of the automotive industry over to an electric basis.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
is cooler-looking fuel pumps!
Ceci n'est pas un post.
From the artilce, "Given the choice between powering the carbon-free hydrogen economy with fossil fuels or nuclear energy, even Greenpeace might embrace nuke plants as the lesser evil."
Hmmmmmmm?, yeah and Van Dam might win an oscar for Best Actor. It could happen.
Didn't Keanu Reeves figure out how to separate the hydrogen from water a few years ago?
I swear I saw it on The Discovery Channel a while back.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Hey, seriously... How should we americans justify our wars when we stop using gasoline? Don't you see that war does more for our economy than "hydrogen fuel" (such a crap..) would ever do?
A problem that CAN be solved by throwing money at it. I'm enthused about it for the rarity value alone.
Actually, in all seriousness, it'd probably take a federal campaign to get it going, even though the results would be good for America. I'd also hate to see us fall behind the curve of technology.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
If you pick over the Cold War/Pre Three Mile Island information people made Nuclear out to the "next big thing" too. "Its cheap and efficient and will solve all of the power problems of tomorrow's world." Of course it didn't turn out like that because they glossed over a few wrinkles.
With advanced hydrogen systems, there are devils in the details. There were problems with Nuclear and there are problem with Advanged Hydrogren too.
As mentioned by stratjakt, hydrogen is in everything but no one knows of a cheap and clean way to pull it out of "everything" in large enough quantities. Just like with Nuclear, are the cotainers and storage devices for the power plants safe?
The flip side is that although some aspects are undesirable or unsafe we should still continue researching. Giving up on both Nuclear and Advanced Hydrogen systems just because they are too messy or expensive at the moment is the wrong thing to do. You can't make them clean and cheap just by wishing they were. It takes R&D time and effort. I hope people and companies continue to see that instead of day dreaming about the perfect power sources.
HE is right. It takes ENERGY to make Hydrogen. This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best. The easiest way to make hydrogen is to use electricity to break down water. Hello? Wow are you going to make electricity? That's right, nuclear and fossil fuels, namely oil and coal. That plus the whole take fuel, making electricity, taking electricity, making hydrogen, pumping that into fuel cells to make electricity to power you car... Does anyone sense a loss of energy efficiency in all of this? Yep. In the end it would be more efficient to continue to drive around in your 4-banger car.
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Why do you think all the oil companies don't mind investing into hydrogen? Because they know they will be powering that economy too. Why not go with an energy source that is already available and just as clean. A truly independent energy source that's already available??? Wake up Wired.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Why not just use hydrogen for internal combustion? Seems that adding the complexity of fuel cells into the mix is just making life more difficult.
Fuel cells are insanely expensive, currently, while many/most existing automobiles could be converted to burning hydrogen instead of gas. It'd certainly be doable for the auto makers to produce hydrogen burning autos now, perhaps even a vehicle that could burn both old style and new style fuels. Volkswagen actually had something like this not too long ago, if I'm not mistaken.
I mean, think about a vehicle that costs _less_, since there's no need for emissions control equipment anymore (or at least isn't much more expensive). The tech for storing hydrogen safely has existed for years - I remember, as a child, reading about hydrogen gas tanks that wouldn't explode even when incendiary bullets were shot into them.
Why not remove one huge obstacle now? Fuel cells just obfuscate the real issue: we need to get off oil NOW. We need to find the energy source of the new century NOW.
When the global energy system becomes dire - which it WILL, eventually, and sooner than you think - the hydrogen economy will take off, because if it doesn't the human race is quite literally doomed.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it ironic that on the same page as this "How Hydrogen can Save America" article, there's a GIANT FUCKING AD FOR AN SUV
I think it's the human race's nature to destroy itself, hydrogen tech or no hydrogen tech.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
ok, let's read a little more into the fallacy that hydrogen is a clean alternative to petroleum fuels.
Here's a Q & A:
Q: While it's true that H2 burns clean: 2 H2 + O2 = 2 H2O, how do we make H2 in the first place?
A: By using electricity, boys & girls.
Q: And how do we get that electricity?
A: That's right, WE BURN FOSSIL FUELS!
It's called offloading. We take the pollution generated from burning gas in areas of population and move it to unpopulated areas where no one notices it. It's still there, churning through the atmosphere but no one sees it.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Solar and wind are alternatives for power, but there doesn't seem to be a rush in making them more efficient.
The oil companies sell oil to the power companies.
The oil companies invest in H2 plants.
The oil companies sell H2 at thier already existing outlets (read: gas stations)
The oil companies make double plus profits
Who wins in the end? I'm still waiting for the reach-around.
Is it just me or do you need electrolysis(sp?) to turn water into hydrogen (and oxygen) .. so where are you going to get that elecricity from? I suppose you'll use magick *sarcasm*
Maybe Dr. Bussard could speed up the work a bit to help make this happen?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
so, does this mean i will finally be able you get a flying car. -- Ok, so you don't have to "think different" But Windows... I mean the least you could do it try!
Silence Bossy Meat Creatures!
Wired's article is of a stunning ignorance! Not only they ignore that hydrogen is a carrier and NOT a source, which won't move the energy dependance of the US by a millimeter, they write:
These guys at Wired are simply LAMERS!!!
The main fields of research in fuel cells are now:
- Get hydrogen to fit in a car, in metal hydrides or in another form;
- Implement PEM fuel cells on cars (See Mercedes' Necar 4)
- Use SO fuel cells to burn natural gas more efficiently and reduce emissions while managing to actually make money, see Siemens.
- First mobile implementations will likely be buses, as they have a reduced chicken-and-egg problem (they all refuel at the same place and regularly), see Ballard.
-Federico,who happens to be a PhD student in Hydrogen technology at NTNU Trondheim
(I actually haven't read the 2nd page. Too much crap makes me sick.)
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
From the article:
Currently, the least expensive method is a process known as steam reforming, in which natural gas reacts chemically with steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
There should be more info on the web. Don't be a pessimist! ;)
Hydrogen powered cars?
Dream on!
Let me break down the 5 areas that they say need R&D. I accept that these are the main problem areas. However, consider the alternative, of methanol powered fuel cells.
1. Solve the hydrogen fuel-tank problem.
However you do it, it's more difficult than storing gasoline. With methanol, it's eactly the same problem. Bush should devote $0 to this problem, and instead point to the current solutions for oil.
2. Encourage mass production of fuel cell vehicles.
This one is the same for methanol fuel cell vehicles. But wait! With methonal, the internal combustion engine is also a viable alternative. It's less efficent than a petrol IC engine, at current standard, but that's migigatable (I think petrol IC will probably slightly excel methanol IC). So, you can get methanol into vehicles sooner, meaning the total cost is spread over a longer time. The dual engine technology will assist adoption.
Additionally, methonal fuel cells, all solid state, are working in lab prototypes. This is about the same state as hydrogen fuel cells, so you'd not lose anything by going to methanol over hydrogen, and you'd gain a lot.
3. Convert the nation's fueling infrastructure to hydrogen.
Easier with methanol - it's the same type of problem as gasoline, so use the same type of solution - no real R&D needed here. That's a significant win over hydrogen, and equal with gasoline. The problem of supplying dual fuels is the same w.r.t. hydrogen or methanol.
4. Ramp up hydrogen production.
Methanol is more difficult to manufacture than hydrogen. But... there are two options. The first one, diret chemical synthesis from CO and H2 is very slightly more complex than direct hydrogen production. The other option, ferment it from celulose. All the waste wood / straw can be fermented into methanol. I don't know which would be cheaper - but I do know that it's not possible for one man to manufacture hydrogen on his ranch. A methanol still, on the other hand, is perfectly feasable. Spin that correctly, and there's capital there.
On the whole, however, it's 50/50 methanol / hydrogen.
5. Mount a public campaign to sell the hydrogen economy.
Hindenberg. Doesn't matter what actually happened, the helium industry spun it so well, that it's embeded in peoples minds that hydrogen is unsafe.
Methanol is methylated sprits. I don't think anyone thinks that's more dangerous than gasoline.
So, slight win for methanol, on the safty front.
Overall, I make that two noticable wins for methanol, two slight advantages, and one where it's 50/50.
Postscript: I use methanol, rather than ethanol because ethanol fuel cells are noticalby more difficult (== expensive), and producing methonal from biomass uses wood and other indigestable matter. Generating ethanol requires sugars, i.e. food.
1. Endorse U.S. takeover of Iraq
2. Cancel electric car programs
3. Bid to "rebuild" Iraqi oil industry
4. Profit!!!
Why isn't anybody talking orbital power satellites?
I'm not speaking from a position of knowledge here, but it seems to me that while solar energy sucks down here where the atmosphere gets in the way, sticking up huge solar arrays in orbit, using microwave radiation to beam the energy down to a central spot (such as Death Valley) might be an interesting idea... Has anybody looked into this? Got any good links?
InThane
But the myth of the hydrogen economy is confounding to me. For example, take the claim that "hydrogen is plentiful" made by Mr. Schwartz. Yes, it's a plentiful element, bound in low energy configurations in other molecules. There are no hydrogen "free lunches" sitting out there waiting for us to take advantage of them. The problem is that most of the sources of hydrogen take more energy to get hydrogen from than they provide in energy output from burning the hydrogen (or reacting it in a fuel cell). This is fundamental chemistry and physics. No ranting and raving or spending campaign is going to change it.
The "hydrogen economy" really needs to be relabeled as the "coal economy" or the "nuclear economy", because hydrogen's role in this hypothesized economy is merely as a very efficient battery.
The most viable alternative energy sources we have right now are right under our noses but we've chosen not to see them. Ethanol can be produced quite efficiently at reasonable cost from renewable sources. Low cost cellulose-containing feedstocks are available that don't end up with the energy-sinkhole problems faced by corn-based ethanol (i.e. you end up putting more energy into making it than you get out of it). The tools of biocommodity engineering are starting to mature, and this is where we need to put more resources.
Ethanol and methanol, in fact, can be used to power fuels fairly efficiently (not quite as much so as hydrogen). But we don't have to wait - FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) are on the market today, thanks to tax incentives. People need to be made aware of this alternative. The problem? Outside of the midwest and corn based ethanol, it's hard to fuel up on fuel grade ethanol at the pump. More investment in building production facilities and developing distribution channels to the pump is needed for the several million FFVs already on the road, and a government-financed consumer awareness campaign would also go a long way to supporting this effort.
Other real possibilities exist too - biodiesel, for one, though the economics of it are likewise not as favorable as for ethanol production.
We don't need to enslave ourselves to oil. But we do need to be realistic about the alternatives and acknowledge that hydrogen is merely part of the equation. We shouldn't use "hydrogen" as shorthand to refer to the broad array of _real_ alternative energy solutions that are available. The myths about hydrogen need to debunked - it doesn't make you anti-progress or pro-oil to point out the realities of a full "lifecycle analysis" (to use the term from the biocommodity engineering literature) of hydrogen production and usage. And to divert vast volumes of money to research hydrogen when that's not necessarily the most viable path to a sustainable energy economy seems at best foolish.
Converting a 2-ton gasoline guzzling SUV into a 2-ton hydrogen guzzling SUV doesn't actually save you anything.
You don't find hydrogen lying around in the same way you find oil. Instead, you usually get hydrogen by adding energy to water. (In this respect, hydrogen acts as a carrier for the energy.) But the energy still has to come from somewhere; and the way our economy is currently rigged, that means burning oil.
There are opportunities for savings: you can insist that any plant which burns oil to make hydrogen must re-capture the carbon; that will have an impact on greenhouse gasses, and it is easier to build/maintain/police that equipment than similar equipment built into every automobile, but it also means that the price of hydrogen will be raised by that much.
But there will also be costs: think for a moment the cost of converting all gasoline engines to hydrogen ones, the cost of the infrastructure (fuel stations, repair facilities, industry skillset retraining) changeover, etc.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Actually you need more than ethanol to cataylize the reaction, and you produce some byproduct, but most of it is useful.
But, while it sounds good in a vegitable patch in my back yard and drive 100 miles a year scale, it doesn't work at the national scale. Besides the staggering cost per gallon, growing grains that that scale would have enormous environmental damage. You just can't meet current US fuel demands with it. You'd need demand to fall by several orders of magnitude.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
i am going to keep driving my old Lincoln that gets about 9 miles to the gallon and uses a quart of oil every tank of gas, and it smokes like a crop duster, boy i can see people cuss me when they are stuck in traffic behind me, HAHAHAHA
Recycling old ideas is a great way to save brain energy. Thus I quote myself:
If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.
Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.
What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.
The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.
These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.
Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.
Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Less chance of inflation.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You are absolutely right. Talking about the hydrogen economy is like talking about the battery economy -- we will just run everything off of batteries ! No pollution ! The fact is, hydrogen and fuel cells in combination are just a better way of having batteries. The pollutionless renewable sources of energy are not being held back from the lack of good batteries to transmit their power around; they held back because they are already run to maximization (hydro-electric) or more expensive than any other source (photo-electric) or variable (wind) or just plain unrelistic hippie pipe-dreams ( biomass ).
Wind is the best and will slowly grow and become a bigger and bigger part of the picture. You could use wind to re-charge batteries or re-fill hydrogen tanks. But all of these methods of time storage incur lost energy. The key, in my opinion, is to find ways to *consume* electricity only when it is being produced (the wind is blowing). Such methods might include an automatic unattended aluminum smelter that starts up as electricity on the grid gets cheaper, for example.
We won't see this in the US anytime soon, and the reason why is painfully obvious. Just go to the gas pump and look up at the sign.
Here in Central PA, we're paying almost $1.70/gallon for 87 grade gasoline. It's the worst I've seen as far back as I can remember. And the prices just keep going up, up, up.
Our Commander In Chief is an old Oil man. He comes from the wells of Texas. His VP? Oil man. Secretary of Energy? Oil. See where I'm going with this? Our country is so caught up in the big business of Oil that a feul like Hydrogen has no chance of breaking the surface within a reasonable amount of time.
Where are we focusing our (pointless) war efforts? Where oil is king: The Middle East. War with Middle Eastern countries usually results in OPEC cutting us off a bit, which translates to dollar signs for Oil companies. The less they have, the more they can charge under the laws of supply and demand.
Anybody remember how gas prices got during the 1991 Gulf War? They haven't gotten any better, have they. And we've been at relative peace for almost a decade. Now, with our government all gung-ho about finding bin Laden (how hard _is_ it to find a 6' tall Arab on Dialasys, anyway?!?) and disarming Saddam, we'll be lucky if we see any drop in prices anytime soon.
It's all about what makes the bucks for the bigwigs, folks, and there's no way around it. I for one would like to see alternative feuls like Hydrogen developed and put into use, but the almighty dollar is going to keep that from happening. The only way to change it is to get a third party candidate elected: One that has his head screwed on straight, preferably. But then again, we probably won't see that happening, either...
Depressing, isn't it...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Saying that Hydrogen is flammable is a stupid reason to be against developing the technology. If you want a piston to go up something needs to explode to move it (well sorta).
Nothing would please me more than telling Saudia Arabia and their towel wearing buddies to go pound their camels sideways because we don't need anymore of your juice. Thank you!
I just recently saw this new design for a car engine and I wonder if this could help with the energy problem. One of the nice things about it (besides being 4x as efficient as an ICE) is that any reasonable fuel may be used as a heat source.
Any thoughts?
Is someone really trying to imply that removing the one good source of income that poor Arab countries have is going to make them like us more?
Mark my words - a move to a hydrogen-based economy would make them hate us in a way that makes today look like a love-fest.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
While the author of this article makes some excellent points, and a very convincing case, how about this instead: Stop importing oil immediately, Allow the price of domestic oil to roughly quintuple (or whatever the market does with it), and let private industry come up with solutions.
I hate to be the voice of techno-libertarianism here, but it seems like what the author is proposing involves putting all our eggs in one basket. I'd rather see a bunch of different people attack the problem from their own angles, and let the market decide which is the best solution.
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
For all the good that comes of weaning ourselves off of oil, there is a price, and it's one that isn't mentioned very often.
Take a look at where we get our oil from. I'm not talking in terms of politics or culture: I'm talking in terms of economics. For many of the oil-producing nations of the world, oil is the only natural resource they have. The influx of money to those nations has allowed great things to be done in some of these nations. It has, admittedly, also fueled some dictatorships, but even in these cases, the standard of living has risen somewhat.
Take away that inflow of cash, and you utterly decimate the economies of these nations. That's what people forget: it's not just the oil companies that benefit from oil. What do you intend to do when you've plunged some rather large nations back into the poverty that oil had finally allowed them to escape? What do you think they will do? Will terrorism decrease, as the groups see themselves as being finally left alone, or will it increase, in revenge for ruining their economies?
It's a delicate game, politics. Each decision leads to others, and has consequences far greater than can usually be seen at the time the decision is made. This is one of them.
nuclear plants could start generating hydrogen right now, generating it during non-peak electrical periods.
Fact is that the reason they don't is there is currently no market for hydrogen. If there was a market, it wouldn't take long for people to start coming up with ways to generate it. These ways, obviously, would get cheaper and better.
The great thing about it is that, unlike natural gas, the market for hydrogen would be steady all year.
The companies that received gov't money for Hybrid cars brought none to market. And yet several other companies - with no corporate wellfare subsidies.
That's the nice viewpoint.
The other side of this Bush would rather push hydrogen since currently hydrogen research and production would greatly benefit the energy industry (despite what you might think).
I'm perfectly fine with a fuel-cel-powered vehicle. Sign me up. I'll buy one today...IF you can answer some VERY important questions for me:
When I'm 50 miles from the nearest re-hydrogenating station and I run out of hydrogen, how am I going to get more hydrogen? I can't really hitchhike into town and borrow a gas can now, can I? Would I have to wait for a hydrogen tanker to come fill me up? Or would it be cheaper just to call a tow truck?
At any rate, I can imagine that a "hydrogen can" might be a lot heavier than one of those red plastic gas cans...
.sig wanted. Inquire within.
Republicans relentlessly mocked Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
Not even close.
AlGore, in his book "Earth in the Balance," called the internal combustion engine the greatest threat to mankind in the world today. For that he was mocked, and rightly so.
If only the economics were there. Unfortunately, it generally costs more to strip the electrons from H than the resultant energy is worth. Nothing works in our consumer based economy without following the bucks. My $.02
The problem was that the hydrogen was enclosed in cloth impregnated with (essentially) .
rocket fuel.
I was really surprised he didn't mention fusion. It's not viable at the moment, but, as he said about fuel cells, it is an engineering problem, not a science problem. For a proof of concept, just look at the bright, shiny, ball of fire in the sky. It could be a different path to a hydrogen economy. In other words, go through the utilities instead of the oil comapnies. However there would still be a role for oil companies, they could provide the material from which the hydrogen would be extracted with the fusion energy provided by the utility companies.
> With Gas prices in my area (SF Bay Area) over $2 ($2.14 at my local station) a gallon for gas
If you vote for no oil drilling, against new oil refinerys and for higher fuel taxes, you get what you voted for.
I guess some of you may learn when one or more of the oil refineries shut down and gas prices go up 40% overnight.
If you make it too expensive to refine oil you will end up drastically lowering your own standard of living.
You get what you vote for. Vote anti-oil, pro-environment, get a lower standard of living and less jobs.
Sleep easy at night knowing that the oil well which was not drilled in Alaska is being drilled in Indonesia where there are no enforceable environmental regulations.
Also, continue to listen to and accept politicans whom tell you to conserve energy but ride in private jets everywhere. There's one set of rules for them and a different set for you.
What's more, even with the best insulation, as much as 4 percent of the liquid evaporates daily, creating pressure that can only be relieved by bleeding off the vapor. As a result, a car left at the airport for two weeks would lose half its fuel. Scientists need to find a way to eliminate or utilize this boil-off.
In the long run, automobile fuel cells themselves might be tied to the grid, making it possible for vehicles to feed power into the system rather than simply consume energy. That is, electrical meters might run backward some of the time. Futurist Amory Lovins envisions a peer-to-peer energy network in which spot power is distributed to users from the nearest source, be it a utility station or a station wagon.
It seems to me that the peer-to-peer grid idea could possibly take care of the car sitting for long periods of time - just burn off some of that extra energy to provide for a more immediate need and credit the energy back to you.
It still doesn't necessarily solve the problem of being "out of gas", but it sure seems more palatable.
Here in Brazil about 15% of the cars use sugar cane alchool which energy comes from sugar cane which has absorbed solar energy and CO2 from atmosphere. Its a fact its needed large fields to plant sugar cane, but all of the mass can be used to produce some kind of energy or sugar or whatever.
Countries like Brazil, Canada, Finland which most eletric energy comes from hydropower generation (>90%) could also benefint from hidrogen based cars since we could use it to produce the energy reactions to load hidrogen cars?
I think other countries should consider nuclear energy to power their hidrogen based cars. After all, besides of the nuclear waste its clean energy and at least it doesnt add billion tons of C02 at atmosphere.
----
The petrol you burn, make it temperatures burning down here!
"This is Shadow Traffic with your morning commute. We're leaving the Garden State Parkway and heading over to Lakehurst. It seems we've got a pile-up with some of them new hydrogen cars. Oh my god! It's burning up. The flames and the fire and, oh the humanity!"
Biking will go a long way towards recuding our dependence on external power sources. I'm not tlaing about replacing everything with human-powered, but there are several articles I've seen that point out:
- The total amount of infrastructure to replace fossil-based sources is woefully inadequate at our current consumption rates.
- Scaling back consumption will have to occur in a relatively quick amount of time (5-10 years) and will result in a panic situation for many people.
- For most trips that people take, a human-powered verion of it wouldn't compromise the duration or capacity. They are simpyl going a short distance with a little bag.
This really isn't a troll, but focusing on the fact that our energy sources are not going to be able to keep up forever should give one pause to think. Infrastructure is most important than science, and we're all going to pass through "an hourglass" of need at some point. I want to be on a bike then.
mug
I believe it had "In God we trust" printed on it even when we were on the gold standard.
Currently Hydrogen is NOT cleaner than Gasoline. Every transition between forms of energy cause a loss. Coal -> Steam -> Work (motion) -> Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Electricy -> Work (motion) Now before the solar/wind/geo advocates start: Solar is not viable during winter. Windmills are expensive, hard to maintain, and have problems with sand and ice damage. Geothermal is also geographic and a poor option in Kansas. I'm sure that California will be happy to send power to the midwest in winter.
Hydrogen is pie in the sky for now.
Instead, we should concentrate on a few other things first, which are immediately achievable, and ultimately more useful, in both the short and long term.
First, we need to get the sulfur out of diesel fuel. I'm taking this first because it's a no-brainer, and the current policy is too little, much too late. US standards for diesel are lower than Europe's, which is why we can't have their terrific, new-generation diesel cars. The average small car can, and does (over there) get 40+ mpg, without hybrid technology. Look at the Jetta Diesel -- it easily beats the Civic Hybrid, with no high-tech fancy stuff. The thing is, that's not even the best of the breed. Plus, if we get the sulfur out of the diesel, we can also clean up our industrial diesel engines considerably, which are the second biggest source of pollution in many areas.
Second, we do need that high-tech fancy stuff -- hybrid cars are terrific. Designs like the Insight/Civic are simply a better way to build a car, for a variety of reasons -- improved electrical systems, etc. The thing is, we need a better internal combustion motor to begin with -- and that's a new-generation diesel. A Civic Hybrid seems great at 45 mpg, but a hypothetical Jetta Diesel Hybrid would probably top 60 mpg. And if you must, SUVs with 40 mpg city, 30 mpg hwy are feasible too.
Third, we need to invest in smart power grids, and distributed power systems. This would allow to hook their solar systems, windmills, natural gas microturbines and fuel cells, and even hybrid cars into the grid, with the meter able to run backward. This would encourage development of clean power systems by eliminating the barrier to becoming a producer. It would drive down costs because of increased supply, and result in a more robust system. It's more efficient because it cuts transmision losses. Distributed power is better than a centralized model in a time of crisis -- what happens if someone bombs Hoover Dam, or other regional facility? Distributed power is better for national security. All it takes is some new switching gear and a computer network to control it all -- why are we not doing this?
Finally, we need to make our whole society more efficient by reducing car-dependent real estate development. It's ridiculous that people accept 50 mile commutes as normal. People should live, work, and shop within a very few miles. Unfortunately, lack of planning or lousy planning and zoning prevents this in many American cities The real solution to oil dependence is getting people out of their cars. Much has been written on this. Do a search on "new urbanism" if you wish.
So there you go -- clean diesel, diesel hybrid cars, and distributed power; plus land use, urban planning, and transportation reform. These are the solutions we have available to us *right now.* There are no huge technical problems to overcome. Hydrogen has huge technical considerations, and even bigger socio-political-economic ones. Sweeping revolution is fun to think about, but never works out in the real world. I say we take the baby steps first.
what do you think saudi arabia will do when we decide to go down this road? pump more oil maybe?? oil can be made so cheap that saudi arabia can kill of the hydrogen transition 'just for fun'. it will be worse that the transition to HDTV :)
when cars came along, they
bought all the train tracks (in LA), and guess
what? public transportation is barely functioning.
look around your neighborhood. how many gas stations do you see? what is the cost of this 'gas infrastructure'?
Lets just modify some photosynthetic bacteria to exhale hydrogen! Just be sure it doesn't get loose into the oceans!
Entropy sucks.
Hydrogen requires energy to be made. The most convenient form of energy right now is still fossil fuels. Energy gets lost when converting it from one form to another (basic thermodynamics). We would be worse off if we tried to convert to hydrogen now. Solar energy is still a pipe dream, hydro power destroys once-pristine rivers, nuclear power is toxic. We are basically screwed without the development of fusion.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Why am I pessimistic? because as soon as a technology that promises to get away from petroleum dependency arises, petroleum producing states will cut prices significantly until said technology is deemed 'impractical'. Once this happens they'll raise prices once again.
I mean, how much does oil cost per barrel to Saudi Arabia to produce? a few bucks? less? how much are they selling it for? 30+ bucks and counting? They could flood the world oil market with oil at $5/barrel (which would translate in gas at around 40c/gallon) and still rack in profits...
Personally I don't believe that until oil runs out we'll ever wean ourselves from it: and given how big the reserves of oil producing states are, I don't believe it will run out for another several decades unfortunately...
just my 2c
-- the cake is a lie
...it's rocket fuel. Literally. Cheap H2 (and perhaps also cheap O2 from electric hydrogen generation) means cheaper space travel.
Oil is not just a power source. If all the cars, generators, and everything else ran on fairy dust, we'd STILL need plenty of oil around. Oil is also used extensively as a lubricant, and a source material for most of the plastics we use today, as well as many composites.
Now, I'm not saying that we need to use fossil oil for all these purposes, but it happens that fossil oil is by far the best source material for most of these applications. It doesn't require as much refinement compared to other sources of hydrocarbons, like plant or animal oil. So, if you want to cut down on fossil oil usage, not only will you have to do extensive research on hydrogen (or some other material) as a power source, but also on low-cost methods for making alternative lubricants, plastics, etc. that don't depend on fossil oil.
Hubbard's Peak on Amazon
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
Since I've seen no mention of methane hydrates yet, I'll bring it up. Methane hydrate is a compound somewhat similar to natural gas that is found trapped in ice crystals on the ocean floor. We don't know how to extract it economically yet, but according to the this article there are about 400 million trillion cubic feet of this stuff worldwide. Replace "Hydorgen Economy" with "Methane Gas Economy" and you've now got a resource that you can mine. Check out google for more info on methane hydrates.
I had a friend who was a wielder and he mentioned that if the tanks ever blew they would turn into rockets. Nothing and I mean nothing could stop them. They will go through anything.
Hydrogen is the most reactive element one earth. Just look it up on the periodic table( elements to the right are more reactive then elements to the left). Almost any explosive uses hydrogen in their compounds for this reason.
I am not sure about all of you but I do not want this in my car.
What would happen in a fatal car crash? Hydrogen cars are electric and yes sparks are a real possiblity in a wreak. You can also have sparks if the vehicle is moving at a fast speed and scraping agaisn't the pavement during a crash.
Doesn't anyone remember the Hindenburg disaster? Appearently the zepplin was state of the art and had all sorts of safety features. The main cabin was pressurized so any leaks would spill into the tank and not out, and the workers only wore felt shoes to prevent sparks. Look what happened?
I prefer a less efficient alchohol fuel cells. They are alot safer.
http://saveie6.com/
For sure, the H-economy will come from fossil resources, but the great advantage is location location. Most likely, h-fuel would be made from natural gas, which is much more abundant here at home, ie, both US and Canada have abundant stores.
The economics of pruducing h-fuel any other way are not likely to pan out for a very long time. Likely not until we have vastly superior technology all around.
Point in short, let's get over the hype, realize that we have been using a dirty H-fuel system for decades plus, and that nothing really dramatic will happen.
At least, not just from h-cars.
My home is already powered by negatively-ionized hydrogen. That's right, I'm already using this 21st century power source right in my own home. Fossil fuel is burned at a power plant, converted into Protonless Gas and Energy (PG&E), and delivered to my home via special metallic conduits.
Simply by removing one positively charged particle from the hydrogen nucleus, we can reduce this hazardous gas to an easily transported, relatively safe energy source. I predict that in the near future, nearly all homes will use this fascinating new technology.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Gasoline -- 9000 Wh/l
Liquid Hydrogen(H2) -- 2500 Wh/l
150 Bar H2 -- 405 Wh/l
Liquid is ok but kinda cold. 150 Bar is ok until it explodes. I see gasoline as still the best way of carring energy.
This is from Blatant Opportunist #71, unfortunatly a pdf on this page - Guru Lair
Hydrogen Peroxide is kinda fun. Works for rockets. Maybe for Turbines?
I don't know physics but...
How much hydrogen would a solar array the size of a modern gas station produce? Figure that the array was 10k sq ft, there was sunlight 50% of the time to varying degrees, etc. Perhaps, if you just consider more southern, sunnier areas.
I stayed at a resort in the bahamas that was powered by a 100Kw solar array that cost $100k total and consisted of 5-8? 8x8 panels. It would seem that would produce a fair amount of power and it was much smaller then 10k sq ft.
Any physics folks know?
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
An H2 based economy will happen. There is absolutely no doubt about this. The general trend throughout history is to go from high carbon fuels to a zero-carbon fuel (wood -> coal -> oil -> gas -> H2). This transition will happen probably over the next 100 years. H2 will be piped into every home and used for both electrical energy (fuel cells) and heat (a furnace).
The most important thing to remember about H2 is that it is NOT an energy source, but an 'energy storage' system. An H2 tank is basically an chemical battery (all batteries are chemical, but you know what I mean). H2 allows energy to be generated in one location (wind-mills on the prairies) and moved to another location (a car manufacturer in Toronto). Currently, generated electrical energy (wind, hydro, etc.) must be consumed at the same time. By converting it into H2 it allows the energy to be stored.
The real question is not if it will happen, but how. There are two broad possibilities. One, the H2 will be distributed in a similar fashion as natural gas is today: Through pipelines that are controlled by state sanctioned monopolies (i.e. the Gas Company). There might be limited competition at the high volume end of things between large companies. These companies will control generation and distribution (and hence the price).
The second model is much more democratic. The pipelines will be owned by the public (like most roads are today) and the mechanism of transmission will be operated by some body (public or otherwise); that is, they'll look after the physical infrastructure. Here's the kicker: the generation and sale of H2 will be open to anybody. Most people will still choose just to buy the H2 at the market price, but people will also be able to store H2 if they want. They will be able to purchase the H2 when the price is low (night), store it in tanks, and sell when the price is high (day). Very complex computer programs will be written to try maximize their profits. Furthermore, people with small wind-mills or solar cells will be able to sell the extra energy that they do not consume by generating H2 and selling it on the open market. Farmers on the prairies will be able to build windmills to generate H2 and supplement their incomes. In this model, the free market is in driving force for the price of H2, not monopolies.
It is important to understand what is happening with H2 based economies because it is up to the people to ensure that the second model happens. Big oil/gas companies will oppose it every step of the way and try to maintain control. It will be interesting to see what happens.
-PCB
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
Obviously this article was bought and paid for by the global hydrogen cartels, in a conspiracy to suppress the true energy source of the future: pure, clean antimatter!
All we need is a $100 trillion/year subsidy to develop antimatter-resistant materials and technology for producing antimatter from medical waste and discarded athletic shoes.
A distribution network would not be necessary because your car could run for 75 BILLION miles on a single kilogram of antimatter, which has four billion times the energy density of gasoline and SIXTEEN BILLION times the energy density of chemical hydrogen.
Oh no they're breaking down the doKJY(W*#&^
Why didn't I think of this?
Maybe because hydrogen is fairly expensive to make. It's extremely expensive and dangerous to transport. Plus it's neither dense nor compact.
It's this kind of thinking (or not thinking) that's dangerous. Sure hydrogen will likely be one of the many viable alternative energy storage devices (not source) for the future but it's not the only one. This is one of those articles that people rally behind because it's simple and sounds somewhat perfect. The reality is that solutions to big problems are most likely complex. The article is full of holes and wherever a hole exists the author says to just add money. That might work to some degree but setting a goal like "energy independence" would be better. It's less limiting and more likely to have a solution. The whole hydrogen thing is nothing but a tidy package for people to rally behind and get excited about. It's not so likely to work as a comprehensive approach.
This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best. Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car? The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down. Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
I'm not an American, but imagine what would have happened if Bush actually spent all the money he is spending now on a war with Iraq on this idea instead. In a few decades the US would become the first country independant of oil, there would be no need to invade more Gulf countries, terrorism in those areas would dissapear since they will have nothing to complain about and ooh yeah global warming anyone?
But instead Bush is spending billions on a war to invade Iraq. This is like gold for terrorists as they will be able to recruite even more poor young boys, turn them into crazy fanatics who want to destroy the US in any way possible. And the whole world will become a nice big turbine of violence starting in the middle east. Then after a century or so there will be no more oil in the world to extract, and hey guess what! yes then the world will have to look into alternative sources of energy.
Why not start now and save the world alot of headaches? I mean the US sure as hell has enough money, research facilities and car companies to do this now don't they? Maybe the world will follow...
Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car?
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
> The simplest option is gaseous hydrogen. The problem: It takes up a lot of room, so the gas must be compressed, but this requires a tank capable of withstanding high pressure. To carry enough fuel for 400 miles of travel, the tank would need to withstand 10,000 pounds per square inch - 50 times the pressure in a combustion engine's cylinders - and to keep it from bursting in an impact, it would need to tolerate 20,000 pounds per square inch. More research is needed to find materials strong enough to do the job yet light enough to carry and cheap enough to mass-produce.
Simpler than that, no hydrogen needed. If we could build tanks with a 20kpsi capability, we could simply run compressed air through a turbine-style engine and not burn any fuel at all.
What we really need is to replace the oil as a source of energy. Once this is done, anything is possible.
Research into controlled fusion is progressing slowly (http://www.jet.efda.org/). A few billions invested into this topic might accelerate it.
With limitless energy from fusion, we would not have to care about efficiency of electrolysis of water!
Currently, the least expensive method is a process known as steam reforming, in which natural gas reacts chemically with steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Far preferable would be to use carbon-free resources like solar, wind, and hydropower to produce electricity for electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would make renewable energy practical, acting as a storage medium for the modest amounts of energy such resources produce. Wind power, especially, lends itself to this sort of use.
And there's the rub. Even neglecting the astronomical capital costs, no one has concieved a renewable energy program that will fulfill our energy needs. Most hydrogen will have to be produced from natural gas. The rest will have to be produced using electricty generated by nuclear, fossil fuel, and hydroelectric plants. No renewable technology has yet been proposed that could possibly generate enough power to do this a bearable cost. Hence, our dependance on foreign oil remains.
Um, well you seem to be getting into semantics. It is the hydrogenn that is physically stored, but in effect its stored as an energized state of water. The water that went into the system is lost until you release the energy used to seperate the water.
Either way my point stands that no water is created for Kalifornia and much of the water currently in the environment will be unavailable for other uses.
I didn't see it in the article, but I read in Robert Zubrin's book about going to Mars, that another benefit of his low-cost space travel agenda would be to mine H3 from the moon, where it exists in copious supply. Somehow (i'm no chemist) this H3 could be broken down into H2 and used for fuel-cell cars and those city buses in Chicago. Anyone have comments on this?
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
Hydrogen powered cars would emit a greenhouse gas: water vapor. Most people don't realize this, but water vapor is actually a far more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
(Now, whether car emissions of H2O would significantly alter the temperature of the planet, I don't know. The modeling of the impact of changing the emission rate of any greenhouse gas is difficult.)
The impact of the emission of purely water vapor by cars may or may not be better than CO2 emission. Just be careful and don't say that hydrogen powered cars don't emit greenhouse gasses.
First, it takes as an axiom that environmentalists do not support nuclear power. Quite frankly, you cannot claim to be an environmentalist and oppose nuclear power. Let me restate that to make myself clear. Anyone who opposes nuclear power but calls themself an environmentalist is lying. Nuclear power is extremely environmentally freindly. Radicals who claim otherwise simply do not have the science to back up their claims. It was really funny to hear about people protesting the radioisotope generators on a deep-space probe when they had absolutely no evidence that there was any danger of contamination.
Second, it mentions the fact that various corporations have a real interest in generating the electricity that will be used to release hydrogen. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. If there is a carrot in front of their noses, they will do something about Hydrogen. The truth of the matter is that corporate R&D dwarfs federal funding of R&D. The more people work on it, the better things will be.
Finally, it fails to mention other solutions. Fusion is still "20 years away," but is obviously very desireable. Various plans for space-base microwave power plants could be done as well. While I don't like raising fuel taxes (it raises the price of everything), it should probably be phased in. There are other solutions out there that we havn't even thought of.
Maybe it's just a pipe-dream, but I'd like to see people break away from their dependence on big multinational corporations to some degree.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Hydrogen requires alot of energy to be produced, and most of that energy will come from coal. I know this has been mentioned, and this MIT study has been mentioned, but here is a link to a more readable news story
People go on and on about the hydrogen future, but it's a mere distraction. Hydrogen will not replace oil, or coal, or gas. It may replace gasoline. Because hydrogen is an intermediate energy form - it's temporary storage between production/harvesting of energy and use of energy. And for all its supposed advantages, it's got a lot of faults. IMHO, diesel/biodiesel is a much more flexible and practical intermediate fuel - and if anyone could come up with a better battery, it would beat both.
The real question is energy generation/production/harvesting. We need to stop shipping in oil and burning up coal and start harvesting it from renewable (AKA "effectively infinite") sources, particularly the ones with low environmental impact. That means solar, wind, microhydro, biodiesel, cellulositic ethanol, tidal and current turbines, and geothermal. We need on-site off-grid power generation. We need to distribute energy generation and storages so that we don't need delicate, wasteful shipping methods - be they the power grid or fuel trucks. And we need to stop letting everyone get away with building structures and devices that waste energy with wild abandon.
Long story short - hydrogen may have potential, but it's being sold like snake oil and it's years away from reality. If we focused on simpler, proven technologies and put some real effort into some rather obvious fields of research (like high efficiency solar) we could have a working system in much shorter order.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Read this: http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/news/2003/20 030210bushfusion.html
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I think I saw somthing like this. Current research was going on in the Artic (Canada-US research team). It was a gas that was dissolved in the ground - TONS of it.
The good part is these deposits are found either in Polar regions or just offshore. So nations like Japan would have a exploitable resource (I don't think they have many oil fields)
The bad part - this stuff is about a mile down and dissolved in a solid. So you can't "pump it" to the surface (its solid). The researchers were looking at ways of extracting this more easily.
There's a simulation game that demonstrates Schwartz's ideas where you play the President and make decisions about U.S. oil policy called The US Oil Import Policy Simulation.
The simulation shows that the high leverage points for reducing US oil imports is conservation and alternative fuels, followed by improved MPG.
All those stupid people with "No blood for oil" bumper stickers are stupid. They think, ok, instead of fighting and getting killed over oil, we'll discuss our differences with the terrorists (who, by the way, just so happen to want us dead, but that's an unimportant detail) and understand them, because terrorists are just good people who want to make a difference. Yeah, right. See, that's what's wrong with all these idiot liberals. They fail to understand that terrorists are EVIL. They don't give a damn about us understanding them. They want us dead. And all these damn liberals who think otherwise are, in the terrorists' view, a weakness that they can and will take advantage of. Therefore, we should get America off this gasoline and onto something else. And do it as soon as possible. The advantages of this move are:
- Environmental friendliness.
- The terrorists can drink their damn oil.
Oh yeah, and we should still kick the crap out of Iraq and all those other countries while we're at it.What's with the fixation on minimalist atomic structures? Your puny electron and single proton are no match for my Plutonium based economy! Not only can I generate power so cheaply that it's not worth measuring, but can blow us both to bits if anybody messes with it!
Well, I guess a hydrogen based economy is better than an information based one. Just be prepared to pay the inventor of cheap, plentiful hydrogen the same or more than you're paying for oil, even if it is nearly zero cost to produce, if our experience with the info biz is any example to go by. If someone can get filthy rich off pc software, imagine what this future hydrogen baron is going to make off something we really need like personal transportation!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Then we can take the "waste product" and sell it to Saudia Arabia.
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
Here
http://www.geomar.de/sci_dpmt/umwelt/gas_hydr/
also look at google.
" Formed under conditions of high pressure and low temperature, the gas hydrates slowly decompose when brought to the surface releasing methane gas and water. As an impressive demonstration of their natural gas content, these snow-white 'icecubes' are flamable. "
Gas is getting expensive?!?! Big joke!
Can you buy any liquid that is cheaper than gas?
I defy anybody to go to a shopping mall and try to buy any liquid that is cheaper than gas, I'm sure your basket will be quite empty. Even bottled water is often more expensive!
It's insane, how can gas be so cheap when you think of all the processing that is needed?
Most people ignore the cost in lives. Did anyone in this forum lose someone in the Sept 11 attacks? Do you feel that your loved one was lost due to America's gasoline addiction? (Anyone who has read the editorial in my sig knows that I very much feel that way, but I didn't lose anyone that day.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Most interesting for me, as a Canadian (and also, with the current anti-Americanism rampant in Canada) is the fact that Michigan is currently trying to woo all the H2-cell companies out of British Columbia. I know the chair of the Canadian national committee on energy efficiency, and she has informed me that Michigan is currently offering huge tax incentives for the companies around Vancouver (currently the world leaders in fuel cell tech) to all leave and head for the U.S. I of course hope they stay in Canada - this is the field I want to work in eventually, and would rather stay in the Great White North.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
I find it quite strange that the media and a whole bunch of other parties are playing up Hydrogen as if it is THE solution.
It's just a transport medium. Unless someone finds huge deposits of hydrogen far bigger than Saudi Arabia's oil fields, something strange is going on.
It can't be just that tons of people are stupid because why are the supposedly smart ones playing along with the story as well?
Could we not reproduce nature and take water and CO2 and make fuel efficiently?
Contrary to nature, we could take any source of energy: wind, wave, dam, solar, nuclear, etc.
That would have many advantages, including the use of the current infrastructure and motor, it could be stored the same way as the current fuel, and would not polute (the same way that nature does not polute, the CO2 is recycled).
Only problem with your VW Beetle is it runs on diesel, which is even less friendly than your standard unleaded gasoline.
Current hybrids do a lot of cool things to improve the efficiency of standard engines. I'd think just having the ability for the engine to quick turn off and on when you are not moving (say at a stop light / grid-lock traffic during rush hour) would save quite a bit of gas. I'd imagine quite a few of the benefits from hybrids will eventually make it back to standard engines.
Peter Schwartz neglects to mention something that is perhaps not immediately obvious - hydrogen is currently produced from petroleum. It is going to be extremely, extremely difficult to transition to a hydrogen economy while leaving petroleum behind. To do this is going to require a major advance in science - namely the development of an inorganic system for splitting water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. There have been many great minds working on this for years and currently the record for doing this is around 1% at best (based on the conversion of hydrogen from a single photon).
Clearly, a hydrogen economy devoid of an intimate connecting with fossil fuels is not going to be a reality any time in the near future.
The first way to begin easing the dependency on petroleum is to both decrease consumption and increase the efficiency of processes that consume energy. The first of these is obviously not a simple task. The second is. John Deutch (MIT) has argued that if all cars in the US were hybrid, we would reduce the daily consumption of petroleum by approximately 30% (I recall it would be around 3 million barrels/day vs 30 million). And this is just the start - think about all of the other technologies that could be improved by improving efficiency.
My point is not to shoot down the article, but simply to note that the switch to a hydrogen economy is absolutely going to be connected to petroleum - there is currently no other way to produce hydrogen as efficiently (currently steam reforming hovers around 60-80% in terms of the yield).
I don't remember anything in the article about spending guvment money on better ways to generate it. The article did state that there are a few ways to generate it, finding more wasn't the thrust.
The article devotes a few paragraphs under "section 4" to discussing how to obtain pure hydrogen. The problem is that none of these are economically viable currently and suffer from undesirable by-products. In my earlier post when I say "we don't know how to do it yet" I mean that we don't know how to do it ECONOMICALLY yet. Yes we can do it using steam reforming. The author recommends putting $10 billion into research on alternate ways of generating the hydrogren -- he suggests nuclear.
GMD
watch this
From the article:
Patriotic duty? Forget that! It's your duty to humankind! Propaganda using Nationalism and Patriotism as a basis is not really a good thing. It creates the illusion of "us" versus "them" and leads to intolerance and violence. Don't make patriotism the focus of the advertising campaign! Though I suppose it'd work on more people these days than saving mankind would... Bleh.
Or better yet, make it more cost effective than gasoline. If people can save money, they'll do it, patriotic/environmental reasons aside.
1) Gasoline is the cheapest way to power an automobile. It has the lowest total fuel cycle cost. It is cheap to make the raw materials (few dollars per barrel of oil) cheap to refine ($0.40 per gallon) easy to distribute and easy to store. There is little evidence this will change over the next 10-20 years. I don't think it will change over the next 20-40 years.
2) Any technology that is going to change fact #1 is going to require immense government action (subsidies or taxes).
3) The economic distortion will lead to black markets that make the War on Drugs look winable.
Did Apollo get to the moon? Yes. Seen anyone on the moon recently? No.
It is easy for governments to achieve specific technological goals, but they don't have a good record on creating economically efficient technological industries.
You can briefly push aside basic economics, but in the end, they'll get you. (USSR, etc.)
The reason environmentalists don't like nuclear is that they don't want the environment polluted with all the neutrons released by the power plants. Even most of the fusion processes being worked on release neutrons.
I don't think nuclear will be very feasible until somebody figures out what to do with all that radiation. And stuffing it into a mountain isn't a viable solution.
To be fair though, the linked page does talk about their initiatives into alternative fuel sources, but the whole name change thing is just a myth.
This is correct, if we switch all teh internal combustion engines over to hydrogen, we'll still need energy to produce the hydrogen. And yes, at first a lot of that hydrogen might be produced by burning or refining petroleum fuel at plants and then shipping the hydrogen to refueling stations.
This does not mean that hydrogen is useless, or that we should deveop ethanol or methanol vehicles instead, or any of the other alternatives suggested.
Hydrogen is the simplest form in the series of energy carries we've been progressing along. We started out with wood, then moved to coal, then petroleum. Each of those is a hydrocarbon, and as we've progressed up the chain there's been more and more hydrogen and less and less carbon. Each step is more efficient at storing energy than the last, and hydrogen is that last step we can take before moving on to something complety different.
Although we can't find it naturally, hydrogen is relatively easy to produce given another source of energy, and as stated, it's very efficient at storing the energy you put into it. This means that hydrogen makes an ideal energy currency.
A long time ago, before there was money, people used barter to get what they needed. You might trade 1 goat for ten chickens. Some cultures eventually devolped a pseudo-currency where everything would be equated to a certain number of one thing, everything had a certain value in chickens for example. After awhile, minted currency was developed that turned this idea into an abstract form. The money was artifically produced and assigned a certain value, and by using this abstract currency people didn't have to carry chickens around anymore.
Petroleum is a pseudo-currency, like a chicken. We've all agreed that (for the most part) petroleum is the standard, and that's what we use to run our internal combustion engines. You can't toss a couple of logs in your gas tank and have your car work, and most cars aren't happy with having methanol poured in them without some adaptions being made.
Hydrogen actually carries the energy with it, which in some senses makes it a pseudo-currency, but the fact that it can be artifically produced using other sources of energy makes it more like a real currency in my opinion, which makes it very similar to electricity.
No one is particulary concerned that if we run out of coal our computers will stop working because there would be no more electricity. We'd build more hydropower plants and more nuclear power plants, and more people would install solar cells on their houses. There might be a period of changeover, but because electricity is an energy currency we'd be able to adapt quickly. If all of the sudden we ran out of oil however, most people are convinced (with good reason) that it would be a disaster)
However if all inernal combustion engines used hydrogen, another energy currency, then we could handle the issue in the same manner as a lack of coal. Other production methods would ramp up to meed the increased demand, and after a period of minor difficulty, everything would be back to normal.
Similarly, no one worries that if fusion power is developed into a workable form that their TV won't be compatible with it anymore. The electric grid is designed so that any source of power can be hooked in. Likewise, your car wouldn't care where the hydrogen came from. If you want to be extra green and produce your own hydrogen using methanol so you don't have to worry about the enviromental effects of petroleum being used, go ahead, your car won't notice.
Along with this increased versatility the centralized production would bring with it imporved efficiency. Petroleum based internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient, and efforts at improving fuel efficiency have only begun to address that. If the petroleum currently being used at cars was instead being refined into hydrogen at centralized plants, not only could more efficient methods of generating power be used at the refinery, but it would be much easier to deal with the polution at a single point source.
The most important point of hydrogen is the freedom it gives us from a single source of energy. Using hydrogen doesn't mean that we would necessarily stop using petroleum, but it would mean that we _could,_ and to some extent we wouldn't have to deal as much with the messiness inherent in petroleum internal combustion engines. Just like the existance of currency doesn't meant that you have to give up owning chickens, but it does mean that you can if you want, and you don't need to carry them with you when you go to the store anymore.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I have heard of fuel cells that can handle methane as a fuel. Does anyone know if they can also handle H?
If so, that's the transition. While natural gas is no ultimate solution, there's already significant infrastructure to deliver it in most places. It might actually win consumers over on the convieniance factor (just fill it up at home from the comfort of your garage).
Once consumers get used to that, H can be phased in. All you'd need for your recent model car is a new fuel tank and possibly metering valve.
Meanwhile, older cars can be converted to natural gas fairly easily. I've seen kits for $500 to $1000, but they'd get cheaper as production scaled up. Those kits should be readily adapted to H as well.
While the most optimal thing is to switch all at once and be done with it, that sort of plan never seems to work. One step at a time is how we got from the stone age to where we are now.
A big advantage to H is that it is a versatile high density energy storage. The tank problem looks solvable. The tech to generate H is fairly simple, and a number of options exist and can be used in tandem (geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, solar) while gasoline is only convieniant when refined from crude.
I'm not necessarily a big fan of nuclear since we still have significant questions about what to do about fuel reprocessing and the waste, but with work, we may find good enough answers to make it a good idea. The pebble bed reactor is a good start.
Since we don't know what our primary energy source will be in a few decades, we need to choose a versatile delivery and storage mechanism like H and fuel cells so that whatever it is, our vehicles can use it.
It's well known that there is some deal between OPEC and consumer countries to make oil prices somewhat stable. I've suspected for a long time that there's also some agreement to make the transition away from oil gradual. If we went whole hog on it, in the short term we might have to weather a crisis if OPEC reacts to a threat to their long term revenues.
There is supposedly a memo from Saudi Arabia leaked about 10 years ago that cautioned OPEC from pushing their customers too hard on oil prices. It predicted that if they pissed us off enough, then in 7-10 years we could rid ourselves of the need for them and then they would be in trouble. Those 7 years would be painful for us, but possible. It seems likely to me that as a quid pro quo for keeping oil prices stable, there's some agreement to make the transition gradual.
Plus you can make it from decaying stuff. Bacteria produce methane from metabolic processes. Cook up a big vat of those...throw in some food, and collect the gas that comes out of the 'brew'. Hell I could concievably have one in my garage. I just throw my organic garbage in it, and fill my car up with the results, all without leaving my house!
Use your brains people, hydrogen is feesable and cheap to produce...if done the right way.
Dude! Mining is sooo 21st century. With the simplest of genetic engineering, we can grow fuel.
Frankly, I don't know why little developments like this don't show up in Wired articles about a potential Hydrogen economy -- it seems like the most likely answer to the question of where all this hydrogen will come from.
___________________
Someday men and women will probably drive cars running on "fuel-cell"
motors that have no pistons, consume hydrogen, and emit no pollutants,
including no greenhouse gases. Between the zero-pollutants advantages of
hydrogen and the fact that its supply is in principle inexhaustible, the
world's petroleum-based economy will probably eventually yield to a
hydrogen-based economy--to everyone's benefit. Republicans relentlessly mocked
Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by
something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
From listening to Al Gore you can get the impression that he believes saying things makes them happen. Planning to legislate the replacement of internal combustion engines without having ideas for alternatives doesn't make you a visionary, it makes you an idiot. There's a big difference between saying we should do something and actually having a plan on how to do it.
Also, the only viable methods for generating hydrogen in quantities sufficient to replace fossil fuels in cars and homes are through fossil fuel or nuclear based power plants. Sure, it may be possible someday to generate enough power using solar, but we don't know how to do it right now, and we don't know how long progress will take. That means in order to replace the internal combustion engine in our vehicles, and the oil furnaces in our basements, we need nuclear power. Guess what Al Gore's position on nuclear is. Great plan, huh?
water + catalyst = wet catalyst
:)) ... anyway, Hydrogen at this state of affairs is impractical... besided don't talk about toxicity and safety hazards.. and then bring up hydrogen..
wet catalyst + energy = wet catalyst + energy..
aside from Ru(bpy)3 you might try photocatalyst which can shift the equilibrium of the "Water Gas Shift reaction".. but quantum efficiencies will always suck.. thank goodness the sun won't go supernova for a little longer (...or has it already?
and finally.. this is to everyone..
Dam'It..use hydroelectricity.. TVA does a great job..
You know, one thing about hybird cars, people might be a little more interested in them if most of them didn't look incredibly gay. Look at the Prius--it looks like one of those little yappy dogs with its ass all hunched up, squeezing out a doggie loaf.
The EV1 isn't much better, it looks like it's wearing a dress. I know, I know, the cars have to be small and light for maximum fuel efficiency, but there are plenty of small cars that look sporty and cool.
Seriously.. please stop maying hybrid cars that scream out "never kissed a girl", and "frigid Women's Studies Professor".. they'll sell much better.
As many other posters have noted, hydrogen is only an efficient storage medium for energy, so the energy to create hydrogen still has to come from somewhere. To power this "hydrogen economy" we can choose from non-renewables (oil, coal, nuclear), renewables (solar, hydro, wind, sea, geo) or some blend thereof.
In the near term it would be (is) oil and coal with a pinch of nuclear and hydro. If we wanted to get off of our dependence on oil in the near future, we'd have to go nearly all coal (not enough hydro and nuclear has too many image problems, the worst being the spent fuel). The U.S. COULD do this as we have some of the largest unexploited, extractable deposits of coal on the planet. Of course, coal has all the environmental drawbacks of oil and then some.
The real solution to our energy and environmental problems is to go with renewables. In the long run, we will use up all of the non-renewables (hence, the name) and while we're doing that we will wreak havoc on our environment and ourselves. Renewable energy, in particular solar power, solves all of our problems: it's safe, environmental impact is nearly nil and it's vastly abundant. Currently, solar power's one fatal flaw is infrastructure (i.e. - collection / production) cost. I believe in time that technology will solve this problem. Improving and deploying solar technology is where I would put the majority of my R&D money, not in developing fuel cells which only half addresses a small part of the real problem! (BTW, IMHO solar space power is unrealistic for the forseeable future)
Here's a picture of the future I'd like to see: every building is helping to power itself and others through solar cell roofs. During the day, most buildings (i.e. - residences) overproduce and spin up kinetic batteries and supply energy to the grid. At night they draw from these batteries and the grid. Sunny places (e.g. - Arizona, Nevada, etc.) really overproduce and help the less sunny places. The grid is backstopped by centralized nuclear and solar plants to supplement during times of extreme demand or lulls (i.e. - winter) in supply. The electric grid becomes much more distributed and energy flows from disparate sources to where it is needed as necessary in a minimal loss manner. This model also has nice side effects such as far fewer power losses in general and our infrastructure is harder to attack.
This brings us back to the question "How do we power automobiles?" We've seen that electric cars have severe drawbacks. Using electricity to produce hydrogen to power fuel cells is a good option. In the model above, if residences produced enough spare electricity to "power" their vehicles' hydrogen needs, then we wouldn't have the transmission loss we have in our current centralized model (this is around a 30% loss today). A possibly better option would be to develop kinetic batteries to power cars. These things are currently close to 80% efficient! The main drawback with them is a possible safety hazard (flying bits of shrapnel (bullets) after a minor accident).
In conclusion, if we are going to spend $100B on energy, then lets spend it on the real energy PRODUCTION problem first!
Hydrogen may be the most abundent element in the galaxy but what makes it so wonderful as a fuel for vehicles makes it rare on earth. Earth has an oxygen atmosphere and so hydrogen readily combines with it here on earth which is why the earth has so much water.
For the the massive quantities needed to power transportation vehicles for centuries it would have to be produced from water using an origional source of energy. Hydrogen is more akin to a battery than a chemical fuel. And if you don't use fossil fuels to make hydrogen then the most likely source is atomic energy. And for some odd reason environmental groups consider atomic energy more abhorent than fossil fuels.
But you see Bush's pupet masters finally got a clue. Hydrogen is an energy storage medium. So they can use whatever means they wish to produce it in whatever country they find more restrictive of protestors than themselves. More than likely this would mean atomic energy. You see atomic energy is way more profitable than petrolium as a fuel source plus they can leverage their production sources and infrastructure to segway into the hydrogen(atomic) economy.
As for storing hydrogen, what about the article on Slashdot a while back about a method of using Borax to store hydrogen in water which is extracted via a catalyst?
A hydrogen based economy is possible, people just need to put some serious effort into looking into all of the methods of extraction and storage to come up with a good inexpensive solution.
The problem is that the initial costs of any solution will be high until it is widely deployed.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The article has an admirable, five-point plan:
1. Solve the hydrogen fuel-tank problem.
2. Encourage mass production of fuel cell vehicles.
3. Convert the nation's fueling infrastructure to hydrogen.
4. Ramp up hydrogen production (glad that one got in there, eh?).
5. Mount a public campaign to sell the hydrogen economy.
.
However, it just so happens that I have a better, SIX-point plan:
1. Solve the AA battery fuel-tank problem (already pretty much solved, just need to keep the batteries from falling out when we drop the car).
2. Encourage mass production of AA battery vehicles (well underway).
3. Convert the nation's fueling infrastructure to AA batteries (many stations already sell them).
4. Ramp up AA battery production.
5. Mount a public campaign to sell the AA battery economy.
6. Profit
Note that my plan not only has more points, but, unlike the first plan, it will generate a profit!
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Hydrogen allows you to use electricity to run a car. Since electricity is so versatile, it leaves the door open to making all kinds of modifications to cars that will improve their energy efficiency in the same way that gasoline hybrids do, but cheaper because the car no longer needs a gasoline engine.
Regenerative brakes are the most common modification, but it would also be possible to do things like have solar panels on your car that will charge up a backup battery or turn wastewater back into hydrogen while its sitting in the parking lot.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Yup, in the future we will all have frying cars.
You know, there are some people who fervently believe that.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Methanol: 17 MJ/l
H2 (2000psi): 1.8MJ/l
Which means you need large tanks for hydrogen and smaller tanks for methanol. Course, they still have to be bigger than petrol tanks.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
1. Use algae to produce hydrogen
From the National Renewable Energy Laboratory:
2. Solar Hydrogen
From the Alternative Energy Institue:
Hydrogen is everywhere and I think these two methods are just the tip of the iceberg. At any rate, I'm disappointed by most of the neysaying that's going on here today. Really, this is a geek site -- shouldn't we debating what we *could* do as opposed to what we *can't*? Where's our hacker ethic?
_________________
HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL!!!
It is a storage device for energy, in essence a battery.
Between a refined fuel and a resource fuel?
Hydrogen on earth is like gasoline: Its refined, and made to be a fuel by the expenditure of energy. Hydrogen is only an "unlimited fuel source" if it can be obtained in its free state, not tied to oxygen atoms.
Its simple, basic, conservation of energy: It takes exactly as much energy to free a hydrogen from water as you get back when you burn it, and actually, because of entropy, the net useful energy is a loss. Unless we find a energy positive way of getting large amounts of free hydrogen (finding a source on earth, or finding someway of mining it cheaply from elsewhere) we're not going to remove our dependance on fossil fuels one single iota. How do you think we're going to power the electrolysis of the water to free hydrogen? By burning fossil fuels most likely. All we'd do is centralize our need for fossil fuels, and perhaps make it more likely we could use natural gas or other more domestically available resources.
Any other method runs into the exact same issues we have with them right now? Wind and solar? Energy density from them isn't at the level to support the entire energy economy, although thankfully that seems to be getting better, enough to the point that we SHOULD be using it to supplement our reserves (and producing Hydrogen is probably a very good way of doing this). The other choice is nuclear fission, but we've apparently decided the costs of that are too high for large scale use (I'm still unsure one way or the other if this is a logical, reasoned decision or not).
Hydrogen isn't the saviour of mankind. What it IS is a way to use our resources a bit more efficiently, and that's why the idea has merit. Its not because somehow we'll not need all that messy oil anymore.
Yes contaminents kill off the micro-organisms in wastewater, but that isn't really news to anyone- most modern industrialized nations have been treating waste water for a very long time. It's a very simple process, and in the end if its done right you will be pumping nearly pure water back into a water source like a river. The left over sludge is sold to farmers typically who use it as a fertilizer, some sludge is also kept just in case a contaminant does get into to the system, so you can restart your waste water plant.
In my back pocket? No, in a capacitor or a battery. Neither of which store very much electricity.
Or you store the energy chemically as hydrogen or better as methanol.
Hydrogen and methanol are simply convenient storage mechanisms. Methanol being more convenient than Hydrogen.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Wouldn't we still have use for the variety of products that comes from oil that don't deal with energy? Hydrogens great and all for burning, but what about plastic?
And this long long speach comes to one point... That-- OOOO! QUARTER!
In my mailbox this morning: Dr. Harry Gray, Beckman professor of Chemistry at Caltech, is giving a public talk on "spectacular advances in chemistry (which) have shown us the way to use sunlight to split water into clean hydrogen fuel". The talk is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11:45 - I certainly intend to show up!
The solution is likely to be finding a good reformer to strip the H from gas and then generate electricity with a hydrogen fuel cell. This preserves all the infrastructure and allows renewable fuel alternatives in the future, while getting better efficiency today.
Bush doesn't get it. Don't throw money at hydrogen research, increase the CAFE requirements and let the market figure out a solution. Don't increase it a lot at one time or you'll kill them, but do raise the requirement 0.5 or 1.0 MPG per year for a few years at least.
Unrelated, A peeve of mine is that we still call them the "Big Three" even though there are really only 2 American car makers now. If you've ever seen Chrysler HQ, it's hard not to think they're a local company :-)
If suddenly (as in a few years down the line) the demand for oil tails off, and the oil revenues will drop off.
Saddam will be unable to keep paying his troops as much and so they will cease to support him.
Saddam is killed by his own people
The UN steps in to do the 'good guy' routine and sets up a democracy.
Everyone gets good PR, except dead people who don't need it.
Would this actually cost more than a $100m war + the cost of picking up the pieces once the entire middle east deteriorates into a kill-zone? What about when you add in the cost of rebuilding $MAJOR_AMERICAN_CITY that was destroyed by a soviet-built suitcase nuke after Saddam's followers realise they've lost the war and strike back?
War rarely makes good economic sense in the modern age. This article highlights this. Actually, it rarely made good economic sense at any point, Henry VIII almost bankrupted England not realising this.
Hmm. This is going to be moderated 'offtopic', isn't it?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Check this article:l ay.v/ART/2 001/03/28/3accb0712
http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/disp
do a search on "too much land"
The speak of ethanol, not biodiesel. If the US were to get its energy supply from ethanol, a full 50% of the continental US would have to be planted with corn. Even if biodiesel was twice as efficient, that would mean 25% of the US would have to be farmed just for fuel. I don't know if we have that much farmable land in addition to what we need for food.
Biodiesel is great, but we'd have to turn the whole country into one big deforested farm for it to work and turn half of our citizens into farmers. Any volunteers?
The article proposes spending 5 Billion in a boondoggle to convert a pump at all service stations nationwide to go to hydrogen. For commutes, you can get a converter powered off of your N. Gas line and fill up in the evenings. For trips, you can create a nationwide network of fill stations along all highways for about $19.5M dollars if you space them 300 miles apart. That's 0.39% of the article estimated cost. I suspect the other numbers are similarly inflated.
This article was a troll. Trolling for dollars that is.
I can see jumpstarting the infrastructure by subsidizing enough filling stations to allow people to travel nationwide using just hydrogen. That's a reasonable escape for the infrastructure catch-22 and it isn't that expensive on a national basis. Why gas station owners have to have $30k stuffed in their pockets for each station they own to switch over once that happens is beyond me.
It sounds like you really don't want this to work.
Saying hydrogen is abundant in nature is just meant to get you thinking about the ways we could get it out. It turns out there are some novel ones. I think, since you appear to have some chemistry, that you should know your analogy with diamonds is weak.
This is one set of bacteria and one set of reactions. I'm just saying "think creatively." It's a line of inquiry - don't treat it this way, unless it's your position that it's a dead end?
Even if you don't get a big win like this, there are still (as you suggested, and as and the article goes into this in some detail) configurations like 5th generation nuclear reactors (their example is a pebble-bed modular reactor) and other cleaner "factory" sources of energy that use hydrogen as a transport.
Even if we rely on hydrocarbon factory enery with a hydrogen transport, as I'm sure you know, factory energy is vastly more efficient that using an IC automobile engine... if you can do good things with the efficiencies of the conversion and storage processes involved even that might be a winner.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Yes, it would be nice not to have a middleman. However, you have to have one. Or, you have to use the less efficient automotive IC engine.
I could easily imagine that using a power plant, and then converting, storing, and releasing with some middleman (i.e. hydrogen) is more efficient that conveying the fossil fuel straight to the car and burning it there.
Of course, it will take work to get it right. But that's worth it, eh?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Hydrogen may be produced by engineered and naturally ocurring microorganisms as a waste product. This is a big piece of current hydrogen power research efforts.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
FYI, a lot of research in the industry is focused on using engineered and naturally ocurring microorganisms to produce hydrogen "as a waste product." There have been some notable early successes.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Neither are the prettiest things around (though certainly fascinating to look at), but they are relatively clean. I think that these 2 sources of energy could also help push the hydrogen economy along.
I'd certainly like to see a large number of alternative energies given serious government help. Hydrogen is wonderful, but we get so much free energy from the sun, wind, and water, it's a shame to not take advantage of that!
- i fart in your general direction -
I don't have the numbers with me but it wasn't hard to show that it takes a lot of wind to generate a single GGE (gallon of gasoline equivalent) of hydrogen. However, considering the vast subsidies we pay for oil (not even counting military and environmental expenses), it seems clear that there is a lot of money to be made.
Regarding the "chicken and egg" problem of "who wants to buy a hydrogen car if there are no hydrogen stations" and "who wants to build hydrogen stations if there are no hydrogen cars", a strategy had occurred to me. Begin the program by providing energy to businesses and cities to run stuff other than cars. There's no reason you couldn't use hydrogen to generate the electricity used in a factory or city water plant. From the brief economic analysis I did it looked feasible to locate fuel cells at the desination (where the electricity is needed) and deliver & store the hydrogen there.
The customer could remain on the power grid to provide backup power in case there was a hydrogen deliver problem (it's new so there will be problems. If they have excess generating capacity there's no reason they couldn't sell power back into the grid.
Using hydrogen in this way would reduce the company's or city's pollution output and might make them eligible for pollution credits (if the US ever decides to join the Kyoto Protocol or something similar).
Selling hydrogen to individual customers with large demand and few & fixed locations would provide a simpler business model as hydrogen production is getting started. As such producers/distributors proliferate, setting up H2-gas stations will be more feasible.
If we don't do it soon in the US then Europe or someone else will do it first and we'll miss out on the economic advantages of controlling market direction.
Another DOE page
With all our talk about bioengineering. I'm surprised no one has suggested the oldest method, photosynthesis. Plants[1] have been solving this problem for millenium. Their output doesn't necessarily have to be hydrogen-oxygen, but a fuel that's more efficient.
[1] Actually it doesn't even have to be that, but algae, or similiar. Imagine transparent plastic tubes (damage resistant) covering the ground in an efficient manner. A greenish solution of algae and processed sewage being pumped through. A processing station filtering out the desired product (an oil perhaps). Solve two problems at once.
BTW There was an article about mid-80's in Scientific America on more efficient methods of solar collecting.
My solution is as follows: Divide the circuit racing calendar in two - have a series where the best drivers race each other in identical vehicles. These could either be something like Formula Ford, or better still let them race karts and hold the series in sports stadiums. Imagine that - Schumacher, Montoya, the best Indy drivers, maybe even guests from series like NASCAR or bike racers like Valentino Rossi, all competing in a small arena where you could actually watch the entire race live!
Then, you could have the tech series where fuel cell racers, with every electronic doodad under the sun legal, compete and manufacturers could show their skills in a field that might actually be vaguely relevant to the average motorist one day.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
If they *can*, however, demonstrate some of that material and can produce it for a realistic cost, the space elevator becomes a no-briner.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Having spent four years working in power-market modeling, forecasting, and optimization, I must at least point out the various inefficiencies in this model.
Generation capacity must be forecast for not only consumption but contingencies. Spinning reserve is fine and gas-powered generators get the job done, but this does not solve n-minus-one transmission line failures. Nor does it address the issue of peak-energy consumption exceeding network capacities.
If it becomes feasible to store power more efficiently and in large quantities, then power can be generated continuously through-out the day and consumed as needed. This has the effect of reducing peak transmission rates, with the additional side-effect of limiting network failures. Isolated nodes can consume their reserves without going completely black on disconnect.
Personally, I think charging consumers spot rates for power would do more for improving efficiencies all around, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Ideally, one would purchase a storage device, charge it at 2AM when power is cheap and consume that power at 12PM when it's hot and power is expensive. Smaller units will be practical long before entire cities are using them.
Cheers.
-Hope
Meanwhile, compare the danger of neutrons with the danger of radioactive elements in nature. Bannanas have a fair amount of potassium, and are fairly radioactive. "Fiestaware" plates and bowls are radioactive. Right now we are being bombarded with particle showers from cosmic rays. Further, and perhaps more importantly, coal contains trace amounts of radioactive material such as Uranium. This is much more dangerous than neutrons as they will go to your lungs when you breathe in the air. Then, it will release its alpha particle directly into your lungs where it is readily absorbed. Coal burning stations are much more of a radiation hazard than nuclear power plants. Combine all the natural sources of radiation, and compare it to the inverse square drop-off of neutron radiation, and it seems to me it will quickly die off compared to the background. Do you have any scientific studies demonstrating that neutron radiation from power plants is a real problem?
Finally, I am reminded of a story of an English teacher that had to teach a class in the Physics building. She was a little worried, and asked a physics professor if there was any radiation in her classroom. The professor smiled and told her there was radiation all around -- in the walls, in the air, everywhere. She was troubled by this, and then asked if there were any chemicals in the room. He jumped on this as well, and told her that there were chemicals in the desks, on the floor, and all over as well. She was quite scared, and had the classroom changed by the next class period! I wonder how many "nuclear protesters" know why this story is funny ;-)
That talk about how you are funding terrorists by buying drugs? You know you can replace the word "drugs" with "gasoline" and the ad is still true. GO Hydrogen....I still think we should go methane until complete turnover to hydrogen. Woot.
Unlike Hydrogen which is merely an intermediate energy storage and transport medium, Biodiesel can be made cheaply and easily from renewable sources including canola, soy, and many other crops. Biodiesel is much cleaner burning than petroleum because it has none of the acid rain producing sulfur compounds found in petroleum based diesel. Modern diesel engines are more fuel efficient and produce more usable torque than gasoline engines and can give better real-world performance and driveability. Finally, Biodiesel requires little or no modification to existing diesel engines so conversion from petroleum is easy and inexpensive.
Check out http://www.biodiesel.org and http://www.homepower.com
As much as I adore GM's new hywire, what I really want is a Hempcycle
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Actually, California has large access to water in the Pacific.
Salt water will electrolize. As the H2 combines with the O in a (fuel cell / jet engine / IC engine / Gas Furnace / whatever) and makes fresh water, it will help California, because it will add moisture to the air that was in the ocean before.
If you want to capture the water escaping the fuel cell, you could drink it. It would be distilled.
So a hydrogen economy would help California's water troubles.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
The US economy is using oil in a very wasteful manner. The quantity of oil used to produce one dollar of GNP is way higher in the US than in many other industrialised nations, like Japan and in Western Europe. Some societies actually manage to have economic growth without using more energy, so production and energy consumption are not inextricably tied together.
The street price of gasoline in the US is less than 50% of the price in most of Europe. As long as gas and oil is priced so ridiculously low in the US, there is no incentive to be efficient and the level of consumption will remain high, and hence the US dependency on foreigh oil will remain, and the US will continue to be the most polluting nation in the world.
It is only a fraction of US oil consumption that comes from the Gulf region. If the US used oil as efficiently as in Europe and Japan, that dependency could easily be removed. In comparison, some European nations are actually oil exporters, even though their oil resources aren't really that immense. Quite are few are self-sufficient with regards to oil.
Europe and Japan actually learned something from the energy crisis in 1973. Maybe it is time for the US to follow suit.
René Seindal
Go all the way to Epcot Center in Florida, and produce enough water to change the environment!
The Middle East's second biggest resource is a lot of Sun. If I were the Saudi Energy Czar, I'd right now be looking very strongly at the feasibility of building a few thousand square miles of solar electricity farms and/or wind power farms in the reaches of the country, spending a big chunk of the oil revenues to build long term alternative revenue sources.
If the reflectors etc. of a solar farm covered (e.g.) 50% of the farm's area, then they'd get a bonus of shade, which like a forest may actually change the evaporation and cause a localized climate change. In some cases, reforestation of a desert area (that was formerly forest) was associated with an increase in rainfall.
Benefits might well include financial (selling power to Europe and Africa, generating a long term revenue stream), social (the area under the solar farm may well make a good location for housing for their expanding population to live), cultural (encouraging a new class of technicians and maintainers with jobs) and possibly even climatic (making the entire region more pleasant, in some cases maybe even farmable)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
At the time Apollo was announced, $100 billion was a lot more than it is today. In 1962, the entire US government budget was a bit under $107 billion.
The current US federal budget is just about $2 trillion (million billion). If you use the Consumer Price Index as a yardstick, then inflation alone counts for a factor of 6 in the difference.
Apollo spent about $19.5 billion over ten years in then-current dollars, which isn't too far from $100 billion today.
There are no "trillion dollar tax cuts", or the government as you know it would collapse. A few years back, politicos got more than a bit disingenuous when it came to budget matters. Perhaps they feared we had become jaded to large numbers and weren't paying attention, or perhaps they just wanted to exaggerate their demagoguery. But, whether to spark panic at cuts, or claim unwarranted credit for small gains, any budget adjustment started being calculated over multiple years in the future and quoted as if it applied to tommorow.
When someone talks about a "trillion dollar tax cut", check the fine print, and you'll see that they are really saying "a cut in projected taxes using a lot of assumptions about the future economy which adds up to a trillion inflated dollars over the next ten or twenty years". There's quite a difference there from what was actually said; you can create arbitrarily large numbers simply by adding up the amounts over an arbitrarily large period of future time.
And -- as we've seen with the federal and especially state governments the past couple of years -- basing your current spending and calculating your future budget based on optimistic assumptions about the current economy is nothing short of just plain stupid.
Some historical data:
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Ap
How long before water emission becomes a pollutant? Adding water to local and global environment "may" change weather patterns just as CO2 is doing right now? In addition, more high clouds in the sky will reflect more sunlight, causing the Earth to cool down. On the other hand, more low clouds (fog) may act like a blanket and trap more heat which accelerates the greenhouse effect. Not to mention, in Dune, water ironically kills the local fauna and deprives the people of precious spice.
I'm curious if anyone has been discussing the consequences of putting that much water vapor in the air. For example, in a confined space like in Manhattan at the street level, would it cause an apprecible rise in the misery index- temp + humidity? The saying - 'it not the temperature its the humidity' - would change to - 'its not the temperature, it those damn fuel-cell powered cars'. Also, in the winter time, would some of the water vapor condense, drip on the road and cause icing problems? Or what about in desert areas, like phoenix, how would the local ecology be affected? The problems probably could be fixed by putting a condensor on the exhaust and storing the water. But that would reduce the efficiency. - ps I like being a contrarian.
Actually, in 2000, there was a discovery of hydrogen producing algae. Today they're looking for $10M in venture capital and hope to come to market in 2-5 years. Bio-hydrogen probably beat soybeans for producing fuel, both because fuel cells are twice as efficient as an ICE and because a hydrogen crop comes in twice a week while soybeans have a much longer growth cycle.
I'm sure hydrogen fuel cells and for that matter, Zn/KOH fuel cells are feasible. But every time I think about hydrogen, I see the Hindenberg in my mind's eye.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
There's your problem right there. I doubt if Greenpeace would even understand that you were proposing a solution to a problem. I think their question would be along the lines of
"Let me get this straight, you want to make cars nukular".
The US will be free to promote democracy in countries like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
Nice how they leave Iraq out of the list. But apart from that why would anyone think the US would show any interest in those countries at all if they didn't have oil. I don't see them 'promoting democracy' in any of the surrounding countries
Ok,
First, concentrating hydrocarbon fuel burning, GAS, OIL, Coal etc into huge plants for the production of electricity to create hydrogen is a friendlier option to the environment. There is this thing called the economy of scale. We can make those plants cleaner per amount of fuel used than we can when it is disbursed among cars etc.... Ie 200 parts ber billion is better than 2000 parts per billion. keep the scales in mind and don't compare apples to oranges as many do when comparing car pollution to plant polution. plants are easy targets with their concentration.. but there are far fewer plants than cars and regulating their emmisions is a hell of alot easier than regulating cars. so funnling all the hydrocarbon mess through more easily managed choke points is a viable alternative in the short run.
Problem.
You still have to collect the oil, make gas, mine coal. That price dosn't go away you have to ship it to the plants and all of that is overhead into creating hydrogen for clean cars. That means the price point of hydrogen will never drop below that of striaght hydrocarbon combustion if hydrocarbon combustion is the genisis of the hydrogen.
not to mention that sticky issue of limited resources. Perhaps its 10 yeard down the road.. hell mabye its 100 or a 1000. But it is limited. the question is do we do something now or later. My guess is later but I would certianly preffer earlier.
Next.
Alternative, either solar, hydro thermal, hydro or of course nuclear.
Solar - Current solar panel efficiency is at 15% for your average 'affordable' panel. roughly 1000 watts of solar power hits a square meter. Meaning a square meter of solar panel collect 150 watts PEAK. 1 watt worth of solar panel is a steal at $4 a watt. So a square meter of panel costs $600. There are higher efficiency panels but the price jumps like CPU's at the upper echeclon. 15% at $4 a watt is the sweet spot.
First to generate the power to run our homes during the day is huge. The power to generate enough hydrogen to replace gas for use in cars is huge. both are expensive. And you need extra size in the array to generate enough energy to store enough hydrogen to run our homes when the sun goes down, larger than the online array cause you have to allow for the loss of energy in translation ( thermodynamic laws ). at best that 80% efficiency turning the sunlight to energy and 80% converting the hydrogen back to electricity for a net of a little more than 60% efficiency. So the array for non sunlight powered days has to be some 40% larger than the online grid during peak time. The gas generating array also has to capture 40% more power.TEHN you need margin of error otherwise you generate a scarce IE EXPENSIVE resource. THis is before considering industry or military needs.
Until we get more capable solar panels that are reasonably priced.. I mean pennies on the watt they are not the answer. They will always be fringe becasue of the loosing efficiency game you play with them. Wind power faces the same problem.
Hydro and Thermal are more useable but they are limited and damning up rivers etc has its own issues. Geo thermal is probably a more viable larger source of power than hydro. Hydro is pretty well utilized at this point. There is more there and improvements and tidal capture ideas but I don' think its a primary possibility.
Nuclear- This is an answer. 6-7000 nuclear plants of the current most powerfull models would provide enough power. Its doable. but we don't know what to do with the waste of about 50 public plants and a couple hundred military plants. Until we solve that problem fission is risky. perhaps its more controlable and we can at least concentrate our damage in one area instead of the wide spread distribution system we have currently.
Just remember you have to have that efficiency overhead.. IE you have to generate more nuclear power than you are going to reap from the hydrogen when you turn it back into electricity.best thing to do is to drive hom
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Nice round numbers, all multiples of $5 billion, and all numbers that are well short of anything resembling a reasonable amount to start making a dent in the current system.
I googled up this recent article that says OPEC is producing 24.5 million barrels of oil a day. At $40 a barrel, that's $980 million a day spent on oil around the world. Let's say we take a quarter of that into the US (it's more, iirc). That's a quarter billion a day in oil alone, without touching infrastructure, etc.
$100 billion is going to "... shift the balance of power from foreign oil producers to US energy consumers within a decade"?? Forget it. "The White House should ask for $5 billion - roughly $30,000 for each of the nation's 176,000 filling stations - to get the ball rolling"?? Get the ball rolling? The authors of this article want station owners to install something for which there's zero consumer demand -- and then only have the government subsidize enough to get the ball rolling?
How much is the government going to pay to give everyone a car that uses this new fuel? And once everyone's driving, what is the government going to do about all the other products that use petroleum? Cars in driveways are just the beginning, and filling stations aren't even that.
These numbers might sound big to us individually, but taken in context they are a drop in the bucket. If switching from oil to hydrogen was that easy, we'd've done it long ago.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
1- Lower income taxes *seriously* (do we need this huge an army BTW?)
2- Triple the price of petrol with taxes
3- Fund alternative energy resources research with these taxes
4- Watch the researchers and entrepreneurs come up with efficient engines and petrol alternatives.
Alternatively to 2 one could just wait a few years, it will happen anyway.
Wouldn't that be the American way?
The problem isn't that the neutrons will go through the power plant and be absorbed into me. The problem is that the neutrons will be absorbed into the reactor, cooling medium, soil, etc. Those items are then infused with lots of extra neutrons that will have to be disposed of somehow. The current plan is to stuff it all in a mountain.
I wouldn't be surprised if somebody figured out what to do with things like spent fuel. But I don't think anybody will ever find a use for all the crap that has absorbed all those extra neutrons, to be slowly released over time.
for actually a large scale physioal plant?
,salon, or some other
any engineeeing calculations?
Ill give you credit for for having a meaningful link though. Most of the other clowns here would say its possible because michael moore
loon said so.
Because Hydrogen is not freely or even cheaply available like oil, it can never replace it.
Hydrogen is just useful (but not even convenient) for transporting energy. You need to produce energy somehow and then you can convert it inefficiently to Hydrogen (by water separation for example). At the other end you can convert it again to water in an engine of some sort (inefficiently again).
So really Hydrogen is not the answer. Rather Hydrogen is the question: `maybe later' is the answer.
Plants can take care of that as well.
While I am a fanatical supporter of cleaner, preferably renewable, energy sources, I wonder whether hydrogen-powered engines will be any better for the environment than combustion engines.
OK, so the "only" byproduct of a fuel cell is H20, not all those nasty greenhouse gases. That's got to be an improvement right? WRONG! What about all that water vapour being pumped into the atmosphere?
If you want lots of horsepower generated from a hydrogen powered engine, you're gonna produce dump trucks of water vapour. Considering the size and duration of the average LA traffic jam, this is gonna produce environmental effects every bit as undesirable as at present. Remember, water has a high heat capacity. Therefore it acts a a thermal blanket. In other words, LA is still gonna have a big problem with temperature inversions.
Of course, I'm sure we would prefer to be drowned during a "pollution day" rather than asphyxiated!
Of course, this argument completely fails to consider the added pollution from the plants extracting the hydrogen in the first place.
In short, hydrogen power will not fix the environmental problem, it'll just shift the problem. Given how little we know about the long term effects of greenhouse gases on global climate, should we really consider an alternative guaranteed to still mess with the environment, only in a different way?
IMO, renewable AND clean energy sources are the only option.
This is precisely the CRUX of the article. Nothing will happen until the US switches over to NUCLEAR power. There is no other way to get so much energy to power the switch to and production of hydrogen. However, this is a very controversial political issue, mostly because people are needlessly afraid of nuclear reactors. The public perception of nuclear power will take a while to change. Until then, we've only got hydrocarbons for fuel!
The sun is full of hydrogen, so all we need to do is build a space elevator to the sun and suck it to earth. :)
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Just in case no one mentioned this yet.There's a car that runs on compressed air. Compressed air sounds like a logical storage medium to me. I would imagine that it takes less energy to compress atmosphere than it does to exctract hydrogen.
Please read the FAQ before you tell me how dumb I am. And I would love to hear any statistics or insight from the slash tards that are in the know on this subject, since I'm too lazy to do the research myself.
I've seen old bills. They said various things but generally, that the note was redeemable in lawful money or some standard amount of gold and/or silver.
If it weren't for the paperless office revolution, I would have to haul big ass rolls of blueprints to City Hall to get building permits. If it weren't for the paperless office, I would have received a SIX FOOT TALL (2m) stack of faxes during the construction of a 6,000 sq. ft. (600 sq. m) building. I sure am glad that I don't have to haul a big stack of papers to every project meeting! I'm sure that you all live in the paper free world, too.
Gosh, I'm sure that the obvious Hydrogen Revolution will happen just like the paperless office revolution did. Overnight.
(Note to the sarcasm impared: we do lots of things today with less paper, but the 'paperless office revolution' hasn't happened)
is that (once we have an efficient storage mechanism) it can be shipped to / from anywhere in the world, just like oil.
So if the American electorate won't go for nuclear power... just buy H2 from Russia, France, or whoever is willing to put up with the (with new designs, astronomically small) risk of nuke-yoo-lar catastrophe!
You pathetic fuckwit. Try paying attention to the news once in a while, and also try to remember that Clinton is no longer in office. You need a new whipping boy to blame everything on (and you better come up with one fast lest the shit starts sticking on the current administration where it belongs).
It takes a hell of a lot of energy to break water down into its components. It's much more economical to use the electricity for wired things, and burning fossil fuels for transportation. Gasoline would have to hit 30-40 bucks a gallon before hydrogen could even begin to compete. But then, ethanol would be an economical alternative when gasoline hit around 10 bucks a gallon, and hydrogen would still be priced out of the market.
Of course the hydrogen-centric system won't happen for quite some time for numerous reasons. But there is something that we could do now that would make the road to hydrogen later much, much easier.
What is needed is a stable, clean national electricity supply that is independent of fossil fuels. I am talking about nuclear power. New reactors, such as high temperature gas cooled pebble-bed reactors, can compete with fossil fuels while creating far less waste and no risk of meltdown. They can even be used to burn off the 38 thousand tones of nuclear waste we have (including plutonium that could be used to make bombs).
Of course, this needs to be coupled with other technologies as well to provide a complete end-to-end energy production solution. We need to use fuel reprocessing in order to extend our fuel supply and eliminate wastes. We can use neutron transmutation to decrease the life of radioactive wastes from tens of millennia to tens of years.
There is no way that we can implement even a limited hydrogen energy storage and transport system until we have a stable and abundant source of electricity. Currently, Bush wants to build 2000 more coal fired power plants over the next 20 years (check http://www.energy.gov/). Even if hydrogen goes through 100%, we'll just be burning that much more coal.
There is a proposal that outlines one possible implementation of a national electrical energy policy using nuclear energy online that is worth a read. It goes over some pros and cons. United States of America: Energy Policy for the 21st Century and Beyond (PDF - 115KB)
P.S. - The Wired article also makes reference to hydrogen as an abundant supply of energy. If we don't eliminate this notion, we will be in sore trouble. Hydrogen can only be a transport of energy.
Basically, it goes like this:
Back in the mid-late 18th century, the latest popular pastime was ballooning (mainly in Europe, though some in other areas of the world). Because hot air balloons weren't practical at that point, hydrogen (and coal gas) were the prevalent methods of acheiving lift. In the sport of speed/distance ballooning, getting your balloon filled and aloft the quickest was paramount to winning the race.
Now, at the time, you had two choices for a gas filled balloon - hydrogen, generated by iron and zinc mixed with sulferic acid in casks, the bubbling liquid generating a fair amount of hydrogen, or using coal gas, which was piped throughout a major city for lamps and such. Neither method was great, the hydrogen took a while to gather a fair amount, and was dangerous to work with (not because of explosions or anything, but mainly because of working with acid bubbling in sealed wooden containers), and coal gas simply didn't come in quick large quantities. Another method had to be found, and it was.
In the late 1790's, it was found (and this is the process I don't understand, but I think it is similar to the current method of catalytic steam cracking for hydrogen) that by passing steam continuously over hot iron in a tube, the hydrogen in the water vapor could be isolated in great amounts. So, the formula is steam+hot iron=hydrogen (in some manner).
Now, how to apply this to the modern day?
Well, if any of you have been through Barstow, CA - you know that just outside Barstow is this large solar power generation plant (I think it is currently offline), that uses hundreds of mirrors to focus the sun on a boiler at the top of the tower (I think it is actually a thermal transfer system using brine or something, not a direct energy boiler - not sure). Now this is what I was thinking:
1. Set up two of these towers (or, maybe one would do with the right design?).
2. One of the towers would generate steam, the other would heat up the "tube of iron".
3. Pass the steam from one through the other, and gather the hydrogen.
4. Nearby, is the town of Boron, famous for Borax - there has been an experimental car made (by GM?) which used hydrogen bound in some manner to Borax, so that hydrogen could be stored and transported in "solid" form. This was on /. not too long back. The car used water to liberate the hydrogen, the chemical reaction created heat, (steam?), and hydrogen, which was then used to run the engine.
Ok, there you have it - a simple and cheap (I think) method of generating hydrogen, that doesn't use electrolysis of water or oil cracking, should be relatively polution free, and uses the sun's energy (essentially storing a portion of the sun's energy in the resultant hydrogen). Can anybody tell me what is wrong (or right?) about this idea? It seems blatently obvious based on history, but is there something I am missing that would rule out doing this?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
To: peter_schwartz@gbn.com, doug_randall@gbn.com
CC: rants@wiredmag.com
Peter/Doug,
I've just completed reading your article on the Wired website. I like
to think I look at pretty much everything with a healthy amount of
skepticism, and through those lenses, your article appears to be much
more along the lines of advocacy.
In the intro, you state:
"It's plentiful, clean, and"...
Calling Hydrogen plentiful because it exists in other molecular forms on
the planet is simply inaccurate. By that argument, so are hydrocarbon
type fuels (natural gas/oil), though admittedly the processes for making
natural gas out of water and carbon dioxide are probably not well known.
I'm at least pleased to see that you admit (though don't retract that
plentiful statement) further in the article that it turns out the most
practical means of obtaining hydrogen in the world today is, in fact,
fossil fuels. You do lay out some practical ideas for the source of the
actual fuel (the Hydrogen in this article should have been more
accurately addressed as a storage medium, not a fuel), and I commend you
for doing so.
However, I would have to disagree with how you so quickly spend our tax
dollars. It's as if you have something to gain from it!!
I would argue that the supply of renewable energy resources should be
the focus of any efforts, absent of spending money on vehicles that use
this 'fuel' that can not yet be mined, pumped or otherwise extracted
from any natural source.
I would further argue that the point that all of our future energy needs
will eventually be supplied by solar, wind, and hydro power, and that
they just need to be "developed", can be tested pretty easily. The
current energy usage can be pretty easily identified from information we
already have on fuel usage. Then it's pretty easy to identify the
maximum amount of energy we can gain from wind/hydro/solar power, and
see how big the delta is.
I hope the chasm isn't too far to cross, but it's possible that it is.
Far too often in the "press" I see assertions like yours without
anything to back it up. You may well have the data to back it up, and
you'd be doing very well with your readers if you were to cite that kind
of information.
So here's to spending some pencil, paper and $10,000 testing your
assertions, before we spend billions developing vehicles that have no
source of "fuel".
My personal opinion? If the fuel were plentiful, the means to consume
it would be developed. I'll entirely agree that it may take government
involvement to get there, but we probably don't need to spend all of
these billions on parallel paths. Focusing our efforts on "developing"
the sources of energy is probably the best bet. Once we have the source
of energy, the rest will fall into place.
Regards,
- Matt Ingenthron
As some other people have pointed out the plan outlined is short on deliverables for the money. As described it just becomes another corupt government program like most others.
I propose that the government goes to the car manufacturers and says "we want to buy $100B in hydrogen based cars and want them delivered by Jan 1, 2013." If you figure about $50K/vehicle that means about 2 million cars. The govt then sells the cars for 1/2 their cost and the whole program costs only $50B. A bargin! And no messy tax rebates and such.
Of course the car manufacturers would have to work with the oil companies to work out the hydrogen distribution system but I figure 2 million cars ought to be enough to jump-start the oil companies interest.
Maybe he means "water powered" like steam, or maybe a water wheel.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15239
A Hydrogen Economy Is a Bad Idea
By David Morris, AlterNet
February 24, 2003
When George Bush proposed a $1.7 billion program to promote hydrogen-fueled cars in the State of the Union Address, both sides of the aisle applauded. Almost everyone supports a hydrogen economy - conservatives and liberals, tree huggers and oil drillers. Such unanimity forecloses serious discussion. That's unfortunate. An aggressive pursuit of a hydrogen economy is wrongheaded and shortsighted.
To understand why, we need to start with the basics. Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet. But it cannot be harvested directly. It must be extracted from another material. There is an upside to this and a downside. The upside is that a wide variety of materials contain hydrogen, which is one reason it has attracted such widespread support. Everyone has a dog in this fight.
Renewable energy is a very little dog. Environmentalists envision an energy economy where hydrogen comes from water, and the energy used to accomplish this comes from wind. Big dogs like the nuclear industry also foresee a water-based hydrogen economy, but with nuclear as the power source that electrolyzes water. Nucleonics Week boasts that nuclear power "is the only way to produce hydrogen on a large scale without contributing to greenhouse gas emissions."
For the fossil fuel industry, not surprisingly, hydrocarbons will provide most of our future hydrogen. They already have a significant head start. Almost 50 percent of the world's commercial hydrogen now comes from natural gas. Another 20 percent is derived from coal.
The automobile and oil companies are betting that petroleum will be the hydrogen source of the future. It was General Motors, after all, that coined the phrase "the hydrogen economy".
What does all this mean? A hydrogen economy will not be a renewable energy economy. For the next 20-50 years hydrogen will overwhelmingly be derived from fossil fuels or with nuclear energy.
Consider that it has taken more than 30 years for the renewable energy industry to capture 1 percent of the transportation fuel market (ethanol) and 2 percent of the electricity market (wind, solar, biomass). Renewables are poised to rapidly expand their presence. A hydrogen economy would be a potentially debilitating diversion.
As the President's 2004 budget demonstrates, any new money for hydrogen will be taken largely from budgets for energy efficiency and renewable energy. From a federal point of view, then, the more aggressively we pursue hydrogen, the less aggressively we pursue more beneficial technologies.
To be successful, a hydrogen initiative will require the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars to build an entirely new energy infrastructure (pipelines, fueling stations, automobile engines). Much of this will come from public money. Little of this expenditure will directly benefit renewables. Indeed, it is likely that renewable energy will have about the same share of the hydrogen market in 2040 as it now has of the transportation and electricity markets.
Far better to spend the billions the President wants to spend on hydrogen to increase renewable energy's share of the energy market from 1-2 percent to 25, 35, or even 50 percent in the same time frame.
Not only will a hydrogen economy do little to expand renewable energy, it will increase pollution. Making hydrogen takes energy. We are using a fuel that could be used directly to provide electricity or mechnical power or heat to instead make hydrogen, which is then used to make electricity. Back in 1993 William Hoagland, senior project coordinator at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's hydrogen program, prophetically told Time Magazine, "I can't see why anyone would invest in additional equipment to make hydrogen rather than simply putting the electricity on the grid."
We can, for example, run vehicles on natural gas or genera
help out.
This guy started out on a couple of strong points, then got lost in the minutiae of hydrogen cars.
1) Protecting foreign oil is expensive
In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, the Gulf War (Hussein vying for oil assets), the War on Terrorism (bin Laden psycho for US in the Holy land, due to Gulf War), and Gulf War 2 (US vying for oil assets) are all fairly direct costs of oil politics. The costs since OPEC ruined the party in '75, deflated and depreciated, are something like $20 bil a year. We rent Egypt for $2 bil/year, we subsidize Israel for $10 bil/yr... and there are plenty of other direct costs to the government of significance because of foreign oil. $40 bil/year ($140/capita) is a decent guess. Plus the political costs of deposing/supporting oil dictators.
2) Trade deficit
11 Mil BPD imported at $30/B x 365 = $120 bil/yr on imports we could alleviate. That would knock our trade deficit down by a third. This would have a $120 bil/yr beneficial impact on our capital account (how much of our capital belongs/is owed to foreigners).
3) Massive government initiative
New technology is great for the economy because then we can export it. Plus, for capital intensive economies like ours, it boosts productivity. A big pile of research grants helps our intellectual capital too.
If a 10 yr program lets us eliminate those costs 10 yrs early, then $20-30 bil a year spent on it is well worth the cost.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15359
Obviously Oil
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet
March 11, 2003
Editor's Note: Although Dennis Kucinich was aggressively attacked by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen for suggesting that the preemptive strike on Iraq was based on oil, the Post refused to print the presidential candidate and Ohio Democrat's response. This was especially frustrating, since the Post editorial stance and balance of editorial page columns have been decidedly pro-war. You can tell the Post how you feel about this ommission at ombudsman@washpost.com.
Is President Bush's war in Iraq about oil? Of course it is. Sometimes, the obvious answer is the right one: Oil is a major factor in the President's march to war, just as oil is a major factor in every aspect of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.
Ask yourself:
What commodity accounts for 83 percent of total exports from the Persian Gulf? What is the U.S. protecting with our permanent deployment of about 25,000 military personnel, 6 fighter squadrons, 6 bomber squadrons, 13 air control and reconnaissance squadrons, one aircraft carrier battle group, and one amphibious ready group based at 11 military installations in the countries of the Persian Gulf? (Note, the disproportionate troop deployments in the Middle East aren't there to protect the people, who constitute only 2 percent of the world population.)
What was Iraq's number one export when the U.S. made an alliance with Saddam Hussein, sold him biological and chemical weapons agents, and then did not object when he gassed his own people?
For what major Iraqi resource has Saddam Hussein denied contracts with the largest U.S. and U.K. multinational companies? (Note, those companies are the #2 (ExxonMobil), #4 (BP-Amoco), #8 (Shell) and #14 (ChevronTexaco) largest companies in the world, and the Bush Administration has been known to listen when large energy corporations speak.)
For what Iraqi resource did French and Russian multinational companies receive lucrative contracts from Saddam Hussein? What valuable commodity does one reprehensible, megalomaniacal tyrant (Saddam Hussein) control that another reprehensible, megalomaniacal tyrant (Kim Chong-il) does not?
How do the White House and State Department plan to pay for a post-Saddam occupation and reconstruction?
The answer to all of these questions is oil, of course. Oil obviously drives U.S. policy in the Middle East. So who can doubt that this war in Iraq concerns oil?
Meanwhile, the justifications the Administration has made for this war can be rather easily dismissed. Contrary to Administration assertions, a war against Iraq will not be in self-defense: Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States. It doesn't have the ability, nor has it ever had the ability, to shoot a missile or send a bomber to harm America. Iraq does not possess nuclear weapons. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
No credible link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda has been made. Iraq did not have anything to do with the anthrax-containing letters that killed several Americans.
Contrary to the Administration's portrayal of an Iraqi threat, Iraq is hardly uniquely threatening. Sixteen other countries in the world have or might have nuclear weapons, 25 countries have or might have chemical weapons, 19 other countries have or might have biological weapons, and 16 other countries have or might have missile systems. Yet the Bush Administration is not on the verge of invading them.
Contrary to their denials that this war has anything to do with oil, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle wanted to go to war in Iraq long before they became Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. In a 1998 letter they sent to then-President Clinton, they stated "it hardly needs to be added that if Saddam d
help out.
FCV uses 3-4 times the amount of energy per mile compared to an BEV.
*) The miles are based on practical teset. Diffrent drivers wil get different ranges. (It can be noted, that Think City have a clamed range of 80km, but vind Lunde gets 100km (Lang: Norwegian) per charge, while other driver get 70-80km per charge)
Source: http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/2003rule/1202 wkshp/brooks.pdf
The chemical weapons that Saddam has are only for local use so to label them as weapons of mass destruction is a lie. They are not more lethal as a couple of bombers and nobody calls those weapons of mass destruction.
I am more afraid of Bush with his threats to use nuclear arms and his plans to use non-letal battle gasses (forbidden by international conventions). Bush is definitely more out of control as Saddam.
they had such definitive information I'm sure a country like Germany would stand behind them.
fleece...snow...fasad...token...fake...nisemono...
>> the president has access to intelligence
If he would only make use of it
seems to show little of his own
though it could just be his manner.
Let's become this article in a movement. This article leaves things very clear, but we the supporters of hydrogen, should make a movement to make this more known and to pressure the ones that make the decision. The US government needed a Russian cosmonaut to be in orbit to create the Apollo, so to me it seams as the US government policy is meanwhile it works we don't need an improvement or as in this case meanwhile we don't need a change, no change has to be done, so we won't pay for one. It is now the time of us to make them know a change is needed. Let's make a manifesto signed by as much people as we can and send it to all USA, UN, NATO, EU, and oil powerful heads, as a start and I'm willing to receive more and better ideas. As I am not a native english speaker, I can't write this manifesto by myself (thing I wished I could) making it with a high quality formal english. It is the time... Let's make a change, Luis de Bethencourt pd> we need to use the power of modern communication, to join and fight together
Q: Where does the hydrogen come from?
A: Huge electrical power generation plants burning coal or diesel......
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
Hey, let's get something straight, Hydrogen is not a "source" of energy, it is a way of storing energy from another source. What will that other source be? Oil? Coal? Nuclear? All these blockbuster articles about "energy from water", don't quite seem to get the main point....
Wouldn't that be much much better spent in trying to actually develop a real energy source, such as (long shot example) http://torsatron.tripod.com/fusor/fusor.html instead of just looking for another form of energy storage? THAT would be more worthy of an apollo/manhattan style project than just to develop a new battery/energy storage/transport medium, methinks.
Furthermore: given certain developments in battery technologies (e.g. NiZn, NaS etc.) - why not simply move towards standard EVs with "conventional" batteries (as hydrogen use in the proposed form is nothing else but some form of battery)? Maybe less fancy than fuel cells, but much more readily available.
Is it just me who thinks it frustrating that the industry successfully tried to block such developments with stupid lead (or poisonous NiCd, or expensive Lithium etc.) battery EVs, and as soon as truly useful battery/technologies come up, change the strategy and now all of a sudden start to talk about hybrids, hydrogen, and elusive fuel cells? It is as if they waited decades for a useful EV battery concept to pop up simply to jump ship, to now sit out another one or two decades.
Hydrogen, being just a storage technology, does offer nothing to solve the fundamental problems. IMHO it's just another kind of battery...
Regards,
scotchco
Great article. Definitely hit the nail on the head. One thing they did omit was that, despite the change in medium (oil or Hydrogen), you will still have heat. And heat does add towards the theory of global warming, although it is only a participant (hydrocarbons are the real accelerant).
Has it been completely overlooked that the most advanced countries in the world, which rely on energy as a whole, give huge amounts of money to third world, dramatically unstable, and in most cases, dictatorial countries with the misguided expectation that all will be right with the world?
Putting massive amounts of money into anyone's hands is dangerous, even on a small scale, but the amount of money that goes to the Middle East and OPEC countries (some outside of the Middle East and SE Asia) where instability is a fact of life seems to be illogical.
Even if it was logical (which is clearly isn't), then all of the money dumped in to those countries would mean that those countries would be shining examples of success rather than shining examples of "haves" and massive "have-nots", which, obviously, is not the case.
Anyone know the White House's fax number?
I posted about the real reasons earlier. I still think it's correct.
Firstly I should say that I think hydrogen would make an excellent fuel for transportation. Burning or oxidising hydrogen produces fabulous amounts of energy, and, if stored absorbed or as a liquid, hydrogen has a higher energy density than today's batteries which means longer journeys in-between fuel-stops. Battery technology might improve, but I'd wager that hydrogen-power could be developed more quickly.
..But hell, even I'm tempted to leave that one for our children to sort out. Let them get wet I say! ;-)
Anyway, pollutants don't necessarily have to be noxious gases. The deposition of significant amounts of material in areas where it doesn't naturally occur is also pollution. For instance hot water from the outflow of a power station might kill nearby wildlife.
If in 20 years time most/all people use transportation that is powered by hydrogen, then the net result is an awful lot of misplaced water. This is unlikely to be excess water -- in 20 years I doubt natural gas will still be catalysed to make hydrogen -- so it would be water misplaced from the sea (if you recall splitting water to give hydrogen and oxygen represents a plentiful supply of hydrogen).
Can anyone imagine what this might do to the climate over cities? Apart from the humidity, how about cloud-formation and rain? The umbrella industry might be worth some investment in advance.. How much hydrogen will the world's drivers require? I can't see the sealevel being effected but constantly removing water from the sea in specific places possibly would effect currents and tides.
Now I'm fairly confident that water pollution has to be better than the myriad of toxins, carcinogens and greenhouse gases we produce today, but my overall point is that it's hard to avoid effecting the environment completely.
And we could avoid repeating the mistakes of today by prioritising low water emission in tomorrow's fuel cells.
I just thought of another point, how about all the oxygen from splitting seawater? When the hydrogen is burnt it recombines with oxygen to make water so there is no net excess of oxygen, however the oxygen produced by the plants will be localised at these coastal regions. More oxygen in the air means higher fire risks. As well as greater ozone levels and ozone is the strongest oxidising agent known to man (think bleaching agent).
He makes a bunch of assertions, and very few arguments. He doesn't back up anything with data, and very few things with logic. His understanding of economics is almost non-existant. Basically this article is a joke.
Friend, I agree with your post.
I would like to voice the concept, however, that the practical tangible reasons for world politics do not exist in a vacuum of philosophy.
What the poster said reminds me of the clash of civilizations. Sure we're going to war because we need to. How we got to "needing to" is subject to opinion, and involves the mindsets of interacting cultures (i.e. philosophies) as much as it does the fluctuations of markets. The immediate need to change Iraq's regime is based on WMD and aid to terrorists. I don't think the poster was suggesting that Bush's goal it to force christianity down the middle east's throat; I think he was observing the "lines" that are being drawn and noting that they lie on ideological fault lines more than political ones. Personally, I favor massive air strikes followed by massive diplomacy.
Everything is inextricably linked. Try reading "The Tao of Physics" by fritjoff capra. Philosophy is the mother of science, religion, and a lot more. Philosophy is the bluest of blue-sky research. Just ask Thales about his olive presses. Fnord!
"Looking at the options - coal, natural gas, wind, water, solar, and nuclear - . . . "
Well, you left out a biggie that's so simple, it's beautiful: biomass conversion.
We can be 100% energy self-sufficient by farming 6% of continental USA--and that's by 1930's estimates of production!
Minimal changes of technology and infrastructure are needed. Wouldn't be any more painful than the conversion to unleaded fuels in the '70s.
Instead of selling our souls to the barbarians in the Middle East, we save a dying family profession: farming.
Ancient stores of CO2 stay in the ground where they belong.
*****No additional reliance on dangerous nuclear power needs to take place*****
With the exception of nuclear, ALL THE ENERGY WE HAVE, CAME FROM THE SUN.
Plants are the most efficient converters of the sun's energy we will ever know. They take its light, combine it with CO2 from the air, and nutrients in the soil and stores it in its mass. It releases oxygen as a waste product, something we really need.
By burning fossil fuels, we are simply releasing the energy harnessed by plants millions of years ago. Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure that we don't have a million years to make another batch, so eventually it will run out.
In our lifetimes, and probably a dozen generations behind us, there will never be a more efficient converter of the sun's energy than a plant does by photosynthesis.
Biomass conversion: A closed-loop renewable energy source that makes excellent sense economically, environmentally, politically, and practically.
One of the major flaws I see with this article (and many like it) is that it assumes that if the US weans itself off Middle Eastern oil that this will erase dependence on Middle Eastern oil and will thus lead to better (or less) relations with Middle Eastern countries. The idea is that if we don't depend on oil then we don't have to go in there Desert Storm style every once in a while to protect our oil interests, which only agitates terrorists to be.
Sounds good. However, there is a major problem. We exist in a global economy. So, if Japan depends on Middle Eastern oil, and we depend on Japan's exports and imports, then if access to Middle Eastern oil is jeopardized for Japan, say, by some dictator, then the US will certainly care. And, the US would likely do something about it.
A recent news report on NBC gave some numbers concerning our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Not too high, actually (I recall them saying 10%, I've seen other posts that suggest 20%). However, the dependence of Japan and Europe, for example, on Middle Eastern oil is much higher (I recall it being in the 30-50% range).
Therefore, if we expect to cut off our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we have to come up with an alternate energy source for ourselves AND all of our major trading partners.
Another plant people haven't looked at for biomass generation is industrial hemp, aka "weed".
;) That's not going to happen anytime soon, since everyone is so obsessed with getting through their lives as quickly as possible, when, in all realism, you are just going to die in the end. *sigh*
It has been shown that the cannabis sativa/indica is capable of generating more biomass per square acre than almost any other plant known (besides kudzu or some other exotic plants, but they can't grow in harsh climates). The seeds are also quite high in density, actually close to soybeans. Plus the plant is a lot easier on soil than soybeans. I've heard of a number of different ideas for turning the biomass into viable energy, from fermentation in giant tanks to seed presses, etc. The hard part is getting the end to end process efficient enough (as always). With biomass, the problem is more difficult than just pulling oil out of the ground. You have to grow the stuff, harvest it, move it to the processing plant, change it into dense energy, hopefully through a catalytic process (some type of exotic enzyme, perhaps?), and then transport the energy to somewhere where it can be used.
Hydrocarbons are good for this, because they are stable, but can be made unstable quite easily (aerosol, ie: carburation).
I think personally we should look more along the lines of natural energy processes, including a very important molocule known as ATP (adenosene tri-phosphate). Little, if any, research has been done with regards to high energy molocules other than hydrocarbons and metal ions (battery technology) because... well, I don't know why. High explosive technologies are also something interesting to look at--highly stable, high energy density (like Semtex), but we need some sort of cataylic reaction to "un-do" the stability without a huge chain reaction/explosion.
Perhaps the answer is under our noses. I think that bio-research including specialized proteins and enzymes, and genetically engineered bacteria can be used to do the work for us, using only solar power. So, we can use the sun and plants to create biomass across large swaths of unused land, (even land poor for growing food crops) then use bacteria with specialized enzymes to process the biomass into something more useable. Use sunlight to power that process also. Then, extract the high energy molucules for transport (ATP is quite stable if it is pure, but very bioreactive), and then convert it to other energy forms for use in daily life.
The problem is that natural processes have evolved to be a sort of slow and efficient process--not something that would fit in with today's society. Ideally, we would also slow down our own way of living to match up with the efficient natural process. Of course, that would involve ingestion of some of the aforementioned biomass
I'm going to look into the enzyme angle though, and perhaps we can make some progress. I know it's possible--they already have those "oil eating" bacteria that change oil into CO2, methane, and water. Perhaps with the addition of some heat and pressure, the process can be expedited?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Crazy Vlaclav : She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.
Homer : What country is this car from?
Crazy Vlaclav : It no longer exists. But take her for a test drive, and you'll agree: "Zagrevev zim lodik viev".
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in
concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the
oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very
much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher
concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason
for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex
process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
always fatal.
However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any
considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.
Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in
the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
in question.
Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
too late.
-- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
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