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Widespread Use of Hydrogen May Hurt Ozone Layer
Saeger writes "The AP has a story about a CalTech study which has found that the Hydrogen Economy may deplete the ozone layer by 'as much as 8 percent' on the assumption that '10 percent to 20 percent of the hydrogen would leak from pipelines, storage facilities, processing plants and fuel cells in cars and at power plants.'" CalTech's press release has more information.
The Cal Tech study seems to be a little extreme:
Maybe it's just because IANAES (I am not an environmental scientist) but how is this any worse than the crap that comes out of our fossil fuel based economy as it is?
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
And BOOM! Do we really want to be able to blow our planet up with one match? I think not!
at least most major cities will be intact and not underwater.
This hydrogen pollution especially occurs when the hydrogen is mixed in a 2:1 ratio with oxygen.
Right.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
What is this world coming to??? Next they'll tell us that cows are a major contributor to the greenhouse effect!!! Oh wait a minute - they just did!!! Cow breath blamed for greenhouse gas
I was afraid the Environmentalist Bubble was going to burst!
Besides leaking hyrdrogen damaging the ozone layer, a hydrogen economy will mean fewer polluting automobiles that currently contribute ozone to the air. Let's bag hydrogen and revert to wood burning steam engines.
This shouldn't be too hard to deal with.
All we need to keep this problem in check is an oversized Zippo in orbit right near the ozone layer.
Activate it every Fourth of July for one helluva fireworks show.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Yes, but is this worse than what oil is doing to the atmosphere?
Oh, the humanity!
I'm sure they could avoid letting 10-20% of it leak out.
Repeal the DMCA!
Look, folks, it's an energy source that isn't even being used yet. I would find it quite amazing if an energy source could, right off the bat, be perfectlyefficient, and not be the least bit wasteful.
As far as I can see, the problems are technological, and can be overcome.
This is a conspiracy by an evil coalition of blimp manufacturers who share a concern that their products will cease to function properly should the atmosphere become contaminated with too much Hydrogen.
The "scientist" is on Exxon's payrole.
Yes, it's supposed to funny. Lighten up =)
Man, all that H! Thats gonna be tough. I sure hope it dosent comind with O to make WATER. Hydrogen is unstable, so it dosent ususally stay as Hydrogen. It simply does not have the electrons. So it combinds with O to make either heydrogen monoxide(still relitivly unstable), or 2 oxygen mols to make Water. So yea. Guipo
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
Does this mean we need an alternative fuel for an alternative fuel?
I was under the impression that the "hydrogen-based economy" would actually transport its energy around in a more easily handled form, e.g. methanol which can be trucked around and handled more easily than pure hydrogen.
To me, this paper appears to be saying: "If the hydrogen economy is based around this arbitrary and unworkable assumption we made, bad things would happen!" Well, okay...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
The greater the size of our population grows, the less buffer we will have between us and the environment. The greater our numbers climb into the billions and finally trillions, the greater the effects our slightest alteration to the environment will create. One person with a campfire is nothing, 100 million people with campfires and you start to get some serious pollution. One person hiking through the woods is nothing, thousands of people visiting a national forest every year is like throwing a 40,000 person concert there.
Its our numbers, not the action that destroys our environment.
No matter what we do, we will pollute and destroy.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
d00d, wow man, the whole planet high.
CINCINNATI BELL IS TEH SUCK.
20% leakage is a lot.
If they include system monitoring (like that wonderful check engine light) We should be able to get very low leakage rates.
Yes people ignore the check engine light, but that is only because they aren't losing 20% of their fuel.
It is indeed very hard to prevent hydrogen leaks (the small molecule goes straight through even slightly porous metal) and it is difficult to detect, except when you get up to a couple of percent when a very small spark can cause a very interesting experience (like the roof being embedded in the car park.) On the other hand, that's the reason why a lot of work has to go into preventing gross leaks.
The same problem existed with the original town gas, which was practically odorless (CO + hydrogen + nitrogen) and of course the solution was to put in an odorous tracer gas. I am sure that with modern sensor technology a suitable tracer could be found that would be detectable in even minute quantities
Given that in the past we've been cavalier about low BP compounds and their ill effects - benzene in gas, CFCs, - it would be really good if this time governments and environmental scientists got their act together in advance. Leakage is not a reason not to use hydrogen, any more than the possibility of a leak is a reason not to put in plumbing. It's just a potential problem to be prevented.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Well, back to the drawing board on these Hydrogen Fuel Cell Buses. I suppose we should all go back to riding horses, but who ever had to walk their car/truck/suv all night because it was collicing?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
...by your best estimates, would this still be better than fossil fuels, or worse?
It doesn't sound as bad to me, and the effects don't seem as immediate, but if it hurts the ozone layer that much...
Oh, and I don't think that much hydrogen would leak...
Oh, wait. That's helium.
It certainly seems that some ozone depletion would be a far less nasty effect than global warming/air polution/acid rain/fouled water supplies/Superfund cleanup sites/oil sponsored terrorism/etc. Plus 10-20% seems like an extreme amount of loss for any closed system. What's the current loss on the fossil fuel economy? 3-5%?
This really applies if you treat it like Oil with centralized production, pipelines to sub-stations, etc.
The reason this article might not reflect what actually happens is that hydrogen production might be done on a decentralized local scale. There's no technological reason you can't make hydrogen gas AT the fill station or home, it's just a matter of the economy of scale. Initially, you might see factories extracting hydrogen for shipment, but the logical next step would be to have extraction facilities at the fill stations that crack water. It's not feasible right now because the easiest way for a small operation to make hydrogen is by electrically seperating the hydrogen from water, but there are other catalytic or new tech (insert trek speak here) ways that could get it to a point where you have a box the size of an airconditioner that takes water in one end, and pumps compressed hydrogen out the other.
Also, the article doesn't take into account another likely source of hydrogen that might be used, and that's natural gas. There are already devices that crack natural gas catalytically to extract the hydrogen for use in fuel cells, so it's conceivable that until the technology reaches the 'gas station hydrogen extraction' level, we might all be using CNG for our fuel cells. Since CNG has big fat molecules, it won't leak like hydrogen.
Soooo... while the article is interesting, the problems it describes can be overcome and probably would need to be to make it economical in the first place.
Wow. that's bad. I think we should keep burning oil. At least it is cheap... Just need to have some war from time to time.
duh. widespread use of fossil fuels hurts the ozone layer too.
The other problem is that the ozone hole is repairing itself while the paper calculates problems in I believe 2060 - but uses the existing ozone levels. The amount of hydrogen needed to have the effects the authors discuss thus takes place many decades after the type of ozone hole analyzed.
There were a few other problems as well. (A perhaps overly optimistic estimate of when hyrdogen would be the dominant energy transmission method, for instance)
If the hydrogen is produced by Methane reformation, there is a carbon that's lost during that process which would most likely be released into the atmosphere. Contributing even more to global warming.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
Ever since Bush this year singled out hydrogen development as an energy priority, the fuel has been the buzzword in energy debates. Congress plans to pump more than $3 billion into hydrogen research over the next five years in hopes of putting fuel-cell-powered cars into showrooms by 2020. Industry is spending billions more to develop fuel cells, although their widespread use is probably still decades away.
Whats the betting that this will be held back until the oil companies have pumped every last drop out of the ground. I would like to be optimistic about a hydrogen economy but we all know how powerful and influential the oil companies are.
1. leakage of 20% a figure based on world wide natural gas industry which includes places like the Russia, and other former eastern block countries with notoriously poor maintenance records. actual leakage from modern hydrogen systems is of the order of 2%
2. article assumes 100% hydrogen based economy by 2050. the most optimistic estimates put hydrogen use at 30% by 2050.
looks like they are off by a factor of 30 minimum.
-- Back to the shadows again...
this is a legitimate argument!
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I don't think there would be much of hydrogen economy if we were letting 10 to 20 percent escape. Businesses wouldn't stand for losing even 10% of their generated product and I know that this consumer would want better than 90% retention out of any hydrogen-powered device.
I doubt that the Honda FCX has this problem.
Don't feed your mind FUD.
Now who, I wonder, would be interested in smearing the "hydrogen economy" concept. Hmm.. I'm drawing a blank... .
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
What is so worrisome about some leak troubles? A hydrogen 'economy' is far from reality. Until we can efficiently extract hydrogen we will stick with other traditional fuel sources. Remember hydrogen is not found isolated in nature, we have to make it.
Hydrogen by itself is dangerous and poisonous, but the greatest danger lies in Hydrogen's ability to bond with oxygen (and like 40% of our atmosphere is oxygen by the way) to form di-hydrogen monoxide. Have you ever seen the damage that does to human lungs? scary stuff.
There is really no need to move hydrogen across wide distances... :)
With solar energy you can just break the long energy chains associated with fossil fuels:
If the car (or the house) has its own solar panels to recharge its hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen does not need to make intercontinental travel, so that you can pretty well minimize losses.
I see other (social) advantages in decentralization, btw
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
I knew we should have gone with cold fusion!
Check out my blog: My Galaxy is Milky Way Adjacent
Whenever I think of Big Oil, I always think about some middle-aged fat Texan tycoon complete with the boots, Stetson hat, and belt buckle the size of Rhode Island - not to mention that stupid string tie. So what will the Big Hydrogen tycoon look like?
You have to get the hydrogen from some energy-intensive process anyway. Either you are refactoring fossil fuels, or using nuclear to split water, or some other energy intensive process. Sure, you could use solar to do some of that, but you could use solar to charge electric cars too--if you want to turn the entire Desert Southwest into one giant panel farm. Of course, solar hurts the environment too. Yep, you heard me. That giant panel farm alters the "albedo" aka reflectivity of the Earth, which changes weather patterns. Nevermind that the shade would also alter the desert ecosystem.
What we should be doing is encouraging advanced modular hybrid technology. Idling and braking waste huge quantities of fuel. With modular hybrid systems (think, multiple small engines you can lift out of your car and swap like video cards) we would encourage innovation in conversion efficiency and alternative fuels. Also, drill ANWR. Yep, that's right. Drill the SOB. Send the environmentalists to the Middle East and see if they can persuade them to stop pumping for a change.
Just once I'd like to see our leadership encourage conservation and local production.
Republicans need to pull their heads out of their posteriors and realize that conservation!=anti business. Democrats need to do the same thing and realize that production!=destruction.
I'm not optimistic that any of this will happen anytime soon. It makes too much sense.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Can't we have a radiation shield for the Earth which is a little more reliable? A few CFCs, a little hydrogen, and it's disappearing all over the place. Bad design. Someone should have considered these possibilities before installing it. If I installed a firewall which was this delicate, I'd be canned.
Of course, IPv6 will probably fix all this.
looks like we're just going to have to ban hydrogen. and i don't just mean banning the use of it as a fuel, I mean banning it from existance. What has hydrogen ever done for ME anyway?
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Another key question is how the residence time of H2 in the stratosphere compares to the residence time of CO2 in the troposphere. If H2 has a significantly shorter residence time than the 120 year residence time of anthropogenic CO2, then it would be a good choice to switch to H2 today and then replace H2 with another alternative at a future date, since the H2 would drop back to its natural level faster than CO2 would. If H2 has a longer residence time in the stratosphere, then the best choice might be to stick with CO2 emissions.
From http://www.e-sources.com/hydrogen/safety.html:
The simple reaction of many people, when confronting the issue of hydrogen as a fuel for the first time, is to say "But won't it explode?" The truth of the matter is that hydrogen is highly explosive in confined spaces, because of a high flame speed. The shape of the space in which the hydrogen is confined plays an important part, as does the mode of ignition. However, it also has a very high dispersion coefficient and this means that it is almost impossible to cause a hydrogen explosion in an open area. For the same reason, a hydrogen fire will burn out much more quickly than a gasoline or methane fire. It is also true to say that hydrogen is not intrinsically explosive - it must be mixed with air or oxygen before detonation can occur.
Hydrogen is also flammable and explosive over a much wider range of mixtures than any conventional fuel, but its lower limits of 4% and 13% respectively in air are better than gasoline (1% and 1.1%) and similar to natural gas (5.3% and 6.3%).
Soylent Ozone.. is made of Hydrogen!
If you look at much of the African nations and other poor countries, you see that they're only steadily declining in use of CFCs. A majority of the industrial equipment they are using is old, often unsafe and certainly inefficient.
If they were to adopt the hydrogen economy - which they will have to at some point, then what's to say that their quality control in manufacture of the engine parts etc. will prevent unnecessary leakage? Though I have to agree 10 to 20 percent seems way too high, their economy surely won't be able to buy the newest, safest and most ecological hydrogen technology.
that we should go with biodiesel and synthetic diesel fuels.
MORTAR COMBAT!
My biggest concern with Hydrogen is where it comes from. If we have a Hydrogen-Fueled economy it'll only help the environment if more of our electricity comes from renewable sources.
Hydrogen in such things as cars is really only a store of energy similar to a battery. You can use electricity to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen and when the Hydrogen is burnt in the atmosphere it reacts with oxygen to give off heat. Esentially that heat energy has come from the electricity used in the creation of the Hydrogen minus any in-efficiencies.
It'd probably serve us well to concentrate efforts on moving away from fossil fuels to offshore wind farms, more efficient vehicles, less wastage through re-use of energy and of course look into Hydrogen fuel.
(Streaming audio can be found if you dig around here.)
Chemically speaking, one hydrogen molecule plus two ozone molecules equals two water molecules plus one oxygen molecule. (NB: ozone is composed of three oxygen atoms)
So pumping hydrogen into the atmosphere will decrease the ozone layer and increase the humidity.
Do you think more humidity and less ozone will help or hurt global warming?
...that if you have to deplete the ozone, it's more fun to do it using megatons of bombs in mostly disarmed, oil-rich foreign countries. To quote Dubyah: "Hydrogen-schmydrogen!"
I don't see why he was modded as a troll, most of what he stated is true except for...
Ozone in the high atmosphere is created by UV. UV can also photodissociate ozone.
Ozone is not created in the absence of UV.
The same "Global winds" that "prevent human emissions from settling over antartica" also "prevent human emissions from settling over North America." The atmosphere is well mixed over a period of a few years, so it is not a supprise that the effects of freons are observed world wide.
What caused the Ozone hole, is ice forming in the high atmosphere. In case you hadn't noticed, ice forms where it is coldest. It is coldest over the antartic, so that is where ice forms. When ice forms, it catalyzes certain reactions. Ozone is an unstable molecule. In fact ozone is so unstable that it is a high explosive and is extrmely dangerous to handle and can detonate even as a gas. It is not a great supprise that ice can catalyze the decomposition of ozone. Most things do.
As far as I understand the article, there is no comparsion to fossil fuels.
So this means we should keep burning fossils, because that dozens of toxic chemicals that come out after the burning process are far less bad for our environment than that evil Hydrogen and Water. And ozone is "super bad", so it is a good argument to spread FUD among dumb people.
This article sound like it is sponsored by your friendly oil company next door.
One for you, and one for me. Two for you...
</Homer>
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
The Big 3 Auto Companies paid how much to get this propaganda started?
I don't think this is really a troll.
Who paid for this study? It's a legitmate question, and you're a moron if you don't ask it.
That said, the claims are ridiculous. Claiming 10 to 20% of the hydrogen is going to leak? Yeah right! Economics alone will dictate that this does not happen. Would you buy a car with a gas tank with no cap, so a significant portion of your fuel evaporated? Of course not, that fuel costs money. They even admit this in the study. They are deliberately extaggerating.
If this was a sensible study, they would be comparing the ozone damage currently caused by cars, to that which would be cause if they were run by hydrogen, and they would be using reasonable number for leakage.
Finally, what about oxygen leakage? They have to consider that too. The way I see things 100 years from now is:
water-> H2 + 2O2 ->Fusion reactor->Energy->Use getting much more H2 and 02.->use in cars
If X% of the hydrogen is going to leak, how much oxygen is? Will this mitigate the hydrogen leakage? Seems like it would, since they're going to be produced in perfect proportion to recombine into water.
Life is too short to proofread.
Widespread birth today will cause widespread death in years to come. Although the time frame is unknown, scientists believe that a large population today will lead to a large number of deaths in the future.
"It just the nature of things" quoted one Harvard PhD who wish to remain nameless.
The fear of massive number of deaths has the Pentagon on high alert. CDC is issuing warnings and are placing people in danger of dying in quarantine.
According to CDC officials, the death rate of this epidemic will far exceed the number of natural deaths that have occurred in the past.
The Homeland Security Office has raised the National Alert level to Red #5 since the release of this report.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I'll show you some hydrogen leakage -- just pull my finger.
When they were first going to test the first atomic explosion, some scientists hypothesized that it would ignite the entire atmosphere!
1) The reaction chemistry for CFC and ozone at high altitudes was postulated and then proven by observation. In this case, the scientists are assuming that the 2H2+ O2 => 2H2O will be the same at high altitudes as it is on the surface. Since the hydrogen cycle is unknown, they can't be sure the reaction will be as stable and prevalent as it is down here.
2) In the CFC-ozone reaction, CFC is a catalyst that is not consumed by the reaction. Hydrogen is consumed in the water reaction.
3) By their nature CFCs stay in the upper atmoshphere for some time before coming back down. Hydrogen is lighter and more likely to escape the atmosphere and head off into space. I remember reading somewhere that scientists estimate that the Earth has lost >80% of its hydrogen since its formation. I could be wrong but that's what I remember.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This may be a folly question, but I've always wondered why if we're so worried about ozone depleation, why not just mandate countries need to produce an amount to offset the destruction we supposedly cause?
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
I believe ozone is created by lightning (among other processes).
Most fuel cell vehicle designs use hydrogen suspended in a solid form. Since the hydrogen is not gaseous until it gets into the preprocessor (air tight, by necessity), there would be no leakage. Hydrogen fuel cells used to power houses or power plants use natural gas which likewise is converted in airtight preprocessors, thus no leakage.
These scientists that came up with this report either have some other agenda or are completely ignorant about the technology they are criticizing. No one is going to be producing hydrogen gas and then shipping it to gas stations or through pipelines, they will use propane, butane, or hydrogen fuel pellets. I can't believe people who call themselves environmentalists would try to come up with any conceivable criticism for this ultimately clean, safe, and revolutionary technology. If I had to guess, it would be that these people have vested interests in other, less effective, means of alternative energy production.
The "Ozone Layer" is a by-product of O2 (oxygen) getting split,and the single O1 attaching to a near by O2 making O3 (Ozone), it's the action of splitting the O2 (Oxygen) that blocks the UV Radiation. Ozone??, not Ozone its the oxygen that matters.
6 months darkness over the poles = Hole in Ozone (no sun smashing Oxygen, no Ozone), when will people stop confusing Media scare tactics with Science?
Need help finding the flow? http://www.myspace.com/naturalismandbalance
If 10% leakage causes an 8% depletion, then if we just pumped the hydrogen straight into the air we could get rid of 80% of the ozone and save the hassle of having a middle-man! Woo-hoo! Way to go Cal-Tech!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
because a friendly texan with oily fingers is in the white house.
I simply won't. How profitable or economic (company and consumer perspective, respectively) is it to vent your Hydrogen into the atmosphere? Correct: it's not. There is no practical reason why people would allow leaks as large as 10 - 20 percent to exist, as it's simply wasting money. The market will keep this from happening. Hydrogen venters will be poor, and can't afford more hydrogen to vent. Even evil plotters trying to give universal skin cancer. Hey, I should try that and buy bananna boat stock... ::toddles off::
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Remember that when you read an article on this sort of thing, you are basing what you may or may not learn on the abilities of someone who has a BA degree in journalism from a liberal arts college.
Not our best and brighteset.
Ozone is O3, a highly reactive isotope (as it would have to be, to do its job, which is to be broken apart by UV rays and to absorb their energy) which will happily combine with 4 Hydrogen molecules to make 2 H20 and an O2 molecule.
H2O will fall back toward earth, combine with other H2O molecules and form clouds. O2 will also move toward earth but more slowly.
Or it will be re-ionized into Ozone again, depending, literally, on what sort of day we are having.
The ozone layer is not finite, it is constantly replenishing itself. If you want to say that hydrogen fuel cells are damaging to it, then first you have to show where the damage exceeds the ability of the ozone layer to reproduce itself, which this article does not.
Remember that these environmentalists are the ones who told you that cow farts will kill us all, that the world is warming because the planet went up a degree in the last hundred years, but have failed to mention that it has cooled 5 degrees in the last 500 years, and can't explain why, if greenhouse gasses have opened up a hole in the ozone on their own, why Mt St. Helens failed to show any effect on the ozone layer, even though it dumped higher quantities of the same gasses.
Now i may be wrong here but realy you could say that we are damaging the ozone/atmosphere if we ever take more than we replace (of hydrogen) or give more that we take (of water.) Of course with that assumption there is nothing we can ever do that wont harm the atmosphere, so my question is:
Does anyone know of any studies showing the effects of extra water (the by product of fuel cells) on the atmosphere?
Then agian if we use stations that then convert water back into hydgrogen.....we have a nice tidy cycle i suppose, depending on quantities etc.
...and with Hydrogen, which is expensive, you can bet your last dollar that the infrastructure in place will not tolerate even 2% leakage. Companies will not have the tolerance for leaking Hydrogen like they currently do with fossil fuels, which are cheap and easily replaceable.
Cow farts? I thought it was my cousin Bob's chili with beans that contributed most of the gas.
No matter what, it has side-effects.
Nuclear: radiation poisening risk
Coal: dust causes cancer
Gas: Kills ozone layer
Hydrogen: Kills ozone layer
Windmills: Throw off earth's equitorial tilt and ice tossed from blades stabs children playing in thier backyards and the humming sounds keep people awake at night, turning them into postal killers.
Oxen (pulling carts): Poop causes mathane, which pollutes and spreads fly-borne desease.
Staying home and jacking off: Blindness
There's no way out. Lets just pollute the fscking planet and be done with it.
Table-ized A.I.
moderator abuse! that is most definitely not a troll.
It's about time that someone pointed out that the very fact that hydrogen combines so readily with oxygen is the reason that the excess H could be a threat to the ozone layer. Everyone saying "well, H isn't dangerous, it mixes with O!" is looking pretty stupid right now and is missing the point. Anyway, mod parent up.
the law of diminishing returns kicks in. The environment WILL be destroyed. Imagine our planet centuries from now resembling that metropolis planet on Star Wars: Phantom Menace. The best we can hope for is recreating whole environments in virtual reality.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
archives.caltech.edu/life_article/life_page_2.h tml/
is having children. I want to have children myself someday. Gay and Lesbian couples are having children. (which may have been nature's built-in method of population control since left to their own devices they can't procreate) Obviously they're not having children at the rate of the poor third world countries but the population IS growing exponentially.
Just look at road rage and the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. How long before we start eating each other like rats in a small cage?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Uranium. It's basically heavily-reprocessed hydrogen, but it packs a lot more energy per unit volume, and there are no greenhouse gases or ozone-depletion effects.
Note that producing U from H2 is even less efficient than producing H2 from H20 and electricity. To make U, you typically have to start with about 10-20 solar masses of hydrogen, let it simmer for 50 million years, and then blow the star to smithereens, frying everything within a light year or two. A miniscule fraction of a billionth of the resulting mess will be uranium, and of that, 99% of it is the crappy kind.
Thankfully, enough folks went through the energy-wasting process of creating the uranium on our behalf, that there's plenty of U lying around for the taking, even here on li'l ol' Earth.
Radiolysis is a very efficient means to crack water. An ultra-low emissions system would use reactors to generate both electricity and large volumes of hydrogen as a by-product. The electricity has obvious uses and the hydrogen can be used as a portable source of energy for combustion applications, etc.
It would require a large investment in new reactor types but in the long run it would be a very cheap and clean method of driving a hydrogen economy.
Ill-informed public opinion will be the greatest obstacle though.
Sarah Connor: "How are you supposed to know? F--king men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you.
Quote source: http://us.imdb.com/
"No matter what we do, we will pollute and destroy."
....and the universe will continue on.
Pollute and destroy according to who? Us? Why does that matter? I mean, the earth doesn't share our prejudices towards "pollution" and our "destruction" of resources. From the earth's point of view, that is just another event taking place within a larger system -- that we, as humans, also happen to be a part of. Remember, nature includes EVERYTHING. It's not just trees and birds and butterflies. It's *everything*. The nastiest, most toxic, nuclear radiation is nothing more than a small piece of a much much larger system. The earth does not discriminate between "good" things and "bad" things. It just is.
If the pollution get so bad, the earth will simply create a new paradigm that goes something like this:
Earth + pollution - people = new paradigm
It takes MORE, I repeat MORE energy to manufacture the hydrogen than the hydrogen returns.
Again, we should use ethanol in a fuel mixture called E85. Requires little or no infrastructure changes and very little changes from the auto manufacturers. Ethanol IS a renewable source of energy. Biomass (including the waste from other lines of industry) can be used to create fuel grade ethanol. Not just corn, people. While E85 still outputs C02, it outputs 85% less of the fossil fuel waste that 100% gasoline outputs. Combine this with hybrid electric and you have the next LOGICAL step in vehicle evolution for the consumer. The automotive industry is so large that we are going to have to take small steps. This large steps are doomed to failure when trillions of dollars are invested in petroleum fuels. Does anyone honestly believe that we are simply going to turn of the spicket on petroleum based consumer vehicles? If so, you're a dreamer (which is good); however, your dream is an end to a means, and not the means.
For more information on e85 visit e85fuel.com
... so it's not a perfect solution, but how do those numbers stack up vs. other fuel sources? For example, if our current carbon economy produces more ozone depeleting than a hydrogen economy ... well, hey, I'll take the hydrogen.
Numbers are irrelevent without relative comparisons.
Living beings are exothermic and release all sorts of gases and heat and waste byproducts. What's important at this point is not to attempt to remove all of those from the energy-conversion systems we use, but to minimize their amount and possibly make sure they affect less critical portions of the environment.
What's worse? Fossil fuel or hydrogen? And to those that argue that producing hydrogen will require fossil-fuel energy are mistaken. Hydro-power and other sources can be used even more effectively.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Here is Phoenix Arizona USA we have "Ozone Alert" days where the ozone concentration is in an unhealthy range. We're supposed to telecommute (my personal choice), car pool, etc. Maybe a little Hydrogen leakage would help cure our "Ozone" problems here.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
I imagine this point may have been stated by now, and answered. If so, I apologize. I don't have time to read the comments right now. Anyway, if there are some people that can help me out (two years of high school chemistry does NOT make me an expert), that could be great. Thanks.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Come on, the dinosaur economy isn't just going to roll over and die......and from having read /. all these years, I think I know FUD when I see it...please.
Shhhhhh! I'm hunting Hobbits.....
Mod this fuck into the stone age! Stupid asshat! Don't you realize that as long as the rotteness of humans befouls this earth, it will always be in a state of environmental crisis? My plan is to rid the world of the entire human population and let the machines take over. They will realize that there is no need to inhabit the planet and head for outer space (goatse) where they don't make an impact on any living system. Fuck you asshole.
that all those ECO-NAZIS screamed about was being created by all the Freon....and after all that expensive change over was discovered that a hole NATURALLY exists in the Ozone layer... Come on people, we are all gonna die, and its not gonna be from a friggin lack of Ozone. Damn Tree-Huggers, now get your damn head out from under the wheel of my SUV!!!!
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
This is quite possibly the only environmental study in the history of modern science which may actually help the republicans.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Walk.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
And the solutions will be tied up in stupid patents I bet.
correction. Should be "stupid patent infighting".
What is not being pointed out is the pollution levels produced by current vehicles compared to a comparable (estimated) level of hydrogen usage. Something tells me that the fossil fuels still pollute a hella lot more... and have the added benefit of running out eventually.
Hydrogen.
Tastes great.
Less filling.
The idea is that more hydrogen leakage will cause ozone depletion and global warming. I think this is the opposite of what will happen.
Leaking hydrogen will take oxygen from the ozone layer but there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere. The extra water vapor will form more clouds and the extra clouds will cause more lightning. The extra lightning will form more ozone.
More lightning means that AM radio will have more static. More static means LESS Dr. Laura. Less Dr. Laura means less hot air. Less hot air means less global warming.
I think that perhaps we should be intentionally dumping hydrogen in the atmosphere to try to save the planet.
I belive this falls under the "some damn thing we can't think of" category.
Still, I am not of the opinion that it's ever as bad as "they" say it is.
I'll just shutup and go back to my code now...that I can do at home...without driving to work...so I don't have to pay for gas...that doesn't do as much damage as "they" think it does anyway...so there.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
If the fuel cells are still in development, and the distribution infrastructure hasn't even been designed, let alone built yet, how can they defend the assumption that 10-20% of the hydrogen in the system would be vented into the atmosphere? In the fuel cells, isn't the hydrogen catalyzed into a solid?
This sounds like an attempt to discredit something that isn't even designed yet, based on bogus assumptions.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
How much worse would this be than the current damage we're doing?
Ok so we have to break a few eggs no matter what sort of egg based breakfast dish we want to enjoy, but which eggs are the ones that we can afford to break?
Surely, a Hydrogen spill isn't anywhere near as bad as a petrol spill. When you consider that hydrogen burns clean it as opposed to the alternative this study simply shows that while there is no "perfect" solution (apart from Doc Brown dropping by with the plans for a "Mr Fusion" device) some solutions are certainly better than others.
We keep burning the fossil fuels like we are now, and another hole in the ozone will be the least of our worries.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Gee, where to start with a statement like this? fossil fules are cheap and easily replaceable while hydrogen is not? Costs will depend on how it is produced, but hydrogen is certainly easily replaceable, far more so than fossil fules. What's more, leak a fossil fuel and you have polution and cleanup issues; leak hydrogen and it just goes up and destroys the ozone layer but leaves no trace at the point of the leak.
Infrastructure will not tolerate it? Why do they tolerate leaks of fossil fuel? But more importantly, much of the leak is likely to be at the end-users point, mostly the hydrogen run cars and SUVs. The infrastructure will not only tolerate that, but will likely cut corners so much that they greatly contribute to it. Will they add extra cost and weight to avoid the loss? Hardly likely in view of all past history.
But it's also important to realize that some of that gas is simply going to get away. Ever work with containment of hydrogen and helium? The damn stuff is tiny . It leaks right out through solid metal containers. Thick walled tanks, of course, hold it better than devices that have to have complex design and seals designed to retain the gas, but fuel cells and similar devices are going to leak, by the very nature of the gas they are working with. The small nature of the hydrogen atom, particularly when it's electron slips off into a metal, is exactly why fuel cells can work; the lone protron is able to pass through the fuel cell barrier. You're not going to be able to work with such tiny atoms and not have a significant loss in conditions that are reasonable for a car.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
All the technologies (except for Solar power) still rely on some sort of burning fuels to make fuel.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Penn and Teller did a bit on this recently on their show "Bullshit!" on Showtime.
They tooks these points (almost exactly, in fact) and sent a woman out to gather signatures during "Earth Day". The woman gathered signatures from 85% of the people she talked to. Her petition was to ban dihydrogen monoxide because it was bad for the environment. Their point was that most, but not all, of the people consumed by the environmental movement are doing so out of emotion and really did not even have a basic understanding of the issues at hand. Let's just say they made their point VERY well.
Of course, the AP article got it wrong too. But then it was probably written by some ignorant liberal arts graduate.
Obligatory Stupid Hydrogen Comment: Hydrogen gas is so light that when released into the air it will eventually float away and leave the earth's atmosphere (and destroy some ozone on the way, i guess). This means that hydrogen gas, once released, is gone forever. It's a non-renewable resource! What will we do when all the hydrogen is gone???? OMG!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!
It takes MORE, I repeat MORE energy to manufacture the hydrogen than the hydrogen returns.
Err, that's called thermodynamics. It happens to apply to every energy storage mechanism which exists. Your plant biomass idea is really just a glorified solar-energy collector, which is why it appears to involve an energy surplus. But I could do the same thing by using some (albeit, highly efficient) solar cells to crack hydrogen into water. It's the SAME THING! The difference is in how you collect the energy and the form in which it's stored.
Incidentally, I suspect your idea doesn't actually generate an energy surplus. Or did you think you could harvest the plant material and convert it into ethanol without expending any energy?
I don't know what the efficiency of traditional batteries are, but electrolysis of water to produce H2 has an efficiency of 10%.
If you have a wind turbine, and it cannot convert its power directly to electricity, it takes 10x longer to pay for itself when it procuces H2. Currently, I understand the payback periods are on the order of 15 years for an "average" site and about 8 years for an "ideal" site. Over the life of the equipment, you would be putting in 60% of the (net) energy that it will produce to just making the turbine.
Likewise for fuel cells-- currently, you need to be able to use the heat for them to be efficient.
Sadly, I think the only real option is going nuke.
Damn... just think about how much damage I did in high school chem lab. We used to make H on almost a daily basis, though our purpose was not to let it escape, of course.
Thankfully, we always made oxygen in the next beaker+burner, and by combining the two with a little dish soap, we managed to keep that evil ozone depleting gas from escaping!
Until we hit it with a burning brand. And released it with enough force to give me permanent hearing damage. Almost every day. For a semester.
Next headline: Spending A Semester Making Glass Pipette Sculptures Causes Acid Rain! Ohhhhhh crap.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
I think we should ban the use of ANY forms of energy which might increase entropy!
It's these same Chicken-little pundits who claimed that the Chlorine atoms in Freon R-12 was the cause of the Great Ozone Hole. There's absolutely no way to prove it, and it's more likely that it is a natural occurence. Now these same jerks want to keep us sucking on the oil teats of our dealers in the Middle East. Hydrogen (H2) is an unstable atom, as well as Ozone (O3) which is a radical molecule, like Hydrogen Peroxide, which is good for blocking UV radiation and cleaning stuff. Let's all crawl under rocks and not live for fear we might hurt some part of the planet, maybe a microbe or two. Save the {ozone molecules,whales,trees,birdies,kittens,puppies,cow s}! Kill the humans!
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Here we are bickering about the effects of Hydrogen release into the stratosphere, forgetting how it pales in comparison to the damages caused by oil: Exhaust aside; oil spills, direct burning of oil, filtering plants. Not to mention, combustion engines rinning on oil-based fuel (every common vehicle, except the segway)are very inefficient too.
Translation for those above 13 years old:
"I heard a slogan 'cars and capitalism are evil', it sounded good, I began to believe, I became one with the slogan, the world was a better place..."
is right here
See the following for a little more info see:
www.csa.com/hottopics/hydrogen/oview.html
and
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-08/ps- oft081202.php
How about we get pipe makers to NOT make pipes with HOLES in them?
we need to create a giant black hole or grey goo nanotech scenario so we destroy every last roach.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Well, we need to spend on the order of $100 Billion to make fusion power viable, since it seems that fusion power requires the economy of scale to produce a net output of power. Of course the by-products are helium and tritium and it seems these fusion plants would have to be giant industrial complexes.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
They are deliberately extaggerating.
Well, yeah. There are so many unknowns here that you can't do a detailed study. They just want to get a sense of the issue. All they're saying is, here's something to think about.
Finally, what about oxygen leakage?
Any oxygen leakage would be pretty miniscule compared to what's in the atmosphere now.
Even if this is true (one study is hardly unarguable fact) its still much better than the alternative. How much damage have fossil fuels caused, how much will they cause. Moving to hydrogen, or even propain would help immensly. Even further it would finally allow us to make policy opinions rationally without having to worry about whos supplying our oil. The fact is Bush isnt really making good on his public claims, even the (superficially) large amounts of money aren't enough to really get enything done, hes to buisy seizing iraqie oil to give a snot.
ETHANOL IS PEOPLE! PEEEEEE-PULLLLL!
Username taken, please choose another one.
It seems that everything we do will eventually destroy the environment. So what next? Should we just sit on our asses in hope that our inaction will have less of an environmental impact? Or should we finally acknowledge that all creatures influence the environment, and that we are as much a part of Earth's ecology as anything else.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
All these sources of energy were initially touted as caheap and "clean as a dime". However, after large scale implementation, all have some environemental problems. Dams cause silting, blighting and fish kills. Wind and solar require vast land area for reasonable power amounts. Solar cells have dirty manufacturing chemicals. Nuclear was suppose to "free and unlimited" int he 40s and 50s, but we've seen several disasters since. Geothermal has brine waste and induced seismicity problems.
At least nowadays people think a little ahead before trashing the environment.
You mean we still can't find a way to build and invent and develop a way out of the ecological problems caused by our building and inventing and developing?
Dammit, if we don't consume the planet, what are we going to consume?
LIFE!!!!
you bastards.
"What's the major source for hydrogen right now? Natural Gas. What's the major byproduct of extracting hydrogen from Natural Gas? Carbon Dioxide"
u se-02h.html
Yes, making hydrogen from natural gas still releases carbon. However, it will be a lot easier to control the disposal of that carbon in dozens or hundreds of industrial hydrogen production facilities than it would be to try to contain and dispose of the carbon coming out of each of the millions of gas powered automobile exhausts.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/greenho
"Have you seen the price of Natural Gas lately?"
If we do switch to a hydrogen economy, then presumably hydrogen production will have become cheap enough to compete with gasoline production (including the fact that gas has a lot of taxes, and that hydrogen will initially probably have some gov't subsidy). That will require pumping more natural gas to get the price down. With investment (again, probably encouraged by gov't) that increase in natural gas production can occur One likely source of the additional natural gas is natural gas hydrates. See http://www.fe.doe.gov/oil_gas/methanehydrates/
Some more people will complain that the energy companies are benifiting from gov't hydrogen research expenditures (or later, subsidies). To which I would point out that the energy companies would be perfectly happy to keep selling gasoline instead. Sure, we only have a few decades of oil left; but then we have only had a few decades of oil left for about a century now.
I would encourage anyone who doesn't like that state of affairs to spend some effort trying to perfect fusion. Failing that, work on safer fission or cheap space access would be helpful.
I've paid for pre-purchase inspections on three houses heated with natural gas. Every single one of them had a slow leak.
Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule than methane and will leak more easily, sometimes through the intermolecular gaps in "solid" material.
If hydrogen replaces fossil fuels, it better be comparable in price. The cost of leaking it will then be about the same as the cost of leaking natural gas. The cost of containing it will be a lot higher.
This study by NASA explains why volcanic plumes, which contain tremendous amounts of chlorine, don't leave much chlorine in the strtatosphere.
Yea, oil/gas independence, right. So just exactly where is Europe going to get the materials it needs for the little things in life such as:
n ts
Plastics
Pharmacuticals
Rubber
Dyes
Lubrica
Helium (Yes, all industrial Helium comes from natural gas...)
Because all of these either come directly from oil/gas or oil/gas are required feedstocks for them.
The point being, even if all the energy in the world were available, we would still have to drill for oil and gas.
Nope. My Prius is 2800 pounds. Going lightweight is actually more important on a conventional car. On a hybrid, if you have an extra pound, some of the energy you spend accelerating that pound goes back into the battery when you apply the regenerative brakes.
Oh, wait, you're absolutely right if "a lot of mileage" means over 50 or 55 mpg. That's Honda Insight territory, with an aluminum body and small size.
Admittedtly this is slightly offtopic, but it's close enough to somthing I've always wondered that I thought I'd post it here.
Hydrogen and Helium are two elements with unusual properties: they're so light that the earth's gravitational field cannot hold them in their elemental form (or molecular form for Hydrogen, H2). Most of the Helium that we use has been harvested from oil wells and is the product of radioactive decay. When we run out of oil, we'll have to turn to nuclear power if we want more helium.
Hydrogen is a little different, of course. Since it's so reactive and abundant people usually don't worry about losing it. But considering that water vapor in the upper atmosphere, whatever it's source can be broken apart into HO and H, and some H might escape into space.... how would this impact the Hydrogen cycle?
If we're continually getting water delivered to earth via mini-comets (this is still debated) and continually evaporating off Hydrogen, what would this say about oxygen levels on earth, especially when the earth was first forming and possibly further from chemical equilibrium. Does this mandate an oxidizing environment if water is abundant in the earth's atmosphere, thus weighing in against the possibility that early earth had a reducing atmosphere?
I had a professor criticize this scenario back when I was in school, but he couldn't offer any evidence why it was wrong.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Unless we can get nuclear fusion working, the only long-term (>10 years) solution to energy problems is to use less.
Solar, wind and water will become increasingly important used as fossil fuels run out, but they simply don't supply enough energy to support widespread heavy industry, SUVs or 747s. This will become very clear once oil extraction starts to decline (at some point between 2010 and 2020).
You ever hear of deadlines? Let's see you create a universe in six days and not have any reliability issues!
No, The Paper is full of facts! "Man gives birth to baby!" That's a fact!
So is Hydrogen good for enviroment or not?
If they been wrong about hydrogen for over 40 years, how can we trust what they say about CFCs?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Partly because of these concerns about radioactivity and the cost of containing it, the American public and electric utilities have preferred coal combustion as a power source. Today 52% of the capacity for generating electricity in the United States is fueled by coal, compared with 14.8% for nuclear energy. Although there are economic justifications for this preference, it is surprising for two reasons.
dosn't coal dump like 10 times as much radioactive waste per unit of power then nuclear energy?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I thought it also took more energy to produce ethanol (from crops anyway) than it returns. See The Corn Isn't Green They show 131,000 BTU's in and 77,000 BTU's out per gallon according to David Pimentel in a Cornell University study published last year. (I'm not talking about thermodynamic BTU's, just the ones you pay for.)
Err, that's called thermodynamics. It happens to apply to every energy storage mechanism which exists. Your plant biomass idea is really just a glorified solar-energy collector, which is why it appears to involve an energy surplus. But I could do the same thing by using some (albeit, highly efficient) solar cells to crack hydrogen into water. It's the SAME THING! The difference is in how you collect the energy and the form in which it's stored.
But your solar panels are SO inferior to the natural ability of plants to convert the sun's energy to stored energy. When you invent a solar panel that is efficient, let me know. I'll send you a check to take it to market. You're arguing that since there is a lowest common dominator, that everyone is wrong. Sure, EVERYTHING we burn for fuel is in one way, shape, or form not as efficient as pure energy; however, the context of this discussion is the storage of energy. aka potential. We still haven't figured out how to harness the raw power at our fingertips. Fusion power is out there, but you think it will be in our lifetime?
Let me state:
Energy can be transformed into another sort of energy. But it cannot be created AND it cannot be destroyed. Energy has always existed in one form or another
So it would take less total energy using ethanol to boil water at sea level than it would to use a solar panel that we have today. Now let's imagine that you invent your solar panel, then we can use hydrogen all day long since we are no longer using oil to create that hyrdogen. We would no longer be pulling the limited oil resouce out of the ground and steering us into a world without oil. We would be using the natural energy of the sun. Yeaa! Cool, make it happen!
Incidentally, I suspect your idea doesn't actually generate an energy surplus. Or did you think you could harvest the plant material and convert it into ethanol without expending any energy?
Read the website. Or actually let me do it for you since you decided to form conclusions without checking the facts..
I quote:
Does it take more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy we get out of it? Response: No. This has been a common misconception of the ethanol industry, that it takes more energy to make ethanol than is available to the final consumer. Remember, ethanol is produced from plant matter, today dominated by corn, wheat, potatoes, sorgum, etc. Plants grow through the use of energy provided by the sun and are a renewable resources. In the future, ethanol will be produced from waste products or "energy crops." In fact, a partner of the NEVC, BC International (BCI), is currently constructing an ethanol production plant in Louisiana that will use sugar cane waste to produce ethanol. Additionally, BCI is considering the establishment of ethanol production facilities in California that would use the waste hulls from rice growers and wood waste from the forrest industry to produce ethanol. Energy crops such as perennial switch grasses, timothy, and other high-output/low-input crops will be used in the future. Current research prepared by Argonne National Laboratory (a U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory), indicates a 38% gain in the overall energy input/output equation for the corn-to-ethanol process. That is, if 100 BTUs of energy is used to plant corn, harvest the crop, transport it, etc., 138 BTUs of energy is available in the fuel ethanol. Corn yields and processing technologies have improved significantly over the past 20 years and they continue to do so, making ethanol production less and less energy intensive.
Questions?
Assuming that this nation finally wakes up and retires its combustion-based power plants (coal, oil, gas, etc...) and replaces them with NUCLEAR POWER on a grand and properly planned scale, all each person needs is an electrolysis device in their house for all the portable power they need. Electric bills might go up, but gas bills will be nonexistent.
Or, if you are of more credulous tastes, what about Genesis World Energy? They're claiming to have broken the laws of thermodynamics -- then we won't even need the electricity distribution infrastructure!
Interesting article, but without the original study, I can't respond. Can you help me find it? FYI, corn isn't the only source of ethanol production. There are many other materials that can be used to create ethanol, including waste products from other industry. (we could use people to make ethanol.. sorta like a 'Matrix' scenario. Hmm.. perhaps that's what the matrix is, a big ethanol plant.) I'm not saying that it's the best solution; however, it is REALISTIC.
Just wondering here, but do you think the oil supplies are going to last forever?
Erm, Soylent Beer?
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
I give you a 5 rating for funny. I wonder if it would be easy to turn people into ethanol. Hmm...
Is that the assumed leakage is no where near what we have with current hydrogen containment technology. This isn't like schleping fossil fuel around people. This study is meaningless.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
GO BEAVERS!!!!!!
DHMO is actually the most powerful solvent on earth.
USE WITH CAUTION!!
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Is it more H looses an electron and drifts through the metal, or it just gets through on it's own?
I would imagine that a container with a positive charge would repell the positively charged hydrogen (ions? Chem isn't my field, by a long shot), resulting in less leakage.
Heck, just sticking the positive end of a bunch of magnets to the outside of a ferrous container would do the trick. The negative charge in the container walls would all gravitate toward the magnets, pushing the positive end into the center. In that scenario, any ion (is that the right term?) that made it past the positively charged inner wall might still stick around just because it would be attracted to the negative end of those magnets.
Hmmm.. maybe make the containers like a capacitor... negative charge in the middle to attract the
And I'm suprised I haven't seen this joke yet:
A hydrogen atom walks into a bar, aproaches the bartender and says:
Hydrogen: "I think I've lost an electron..."
Bartender: "Are you sure?"
Hydrogen: "I'm positive!"
And you can thank Wil Wheaton for reminding me of that one in his blog today.
Fooz Meister
your 100/138 number is obviously incorrect, as it does not take into account solar input
the actual solar input between crops/cells is however largely irrelevant, just compare the remaining factors
making sure to count pollution costs of tractors trucks, the production processes of machinery against whatever production and distribution costs are involved in hydrogen
Did you know doctors recommend dihydrogen monoxide to prevent pharangeal adhesion of analgesics?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Wrong, hydroxilic acid is 10X worse!
FUCK THE OZONE!
Aluminum foil plus Clorox equals the salvation of the world's problems. What used to be a silly homemade "hydrogen bomb" can be our key to oil independence from filthy terror sponsoring states like Saudi Arabia.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Are these the same people who told us that if we ate twice our body weight in saccharine each week, we'd get cancer? Obviously this means three hundred milligrams in your iced tea will kill you deader'n'shit, too.
This is not my sandwich.
Hydrogen *may* destroy the Ozone layer, like oil, but at least, at ground level, it will not create it!
Hydrogen (or hybrid cars) will stop the regular "Pollution Alerts" that big cities have to issue on a regular basis on hot, still days. It will be nice to be able to see across town again, instead of only seeing that ever-present haze.
You just have to look at the black faces of old buildings and the ravages of acid rain to realize that internal combustion must be (at least partly) replaced as our main form of transportation power.
Here's a shocking idea... let's ban single-occupant vehicles! Make every lane an HOV lane! The petrol usage would drop precipitously, with a lot less infrastructure changes... except a good one -- better public transportation, and maybe some more lanes for those Segway scooters.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
If somebody can construct a space elevator that would do nicely...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
All this talk about linux under this legal cloud of doom has made me start telling everyone to switch to FreeBSD and tell SCO to go take a flying leap with respect to linux.
Lightining makes ozone.
Just got a better idea. Instead of banning SOVs, how about a special SOV licence sticker that you must buy in urban centres to be allowed to drive a vehicle alone?
That sticker will cost the same as a monthly bus pass, and the money will be put directly into improving public transit services.
Big signs will ring major city centres, warning solo drivers that if they don't have SOV stickers, they must buy day permits from the automated booths in the far left lane and place them in their back window. If you're alone in the car, the cops can just look to see if you have the sticker or the day permit, and if you don't, they pull you over and fine you -- the price of a year's bus pass.
That would be sooo cool. It would mean some increase in infrastructure, but that could be paid off by the revenues generated by the sticker sales.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
yes, but there's just so much MORE DHMO around, it wins through sheer quantity!
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Either you are ignorant or are a horrible, obvious troll. How the post got modded up to +5 insightful just demonstrates the enormous gullibility of the moderators. This is for them. =-P
Let it be said that there could not be enough lightning to consume all the excess hydrogen. Some would naturally oxidize and form water, but lightning would only burn the hydrogen in a very narrow column of air surrounding the lighting bolt. There just wouldn't be enough hydrogen to burn and ignite more nearby. And assuming that there were, this is something you certainly don't want! Imagine a lightning bolt causing huge fireballs to spontanously erupt over major cities!
according to this article from cnn
"If you think you have bad breath, just be thankful you're not a cow -- with breath that allegedly harms Earth's ozone layer and contributes to global warming.
Sheep, termites implicated too "
then lets just recycle all the carbon we use back into oil and base chemicals like these guys are doing now
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I agree. Unfortunately I don't have M2 Metamoderation priveleges yet to try and correct this.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have a solution to both the sorce of energy and any posible ozone holes that might hapen. A Solar Chimney can produce wattage compleatly cleanly. Pluss if we bild a realy tall one we can send ozone up it directly. On top of that the taller the chimney is the more power it will produce & the greenhouses an the bass could be used for farming.
I wonder if it would be easy to turn people into ethanol. Hmm...
You obviously haven't been to one of my parties. Some people are already 30% ethanol.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Mod this fuck into the stone age! Stupid asshat! Don't you realize that as long as the rotteness of humans befouls this earth, it will always be in a state of environmental crisis? Fuck you asshole.
You have done a much better job at showing your ignorance than I could have done. Thank you.
If you really believe in protecting the environment please stop using and do not buy in the future: a refrigerator, a car, a motorcycle, plastic in any form, electricity, solar panels made by evil energy companies, ice cubes, tea, gasoline, computers, cotton, polyester, music CDs, DVDs...and the multitude of hypocritical products you use which 'hurt' the environmet.
I also suspect you believed the scientists in the 1970s that we would have an ice age within a few years. You must have also believed the 1980s scientists when they predicted a catasrophic warming of the earth.
Continue being a eco-liberal-ignoramus.
I think you missed the joke. Hydroxilic acid is the systematic acid name of water.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
"ETHANOL IS PEOPLE!"
Yes, and his name was apparently "Jack Daniels."
Ethanol-powered cars is going to redefine open container laws...
If you paid attention during your chemistry classes, you already know this: H2 released in the atmosphere will react with oxydants at the drop of a hat under the influence of almost any catalyzer or combustion. The most likely oxydant is good old O2. I fail to see how H2 would patiently wait until it finds some unsuspecting ozone (03) before reacting. This just doesn't add up.
Moreover, millions of tons of H2 are already manufactured in refineries and chemical plants. Any increase linked to transportation use would be a drop in the bucket. So why do these pseudo-scientist wake up now?
Finally, recent developments indicate that fuel cells will probably not use H2 directly. The FC types favored these days use methanol, or alcohol, in solutions between 7 and 60%. See engineering publications such as Electronics Engineering Times, for instance http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030507S0035 or http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030407S0046. Conclusion: 1. fuel cells will use methanol; 2. Large-scale H2 production started in the 19th century; 3. And the ozone layer is safe from H2. So why do pseudo-scientist feel the need to start alarming people with demonstrably false voodoo claims? Say what? Research grants? Oh, OK, sorry, keep going.
On the other point, if we don't at least TRY to use up the oil supplies, how will we know if they'll last forever or not?
Pshht. That acid has nothing on the sheer caustic power of hydrogen hydroxide.
If the United States, and whatsoever other Northern Hemispheric dwellers, are ' the ' cause or the ' major ' cause of the deteriorization of the Ozone Layer (industrialization, etc.), then why is the hole in the Ozone Layer over the South Pole and not the North Pole?!?!
the yahoo page is missing three paragraphs, what's up with that? the complete AP article can be found at http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/6073725.htm .
- Collect waste products
- Convert to useable fuel products and other raw materials.
- Sell raw materials. Profit!
- Sell some oil. Profit!
- Use remaining oil to fuel massive hydrogen refining process.
- Sell hydrogen. Profit!
All while cleaning up the planet, a whole lot. This makes the hippies, the business types, and the everyday people happy. Let's just hope it works like they say it does and it might just be one of the best solutions we've been presented with.As for the leakage issue: Why would it be so hard to contain hydrogen? I mean yea I realize porous metals and since it's the smallest atom etc...however I routinely see tanker trucks with things like "AIRTECH: Liquid Refrigerated Hydrogen" in big letters on them. So if these trucks can hold it so easily, why not other things?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Earth was engineered far better then we understand right now. I don't think a little hydrogen leakage is going to break it.
Oops. If only Slashdot had a comment-retraction system... Hydroxilic acid ... H20... d'oh...
BDIFD: Boy Do I Feel Dumb.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
With all the depleted uranium they left lying around, it's not like it matters anymore. Most armed Iraqis can probably puncture all but the most heavily armored pipes, given close enough range. Talk about a quagmire.
Anyway, with water and air, you can transport hydrogen as electricity, so maintaining the existing electrical grid will do the trick. The penalty for conversion back and forth is about 50%, with the right kind of proton enchange membrane (which has to be kept clean and free from erosion), and which goes up with lengthier transmissions. There are both inorganic (e.g., Pt, Pd) and organic proton echange membranes. If you are interested in this science, you should follow the stories about conductive carbon filament and nanotube production. Carbon nanotubes will likely be extremly effective for high-density hydrogen storage, although there might be a way to do it with filaments and certain topologies of substrates. I wish I knew more about the chemistry of organic proton exchange membranes, too, but I suppose that's what the patent literature is for these days.
No matter how you slice it, there is no reason that wind power should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2020.
there is always everyone's favorite alternative power source, solar satellites!
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Yes, in the U.S. The way the Europeans scrub it, I think it works out to between 3 and 5 times as much, unless you count Chernobel.
Watching Alan Greenspan on C-SPAN this week, taking Energy committee questions in favor of fossil fuels, and not taking every opportunity to suggest building wind power (because he loves globalization so much he's willing to compromise energy independence, I suppose.)
There is no reason that wind should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2018.
Someone please tell Alan Greenspan. +1.202.452.3204. Ask for Michelle Smith or Andrew Williams.
That seems absurd to me. The capital cost of modern wind turbines is about the same as several street lamp posts, and they generate an amortized quarter megawatt per 36 square feet of land use.
Would you please cite your sources for those claims, and/or revise them with accurate data?
There is no reason that wind should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2018.
Please tell Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Based on his Energy Committee testimony this week, nobody has explained this to him yet. Please phone +1.202.452.3204 and ask for Michelle Smith or Andrew Williams.
On the contrary, the entire United States of America can be converted to wind power electricity using only 14,000 acres of turbine footprint area on existing farmland, pasture, and prarie. That's about twice the area of the Stanford University campus, or about as much Oak forest lost in California each year.
There is no reason that wind should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2018.
Please tell Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Based on his Energy Committee testimony this week, nobody has explained this to him yet. Please phone +1.202.452.3204 and ask for Michelle Smith or Andrew Williams.
Modern wind turbines are very quiet. Perhaps you have heard the 1970s models on Altamont pass, which are noisy.
It is easy to defrost turbine blades, in populated areas. But you only need 14,000 acres of turbine footprint to convert the entire current U.S. electricity usage to wind power. Thats about twice the area of the Stanford U. campus, or about as much Oak forest as is lost in California each year. Cats kill more than two decimal orders of magnitude more birds than wind turbines do.
If the entire planet converted to wind electricity in thirty years, it would take another 300 years to extract the same amount of energy from the atmosphere as fossil fuel consumption has thusfar forced into the troposphere. Equitorial alignments are safe.
ANYTHING -- yes, ANYTHING -- dealing with Hydrogen is a Class I Div II (minimum) certified piece of equipment. Just ask anyone who does anything with manufacturing and they will tell you that your hair-brained idea of H in the home is crazy.
Dealing with H is NOT as easy as dealing with fossil fuels. Period. There is much much much more to think about when handling hydrogen. These simple statements like "we'll just make it wherever" are totally unfounded.
Why do I know this? Well, I work with Hydrogen -- and let me tell you, the tolerance is VERY VERY small between success and disastrous failure (ie: explosions).
No, you are correct. It is NOT just limited to the environmental folks. There are plenty of candidates for the throne....
I just mentioned it because that was the topic du jour.
So are you saying that someone who signs a peition calling for the banning of Dihydrogen Monoxide is innocent? C'mon....if you don't understand the damn thing, then why did you sign it?
I'm not sure what is scarier: the idea of ignorance running rampant or that someone is actually defending the ignorant because they were presented with "biased" information. My god -- everything in this world that presented to you is biased. Unless you create it yourself, it has a bias. So do we now say that nobody is responsible for anything because we all know nothing?
Bah. Utter nonsense.
"No matter how you slice it, there is no reason that wind power should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2020."
Except for the fact that we'd have to cover Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to get as much as we need.
Did you know that wind power and ALL alternative electricity models only account for 2% of total energy available in the US?
Hydrogen is JUST an energy-storage medium in the proposed "hydrogen economy," and an unweildy one at that. Just think of the energy costs of fabricating all these exotic high-pressure storage tanks.
Now, what about methane? It can be used in a methane fuel cell (yes, there are fuel cells that run off methane without the need for a reformer), or, less efficiently, in an existing car engine with nothing but a new carburetor.
Once we have renewable energy sources, it can be synthesized from water and atmospheric CO2 with efficiency comparable to the electrolysis of water (which would be used in a H2 cycle) And until then, unlike hydrogen, methane is widely available (natural gas is mostly methane). It's even generated at landfills by natural decay!
Does a methane-fueled car pollute? Sure, it releases CO2. But the same amount of CO2 is used to make the fuel to begin with, so the "methane economy" cycle as a whole produces no net pollution.
-TerranFury
There are a few places that use underground rock formations to store compressed air.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"