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.

Comments

FACE IT

[CiXeL]

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.

Re:No big deal.

[Chagatai]

If you think about it, normal lightning bolts would cause any excess hydrogen to release its energy and become water. The point that the CalTech crew was saying is that this reaction would cause lower levels of the stratosphere to cool, thus hindering the ozone repletion.

I don't buy it. Their model would work if everything changed overnight to a hydrogen economy, but as countries like China will inevtiably use fossil fuels to take care of their economies, it would take a revolution to match their models.

Hydrogen Is A Boondoggle Anyway

[istartedi]

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.

Re:Fossil Fuels

[Rich0]

Still, it has a major advantage in the fact that it is commercially viable to burn oil in a power plant with sophisticated scrubbing equipment to minimize the pollution output. A plant generating hydrogen to power 100,000 cars will not produce as much pollution as 100,000 cars will. EPA regulations are much easier to enforce on a couple of thousand power plants than on a couple hundred million cars. You also decouple energy use from energy production - which means that if a more efficient system for producing energy is discovered you can switch to it easily without rendering obsolete every car that exists.

For the short term hybrid vehicles are definitely the solution - they don't require any infrastrucutre and reduce pollution and oil use immediately. For the longer term you need a system that can run at high power for extended periods of time if you want to use it in cars. Hydrogen is probably your best bet. How you make the hydrogen is up to you... Eventually it might be made using solar power, but for now you are still helping the environment even if the hydrogen is made by burning coal...

20% leakage

[tacokill]

...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.

Re:Fossil Fuels

[Abcd1234]

What nearly everyone seems to forget (including the NPR report last night) is that hydrogen is not an energy source any more than the wall socket your computer is plugged into is.

Ugh, that applies to almost every energy medium you will ever find on this planet. Fossil fuels themselves are stored up energy... they just happen to store solar energy from millions of years ago and are thus, from our point of view, free.

Hydrogen has to be produced. Currently, most of it comes from fossil fuels in a process that releases CO2. Some if it comes from electrolosis, which requires energy which comes from sources like burning fossil fuels.

The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.

So? This is a great thing! This means that the pollution is localized, meaning it's easier to control, and you only have on the order of thousands (guess) of facilities to upgrade when new pollution-control technologies appear (unlike having to fix, say, a hundred million cars). Moreover, by having centralized energy production, we can role out new production technologies easier AND we can use technologies which operate better at larger scales (eg, nuclear or fusion power, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc).

20% leakage - at least!

[frovingslosh]

..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.

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.