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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.
They had a discussion about this topic on Talk of the Nation on NPR today. One of the scientists that was on claimed that this report focused mainly on the extremes. For instance the 20% leakage they've been using is a worldwide amount. The national amount in the US is about 2%.
Mike
All-in-all, I think they'll reduce the leakage before H2 becomes practical...
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Not only that, but unlike catalytic destruction of ozone (as with CFCs and such) the oxidation of this hydrogen means that the hydrogen is consumed. So I can't see how a hydrogen sink could approach the ozone loss levels attributed to CFCs and such - naively, I would say that it's probably not as big a deal. Naively, of course - this still merits some attention.
:)
But hey, publish publish publish, whatever the cost, right?
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
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...
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That's only one problem with the future "hydrogen economy".
Sure, hydrogen is in abundance, in outer space. Who's going to go get it?
What's the major source for hydrogen right now? Natural Gas. What's the major byproduct of extracting hydrogen from Natural Gas? Carbon Dioxide.
Sure, you can do electrolysis. Unfortunately, you need a lot of electricity to do that. Until nuclear power becomes popular again, there's not enough capacity in our power infrastructure. Not to mention that, in the US, most power is generated from coal.
Have you seen the price of Natural Gas lately?
It will be interesting to watch how we overcome these hurdles.
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.
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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.
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)
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.
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Of course, this is ignoring the fact that gasoline is actually worse than hydrogen about this. Also, the H2 will probably disapate into the atmosphere too fast to get to any sort of useful concentration. Remember, that while (2H2 + O2 -> 2H20 + energy) if there isn't much of the H2 in one place, there isn't going to be much energy. This is why H2 is usually held in ballons before it is used, its just not useful while its spaying out of the wine bottle. It just disapates way too fast.
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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.
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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.
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IAAES (I am an environmental scientist/policy analyst) and it is definitely better than fossil fuels. The thing is, if this study is correct, and that is a big if based on how little is known about hydrogen in the environment, it will slow Hydrogen adoption by increasing costs associated with it's use and through fear of creating damage to the ozone layer, thereby extending how long fossil fuels continue to remain dominant. Hydrogen (more specifically hydrogen rich fuels) is seen as the next step in portable fuel. As time has moved forward from the industrial age, the hydrogen:caron ratio in fuels has swung from being very carbon rich (wood,coal) to less carbon rich (natural gas).
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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.
I can't quote the source but I'm sure someone can google it.. but a fairly recent study (by the UN I believe) has predicted the world's population will peak sometime within the this century at a relatively manageable level. More than now obviously, but not the exponential nightmare the doomsayers predict. Fact is, the more affluent societies get, the slower the population increases. Hell, some European countries have negative growth. China and India aren't going to keep ballooning forever and are on the right path to stability.
My point is, we will never hit an astronomically high population. At some point population will peak but (at least hopefully) technology will not. In time technology will help solve the problems created by the numbers.
Let's just hope we don't kill ourselves through war in the meantime.
The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.
Many people don't realize that you can force a few thousand power plants to keep their emissions down to reasonable or even sub-reasonable levels a lot easier than you can get a few hundred thousand 15 year old cars to stop spewing the same crap into the air. Centralization of the pollution means that we can exhibit a much higher level of control over the source.
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Not only is coal visually dirty, it also releases more radioactivity than a nuclear plant does. All the radioactivity in a nuclear plant has been removed from the environment and is kept that way. Coal has many minerals, and the ash concentrates the metals, including uranium and other radioactives.
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.
Whats so bad about coal? The technology is available to burn it cleanly (albeit not cheap) and CO2 and H2O can be recycled by plant growth. In fact according to a recent article (dang, can't find it) plant growth on the planet is up 6% due to extra CO2 availablity and possibly global warming.
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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.
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Gas doesn't have a size. Gas atoms do. Helium is famous for outgasing. While you can have a neon tube and fifty years later find that it still has "all" of the neon in it, a helium laser tube will leak the helium right through the walls of the laser tube in a year or so. It would be nice to prevent this, as it's the primary cause of failure of expensive laser tubes, but it just isn't pratical to make a helium laser tube that will not outgas.
Years ago (in the 70's) I worked on a hard disk drive that was filled with helium, both because it was inert and because the helium let the heads fly closer to the surface than other gasses would. But the damn thing required a spare heluim tank and frequent checks of the pressure to be sure it stayed in range; and you can bet that the drive was as well sealed as could be.
Hydrogen presents the same problems, except to a greater extent. An atom gets really tiny when it can give up an electron and become just a proton with no electron shell at all.
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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.)