US Army Pursues Hydrogen Fuel Concepts

securitas writes "According to GlobeTechnology/AP, the US Army is excited about the potential of hydrogen-powered tanks. The interest is the result of a technology demonstration that took place at Auburn University in December. Scientists have invented a process that removes the carbon and sulfur from hydrocarbon fuels like oil and gasoline. Hydrogen-powered vehicles could go three times farther than diesel-powered counterparts. DoD officials say 'it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.' The new process could let them take advantage of the existing oil industry infrastructure. Auburn University scientists 'realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel' and 'took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.' The Auburn team is now pursuing military funding."

Comments

Oil?

[guarddonkey]

Does it seem kind of backwards to be using Oil in the fuel cell process?

Re:Oil?

[Sarojin]

Not really - right now hydrogen fuel is really only useful as a container of energy, not as an energy source.

Re:Oil?

[Xolotl]

It's useful as a trnasition technology, exploiting the existing infrastructure and increasing use of hydrogen engines until a critical mass is reached where it becomes economically viable to create a dedicated hydrogen distribution system. And because they use catalysts the energy cost should be small. Very clever indeed.

Re:Oil?

[overunderunderdone]

Does it seem kind of backwards to be using Oil in the fuel cell process?

No that is the usual way of getting hydrogen. The other way involves getting it from water but that requires a great deal of energy - in fact, the same amount of energy that you get back when you turn it back into water in the fuel cell (really a fair bit more due to inefficiencies).

This is the problem with many alternative energy sources - they all sound good but there are always downsides that don't get much press. People talk about hydrogen like it's magic energy for free - but you have to GET the hydrogen from somewhere, either from oil, in which case we're back were we started. Or from water which takes more energy to process than you get from the fuel cell. At that point you can simply think of fuel cells as a type of battery. It's a way to store energy which must be produced in some other way.

Re:Oil?

[Catbeller]

Not oil - diesel fuel.The process has been well known for a while. Remove the oxygen and carbon with catalysts, then burn the liberated hydrogen.

Can be done with gasoline, too, of course. When car manufacturers go on about "fuel cells", they are not talking about hydrogen tanks. They want to use plain old gas out of a plain old gas station.

Makes sense to the oil companies as well.

Not quite a perfect process, emissions wise, but at least you get three times the miles per gallon, and fewer impurities are spewing into the air.

Re:Oil?

[cluckshot]

The process actually has many advantages for the Military and for civilians. But first people have to quit viewing hydrogen as a fuel and see it more like a battery that they charge up. It is not a Energy Source. It is an Energy Storage Media.

Working on such research myself for the USAF *yes military* I have learned a lot about what is going on. The process and demand for such changes is not exactly like what the media tend to report.

The reason we burn gasoline etc is to provide the Heat Catalyzed Hydrogen for conversion to Steam when reacted with Oxygen. While the carbon provides some energy it is really for running a Steam Engine. This cycle is limited thermally to about 38% efficient of the original energy in the steam. This is functionally further limited by other factors leaving current petrol engines about 25% to 28% efficient thermally.

The process for Cracking Hydrogen from fuel uses about 25% of the gross energy entering the process. Then the process of running a fuel cell drive eats another 15% (more or less) This leaves a potential thermal efficiency of a drive train at something close to 60%! This is more than double the current efficiency. Curiously this is not the military reason for doing this. It is but one fairly lessor factor. The military reasons for doing this have to do with issues of "Readiness" and "Dual Use."

If you have a tank that runs this way and you have no longer use for the tank if it runs on standard engines you have a very expensive item to leave just sitting around doing nothing. But if you drive the tank using Hydrogen and produce Electric energy to drive it, the tank can just plug in and become a "Generator" for many uses after battle is done. The savings to the military here by going to such systems is about a 4 to 1 ratio in machinery that they don't have to haul around. This coupled with increased milage etc makes the process very attractive

In Iraq this would have allowed us to just "Plug In" and have the electrical grid up and running. But this is hardly all. There are very big issues here on the weight of drive trains and also in issues such as stealth. Current engines would allow an enemy to hear the Soldiers coming for many miles.(often 20 or more miles) This system is very quiet.

This will spin off into civilian use. The technology is going to do many things. It will make cars which are profoundly less noisy. The technology also has pollution control issues. It is essentially a clean burn for the fuel.

There are other issues here that many people could hardly imagine. The storage of Hydrogen as a liquified gas, or compressed gas is essentially impossible for use in normal conditions. The losses of Hydrogen alone would kill the use. The natural solution is to store the Hydrogen as a Hydride. Much experimentation has been done with Hydrides. All solutions come back to the natural solution that Carbon Hydrides and essentially about 6 to 20 carbon Alcane chains (Gasoline Jet fuel etc) are just about the optimal solution.

What is going to develop will probably be that Gasoline or similar fuel will be made using either Coal for the Carbon or by Hydration of poor quality vegitable oils or vegitable mass like Hydrilla or Algea. This will provide the store for the Hydrogen that may in fact be made from the same process fairly directly. This can be SOLAR in energy source.

There are other features here that are most desirable. This provides a stable store which works with current technology. It is energy optimal. It is fairly clean and allows the addition of regenerative braking and other mechanisms.

This is more or less what is going on. Sorry for those who thought that gasoline was going away, it looks as though it is here to stay for a long time to come. Fuel Reformers (Crackers for Hydrogen) will just make you have a 50 Kg Primary Energy Converter insted of a 500 Kg one. You will no longer have brakes or a transmission. Your controls will be as simple as computer joysticks. The

Re:Oil?

[DoraLives]

you have to GET the hydrogen from somewhere,

The hidden key to this story is actually catalysis. Methinks that sooner than you'd expect, we're going to be doing just fine throwing grass clippings, old newspapers, orange peels, and most any old kind of organic residue into the hopper and then driving off, leaving a cloud of water vapor and a stash of nicely organized chemical elements, which will also turn out to have some interesting uses.

Re:Oil?

[mwood]

Since there are no wells of molecular hydrogen anywhere on the planet, hydrogen will *always* be only a storage medium, *never* a direct energy source. Hydrogen production will be coupled with some other source of energy because that's the only way to get free hydrogen around here.

But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go. Notice the byproducts: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. Sound familiar? Aren't those a large part of the reason people have been whining about the need for alternative fuels?

The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily. (Try loading 40 tons of electricity on a truck.) We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process. The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen. So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.

Liberating hydrogen from oil is expedient in the short term, but it's stupid in the long term. Isn't short-term thinking how we messed up our atmosphere in the first place?

That said, I'm happy to see an outfit with the size and clout of the U.S. Army getting serious about hydrogen. They can drive development to the point that the consumption end is a going concern, whether the production end is well thought out or not. Once there's a sizable demand for hydrogen fuel, there'll be money enough for bright people to tune up the supply side.

Re:Oil?

[mwood]

Think a little longer. Getting hydrogen from oil *also* consumes as much energy as it gives back, and then some. The oil is destroyed. The oil represents every bit of the energy latent in the hydrogen, plus some more. Breaking down water might turn out to be *more* efficient since nearly all the energy put in will be stored in the output, while the energy that could be gotten from burning the carbon in oil goes, well, where *does* it go? I hope it's used in driving the hydrogen production process, since we get stuck with the combustion products anyway. (Please tell me we're not throwing away millions of BTUs via cooling towers just to get the hydrogen. That would be pathetic.)

People do talk as though hydrogen is free energy, but I can't help it that so many didn't listen to primary-school discussions of thermodynamics. All we can do is to correct them until the light dawns.

Re:Oil?

[Hungus]

Don't worry nobody is violating the laws of thermodynamics. The difference comes from efficiency. Gasoline reciprocal engines are really not very efficient. Plus depending on the transmission you can loose 75% of your power output from the engine through the differential. Move the engine to the wheels and engine output == force at wheel plus you no longer need brakes as the engine can now be used as a brake. I have been tinkering for a while with a turbine generator driving the rear wheel of a 3 wheeled vehicle based exactly on this process, Currently I use diesel fuel but the idea could be done with hydrogen by changing the injection system and converting the blades to a ceramic rather than metal , and thats still using combustion! Diverting the hydrogen through a fuel cell should be even more efficient.

Re:Oil?

[tunabomber]

Not at all. The technology to strip hydrogen atoms off of common hydrocarbons is really the big missing link in the idea of a hydrogen-based economy because it solves the the big problems:

1. How do we get hydrogen in the first place (without wasting energy)?
2.If our cars are hydrogen-powered, how do we distribute the hydrogen to them without rebuilding our infrastructure?
3. How do we store hydrogen in a way that doesn't take up a lot of space or weigh a lot.

How well the Auburn students' solution can address these problems depends on how small and cheap they can make the equipment that does the hydrocarbon->hydrogen conversion. The "holy grail" is to have a system so small that it will fit onboard a car so we won't have to make any modifications to the current fuel distribution infrastructure.
Using the hydrogen from hydrocarbons to directly make electricity will undoubtedly be much more efficient both because it eliminates all the wastefulness inherent in combustion and internal combustion engines, and because electricity can be used much more efficiently than mechanical energy, ie. you don't have to have your motor running continuously, you can use regenerative braking to recover some lost energy.
Finally, electrical engines are much cheaper to buy and maintain than internal combustion engines because they don't have to withstand the stress of thousands of explosions per minute that force dozens of parts to move at high speed.

Re:Oil?

[Rostin]

The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily.

Actually, one of the big obstacles to using hydrogen as a fuel is that it ISN'T very easily transportable. As a gas, you have to employ very high pressures that involve expensive tanks. Compress it all the way to a liquid and you've burned up so much energy that its no longer attractive as a more efficient source. Chemical storage (metal hydrides, etc) is being researched, but AFAIK, it isn't ready to be main-streamed.

We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process.

That's a great plan, except that the energy to do those things has to come from somewhere. It can't be hydrogen, because it would take more hydrogen than you are making to do it.

The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen.

Let's be clear about what we're talking about. I'm not sure how much hydrogen you are planning on making (total replacement of hydrocarbon fuels?) but you will have to build enough solar/wind/wave/hydro/whatever installations to nearly match the amount of energy being produced by hydrocarbons for whatever application you are interested in. The "nearly" shows up because hydrogen power IS generally more efficient than hydrocarbon based power. This is a nice theoretical solution, but practically it would be very expensive and difficult, even if it is possible.

So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.

A lot of people consider water vapor to be a green house gas.

Re:Oil?

[mark-t]

The chief advantage of Hydrogen over fossil fuels isn't so much that it's cheaper, but that it's truly an infinitely renewable resource that's virtually perfect in terms of environmental friendliness.

There is an inescapable fact that is often overlooked by advocates of conventional fuel usage: There is a finite amount of fossil fuel on this planet. Once that's used up, that's it. We're screwed... BIG time. There's no getting it back without waiting a few million years for its users to all decompose back into oil. Now how long this oil is going to last us at the rate we are currently using it may be up for debate, but it is irrefutable that we are consuming it faster than it gets created, so eventually, however long from now, if we keep using it at the rate that we are, we *WILL* run out.

Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the entire universe. Further, even though there is a finite amount of it on this planet as well, when you burn it, the exhaust is pure water vapour. No more dumping poisonous gasses into the atomosphere. Further, this water vapour will eventually fall back as rain, and the net result will be cleaner rain water as hydrogen fueled cars become more popular.

With the application of some amount of energy (yes, I know it isn't cheap), hydrogen can always be extracted from water (which, considering hydrogen combustion exhaust *IS* water, makes it infinitely renewable). It is the energy for this extraction process that would be the greatest contributing factor in determining how much an end consumer would pay for gasoline. I don't think any serious advodate of Hydrogen fuel would insist that this process would be for free. But because such extraction processes could be large scale and centralized, alternative energy sources such as geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, or even nuclear power could be employed to obtain the energy ncecessary to extract the water from the hydrogen (a process which, as a convenient byproduct, also produces pure Oxygen which can be collected or released immediately as seen fit). Stricter pollution control measures could reasonably be enforced at such centralized locations than might be also possible in mobile internal combustion engines, so again the negative impact that using such fuel would have on the environment could be minimized.

Would worldwide adoption of Hydrogen fuel spell an end for the oil companies that have invested so much in their current industry? Not at all. Why couldn't current oil companies instead choose to run the plants that extract hydrogen from water for shipping to fuel pumping stations? That way, they would still get the same slice of the pie that they were always getting. Oh, their monopoly may be cut into a bit, but they currently have the resources at their disposal to implement such processes on a scale that would, in general, be likely to be cleaner and more efficient than the processes that might be employed by those with lesser capital to start out with. Further, if they wait until after there isn't enough oil to go around before starting this, their income will have already taken a hit and they simply won't have the same resources that they do now.

Also, there will always be a demand for oil, even if it is not used as a fuel. Oil is employed in many different manufacturing processes, not to mention also used as lubrication. Oil pumps won't be useless in such a world, they just wouldn't need to be as plentiful.

Re:Oil?

[Fnkmaster]

Generally, the H20->H2+O2 process is at most 50% efficient in practice. There have been several crazy pseudoscientists who've come up with unreproducible results that claim 90%+ efficiency rates (these results are not repeatable by anybody else), but standard "cracking of water" is not a perfectly efficient process by any means.

Likewise, you need to get energy from some source to drive the hydrogen production process. Hopefully you don't plan on getting that from fossil fuel sources, since they you have the power generation inefficiencies, plus the hydrogen production inefficiencies. Given how hard and expensive to transport the resulting product (hydrogen) is, if you're going to go through all the effort of transforming your energy source into something, you'd think you might want to make ethanol (which can be relatively efficiently produced from cellulose, which we really do have in renewable, limitless supply) that is cheap and easy to transport and adapt to our existing infrastructure.

Re:Oil?

[Phronesis]

A lot of people consider water vapor to be a green house gas.

Anyone who knows anything understands that water vapor is indeed a greenhouse gas and contributes more to the natural greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide does.

However, the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is very close to its saturation value, so excess water vapor will precipitate out quickly.

The saturation vapor pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 1000 PSI, so excess carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere will not precipitate. It must be removed by other processes (e.g., photosynthesis), which run a lot more slowly. Current estimates of the residence time of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere are around 60 years.

Other than this, your criticisms of hydrogen as fuel is right on target. I would only add that nuclear power looks like a very good source of power for industrial-scale electrolysis. This still wouldn't address the question of transporting hydrogen, though.

Re:Oil?

[Short Circuit]

If you're lucky, you can use chemical catalysts to perform chemical changes on a substance while expending virtually no energy. That's what a catalytic converter does in a normal unleaded-fuel automobile.

Re:Oil?

[Hoser McMoose]

Since there are no wells of molecular hydrogen anywhere on the planet, hydrogen will *always* be only a storage medium, *never* a direct energy source

Err, well unless you count nuclear fussion. I suppose that's a little ways off though!

But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go.

Have you got any other suggestions? There are only two widely available sources of hydrogen. The first is water, which is all well and good except that you only ever get out less energy than you put in (ie it's purely an energy transport mechanism, you still need a power plant to provide the electricity in the first place). The second widely available source of hydrogen is in hydrocarbons.

Of course, there are some advantages to getting power from hydrocarbons the fuel cell way instead of internal combustion engines. First off, the real big problem with current energy production is that burning hydrocarbons produces all kinds of sulpher dioxide, nitrogen monoxide/dioxide, etc. By separating out the hydrogen using a membrane you shouldn't get nearly as many of these emissions. Also, if the claim of 3x the efficiency is accurate than it would be a BIG bonus, though most numbers I've heard place the efficiency as being much lower. Finally, a fuel cell powered car would probably work better with regenerative breaking than what you get in current hybrid cars, since you would now just have an all-electrical system instead of a gas motor and an electrical motor. At the very least it should make things easier/cheaper than hybrids.

The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily

Err, actually it's not all that easy to ship hydrogen. It's a gas, and a VERY light gas at that. You really need to compress it a whole lot before you can get any meaningful quantity. You also then have the problem of shipping a lot of highly compressed and highly combustable gas. In short, it's not easy at all. Storing is extremely troublesome for the same reasons. Shipping and storing fossil fuels is MUCH easier.

The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen

I love wind, solar, wave, etc. energy as much as the enxt guy, but lets face it, they aren't anywhere near capable of providing us with our CURRENT energy needs, let alone the SIGNIFICANTLY higher energy needs if we started doing electrolytic converters for all of our cars!

Re:Oil?

[jdray]

We know how to get hydrogen out of a lot of things (water, for instance, through electrolosys). Compressed hydrogen is a common commodity (you can buy a cylinder of it at your local welding supply, I believe). The hydrogen that filled the blimps, like the Hindenburg, was likely from compressed tankage on the ground for the main fill, then from smaller, more portable tanks while in flight.

Hindenburg

[RobertTaylor]

Lets hope the tanks are not covered in iron oxide and aluminum paint as well ;)

Cheers,
rob.

Re:Hindenburg

[fuzzybunny]

Damn, beat me to it.

"This is Wolf Blitzer reporting from the 1st Cavalry Divi...Oh the humanity!"

Re:Hindenburg

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Joke apart, isn't hydrogen a major safety concern for standard road vehicles? I mean, they even have to store it as hydrates to make it safe, at the cost of limited trunk space and complicated heating equipment to get the gas out.

If it sounds dangerous for an average car, it's probably even more so for tanks, that may be hit by any kind of nasty projectile while in battle. And if the tank stores the stuff as hydrates, or has a lot of shielding to protect the compressed gas area, that's as much less ordnance it can carry.

Diesel fuel on the other hand is quite difficult to ignite, let alone explode. For example, pour a bit of diesel fuel in a small glass and try to light it up with a match : it won't ignite, no matter how hard you try. Diesel therefore would actually be a rather suitable combat-situation fuel.

Re:Hindenburg

[HeghmoH]

You may be right about tanks, but there's no worry about regular cars, which normally use gasoline. If you try your little experiment with gasoline, you could well be headed for the hospital if you're not careful. And people drive around with enormous amounts of this stuff stored in their vehicles. Hydrogen is much less dangerous.

hmmm... i dunno

[MrRTFM]

depending on how much this costs, it seems like a waste of time extracting the hydrogen from 'oil', when there is a *chance* it could get up to 3 times more energy.

Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.

Re:hmmm... i dunno

[swordboy]

Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.

There doesn't need to be a breakthrough because that has already happened. Stan Ovshinsky, pioneer of disordered materials, has developed a thin-film solar technology that is competitive with grid-supplied fossil fuel electricity. Now, he believes that they can achieve this feat with 100MW of production economy so they aren't quite there yet (they currently run a 30MW machine).

They just partnered with HaveBlue to develop a fuel cell hydrogen sailboat with solid hydrogen storage. The sailboats sit in the harbor most of the time so they are perfect vessels to soak up the sun and convert it to hydrogen.

Water is the best battery. We just need an affordable fuel cell to convert it back into electricity. Stan is working on that too.

Re:hmmm... i dunno

[Hoser McMoose]

A 100% efficient solar panel gives you about 500-1000KW/km^2 during the day, and nothing at night. In North America we consume about 2KW of energy on average throughout the day.

So, let's take a near best-case scenario of putting solar panels on the equator, getting full-intensity (ie noon hour) sun for 12 hours a day, we're still talking about only being able to provide power to 500 people per km^2. For the United State's 270 million people, that works out to 540,000km^2, or about halfway between the size of California and Texas.

Of course, if we were to use real numbers, even with 100% effective solar panels you would need an area MUCH larger than the size of Texas to support out current energy needs.

Note that this isn't even starting to consider the HUGE extra burder to the power grid if we were to try and power all our cars by it like you're suggesting. Our total energy consumption is up around 7 or 8KW/person when you add in non-electrical energy sources (mainly internal combustion engines for vehicles, heating, etc.).

Not just tanks

[Eric S Rayrnond]

The APU is a new invention that could also reduce the military's reliance on oil. It doesn't drive the engines of the Army's long-haul trucks, but it will run almost everything else, from the heating and air conditioning to the vehicle's water pump and other accessories. It's powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The hydrogen comes from a small set of tanks attached to the cab, but eventually the hydrogen could come directly from the diesel fuel that runs the engine itself. A fuel-cell APU can increase the efficiency of a typical diesel engine by as much as ten-fold. And the less noise and emissions a truck generates, the lower the chance it'll be spotted by the enemy.

Personally, I think that best solution is a reduction in military and government spending on fuel, along with everything else. After all, the government is the greatest polluter on the planet.

This is a great first step!

[Qwerpafw]

The giant barrier for fuel cells is, and has been, transportation and distribution of fuel. Pure hydrogen is enormously expensive to transport and store since it "leaks" out of most containers (the molecules fit through the walls or something equally frustrating). Strides were made with that (boron?) chemical storage, but it's still pretty labor intensive and would require a vastly different infrastructure. This, however, manages to use the existing system (for diesel fuel) for hydrogen cells. That's a giant breakthrough.

The article describes the technology as being "a four or a five" on a scale where 10 is production-level, so the whole thing is, to an extent, still vapourware. BUT, the transition path to hydrogren is so advantageous, I wouldn't be surprised if we were to see production examples of fuel-cell diesel trucks (apparently the tech works better with diesel...) in a few years domestically. First a transition for trucks, then a gradual increase in diesel/hydrogen fuel availability for the rest of America's car fleet, and finally a total switch to hydrogen tech. All without having to significantly rework the fossil fuel distribution network. This is the stuff of the future and I, for one, look forwards to it eagerly.

Cost

[sangfroid]

They're using a catalytic converter to draw the hydrogen out of readily available, pre-processed fuel -- probably still in the form of hydrocarbons instead of pure hydrogen. This is cheap. Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.

From the article:

"Scientists have known about the advantages of hydrogen fuel since they began using it to power rockets. But super-cooled liquid hydrogen is difficult to store and move.

Thus, converting to widespread use would be expensive and take years, and would require creating an alternative to the world's trillion-dollar infrastructure.

But they realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel -- diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline. All they would have to do is invent a process that removes the carbon and sulfur and they could take advantage of the oil industry infrastructure."

Re:Cost

[jsebrech]

Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.

Except that you can use renewable power to separate the hydrogen from water. First you distill the water to purify it, then you electrolyse it to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. It's really not a complicated process. All you need is electricity, which is what the majority of "clean" and renewable energy sources deliver.

The whole point of "the hydrogen economy" is abandoning oil and its costly and politically risky infrastructure (generate fuel where you need it, instead of shipping it in from dictatorships). Reusing the oil infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars is pointless. You're wasting even more energy than you would be if you just burnt the oil directly.

Ofcourse, it's probably cost efficient for the specific case the military has in iraq, but for general use it's not a good strategy.

Great!

[Stile 65]

Between this and Thermal Depolymerization, which can turn any organic material into oil, we're going to be in hog heaven. Who needs to import oil anymore? :)

Costs

[pubjames]

DoD officials say 'it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.'

It really costs that much? Seems a hell of a lot to me. How many gallons does an oil tanker hold? Let's me guess at 20,000. If so, then to drive an oil tanker from Kuwait to Badhdad is costing $800,000!!

I guess these must be the prices that Haliburton etc. are charging. The war in Iraq looks like a damn efficient means to move money from the American taxer into the hands of friends of those in power in the USA. Go Bush!

Re:Costs

[pubjames]

How much would you charge a to drive a tanker truck from Kuwait to Badhdad?!

If someone was going to pay me $800,000 each truck to get trucks from Kuwait to Bagdad, I'd jump at the chance.

I wouldn't do it myself. That would just be dumb. Locals would be a) much cheaper and b) a lot more likely to get through, because they understand the local conditions, can speak the language, know the roads, local tribes, risks etc. I would pay the driver half at the start of the journey and half on delivery, this would reduce losses should tankers not get through and would give the driver motivation to deliver.

I would also think about more creative ways of getting the oil delivered. At $40 a gallon it would probably be cheaper to fly it. Or setup a scheme whereby public passenger cars can opt to take one barrel each for payment on delivery. Hey, why bother at all, I'm sure if you let it be known on the streets of Bagdad that you'd pay an extra $40 a gallon, plenty of willing locals be keen to find a way to sell it to you.

Hydrogen isn't the answer

[corebreech]

Here's a tank truck that can carry 5000 gallons of gas. You can get one for less than $120,000.

The drive from Kuwait to Baghdad is approximately 400 miles. This means a truck can do at least one round trip between Kuwait and Baghdad per day.

That means that over the course of a year, this one truck with a driver that is paid, say, $50,000 a year, can haul 1,825,000 gallons of gas for a price of approximately $200,000 ($120,000 for the truck, $50,000 for the driver, and say $30,000 for incidentals... fuel, windshield wipers, those mud flap things with the pictures of naked woman on them... whatever.)

That works out to about $.10 per gallon.

The Pentagon is paying $40 per gallon.

Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer

[GangstaLean]

Don't forget the extra $50,000 you gotta pay the driver for hazard pay, and the 2 HumVees and 6 soldiers that have to accompany the tank truck to stop guerillas from rocket launching the truck into oblivion.

(ok, even then it doesn't add up to $40/gallon. How can I become a Pentagon supplier?)

Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer

[pubjames]

I pointed out that $40 a gallon sounded extrordinarily expensive in another posts, but it got modded down as flamebait.

If the truck carries 5000 gallons then the journey of 400 miles is costing 200,000 dollars, or about $500 a mile. And I believe that is a relatively small oil transporter, they come much bigger.

Of course, it's going to cost more in times of war, but what is reasonable? $40 a gallon sounds way off the scale to me.

Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer

[philbert26]

Don't forget the extra $50,000 you gotta pay the driver for hazard pay, and the 2 HumVees and 6 soldiers that have to accompany the tank truck to stop guerillas from rocket launching the truck into oblivion.

Plus the losses you incur when the guerillas succeed. I reckon a lot of the cost would be in air cover for the fuel convoys. Flying planes and helicopters not only costs large amounts of fuel, it also costs a lot in aircraft maintenance. That's before you consider the loss of any multi-million dollar aircraft.

I'm sure Haliburton (or whoever) is making money on this (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it). I don't know what the convoy protection cost is but I'd be careful about concluding that most of the $40 is going to their bank account.

Also, let's not forget that fewer trucks means fewer targets for the guerillas and therefore hopefully less casualties, so maybe this fuel cell idea isn't so bad.

Re:neat idea

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

remove the carbon from hydrocarbons - does the C in ordinary gasoline combustion contribute any energy or is it just a greenhouse gas pollutant? This way they can please the greens and Shell/Exxon/BP etc at the same time.

Hey, I have another NEATER idea : remove the C *and* the H from hydrocarbons, and you have vaccuum, so you can run a piston engine out of that vaccuum, and you keep your original hydrocarbon stuff at the same time, to start the process all over again.

FREE ENERGY!

Here's some more info

[swordboy]

Here's a company that has part of the contract on this. They are developing the solid (hydride) hydrogen storage system for these tanks. The hydride is like a hydrogen sponge that holds more hydrogen than high-pressure tanks. The biggest problem with hydrogen really is storing it since it is so low in density. Liquid hydrogen is actually lighter than air...

Re:neat idea

[Xolotl]

What releases energy in chemical combustion is making new chemical bonds which are lower energy (i.e. stronger) than the ones you have to break to start the reaction. In hydrocarbon burning you break the C-H bonds and form much stronger H-O and C=O bonds, releasing energy. So yes, the C does contribute energy, its just that the byproduct is CO2, a greenhouse gas.

Re:Dumb

[Stile 65]

To split any kind of water into H2 and O2 actually takes more energy than their recombination (burning H2 to produce H2O) provides. This is the principle of conservation of energy.

What this method has created is a cheap (energy-wise, and apparently, money-wise too) way of producing hydrogen, which can then combine with oxygen in the energy-producing burning reaction to produce water.

Re: Tanks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it seem kind of backwards to use an explosive gas to power vehicles that are designed to drive into a gunfight?

There's a reason tanks run on diesel and not gasoline...

Love them or hate them...

[billmaly]

Military research and spending is often times the catalyst that drives innovation. If it takes the DoD to FINALLY create a means of providing hydrogen power to vehicles, I see it as a good thing. New tech, if it works, ALWAYS trickles down to the civilian world.

Nuclear Alternative

[catherder_finleyd]

A good alternative to burning Oil for the Hydrogen would be to use Nuclear Energy to split Hydrogren from water.

I could see the Navy building Nuclear Powered "Hydrogen Tankers", ships that could both store and provide Hydrogen Fuel. These ships could be moved to an operational zone and parked to produce all the Hydrogen fuel needed for an expeditionary force.

Re:Nuclear Alternative

[WegianWarrior]

Off course, the other name for such a ship will be "target". Not only would an enemy dry up the fuelsupply for your landbased forces, but he would also be able to spread radiactive waste (if he gets a good hit) among your fleet.

Re:Nuclear Alternative

[catherder_finleyd]

No more than any other nuclear powered Naval ship. As it is now, a number of key naval combatants, such as Aircraft Carriers, Submarines, Cruisers are nowadays Nuclear-Powered. The same sort of measures now used by those ships to protect their nuclear reactors can be employed here. Unlike civilian tankers, these tankers will likely be fitted with Anti-Aircraft / Missile defenses. They will also enjoy the protection of the naval fleet and ground forces with which they will operate.

Re:Nuclear Alternative

[Short Circuit]

Big and slow? You'd be amazed at how fast their engines can push those things through water. My step dad (a fire controlman) was ordered to clear his radar screen when the group his ship was in spread out because of a MiG sighting. The XO didn't want anyone else in the room to realize what it meant when those little blips could move off the screen so quickly.

Re:Nuclear Alternative

[Ugmo]

I still like the idea.

You can use a Nuclear Submarine Blueprint. Replace the missle bays with hydrogen tanks. Use the electricity from the engines for splitting the hydrogen from seawater while out at sea somewhere hidden. Come in near the coast to offload.

In order to make it harder to guess where the sub is while offloading run multiple temp pipelines into the water. The sub docks with a random one of these out at sea and pumps in the hydrogen to a land based fuel station. When you are done, the sub goes out to deep water and hides and the pipelines get rolled up and put on a plane.

Re:Nuclear Alternative

[WegianWarrior]

Off course the 'Hydrogen Tanker' will be well protected, but I'm an airforce guy. We're more conserned with how to take targets out than how to defend them. One of my favorite stunt when a naval officers points out that his ship has the capability to engave X number of targets at once is to ask what will happen if someone attacks with X+1 missiles... it's called 'swamping the defence' and has been a good tactic since man first started doing war.

I'm not saying a 'Hydrogen Tanker' is a bad idea - it will allow an armed force dependant on hydrogen for fuel to make their own (provided their relatively close to water off course) and can also be employed to make drinkingwater. BUT it will be a _juicy_ target for an enemy to hit, so a determined attemt to take it out is bound to happen.

They figured out hydrogens in hydrocarbons??

[Viol8]

"Auburn University scientists 'realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel'"

Wow, theres no fooling with these guys. Those sharp megawatt intelligences are really on the ball, I mean its only been over a hundred years since
most chemists realised the very same thing and even put "hydro" in the name of hydrocarbon as clue.

Re:decent transitional solution

[aziraphale]

> the Bush fueled military

Ah, now there's a fuel solution they hadn't considered. Did you have some sort of hot-air solution in mind, or are we talking about extracting all of his hydrogen?

Hang on...

[RMH101]

...if we can power vehicles using hydrogen, then what would be the point of invading all those oil-rich countries, anyway?

Re:oil is the source?

[jgalun]

What an inane comment:

The Palestinians have nothing to do with fuel.

If invading Iraq were simply about attaining oil, we would have just dropped the sanctions. It would have been $200 billion cheaper and been faster to bring a lot more oil onto the world market (to lower oil prices). Which is not to say that Iraq isn't partially about protecting oil supplies, but it's not as direct as you seem to think.

Finally, it's not just "the Yanks" who have to deal with the problem that the world economy depends on fuel. If there were a major oil crisis - let's say the Saudi fuel depots get hit by a terrorist attacks, which makes oil prices rise by 80% (totally possible) - everyone is fucked. China is a major oil importer now whose economy becomes more dependent on oil every day. Japan is hugely dependent on foreign oil. Europe is dependent. America is dependent. You think the world economy will do well after America, Europe, China, and Japan (jointly responsible for, what, 80% of world GDP?) go into recession? You think you're still going to have a job after that?

Shit, maybe you should thank the Yanks for safeguarding the foundation of the world economy, rather than attacking it.

This is not news

[Maury Markowitz]

Devices like this, known generally as "reformers", have beeen in use for a decade at least. They universally share the problem of leaking contaminents into the hydrogen output, where these stray molecules stick to the catalyst inside the fuel cell and slowly degrade it.

If this team has invented a new type of reformer, great, but as it stands the article is a joke.

Re:This is not news

[uradu]

> Devices like this, known generally as "reformers", have beeen in use for a decade at least.

My thoughts exactly. What's news about this, other than that the military are all of a sudden interested in fuel economy? A clean and compact/cheap reformer has been the holy grail of fuel cells for quite a while, I don't see anything Auburn has done to change that. Perhaps they just had the brilliant insight that there's hydrogen in them thar fossil fuels?

Think long term

[voss]

This process can use ANY oil, not just the nice sweet crude from Saudi Arabia. What is the benefit of this

1) Oil from sources that are not usable now. There are many areas that have high sulfur oil that would pollute if burned but could converted into usable non-polluting hydrogen.

2) Once you have a workable fuel cell that runs on hydrogen (with some oil-to- Hydrogen converter) you can fairly easily just switch over to your nice politically correct solar created hydrogen which will by then be much more economically viable and not just green welfare.

3) Even if you never got beyond a gasoline powered fuel cell, the emissions would still be FAR less (90+% less) than an internal combustion engine.

The stupidity lies in the article, not Auburn U

[cagle_.25]

Don't rip on the Auburn University team; the article itself was badly written. For starters,

The process is chemical, and there is no combustion.

makes it sound like combustion is a non-chemical process. Combustion is, of course, a chemical process: reaction with oxygen. In the case of fuel cells, the hydrogen is allowed to react with atmospheric oxygen (or another oxidizer) in a controlled fashion. So combustion is a very apt description of a fuel cell reaction.

Also, the sentence

They took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.

seems to imply that hydrocarbons contain carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide within them. They don't, of course. The CO2 and CO are simply by-products of the hydrogen removal process: the carbon comes from the fuel, the oxygen from an outside source (most likely air, in which case combustion is directly involved again.)

The byproducts from this process are pretty much the same ones that come from an ordinary engine.

And then the quote you noticed,

But they realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel

completely ignores the fact that hydrocarbons are currently the primary source of hydrogen in fuel cells. It's just badly written.

Re:What do they do with the CO2????

[cagle_.25]

Unfortunately, into the atmosphere it goes. The point of this process is not to reduce greenhouse gases or improve overall fuel efficiency. The point is that since tanks have a limited fuel space, they need to be able to stuff as much power as possible into themselves before leaving for a mission. H2 (apparently) has a 3:1 advantage over hydrocarbons in that regard.

Re:Great explosive potential here

[ljavelin]

A hydrogen-powered military tank wouldn't make any more of a bang than a diesel powered tank. Heck, the Hindenberg, with an incredibly large volume of hydrogen held in an unsafe container, didn't even make a huge bang - it simply burned quickly, and there were may survivors. If you ever see the pictures, note that the metal tower next to the air ship wasn't even knocked down by the so-called "explosion".

Then again, hollywood often makes things "more exciting" than physical reality. I've seen lots of cars "blow up" in the movies. But for all the car fires I've seen, I've never seen a car explode. Or even heard of one exploding. Except in the movies and Grand Theft Auto.

Remember, most of Hollywood is based on entertainment, not science.

Cheap sulfur and carbon for all!

[Uninvited Guest]

Finally! A cheap, abundant source of sulfur and carbon as an industrial byproduct. Soon, I'll be able to take all that waste carbon and sulfur to make my... uh... (a little help here, please?)...

Re:forty bucks?

[agilen]

Well, think about it this way...its about 300 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad. M1 Abrams tanks get about 0.6 miles to the gallon. So, that means a single tank needed about 500 gallons of gas to get to Baghdad. Cost @ $40/gallon: $20,000. (Yes im not figuring in the fact that it is consuming gas, but the return trip should account for the difference) If a hydrogen tank got 3 times the gas mileage, the cost of getting it to Baghdad would be $6,667. A fine savings by my standards, but multiply that by the number of tanks going in there (say 500, im not sure the exact number), and $10 million in fuel costs drops to $3.3 million. Or maybe they could use 3 times the number of tanks. When it comes down to it, the more Dubya plays with his tanks, the more money could be saved by converting them to hydrogen.

Re: Tanks?

[Ralph Wiggam]

If a round penetrates the diesel fuel tank of a current vehicle, the crew is pretty screwed anyway. If they could make the hydrogen tank smaller than the diesel fuel tank, thus less likely to be hit, it would be an improvement.

-B

Re: Tanks?

[Catbeller]

Actually, yes it did. The flame burned upwards, rather than out and down, napalm-like, as gasoline does. The heat was flaring away from the passenger compartment. Most of the people died from jumping from the airship when it was still too high from the ground. Those who kept their heads waited for the ship to drift to the ground, then hopped off and ran. They survived for the most part.

And, oh yes, the bright searing flame you see in the picture? It's the paint. It was basically thermite. Powdered metal. The company wanted pretty silver shiny skin. One electrical arc, and WHOOMP - hydrogen gets the blame.

And fuel cells fueled by gasoline or diesel are in no way more dangerous than a straight IC design! As a matter of fact, since you get more MPG, you can have a smaller tank of what is essentially napalm.

Hydrogen is not "dangerous" in the sense that gasoline is. Gasoline is heavy, adhears to surfaces, ignites easily when vaporized, burns outward in a mushrooming effect, and also is every vehicle in America - and is dispensed from gas pumps like it is as safe as water!

Green tanks

[mark2003]

Fantastic - now we have tanks that don't harm the environment...

Re: Tanks?

[Anonymous Coward]

"company wanted pretty silver shiny skin"

Sorry, no. You need that shiny surface for thermal regulation, otherwise when the blimp gets warm, it goes wayyy up....

Re: Tanks?

[KDan]

Hydrogen is not any more explosive than diesel. It is combustive, so it will burn, but it doesn't explode in the sense that you seem to imply.

Daniel

Re:forty bucks?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

When it comes down to it, the more Dubya plays with his tanks, the more money could be saved by converting them to hydrogen.

Wow! If we just had a trillion tanks, we could save enough to pay off the national debt!

Re:Well this is great . . i guess?

[curmudgeous]

Once this bleeds over into civilian use it will make a great transitional step. Hydrogen is too difficult to transport in bulk, and we can't afford to just up and replace the existing fuel transport infrastructure. If the catalytic converter can be made small enough it can be installed at individual gas stations allowing the Hydrogen to be produced on demand or in small batches that are stored locally. Using a calytic conversion process also allows us to capture the carbon dioxide, sulfur and other by-products at a control point for further processing, rather than just dumping them into the atmosphere as we currently do.

Re:Costs of moving fuel over land w/shooting

[A55M0NKEY]

People always find ways of heaping the costs of tons of other things onto a cost they are calculating when trying to make a point. For instance, when a hacker does some damage to a company, like posting 100 stolen credit card numbers, they will come up with a damages number in the billions. They might, for instance, say that if it wasn't for hackers like him, they wouldn't need a IT Security department ( which in this case failed to prevent a breach ) Then you consider that every person in IT Security needs a network connection, so any part of the cost of the corporate network that would be essential to providing the IT Security department with internet access, even if those same routers etc also serve the rest of the company will be tacked onto the cost of IT Security's maintenance and so also tacked onto the damage figure for the breach. If another breach is made next week, the same expenses that were previously attributed to the damage done by the first breach will be attributed to the second breach
in their entirety a second time.

And the loss of customer trust caused by the breach will reverberate throughout the company. Loss of customer trust, caused by the breach and publicised in a small article on the 12th page of the newspaper will disrupt the entire marketing campaign for the conglomerate. The image the company has strived for including customer confidence in the security procedures of MegaCorp Inc, is now tarnished and so the entire mega-millions cost of all marketing for MegaCorp Inc's products for the last 5 years will have to be included in the damage estimate. This figure will be included again in estimates for any future breaches.

So when they calculate the cost of moving a gallon of oil into baghdad they are probably calculating the cost of the Tank Escort, and all the troops in the troop carrier in the same convoy, as well as the bradley fighting vehicles and air cover. All these vehicles would be going to baghdad anyway even if they required no fuel, and air cover would still be provided to the convoy regardless of there being a fuel truck. But the entire cost of all these vehicles will be tacked onto the cost for transproting the gas as if bringing gas to baghdad were the end goal for going there. The gas truck is, in reality just tagging along.

And we probably already had the gas truck.

If you calculate the cost of maintaining a piece of military equipment and personel between wars, and then use that number as the cost incurred by using that equipment and personel *in* a war, even though the cost would have been incurred with or without the war, then you can really jack up the numbers.

If the cost of war were calculated as the cost of consumables, plus increased pay & benefits ( since we have a military regardless of whether we are fighting a war ) then it might turn out that war is cheap in terms of money...

Re: Tanks?

[ID_Roamer]

A little known fact about the Hindenburg

The designers were well aware of the dangers of Hydrogen gas and designed the airship to use Helium.

At the time the only source of Helium in large volumes was the United States. Already the US Government wasn't thrilled with the Nazi Government and blocked the exportation of Helium to Germany for use in Airships. So the owners used the only lifting gas that they had readily available, Hydrogen. BTW it had the unfortunate side effect of allowing them to increase the number of passengers on that final flight over what was originally designed.

Re:Why not just use the Carriers?

[catherder_finleyd]

It could be, especially for the internal needs of the carriers. They use large amounts of fuel for their air wings. Using Hydrogen generated by their Nuclear Reactor can lessen / eliminate this requirement, lowering the need for extra fuel tankers.

Against it operational needs would come to play. The Navy tends to keep Carrier battle groups out to sea, in order to keep them away from close-in threats. A "Hydrogen Tanker" would need to be brought close-in and moored for the duration of operations.

No, H2 actually has three times LESS energy

[DaveWhite99]

Sure, H2 has three times more energy per mass, but it has three times less energy per volume, which is what really matters for transportation.

So, no, that tank won't go three times farther on H2 than on diesel. It will actually have only 1/3 the range.

As usual, distorted facts are reported on Slashdot as gospel.

Re: Tanks?

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Actualy test have shown that gaseous H2 is safer than liquid gasoline.

To adress your points;

should a rupture of the H2 tank occur the H2 would disapate upwards and be dispersed, lowering the danger of an explosion. In the same scenario with gasoline the fuel vapors would hug the ground and spread out till it was ignited, then the flame would travel back to the liquid and ignite that. What would you rather have if you where traped in a car? a single flame venting AWAY from the car, or a buring pool of gasoline and a fuel tank that would explode? An interesting point that was made about 9-11 is that if the planse had been using H2 instead of J4 fuel the WTC towers would not have colapsed, remember that the towers survived the impacts, it was the fire, the burning jet fuel, that caused the structure to melt and colapse.

As to your concern about "..a high-pressure flame-thrower.." yes there would be a flame jet, but thats all, one localized hot flame, not a spreading pool of burning liquid. Also, in a case where a vehicle powered by H2 where to catch fire the H2 tank would heat up till the relief valve triggered then the H2 would vent and dissapate, a gasoline tank would explode when the fuel hit flash point and then you would really have a mess.

Some years back (pre-net, no link sorry) I watched a safety demonstration of H2 tanks verses gasoline, H2 won hands down, here is why.

Puncture test, they fired bullet though a gasoline tank, BOOM!!!!, flaming gas in a 10 meter radius. Bullet through the H2 tank, small flame jet from the puncture till the tank was empty, no other damage.

Heat test, tank of sealed gasoline tank placed in a fire, result, BOOM!!!, flaming gas everywhere. H2 tank, release valve trips and the H2 vents (yes it ignited) away from tank.

fire supression, gasoline floats on water so you have to use CO2 or foam, plus it splaters when you hit it with a jet of water (think napalm), very bad. H2, a concentrated water mist can put out the flame in some cases and at minnimum it keeps the surounding matierial cool to prevent the fire from spreading.

Say what you want about H2 v. Gasoline, if my life was on the line I would want H2 fueling my vehicle. As soon as it becomes viable I'm getting my car converted.