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The Physics of the Hydrogen Economy
Spy der Mann writes "A Physics Today article entitled The Hydrogen Economy explores the possibility of using hydrogen as an energy source. The article explores the current methods, limitations, and the need for more research. For those wanting to point out the Hindenburg incident, the article doesn't talk about gaseous hydrogen only, but also about hydrogen fuel cells. My favorite quote: 'The natural world began forming its own hydrogen economy 3 billion years ago, when it developed photosynthesis to convert CO2, water, and sunlight into hydrogen and oxygen'. Interesting read for eco-fans."
This looks like something I read in January's Popular Science last week!
I have to post this as an AC to keep my identity secret. The government created hydrogen in 1897 and altered all history books to reflect otherwise.
Background: I work as a research scientist in a secret government lab deep under the Nevada desert. There are a few things the public needs to know about hydrogen.
FACT: Hydrogen was NOT discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1776 as the books say. Read on...
FACT: in 1892 the US government was experimenting with ways to weaponize a new substance that was discovered at an alien crash site in New Mexico. The military knew that this substance, used as fuel in the alien ship, could be weaponized which would allow the US to take over the world as part of its Pax Americana goal.
FACT: in late 1894 a spark in the secret lab caused the fuel to chain react. It destroyed several square miles of land and created a crater in Arizona. The history books were re-written to suggest that Barrington Crater in Arizona was in fact created by a meteor eons earlier. The fact is that Dr. Hymie Barrington was the person who sparked off the largest explosion until that time on the planet.
FACT: A byproduct of the fusion was a toxic product the government called "Hydrogen". So much of the hydrogen was released that it is now found virtually everywhere on Earth. Recent measurements show that common water is now 2 parts hydrogen to one part oxygen.
FACT: The US wanted to scare people into not using hydrogen. That is why they engineered the Hindengberg disaster in 1937. An oilman at the time, Wallace Bush (sound familiar?) knew that hydrogen could ruin his new buisiness of oil drilling. Bush, along with Herman Cheney (another oilman) rigged explosives in the Hindenberg back in Germany and ectivated them by remote control when all the cameras were rolling.
A friend and coworker was describing a scene he witnessed at a plant that liquifies gasses. You figure out which one.
One of his coworkers was pushing a metal cart loaded with a test rig down an aisle. About halfway down there was a huge *whump* that echoed down the hall and the entire front half of the cart was in flames. The man wasn't seriously injured, even being so close to a tremendous fire.
A H2 pipeline had ruptured (H2 embrittlement I think he said) and was spewing a steady stream of the material in a jet across the walkway. Somehow it had caught fire and, since H2 burns colorless no one saw it.
Had that cart not been there.... ouch.
'The natural world began forming its own hydrogen economy 3 billion years ago, when it developed photosynthesis to convert CO2, water, and sunlight into hydrogen and oxygen'.
Well, as the official sponsor of the Big Bang, I claim all copyright on that whole electrons and protons forming into a 1-1 molecule and will hereby sue the ass of any plant who dars to reverse engineer my process to produce Hydrogen
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The real problem with the Hindenburg wasn't the Hydrogen inside, it was the flammable skin-coating on the outer covering. The Hydrogen alone wouldn't have reacted so wildly.
Hydrogen is an integral component of dihydrogen monoxide
Hydrogen would be a great and presumably cheaper alternative to oil, but imagine what would happen to the middle east, situations would probably end up worse, and it would probably start to resemble its African neighbors. But who knows?
1- Re the Hindenburg incident: there is now fair evidence that the whole thing happened not because the hydrogen is flamable (it was in airtight balloons, and any hydrogen leaking out was highly vented), but because of the envelope fabric, that had cellulose acetate butyrate coating, which is highly flamable and prone to cause static electricity. If the blimp had been filled with helium, a ravaging fire would have engulfed its skin anyway, but with less violence. The hydrogen gas here was a facilitant more than a cause of the disaster.
2- Hydrogen is only a vector. It is not an energy source, it's only a way to carry energy created elsewhere. There is no "hydrogen economy", just the existing energy economy with an additional vector that can be compared to batteries.
Hydrogen can never occur naturally because it always binds to some oxydizer, so, in order to get the hydrogen out, you have to crack the compound you're getting it from.
This takes energy to do, at least as much energy as you get back by using the hydrogen.
So, in order to have a large-scale hydrogen "economy", you need an alternate power source to make all that hydrogen in the first place. Basically, even though hydrogen may be extra-clean, you're just moving the pollution ardound anyways.
Is it just me, or should there be a distinction between "energy source" and "fuel?" If you burn gasoline, hydrogen is still the component providing the energy. So talking about using pure hydrogen versus hydrogen bound up with carbon (and other atoms) is a difference in fuel makeup than the energy source.
Or so it seems to me...
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Hydrogen is energy storage and transfer medium, not a power source. At least not in what is generally called "hydrogen economy". It takes a lot of energy to make Hydrogen (H2) in large amounts, and only quita s small portion of that "original" power is regained when the Hydrogen is later used as fuel.
Of course fusion power would use Hydrogen as power source, but that's a totally different issue, and it happening is probably much farther in the future than "Hydrogen Economy"...
But I always thought the byproducts of photosynthesis were carbohydrates and oxygen, not oxygen and hydrogen as the article suggests? Hydrogen is used as a source in the photosynthesis process (usually taken from water), not produced as a result.
So hydrogen is a good energy source. How does collecting hydrogen compare to oil pumping in terms of energy return on energy investment? (I admit, I didn't read the article)
><////>
Yup.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
I think Hydrogen fuel is a great replacement if implemented correctly (for obvious safety reasons).
I just "refueling" would be rather expensive compared to gasoline. This will probably make the transition over really slow.
Hydrogen is like a magic genie..
Everyone can agree it is a good thing, but nobody knows how to get it.
Where do we get it? If we use solar panels to create hydrogen, it would be far more efficient to just use the electricity then to convert it to hydrogen. In reality most hydrogen we make comes from reformed gasoline, thermodynamics tells us that wed be better off just burning the gasoline in the first place.
The hydrogen economy is a bush sham.
Everyone in the DOE knows it
Everyone in the DOE who said it, is no longer with the DOE.
One prolem i think is that oil companies have been blocking the development because it would take away a huge market for them. They would lose tons of money if Hydrogen became a practical resource.
"We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose." "Perceptions rule the universe." --Bene Gesserit Sayings
I should know, I never could get work as a physicist:-( There are other analyses that say a hydrogen economy is a daydream. you still have to GET the energy from some where If that is to be done without further burning of fossil fuels, we have to commandeer a huge amount of land for solar and wind farms and those are political and financial undertakings that are NOT an easy sell. Especially when the biggest fossil burning country reneges on Kyoto accords and is run by former president and vice president of oil or oil services companies.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
diesel requires no new infrastructure, and we can gracefully move to biodiesel as the oil reserves are tapped out.
Why is this only obvious to me? Why can't I buy a honda civic with a diesel?
love is just extroverted narcissism
The article makes no mention of the potential environmental effects of large-scale hydrogen production. To make hydrogen, you could use a nuclear reactor as suggested but that produces nuclear waste. You could invent some kind of biochemical method but that will probably require living cells and large quantities of clean water - which is also needed by growing human populations. The solar method is clean when working but the photochemical cells would probably be quite toxic.
I do not think the "hydrogen economy" will provide limitless clean energy without any environmental costs or risks.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
If hydrogen takes off, you'll see the "oil companies" quickly become the "hydrogen companies". After all, they're the ones with fuel distribution expertise. Where are you going to fill up your hydrogen-powered car? At the gas station (and finally, Brits and Americans will agree on what their cars' fuel is called!)
Odd bit in TFA: "internal combustion engines can be rather easily modified to run on hydrogen instead of hydrocarbons." Is that so? I understand why jets can be converted easily, but my Honda can too?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
we have to commandeer a huge amount of land for solar and wind farms and those are political and financial undertakings that are NOT an easy sell
First, you're forgetting nuclear and second, what's your alternative? The hydrogen model is based on ever-decreasing supply of oil -- thus, ever-increasing prices. The political will will follow the high prices, and we can't respond to scarcity with continued consumption...so, hydrogen.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Hydrogen is a Boondoggle. The energy density is so low, that we might as well use batteries if we're going to power vehicles with it. (It may be good for stationary purposes.) If we really wanted to, we could convert all US vehicles to diesel, and run them all with Algae-Derived Biodiesel using sewage as a feedstock. Because of the greater efficiency of algae, supplying all of our vehicular needs is actually feasible.
This would alleviate both the global warming problem and our dependence on Middle-Eastern petroleum. The technology is available now, and because of the high energy density, no sacrifices on the part of automotive consumers are required in terms of range and performance. (We may need to invest in research into better catalytic converters and turbocharging technology.)
The article isn't about how wonderful the hydrogen economy will be etc. etc. Nor is it about the Hindenburg. It's about the immense basic science challenges that will likely prevent any commercial viability for decades...
Given that the article was directed at research physicists (readers of Physics Today), the intent was probably to motivate people to look into these challenges as basic science research areas for their labs.
The main reason they think there's any point at all is because of the energy conversion efficiency of fuel cells, and the natural link between fuel cell use and hydrogen. But as the original post implies, one of the best ways to store hydrogen is in the form of hydrocarbons:
Energy: time to change the picture.
Every technology has its unexpected negative consequences.
Though the article is cautiously optimistic, it did mention some serious problems. First is that fuel cells currently cost about 100 times than a gasoline engine for the sme power. Second, the storage energy density of gasoline is 4-10 times better than hydrogen.
Biodiesel in Vancouver and
the Biodiesel Project.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Microorganisms have little use for molecular hydrogen; what are they going to do with their hard-earned energy, vent it as gas? Fixing carbon for energy and structure is their goal, and fats and carbohydrates are nearly perfect for those needs. (Fatty acids and hydrocarbons are very similar chemically.)
Using molecular hydrogen for e.g. vehicular power is problematic; we could learn something from plants if we used carbon as a carrier for hydrogen instead, and just recycled (rather than dumping) the carbon.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I'll stick with my Mr. Fusion, thank you very much...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
I just submitted the following letter using Physics Today's form for Letters to the Editor. I urge you to write and submit your own letters if you feel the same way. Or please tell me what is wrong with my thinking. I just don't understand how three established scientists can publish something containing such blatant contradictions.
Could it be because of the negative connotations of carbon-based fuels ? (I did Physics and Chemistry at university; those atmospheric CO2 and ocean heat conveyor graphs sure get me worried).
In which case, how about making (much) better use of the existing hydrocarbon fuels ?
I hear that the dreaded SUVs are getting on for half as efficient as standard saloon cars, even US saloons !
Most of the rest of the economy (outsourcing, downsizing ...) seems to be hell-bent on greater "efficiency" - how come the motor industry has the attitude "we don't like the sound of this, we'll bury our heads in the sand and believe it's nothing to do with us".
Or maybe it's the customers who buy these things that need educating in global citizenship ... that we live in a finite set of interdependent systems, you can't just "go west" if you run out.
Doesn't win any votes though ...
PS Why doesn't Slashdot support <sub> tags ?
1. Huge vast amounts of Free Energy, courtesy of plate tectonics.
2. They are completely surrounded by all the water they could ever want.
All you have to do is drill down to the heat, use it to boil water to spin turbines, which then make electricity to crack the water to make the hydrogen. Done.
You heard it hear first. The amount of energy under Iceland and the Big Island is *insane*. Another good place to drill for heat would be the supervolcano at Yellowstone. Use the electricity generated there and you can pump in the water from most anywhere and crack it into H2. Also: by draining off some of the heat from the supervolcano, we might be able to prevent (or slow) the eventual eruption of that sucker.
Problem solved. Next?
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is one of the few things I remember from chemistry.. we watched a video where they had various tanks of gases, they put them in a field and shot that them, then tried the same experiment but with a spark generator near-by. Can't remember the exact results except the conclusion that Hydrogen was pretty safe. The Hindenberg was something to do with the skin of the airship.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
hydrogen is a net energy loser. It takes more energy to create hydrogen than it creates from burning it.
a ge=1/
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99463&p
quote --
And where does that energy normally come from? It is produced by burning fossil fuels -- the stuff we're trying to get away from -- in processes that use more energy than the extracted hydrogen is likely to produce. That's called a net energy loser, and until someone solves that problem hydrogen power isn't going to go anywhere.
quote -- The bottom line is that - if we create hydrogen from burning fossil fuels, then we actually burn more energy latent in those fossil fuels than we gain from the hydrogen end product. If we create the hydrogen from renewable sources such as wind and solar then hydrogen is no longer viable because of the enormous amount of power generating devices (wind turbines, solar panels etc) required.
When you burn gasoline in a power plant, you run at one speed, the most efficient one. This means that a gallon of gas burned in a power plant will generally speaking cause less pollution than a gallon of gas burned in an automobile.
The upshot of this is that even if all of the hydrogen used in automobiles were created in power plants fueled with gasoline, there'd still be a huge reduction in the amount of pollution emitted.
This is not even getting into the fact that it is easier to create technologies to trap polluting emissions in a few power plants than a million cars.
As a thought experiment, imagine if instead of having coal fire plants generate electricity, we just put coal-based generators in everyone's house. Do you think the amount of overall pollution would be the same? After all, the electricity is just "moving around" where the coal is burned.
The final reason that this is important is that it is much easier to add new alternative fuel power plant online than it is to create an alternative fuel car. Right now, there is absolutely no way to make a car run on solar power, period. If, however, there were large numbers of hydrogen powered cars around on the road today, you could move toward non-polluting sources simply by putting a solar power plant on the grid.
So no, a hydrogen economy is not perfect. However, it is better than what we've got. It's also a first step towards an economy that doesn't use fossil fuels.
The cake is a pie
Yep, that is the way to go. The problem was that the oil industry demonized nuke power back in the 70s. What we need is pro-nuke counter-propaganda.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Hydrogen is a fuel, not a source of energy. All we can really hope to use it for is as a clean and efficient way to transfer energy from other sources such as solar and wind. The real fact of the matter is that we can use hydrogen today. It would require a world war 2 sensibility to make the switch however. We could use solar, hydro, wind, and coal to provide the energy to derive hydrogen from water. At the same time, while we are building the distribution infrastructre we need to be retrofitting our vehicles for hydrogen. The benefits, aside from the ecological, are strategic. The nature of this public works program would solve the United States' employment problems. It would reduce the price of oil on the world stage, which would free up value worlwide. That would result in new investment and new industries. We would release ourselves from the heroin that is middle east oil and stop sending money to that region, where a percentage of it is used to fund atacks on the US. So to sum up, hydrogen is not and energy source, it is a fuel. It happens to be very clean and enables a clean electric society. It allows us to disengage from immoral and dagerous dealings in the Middle East, it allows us to become self sufficient. The switch will free up trillions in cash and help with unemployment. We can even sell the rest of the world on it first. So, whats the problem? The cost of this program might be high, possibly rivalling the cost of the Iraq war. We deal with our enemies euther way. Which method would you rather use?
got too hot [and] exploded it would be worse.....
Well yes, but only because the exploding metal tank was hot enough to melt... hot hydrogen cannot explode, it requires oxygen to burn. No oxygen in tank, no explosion.
Once the tank is "near" its melting point it will weaken though, and could rupture. The tank would probably be empty first though, because of hydrogen's low mass (and therefore high exit velocity).
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
All of these discussions on novel means of energy production are well and good -- hydrogen, wind, solar, and several other approaches are quite promising. What seems invariably to be forgotten is that entropy, chiefly in the form of waste heat, is a limiting factor.
The executive summary version of this fact is that if the entire population of the earth were consuming energy at the same rate as Americans, the atmosphere would be incandescent with waste heat.
The obvious consequence of this -- and something which rarely receives any exposure on Slashdot unless it involves white LEDs -- is that producing more energy is not a viable long term goal; only conserving energy is. Even were this not the case, the current growth rates for energy consumption would lead to the exhaustion of even uranium for fission in a relatively small number of generations.
Arguably, the worst thing that could happent to the human race would be the practical availability of an effectively unlimited source of power like fusion. If fusion power proved to be anywhere near as cheap as its proponents claim it would be, all economic incentive to reduce consumption (and therefore waste heat production) would be eliminated. While it would be theoretically possible to offset some of this by moving production offplanet, the economic barriers would be steep. Considering the reluctance of our species to deal with the current manmade environmental effects of industry, there is little reason to be optimistic.
Alternative energy proponents all too often sound as if they were discussing perpetual motion machines. It is not possible to escape the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Some machines are more efficient than others, to be sure, but there is a theoretical limit and it is not a generous one. Beyond that limit, which is seldom even approached, all you can do is shuffle the wastage around; you cannot eliminate it.
This is not something anyone likes to hear, and I suspect that is why it is so universally overlooked. There is a utopian vision shared by technologists and science fiction devotees (and I count myself in both camps) in which technology will someday give us everything we want. Unfortunately, "everything we want" violates the laws of thermodynamics, and those laws appear unlikely to be repealed.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Or failing that, one which burned the resulting compound to provide motive power, in a carbon-neutral reaction.
Or, I suppose, a more efficient photovoltaic cell - since, all we're wanting to do here is convert sunlight to energy, like those bugs and plants did when the fossil fuels were being formed many millions of years ago.
How does this alleviate global warming? Does biodiesel not release carbon dioxide when it burns?
Hell, did you hear about contaminated with diseases or poisoned water? It's not contaminated or poisoned, it's the water itself, because of those nasty Hydrogen-Atoms! Drinkink water in order to keep humans, animals and plants alive is the biggest conspiracy of all times! So Remember: DO NOT DRINK ANY WATER!! Drinking water will only shorten your life, and cause many diseases! If you feel thirsty, take some drugs like Cocain to decompulse the need for Water! Trust me, i live in that Black Monolith orbiting our planet, i can tell!
EOF
Hydrogen Economy = money is directly related to hydrogen...
10 years from now, at local Bank of America Branch:
"Lets see...thats 23,243,436 cubic meters of hydrogen, here is your $1.50. Have a nice day!"
Wouldn't this open up the field for fake government hydrogen?
Step 1: Get water and a car battery Step 2: Electrolysis Step 3: ??? Step 4: Reap the benifits
I for one welcome our uni-proton masters!
"Please also note that there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen."
Isn't Psuedoscience Fun? Don Lancaster is the master debunker. More energy stuff here.
Don was one of the techs who brought computers to the masses back in the 1970's. Check out his web site. http://www.tinaja.com/
100 miles x 100 miles of Nevada desert would power the entire nation with photovoltaics, but the thing is...
PV goes on roofs. Oil wells do not. Look out the window next time you fly into LAX or Dallas...we do need a lot of land for solar. It's just that we've already built stuff on most of it.
Ah, but you can use fossil fuels much more efficiently if they are ultimately used to product hydrogen. Because, you can switch between different sources of fuel easily; in other words, oil producers will have to compete with other sources of energy. Currently oil has a monopoly on that which depends on internal combustion engines, and if oil producers crank up the price a few notches we can't all go, "Oh, I'll just use 26% less oil for energy for my car this week" you'll still have to use 100% like you do every week. With hydrogen engines that is not the case.
This may be somewhat off topic but may be relevant.
5 14029,00.html and the web site for the invention is at http://www.mcmastermotor.com/engine.htm. The web site has not been updated since 2001, though.
There was a reference to an article here a long time ago about a guy who was building a rotary engine which used hydrogen and oxygen as fuel and exhausted water. When you park your car, it plugs into solar panels which 'recharge' the water back into oxygen and hydrogen.
The article is still at http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,
The Hindenburg didn't go up in flames because of the hydrogen gas inside, it was due to the outer skin which was made from a rocket fuel like substance.
Bain is wrong. The covering was not anything like rocket fuel because the powdered aluminum and powdered iron were not mixed together; they were applied in separate layers. When ignited, both authentic samples of the treated covering, and replicated material, burn quite slowly and not spectacularly at all.
Hydrogen burns without much of a visible flame, but witnesses described the fire as extremely colorful.
Bain is not thinking very deeply, or is pretending not to. Yes, hydrogen burning alone is pale blue, and not bright at all. But if you stick a broom in the pale jet, it will flare brightly. That is one way that is used to find hydrogen leaks that have ignited. The Hindenburg contained some 15 tons of fabric plus other assorted flammable materials. That is a 15 ton broom in a seven million cubic foot hydrogen flame. Yeah, that is going to make one Hell of a bright flare.
Hydrogen tanks are currently (by law) made out of carbon-fiber, very durable and tough. I'm not saying they're perfect, but they are better than metal tanks IMHO.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Let's get one of the big fuel/oil companies to look past it's nose far enough to see that whatever the future may hold, petrochemicals will NOT last forever, and ask them to sponsor a multi-million dollar prize for the best alternative ("best" as provable via ease of mass-production and support, with public appeal and ease of transition also considered as factors). Other potential sponsors could include vehicle manufacturers...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Hydrogen is energy storage and transfer medium, not a power source.
The same thing can be said about fossil fuels - or do you believe that the fossils create the energy themselves?
It takes a lot of energy to make Hydrogen (H2) in large amounts
And it takes just as much (possibly even more) energy to *make* oil. (Make as in create, not refine.)
The only difference between oil and hydrogen is that oil has had a few billion years head-start.
How would you fake hydrogen?
Hopefully then the SUV will be a thing of the past, and cars will get smaller instead of bigger. Perhaps machinery and large trucks that need it could go hybrid at least, cutting emissions in half.
The efficiency improvements offset some of the storage problems. If you can use 1/2 of the stored energy instead of 1/4 for gasoline, it's no longer quite as important that gas has about four times the energy density. You might have to make your gas tank twice as big for the same range, but at least you don't have to make it four times as big.
Does anyone have any remarks about metallic hydrogen? It has higher energy density, but is very difficult to make and its properties aren't well understood. According to the wikipedia article, some people think it might be possible to turn hydrogen into a solid that doesn't revert back to a gas when pressure is removed.
Random trivia of the day: the core of Jupiter is thought to be made of metallic hydrogen.
OK Since I'm the one who submitted the article, please allow me to clarify some logical errors in your statements.
,insert the electrodes, add some acid as catalyst, and plug the wires into a battery. Voila! Oxygen in one, hydrogen in the other. Now Try making oil from wood with your chemistry kit.
So, in order to have a large-scale hydrogen "economy", you need an alternate power source to make all that hydrogen in the first place.
News for you. Hydrogen is not "made". It's extracted. OK, putting the word jokes aside, I understand that what you mean is that *PURE* hydrogen is not found *NATURALLY* on Earth.
So we need an ALTERNATIVE power source to obtain it. So what? Electricity is not energy either! It's a bunch of electrons and possitive ions waiting for us to mix them together. We use turbines in dams to produce it. (kynetic energy -> electrical energy). We need engines (kynetic->chemical) to take out the oil from the deposits below Earth.
Didn't you study physics in high school? Just climbing some stairs transforms the kinetic energy you use to move, into "potential energy". And by falling you turn it into kinetic energy, too. And guess what, we're made of protons,electrons and neutrons, and all of these are made of quantums, which are discrete packets of *energy*.
EVERYTHING's energy, dude! So what's the mystery if hydrogen needs some alternate energy to be extracted from water or other compounds? Don't forget your thermodynamics lessons from college. All engines do is transforming one form of energy into another. And since no engine is 100% efficient, then we have what is known as "entropy", which constantly is increased across the universe.
So, what power source can we have to extract pure H2 from other materials? Well, we can have, for example, solar power.
Hydrogen can be built *instantly* with some electrolysis (either chemically or solar powered). I did it myself at home when i was a kid. You put these water-filled tubes in a bucket (upside down)
The H2-generating process is sub-optimal right now (as was the vacuum tube in the 70's to act as a current switch), but technology always improves with time. And don't forget that big companies like Shell are investing millions of dollars into research.
The point with using hydrogen, is that:
a) It's combustible and can produce energy when reacting chemically with other elements/compounds.
b) Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn't require millions of years to be produced/extracted/whatever.
c) It's clean, it doesn't produce CO2 when burned.
Did you RTFA by the way? How do you think fossil fuels are made? Plants transformed H2O + CO2 + SOLAR POWER + nutrients into wood (and O2 as a byproduct). And these with time were transformed into hydrocarbons. Which consist of long hydrogen and carbon chains (not to be confused with carbohydrates - sugars -, which have oxygen in them).
The real energy in hydrocarbons is stored in the chemical bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms. By burning them, the combustion process releases these bonds. O2 + (long chains of C + H) ---> H2O + CO2. See? There's the hydrogen, and the C. What we're wanting to do, is get the carbon out of the equation. O2 + 2H2 ---> 2 H2O.
So, is hydrogen economy all that far-fetched? No, it isn't! We've been using hydrogen in our cars for a lot of time. The problem is that we're also using carbon.
Frankly, I'm amazed why your post was moderated as "insightful" (someone MOD it as overrated, please!). More mysterious than the universe is the human ignorance.
P.S. If this post is modded up, please do so as "informative".
Look, the efficiency numbers for hydrogen just do not add up.
While hydrogen has decent potential as an energy storage medium, it will never be an acceptable replacement for liquid petroleum fuels. The chatter about the hydrogen economy is based on wishful thinking and deliberate refusal to honestly consider the math.
There is an oil crisis and an energy crisis coming soon. The Hydrogen energy cycle is very inefficient. Just when we are desperately short of energy will NOT be an acceptable time to switch to a LESS EFFICIENT energy infrastructure. Given how quickly the fossil fuels are failing us, we are unlikely to have the additional energy resources to transform to the 'hydrogen economy'. Most hydrogen-economy proponents in North America suggest natural gas as the transition feedstock to make hydrogen, but North America has just run off the natural gas production cliff and faces immiment shortages of natural gas.
As a physicist and technogeek I'd love to see something similar to a 'hydrogen economy' work. Unfortunately, once one digs deeply into energy resources and the proposed 'hydrogen economy' one discovers that such a technofix is just bluster that will not work. I wish it was not so.
My dad worked in two nuclear power plants and on several naval vessels (some nuclear) as a welder. He says the same thing about looking for steam leaks (with a broomhandle instead of a 2x4), but it's not because the steam will ignite the wood -- it's because those leaks may be thousands of PSI. What you're looking for, is for the end of the broom to suddenly fall off as the steam pressure carves it right in two.
-- Old Man Kensey
... what's your alternative...
Use less energy, much less. I bike to work. I heat with passive solar and burn a little wood for back up...and I live in the Boston area so my heat load is a non-trivial 6000 degree-days...I designed my own super insulated house instead of taking some half-insulated spec-built shitbox....if you don't lose energy, you don't have to scrape the planet clean looking for it in the first place.
I also live on a sustainable plot...I can start growing my own food when diesel gets too scarce/expensive to truck food in from out of state or out of country. I'm banking compost against the day when I just don't feel like spending money for $10 carrots.
you can use a lot less energy and still live pretty well. What's your alternative? I mean what are YOU going to do, not what are you going to tell me "we" or our government ought to do [because I don't think "we" are ever going to get off our asses until its way too late].
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
the skin was tested to be more flammable than another design that was adopted for the rest of the fleet.
References on this point are not decisive. What is decisive is when you ignite a sample and see how slowly it burns.
Some dozens of other hydrogen filled airships burned catastrophically without benefit of this supposed legendary unique covering material. Even discounting those due to military action, a large proportion of all hydrogen filled airships burned catastrophically, while no helium filled airship ever burned catastrophically.
It is a storage medium. And it is not perfectly efficient. Ergo, when the article says "It takes energy to split the water molecule and release hydrogen, but that energy is later recovered during oxidation to produce water." what it means ks that "later some of that energy is later recovered.
Hydrogen must take more energy to produce than you can recover from it. So our hydrogen economy is not a hydrogen economy at all. It is an economy based on some other energy source, with an exchange rate, like currency, where you lose a little to the money changer in every transaction.
So where do they imagine that energy will come from? Solar? Unlikely. Hydro? Simply not enough to supply the world's needs. Geothermal? Also not enough. All of it combined isn't enough.
And if it is enough, why waste some of it converting it to hydrogen, then back to electricity? Why not just use it directly?
The whole concept of a "hydrogen economy" is a sham. Or a scam. Somebody's making a lot of money on all that research.
But no matter how much research you do, you cannot turn hydrogen in to an energy source. It does not occur in nature in a usable form.
Economic considerations are far more important. Any idea what replacing the US oil distribution infrastructure with a hydrogen distribution infrastructure would cost? The researchers obviously don't.
My WAG would be hundreds of billions of dollars, with luck. Putting giant hydrogen tanks at every gas station? New hydrogen pump islands well away from current gas/oil pumps? Training personnel? How about replacing every single plane, bus, auto, truck, locomotive, and generator on the face of the earth? Just what are we buying with it that we can't get cheaper with biodiesel? (estimate for building energy farms big enough to grow enough biodiesel for the US - $169 billion)
Meeting the volume restrictions in cars or trucks, for instance, requires using hydrogen stored at densities higher than its liquid density
Just what kind of superpressure vessels or exotic chemistries or other technologies are going to be required to fix this problem? Will vehicles based on this cost as little as twice what current vehicles do in volume production?
Solving the problem (cheap space transportation) that is required to make space power satellites cost-effective is comparatively trivial compared to the problem of building hydrogen storage for vehicles comparable in performance to current diesel products.
Frankly, I doubt that "the hydrogen economy" would be cost-effective even at a zero-cost/Kwh and IMHO, it's not worth wasting resources we're going to need to replace fossil fuel in trying.
It's time to say clearly and publically that the "hydrogen economy" is driven by hype and is nothing more or less than a technonerd wankfest, not a viable replacement for fossil fuel.
Not to say that the research should be stopped, we might learn some useful things from it, like how to build safe superpressure vessels for flammable gases.
But no responsible scientist or environmentalist should be discussing replacing fossil fuel or stopping global warning with "THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY!!!". Such talk at best, serves us to distract us from more viable energy alternatives. Anyone who discusses hydrogen energy as a fossil fuel replacement or as a global warning solution is talking through his asshole, whether he knows it or not, you can dismiss him as clueless at best.
Examples:
We've been researching alternative energy for generations, we need to bring the most promising technologies up to the pilot plant level NOW, pick winners, and GO while we still have a more-or-less viable planet to work from.
Check the link in my sig for more discussion and links to the source info I'm using to support the above.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Once the outer covering spread the flames, the video from the Hindenberg disaster showed a hydrogen fire where the surface burned at the hydrogen / air interface. The hydrogen inside had no oxygen and couldn't burn.
But even with a fireproof and antistatic covering, I don't think hydrogen zeppelins are safe. Hydrogen is too flammable and a leak in a huge airship seems inevitable. Once a hydrogen fire starts, it'd be difficult to extinguish.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
I'm afraid I've lost a lot of respect for RMI over the past five years. They know the truth about the energy resources situation, but their publications promote soothing, pernicious lies. Organizations that say "We have an energy crisis coming, and the only solution is radical efficiency combined with lifestyle change combined with shrinking the global economy to achieve a gradual Powerdown" get neither grant money nor political support. Organizations that say "We have an energy crisis coming, but our technical fixes will allow the status quo to continue" get both grants and political support. RMI has chosen to say the latter, even though they ought to know better. By promoting a 'technofix' approach and claiming it can solve the impending energy crisis (it can not), they do us all a grave dis-service. If one carefully examines the numbers regarding viable future energy use, the realworld choices become quite clear. The single biggest step our species MUST take, that hardly anyone is even willing to discuss, is removing cars from cities. I personally believe that any city which has not converted to a mostly carfree model by about 2020 will cease to function as a city. About 30% of the global energy budget is spent on moving big chunks of steel and small people around our cities. See http://www.carfree.com for a detailed and attractive explanation of why carfree cities would inprove urban quality of life while using drastically less energy. I hope we eventually all realize that it's how we should have done things in the first place.
...but what I want to know (maybe some knowledgeable person can answer) is whether it's possible to directly manufacture hydrocarbons with some kind of reaction as follows: sunlight/electricity + water + CO2 = CxHx This is basically a photosynthetic reaction: is there any reason why we can't do this with some kind of biological organism? I've read about biodiesel, but the problem it appears to be is that you still need a feedstock like vegetable oil or something. That's a problem, because most of our vegetables are grown in fields fertilized by... (take a guess here...) fossil fuel derived fertilizers. But if you could directly photosynthetically produce large hydrocarbon chains, you wouldn't have the same energy-balance problem.
Nuclear is NOT an alternative energy source. It is a very dirty and dangerous power source. Anyone that believes that nuclear power is clean, cheap and safe has been brainwashed by the well-funded nuclear industry's public relations arm.
Radiation is a carcinogen -- it causes mutations to your DNA and the vast majority of genetic mutations are harmful. Radiation causes cancer, it causes birth defects, miscarriages and many other biological problems. Genetic damage lasts forever, because it is passed on from one generation to another. We're killing our kids with nuclear power.
There is no good solution to the problem of nuclear waste. The nuclear industry and government have promised solutions to the problem since the very beginning of the nuclear power industry. Spent fuel rods are extremely dangerous (a few minutes of unshielded exposure would mean an almost certain death) and have to be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years.
The best solution that they've come up with is tunneling into Yucca Mountain and dumping it there, despite the fact that the site does not meet the original geological requirements for safe radioactive waste disposal. Despite the fact that the site is riddled with earthquake faults and has 2 inactive volcanos within 10 miles of Yucca Mountain. I don't know about you, but I sure don't like the idea of dumping 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in an unstable geological area. Instead of searching for better solutions industry has bribed and strong-armed congress into just weakening their requirements for nuclear waste disposal.
They want to dump it at Yucca Mountain, because obviously no one wants it in their backyard and they know that the State of Nevada isn't strong enough to fight it off. Even worse yet they want to dump the nuclear waste on Western Shoshone Territory, which makes it a blatant case of environmental racism.
It's very backwards in thinking to talk about building new nuclear reactors, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission isn't even doing a good enough job of regulating nuclear plant security with the existing line of nuclear reactors. Wackenhut Corp should not be testing it's own security forces. Plant security should be tested by an independent 3rd party. There is nothing in place to protect nuclear reactors from an aircraft or marine attack. After the tragic 9/11 attacks, it was revealed by the mainstream media that Al-Qaeda had considered striking nuclear targets. What part of that doesn't the Bush Administration understand? At a time when we are all very concerned about our national security, proposing to build new nuclear reactors goes against the concept of homeland security.
Im sure your quite the intellectual.
It is a transfer medium for energy, like electricity. You still have to produce the energy, using gas, oil, coal, uranium, wind, sunlight, wood, water, or garbage.
So, even if your car uses hydrogen, you still may be financing the emission of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.
First, I hate that the article contains the submitter's favourite: 'The natural world began forming its own hydrogen economy 3 billion years ago, when it developed photosynthesis to convert CO2, water, and sunlight into hydrogen and oxygen'. What crap. Photosynthesis generates saccharides - chains of sugars, which are used by plants in to generate energy from respiration, just as animals do. There may be a brief moment where water molecules are split into H. and OH. radicals, but no hydrogen gas is produced or used as an energy store. Bury the plants deep undergound for a few million years and you have fossil fuels, not hydrogen gas pockets.
Now, for those of you pointing out how crap hydrogen's energy density is - you're right! It sucks. It's so hard to deal with the stuff. I mean, the only way they make it work for the Space Shuttle is to deep freeze it so that it liquifies, and it takes yet more energy to cool it down which makes it suck more...
If you read the article, it admits that using hydrogen in vehicles is very challenging. A tank full of H2 is unlikely to ever happen on this planet. Instead, the suggested vehicle storage solutions include nanostructure materials, surface absorbption/adsorption, or ionic compounds. However, cars and planes are not everything in the world. H2 gas could be used in homes and businesses instead of natural gas. Various methods of generating H2 gas from a much denser hydrogen store - such as water - are suggested: heating it up to 3000C (~5400F) using solar collectors or nuclear power, bacterial processes, and catalysts (see figure 2 in the article - looks fancy doesn't it?).
So, OK, some of the style of the article feels bad to me, but there is some useful physics in there.
This is not a sig
That's a definite maybe.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
The point is, where are you going to get the energy to crack the water? That's the rub. The only way to do that efficiently now is in larger scale operations, and that's what the research is focusing on.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The submitter of this story seems to think that hydrogen is an energy source. It is not. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. You need energy to generate hydrogen which can then be used to store, transport and ultimately use this energy via fuel cell or combustion.
It is not an energy source until we find large, usable stores of it.
More
Not trying to start a flame war with you, but can you back this urban legend thing up with some links? It is rare the PBS and the History chanel really bone things this badly (except when they have David Blaine specials on!)
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Could it be that they simply do not deserve it?
If we follow the path they recommend, what we will wind up with is a bunch of cities that are just what the environmental lifestyle people want us to live in. Will they survive the conseqences of the global climate change into which the resources which properly applied, might have solved the problem will have been wasted? Will the people in them? I think these people are either innumerate or don't understand the real magnitude of the problem.
The idea that "technology can't solve the problem" is a statement of religious faith that doesn't match the available facts, just as "global warming is junk science" is a statement of religious faith that doesn't match the available facts. For that matter, so is the idea that "hydrogen economy will save us from global warming."
We don't need lifestyle solutions that'll take generations to have an effect, we need replacements for fossil fuel which we can make substantial progress towards implementing in production over the next decade and complete over the next generation.
Such solutions exist and may be cheaper than what we are currently doing.
Did you really believe that people have been working on the alternative energy problem for generations and haven't come up with anything?
We are on the cheap transportation to space over a decade before the Space Elevator will be remotely close to possibl. Solar cell arrays in space are old technology. We know how to transport power via microwave. It's a cheap, clean power source. In this case, anything that costs less than the $16,000,000,000 that the International Energy Agency says is nneded to keep burning fossil fuel is cheap.
Biodiesel is already being sold at the gas pump, and it's carbon-neutral. There are ways to make it cheaper and there are people working on the solutions. (Provisional Patent App in progress) It can be processed and distributed using our existing infrastructure, and changing vehicle assembly lines to make diesels instead of gasoline engine cars is fairly trivial.
Personally, I'd rather buy cheap light bulbs and put the money I save into higher taxes for government programs intended to turn viable lab-scale solutions into production solutions.
If you think we can wait generations for a soltion, go Google on "clathrate gun". Enjoy... if what's discussed is correct, the Pentagon hypothetical global warming worst-case scenario may be optimistic.
Go to the link in my sig for further discussion and links to more info.
Tech Public Policy stuff
That is in part why I treat the energy crisis / peak oil / global warming as solvable problems. Check my sig below for a page with links to the research and what I think should be done about it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
In another form. Hydrogen doesn't just occur naturally, it bonds with other atoms to make things like water and methane, two sources commonly used in the production of pure hydrogen. ;)
:)
Extraction of hydrogen either way requires energy, so electricity. Oil provides a huge margin of energy output for the cost of harvesting it. Hydrogen production is going to have a hard time not actually in net total using more energy than it produces, which is bad news in a society/economy that always wants more energy.
If you believe some energy think tanks we are at or near the peak production of oil and natural gas the planet can sustain, so in the not too distant future we are going to have a continuing decline of energy availablity and we may not be able to produce enough hydrogen to sustain anything like the demand there would be to maintain our current way of life.
Nuclear is the only choice long-term at the moment because the energy output is way higher than the input. If nothing else, waste that decays naturally (albeit slowly and hazardously, but in pretty low volumes) from a reactor in a big concrete bunker makes me feel safer than pouring the remaining trillions of tons of carbon in the oil reserves into the atmosphere, because if you believe some climatologists we aren't a huge number of decades from pushing the atmosphere into a very different state, or that it's not our fault, but is going to happen anyway
So generally we are screwed and need to build lots of reactors so we can at least scoot around our rural village economies on a leccy scooter
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Carbon fires are 'dirty' and thus feel 'hot'. A candle flame will feel warmer to your finger 2" from it (off the side) than an alcohol lamp- and thats all because of the amount of 'dirty carbon' in the flame.
And I never met the guy in person so I couldn't ask him, but my guess is it was a hot plant anyway (all the ones I worked in were uncomfortable save for the middle of the winter) and when you've got 2 layers of clothing on + clean suit (keep you clean)... ya might just not notice it.
I do not mean by this message to imply that we cannot move to an economy that oxidizes hydrogen as a primary resource. I *am* intending by this message to point out the amount of hand waving that is going on both within government circles, the Department of Energy, the news media, etc. about the "famed" hydrogen economy. It is a much more difficult problem than the people waving their hands would like us to believe.
In contrast an energy solution built upon methane (natural gas) which is manufactured from carbon which is in the atmosphere (rather than in the ground) is a viable sustainable solution give technologies and infrastructure we already have.
We just have to be intelligent enough to (a) develop the organisms to produce the methane; and (b) channel said methane into the existiing natural gas pipeline system; and (c) perhaps develop some incentives that would bias farmers to produce solar ponds that produce methane instead of cows that produce methane. (Think about this for a second -- sunlight provides energy. Photosynthesis grows grass. Cows eat grass. Cows produce methane. Humans consume methane (but it is mostly methane we haul out of the ground that was manufactured thousands of years ago.)
Are we not clever enough to produce our own methane from atmospheric carbon dioxide in a way that creates a completely sustainable energy system?
This I ask you...
And by the way the complete genomes for bacteria that can (a) perform photosynthesis and so are able to harvest solar energy; and (b) the bacteria that can synthesize methane; are in the public databases. They are free for the taking. It will not be easy to merge them. I have some ideas as to how to do this. The point of this message however is to get you to *THINK* outside of the box.
Yes, we may get some subset of a hydrogen economy. But as most /. readers are probably good engineers you should be asking how, where and when. In the meantime a methane economy could more easily be developed and sustained (i.e. the carbon we put into the atmosphere is carbon we have previously taken out of the atmosphere).
Just a few thoughts...
While this reply is off-topic in regards to the story, I feel there is some stuff that should corrected.
The recurrence interval for large scale eruptions at Yellowstone ranges from 600Ka to 800Ka. That's a 200,000 year range. The last major eruption was ~640Ka ago.
That means it might erupt tomorrow, or it might erupt 120,000 years from now. Chances are, we won't be alive to see it when it finally happens.
It's also entirely possible that it might not have a major eruption ever again. The 600-800Ka recurrence intervals are based on only three large eruption events that have occured in the past 2 million years.
Currently, seismicity in the region is at relatively low background levels and there really isn't anything to worry about. We see the same sort of situation at Long Valley Caldera as well.
Regarding the grandparent's theory of how to use geothermal power: I have to say that I disagree with it. Just because there is magma down there doesn't mean it will be economically feasible to drill through the rock that the plant will sit on.
As the parent poster states, there are also possible drawbacks and consequences as well. It has been proven that earthquakes in The Geysers region of California (northwest of San Francisco) are caused by the injection of water into the ground. Whether this could lead to some bigger event in certain areas, we don't know.
Exactly. Hydrogen is a battery, you still need to charge it. And it's not the battery that I would pick for just about ANY application that hydrogen hype surrounds.
Methinks all the venture capital that isn't being invested in IT now needs a new vapourware application. Hydrogen it is!
Pity it will NEVER work (if the goal is to maintain our present way of life after oil supplies peak in the next decade or two).
Now if we can just get that fusion reactor to work...
First of all that link does not work. I get an error page. I suggest you post an alternate way of finding that article.
From first principles we can see that it _can't_ be right that hydrogen is less "energy-dense" than a hydrocarbon fuel _by weight_.
At any rate, there is no way that both the claims above can be true. I can credit the ratio of energy densities _by volume_. But consider how low liquid hydrogen's _mass_ density would be. I don't have those figures handy, but a reasonable assumption is that a molecule of liquid hydrogen would occupy the same volume that a water molecule would. Possibly that understates the density since hydrogen molecules might pack more closely than water molecules, and will be less energetic since they only condense under either very low temperature or very high pressure. Here we assume low temperature--but a liquid is condensed matter; its molecules are already "touching" for practical purposes and density hardly varies over a tremendous range of pressures.
Then mass density would be in ratio to atomic mass units: 2/18 or 1/9. Gasoline I am not sure of either, but it is moderately lighter than water. Say it is 80 percent the density of water, that seems about right. To state that a liter of liquid hydrogen contains 1/3 the potential for heat release of a liter of gasoline is therefore to state that 111 grams of LH2 releases 1/3 the heat of 800 grams of gasoline, therefore the energy density of hydrogen by _mass_ must be
800/333=2.4
To claim otherswise, to claim that the ratio is reversed and more than reversed so that the gasoline releases 3.5 times _more_ heat _by mass_ would require the liquid hydrogen to be far _denser_ than water, or for liquid gasoline to be _even lighter_ than LH2! Lighter than LH2 by 6/7 in fact! We know that is not so.
Would you seriously have us believe that liquid hydrogen condenses 8.4 or more molecules in the space occupied by 1 water molecule in water? That is what it would take to make LH2 dense enough for both of your claims to be consistent with each other.
Either your source is screwed up, or you misread it.
http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/pro ject1/index.html
r e. htm
r e. pdf
This is a project whereby someone created samples of the skin according to documented reports of its composition, and measured the burn rate when he set them alight with a torch.
BTW you _have_ to use a torch; sparks do not set these things ablaze. The actual airship had pinhole burns in its skin near the engines where sparks sometimes came out. Clearly if the skin were somehow "more flammible" than hydrogen gas, it would have gone up the first time one of them hit it!
Anyway, they burn at a rate of less than 1 centimeter/sec. The Hindenburg was engulfed in flames all along its 245 meter length in under a minute. Do the math; the skin burns at less than 1/1000 the necessary rate!
It is another story of course when there is a powerful source of heat _inside_ the skin that can only get out by burning through. That would clearly accelerate the flames! That was the hydrogen of course. It would have massed about 18 metric tons, and such a mass of hydrogen can release as much energy as 50 tonnes of diesel fuel. And if it is allowed to mix with air, clearly flames can progress very rapidly along the interface; think of how the flames race along a gas grill when you light it at one end. Once a big fire was going inside clearly the heat of the flames themselves would burn through the incredibly thin light gas cells and then through the outer skin, even if all the fabric were totally inert to fire. The heat would be enough to _melt_ them, and there would be your gas/air mix, in the presence of flame yet.
Here's where you can find another paper that goes over the erroneous claims of Dr Addison Bain one after another, by a Dr. Alex Dessler.
http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Edziadeck/zf/LZ129fi
http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Edziadeck/zf/LZ129fi
Is that even supposed to make sense? Why would any designer opt for the _most flammible_ skin when less dangerous designs were available?
Actually the Hindenburg's skin was less dangerous than any prior design. These Zeppelin engineers were _not_ idiots. (Not even to use hydrogen--they had no other choice but to abandon airships, and they had good reason to think they could manage the risks. But clearly not by deliberately choosing dangerous skin!!)
One Addison Bain makes all kinds of bizarre claims, about the skin being "thermite" like or "rocket-fuel" like, but actually none of them are borne out when you make a sample of the stuff and test it. Only the hydrogen, burning inside the airship, accounts for the disaster of 1937.
Energy released when oxidized:
Hydrogen: 141.86 MJ / kg
Gasoline : 47.5 MJ / kg
So maybe the engineers that decided to use hydrogen for fuel for the space shuttle, liquid fueled rockets and hypersonic scramjets instead of gasoline aren't that stupid after all.
The small scale storage however, as in a car tank, still takes some more space than gasoline tanks. And storage in gaseous form at high pressure presents a potential exploding hazard if the containment is broken. Liquid Hydrogen, I am told: is barely more dangerous than gasoline(just don't touch it at its liquid temperature at normal pressure of less than 20 K = -253 C = -424 F). Like gasoline in real life, it shouldn't usually explode in an accident because it can only react as much as it gets oxygen which is limited by the surface area exposed to air. Some H evaporating will cool the remaining liquid H down (same effect as is used in a refrigerator). And if it evaporates without burning up right away, it will rise up and away very quickly since it is so much lighter than air.
Hydrogen reacts with oxygen from the atmoshpere (combusts) to form Dihydrogen Monoxide, which is
On top of the higher energy density per mass unit than just about any other substance obtainable in big quantities, hydrogen has a higher combustion pressure (burns faster) than gasoline which means higher conversion efficiency can be achieved when used in internal combustion engines. Hydrogen isn't limited to be used with fuel cells, it can be used in combustion engines in the same way as gasoline is used. BMW has actually been testing a prototype since a couple of years whose engine can be fueled off liquid hydrogen as well as gasoline. It has one tank for each and can switch between them.
http://www.wheels24.co.za/Wheels24/News/0,,1369-1
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/specialreport/20
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_38/b3699304.h
http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/stragegy.htm
http://www.google.com/
It is expected go into series production "soon" . They've built a racing car demonstrator based on the technology as well. http://www.rsportscars.com/eng/articles/bmw_hydro
Biodiesel, even if CO2 neutral (amount absorbed during plant growth = amount released through its combustion) tend to emit some other undesirable substances into the atmosphere. But of course it IS vastly superior to fossil fuels based energy in terms of emissions.
More research and support is needed to further develop and assess promising new sustainable non-polluting energy technologies like biodiesel or hydrogen from algae and others. And to START IMPLEMENTING ones that prove viable.
Unfortunately the bush administration decided to drastically cut sustainable energy research spending and energy efficiency improvement programs, and to rather grant subsidies and tax cuts of billions of dollars to coal, gas, oil and nuclear electricity generation companies(1 Site of potential interest: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/).
"They had an actual cover sample that was preserved from the Graf Zeppelin company (no relation to Led Zeppelin). "
No, that was supposed to be an actual piece of Hindenburg's own skin! Which--think about it--survived the fire. Without burning up.
The Hindenburg was 245 meters long, and was burning everywhere from stem to stern in under 60 seconds, about as long as it took to fall down to the ground. For flame to burn along the skin so as to achieve that, it would have to burn at 4 meters per second. If you examine other comments of mine you will find I give references to someone who made his own doped skin samples modeled after Hindenburg's--they burnt at less than 1 _centimeter_ per second.
It was the hydrogen and the hull could have been asbestos--it would still have been heated to cherry red heat, and the ship would still crash, once the hydrogen cells were set aflame.
" The hydrogen inside had no oxygen and couldn't burn."
The hydrogen inside the 18 or so gas cells was pure and couldn't burn--as long as there were no holes in said cells. No one knows just what did happen. But a small hole in one cell could have released a quantity of hydrogen adequate to start a fire, and the ship's ventilation (rigid airships were the opposite of airtight--they had to let their pressure match that of the air outside, and hydrogen ships were designed to flush the air continually) depended on _motion_ to drive it. All that would be needed then was a spark; given that,there was quite a bit of air inside the hull. And the flames would soon burn themselves some more ventilation!
Look, the heat content of the 18 tonnes of hydrogen contained, if set afire, was equivalent to about 50 tonnes of diesel fuel. Whereas all the airship's fabrics put togehter weighted just 15 tonnes. I suggest to you, if 15 tonnes of doped fabrics can release more energy than 50 tonnes of diesel fuel (or its equivalent, 200,000 cubic meters of hydrogen) then the designers should have devised engines to burn swatches of fabric instead of diesel fuel. Weight is critical on aircraft, you know. (A steam engine could do the job by the way.)
It was the hydrogen, not the skin.
It is a funny thing--the guy, Addison Bain, who started this skin nonsense doesn't care about airships, he wants to promote a hydrogen-based fuel economy. He thinks he has to prove that the hydrogen was blameless in _every_ airship disaster (there were many other cases of hydrogen ships burning up) to set at rest "irrational" fears about hydrogen as a fuel. But that is nonsense. Hydrogen is dangerous in airships because a very flammible substance is contained in huge volumes with enormous surface areas, that need very thin skins if they are to be light enough to be lifted by buoyancy. If we had liquid hydrogen stored in tanks, they would be bulkier than gasoline tanks, but still far denser than air, with much thicker skins--liquid hydrogen has to be kept in a thermos after all! The danger is much more comparable to that posed by _any_ fuel, and less in some ways that familiar ones. Airship fires are irrelevant to the fuel question.
This company http://www.bioxcorp.com/ uses a process, developed at the University of Toronto that
they claim can produce BioDiesel much faster than previous methods and is price-competitive with petroleum diesel.
I hope that they will start licensing their technology soon - this could be just the kickstart needed expanded use of BioDiesel in North America.
It would be nice to see more auto manufacturers selling diesel passenger cars here and promoting the use of Biodiesel.
While refiners have a mandate to reduce the sulfur content of petro-diesel within the next few years,
these reductions can be achieved TODAY using Biodiesel blends.
Also, it was President Bush's promotion of his Hydrogen initiative that really drove home the fact that he either has NO concern for environmental concerns or he just doesn't get it.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Getting hydrogen from electrolysis requires more energy in electricity than the reverse reaction of the products will generate.
Getting hydrogen from methane, at least by the method i'm familiar with, produces co2 and co. Likewise, elecricity for hydrolysis in america comes from american power plants... which produce a lot of co2 and h2so4.
Hydrogen power will be practical and will reduce pollution when we switch completely to nuclear power. Even then, it won't be the hydrogen that's cleaner so much as the nuclear power plants.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Cute idea, but I think "staggering capital costs" is the world largest understatement. First off, you are talking about what would be by far the largest government project ever even conceived. It would make the current combined spending of the US government look like pocket change. You couldn't even contemplate such a thing without turning your entire economy over to the effort. You would need greatest tax hike in American history to fund it. No, even disbanding the military wouldn't even begin to cover the cost.
Then, you would have the fun time period in-between the completion of this new magical rail system where you would still need roads. So, somehow you need to build this track system while still preserving the road system. This is an completely unthinkable task unless you commit yourself to some serious private land seizures. If you want to make a new rail system appear out of air and not destroy the existing road system until it is done, you are going to have to tell people to vacate their house while the government bulldozes it down to make way for the greatest piece of pork ever conceived.
If you are going to cover the entire nation in this thing in one life time, you also will need a massive amount of construction crews and equipment. I don't know about you, but I have no intention of quitting my day job to be a construction worker. That means that the US is going to import a massive number of people to work these jobs and pay them, straight out of the government's pocket. Further, some has to oversee and manage the entire project and keep it on budget.
So, now we have this magical rail system, we need to continue to pay for it. If you thought a layer of tar was expensive - imagine the joys of keeping a magnetic rail system intact. Certainly you could build safety into these things, but if cars are zipping around at a 100+ miles per hour, you better be ready to jump on any repairs that are needed. The materials all costs significantly more then tar does. Further, you need to completely rewire the US power grid. The power grid as its stands couldn't even begin to handle having to support every single personal and commercial vehicle.
So yeah, really cute idea. Alls you need to do is convince people initiate the biggest government project in history, raise taxes as far as they will go, seize millions of acres of private land, some how oversee and manage this project, then once it is done devote massive amounts of government budget to its continual upkeep. No, the "GDP boost alone" will NOT pay for it. This idea is at best a recipe for making an industrialized nation into a poor third world nation, and most likely a recipe for a violent anti-government revolution. Mods, please think before you label this crap interesting. I might as well throw up my "just drive to Mars idea in family mini-van". I mean, it would work perfectly with only the small hitch of a few million miles of vacuum between here and there.
Today, human energy consumption is 411 quads per year, or 4 x 10^20 Joules per year, which works out to a power of 1.3 x 10^13 Watts.
About half the sun's power is absorbed by the earth's surface, so solar energy heats the earth with about 690 Watts per square meter. Multiplying this by the cross-sectional area of the earth gives 9x10^16 watts, or about 6400 times the human energy use.
Following Bartlett's reasoning, we see that in nine doubling-times, human activity will amount to 10% of solar warming---a significant, if not mind-blowing fraction. In 13 doubling times, human activity will match solar heating.
If we increase energy consumption at 10% per year, it would take about 90 years to achieve this. It's worth noting that per-capita GDP scales nicely with energy consumption, so if we were to sustain 10% world per-capita GDP growth for a century, we would need to increase energy consumption in this way, even if population stabilized.
Doubling the sun's heating would increase the temperature of the earth's surface by a factor of the fourth root of 2 (Stefan-Boltzman law), or a bit less than 20%: It would warm up from 288 K to about 350 K, or around 150 F. Decidedly uncomfortable, but many orders of magnitude less warming than would be required to turn the atmosphere incandescant.
Bartlett's point was not that we really need to worry about making the sky glow. It was that even if we had a completely free energy source and stopped population growth, we'd still need to think about using energy wisely. In that, he's right.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1 &item=5548444803&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
Why aren't we simply using an already existing, working, proven alternative to gasoline, which is hydrogen in the mix with some carbons -- aka ethanol? The existing combustion engines would need only minimal modification (new carb and some heating appliance), and your could run the car you own at this very day, on a renewable, far cleaner, and safer energy source which you could fuel from the same gas station you use today. Did you know in Brazil there are already 5 million cars running on ethanol? And no, you wouldn't need to convert half the territory of the US to fulfill its energy needs, you could just as well use byproducts of existing normal agriculture.
Especially when the biggest fossil burning country reneges on Kyoto accords and is run by former president and vice president of oil or oil services companies.
/. rating system).
Which country would that be? Since the US never agreed to the Kyoto accords, it can't renege on them. Bill Clinton signed it but never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. In July 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 for a resolution opposing any international treaty that would damage the economy by restricting energy usage, raising the cost of fuels for transportation, heating and electricity.
So clearly you are talking about some other country. Care to share which one?
It can't be China since it is exempt, and has no president. Russia has a president, but because of economic downturns, Russia's emissions are already below 1990 levels.
Also, since the Kyoto treaty is/was not to go into effect until 2008, and the reduction targets were not to be measured until 2012 (according to Sen. Joe Lieberman), and this is only 2005 no country can have reneged on them yet as there are still three years until it becomes binding.
So, mods, where is the truthful, or shall we simply say accurate, information in the parent post? Or are we saying that wrong, inaccurate information is still good? (Remember, informative is a positive assessment in the
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
I have always thought that the first few alkanes , Methane etc , basically LPG would be a better source of energy as unlike Hydrogen they can be liquified at room temperature.Why are people obssessed with Hydrogen when its difficult to handle compred to LPG's.
Wanted : A Signature.
Let's get back to the basics here:
Energy Sources:
Oil, Coal, Nuclear, Natural Gas (& Cow farts), Solar, Wind, and anything that will burn in a fire.
Debatable Energy Sources:
Cold Fusion, Anti Matter, Geothermal, Natural Electricity (as in lightnight), Black Matter/Energy, Trilithium Crystals, and THE FORCE.
Definitely NOT: Gas, petrol, batteries, rubber bands, and HYDROGEN (unless we stumble onto a liquid Hydrogen Reservoir under the icy surface of Io or Neptune.)
"not yet aflame when the fire busts forth."
What colour does Hydrogen burn?
I mean, generally it's colourless, but you must be looking at a fairly exotic hydrogen to see the flames burst forth.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
"But even with a fireproof and antistatic covering, I don't think hydrogen zeppelins are safe."
Everyone agrees with you, which is why they don't tend to do it.
"Definitely NOT something to use to build a huge airship."
Planes used to use a lot of doped cellulose, which burns extremely quickly; plastics and rubbers from the 40s/50s were also hazardous, and the 'Komet' used to sit the pilot in between the two propellant tanks and used a skid to land. We still fly planes using different materials, techniques and safety measures.
Why is it so difficult for people here to apply 21st century technology to an old design?
"Hydrogen is too flammable"
Nah. Hydrogen/oxygen mix is flammable. The more accurate problem is that Hydrogen is a small atom that can leach through most other materials, which is why, as a fuel source, you'd bind it in a material that released hydrogen in a controlled manner.
The main problem with the entire thread is people taking a single disaster and applying it across the board as the hazards of hydrogen, which is dumb. You learn from mistakes, rather than running for the hills and pulling a blanket over your head. This is why we're still climbing into space, despite the relatively high risk.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I recommend "Normal Accidents" by Charles Perrow and "Out of Gas" by David Goodstein.
Highlights:
Charles Perrow has a good analysis of why nuclear power (the real agenda of the Hydrogen Economy boosters) is considered so dangerous. He identifies four classes of human accident victims:
"Out of Gas" (by a Cal Tech professor) includes a thorough explanation of the physics of energy, entropy, and various energy sources. It clearly explains that hydrogen is not a source of energy showing that the only real energy source is nuclear (from the sun and from the earth's core). Everything else, including oil, is an energy storage medium. It's slow going but very informative. He doesn't offer any quick solutions.
David Goodstein's other interesting point is that we are going to experience oil shortages very soon. Not when the last drop of oil is pumped out, but rather when we start using more oil than we're discovering.
Much as our great-grandparents lived through the transition to an oil-based economy and lifestyle, we or our children will probably live to see the post-oil economy. I don't know what the post-oil world will look like, but I strongly doubt that we will smoothly transition to equivalent lifestyles in the the so-called Hydrogen Economy. Think about $100/barrel oil and plan accordingly.
Thanks, I was both uninformed about Kyoto details and sloppy in my wording. But I stand by the general drift of my statement: The US, more than any other nation, should take the lead in reducing emissions: We should have signed the treaty...the effects would NOT be economic disaster but rather upset the status quo for some powerful industrial lobbying groups. The US voters and even more, the US administration are clueless, or in denial about the effects of their appetite for oil. They have found excuses and will continue to find excuses to ruin nature, other countries and, ultimately, their own economy by continuation at all costs of traditional energy use trends rather than devote levels of political will and reseach funding to alternatives proportional to the crisis that is actually bearing down on them. Mention of hydrogen by this administration is lip service. If you read the DOE and USDA budgets, you would find that funding has decreased in the last two fiscal years for alternative energy sources that are technically much nearer to feasibility and would stimulate our perpetually beleagured farm economy, e.g. biodiesel.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
can you back this urban legend thing up with some links?
Yes. Sorry I didn't have access to the links at the time. I vividly remember the months of discussion on the airship mailing list, in which all aspects of the Hindenburg disaster were exhaustively trashed out, and all the experts concluded the revisionist theory was bunk.
Debunking exaggerated flammability claims
The revisonist theory requires the covering material to have burned at a rate of 600 cm per second. Actual tests showed the true rate of burning is at least 1000 times slower.
Lots of good links
[Hydrogen flame is] colourless, ... you must be looking at a fairly exotic hydrogen to see the flames burst forth.
Not really. Yes, it is true that pure hydrogen burns with a very pale blue flame. But if you put a broom in a hydrogen flame, it of course flares brilliantly. That is one way in which you find hydrogen leaks which have ignited. Hindenburg contained some 15 tons of cotton fabric based gas cells and outer covering. You essentially have a 15 ton broom in a seven million cubic foot hydrogen fire. And that is going to make one Hell of a brilliant flare.
You can't separate the burning hydrogen from the other flammable materials that were involved, but that doesn't change the fact that the fire is hydrogen driven. The flame front races ahead through the hydrogen gas cells and the outer covering is ignited from behind as it progresses.
"BTW you _have_ to use a torch; sparks do not set these things ablaze."
Both studies and experiments suffer from flaws in duplication because they're concentrating on an extremely tiny section of the whole, when something as innocuous as the tielines could be responsible for acting as an accelerant.
I've never been that convinced either way, and I consider people using pictures to model something like a large scale combustion to be naive at best.
I certainly haven't seen anyone apply the same methodology with a hydrogen-filled bag under the simulated skin to check out the possibility of minute traces of hydrogen migrating into voids; a similar idea to what apparently downed TWA800 when the center tank filled with fuel vapour, or even anyone that's looked at the propulsors. I'm sort of assuming that there were internal combustion engines fairly close to a hydrogen envelope.
I think the only conclusion that is worth a damn is that your risk of seeing flames increases if you lob around an enormous series of hydrogen bags, but I have a pragmatic bent that sometimes overrides interesting hobbyist studies.
"erroneous claims of Dr Addison Bain one after another"
From the paper;
"In this paper, we demonstrate only that the IPT is fatally flawed and hence is not applicable to the Hindenburg fire. We do not defend any competing theory as being correct."
It's a concentrated refutation that doesn't supply another hypotheses. Now, I'm interested in the propulsors for the Hindenberg. What fuel did they use, and would an explosion of that produce the tell-tale 'mushroom' toroidal cloud that broke the spine of the Aircraft?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Some fundamental things are often overlooked.
Water is not simply H2O and behaves in many, very interesting ways.
Electrolysis of water in the simplest form is application of a DC current, which evolves the 2 substituent gases. In order for this to happen, ions must be present (usually in the form of impurities in hard water, or with the addition of an electrolyte). But an electrolyte isn't necessary to electrolyse water.
On the molecular level, hydrogen bonding also takes place, and with the shape of a water molecule, provides many possible arrangements of molecules and redistribution of ions within the molcules. Endothermic ionisation occurs, as well as proton-tunnelling (the Grotthuss mechanism) and the existence of many types of Hydrogen-Oxygen molecules.
So, if you're intent on pumping enough electrons into water ("brute-force", via DC current) to break the H-O bonds, you are going to expend X amount of energy. When you recombine the H and O, you can understandably expect to release the same amount of energy.
As I see it, there is much research to do in the study of excitation (by electrical, magnetic, mechanical and optical stimulation) of liquid water to produce Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Another thing that is frequently overlooked is power, as opposed to work.
Power is work over time, and from the "macro" level of waiting for your collected solar panels to electrolyse enough hydrogen to run your car to the shop, to the molecular level of applying stimulation to a substance to excite and evolve the readily available ions for release in their atomic form, time is a factor.
The wavelength used in microwave ovens is far higher than that used by many of the experimenters in the "water-car" circles, that have found the frequency of around 42kHz (among other frequencies) has some surprising effects on the electrolysis of water, and yet I have seen no explanation of these types of resonance. This only tells us that we simply do not know enough about the behaviour of water.
I personally think it would be foolish to say that electrolysing water is the wrong to way to go about producing Hydrogen efficiently, when it seems it's behaviour is only so recently beginning to be understood.
All said and done, discounting the many conspiracy theorists and frauds that only serve to confuse the subject, there is a small army of people out there already, producing variants of Hydrogen-Oxygen mixes, "Browns gas", and who knows what else and attempting to run their vehicles on it. I am so far disappointed that nobody has come up with anything approaching the ideal, but I'd say the future is promising.
Anyway, that's my 2c. I'd like to hear more from anyone that can offer further enlightenment.
chown -R us yourbase
"Collecting car poop" can range from impossible to nearly trivial, depending on the technology you assume for the car. For instance, an Otto-cycle vehicle would be a very difficult target for sequestration. On the other hand, if you use a direct-reacting methanol fuel cell, you would be able to store the reaction products (CO2 and H2O, as highly charged soda water) in a tank much more easily than you could store the hydrogen required to supply the same amount of energy. Reactors to convert CO2 and H2 to methanol are off-the-shelf technology. It appears to me that an almost-hydrogen economy which uses methanol as the hydrogen carrier for mobile uses is more practical than the model of the purists.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Hydrogen is a way of storing energy taken from and actual energy source, e.g. Nuclear, Oil, sun, water ect. You should make this clear when you write, a lot of people get the wrong idea and talk about "energy from water" and other fuelishness
real decreases. http://www.bioproducts-bioenergy.gov/pdfs/USDA-DOE %20R&D%20Funding%20by%20Roadmap%20Category3.pdf
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Fascinating. Thanks for the information.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
1) Setup arrays of solar cells in the wake of the earth's orbit. (~20% efficient)
2) Setup a method for transferring source material from the moon (or maybe just collect it)
3) Use some of the energy created to transport it back to earth.
With enough solar arrays in our wake, the energy lost by the physical transferrance of source material and hydrogen cells would someday be a small percentage of the yield.
Profit!
That's like saying "electrons are a boondoggle", because a charged leyden jar has such low efficiencies. Biodiesel is a great source of hydrogen, and the conversion process offers carbonsink opportunities that can also feed manufacturing. Let's not fight among ourselves while we explore various alternatives to burning mud - until we've got at least a couple of stable alternatives feeding the energy markets, we need to stick together to escape the petro clutches.
--
make install -not war
"Interesting read for eco-fans."
Would that be "ecology", or "economy"? Or "eCommerce"? Or Umberto Eco? Why choose? In fact, it seems interesting for anyone who cares about energy or physics.
--
make install -not war
Why is this only obvious to me? Why can't I buy a honda civic with a diesel?
Because you don't realise but some state governments do that diesel exhaust causes lung cancer?
long term retrospective study
It's the microparticulates that are the problem. Figure out a way to filter them cost effectively, then OK.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
China?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I think you have COMPLETELY missed my point. Nobody is suggesting that hydrogen did not play a significant role in the Hindenberg disaster. As I said, it's too flammable to be safe in that application.
The fabric sample that was obtained was not from the Hindenberg (duh). It was, as I said, from the Graf Zeppelin company. They had been experimenting with various coverings and coatings and had sample coupons available, some of which were identical to the material used in the ill fated Hindenberg. They had probably tested some of these samples for resistance to the elements, poracity, etc. They should have tested them for flammability, but apparently did not. The demonstration of the sample burning in air was very compelling. It burned very quickly.
Once again, nobody is saying that the cover burned and the hydrogen didn't. The significance of the rapidly burning cover material is that it could START a hydrogen fire very easily. Such a flammable material would need only a strong spark to ignite, and in turn ignite the hydrogen. But even with a fireproof covering, hydrogen is considered too flammable for use in airships because of the possibility of leaks, electrostatic discharge, landing accidents, lightning, etc.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
"I've never been that convinced either way..."
Good for you. I'm uncomfortable with my friends who adopt Hugo Eckener's best _guess_ scenario. Which is: hard maneuvering breaks shear wire; shear wire slashes one of the rear hydrogen cells; ventilation slacks off (this is actually a certainty; by the design it would do that); hydrogen "pools" above the cell able to disperse only _through_ the skin; spark sets off mix; rest is history. We don't _know_ a shear wire broke; we don't even know a hydrogen cell had a hole in it. Possibly some saboteur did it and did not get caught (we sure _don't know_ it was sabotage, nor can we prove it was not!) Possibly something quite outlandish happened. A number of people I know insist on claiming Eckener's scenario is _true_ just because alternatives they don't like are _either_ disproved or distasteful.
But some things are impossible.
"and I consider people using pictures to model something like a large scale combustion to be naive at best."
"Pictures?" I am not sure what you mean here. Bill Appleby made actual samples of the same kind of material as Hindenburg's hull, layered in the same way, that were used on the hull. Little pieces to be sure but they do verify that _without_ the presence of hydrogen, the stuff burns slowly and needs some prodding to get started. Which was, from all descriptions, the case with Bain's authentic skin sample--he never showed it could ignite itself, and he used an intense flame to start it burning and it burnt _slowly_, with no very intense heat being produced. I suppose on a larger scale the speed of the flame propagation might pick up, but it would have to speed up by a factor of a thousand to account for the disaster.
"It's a concentrated refutation..."
Yes. Some years ago, in the late 1990s, Addison Bain stepped forward with the remarkable, revolutionary idea that _actually_ the Hindenburg fire _was in no way_ caused by the hydrogen, that the hydrogen was "unfairly condemned" as the culprit, for even if that same airship had used helium (which of course does not burn) the results would have been the same. For, as you have no doubt heard, the doped, aluminum-painted fabric was equivalent to "thermite" or "solid rocket fuel."
BTW--it is not a virtue of rocket fuels to blow themselves up in one quick blast. They burn slowly and steadily--that is part of the point, and they are typically _not_ the densest concentration of available heat energy you can attain either. That desirable feature goes a bit by the board aiming at other desirable qualities--like stable burning for instance. Thermite and rocket fuel then are very different things. And doped aircraft skin material is a third thing.
Anyway, it is the purpose of many people who are interested in airships for historical and other reasons to restore accuracy to the discussion. _Clearly_ the presence of hydrogen made a big difference. Clearly also, the Hindenburg's designers had the longest experience of anyone in the world, and with the most success, at avoiding hydrogen fires, and to do that, avoiding fires of any sort if they could help it. They couldn't always help it and had damage control strategies to prevent inevitable sparks from leading to catastrophes. They would not, and did not, fail to check out the flammibility of the material they wrapped the entire airship in. Those of us who once took Bain seriously are amazed at how _difficult_ it is to get this fabric to burn; we should not be, why would Zeppelin designers want anything less? From our point of view it is important to examine each of Bain's specific claims and see if they have any merit.
Bain wants to argue that hydrogen is safe _as a fuel_ and he thinks that the image of the fiery destruction of Hindenburg is a barrier to acceptance of hydrogen. I think that is absurd myself but I have to admit I have not been in the business of selling hydrogen fuel professionally. It is evident to me that concentrated, insulated fuel tanks are different than huge, thin-walled b
Others have also pointed out China...and you are right: Their record sucks regarding the balance they strike between preserving a livable planet and fostering their particular vision of economic growth, their soot wafts across the Pacific to settle on Oregon. But I give them credit for at least trying to keep a lid on population.
[What irony that the biggest capitalist nation and the biggest communist nation, despite any difference of rhetoric, per-capita wealth or belief, wind up as vaguely co-equal master polluters of the planet. IMHO it simply emphasizes that our resouce problems have grown to dwarf our politics: Politicians who mostly try to spot which way the hurd is headed and jump out in front of it waving a flag deserve to be the first ones crushed when the hurd goes over an ecological cliff...they have not been leaders in any true sense.]
I really don't know if democracy, decrees and tax-influenced market forces, in any combination, can stem the total effects that arise from billions of individual choices that all sound like "$8.50 a gallon! damn! but I just gotta get to work now". But optimism takes imagination whereas pessimism has a surplus of substantiation.
And as to our topic: the Japanese are way ahead of the US in hydrogen research budget and somewhat ahead, from what I have read, in implementation, e.g. fuel cell powered cars...haven't heard that China is doing anything in this area.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
you still have to GET the energy from some where If that is to be done without further burning of fossil fuels, we have to commandeer a huge amount of land for solar and wind farms
;)
I fully agree. What Im wondering is if there are parts of the world that are better for producing wind or solar energy than others? I imagine Ireland isnt the best for solar energy but maybe it makes up for it from wind. In the same sense if we go down the road of using nuclear energy then we have to source plutonium or more likely uranium, and that blows a bit of a hole in the articles assertion that:
"Hydrogen is abundant and generously distributed throughout the world without regard for national boundaries; using it to create a hydrogen economy--a future energy system based on hydrogen and electricity--only requires technology, not political access."
And what if Fission becomes possible? The recent article on Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html got me thinking about what the political implications could be if he is right. He estimates that the 1 million metric tons of He3 would be worth $3billion/ton and since the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the militarisation of space the moon will have to be secured, and fought over if necessary.
maybe that explains the recent Chinese interest
- only a few areas of the nation have the terrain to generate hydro and are lightly enough populated for that energy to meet majority of needs [e.g. Oregon gets 60% of its juice from hydro, WA even more]...they are exceptional in this regard
- Hydro is clean as far as air is concerned but not as far as water is concerned. If you add a dam, you lose a fishery.
- You will also inundate human and animal habitat if you try to increase hydro capacity.
WA state, one of hydro's biggest beneficiaries, does not consider hydro a pure or purely good choice:SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
"Hindenburg contained some 15 tons of cotton fabric based gas cells and outer covering. You essentially have a 15 ton broom in a seven million cubic foot hydrogen fire."
What's that in hogsheads and furlongs?
I think the point that I personally was trying to make is that the initial mushroom cloud that vents up from the mid-portion around the tower looks more like a fuel/air explosion than secondary combustion from a hydrogen plume.
The thing is that this is essentially arranging deckchairs on the titanic, or more accurately, measuring the stress on the bulkhead rivets as the ship went down.
I'm personally dubious about the IPT claim because the constituents of thermite are there, but not the actual mixture, and you wouldn't have seen the support spars hit the ground. There would have significant damage from the _enormous_ relative temperature of the 'thermite', compared with the more stately 1500C produced by a hydrogen jet, but this reinforces my original point; people are getting caught up in details after the fact.
Gaseous hydrogen is dangerous. Noone disputes that fact, but there does appear to be a large number of people that think that a hydrogen economy can't trap, process or use it safely. Go take a look at the volatility of petroleum distillate.
"The flame front races ahead through the hydrogen gas cells"
Where is the explosive increase in pressure? Newton's first law would tend to suggest that combustion of hydrogen and air would create forces to push in a particular direction. I don't have any figures, hence the hand-waving, but I haven't seen anyone take on this viewpoint.
Dammit, now I've got to go find the archive footage to set up a timeline. This is the very reason my living room still needs plastering.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
"A number of people I know insist on claiming Eckener's scenario is _true_ just because alternatives they don't like are _either_ disproved or distasteful."
It's bad to only accept a hypothesis that you like, but a lot of what you mentioned seems to be completely unprovable under any circumstances, and therefore an item of faith.
"I am not sure what you mean here."
Relying on photographic or film evidence as a primary source of investigation, rather than relying on the material at hand. One thing that did strike me as I got sucked into this was that wreckage would contain clues as to what happened in particular places; similar to the way the NTSB reconstructs planes to look for stress patterns, it should be possible to check wreckage for telltales. My ignorance will come to the fore here, but is the wreckage still about? What was the supporting framework constructed from? Do you have any resources regarding the construction of the Hindenburg?
"Little pieces to be sure but they do verify that _without_ the presence of hydrogen, the stuff burns slowly and needs some prodding to get started."
Were the tests re-run in a hydrogen atmosphere, or under a hydrogen jet?
I know that it might seem that this is a forgone conclusion, but it would extend the pool of knowledge a little more.
"Thermite and rocket fuel then are very different things. And doped aircraft skin material is a third thing."
Fair enough, although I would point out that explosives are simply materials with burn rates in the region of kilometres a second, and rocket fuels have been known for their volitility, especially using recombustion. I've forgotten the names, but the two-part propellent for the Messcherschmitt Komet had a reputation for being unstable. T-schtoff may have been one of them.
"Anyway, it is the purpose of many people who are interested in airships for historical and other reasons to restore accuracy to the discussion."
Likewise for hydrogen fans, but I don't think that Slashdot is the place...;)
"Clearly also, the Hindenburg's designers had the longest experience of anyone in the world, and with the most success, at avoiding hydrogen fires"
I read elsewhere that the Hindenburg was using Hydrogen because helium was scarce at the time. Surely this would have meant a design that was geared towards helium rather than hydrogen, possibly with retrofits to be able to handle the different gas. Is this wrong?
"he thinks that the image of the fiery destruction of Hindenburg is a barrier to acceptance of hydrogen."
Well, it doesn't help, but it's a matter of pointing out that eighty-odd years of progress has moved us a little past that problem, and there are tanks buried under Florida and Alabama that hold waaaay more than the Hindenburg. First time I saw a hydrogen plume in the flesh was at Redstone.
"It is evident to me that concentrated, insulated fuel tanks are different than huge, thin-walled buoyancy cells."
As are the solid state materials developed that suck up hydrogen, hold it in a matrix and release it under certain circumstances. That's the grail...weakly binding hydrogen to an inert substrate. I'd personally be scared witless if they tried to apply the current 'forecourt' model to hydrogen fuel use.
"The question was, what created a spark where there was a mix of air and hydrogen to burn?"
This is the place that I'm at, despite only dipping a toe into the subject. Do you have any details on the construction of the gas bags themselves? The main problem with storing hydrogen is that it's a small atom. A lot smaller than most materials, which means that your airtight container can steadily leak hydrogen with no real trouble. Getting a hyd/ox mix would simply be a matter of time if there was an unventilated void.
"beloved feature was that the fuel is also far less volatile than gasoline"
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Well, not exactly destroyed, but converted directly into energy. The amount of energy produced by converting energy is that relatively unknown equation E=mc^2.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I don't have much information on private R&D in hydrogen...I'm not interested in it because it is no more a source of energy than a pipeline or a power is a source of energy.
in biomass, I don't have hard numbers handy but I have bookmarks on dozens of companies doing one thing or another with biodiesel...and not Shell and Exxon but startups...US companies. R is hardly needed, D is in full swing. I would say the govt doesnt need to lead or coax the creation of a biodiesel industry; just let it happen. Where more risk is involved is in ethanol from biomass...Canadian companies are in the lead on that because Ottawa is either subsidizing them or giving tax breaks. Better yields from otherwise useless feedstocks [well you could always burn it] is the promise with ethanol but ADM and Mississippi University Research Consortium for the Utilization of Biomass are not at commercial break-even yet. I don't care who you are but I am curious as to what you are afraid of AC.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
You would somehow have to get the soda water back to the hydrogen producing facilities(or the hydrogen to the soda water), which may be a non-trivial energy cost (including building infrastructure).
Thanks for the ideas though, I hadn't rated methanol as an energy carrier due to difficulties of water usage (I had seen someone proposing using biomass to create methanol). I agree that hydrogen does appear very impractical.
1) There is no "Graf Zeppelin" company. There was Zeppelin Luftschiffbau GmbH.
2) Experiments HAVE been done with actual material from Hindenburg, whether you have seen them or not. No "duh" is necessary. The results are as has been described by Mr. Foxwell and myself.
3) Everyone knew that the fabric was flammable. All varieties of it on all airships were flammable in approximately the same degree. As long as the airships were filled with hydrogen, I think the feeling was "so what, are you kidding me, with all that hydrogen gas aboard we should worry about some cotton fabric?"
4) It's not exactly true that no one is saying the hydrogen didn't burn. That claim was made by Dr. Bain at one time. It is so preposterous that he is not saying it any more.
5) It has been well established that the fabric does not burn particularly rapidly.
6) Leaking/escaping hydrogen gas being orders of magnitude easier to set alight than the covering, it is self evident that the hydrogen set the covering afire, and not vice versa. As, indeed, eyewitnesses aboard saw.
What's that in hogsheads and furlongs?
Not sure, but it works out (given the partially empty gas cells at the time due to valving to compensate for weight of fuel burned) to roughly 12 metric tons mass of hydrogen vs roughly 15 tons mass of fabric and coating in the gas cells and outer cover. Hydrogen being some 3 times the heating value of the best liquid fuels, and treated cotton fabric being substantially lower in heating value than liquid fuels, the heat released by the burning hydrogen was several times as much as that released by the burning fabric.
Where is the explosive increase in pressure? Newton's first law would tend to suggest that combustion of hydrogen and air would create forces to push in a particular direction. I don't have any figures, hence the hand-waving, but I haven't seen anyone take on this viewpoint.
This has been dealt with satisfactorily on the airship discussion list, but it would take me some time to track down the citations. As I recall, there are two factors at work.
1) Hydrogen plus air yields steam. Steam is much denser than hydrogen at any given temperature, and this works in opposition to the reduction in density (hence increase in pressure or volume) due to the heating.
2) There was no effective containment that could have stood up for more than milliseconds against the heat. The expansion just dissipated essentially freely into the atmosphere.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/0 7/1846247&tid=14
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Graf is German for count. Count Zeppelin founded the company. A couple of the airships were named in his honor. The Hindenberg was a later airship from the same company.
Despite your expert opinion, I saw the video. "Rapidly" is a relative term, but I would use it in this case. It quickly ignited and burned rapidly, with what certainly appeared to be a hot flame.
The fabric dope contained finely powdered aluminum and iron oxide. It was very flammable. Any guess what the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle contain? Yep, powdered aluminum (fuel) and iron oxide (catalyst). Check it out.
Self evident to you, perhaps. The *real* experts who studied the Hindenberg disaster agreed that the incendiary covering was a major contributing factor.
I think you are still misunderstanding what I'm trying to say, so I'll try again. The issue is not whether hydrogen is more flammable than the doped fabric. The problem is that the huge structure was so flammable that there was no need for a hydrogen leak to occur to start the ignition process.
Hydrogen drifts upward and is self-venting in an open area, and numerous efforts were made to ensure adequate ventilation of all enclosed spaces to prevent any hydrogen from accumulating in the event of a leak. The major design flaw was the fabric. A small flame or intense spark anywhere on the structure would ignite the highly flammable fabric with the inevitable tragic result.
See if you can find the PBS special. It was very interesting, both technically, and in terms of how much information can be assembled over 50 years later.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Rather than pointlessly and repetitively correct your errors in the incorrect naming of the company and spelling of the airship's name, and so on, I'll just point to where the real point of contention (fabric vs hydrogen flammability) has already been dealt with:
The outer cover fabric was not treated as you seem to think it was. There were separate coats of clear dope, dope with powdered aluminum pigment, and dope with powdered iron oxide pigment. The coats dried separately. The two powders are not mixed. They are separated from each other. They are separately embedded in dope matrix. There is no "rocket fuel" mixture. When ignited, such a composite burns at less than 1 cm/s. That is not very fast.
Actual experiment, not supposition
The major flaw of the design was far from the fabric. The major flaw of the design was the highly flammable lifting gas.
I don't know what "real" experts you are talking about, but I can assure you that the combined weight of airship historians and technical experts, when this matter was hashed out on the airship mailing list at length, comes down in their considered opinion heavily on the side I and have represented.
Interesting article. I like the Society for Amateur Scientists. But like any such group, there are always people with pet theories and various agendas.
There were a few problems with the "science". One was the method of the burn test. A flat piece of treated cloth is oriented horizontally and lit in the center. This method seems designed to ensure the slowest burn rate possible. Or were they trying to simulate a fire that begins at the very top of the airship in perfectly still air?
There were other similar examples of bad science. However, by far the largest problem was indicated by the following quote from the article:
The experiments used formulations and application techniques that were invented by the experimenter, so the "actual experiment" was filled with supposition. As I have repeatedly stated, the video I saw used a sample coupon of cloth that was prepared by the company that produced the Hindenberg, using exactly the same materials and techniques. There was no supposition about the materials used and the way they were applied. The material was the same as the fabric covering on the Hindenberg, as verified by the original engineer's notes which were preserved after the accident. The fabric ignited easily and burned quickly. It's a fact. Deal with it.
The sad thing is, we both apparently agree that hydrogen is too flammable for use in an airship. Once it's ignited, there is no practical way to extinguish it. I have never claimed that hydrogen would be safe in an airship if a nonflammable covering were used. All I claim was that the highly flammable covering used in the Hindenberg was a big mistake, and was likely to have started the fire that consumed the giant airship.
A hydrogen filled airship is dangerous. A hydrogen filled airship surrounded by a giant firestarter is even more dangerous. Got it?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
The plug-in hybrid is definately a step in the right direction and will limit the direct affect of oil shocks (at least in the short term).
I have had a look at your blog and note that you have mainly concentrated on America. Now there is nothing wrong with that from a moral standpoint (at least my morals), but when looking at trying to maintain the economy at the roughly the same energy usage/ wealth you have to take into consideration the energy imported in goods from abroad. If you truly wish to be energy independant from the middle east you will have to factor in the creation of energy infrastructure equal to that embodied in the raw materials/goods and associated factories imported from abroad.
Take for example if china went into anarchy due to rising oil prices and modern production stopped in china. Then the production for American goods goes to America and requires energy to run, the energy supply needs to increase by the same amount else the personal energy allowed for each citizen will probably go down. So there might be lots of useless cars or infrastructure built.
It is for reasons like this that I do not propose full econonomy transformations (as we cannot fully predict all that is needed) and rather urge people to move in certain directions, such as energy efficiency, low infrastructure schemes, renewable energy and a certain amount of preparing for a less energy full future.
I'm too used to scoop that remembers my options.
OK, so you disagree with a large majority of airship historians and technologists. The fact that the energy required to ignite hydrogen is many orders of magnitude less than that required to ignite the cover does not seem to register. You seem unconcerned that leakage of hydrogen through the gas cells to the tune of tens of thousands of liters per day was an accepted design parameter, and that the gas valves were known to stick open, and therefore that flammable gas mixtures were to be found outside the gas cells in normal operation. I got it. You're welcome to your opinion.
For the fourth time, I saw the burn rate with my own eyes. So, yeah, I guess I disagree with you and your anonymous experts.
You're being deliberately obtuse, right?
The flammability of hydrogen is not an issue if there is not a combustible mixture of hydrogen present. That is almost always the case. The very flammable cover is ALL OVER THE OUTSIDE OF THE ENTIRE AIRSHIP. This very flammable material is always present. That's why the flammability of the cover is a significant issue. Once the cover is burning, the hydrogen will inevitably burn too. But the most likely cause of the initial ignition is the cover, not the enclosed hydrogen that is too rich a mixture to burn.
That loss rate sounds like a lot, and in absolute terms it is. But it's fairly insignificant in terms of the volume of a huge airship. H2 is a very small molecule and it readily diffuses through materials. The vast majority of the leakage you mentioned is almost certainly diffusion. In the case of diffusion, the entire ship is leaking, but the diffusion rate is so low that the concentration of hydrogen at the surface of the airship is many orders of magnitude below what would be required for a minimal combustible mixture. The ship was designed with gas cells held in a framework, and an outer cover. The design prevented a buildup of hydrogen lost through diffusion. So the entire hydrogen leakage rate is a big red herring.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
How is the relative heat output of hydrogen vs. doped fabric of any significance? Obviously, a lot of heat will be produced by the hydrogen needed to fill an entire airship. But the important issue is, what started the fire?
When investigating a house fire, nobody says, "The heat produced by a cigarette that was dropped when someone fell asleep is insignificant compared to all the lumber and other combustibles in a house, so the cigarette couldn't be the cause of the accident." Yet that is exactly the sort of specious argument you're advancing when you ignore the flammable covering material.
A great number of the things we find to be very useful have an lot of stored energy. Dams hold back tons of water. Jet airliners traveling at 500 MPH have enormous kinetic energy. A gas station has a lot of flammable gasoline. When there is an accident, we don't start pointing fingers at the stored energy. We look for the problem. What allowed the stored energy to be released? That's the cause of the accident. Otherwise, we couldn't have hydroelectric dams, airliners, gas stations, or any of the other devices we find to be so useful.
Good design requires the safe management of the risks associated with stored energy. Admittedly, a huge airship full of hydrogen would represent an unacceptable risk in the best of circumstances. But covering that hydrogen in a highly flammable material is just asking for trouble. It was a bad design choice that made the Hindenberg disaster all but inevitable.
Previous airships had a good safety record, even though many of them were filled with hydrogen when the US stopped exporting helium to pre Nazi Germany. The flammable covering material was a recent change made in the airship by an engineer who should have known better.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
No, actually I am not the one being obtuse, deliberately or otherwise.
1) The leaking hydrogen can be ignited by a tiny, almost invisible spark or discharge. The cover takes a torch or other significant flame to ignite. There is no comparison. No amount of static electricity discharge on the cover will set it on fire.
2) The "vast majority" of the leakage is not necessarily the issue. Have you considered that small holes get chafed or otherwise develop in the gas cells? That results in a small area of combustible mixture near the leak. It only takes a tiny amount of leaking hydrogen set aflame to burn through the gas cell, with the disastrous result seen on Hindenburg.
3) You conveniently fail to address the fact that the gas valves were known to leak, causing significant combustible mixture concentrations.
4) You conveniently fail to address the fact that onboard eyewitnesses place the origin of the fire within the airship, not on the surface.
5) You conveniently igore the fact that the outer cover was so far from the phenomenally flammable material that you paint it, that chunks of carbon in the exhaust of the engines burned holes in it, yet did not set it alight.
Have fun piloting your safe helium powered airships in the irridescent purple sky of whatever planet you live, where logic is trumped by rigidly held beliefs, science is banished by the self-appointed experts who have all the answers, and the physical laws of the universe do not apply.
Thanks for playing. OK, Bye-bye.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
- I can get fairly good energy data for the USA; data for the world as a whole is another matter.
- The USA is the single biggest energy consumer on earth, and changes need to start at home.
- Any change in the technology mix in the USA is bound to affect what is offered overseas; all major auto and power companies are multinationals.
- It scratches my personal itch.
I encourage others to take up aspects of the issue for which I have neither the time nor the inclination. I doubt this. The imports from China include lots of inexpensive consumer electronics and textiles. If these disappeared, they would not be replaced on a 1:1 basis; prices would go up and consumption would go down. I'd say that production would return to Taiwan and Japan, if the plants hadn't been physically moved to the mainland; perhaps India would be able to pick up some of the slack.The "embodied energy" issue is one reason I advocate a carbon tax; you ought to have a price signal for the amount of carbon that each activity or purchase represents.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
There can be a "move" to H2 even if another fuel is more convenient, if it is given political priority. _If_ we can anticipate a future situation where the costs of the alternatives you prefer outweigh their benefits relative to hydrogen, it would make sense to invest now in developing the hydrogen alternative.
You can make a _strong_ case that even if we have to synthesize fuels, we would do better to synthesize hydrocarbons similar to the mix found in gasoline. Even the carbon issue would be addressed that way, for if we were synthesizing fuel from scratch or biological feedstocks of course we'd be pulling CO2 out of the air as fast as we put it back in. But I see that you disbelieve CO2 emissions have anything to do with climate so this point may not matter to you.
It is quite true that gasoline is a _volumetrically_ efficient way to store hydrogen fuel. You do recognize it comes with a downside--aside from CO2 emissions, there is other pollution, and considerable hazard from burning fuel during a crash? I happen to agree that some kind of "tank" full of pure hydrogen in some form would probably pose less of a hazard, but that might be wrong.
I'd be amazed if "no one" in these hundreds of comments on a scheme to include hydrogen fuel in our repetoire of transport power sources is even _considering_ the simple, straightforward method of cooling and liquefying the gas to store it in an insulated tank. Anyway, I am. And I am not talking about cars.
My suggestion is, that if we decide to make a priority of developing hydrogen as a fuel, we should start with aviation, particularly big military transport planes. The airplanes would have to be redesigned, because you almost certainly can't put the fuel in the wings anymore. Too much surface area to insulate and too little volume left over for enough fuel, not to mention the danger that internal structure in the wings might get chilled and thus behave weirdly--snapping suddenly for instance. But a thicker fuselage with big compact tanks in it would add less drag than the smaller wings would save. Or, the planes can be desiged, for a given weight, to achieve fantastic ranges.
I don't think they would be more vulnerable to destruction by the fuel, in an attack or in a crash, than airplanes with traditional jet fuels are now.