Crunching the Numbers on a Hydrogen Economy

mattnyc99 writes "In its new cover story, 'The Truth About Hydrogen,' Popular Mechanics magazine takes a close look at how close the United States is to powering its homes, cars and economy with hydrogen — including a calculation of where all the hydrogen would come from to meet President Bush's demands. Interesting that they break down the future of hydropower not by its advantages but by its challenges: production, storage, distribution and use."

Comments

You keep using that word.

[tdemark]

Interesting that they break down the future of hydropower not by its advantages

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Electricity + Water

[Anonymous Coward]

With a fuel cell in each house, you could essentially generate hydrogen from water and electricity at night when the power plants are idling in inefficient speeds. During the day, you could do the opposite and generate electricity from the hydrogen generated the previous night.

Or you could do what most people do when they want hydrogen, heat a hydrocarbon with steam. It is a hell of a lot cheaper than electrolysis! In fact, most fuel cells use some sort of hydrocarbon reforming to get their hydrogen. Unless you store hydrogen as a liquid, its energy density is just too low for any reasonable fuel tank.

Crisis is in Transportation sector.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We should recognize that there are two distinct energy sectors, and one is in crisis and the other one has some breathing space for a smooth landing.

The fixed or stationary energy use, at homes, offices, and factories is not in as much of a crisis as the transportation sector. For electricity generation, there are alternatives like coal (yeah, it is dirty), or nuclear (yeah, most people fear it) or tar sands (yeah, it is expensive to recover) or wind (yeah, it has some problems), solar (yes, it needs high investment). There are problems, but USA is self suffiicient in them, and we wont be held hostage by foreign powers. There is breathing space to develop really good alternatives.

On the other hand, in the transportation sector is in crisis already. So much of personal transportation depends on gasoline and freight depends on diesel and air transportation depends on kerosene. No serious alternatives are emerging and the time is running out on those sectors. Most predictions of peak oil is around now or 2010. Even the most optimistic estimates about the Hydrogen powered cars or biodiesel driven trucks talk about widespread adaptation around 2020.

America is particularly vulnerable to this energy crisis. It is not as densely populated like Europe or Urban India and China. It is not easy to switch USA to use electricity driven public transportation. So much of the economy depends on the high home values of the sprawled cities and the humongous fleets of trucks delivering goods. So much of the infrastructure is built around the idea it is very cheap to transport goods over 100s of miles. And America is not self sufficient in this energy sector. This is a grave crisis.

Re:What about Iceland?

[tonicblue]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2973885.st m
http://www.hydro.com/en/press_room/news/archive/20 03_04/hydrogen_island_en.html
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,3604,943132 ,00.html

They don't just use hydrogen.

Some cities, such as Reykjavik, already use hydrogen to power buses. But Iceland gets some electricity and over 80% of its heating and hot water from geothermal energy sources, and can produce the hydrogen emission-free. Other countries need to find ways to produce the hydrogen sustainably.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-f uels/dn9984

They are lucky they live where they do. It's a hot bed of free energy.