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Hydrogen Won't Save Our Economy
anaesthetica writes "Physorg.com is featuring a story asserting that hydrogen is economically infeasible as a replacement for our current energy sources. The premise is that isolating and converting hydrogen into a usable energy source takes up a great deal of energy to begin with, and that subsequently converting that hydrogen fuel into usable energy results in an overall efficiency of only about 25%. Apparently, the increasing scarcity of water is going to make hydrogen too costly and just as politicized as oil." From the article: "[Fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel's] overall energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense. The advantages of hydrogen praised by journalists (non-toxic, burns to water, abundance of hydrogen in the Universe, etc.) are misleading, because the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare and may become political issues, as much as oil and natural gas are today."
sun and wind power are, IMHO, the alternative to oil and coal. hydrogen should be used just as storage/transport of energy.
but even this will be useless if we don't put serious brain power into improving the eficiency of our gadgets/cars/homes/etc.
What ? Me, worry ?
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
It doesn't really matter if water is scarce or not, since contrary to gas/oil it can be re-used; it's only an energy carrier. Also, 3/4ths of our planet is covered in the stuff.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
It seems unlikely that some magic bullet will come and solve all our problems. The largest part of any solution has got to be a dramatic downward trend in energy consumption regardless of the source.
"We have to solve an energy problem not an energy carrier problem."
There. nuff said.
Just because it takes alot of energy to create the fuel, doesn't mean the fuel isn't usable on cars. You don't see a whole lot of space shuttles running on coal.
God spoke to me.
Before that, hydrogen is a cumbersome, impractical, lossy way to transport energy. We might as well look into synthesizing hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2O instead of just splitting water into H2 and O2. Any hydrocarbon is less troublesome to handle than hydrogen. If we make the chains long enough, we might even end up with stuff that's pretty much identical to oil-based gasoline.
You don't need clean drinking water for electrolysis.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And it underlines a point that I'd like to see raised more often: a lot of people are looking for a "magic bullet", meaning some sort of drop-in replacement for oil, whether it's bio-fuels, or hydrogen or something else. They want something that would solve all of our energy problems in one fell swoop. And that's just not going to happen.
Think about the early 19th century, for instance: oil was just one energy possibility among many others. Most people used wind power to process cereals into flour, or mechanical water power. They used coal or wood to warm themselves and candles or whale oil to light themselves. They also used solar power, for instance in salt flats. Then came steam engines -- again wood or coal -- and so on and so forth.
Of course, the 21st century is a much more advanced society, but the energy possibilities are also much more numerous: from bio-fuels to nuclear, with solar (photovoltaic and thermal), wind power, bio-mass, natural gas, tide power, etc... etc... Our technology level has progressed by leaps and bounds and may well end up covering most our needs, IF we also improve efficiency and energy savings (= no more gas guzzler for you, sorry). But the key idea here is this: the 20th century, from and energy point of view, was an historical abberation: a time when we solved most of our energy needs on one solution. The 21st century may well see us come back to a more diversified picture, and something more in line with the previous centuries.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
We need to stop relying on one single solution.
In the future (if there is one once we get our act together soon enough), the "solution" has to be a combination of solutions. Wind, Geothermal, Tidal, Nuclear (yes, Nuclear - although it's gotten a bad rap, it's actually a pretty good source), and perhaps Fusion, in addition to Hydrogen. The Earth's Oceans are a huge source of Deuterium, which can be used for Fusion (if we have it figured out), and possibly we could even use it as fuel (burning it). But I'm not sure of the effects of having slightly radioactive water vapor. Maybe it's not a good thing.
I know there's a lot of IFs, but the sooner we start...
Discovery had a good show today, outlining doomsday scenarios because of our overdependence on fossil fuels. It seems the Pentagon is actually seriously considering the implications to National Security from Global Warming and the rising cost of Oil, especially when it can involve droughts, and lots of war.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
C2H5OH with [H2SO4] as a catalyst -----> C2H4 + H2O
and with that cute little double bond, I can make any hydrocarbon you want. Where do we get the ethanol? There's plenty of arable land left for now - so much so that certain governments pay their farmers NOT to plant crops. Instead of making energy to create H2, perhaps we should use the sun's energy to work for us, as we have been doing anyway for the past few billion years...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://www.whynot.net/ideas/2195
No changes to human behaviour required.
Deleted
Actually both are space hogs, especially if you are talking about actual wind or solar 'powerplants'. However each has the potential to produce say... very rough guess here... up to 10% of the energy needs. In Europe wind is extensively used, farmers often set up wind generators on their fields and sell the electricity they don't need to the energy companies for extra income. If you drive through Denmark, Holland, or N-Germany you will see wind generators by the dozen in the wheat fields you drive through. I don't think either wind nor solar will replace coal and oil for all sorts of reasons of which the physical space they take up is only one reason, they will remain important supplementary energy sources. Large solar power plants are not all that common here in Europe but people have begun to combine improved insulation of their houses/apartments with measures like mounting solar cells on the roof to reduce the amount of energy they have to draw off the electric network for heating/cooling or lighting in their houses. Basically I think we can get far by encouraging the use of wind and solar and combining those with measures aimed at increasing the efficient use of energy but even all those measures together will never enable us to replace oil and coal. Unless somebody finds miraculous new energy source and invents room temperature super-conductors in the near future, conventional Nuclear power may prove the only viable way to phase out fossil fuel use in power plants. Nuclear leaves nasty waste products that will be hard to deal with but at least it doesn't cause a rise in sea levels and climate change. The choice we have at the moment is:
It's a choice between bad and worse.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Agreed, of course, but there is something fishy about the article.
FRAUD??? It's true that making hydrogen is not an efficient way to store energy for use later. However, this quote is partly nonsense: "... the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare..." Water is not rare, and is could never be a problem with the production of hydrogen. I doubt that a reputable publication would print nonsense like that.
Not only is something very wrong with the article, but something is not right with the article's source, Physorg.org. Here are some Google ads at the site that seem full of fraud: "Sponsored Links (Ads by Google) -- The Next Oil Boom - See who's pumping cash by making oil for $13.21. And selling for $59. And another: Free Top Energy Profits - 5 Triple-Digit Investment Gains in Today's Alternative Energy Boom." An honest organization would never allow advertising like that, I think.
This article on the same web site seems like the beginning of fraud to me: A Printer that Delivers 1,000 Pages a Minute?. There is NO printer. There is only a poorly edited article in the online (not peer-reviewed, apparently) edition of Applied Physics Letters. The idea is called JeTrix (Jet Tricks) by the supposed developers. The idea is that a printhead that covers the whole sheet of paper can print faster than one that is small.
Recently, Slashdot has been carrying discussions of "scientific breakthroughs" that are in actuality attempts to get money from investors. The Slashdot articles are, in reality, press releases for extremely poor investment "opportunities". Is a Slashdot editor taking money to run these?
The trouble with using accuall batteries in electric cars is the time it takes for a recharge cycle. If your driving from new New York to Detroit and you have to stop to refuel you don't want to have to wait 6 hours at the "gas" station for your car to recharge. While with a hydrogen fuel cell it would only take about as long to refuel as it does now.
Here are some Google ads at the site that seem full of fraud: "Sponsored Links (Ads by Google) -- The Next Oil Boom ... Free Top Energy Profits ..." An honest organization would never allow advertising like that, I think.
If they are using Google to sell ads they don't control the ads. Their site relates to energy issues, so ads for energy-related scams will match in the placement algorithms.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Alcohol is one answer, but it's not exactly perfect either.
Sigh... So we can't use petroleum because it raises the temperature of the earth. We can't use water because some people don't have water. It's posts like this that really seem to confirm to me that "environmentalists" are more about restraining economic activity and prosperity than really caring about the environment.
*The Rio Grande used to bring water to Mexico, which it no longer does do to consumption in southern California - part of the reason in fact that many Mexicans now come north to farm.
I'm an American but lived 10 years in Mexico. Mexicans don't come north because there's no water in Mexico to irrigate. They come north because regardless of water, they can earn 10 times as much in the U.S. That is completely unrelated to water.
The carbon you are releasing is carbon that has already been removed from the atmosphere. It's called 'Carbon-nuetral' for a reason.
Of course this is correct. I'm a huge supporter of biofuels as a renewable energy source (obviously) and I think carbon neutrality is a major selling point. However it's still wrong to say that Hydrogen is a carbon-free energy system when it's refined from a hydrocarbon source - especially a fossil fuel.
Reducing energy yield, yes. Reducing efficiency, no. Hydrogen/electric cars are significantly more efficient than gas ICE cars. So while you have less energy to use when you put the fuel in the vehicle, you use less energy to get the same output from the vehicle using hydrogen.
While burning hydrogen may be slightly more efficient, the energy density is significantly lower resulting in more fuel being burned for the same output. In the end, pound-for-pound, Hydrogen seems to offer no significant advantage.
When you consider the requirements to manufacture and store the Hydrogen, I challenge that the efficiency from energy source to point of use is actually very poor.
People love to shoot down alternative fuels because they aren't able to replace ALL of the vehicles on the road.
Hydrogen is not an alternative fuel. That's the problem. So far, whatever source of energy you're using to make the hydrogen - electricity, natural gas, etc. - can be better used directly instead of pissing away half of it using hydrogen as an intermediate.
I completely agree that there is no single solution, but I do not agree that pure Hydrogen as a primary link in the energy flow is ever going to work. Biofuels are a much safer bet, being renewable, carbon-neutral, 100% compatible with existing infrastructure and closer to the energy source.
=Smidge=
Not so much potable as not seawater. To generate hydrogen in the amounts needed to power transportation you are going to have some serious issues with chlorine and insoluable percipitates.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.