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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."
we're going to have to keep the rising water levels in the oceans down somehow right? ;)
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.
I read somewhere that some consider hydrogen to be sort of a liquid battery. It costs energy to make it so it's really just a transference mechanism between the source of the energy and your car. The benefit is this, though: That source does not have to be oil. It can be anything. Wind, nuclear, squirrels in hamster wheels, anything. It will not solve our long-term energy problems, but it could help relieve our dependence on foreign oil.
"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.
The hydrogen economy was an idea dreamed up by those with a vested interest to divert attention and money away from more promising and immediate technologies which compete with their own investments. Still, the government got to spend lots of money.
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You don't need clean drinking water for electrolysis.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sugar, like most other forms of easily accessible energy, is dangerous stuff. It only seems harmless since complex mechanisms have evolved to deal with it. Sugar is hydrophilic and will kill microbes that come in contact with it by dehydrating them. It will also destroy cells that contain too much of by osmosis. Your body needs to keep the level of sugar in the bloodstream within very tight limits, or bad things will happen.
(Yeah, I know. Completely offtopic.)
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)
You didn't read the article. Hydrogen is just a 25% efficient battery. We already have much better batteries.
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Considering that 3/4 of the planet is covered with oceans, at some points kilometers deep, I fail to see a "water shortage". There may be a shortage on fresh water, yes, but salt water elctrolyzes just as well (even better, since it contains ions). To boot, you end up with sodium, chloride and some other chemical elements that can be sold as by-product.
The real problem with hydrogen is that it's an inefficient way to store energy. Plus, storage is difficult since it's a very tiny atom (one proton only...) so it tends to seep out of every container; it's highly flammable, and to store it effectively you need either very high pressure, or very cold temperatures (20K). Gasoline really isn't that bad for a fuel...
No, the real boon would be to either store electricity very efficiently, or somehow convert the CO2 in the atmosphere directly into fuel again, using some form of renewable energy like the sun.
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
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.
There is no "electric car with regenerative breaking". There may be a few golf-cart sized vehicles with or small cars with limited ranges, but a practical, mid-sized sedan with acceptable range on electricity only is far from a reality. Also, he seems to forgete that the batteries have to carry themselves, lowering their efficiency. Of course this is true of liquid fuels as well, but their energy density is much higher, so this issue is much less of a concern.
It seems that the title of this article should be "hydrogen infererior to magic batteries".
Whoopdie doo...
And it gets worse. Assume we're not going to use 100% *cough* renewable electricity. Assume your energy comes from a local coal power station. They're about 35% efficient, so your 25% efficient battery actually gives you an overall efficiency of 8.8%. You're taking your scarce energy resource, burning it and making use of less than 10% of the energy in that resource.
Until we are using 100% renewable or magical *cough* fusion you're throwing around 90% of your energy away. Afterwards you're throwing 75% away. Either scenario is just fucking dumb. Our existing energy strategies fit into the du
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And it gets worse. Assume we're not going to use 100% *cough* renewable electricity. Assume your energy comes from a local coal power station. They're about 35% efficient, so your 25% efficient battery actually gives you an overall efficiency of 8.8%. You're taking your scarce energy resource, burning it and making use of less than 10% of the energy in that resource. Exactly how clean do you think that strategy is?
Until we are using 100% renewable or the magical *cough* fusion you're throwing around 90% of your energy away. Afterwards you're throwing 75% away. Either scenario is just fucking dumb.
The existing energy strategies of many countries fit into the dumb category, particularly knowing the resources are generally going to increase in value in the future.
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Call me crazy (or just lazy because I don't feel like looking it up), but doesn't electrolysis happen more readily in salt water?
I seem to recall needing to add salt to the mix whenever we did electrolysis experiments in junior high science classes...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The article seems to have a basic flaw:
"In the market place, hydrogen would have to compete with its own source of energy, i.e. with ("green") electricity from the grid," he says. "For this reason, creating a new energy carrier is a no-win solution. We have to solve an energy problem not an energy carrier problem."
Why do we have to use electricity from the grid to generate hydrogen? Why can't we use floating arrays of photovoltaic cells to crack the water on the ocean? Or we could use large banks of mirrors to power an array of Stirling engines to generate the power to crack the water? It's not as if you need a large voltage to do the job, I think there are many ways of getting the power other than off the grid.
I have to admit I'm rather partial ton the idea of using arrays of mirrors to power a series of stirling engines - apart from possible loss of heat transfer fluid, and wear and tear (which is minimised by the typically low RPM of stirling engines) it should be very cheap power once you amortise the cost of setting up the thing. There are several places in the world (in the USA, South America, Africa and Australia at least) where you have ubiquitous sunshine at beaches where desert (or otherwise low-productivity land) comes down to the beach. The real problems to be solved for Hydrogen as a stored energy source are purely matters of storage and shipping. There are several technologies for renewable energy that could power the cracking with relatively low research costs to get them to a point where they would be usable.
Conventional energy sources have had 100+ years of intense research and development to make it effecient. Engines running on fossil fuels were not as effecient in the beginning as it is now. I am 100% positive that if we by some magic accident (legislation for instance) were _forced_ to use renewable energy sources exclusively, there would be much more brainpower going into this and much more technological advancement, and that we _would_ be able to sustain humanity energy-wise. But it is not going to happen if we keep things in the lab and wait for hydrogen to suddenly becoming an instant economical win.
http://www.whynot.net/ideas/2195
No changes to human behaviour required.
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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
sea levels CAN'T rise.........after all, no matter how much water is in the ocean...SEA LEVEL is SEA LEVEL LOL.
Has anybody seen that documentary movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" In it, they look into hydrogen vehicles and the auto industry's support for it, but get a technician involved to admit that these machines are nowhere near being available to the public. This idea, along with Bush's much vaunted "hydrogen economy", is nothing more than a white elephant -- a strategy for getting the public think that the industry is doing its best, while in actual fact hydrogen powered vehicles are a dead end. They pay lip service to the idea by investing few million a year into their hydrogen research projects, while in the mean time moving along with business as usual.
As the movie points out, electric cars are the real answer: they're simple, cheap, fast, efficient, convenient and low maintenance, so there's absolutely no need for hydrogen to enter the equation. Hydrogen just makes these cars more complicated and less efficient. The only thing holding back the electric car is the will of the industry. For instance, Chevron holds the patents for one of the most promising battery technologies, but they specifically forbid the current manufacturer to sell them for use in private vehicles (only public transport).
I suppose you could argue that the auto manufacturers the oil companies are only acting in the best interests of their stock holders, and that's probably true, but at this rate they might as well be evil.
and yet, it still says idiotic things...
/drinking/ the hydrogen... I don't see that as being a big issue.
As far as the hydrogen goes - it's a good point, it's not a fuel source, it's a transport mechanism, since we don't have a lot of easily collectable hydrogen around - we have to obtain it by expending energy. Hydrogen should be thought more in the lines of electricity than of gas, just that it has different uses.
As for "water running out"? WTF? Clean water may be diminishing, but the amount of water on the earth probably hasn't fluctuated by even 1% over the past billion years. Seing as how we aren't
And anyway, take the hydrogen out of unclean water... Well, when that hydrogen mixes with oxygen, I gurantee you the water will be clean.
34486853790
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Transport batteries ( I think we all agree that is what we are discussing here) require a few things to be practical: low cost of materials and ease of fabrication, high energy density, ease of movement of the material from one vessel to another and finally ease of synthesis and also conversion efficiency. Non-toxicity is important as is the effect on the atmosphere. There are very few materials that can match or better liquid hydrocarbons.
There is one candidate that should at least be considered. Nitrous Oxide. N2O is a saturated fluid under about 750psia at room temperature and it has a density the same as hydrocarbons. This means that vessels to store it are efficient. It is non-toxic although it is an anesthetic gas. It is very safe to handle and compatible with nearly all materials. This means that the devices to handle it are cheap to make. It is a liquid so heat of compression losses for movement are minimized. If it leaks it has a distinct odor and will generally not pose an explosion hazard- at least compared to H2.
N2O is a monopropellant- in other words it will decompose to N2 and O2 when passed over a heated catalyst. It reacts very completely and almost no NOx species are produced- good for pollution. Better still it has a high flame temperature which makes for high thermodynamic efficiency. So a turbogenerator running N2O does not have to have a compressor- it can work at least part of the time off of the storage tank source pressure. Heat from the environment or directed waste heat from the exhaust can help keep the remaining N2O warm and vapor pressure high. N2O has a decent energy density but more importantly you can add any fuel and increase the power release enormously. So you power with N2O when you can and add fuel when you need to accelerate. The power increase is rapid and significant.
It does have problems though- synthesis is complex and not presently at large scale. What would be great is to develop a catalytic system that could take atmospheric N2 and O2 and under proper conditions directly synthesize N2O which could then be stored. Sounds hard to me but you never know. In any case there is no shortage of the precursors. It is however a nasty greenhouse gas. This could be its worst issue- lareg releases of unreacted N2O could be worse than CO2. But at least these are accidental and incidental- not part of everyday operation.
Anyway it is something to ponder. I always thought that a N2O vehicle with ethanol fuel assist sounded pretty good- and what a party car!
Alcohols also need to be made, although there is at least a slight energy gain in the process (stored solar energy in the plants you ferment). Converting a perfectly viable fuel like Alcohol into hydrogen is pointless: You lose energy in the conversion and you still release the carbon into the atmosphere.
You are correct in saying that hydrogen is rarely produced by electrolysis due to energy consumption. Do you know how it's really made? Reforming natural gas - a fossil fuel! Congratulations, you've managed to shift our dependence on fossil fuels from crude oil to natural gas (which is even more scarce) while reducing the overall energy yield from the raw fuel and still not reducing carbon emissions.
Metal hydride storage uses some pretty expensive, toxic and dangerous materials and still does not achieve the hydrogen storage density of more common and safer-to-handle fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel.
It's a trifecta of failure.
=Smidge=
There are new windmills going up in the flat countryside. They're barely making the payments on the initial costs, but they're relatively affordable. It doesn't take huge amounts of wind to make decent amounts of electricity, it's just not as affordable for the companies trying to make a profit. Here's a helpful website, I am not affiliated with http://www.greenenergyohio.org/page.cfm?pageID=108
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?
Actually, I was watching a program last night on the History Channel -- not exactly peer reviewed scientific literature, I realize, but IMO on par with TFA -- which was talking about the viability of wind power in the United States as a renewable energy source.
They pointed out that although wind does take up space, it's not as if the space it "takes up" can't be used for other things. They had some interesting shots of farmland out in the midwest where there were wind generators standing in the middle of the fields. The actual footprint of the generator on the ground is pretty small. Though I suppose its shadow might reduce crop yields in the surrounding acres slightly, one assumes the electricity generated must be enough to make up for this cost to the farmer. Probably the biggest drawback of having them all over your field is that it becomes harder to spray your crops using aircraft, but that doesn't seem like a total deal-breaker.
There's a whole lot of farmland out in the middle part of the country which also has pretty steady winds, and is already being used for what basically amounts to an "industrial" purpose (large scale high-yield farming). If you can show the owners of that land that they can increase their financial yield per acre by adding wind turbines to their fields -- basically giving them another cash crop besides food -- you probably wouldn't have as much of the NIMBYism that plagues wind projects in more residential or coastal areas. (Although I think eventually, those people are just going to have to suck it up and learn to enjoy looking at turbines; 100 years ago, people probably bitched about having a lighthouse mucking up their view, but now they're considered a beautiful addition to the landscape. Surely generators could be the same way in time.)
Although I think in the short term, nuclear (fission, obviously) plants are probably our best bet towards cutting carbon emissions and reducing our dependency on foreign energy sources, wind turbines seem close to being practical. Most of the objections to them seem to be aesthetic, and when it comes down to having your lights go out, or having some sort of power plant in your backyard, wind turbines seem a whole lot nicer than a coal-burner or nuclear facility (or being flooded out for a hydro project).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
But, funnily enough, nobody wants to buy an electric car, despite the fact that they'd probably be cheaper to run. Why? Because the range and performance is unacceptable to most people. And it's the same with a fuel cell vehicle compared with a battery-powered electric car. Sure, the hydrogen might be more expensive than the equivalent power straight from the grid. But the car's range and performance will be much better than the battery car.
Furthermore, he makes the strange assumption that the hydrogen will be coming from room-temperature electrolysis. That's highly unlikely. It's much more likely that hydrogen will be produced using chemical processes on fossil fuels (using geosequestration to dispose of the resulting CO2), by using a nonchemical source of heat (such as a nuclear reactor or solar furnace) in high temperature electrolysis, or through all manner of nifty renewable hydrogen sources that don't involve producing electricity and then doing electrolysis.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
for special applications. In space, it's the ideal rocket fuel, and in fuel cells
for generating both electrical power and drinking water. On earth, hydrogen fuel
cells might make sense in places where batteries don't fit. For example, there is
a company that is working on small hydrogen fuel cells to power lap top computers.
The power density of these promises to be better than Li-Ion batteries (and maybe
even safer given Li-Ion batteries often catch fire).
We just need to keep in mind that hydrogen is NOT a power source. It is a fuel that
needs to be manufactured, better yet, it is a battery that needs to be charged.
I think I'll keep my cultural values just the way they are TYVM. Why don't you go ahead and define some of these "superior" cultural values you speak of.
I would argue that, as a whole (and speaking from a U.S. citizens perspective) our cultural values are about as good as you can get. We as a society give endlessly to the needy around the world. We volunteer and contribute, while all along providing a fairly utopic environment for our children(comparatively speaking).
As for "sharing" resources with you, ok, I MIGHT entertain some of those ideas, but I think you are going WAAAYY out into left-field with your suggestions. The problem with sharing resources like a home is, quite frankly, I don't trust you to take care of it the way I want it taken care of. We (U.S.) used to do this very thing a few years ago. Noone had home gyms in the 60's and 70's, people went to the local YMCA, or local school gym to get their workouts. Where are the YMCAs now? Sure, a few still exist, but have you been to one? I would bet not. They are old, dirty, and, for the most part, undesirable places to be. Why did this happen? Because the 1% of the population who shares and doesn't care ruins it for the other 99%.
"How much money would be saved on social programs if governments gave tax breaks to people that took the disabled, homeless, etc into the free space in their homes rent free, etc?"
You're have got to be kidding!@! Do you have any REAL understanding of the types of individuals who are homeless? I do, and without going into a big long sermon on why people end up in these types of situations(at least here in the U.S.), I'll just say that a fair number of them are there by their own designs.
Are you really advocating inviting those people into your home, to sleep with/near your children? Its absolutely insane to suggest something like this. I'm all for providing shelters on my tax dollar. I'm all for volunteering to help those out who really want to lift themselves out of their situations, but I'll be damned if I am going to invite some drunken lunatic into my home to share a bed with my daughter.
As for the disabled, the challenge with doing as you suggest is that many have "special needs". Are you really suggesting having homes all across the U.S. install ramps and escalators in an effort to help the disabled? Talk about a waste of resources. I wan to help the disabled as much as you, but from a resource perspective, it makes far more sense to (as we do and continue to do in the U.S.) build institutions capables of catering to those with special needs. Then, go out and solicit the public for support.
For those without we have a multitude of solutions available for them (again, at least here in the U.S.). As for other nations, I can't speak to all their problems, but I can say that it most often does not come down to overcrowding and resource use, it has more to do with THEIR social values (10 kids per family with no sustainable income, civil unrest, inability to form a workable government). Now you may WANT to blame all of us for these issues, but when you strip everything away, your arguements crumble into dust.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
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.
. Converting a perfectly viable fuel like Alcohol into hydrogen is pointless: You lose energy in the conversion and you still release the carbon into the atmosphere.
The carbon you are releasing is carbon that has already been removed from the atmosphere. It's called 'Carbon-nuetral' for a reason.
reducing the overall energy yield from the raw fuel and still not reducing carbon emissions.
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.
Metal hydride storage uses some pretty expensive, toxic and dangerous materials and still does not achieve the hydrogen storage density of more common and safer-to-handle fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel.
This is a technical problem awaiting a solution. Same as the efficiency of harvesting hydrogen. Using current technology, it would be impossible to replace 100% of the US's road fleet with hydrogen. But, given 20 years of technology and investment, I wouldn't be surprised to see 30% of the US's road fleet to be replaced by hydrogen.
People love to shoot down alternative fuels because they aren't able to replace ALL of the vehicles on the road. It drives me crazy. There is no singular fuel source that will. Sure Diesel's can use soy and algae, but you'll be hard pressed to get the fuel production high enough to grow the diesel market greatly. Ethanol is a craptastic option (in the US) but it will reduce the consumption of petroleum gasoline. Improvements in the quantity and cleanliness of centralized power production will also help pave the way for pure electric vehicles. No single option will be able to replace 100% of our current petrol based fuel economy, but a combination of all of them will likely replace enough of the market, that the instability in the oil segment will be heavily mitigated.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Since it produces more energy than it consumes it should be easy to produce a full working example. For example a device consisting of a generator that feeds it's output to an electric motor that powers the generator.
"We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy."
davecb5620@gmail.com
All other forms of 'power' are just storage mechanisms or transformations for nuclear power:
Solar: Converting radiation from Nuclear @ Sol
Wind: Nuclear @ Sol -> differential heating -> wind
Hydro: Nuclear @ Sol -> evaporation -> water runs down hill
Geothermal: Nuclear fission within the earth -> hot core -> heats water for geothermal
Biomass: Nuclear @ Sol -> photosynthesis -> energy storage
Fossil Fuels: As Biomass -> burried over long periods -> concentration of stored energy
It's _all_ Nuclear at some point. Once we accept that and work toward building safe reactor designs we'll be able to get on with "progress" without destroying the environment.
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here's a really thorough look at crunching the numbers on a real hydrogen economy
It's true that we need water to produce Hydrogen, and that it's inefficient, and that using salty sea water may be even more inefficient, but if we have hundreds of thousands of cars spewing out steam instead of CO/CO2, wouldn't that help SOLVE the water scarcity problem? Isn't all that steam going to come down as rain. And since we've transorted it from the coast inland, isn't it more likely to come down over land? Someone will probably chime in with a scathing reply about it not being enought water to be to make a difference, but isn't that what we though about oil-based combustion products.
So basically, you're suggesting taking the energy that the sun currently transfers into the oceans? Because.... the ocean doesn't really need that heat energy anyway, and it couldn't possibly be environmentally catastrophic if done on a massive scale? No thanks. Let's stick to nuclear.
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=
"if it takes a lot of energy to create the water used to create the energy, you're headed for trouble."
And the whole point of a hydrogen carrier for energy is that there is no lack whatsoever of energy; there's a lack of energy where it's useful and an overabundance of energy where it isnt.
Coincidentally, water has the exact same problem; there's a whole bunch of it where you dont particularly need it and not enough where you do.
So put water pipeline from the atlantic to the middle of sahara, drive hydrogen plants with solar concentrator driven turbines, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, hand out clean water to the thirsty, combine the hydrogen gas with nitrogen from the air, and pipe ammonia back. Both problems solved at once. (plus ammonia is vastly simpler to transport than hydrogen, and can be used in fuelcells).
Yeah I know, think of how catastrophic it would be to not have to deal with natures natural way of cooling down the oceans. You know, hurricanes.
/Wait for troll to say they're glad I'm not in charge in 3...2...
In all fairness, smart people would need to be in charge to get something like that just right and not overdone, and smart people in charge are a rare commodity.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
Huh? How about a source on this, because I am not buying it. People in hunter/gatherer societies basically spend all their waking hours providing for their basic needs.
It's the theory of the original affluent society.
Modern hunter-gatherer societies generally only spend about 3-5 hours per day in search of food.
Of course, this assumes a rather small, stable, mobile population. If every person on earth today decided to drop what they're doing and go forage the countryside for food, we'd pick the earth clean by the end of the day.
Agriculture allowed a large surplus in food, which in turn created tremendous growth in population, which allowed for the specialization of labor. In a hunter-gatherer society, people generally take the food that they need for the day, and then they're done, they spend the rest of the day in leisure, and start over with the hunting and gathering the next day. They get enough food to maintain their lifestyle, but the system doesn't lend itself to creating a large food surplus that would support the creation of specialized labor.
Also contributing to the specialization of labor was the sedentary lifestyle that the agricultural revolution would bring. It's hard to create industry when your people are constantly on the move.
I'm not saying we should all just drop what we're doing and become hunter-gatherers. There are indeed huge advantages to agricultural society, but a lot of our views of hunter-gatherer societies are based on the cultural myth that looks down upon them as what basically amounts to savages making a poor choice for their society, and wouldn't-it-be-great-if-we-civilized-them, or else they're just taking up space on land that could be developed for agricultural/industrial society.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
It would take about 2 million square km of cheap amorphous solar cell to give every man, woman, and child expected to be living worldwide at the population peak in 2060ish as much electrical power as people in the US use per capita now. We can treat this as a reasonable limit case for how much we need.
The earth has a surface area of around 510 million square km.
We'd preferentially want to use equatorial waters, which limit you to about 200 million square km, but that's still only using about 1% of the total ocean surface area.
Those solar cells tend to have a similar reflectance/absorbed as heat ratio as ocean water; that heat will end up slightly more preferentially in the air rather than in the water, but that's not a huge effect. Only about 10% of the total solar energy will come out in electricity and be "lost" compared to water's thermal absorbtion.
The total impact here is not negligible but is pretty minor. We shouldn't ignore climatic issues, but they are likely to be small, and in the opposite direction from global warming's impact.
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.
One of my papers in college was on the feasability of distributed electricity generation and I came to 3 primary conclusions:
1) Centralized energy generation is usually cleaner and more efficient
2) The price of silicone limits the adaptation of building integrated solar arrays (solar shingles for instance)
3) Distributed electricity generation will not likely replace the need for centralized energy generation, but it can reduce the need for MORE centralized energy generation as demand grows.
There have since been some great advances in photo voltaic cells that have increased efficiency and decreased silicon requirements. And with government/industry incentives, replacing an ageing roof with a new photovoltaic roof is getting competetive against a standard replacement roof.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfish!
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
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.
You seem to be missing the two fundamental points of a hydrogen economy.
1) A hydrogen economy is not bound to a specific liquid fuel. Ultimately, a hydrogen economy is an electric one. Not many are predicting "peak electricity" any time soon.
2) A hydrogen economy is very efficient. That is, to say, electric vehicles (which is what hydrogen-fuelled vehicles are) can easily recover energy, electric engines are very efficient, fuel cells are up to ~70% efficient, electrolysis of water is ~90% efficient, etc.
Of course, in the mean time, until thermolysis of water (say, from nuclear power) or farmed hydrogen (say, from genetically engineered bacteria) is available, producing the hydrogen is a somewhat wasteful stage that's reliant on natural gas. Only "somewhat", however. Natural gas reforming produces H2 and CO. CO can be burned for heat. As a result, apart from incomplete combustion, all of the energy of the natural gas either goes to H2 or heat. Heat can be used to do work. Indirectly (subject to carnot cycle losses), it can generate power. More usefully, however, is it can heat processes that need heat inputs -- industry or even home water/house heating. In such a case, you only "lose" a tiny amount of the natural gas's energy.
Of course, even if you consider all of non-H2 energy wasted, as this article does, you're left with the following possibilities:
1) 30% efficiency on your typical ICE gasoline engine.
OR
2) 25% efficiency on your typical natural-gas derrived hydrogen engine, which is automatically a "hybrid" and can thus save power by regenerative braking. And, since it uses natural gas for the hydrogen, which is currently more available than oil, it reduces stress on the oil market. If natural gas prices rise too much, pressure on natural gas markets can be allieviated by switching from natural gas power plants to coal/nuclear (as happened with the oil-driven power plants in the 70s).
Is the second option really that bad -- present day? Especially with some of the new high-density hydrogen storage systems hitting the market? I think not.
As an aside, I ran into an interesting proposal for hydrogen storage that costs 1/3 as much as conventional storage tanks: commercial-scale wind turbines. They're huge hollow shafts. The extra cost to make the turbine able to hold hydrogen is something like 85k$, and an equivalent-sized tank costs something like 250k$.
If a tree falls in the forest and no engineer observes it, does it have a drag coefficient?
TFA fails to see the big picture and that compatative cost is not the only value.
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Heres how it could be made to work.
Liquid hydrogen is the coolant for superconducting wires for your power grid.
These reduce the energy lost between power plant and the home.
Seeing as you are pumping hydrogen around anyway... you may as well go into the distribution business.
A quick google found these links
http://www.supercables.com/News_and_links/press%2
http://scientificamerican.com/print_version.cfm?a
and
http://www.conectus.org/xxtechnology.html
Has some cool pictures
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Alcohol is one answer, but it's not exactly perfect either.
That's what I keep telling my friend Mr. Jack Daniels.
Since when is water the only source of hydrogen? It makes up 75% of the mass of the known universe. It can be produced by plankton in large quantities, and countless means other than extraction from water. This argument is like saying that sand is a precious item, since refining cement sidewalks back into sand is expensive.
Hydrogen is just an energy transportation system, not an energy generation system. And it is a very bad one at that. Batteries (even curfrent batteries, with large advancements coming every year) are almost perfect for transporting energy. So hydrogen is useless, I agree with the article on that. But the water scarcity claim is bogus. Not only there's not a shortage of water in the world, there's not even a shortage of fresh water or clean water (and for generating hydrogen, any relatively clean water is just about the same). It is just that in some areas there's overpopulation and water is not expensive enough to be worth the transport cost. But in areas such as most of South America there's enough fresh water to source the whole planet several times over. And in the Antartica there's enough water for all our possible needs for eons. So water will never be scarce. It might become more expensive as it needs to be transported, but oil is already in that situation and it is not THAT expensive.