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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.
Deleted
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.
Deleted
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.
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
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=
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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?