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Ubiquitous Hydrogen Power Not Getting Any Closer
NewScientist has a story about the "hydrogen economy" that has been resting on the horizon for a decade or more. Despite a great deal of enthusiasm for and research into hydrogen-based power systems, the technology seems just as far away from everyday use as it's always been. A British startup, ITM Power, has recently claimed a breakthrough in lowering production costs by using a nickel catalyst (rather than platinum) with a membrane small enough for home use. But, even if their method is proven and adopted, it still wouldn't address huge energy efficiency problems in the process. "The point was made forcefully by Gary Kendall of the conservation group WWF in a recent report called Plugged In (PDF, pgs. 135-149). Kendall, a chemist who previously spent almost a decade working for ExxonMobil, highlights how the energy losses in the fuel chain - from electrolysis to compression of the hydrogen for use to inefficiencies in the fuel cell itself — mean that only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the fuel does any useful work on the road."
Are fossil fuels an energy source or a way of storing energy? Just a question of timescales.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sure it does. Most of the current hydrogen (in its raw form) is generated from hydrocarbons.
Not a typewriter
We have net positive energy right now with hydrocarbons, and it's not because of perpetual motion. It's because the energy we put into it (drilling, transport, etc.) is less than we get out when we burn it. That's because the majority of the energy to make the stuff was already put into it by the sun with some geothermal processes thrown in.
Thermodynamics applies to the universe as a whole. You can have net energy production or a decrease in entropy if you're limiting the scale (either in time or space) of your solution.
Not a typewriter
The "Hydrogen Economy" was partly the result of a stupid book by Jeremy Rifkin. Read it and note how little it says about where the hydrogen comes from. It was promoted by the Bush/Cheney crowd as a means for diverting attention from electric cars.
Using electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, then liquefying the hydrogen, storing it as a liquid, then recombining it in a car (either in an engine or a fuel cell) is incredibly inefficient. The only advantage over batteries is that it looked like it might provide more range. Battery energy density has improved in the last decade, though. Battery cost is still a problem. But none of the hydrogen cars are cheap. Nor do they really have that much range. Arnold's hydrogen-powered Hummer only has a 60-mile range.
BMW actually built about 100 "hydrogen powered" cars. But they mostly run on gasoline; although they can optionally run on hydrogen, that's mostly for PR purposes. The liquid hydrogen tank has a "use it or lose it feature"; the BMW vehicle will evaporate all its hydrogen in about 10-12 days.
It looks like an idea whose time has passed.
Neither, it takes more energy to make the hydrogen then you can get from it, and it is almost impossible to store...
Hydrogen is just a distraction, not a viable source of... well... anything really...
If hydrogen was so great, we would be all using it already, you can hose it directly into an IC engine and it would run with almost no modification.
The problem with hydrogen has been, and always will be 2 things.
1. Very difficult to produce, it takes a lot of energy, in the form of electricity. (Note: The concept of fuel cells is flawed inherently, because there is no way you can get more electricity out of the hydrogen then you put in to the water to make the hydrogen in the first place. Law of thermodynamics. I propose, we take that energy and store it in... say, batteries to power cars directly... There is no way that is less efficient then going from electricity to hydrogen to electricity.)
2. Very difficult to store. Needs to be kept under extreme pressure, and in some cases needs to be cooled.
I assume you're rejecting the solution presently used by the fossil fuel industry, which is just to dump it directly into the environment at the point of generation, right?
'cause if that's on the table, well, problem solved.
But if you, quite reasonably, reject this solution then it shouldn't be permissible for the fossil fuel industry either. So comparing apples to apples we see that nuclear power is much better off.
--MarkusQ