Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'd love to have an alternative - a real, no compromise one - for fuelling my activities without destroying the planet. Really.
But we ain't there yet. Not just because nothing - repeat nothing - comes remotely close to matching the energy density AND cost of fossil fuels. (And this after we've shipped the fuel halfway round the world).
No, the main problem is infrastucture. Be it public charging sockets for your Tesla or Chevy Volt, or H being available at your local gas (sic) station.
The only organisations with enough power - and money - to enable the promising technologies of the future to flourish is central Gov. As usual, they're doing nothing.
So how about it Pres Obama - ditch no-future subsidies for ethanol & Detroit, and use them to build nuclear powerstations (no CO2) and a nationwide H and elec infrastruture. Now that would be change I can believe in.
Thats actually Wrong... I'm not a green freak (as can be attested by a number of my posts and the truth that real environmentalists commit suicide to lessen their impact on the planet...) BUT: I'd love a hydrogen vehicle... I don't care about the carbon being released by burning hydrocarbon fuels, etc... (Heck problaby more Carbondioxide released by brewing and drinking of beer...) I think we need a way to be free of the grasp of forign powers (some not so friendly) on our infastructure. My alternative to Hydrogen vehicles would be CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and even the CNG has home filling units available now. and CNG is something we have plenty of HERE at home (if you're a Non-USA Reader... Pardon the egocentricity of my post.)
Wind and Solar are ok ideas, but they can't be put into my tank...
So I put forward that for national security and protection of our transportation infastructure, that we need to CONTINUE to look for Hydrogen and/or CNG solutions for our transportation needs.
I've told my representative the same, but she replied back with a form letter about how solar is the future, etc... etc.. etc.. Even a solar panel on the roof of my car would probably just run the radio and airconditioning fans...
Just my .02 worth...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
That's an important point but how come these issues are never brought up in discussions about the inefficiencies of conventional fuel? It takes energy to pump oil out of the ground, ship it to a refinery, distill it into gasoline, and transport the fuel to a gas station. With conventional internal combustion engines you get about 25% efficiency from the time you fill up at the gas station. Fuel cells get over twice that.
It is not an energy source - it is an energy storage medium, little different than a battery.
The same as fossil fuels. The only "energy source" is the sun, that moves the wind and powers the waves and makes the plants grow and eventually turn into the mush we call petroleum, and nuclear energy which is finite in terms of ore and has its own refining/purification and infrastructure costs.
The smart bit is if you manage to find a way to harness a huge amount of a non-portable energy source - like sun in the desert or waves in the ocean - energy that is really available in excess, and use THAT energy to make smaller, PORTABLE forms of energy that lets us move about.
Either way our current society will end when petroleum becomes really scarce. There's no way we can maintain a world where everyone has a car. As you pointed out, the inefficiencies just won't allow it. Trains will be coming back in style in a BIG way, and there will HAVE to be changes to our town planning. History teaches us that probably quite a bit of people will have to die before we accept this as a society though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
ditch no-future subsidies for ethanol & Detroit
Unless I'm reading into this wrong, you're missing something...
For Obama's plan for the US to be the leader in alternative fuels we're going to need Detroit. He needs an auto industry that he can lay hands on and manipulate. Otherwise he's going to be relying on the goodwill of other auto makers to meet him half way to his goal and that's probably still going to involve subsidies. If these subsidies are going to exist either way I'd much rather have them here than abroad. By using resources in the US he will have some say and legislation will give him a hand to work with these assets.
We need to draw a line between the oil industry and the auto industry. As long as we treat them as the same we're never going to rise above the muck that keeps alternative fuels beached. It's a hard pill to swallow but it's still there regardless of our outlook on all of it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Exclellent movie, well worth watching. Really makes you want to see the big three go under rather then receive another big subsidy.
Actually, in terms of energy density per kg or per $, batteries are much, much worse than hydrogen. A typical 11V 6000 mAh laptop battery costs about $100 and holds 0.066 kWh of electricity (237,600 joules). Figure electricity costs $0.11 per kWh (average residential price for the U.S.) and your $120 battery is carry 0.726 cents worth of electricity - that's right, you pay a hundred dollars for your laptop battery to carry around less than a penny's worth of electricity. If you use it for 500 cycles (which is the typical life of a Li-ion battery pack), it's carried a whopping $3.63 worth of electricity in its lifetime.
Otherwise I don't disagree with anything specific you say. However, you're making the mistake of thinking that this is about making the cheapest fuel/battery possible. It's not. It's about making an energy storage medium which is a combination of cheap, lightweight, doesn't take much space, is safe, and doesn't destroy the world we live in. The best solution doesn't have to be the best in all those categories, heck it doesn't even have to be the best in any of those categories. The fuel/battery with the best mix will end up the winner. It can be sub-optimal in one or many of the categories as long as the combination is best. That's why petroleum is so ubiquitous - it fails miserably in the environmental category, but is or is near the best in all the others. Current electric vehicles can travel more than twice as far per dollar of energy as ICE vehicles, but the ICE still dominates because of its superior performance in the other factors.
Kendall is apparently one of the few people who can analyze chemical energy storage systems rationally; the sorry truth is that hydrogen GAS - its default phase at the surface of this planet - is one of the least energy-dense materials we have. It's complete lunacy to think it can ever be EFFICIENTLY used as a fuel or source of stored energy.
What Kendall said of the "hydrogen economy" is also sadly true of virtually every other form of stored chemical energy we have or can envision: it takes more energy to create the stored form than can be recovered later as useful work. That is just my own restatement of what Kendall said. This is true of petroleum (though Mother Nature paid down the energy cost for us over millions of years), biodiesel, hydrogen as a fuel, batteries, and all the rest. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal generation are different, since they are not STORED chemical forms of energy, though even they are heavily dependent upon at least one form in order to be fully useful (to modern human society).
From where does the energy come to create the stored chemical fuels in the first place? We might possibly use solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal systems, but if the creation is significantly dependent upon the use of the very fuels created then it's a losing game of slow energy starvation.
If that's going to be the case, then we'd best just start getting comfy with having and using a LOT less energy than we do now: no more street lights, no neon signs, no more endless numbers of "wall warts" sipping power 24/7, no stadiums lit up bright as day in the dead of night, no more computer screens running screensavers every idle minute, no more "security" lights appeasing fears, no more giant metal birds shooting across the sky... and no more two hour commutes in Lincoln Navigators or Hummers.
I've been suggesting for some time that the "petroleum age" has been an energy anomaly, and one that we have not exploited wisely; we still don't have a sustainable presence in space or on another planet, for instance. Once the petroleum runs truly scarce, we will no longer even have the means to establish that sustainable presence; the heavy industry necessary to accomplish it is utterly dependent upon limitless supplies of petroleum.
Wanna know the real reason why we haven't been visited by ET? Poor little ET's species wasn't any more disciplined than we have been, they had their own Peak Oil event on their planet, and got trapped on their little rock for lack of energy to finish the exodus.