Slashdot Mirror
Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut
rgarbacz writes "The US will stop funding research on automotive fuel cells and redirect the work towards stationary plants, because of slow progress on the research. Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration's budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly. The industry and the National Hydrogen Association criticized the decision and declared their intention to fight for funding. Dr. Chu also announced that funding for a coal gasification pilot project, cut by the Bush administration, will be reinstated. The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that, Dr. Chu said."
I mean... you stick them in the ground, and they stay there. It's really pretty consistent. If your tree walks away, it's probably not a tree. I don't know how much funding this needs, but if it is more than $0, it's too much.
I'm pro biofuels, but how are they going to know what technology will pan out?
And the stationary plants are going to have to be farmed and converted into fuel and that fuel will have to be distributed.
% If I had a ( for every dollar wasted on fuel cells, what would I have?
Kneel Before Christ!
Its a new team in town, with a different set of friends that need to be 'greased'.
Its just typical ( shortsighted ) politics at work here. Nothing new.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's hard, so let's forget it.
Typical politician thought.
Gee, let's just ignore a field of research that could almost totally eliminate CO2 emissions from transportation. That's how we get breakthroughs, right?
bad, rgarbacz, very bad.
I thought the real problem was creating the hydrogen in the first place. Not to mention the problem of compressing it to a point that it had a reasonable amount of energy per unit of volume.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that current methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells was only slightly more intelligent than producing ethanol from corn.
On a qualitative argument they were a middle ground between current gas engines and electric engines. Slightly more energy efficient and less emissions but still holding a (more) explosive and volatile fuel on board. Electrical systems offer more benefits (they in general are more energy efficient) and have less logistical hurdles. There seemed like there was little reason to go the way of hydrogen. Basically they were an alternative, and thus received some initial funding. It just wasn't a very good alternative. Time to let it die
When Bush/Cheney took office in Feb 2001, it was only a month or so before they created the hydrogen program and then axed the hybrid vehicle program.
I guess since both Obama and McCain were involved in all the hydrogen hype there wasn't anyone cracking jokes about hydrogen like there was Bush putting down hybrids in the campaigning upto the 2000 election*.
Still good to see this finally happening. I wonder if the Governator is still backing that Hydrogen Super Highway to the tune of $200 million out in California?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's about time this was submarined. I don't know what kind of craziness has led to the obsession with fuel cells. Not only is there no hydrogen distribution infrastructure of any kind, but fuel cells still haven't gotten out of the spaceship era.
We'll be driving cars on Mr. Fusion power before we drive them on fuel cells, unless someone gets fuel cells that use something other than hydrogen working in a way that's suitable for automotive use.
Hydrogen-powered cells for autos are a pointless waste of time with out a LOT of pre-requisite technologies. Generating the Hydrogen is an energy-wasting PITA or involves oil. Storing it in a form that even comes close to the energy density of gasoline is extremely difficult. Compressing the Hydrogen is energy-intensive. (CNG gets a LOT more energy out of the same volume of compressed gas at an identical pressure, so NG actually makes sense to compress.)
There are a LOT of things we can do to reduce pollution before we have so much spare electricity lying around that we can crack and store Hydrogen in amounts large enough to feasibly power a car.
SirWired
The article says transporting hydrogen is "a big challenge". Well then don't transport it. All you need to generate it is water and electricity, which are both pretty easy to transport. What they need to work on is a cheaper way to generate electricity.
From the article
While the budget request for the Energy Department is $26.4 billion, an increase of less than 1 percent, actual spending will actually be far higher because some projects will be financed by the economic stimulus package,...
It would be nice if they actually told us how much higher because once you subtract out "$6.4 billion for nuclear weapons and $4.4 billion for naval reactors, nuclear nonproliferation activity and safe storage of surplus plutonium" you're only left with 15.6 billion - which is the direct cost of only a month and a half in Iraq.
...if you think it's a tree but it gets up and walks away, then it probably Ent.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that"
Hydrogen doesn't have the density we need and it's difficult to move.
Batteries. Focus on batteries, industrial solar thermal, and Nuclear.
That can solve are energy needs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The hydrogen economy is a bit screwy anyway. While we already know very well how to run a car on methane, how to distribute and store methane (most homes get it through a pipeline already), and even how to retrofit existing cars for methane, AND how to synthesize methane given a good energy source, we've been throwing money down a hole for the "hydrogen economy".
That is, for a fuel we don't know how to store without it escaping and making the tank brittle in the process, that has additional hazards because it burns invisibly. Meanwhile, we're trying to come up with fuel cells to use it. It's a perfect recipe for looking like you care but delaying an actual solution for as long as possible.
Fuel cells have never been close to a workable solution. Batteries and super capacitors are much better and available right now. The oil companies wanted it so they would have something to sell us when fossil fuels got phased out. Instead the power companies will get all the business when people buy plugin hybrids.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Another part of being green is fixing all the screwed up horrible polluting technology that isn't likely to go away for decades and decades!
Inventing new "green" stuff is nice, but sometimes fixing the old extremely common stuff makes a bigger difference!
More efficient cars, and less polluting coal plants? Sign me up!
[pulls out beloved pipedream list from pocket, crosses something off with a small, chewed-up #2 pencil, and returns the wrinkled scrap of paper to pocket]
Honda and Mazda had done research in using hydrogen to replace gasoline in a more or less normal internal combustion engine . While straight forward, producing and storing the hydrogen is incredibly wasteful of energy... as well as the problems of having a 15000 psi storage tank in an accident.
BMW took the cake, though, with their hydrogen powered 7 series. It maintained its fuel in liquid form... that involves maintaining the tank at -252.87 degrees C or -423.17 degrees F. Real energy efficient, I'm sure.
Supposedly, the insulation on the tank was such that an ice cube placed inside would take 16 years to melt when the tank was maintained at room temperature
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
You're wrong: storage of H2 under decent conditions (i.e. at room temperature and not a HUMUNGOUS pressure) is EXTREMELY difficult. The energy density of H2 is very small.
I question Chu's objective logic.
The U.S. sits between 2 of the largest sources of Hydrogen on this planet. Dangerous to ship? How about shipping it as Water? Then at the "Filling Station" Use Solar, and or Wind Electricity to separate the Hydrogen out. This is already being done in Norway.
Batteries are a better idea then everyone using a local fuel cell. The only reason there was much behind the so called "hydrogen economy" was because companies like the idea of selling fuel of some sort.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
In this case "transport" refers to moving it around as an energy source for your car. It's more difficult than it sounds, as a usable size supply of Hydrogen must be compressed to far higher pressures than CNG to perform the same task. (CNG has far higher energy densities, even if a ICE is less efficient than an electric motor.)
SirWired
It's about time this was submarined. I don't know what kind of craziness has led to the obsession with fuel cells. Not only is there no hydrogen distribution infrastructure of any kind, but fuel cells still haven't gotten out of the spaceship era.
Look around. We distribute liquid fuels all over the place today.
Hydrogen cells make a lot more sense than batteries do for cars, because they can be refueled instantly instead of having a delay.
And as for "spaceship stage", I guess you think the highways of today are futuristic - the FCX Clarity uses fuel cells. Yes that's a limited trial but those are real production cars o n the road. They'd be a lot LESS futuristic if people would spend more money developing them.
The future needs a mix of traditional batteries and fuel cells for the same reasons the world of today does. You can't just drop one and put all your research eggs in one basket.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, you've now generated a bazillion liters of H2 at the gas station next door. How do you plan to haul it around in your car?
SirWired
You said:
Real energy efficient, I'm sure.
Immediately after you said:
Supposedly, the insulation on the tank was such that an ice cube placed inside would take 16 years to melt when the tank was maintained at room temperature
So what's so funny? It seems like in fact yes, it's damn energy efficient.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why so much subsidies around solar and other renewable technologies then - the same theory applies. It's mainly the energy industry doing the research, they have a lot of funds to apply to it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that current methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells was only slightly more intelligent than producing ethanol from corn.
Uh, what? A fish without a bicycle? Look, ethanol from corn is stupid because it's not very energy positive and people eat corn, and corn depletes the soil unless you grow it in a guild with squash and beans, or at least rotate your crops. We don't even use crop rotation any more in big agribusiness; it's basically hydroponics in a soil medium. The corn is fertilized with, guess what, oil. Meanwhile, hydrogen is stupid because it's difficult to store and transport and you have to use [comparatively] exotic alloys with it because of problems with hydrogen embrittlement... oh, and fuel cells are energy-intensive and toxic to make, and they wear out and have to be replenished like everything else. However, we currently have a lot of power going to waste at night and we could be making hydrogen with it. If we're currently wasting it, and we start using it for Hydrogen, then even if it's only 40% efficient we're still vastly better off than we are today.
However, a better plan than either would be to grow craploads of algae in the desert, and use our extra power to run arc lamps to provide light at night to extend the photoperiod and thus speed up the growth cycle. The emissions from the power plants can be piped through algae beds and up to 80% of the CO2 captured for reuse. The algae can be used to make biodiesel and butanol, both of which can be burned in current vehicles, transported in the current trucks, and stored and pumped with the existing tanks and pumps.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How do you plan to haul it around in your car?
It seems like a few car companies have already answered that.
Gee dude, the Norway link was right in the main post you replied to... perhaps you should have read a little further before you fired off a response. If Obama says Hydrogen is evil, it must be evil I supposed even if there are working solutions today... Better to run off chasing the new shiny thing!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had more hope that Chu would back nuclear power. If they don't start building loads of plants rather quickly, then they have to start building more coal plants, THERE IS NO OTHER VIABLE SOLUTION CURRENTLY AVAILABLE! Either build or face power disruptions, alternatives are not ready yet, or in the case of wind, would require building lots of new transmission lines that would drive up the cost.
People like Obama who basically hate capitalism and individual liberty realized that hydrogen fuel cells are too efficient to allow to freely come to the market. They would require too much electricity and they realize that a bunch of windfarms wouldn't be able to produce it. The only way Hydrogen would work is if we built a lot more nuclear power plants (like France) and that would simply generate way too much cheap and clean energy and would fly in the face of the democrat and big government pet projects like Wind, Solar, and Biofuels. This is why Hydrogen is taking the back seat now with the government and with environmentalists in general.
~ now you know
Hydrogen is generally cracked from natural gas. This is much more intelligent than using the natural gas to produce ammonium nitrate to feed crops that will, when digested by yeast to produce ethanol, yield a little less energy than was contained in the natural gas to begin with. (albeit in a form that is much, much tastier.)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
As far as I know, hydrogen fuel was always really an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in and of itself. While it may be the most common element in the universe, free H2 isn't especially abundant on Earth. If you could store it well, it would allow electric vehicles to have the same convenience as petroleum-powered vehicles.
The biggest problems with pure electric cars are that the range is limited and that you can't refill it in a matter of minutes. A pure battery-EV doesn't really allow any kind of long-distance road trip. This is the appeal of plug-in hybrids, it gives you range and easy refilling capability while potentially allowing zero-emissions driving during normal city driving/commuting. Although a hydrogen energy storage system would require new infrastructure, it would serve as a great long-term solution that fits with most peoples lifestyles.
As with any kind of EV, the 'green-ness' depends on the original source of the power. Even from fossil fuels it would probably be slightly better, since large fixed plants are more efficient and cleaner, but definitely better with wind/solar/nuclear/geothermal/whatever.
Note though, that the requirement for all of this is efficient, easy and safe storage, which has been going nowhere with plenty of funding. I think biofuels from non-food crops on non-food-producing land (i.e. not corn ethanol) are a more feasible long term solution, either with or without plug-in hybrid vehicles.
...require new infrastructure for all modes of operation (versus EVs which only need new infrastructure for long trips)
There was an engineer on the west coast who electrified his Honda CRX. His solution for long trips -- hitch a little cart on the back with a generator. You could even fuel these with propane bottles, and so avoid the whole petroleum infrastructure. Or, you could use the petroleum infrastructure, but use it to distribute biofuels for the generator modules.
If a Bushie did this, I think I'd be all like "grarwbrblarblab rl! I can't believe glrbalrbalg, stupid politicians grblbr ... oil asgerbglajbaeog"
But somehow, the fact the Dr. Chu is saying makes me feel OK with it. Definitely hypocritical of me, but I feel I'd rather have the wrong decision made for the right reasons than the right decision made for the wrong ones. Maybe because the wrong reasons always screws things up in the end.
I read an interesting writeup in a magazine that showed hydrogen production, storage, and distribution actually had a larger carbon footprint than petroleum based fuels. I unfortunately can't cite a source.
Another interesting statistic was that fueling all of the cars currently on the road in the US would require covering everything but the state of Florida in corn crops.
Ethanol fueled vehicles don't exactly work when you need to drive through the corn.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
But I notice that neither of those are cars that are in wide release or with the actual purchase price available (I'm sure the $600/month lease isn't break-even, its still an R&D project).
While it's certainly possible to store hydrogen, its certainly not cheap. I remember for a project I was involved in a couple of years ago, a DOT approved storage vessel that really would have been too small for a production vehicle was ~$10k. Surely this could be brought down some, but I can't see any way it could be brought down to the point of not being one of the main cost drivers.
Combine that with conversion inefficiencies (compared to batteries/capacitors) and the need for a completely new infrastructure (compared to biofuels) make think this is probably the right choice. EVs and biofuels are much closer to achieving cost-effective solutions, and it seems like a reasonable and responsible move. Plug-in hybrids using biofuels for range extension and quick refueling seem to me to be a lot more effective than hydrogen.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't think this will completely kill fuel-cell research, if car companies are still interested they'll keep going on it. However shifting funding to something showing more signs of progress sounds like a responsible use of our tax dollars. And I'm not an Obama-ite, I just happen to think this particular decision is correct.
can store it as acid? then react it with some cheap metal(or something else that gives hydrogen when reacted with HCl)?
Isn't the *main* problem that all this shit gets powered by big oil/gas power-stations? Until countries (in this case the US) start going green (nuclear), how to best store the energy isn't that important.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
because he and his type find it politically expedient to vilify the oil industry.
Doing so to the solar industry, regardless of how true, has no political mileage.
Remember, Obama has advisers whose entire job is to determine how to release information and in what form. They recently released information that their studies shows the public in general cannot wrap its mind around the three trillion dollar budget but has an easier time understanding sixteen billion in savings. In other words, they are playing with public ignorance, fears, and jealousy, to do what they want. It is a brilliant show of marketing.
On a side note, with no support for nuclear what is going to be our base load supplier of electricity?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All you need to do is combine the hydrogen with carbon, to form long chain molecules. That changes the hydrogen into a liquid that can be easily distributed and burned in existing automobile engines without any modification.
The real issue we have with electricity is storage. Hydrogen was never, and will never be, a fuel source, rather it is an energy transportation medium. What I mean is that in order to have hydrogen you need to get it from some medium, such as water or another compound. Since you need to do electrolysis to extract Hydrogen from water, you might as well look into skipping the step and using is straight. This reminds me of using natural gas to extract oil, as another energy wasting endeavour, but that is another story.
Now the issue is the storage of electricity, which currently has Lithium based batteries as the best method. The ideal solution, will probably be a super capacitor based system, since you will get the advantages of charge time and reduction of chemicals. Storing Hydrogen has one set of issues, which is compounded by the issues of making it safe in an accident.
Having said all this, batteries currently fail in very cold climates, and this is a place where Hydrogen could find its place. Given that this suddenly reduces the potential market for Hydrogen based vehicles, it is probably money better spent to find a solution to getting an electric vehicle starting at -30C. Heck, given the advantages for Moon and Mars missions, maybe we could even get NASA involved. Another advantage with electric vehicles, is that electricity can be produced by plenty of different sources and is easily transported (even if there is some loss).
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...a joke. It's actually a farce. Hydrogen is a form of energy storage, not production. Currently the simplest way to produce it is with methane - natural gas, and considering that fossil fuels are in decline ramping up hydrogren production is a pretty stupid idea. Not to mention the cost of retrofitting the entire world economy, which is frankly impossible in the current climate. Hydrogen is also damned near impossible to store as the atoms can easily pass through pretty much everything. Google "Hindenburg" for other undesirable hydrogen side-effects.
In short, hydrogen is going nowhere. It may have a few specialised uses in the future, but that's about it. The thing is, we've likely passed the Hubbert peak for oil production - and we need feasible, available solutions now. The only real, viable, proven and quickyl deployable alternative to cars that we have now is public transport. Like it or lump it. We should invest what we resources we have in that that direction asap... If you hate the idea of using a train, consider it a stopgap solution until we can start large production of electric cars later once the economy is healthy and we've adjusted to the post oil paradigm.
It gets worse. Fuel cells use exotic metals (platinum namely).
That may be fine for a few experimental operations, but what happens when we try to put those in *millions* of vehicles? The price would quickly be impractical / unaffordable.
Yes, you would eventually get to a sustainable level for recycling, but platinum would take a very very long time to get to that level, platinum is just plain rare.
(Bad form to reply to myself, but)
I know about catalytic converters. Fuel cells require more units and more of the material by far than any converter from everything I have read, so it is not fully comparable.
I actually don't mind him killing the funding - I was a far greater fan of Mcain's idea for a battery X-Prize style competition with a prize awarded by the government. That would be a far superior use of government funds to help direct private R&D without being forceful... I would rather the government cut funding dollars to many other programs too.
You have a lot of good points about biofuel I still think biofuels are a stop-gap measure because an all electric powertrain is so much better in many ways, and fundamentally you still get pollution and a lot of mechanical parts that have to be replaced over time compared to an electric sysrem. It may be expensive to store hydrogen but gas stations today and pretty expensive to set up as well, I'm not even sure there's an order of magnitude difference. I know if I had a few million dollars (probably much more in reality) I'd invest in a string of hydrogen stations across the U.S. and make the first transcontinental drive....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
EOM
last I checked, fuel cells can run off of things other than pure hydrogen. Methanol comes to mind. People are looking at diesel (military at JP8) but sulfur is the big killer there. New low sulfur diesel may just be ok in a fuel cell. Either way, the idea that you need compressed hydrogen is a bit off.
Well, part of the "summer driving season" prices are due to increased demand from more individuals and families taking long car trips on vacations (basic econ: fixed supply + increase in demand => higher prices). Another big difference in costs is that they tend to use different formulations and additives in the summer. Note that the change-over starts happening in May which just might explain the recent price increase you've been seeing. See if your location corresponds to the areas covered by the regulation. Note that even if you aren't you may still be obtaining gas from a refinery in a covered area, which only produces summer RFG for efficiency.
On the other hand, if you'd tried to argue that the gasoline refiners are deliberately shutting down refineries to decrease supplies and increase prices, you might be able to find some supporting evidence.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Another poster pointed it out up above a little in the thread. It's called a generator trailer for long trips. Short trips (we'll call it 100 miles or less) are now adequately covered with existing battery tech, thousands of home built EV rides have proven this. And AC Propulsion had an interesting variation on the genny trailer, it attached in two points and then made an inline rigid "modular hybrid" that was easy to drive with and didn't have any of the "backing up" problems that some people might have with conventional trailers. Their high performance electric car + the genny trailer still fit inside a normal parking space as well, and gave the electric car an unlimited range using conventional fuels when it was really needed, just like any other normal car.
The main reason we don't have electric vehicles right now is that it is seriously disruptive technology that really screws with and threatens most established motor vehicle manufacturers and their kissing cuzzins in the oil industry. They have fought it severely and want to keep pushing overly complicated and overly expensive "hybrids", and keep throwing one off "concept cars" at the public, because they can make more "per unit" and they make more with repairs and faster replacements with the type of vehicles they make and sell now.
EVs are so simple and robust in design compared to most gasoline cars that built in quantity they can be cheap and last easily twice as long without major repairs. Even with today's average kilowatt hour rates, it is conceivable to only have around a 2-3 cents a mile driving cost. The savings right there might pay for your insurance and eventual battery pack replacement, and then some. think about how easy it will be every 5 or ten years to "upgrade" by just getting a new battery pack that will be more powerful and lighter, etc. You won't *need* to buy a new car near as often.
Either way, the Chinese and Indian builders will win here with really cheap and "good enough" electric cars for the masses, not those lame "start at 50 grand and go up from there" models you read about. They are going to have affordable electric cars out sooner than most other nations efforts, and will be able to stomp on prices. The only other company in the running now (of the majors) for real electric vehicles is Renault/Nissan with their tie in to the Better Place project, which is developing the whole EV stack, vehicles plus charging stations plus battery pack swapout stations. They are planning on using the subsidized cellphone and plan model for this. You'll get the vehicle cheaper upfront, and buy the electricity from them with some dedicated charging card. All the other electric vehicle makers are niche and boutique makers, all with high prices and very limited production runs, like Tesla.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fuel cells generally rely on a platinum group alloy for the catalyst... cheap stuff indeed and not at all scarce. I, for one, can't see the slightest problem. I mean at about $1,000,000+ a car it's a bargain. I'll take two.
The problem with growing algae in the desert is water. Evaporative losses are non-trivial.
Yep. Obama's Energy Secretary pick, Steven Chu, is a Nobel prizewinner. While I think picking Geithner was a mistake because he was too beholden to a failed financial system, Chu's strong scientific background is leading to energy decisions based on sound scientific principles as opposed to lobbying and politics. If Obama fired Geithner and replaced him with Paul Krugman, there might actually be hope for a proper housecleaning in the financial industry, too.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
And the stationary plants are going to have to be farmed and converted into fuel and that fuel will have to be distributed.
Doing what we know how to do.
Using infrastructure that is already in place.
The motor coach built on a bus chassis gets 5 mpg - and a cruising range of 1,000 miles on a single 200 gallon tank.
It can be out exploring the Bad Lands for a month and the only support it will require is a single gas station on the perimeter.
It might not even need a paved road.
If you look only at mpg - the environmental impact seems dreadful. Pull back a bit and the picture is not so clear.
Gasoline and diesel are really quite remarkable fuels. It's taken 100 years to find a plausible alternative for the suburban commuter car -
and that is - or at least would seem to be - the easiest problem to define and solve.
The problem with growing algae in the desert is water. Evaporative losses are non-trivial.
The easiest way to solve this problem is to tent the ponds. I envision inflated, toroidal ponds. You could run a drip line and a gutter under the highest point (in a circle of course) and have it be a solar distiller at the same time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wasting money on this was nonsense. Hydrogen is much too difficult to handle, takes far too much energy to compress it to get not nearly enough energy in high pressure vessels that are themselves an additional hazard. Hydrogen brittles the metals used for the containers to store it. Hydrogen would accumulate in corners of garages and ignite at the slightest provocation. Hydrogen made from fossil fuels is a huge mistake, and hydrogen made from electrolysis is a huge waste of energy. Fergedaboudit. Chase something else. Better batteries. railway systems to carry cars. Anything but hydrogen.
Hydrogen for cars mainly looked promising because the alternative non-carbon fuel was batteries, which ten years ago were nowhere close to the required performance. Then the explosion in mobile consumer electronics like laptops and cellphones brought a lot of battery research which resulted in high energy density Li-ion batteries and more recently fast-charging batteries that can be charged in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Basically developments in battery technology during the last decade has pretty much made hydrogen for automotive purposes obsolete before it was ready. There are still some issues with batteries ( mainly their high price compared to present petroleum prices) but the more recent battery generations are up to the job, and if you look at stuff that is at the engineering stage and will likely be commercialized in the near future, hydrogen seems to be a solution looking for a problem. In my opinion that application will likely be aviation where liquid hydrogen can offer an unbeatable energy/weight ratio ( in fact the highest possible of all chemical fuels ). Of course at the moment liquid hydrogen is far too expensive to produce in a CO2 neutral manner as compared to jet fuel, but that may change as Oil reserves dwindle.
Regardless of why the funds were redirected, it was the right thing to do anyway. Why make the difficult task of inventing cost-effective fuel cells even more difficult by mandating that the system is for automobiles? A mobile system adds to the difficulties: crash-proof hydrogen storage, maintenance, consumer-based fueling infrastructure, size and weight of the system, etc.
Stationary systems (which already exist commercially in limited numbers) are the common-sense first step. Millions of homes and businesses are heated by fuel oil, and I would welcome a fuel cell replacement for those filthy and un-green furnaces. And those fuel cell systems have very few constraints for size or weight. They could be fueled and serviced by the same infrastructure used by the heating oil and propane industry, and down the road, perhaps a hydrogen delivery system similar to residential and commercial natural gas could be developed.
Right off the bat, as in other things, one size doesn't fit everyone. With that said, the "problem" with the attached generator trailer doesn't exist, people in suburbia would park it in their garage (where it can act as an emergency home generator, something people might want anyway) and folks in town don't even have to buy them, they could be *rented* for the few times a year when they go to the grandparents, etc.
A hundred mile range pure EV is good enough for millions of drivers today, they just don't drive more than that per day. I have read average commute in the US is 33 miles. And being a pure EV, it doesn't have to tote around the ICE and fuel tank, a significant weight reduction, meaning the battery bank is now a more normal load and can be larger than the battery bank in a plug in hybrid, and the vehicle will still weigh less. And when they do need that ICE, the generator trailer, being on its own axle it is easier to tow than carry. Towing occasional decent weight is always easier than carrying, that extra axle works.
Really, there's very little downside to it and it isn't a kludge, it's a remarkably workable and common sense solution.
Cramming an ICE AND the electric drive train AND the batteries AND the liquid fuel tank all in something that is supposed to be light weight is the big kludge. It also makes the vehicle *twice* as expensive as it needs to be, and *significantly* heavier once you start talking about a plug in hybrid with even 40 miles range, let alone a hundred. Most of the time, for most people, they won't be using the generator so it wouldn't be attached, so as a purchase option or once in awhile special trip rental, there's little downside to it. With a hybrid, you are already buying the whole package anyway, jso if you split that up, with the generator part on a trailer instead of built in, you don't HAVE to haul it with you all the time.
If the range you need to drive daily is just too close to "batteries flat" stage, you don't need an electric then, just get a normal gas or diesel and be done with it (my datsun diesel pickup gets 40 mpg!)
My next ride, a project vehicle, will be electric (but I will retain the diesel, I like choice), probably build one of the chevy s-10 conversion kits, they keep getting cheaper.
We don't even use crop rotation any more in big agribusiness; it's basically hydroponics in a soil medium.
While it's fun to toss out the "big agribusiness" card, crop rotation isn't such a foreign concept to today's farmers. In many cases it improves the bottom line, and helps break dependence on rapidly increasing input costs (fertilizer, fuel to run tractors and pump irrigation water). I don't disagree, incidentally that corn isn't a particularly good choice for biofuels, it just happens to have the most money behind it at the moment. The people raising it aren't quite as clueless as you seem to believe.
You think? Sure, I believe linux will take over the desktop but I'm not even crazy enough to think building a hydrogen distribution system can overcome the momentum of the existing electrical grid. And it isn't even an energy source as such. Always seemed delusional to me.
Instead of doing this, why don't we grow rats, and have cats eat them. Then we harvest some of the cats, and kill the others to feed to the rats.
Bruce Perens.
"The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that, Dr. Chu said."
Last year's gasoline and diesel prices disagree with you, sir. As do the rising number of unused cargo ships.
Do you mean to say Obama's cutting the research isn't his way of redistributing funds to support the unions, he is putting in charge, of auto manufactures? Gasp!
And lets call it what it is, not what it isn't. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1230933&cid=27930113
Obama isn't executing a good plan violently, he is executing a "plan" and doing it violently.
There is nothing good about the direction he takes on spending unless your on his bank roll.
Obama Support's don't you worry about him getting caught in the middle. Oh no, he'll come up with some reason the unions "helped" nationalize a vehicle "for" the USA and take the spotlight off him.
United Nuclear claims to store it as a hydride... thoughts?
What this country needs is a fuelcell that gets over 60% efficiency turning diesel into electricity. Because diesel is close enough to the "#2 heating oil" that heats millions of American homes that we'd get that, too.
--
make install -not war
Anything that improves American car efficiency cuts American oil imports, and is therefore essential for America's national security. We should skip a few $BILLION weapons systems and spend the money on the fuel cells. If we're going to give $BILLIONS to car corps, we should do it by giving them free fuel cell research that we also use for the rest of the country's energy security.
--
make install -not war
I personally think they are going the wrong route with fuel cells anyways.
They could just as easy use H2O2 to run a pneumatic motor that would charge a set of batteries and assist with driving the motors if necessary. At an expansion ratio of 600 to 1 for a 50% solution, it almost rivals the power of an internal combustible engine used in the hybrids and is just as easy to handle as hydrogen would be. Turn the hybrids into Plug in EVs and it will last quite a while but not only does it have the potential to run the electric motors when battery power is low, a monitoring circuit could be installed to charge the batteries if the car is off more then 10 minutes without being plugged in. That would serve the purpose of making sure a charge is present when needed as well as not leaving someone stranded with a dead battery and no means to move. You also have the added benefit of not needed to use electricity to heat the car or defrost the windshields as the expansion creates about 300 degrees of heat that could easily be captured.
We do have a definite problem with "Dr." Chu "Baka". Baka sensei would be appropriate.
Plus the tenting would help keep the atmosphere CO2-rich. But there's also the fact that you're essentially taking water and CO2 and turning that into materials you can produce fuel from - so effectively, you're burning what was once water. That water has to come from somewhere. So, use salt-water tolerant algae in deserts not too far away from the sea. Pump in seawater, grow algae in it (and find some way to deal with the fact that as you use water, your growth medium will become more saline...)
There's also, I guess, going to be the matter of what you do with the excess oxygen. Normally, in agriculture, it just gets vented to the atmosphere. If you have a largely-sealed system where you only push water and CO2 and selected other nutrients in at one end and only pull alagae out the other, the percentage of oxygen in the system will increase over time. Oxygen at high levels can be toxic and also increase the ferocity of a fire in your tents. So, you'd need to find some way to extract it from the system and either vent it or commercially exploit it.
Or, the algae could be grown in clear tubes. Recirculate the water through the system, add CO2 and nutrients as required, extract excess oxygen. If you're not adding CO2 until you inject the water into the start of the tube system, you could actually end up with osygen-rich and CO2-depleted water coming out the far end which could be useful for growing fish or shrimp as food for people or livestock.
The CO2 could come from captured emissions or be extracted from the air. If this is being done in a desert, there'd presumably be plenty of sunshine and plenty of space for solar collectors for either producing electricity for refrigeration or capturing heat for direct use in a refrigeration cycle. Obviously, it'd be beneficial to initially use captured emissions as an input - for cost reasons, and because you'd still be reducing overall CO2 emissions by whatever amount of oil you avoided pulling out of the ground - but in the longer term it'd be desirable to find ways of economically extracting and using atmospheric CO2. Carbon capture and storage is all well and good, but it relies on the hope that that CO2 will *never* get out into the environment, and I suspect that's more a matter of faith and hope than practicalities. Getting double-use out of the carbon in the gas and coal we burn for power and reducing the amount of oil used for transportation fuels has to be a better alternative for now than just burying the CO2 and hoping for the best.
Charges up at home, new models can go 300 miles on a single charge, charge completely overnight, and some have gas engines that allow recharging the batteries 'on the road', and also can provide immediate power to the electric motors to just keep driving even when the batteries are flat. Unless you are going far from home, you never buy gas. Top speed is only 80 miles per hour, and 0-60 MPH is only 3.5 seconds, (damn those high-torque electric motors!), but getting the equivalent of between 90 and 120 miles per gallon (depending on your power supplier), is a real bitch! Dead baby, dead and gone. Sure the volt is coming, sometime 20 years from now, since we are perpetually 'not quite there yet'. Expect someone other than GM to help you out. I don't know why they help out the oil companies so much, when the oil companies let them die, while reaping the largest profits in their entire history. Dirty, stinking, expensive, ancient-technology-loving rat bastards! Hydrogen highway replaced batteries, and now hydrogen fuel cell tech (the placebo) is being chopped. Give us our electrics back!
Meanwhile, hydrogen is stupid because it's difficult to store and transport and you have to use [comparatively] exotic alloys with it because of problems with hydrogen embrittlement... oh, and fuel cells are energy-intensive and toxic to make, and they wear out and have to be replenished like everything else.
You are correct. However, hydrogen is ALSO impossible (barring some breakthrough that verges on violating the laws of thermodynamics) to efficiently generate from sea water. GPP is correct in stating that our current best methods of hydrogen production are still horribly inefficient.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Fuel cells for cars are interesting, but hydrogen is over-hyped. Vehicles powered by batteries or capacitors are also emission-free (looking at the vehicle) and viable and promising. At least for distances less then 30 miles (which so happens to constitute more than 95% of all trips). So it's not a critical technology but it's a "nice to have" technology. Besides, like Chu says, hydrogen powered cars are looking at a long list of pesky and fairly fundamental problems which will take time to solve.
I applaud the decision to set up 8 smaller research establishments for 5 years instead of "one big one". Less photo opportunities perhaps, but (taking into account that they will work with local research centers and with industry) more chance of someone having a bright idea. And long enough to make it attractive for someone considering what field to specialize in to choose energy research.
I also like the decision to let the government stop looking for oil and gas. We have private industries that are quite adept at doing that, and (as Chu says) they have plenty of money to fund exploration. So pouring government funding into it is a dead waste. It's nice to be able to pick up the tab for costly and risky research for your oil-industry buddies, but that doesn't help the public.
I think this shows what can happen when you put an actual scientist in charge of research. And yes, Chu's freedom of action is severely limited by previous commitments, including the one to do research and produce material for nuclear weapons.
That Honda you linked to... just as I suspected. It has no trunk. (11.5 cubic feet of cargo capacity is not a trunk suitable for anybody that actually wants to use all four seats of a car on a regular basis. 11.5 cubes is 1st Mini Cooper or first-gen Prius territory.)
Forget the fuel cell itself (which is where the research dollars were going)... when they can make a prototype car that can put a 300-mile H2 charge in a mid-size vehicle in a space that doesn't reduce cargo or passenger room beyond that of a good, ol' fashioned dino-juice vehicle, AND the other energy projects exist to generate the massive amounts of electricity required to generate and compress the Hydrogen, THEN spend my tax money researching cheap cells to burn that H2.
H2-based personal transportation projects are all about energy density. Beating the density of Gasoline is unglamorous, and HARD. (What budding auto engineer wants to be stuck on a project to design the tank?) Dumping money into fuel-cell research is like pouring all the money for electric cars into the motor. The motor isn't the problem, it's the battery. Electric car companies realize this, so why is all the high-profile and funding H2 research in the cell instead of the tank?
SirWired
P.S. That Mazda has a H2 range of a puny 60 miles. It's just a gas/H2 Hybrid; a research toy. Oh, and "the first two RX-8 hydrogen cars [were purchased in] lease deals coming in at under $10,000 per month" Ouch.
a fuel cell.
We could easily get 100-200% improvement in efficiency by using petro or ethanol based fuel cells right now. What the hell is wrong with this country?
Actually, it's about 4 times more expensive than producing ethanol from anything... It also can't use any of our existing infrastructure for transport or pipelining, is extemely difficult to store (expensive containers that are massive compared to equivalent joule storage gas tanks let alone batteries, weigh many times more, and LEAK), is extremely dangerous, is extremely complicated, and the FCs require continual invasive replacement at MASSIVE costs.
H2 will NEVER be used in a car you drive. EVER.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
How about a MUCH simpler solution, that costs about an order of magnitude less (it's competitive between $50 and $60/bbl), and is ready to go NOW.
WindFuels (dotyenergy.com).
Step one: Electronlysis (not only proven, but recently greatly improved process through patents by DotyEnergy: energy from wind + H20 -> H2 + 02 -> on-site low density very short term storage tank. O2 is sold to multipole industries for profit
Step 2: some H2 + CO2 -> CO and H20 (H20 recycled for more electronysis) This is called Reverse Water Gas Shift (been used for 50+ years). Doty has also been granted multiple patents greatly improving this process.
Step 3: RFTS: An improved version of Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (als in use for more than 50 years) CO + H2 = FUEL! VERY HIGH QUALITY CONTAMINATE FREE FUEL.
This has been lab proven. ALL the science behind it is all IN USE TODAY, just not in a completely combined process.
Using off-peak wind H2 can be made at any pace power can be generated. Enough H2 can be generated in a few hours on nearly free electricity to run the plant for more than a day at full capacity.
Since the fuel is made from recycled CO2, the gas you burn in your car has effectively 0 additional CO2 output.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Since the fuel is made from recycled CO2, the gas you burn in your car has effectively 0 additional CO2 output.
I don't think you get it. Biofuels are being made from algae right now and they are potentially carbon-negative, depending on what you do with your waste and how much carbon it contains. Most significantly, they can be run in current vehicles without any changes. Right now the major frontier is aviation fuel, but that's being worked on pretty hard.
Wind is nifty stuff, but using a new fuel requires changes. Biodiesel is an old fuel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't disagree, incidentally that corn isn't a particularly good choice for biofuels, it just happens to have the most money behind it at the moment. The people raising it aren't quite as clueless as you seem to believe.
It's not about clueless. It's about cost-benefit analysis. The problem is that the environmental cost goes unconsidered.
The simple truth is that growing continuous corn for ethanol is profitable due to subsidies, and the ready availability of disease-resistant GMO corn. Soy crops which are currently typical candidates for crop rotation with corn have been repeatedly hit hard by various plant diseases which have reduced yields and thus profits, chasing numerous farmers back to continuous corn.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
WindFuels makes gasoline, diesel, etc. Check the research on dotyenergy.com before you spread FUD. It's not new fuel...
Algae has a LOT of it's own issues. I hate to quote the company I'm supporting here, but this site explains it all, and does so by referencing accepted scientific papers on algae industry leaders (references more than 10 papers): http://dotyenergy.com/Markets/Micro-algae.htm
Here's my favorite quotes: "That amounts to ~560 gal/acre/year of algae oil, which is an especially dirty, heavy oil that must be cleaned, hydrocracked, and refined into diesel" and "the annual operating and maintenance costs alone would probably be well in excess of the $600M ($14/gallon)"
Read that again. $14 a gallon in MAINTENANCE costs, not total cost for fuel production. Beyond that, we'd need millions of acres of temerate climate or indoor growth facilities, producing hundreds of billions of tons of algae a year in order to meet fuel demands. We don;t have that much good land, it can't be done year round, and we have nowhere to put the waste...
We're also talking algae being competition for oil at values not less than $800/bbl, given a few more decades of reasearch yet. Even the best systems being researched today, facilities that could generate 600 tons per day in usable fuel, scaled up based on available papers published from within the algae industry, would cost about $9 Billion to build. An equivalent WindFuels facility operating at 250MW would generate the same fuels with no hazardous byproducts for about $300 million.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Read that again. $14 a gallon in MAINTENANCE costs, not total cost for fuel production.
Right, that's why petrosun is currently operating an algae-to-biodiesel plant. Because it cannot be made profitable! Clearly you are teh sooper genuis!
Beyond that, we'd need millions of acres of temerate climate or indoor growth facilities, producing hundreds of billions of tons of algae a year in order to meet fuel demands.
Not really. You can grow algae in the desert using saltwater. Don't let the facts interfere with your astroturfing, though. The ponds could be covered with plastic tents, but then you have to circulate air, a non-trivial problem but one which is even harder in "closed" reactor designs.
We're also talking algae being competition for oil at values not less than $800/bbl, given a few more decades of reasearch yet.
Also patently false. Even the US DOE let us know years ago that biodiesel from algae should be profitable by the time diesel fuel hit $3/gallon. Nothing much has changed since, except that the technologies for making biodiesel from algae have improved since then.
If you have any more lies to spread, you could just save them. I can keep coming up with citations all day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You might want to actually follow the link to the resources provided. The data is from the algae industry experts themselves, and most was very recent, including data as early as late 2008 and early 2009.
petrosuninc may be operating a plant, sure. Honda is building fuel cell vehicles too... the cars cost OVER $1M without the government subsidies! petrosuninc is using government funds to offset their costs. They're also a research firm. Sure, they're selling fuel, but they're selling it under cost (they do have to do SOMETHING with the gas after its made, and noone's going to pay $14 a gallon. look at the real numbers, not the marketing fluff... In NJ I can get solar panels on my house for a few thousand dollars and pay them off in 6 years. Same solar panels in SC cost 6X the price, and have a 31 year payoff, in a BETTER sun zone. That's due to the subsidies. Those government subsidies are fine when 3,000 people get fuel from it. When 300 million are, who's going to pay for it?
I don;t care WHERE you grow tha algae... you still have billions of metric tons of waste to deal with... only 34% of the mass is oil, and it;s DIRTY oil that requires expensive processing to be used in cars and creas tons of highly dangerous byproducts.
The DOA also said we could get H2 for $3 per gallon equivalent by 2010 too... They also said we'd not go over $2 a gallon for gas before 2018. They also said fuel cells would be economical by 2009. The technology HAS improved since the DOE made it's statement, but it's imporved marginally, not by the 2 orders of magnitude required to meet the $3/gallon line. Also, other costs have spiraled upwards.
Before you debunk my data, I suggest you read the sources I referenced you to. Since you;re too laze to click 1 link and ready the article I suggested, here's it's own sources for you:
Biodeisel from Algae at $33/gallon, Feb 2009:http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652/
Article by Bob Grant, chief scientist working on het fuels under AirForce grants, and one of the leading scientists in the entire Algae Oils field:
http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/02/1/36/1/
Keynote Address Photosynthetic Biohydrogen, Paul D. Frymier, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Tennessee:
http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2008/techprogram/P134919.HTM
GreenFuel Technologies: A Case Study for Industrial Photosynthetic Energy Capture
Krassen: March 2007 http://www.nanostring.net/Algae/CaseStudy.pdf
Carbon Recycling Forum, Department of Energy: Sept 2008: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/08/H2/index.html
A history of the US DOE's Algae Research, publiched by NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf
There are more citations available on dotyenergy.com. They all back up the extreme costs and failed research and failed promises. Considder the source man, the DOE has continually lied and lied and overpromised. THEY'RE A BUNCH OF BIG OIL NUTJOBS ON BIG OIL PAYROLLS!!!
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I think we need to industrialize the whole "manufacture your own hydrocarbons" thing that NASA had planned for a Mars mission or something.
The current problem we have with solar is that during the day we get way way more of it than we can use, and there's not enough going around during night when it's needed.
Using solar power during the day to produce fuel that can be burned at night solves the storage problem. Use the insolation to power the grid as needed, and dump the excess into fuel synthesis to generate fuel, which can be shipped to gas stations or sent to power plants as needed.
If solar fuel production is industrialized properly we'll have oil up to our eyeballs and we will be the envy of the Arabs.
A fringe benefit is that putting the carbon in the fuel will take it out of the air, literally reversing global warming.
The only thing standing in the way is politics from Big Oil.
The biggest issue with widespread adoption (even if we had viable H2 cars) is the problem of generating all the electricity to crack and compress the H2. Both the cracking and compression are extremely inefficient processes. Combine that inefficiency with the waste heat as part of the "burning" (or whatever it is a fuel cell does), and I have a feeling you don't end up with anything more energy efficient than the existing setup with petroleum.
I am firmly of the belief that H2 cars are, and will remain, a research toy until we can generate fantastic amounts of electricity. Given limited research dollars, I'd go with electrical generation over H2 burning any day of the week. The benefits of environmentally friendly electrical generation also have a far more immediate payoff than impractical H2 cars. (As in, a nifty new tide-powered setup could help out (if not cure) pollution in say, the NY area NOW, without the complete infrastructure overhaul either electrical or H2 cars would require.)
SirWired
Open tanks are the only way we're going to grow enough algae to solve a major portion of the continuing liquid fuels crisis - which at this point is the primary driver of our foreign policy, helped create the economic conditions that led to the recession, and will only get much worse once a persistent global decline rate is established, sometime between now and ~2025.