Posted on 02/10/2004 10:11:17 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
FREEPORT — With the flip of a switch Tuesday, Dow and General Motors began the world's first pilot project to make electricity for a chemical plant using fuel cells.
It's a test that may have far-reaching effects for average consumers. The 75-kilowatt fuel cell turned on Tuesday is basically the same as the power units used in GM's prototype fuel cell autos.
That technology is often touted as hope for cleaner-running, more efficient cars that aren't dependent on petroleum for fuel.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the test opens up the possibility that "a generation from today we will live in hydrogen-powered homes, driving hydrogen-powered cars."
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who pulled the switch with Perry to turn the unit on, said hydrogen fuel cells are the perfect marriage of good environmental stewardship and good business practices.
He said the pilot project, which ultimately will produce enough electricity to power 25,000 homes, isn't some esoteric idea.
"This is real," Abraham said.
Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water, electricity and heat.
Although fuel cells were first invented more than a century ago, they have always been expensive to build. Obtaining hydrogen for fuel has also been costly.
The Dow Oyster Creek Plant, where the pilot project is located, has been in operation for more than 60 years. It produces hydrogen as a byproduct of making chlorine and a wide variety of plastics feedstocks.
Dow now sells some of that hydrogen to industrial gas companies and burns the rest as fuel in power generation plants.
By 2006, Dow plans to use up to 400 of the washing machine-sized units to produce 35 megawatts of electricity at the plant — 2 percent of the power the plant needs.
Even when the project grows that big, it will use less than a sixth of the hydrogen the plant produces.
"We produce more than enough hydrogen," Dow's Commercial Energy Manager, George Kehler, said.
The unit started Tuesday sits inside a moving van-size trailer inside the plant. When Perry and Abraham pulled the switch, a series of lights lit up on a pipe bringing hydrogen into the unit and on what looked like an exhaust stack.
It wasn't an exhaust, however. The only exhaust that comes from the unit is 140- to 160-degree pure water and waste heat from cooling radiators. Kehler said the company plans in the future to reclaim some of the waste heat to use in the plant.
"There are no emissions," he said.
He also said the project poses no new environmental threat.
"We've been making hydrogen there for decades," Kehler said. "The hydrogen is already there."
Plans are to put a dozen of the generation units in trailers to produce a megawatt of electricity.
The fuel cell part of the power units are identical to the cells used in GM prototype vehicles, said George Hernandez, a consultant who helped develop the project for GM at Dow.
The project lets GM test and refine the efficiency and cost of the units as if it had 400 prototype cars on the road.
GM plans to put fuel cell cars into production by the end of the decade and wants to build a million of them by 2020.
At Tuesday's event, GM showed off HydroGen III, a fuel cell-powered version of a Zafira four-seater made in Germany.
Among those who stood in line to test drive the whisper-quiet vehicle Tuesday was Frank Spillers, a retired Dow researcher who worked on fuel cell technology 30 years ago.
"They told us then it would be 20 years or more before they get in cars," he said. Tuesday was the first time he ever saw a fuel cell-powered car.
As he drove off, a trickle of water came out of the car's tailpipe, dripping on the pavement already wet from a rainy day.
Led by Saudi Arabia, ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pledged to immediately stop selling the 1.6 million barrels a day that is above the formal quota of 24.5 million. Starting April 1 member countries will slash their daily quotas by 1 million barrels.
OPEC ministers said they were projecting a significant surplus of oil this spring as the demands of winter ebb -- and they are determined to keep the prices up.
Influential Saudi Oil Minister Ali Ibrahim Naimi said the decision is firm and pledged that the kingdom will abide by the limits.
A British analyst at the conference said proof could come soon, as Saudi Arabia is scheduled to let customers know within a week how much oil it will deliver.
"You will hear from the customers (about the cuts) more than from us," Naimi said.
The Bush administration declined Tuesday to comment specifically on the OPEC cuts, although White House spokesman Trent Duffy said: "The president has said that he hopes that producers will not take actions that might hurt the American economy, workers and consumers."
The administration used the OPEC announcement, however, to again call on lawmakers to pass energy legislation to lessen the country's dependence on imported oil. The Senate hopes to take up a pared-down version of the energy bill later this week.
High oil prices are likely to remain, or rise, through 2005, Cambridge Energy Research Associate Director James Burkhard said Tuesday in Houston.
OPEC decisions are contributing to an environment where oil prices are likely to range from the mid- to upper $20s to low $30s per barrel in 2004 and 2005, Burkhard said.
High prices are likely this year because of strong demand due to economic growth in China, which is expected to boost world oil demand by 1.3 million barrels a day this year. Production problems in Russia and Iraq and the possibility of terrorism in Saudi Arabia could also contribute to high energy prices.
Coming into Tuesday's meeting, ministers had hinted that they would leave production levels unchanged and urge members to simply stop pumping more than their quotas.
Instead, they decided to do both. ***
Iran and Castro: October surprises***In parallel with this ongoing but still mostly unrecognized Iranian covert action, there are reliable reports of numbers of Iranian-supported Hezbollah terrorists infiltrating into Iraq from their bases in Syrian-occupied Lebanon. It is quite likely they are planning massive terrorist attacks on U.S. forces for the spring, summer and fall of 2004 as well as the taking of U.S. hostages.
These hostages would likely be made available to the media with the intention of demonstrating the failure of the Bush policy and of creating public sympathy in the U.S. for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
In the Americas, Mr. Castro has been using a deceptive political strategy and long-established relations with radical leaders who are not formally communist to establish a new axis with governments friendly to him. These now include 231 million people ruled by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador and the shadow power of Evo Morales and Felipe Quispe in Bolivia, who recently removed the elected president.***
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