If it's any help, this character farts helium...
Posted on 05/07/2003 11:54:50 AM PDT by Jack of all Trades
Not long ago I wrote a commentary, "The Great Hydrogen Myth," in which I opined that throwing another billion dollars at more research for the purpose of replacing oil, coal, or natural gas was a huge waste. Recently, that commentary was posted on an Internet site for those who work in industries that provide and use various forms of energy. It's a favorite among the many engineers and scientists whose lives are devoted to energy issues.
Here are some of the responses my commentary received. The names of the innocent have been protected because their jobs depend upon it.
"I have often thought that this 'hydrogen economy' seems intuitively flawed; using energy to make hydrogen to then be used as an energy source. Intuitively, it feels like the Escher painting with the water flowing uphill."
Therein lies central issue that undermines the hype about hydrogen as an endless, virtually free, source of energy. First of all, it is not energy. It is what the engineers and scientists call "a carrier." You have to break the hydrogen molecule free from others to use it and that requires energy. Thus, you have to use a lot of energy in order to use hydrogen to make energy. In real life there is no free lunch.
A chemical engineer with 35 years in the chemical and oil industry who knows a lot about catalytic reforming units that make and use hydrogen in the reformation processes, had this to say: "Not only does H2 (hydrogen) require a lot of energy to produce, collect, and store, it presents rather nasty safety problems."
Need it be said he thinks that Ethanol (made from corn!) is another bad idea the environmentalists have foisted on us? Why? "Ethanol costs far more to produce than the fuel value it provides and the Environmental Protection Agency in its wisdom forced industry to oxygenate fuels only to discover that covalent bonds of all oxygenates are very soluble and stable in ground waters when released." In other words, this environmental "solution" has led to the poisoning of ground water supplies throughout the nation. It also forces up the cost of gasoline.
He wasn't through. "While I'm at it - Greens have our environmental experts at EPA on another even wilder goose chase to capture mercury from coal fired utility plants across the USA. If you add up all the Hg (mercury) released from coal combustion and compare it to global sources, the current analytical and statistical techniques and technologies probably will not be able to detect any reduction in the global Hq pool in the environment."
Thank you, thank you, thank you! The Greens live to conjure up endless scare campaigns, always shouting that everyone, especially children, are being "poisoned" by things that pose no real threat. Or they find ways to force government mandates that either end up poisoning us, i.e., ethanol, are represent no real threat, i.e., mercury. The end result is higher costs for energy use of any kind.
Part of the hydrogen hype is its use in fuel cells. A retired General Electric engineer wrote to say, "I previously analyzed and designed fuel cells and it is apparent to me that they will always be too expensive for all but very special uses. They are twenty times the cost of a piston engine and are very likely to remain at least ten times more in spite of all the research done."
Like all realists, engineers and scientists believe we are, in fact, running a risk in our dependence on petroleum. Even with a trillion and maybe even two trillion barrels of oil available, at the present rate of use, the experts estimate we will go through it in about forty years. Others, however, believe there are vast amounts of undiscovered oil reserves.
Part of the problem of energy costs, energy dependency, and the cost of oil can be found in the fact that the US has experienced a drop in its refining capability over the past twenty years. We went from being able to refine 18.5 million barrels to 16.5 million barrels. There has been an even sharper drop in the number of refineries, from 315 to 155! Thus, the US is highly vulnerable if even a small number of refineries stopped producing, even temporarily. A major factor for the dramatic increase in oil prices is this lack of refining capacity.
This may explain why the oil industry and auto manufacturers are willing to spend billions to find a way to make hydrogen the transportation energy of the future. Hybrid vehicles that utilize a fuel cell could get more than 75 miles per gallon of gasoline and that's a good thing. Environmentalists support this and, if the technology can be developed to a point of being affordable, why not? It remains, however, a very big "if".
The real answer, of course, is to build more refineries and, in part, to tap the reserves of oil known to exist in the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve. Environmentalists have fought both these options.
Here's the bottom line. Without energy, this nation shuts down, and so do all the others. The good news is that technologies are being developed whereby, for transportation and other uses, new engines will revolutionize the use of current energy sources. They will be far more efficient and they will be affordable.
Beware of the hype about hydrogen. Many engineers and scientists know it's baloney, and you should too.
I agree. A little cognitive dissonance there. A lot of them live in L.A., which gets a significant amount of power from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating plant West of Phoenix.
Hasn't gone critical yet. :^)
So, we burn some fuel, inefficiently, to create H2 and then burn the H2 to, inefficiently, move an automobile or to generate electricity? Sounds rather inefficient.
Replacement it is not. I've noticed more and more usage of natural gas in large transportation vehicles in urban areas. The efficiency of burning NG straight as opposed to burning H extracted from it, I haven't seen anything on that.
Places like Italy are turning to NG - 20% of new vehicles there run on it.
A convenience and economy of hydrogen is that one "fuel" will be universal - rather than the several we have now. Well, maybe I underestimate American salesmanship and they'll invent a "regular" and "premium."
And don't let the cat near it.
When a reactor is said to be "critical," that means that the reactivity has exceeded the "critical" level needed to ensure that the reaction is self-sustaining.
That's where all the free hydrogen is. In your back yard you'd get Oxygen and Nitrogen, not much free hydrogen in the atmosphere.
Ouch!
Hydrogen requires a source of energy.
So does gasoline - oil. Natrual gas and coal burned straight do not of course.
If you are talking about replacing any significant number of fossil-fueled vehicles with hydrogen vehicles, you are going to need an energy source that is not a gimmick and is much cheaper than current methods of generating electricity.
When mention is made of NG, coal, even oil, the hydrogen is cracked right from them.
In other words, hydrogen cars will make sense when you have a fusion reactor in your garage.
Not if cracked from the three above. We need not be restrictive - H can be derived from electrolysis supported from Nuclear power and Hydro-electric "waste" energy (Which is substantial since electricity can't be effectively stored...unless it's "converted" to hydrogen!)
Until you realize that you are just going to sound stupid to people who understand basic math.
How do you think you sound to the natural gas and other industries pushing this?
Bush should have spent that money teaching science so that this issue will go away.
But he didn't - what does that tell you? BTW, check out energy sites re: explosion in NG exploration. Also, those quietly discussed Alaskan NG pipeline bills in Congress for starters.
Probably not. But Anything that gets us out of NutLand is worth looking into. Even the current Energy Secretary is on board with that one. And even if it CAN'T be done effectively....shhhh. Don't tell the Arabs. They'll think we can do it, and maybe start to clean up their act.
In the 1970's, when OPEC was roaring, Luis Echeverria, the President of Mexico, warned OPEC that "the Americans will create a technological solution" to get off of oil if they (OPEC) raised the price too high. It doesn't matter if he was right, wrong, or just scared. If it influenced their cartel's behavior positively...mission accomplished.
I guess we can't tell them about our Zero-Point Energy Motorcycles yet...
1. They compete with oil.
2. We got a lot of NG and coal.
The point is a million barrels of oil produces several hundred thousand barrels of fuel. If you "crack" hydrogen from oil, coal, NG you lose the energy from the carbon and so you'd need several times more oil to get the same energy.
The only source of hydrogen that makes sense is nuclear.
So, coal gasification and then separate the H2 out of the gas?
Where do you get the energy for these processes? Burn the coal? Oh no, CO2. Sounds like we need more strip mines too.
This is like explaining calculus to a chimp. Why don't you figure out the economics of the thing, go into business and become the next Rockefeller? Hmm?
Work out a businesss plan. Figure out how much you will have to charge for hydrogen.
But you won't. You will just rant ignorantly on, and vote for congressman who are just as ignorant. They will raise taxes to fund this nonsense, which will never work and just lower the standard of living for all of us.
If you can't write up a business plan and make money on it, then it is a bad idea you should just drop. If you can make money on it, go do it and quit talking about it before someone else beats you to it.
If it's any help, this character farts helium...
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