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.
This point should not be addressed at all. Probably there is no one left who believes hydrogen is an endless, virtually free, source of energy. Instead, the emphasis should be on hydrogen as a clean-burning fuel for cars or for the fuel cells.
But how will I put it in my garage? I like the swimming pool idea better.
Great question. I've always wondered why people who believe the great scientific minds are correct about global warming and the risks of low level pollutants don't believe great scientific minds when they tell us that genetically engineered foods are safe.
I still have nightmares about my airbag killing me in my daily commute, but at least I don't worry about white guys in white vans sniping me at the gas pumps anymore.;-)
This is a totally ignorant and false remark, and it's easy to understand if you think about it.
A lack of refining capacity leads to lower oil costs because the refineries aren't interested in buying crude they can't use. It's simply supply and demand.
What is true is that reduced refining capacity can cause higher prices for the refined product, like gasoline. In the abstract, it's entirely possible to have very high prices for gasoline with oil prices falling through the floor.
But how will I put it in my garage? I like the swimming pool idea better."
You might also take a look at UHTREX. It was (maybe still is) a high-temperature gas-cooled RX that was used in a Brayton cycle, replacing the gas turbine's combustor section. Interesting.
That IS my point. I'm generally surprised that people on the Right -- who tend to have a little more faith that, with persistence, you can push something to the point where it works -- don't feel the same way about technologies that solve problems that they don't necessarily agree ARE problems in the first place.
The leftists who see 'danger' in genetically engineered foods are only upset that it's Big Corporations that are doing it, and they will not have the wherewithal to do the same, or that some diabolical corporate scientist has left a time bomb in the gene...it's a political opinion, not a scientific one. Rational skepticism is reasonable, but like you said, after some point, an honest skeptic would accept favorable results. They don't. The Jeremy Rifkins of the planet just stubbornly refuse to give in, even when confronted with good results. Are the results imperfect, incomplete? Probably. But if you want perfection....ain't gonna happen.
Over the last 30 years I have heard time and again that this was a big problem, never happen, too hard, too expensive, blah blah. Engineering curricula mentions this in many places, but also provides rational tools to debunk the repetitive erroneous assertions. But consider some of these famous statements:
Theodor Von Karman, 1921: "The Gas Turbine will never be light enough for aero propulsion, even if you could make one work". Wrong.
Ken Olson, Head of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977: "What could you use a personal computer for except maybe balancing your checkbook?" Ken's gone. So's his company.
The world to Stan Ovshinsky in 1978:"Amorphous Semiconductors will never be economically viable". Do a web search on Stan for some history. They were wrong.
You just gotta keep trying. If there's a real goal, and you aren't trying to build perpetual motion machines, you never know. You just might get what you need.
I don't know the safety hit on high temp gas cooled reactors. I thought that there were issues with them as far as gas containment etc. Do you have any comments on that, and why concepts like UHTREX and the General Atomics lines don't get very far? Or is it just ordinary anti-nuke hysteria?
I made money shorting that from $30 to $15, just like I made money shorting all the over-hyped 'hydrogen plays' - a lot of the corporate hype was to rip off investors like you!! ... Yes, sell it ... Ballard Power will go to $0 and fuel cells will not be economic for decades - IF EVER.
The author is correct, the 'wonders' of hydrogen are mostly hype. you can get the benefits of fuel-cell cars with much less cost by simply converting ICE cars to hybrid cars. (like prius: the gas engine feeds a generator which powers an electric drivetrain - twice the efficiency of current ICEs).
Actually, from what Ive read, the cheapest way to make hydrogen is from methane, using steam reformation. The idea that hydrogen is a ticket off of hydrocarbons falls apart once you take economics into account. Sure, you can make hydrogen from other sources, like electrolysis, but the cost ofthat is about 10X per joule than gasoline, and there aint no way oil is going to $300/barrel anytime soon.
Almost uniformly they call people foolish, quote "engineers", and talk about "energy inputs" avoiding the "energy inputs" converting oil into gasoline, and transporting the heavy fuel to markets. God forbid they bring facts and practicalities into the debate. :-) Also, did it occur to you that $1.50/gallon takes into account those transportation costs (and about 40% in taxes to boot!!) dont forget that!
I meant to write the opposite!!! Maybe that's why some others are nasty to me in here... :)
The reality is that it's a systems engineering problem: what engine/fuel/infrastructure combination is the optimal solution, considering physical and political (=economical) constraints. The cost of just about any physical device is almost entirely driven by production volume barring the necessity for some wildly difficult material cost (which IS a consideration for some fuel cell devices, but not necessarily the critical one).
It's not really a systems engineering as much an economics problem. But your thinking is a great argument for fossil fuels, they are the cheapest energy source per joule. The best infrastructure on the ehicle is an ELECTRIC DRIVETRAIN, there is practically NO ADVANTAGE to fuel cells over ICES and MANY DISADVANTAGES, namely cost and robustness (what happens when your feull cell stack freezes)? The only way to beat oil in the car is to have an energy source that COSTS LESS. Only nuclear power has even a hope of acheiving that, and only if it supplying electrons - to ELECTRIC CARS - hydrogen is far too indirect.
And you go through ALL THAT TROUBLE and STILL find that hydrogen is awfully hard to store, with low energy density/volume. WHY FIGHT NATURE? The natrual solution is to have a liquid energy form... In other words, if oil didnt exist and we were looking for a great energy carrier, mankind would invent gasoline as the perfect one for vehicles
And one last. Why is it that people who have no problem believing that me and my fellow Aerospace Engineers can build a Space Based Strategic Defense System to knock down incoming nuclear re-entry vehicles (which we most certainly CAN do), but believe that we are incapable of coming up with a transportation system that gets us off of oil?
Aeorspace Engineers are quite capable of designing large passenger jets that fly over MACH 1. That alone doesnt make the Concorde pay its own way.
Interestingly, much energy like hydroelectric is wasted via transmission over lines and over-production at night time. Might as well put it to use. Also, think about those nuclear plants that decrease output at night..what if night time production is ramped up for producing hydrogen???
Any idea that involves building 500 nukes in this country is a GOOD idea! :-) "Annoy your local greens, Support nuclear power!" Electrons, gimme more electrons!
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