It would be, if he were suggesting to then run the power plant off the results of the process and use the plant's electricity to produce the HCl. However, since the system has two energy inputs, the fuel burned by this plant and the fuel burned by the plant powering the HCl factory, it's okay for the end result to contain more energy than one of the two inputs. Essentially, if this process were very efficient, it'd be like running a power plant off HCl rather than hydrocarbons.
Of course, the process won't be even remotely that efficient. Instead, the point is to combine the plant's waste products—heat and CO2—with HCl to create a product that, one hopes, has more economic value than the original HCl did. Actually, even if the petroleum products have less value than the HCl, this can still make financial sense. It transfers the pollution from this generator to the one that powered the HCl plant; varying regulations may make that worthwhile. And if the HCl plant is run off nuclear power or some other "free" electricity, then the process reduces CO2 emissions as a whole. Not that there's any objective value to that, but again, regulations may make it worthwhile.
Yup. And what is the energy cost and/or dollar cost to make Hcl?...
I was recently asked to review a German patent(0055134A1). The engine was built and tested by BMW and it worked.
Basically the idea is you carry a big tank of water and feed aluminum wire into the tank, where it is reacted using a spark and the reaction Al + 3H2O --> Al2O3 + 3H2 allows free hydrogen to be burned in a modified engine with incoming air.
This is a “redox” reaction. Aluminum is being oxidized by the water, and the water is being “reduced” by the aluminum to make hydrogen.
In this reaction we have two moles of aluminum (54 grams) reacting with three moles of water (54 grams) to produce one mole of aluminum oxide (102 grams) plus 3 moles of hydrogen (six grams). So to make one pound of hydrogen, you will need to scale this by a factor of 75.6: 4.08 kilograms of aluminum (9 lb), 4.08 kilograms of water (again 9 lb), producing 7.71 kilograms of Al2O3 (17 lb) and one pound of hydrogen.
Aluminum costs about 70 cents per pound, so the aluminum cost will be $6.30 for each pound of hydrogen created.
The ‘heating value’ of gasoline is 114,000 BTU/gallon or +9,475 calories per gram. This is 4,297,765 calories per pound, or 17,055 BTU/lb.
Each pound of hydrogen is “worth” 60,190 BTU. So hydrogen liberates about 3.5 times as much energy per pound as gasoline. The problem is that gasoline costs about $1.60 per gallon at present, which is the same as $11.40 per cubic foot, or $0.239 per pound.
Since hydrogen gives 3.5 times as much energy per pound as gasoline, we need 1/3.5 times as many pounds of hydrogen to do the same job. This is 0.29 times. But the cost of making hydrogen from aluminum is $6.30 per pound of hydrogen. So 0.29 times $6.30 says hydrogen made from aluminum costs $1.80 per pound of gasoline equivalent. This is $1.80/$0.239=7.54 times as much on a per pound basis. Gas would have to rise to $12.06/gal before you “break even” using this system. In other words, the economics get you.
Part of the problem is that refined aluminum requires enormous amounts of electricity to make. From the raw ore to the high-purity aluminum takes huge amounts of energy. In fact, the price of aluminum and the price of electricity track one another and affect one another in a complex way. One can look at this patent as follows: the inventor has invented a very expensive battery which is “charged up” at the aluminum smelter plant. The “charging” is the energy cost of making pure aluminum out of rocks.
(Water has a “heat of formation” of –68,320 calories/mole. This is equivalent to –3795 calories per gram. Aluminum Oxide has a heat of formation of –1675.7 kJ/mole, or –3925.4 calories per gram. The total energy available from this reaction is thus (-3795)-(-3925.4) = +130.4 calories/gram. This energy is not used in the actual engine and all it does is make the water get hot.)
(Water weighs 62.4 lb/ft3. Nine pounds of water liberate one pound of hydrogen and 8 pounds of oxygen. In this system the oxygen is thrown away! It is sequestered in Al2O3. Then more oxygen from the air is used to burn the hydrogen.)