I’ve heard great things about the advancing technology behind hydrogen powered automobile technology, but so far I’ve only heard about a few gas stations in California that offer hydrogen fuel. Is it reasonable to say that the advance of the technology is simply taking a while to become widespread? Or is it another scientific breakthrough with great expectations but low support from consumers? (Think of the Segway scooter thingy-do. The vehicle that was supposed to revolutionize the way we commute has hardly become widespread and is available for a small fortune on Amazon. Perhaps it’s too early to say, though…_)
I think it will be in the form of h2o2 so it can be burned in a standard automobile. It would take little to modify current engines, It could use the infrastructure for transporting/selling gasolene, and the by-product (water vapor) could be captured and dumped if it causes any weather changes.
All we need are the power plants to provide the electricity needed to make it.
Making hydrogen from the electrolysis of water is neither efficient nor economical:
Consumer Energy Information: EREC Reference Briefs: Hydrogen Fuel
What I was refering to required the addition of an oxygen molecule vs the extraction of a hydrogen molecule.
I’m Not a Chemical Engineer but I was under the impression the extra oxygen molecule was added in a process requiring electric power. I’m sure there is some kind of catalyst process. Just don’t know what it is.
I don’t have a cite offhand, but i think that the greatest obstacle would be giant oil companies determined to protect their best interests. The great impediment to scientific advances (in this case) is oil-profits.
I don’t have a cite offhand, but i think that the greatest obstacle would be giant oil companies determined to protect their best interests. The great impediment to scientific advances (in this case) is oil-profits.
I disagree. It will be large oil companies that bring this technology to the market place. You need a processing system and a distribution system. The closer the technology blends with current transportation nodes (internal combustion engine) the faster it wil go into production.
The price of gasolene has steadly declined in the last 20 years (adjusted for inflation). When this trend stops, market forces will push the new technology foward. I say “new” technology, but the concept of an H2O2 powered vehicle has been around for awhile.
Well what corporations right now have massive distribution networks, skilled personnel, legions of chemical engineers and chemists that do nothing but pull HYDROcarbons out of the ground right now? A hydrogen economy simply alters their final product from gas to hydrogen.
How about nuclear plants? Nuclear plants could make it, process it, and provide it a form suitable for automobiles. There are many that say, “The problem with hydrogen fuel is it takes more energy to extract the hydrogen than burning the hydrogen produces.” I would submit (without a cite) that using nuclear energy to provide this fuel would on balance be cheaper and cleaner than the drilling, shipping, processing, trucking, and geo-political expenses (conflicts, favors etc) that accompany gasoline.
What we are looking for is a clean way to run our automobiles. Since at present it is not practical to have nuclear power reactors in our cars, what’s wrong with being one step removed from the reactor by using it to make one of the cleanest fuels ever?
Well, ** hilltopper **, while I am a large supporter of nuclear power, using nuclear plants to make the hydrogen wouldn’t be that cheap. IIRC, the you would need 200-300 additional nuclear reactors to make enough hydrogen to replace gasoline in the US. Right now the US has about 100 reactors. Of course, if we started building them now, we could phase them in over the next 3 decades or so, spreading the cost out. That’s how long the rest of the infastructure for hydrogen fuel is going to take to set up anyways, and that is the time frame at which oil starts getting scarce.
And then there is a nasty problem of what to do the waste with the waste, which of course enviromentalist hate (with fairly good reason). Breeder reactors could significatly reduce the amount of waste that needs to be stored, but many enviromentalist will throw a fit over the smallest amounts. And most of them don’t like breeder reactors in the first place.
Grey and Magiver,
This is what i was thinking about.
Excerpt:
Mike Nicklas, chair of the American Solar Energy Society, was one of 224 energy experts invited by the Department of Energy to develop the government’s Roadmap last spring. **The sessions, environmentalists quickly discovered, were dominated by representatives from the oil, coal, and nuclear industries. **“All the emphasis was on how the process would benefit traditional energy industries,” recalls Nicklas, who sat on a committee chaired by an executive from ChevronTexaco. “The whole meeting had been staged to get a particular result, which was a plan to extract hydrogen from fossil fuels and not from renewables.” The plan does not call for a single ounce of hydrogen to come from power generated by the sun or the wind, concluding that such technologies “need further development for hydrogen production to be more cost competitive.”
*Bolding mine
And although your points are valid, ie that oil companies have the networking and infrastructure to pull it off, my point is that they would do more to maintain their current monopoly (at least for the time being) and retard scientific efforts of advacing H cells. (by which i mean as an example, the use of renewable sources of producing Hydrogen)
If they decide that Hydrogen’s the way to go, it is highly likely that whatever scientific advancement made will still be overly skewed in favour of the oil giants, and highly doubtful that this will benefit consumers as a whole.
Will Hydrogen fuel progress? Now, i guess it really depends on your definition of progress. But in short, at least to the to the public: No. Not as long as oil companies try to maintain their self interest.*
*Now i’m not really into conspiracy theories or anything, but i feel that it’s logical for oil giants to try to extend their current monopoly. It’s what i’d do in their place.
I say let’s get started. I’m curious how you came up with your 200-300 estimate. Since these new reactors would have a different purpose than current models couldn’t they be designed to work more efficiently? And since they are not intended to supply energy to population centers you could put a bunch of them in the middle of nowherezville. You would have to staff the plants etc., but that hasn’t been a problem for say Los Alamos National Labratories which is basically in the middel of nowhere.
States like Nevada and New Mexico that already have nuclear waste dumps would probably welcome the revenue, and if you put the plant near the dump you take the risk out of the shipping.
In the end I agree the oil industry and too many U.S. citizens who work in that industry and periferal industries would have too much too lose if we cut our reliance on oil to a small percentage of what it is today. A lot of jobs would be transferred to the new industry but the process would cause a LOT of pain.
So let me get this straight - if Chevron decides to diversify into wind power, and therefore sends a large contingent of people to a wind power conference, they are guilty of ‘trying to dominate the debate’? And if their purpose to see how their company can benefit from diversifying into wind, they are guilty of ‘trying to control the industry for their own profit’?
I guess it’s all in how you look at it. If you’re a corporation-hating environmentalist who refuses to acknowledge the limits of its own pet technology, I guess they are pretty sinister. If, on the other hand, you live on planet Earth, the participation of large corporations should be welcomed, since they have the money to actually do something.
And the reason they aren’t supporting renewables is because renewables like biomass are hideously expensive, and turn out to be a net energy sink. It costs money and energy to grow plants, harvest them, and convert them into another form of energy. It’s also easy to do the math and discover that you’d need huge amounts of surface area to power our energy needs with renewables.
I’m curious - how do these big companies ‘retard developments’ in alternative power? Do they hire all the scientists and then put them to work shining shoes? Shooting scientists in the back? Manipulating the scientific press? Just what, specifically, are they doing?
That number is in the ballpark. Canada has actually floated a proposal to put a ring of about 175 CANDU reactors in Nevada near Yucca mountain to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. The problem is that it just isn’t cost-effective today with current prices of oil. But as oil and natural gas get more expensive, an alternative like this will pop up.
No, I don’t think so, at least not anytime soon. Though hydrogen fuel is possible, that doesn’t mean it’s efficient, nor does it mean it would ever be suitable for vehicles. Hydrogen is meant to replace oil, which is mainly used in motor vehicles/aeroplanes (ca. 65%) and in the industry (ca. 25%). And, as in the OP, it’s also the question of when.
The question of when (if ever at all):
"When that might happen is anyone’s guess. “This is a marathon, not a sprint, and frankly the race has just begun,” says Don Huberts, chief executive of Shell Hydrogen, a Shell unit looking at how to turn hydrogen into a consumer fuel. “I cannot predict whether we will reach the finish line in 2030 or 2050.” "
or:
“The verdict is still out on whether hydrogen will ever become a mainstream fuel,” says Buford Lewis, manager of fuels development for Exxon Mobil Corp., which is working with GM on research. "
One of the big problems is the hydrogen fuel itself:
“Perhaps the largest problem for hydrogen fuel cell transportation is the size of the fuel tanks. In gaseous form, a volume of 238,000 litres of hydrogen gas is necessary to replace the energy capacity of 20 gallons of gasoline.”
“So far, demonstrations of hydrogen-powered cars have depended upon compressed hydrogen. Because of its low density, compressed hydrogen will not give a car as useful a range as gasoline. Moreover, a compressed hydrogen fuel tank would be at risk of developing pressure leaks either through accidents or through normal wear, and such leaks could result in explosions.”
“If the hydrogen is liquefied … will require four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Thus, a 15-gallon gas tank would equate to a 60-gallon tank of liquefied hydrogen. Beyond this, there are the difficulties of storing liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to freeze air. In test vehicles, accidents have occurred from pressure build-ups resulting from plugged valves.”
“Beyond this, there are the energy costs of liquefying the hydrogen and refrigerating it so that it remains in a liquid state. No studies have been done on the energy costs here, but they are sure to further decrease the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of hydrogen fuel.”
The infrastructure problem:
“A conventional gas station costs about $1.5 million to build. To outfit a station with a machine that would convert natural gas to hydrogen would cost about another $400,000, according to oil giant BP PLC. Some companies, particularly GM and Honda Motor Co., are talking about bypassing existing gas stations altogether. They suggest letting consumers buy or lease special hydrogen-fueling machines at home. That option would require satisfying regulators that it’s safe – a question that’s still under discussion.”
…
“Oil companies estimate that, to catch on with consumers, a new fuel has to be available at about 30% of the gas stations in a given area. There are about 180,000 gas stations in the U.S.”
Production problems:
Further more, we have to use energy to produce hydrogen fuel. There are several methods available, but currently the least expensive method is a process known as steam reforming. However, neither this, not any other method is very efficient:
methane/gas steam:
“This procedure of hydrogen production also results in a severe energy loss. First we have the production of the feedstock methanol from natural gas or coal at a 32 percent to 44 percent net energy loss. Then the steam treatment process to procure the hydrogen will result in a further 35 percent energy loss.”
electrolysis of water:
“The energy required to produce 1 billion kWh (kilowatt hours) of hydrogen is 1.3 billion kWh of electricity … the solar cell arrays would be enormous … likewise, the amount of water required to generate this hydrogen would be equivalent to 5 percent of the flow of the Mississippi River.”
Note that the two metods above are using fossil fuel to produce hydrogen:
"If fossil fuels are used to generate the hydrogen, either through the Methane-Steam method or through Electrolysis of Water, there will be no advantage over using the fossil fuels directly. "
nuclear energy (non-fossil fuel):
I have no specific data here, but according to one source (not checked), about 40% of the energy use in the US comes from oil, while only 8% is nuclear power. So, only to replace oil (no net energy loss) one would need 5 times as many nuclear plants as today (=500). And if I’m not mistaken, the US are also using substantial amounts of coal and gas, which also are fossil fuels, and also needs to be replaced.
What would it cost?
Bush has promised 1.7 billion dollars over 5 years. But what would it cost alltogether? Nobody knows, but hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and government funding has been mentioned, much of it for the US alone. Only solving the hydrogen fuel-tank problem could cost 10 - 20 billion dollars or more. Rebuilding gas station in the US another 60 - 70 billions. And pipelines and production facilities? The jury is still out.
“Today, power from a fuel cell car engine costs 100 times more than power from its internal combustion counterpart”
Bottom line, it’s a long road ahead.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/hydrogen_pr.html (very good, more indepth data)
http://www.petroleumworld.com/story0640.htm (nice op/ed)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120502_caspian.html (unreliable site, but data checked)
Forgot this:
And this is exactly right. Those technologies are just not cost-effective for this application. Not today. Wind power is getting reasonably inexpensive for locations that have high, constant winds, and where other energy is expensive. Alberta has a few large wind farms due to the high prevailing winds around Pincher Creek. Remote areas also benefit.
But overall, even for direct energy use wind power is still too expensive to compete with petroleum. So using wind power as an intermediate to create hydrogen would be even more expensive.
The discussion seems to center around stripping hydrogen atoms. I’m talking about adding oxygen atoms (to water).
I don’t have the numbers handy but fuel cells are supposed to be efficient converters of energy. I don’t think you need efficiency per se. I think you need the best cost/mile of a fuel that can easily be converted to today’s engines. H2O2 makes more sense when you look at the big picture.
As for building more Nuclear plants, I’ve always thought you could put them on military bases. In many cases they would be in isolated areas and they would be easier to protect.