The Hydrogen Hallucination

Solar Acess ^ | 11/10/03 | Mark Sardella

[colorado tanker]

It will become obvious that global control of energy by the UN is the key to making progress

Yep, that's their goal - that and the destruction of the energy and automobile industries.

[expatpat]

...compressed H2 gas is not the only (or necessarily the best) hydrogen transport mechanism

Yes, I was aware of other approaches, but most of them are impractical lab-size methods. I don't know much about the natrium process you quote, but remember fuel-cell research in the 1960's which never came to anything -- because of catalyst problems I believe. Is the natrium catalyst affordable and resistant to poisoning, etc?

I didn't realize that compressing was such a large fraction of the energy input to H2 gas storage, but it doesn't surprise me.

[expatpat]

And how many tons of algae do you think you'll need to go a hundred miles at 50mph?

[expatpat]

Now you're talking, apart from some engineering problems and some politicial problems. How do you pursuade the Kennedys to allow these things on Cape Cod beaches? Or the Hollywood types to allow them off Malibu?

[RandallFlagg]

Well, personally I'd say something like, "It's up to you. Either we put the wave generators here, or we put a nuke plant here."

Just to watch their faces, of course...

[chickenlips]

My liberal neighbors are sure Al Gore is the key to the solution. They are convinced that as soon as he invents the "hydrogen press" we'll have abundant energy. They're also sure he invented the sun.

[MainFrame65]

Because of the near-universal use of gas and diesel as transportation fuel, there is a gigantic infrastructure to find, extract, transport, refine, distribute, and dispense it. Analog fuels, such as ethanol, biodiesel, and propane for the few vehicles that use it, mostly piggyback on the existing fuel system. Hydrogen as a gas or a hydride could not.

The article is completely correct about where the energy resides. Fossil-fueled vehicles are running off of God's battery, using up energy stored by nature at an earlier time. The question about how much is left is a little slippery, because it is a function of molecules, technology, and economics, all of which figure into the equation about equally. For instance, during WWII, Germany effectively used ethanol as a substitute.

Considering the inputs required, an acre of irrigated, tended land can produce roughly 8.5 barrels of either ethanol or biodiesel in one crop cycle. Considering how much fuel we use, NEW irrigated land about ten percent larger than the state of TEXAS would be needed to replace twenty percent of our current use - and would require a significant amount of petroleum as input, in terms of tractor and pump fuel, insecticides, chemical fertilizers, and processing energy.

But the question I wanted to get to is the one about facilities. So far, by comparison with what has been spent on petroleum technology, little effort has gone into developing NaBH4 as an energy vector. It might prove difficult to scale up, but so have other chemical processes that we now use in great volume to produce what we need. We now manufacture industrial diamond, garnet, and tons of ruby for electronics and lasers, nitrogen fertilizers, and all of the synthetics for fabrics. A little seed money might produce great rewards.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the two inputs that have to be there in addition to the recycling residue are hydrogen and energy - lots of hydrogen (perhaps from water), and a WHOLE LOT of energy. I doubt that current methods for producing laboratory quantities of NaBH4 will scale up to fuel the nation, but something might very well be developed that will be relatively efficient - perhaps require 50 to 100 percent more energy than will be available to the user of the resulting fuel. If instead it is six or ten times, it probably is unworkable.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Then get me some.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

You're picking up on the "control" aspect....

[Eric in the Ozarks]

If we'd spent the moon walk money on nuclear power, we'd be there.

[Dark Knight]

I personally like hydrogen fuel as a solution to many problems. Mostly high pollution areas where there are major health problems and major infrastructure problems. I also like have a Personally Owned Vehicle I can drive at my own convenience.

We can have both. But the economics drive the production decisions, not the science. This guy is assuming oil is a dwindling asset and assumes no new tech will arise to make oil economic. It has not been true in the past, even thought it has been predicted many times. Technology is always advancing. It has been on FR and FR was on the forefront of making the new tech known (I'm embarassed I forgot about in my previous post). We can turn organic (and some nonorganic) wastes back into constituant parts, oils, water, and minerals.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897232/posts

"And it will be profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in Philadelphia, we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there."

The solar-based author made bad assumptions about oil because he is political.

I still like hydrogen though, its clean.

DK