Posted on 09/23/2005 2:19:38 PM PDT by newgeezer
With all its inefficiencies, the only real advantage of using hydrogen as a fuel source is that it can be burned without producing waste carbon to eneter the atmosphere. But extracting hyrogen directly from coal, by any process and regardless of other coproducts, still releases trapped carbon. And that defeats the only real point of moving to a "hydrogen economy".
The other stated purpose of the "hydrogen economy", energy independence, simply doesn't make sense for coal sourced hydrogen. Again, hydrogen's inefficiencies mean it would make more sense to make cars that burn coal directly. A coal driven car would release less carbon and yield more usefull energy than a car fueled by coal sourced hydrogen.
Bad as it paints the picture, it leaves out another dirty little secret. Hydrogen oxygen fuel cells depend on a platinum catalyst. Platinum is rarer then gold and more expensive. There is no domestic source of platinum, we'd have to buy it on the world market.
More food for thought!
Regards,
GtG
It costs about $30/barrel to make gasoline from coal!
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03328.htm
Back in 1949, the Bureau of the Mines in Louisville, Missouri put together a demonstration plant to produce gasoline from coal. Raw coal was first crushed to about 3/4 inch size and then pulverized in a ball-mill to less than 60 mesh, then dried to 1 or 2 percent moisture content. This is mixed with a small quantity of catalyst, such as iron oxide or tin oxalate, and with a heavy oil into a paste containing about 47 percent solids. Steam-driven pumps at 10,000 psi force this paste into a radiant-type heater in which the high pressure tubing is protected
by a superheated jacket. The plant was designed to work at 700 atmospheres or over 10,000 lb. pressure, in two major steps. This liquifies the coal and produces gasoline and its by-products. The output of the plant was from 300 barrels of gasoline per day depending on the coal used and the catalyst used.
Taken from ENCARTA 2004 by Microsoft.
That's not the point. The energy used to refine gasoline comes from the oil itself. Gasoline doesn't hold all the energy from the oil consumed to produce it, but it's still a positive net energy transfer from the well to your fuel tank.
Producing hydrogen, by any method, requires an external energy source. Unless someone figures out a way to get energy from the water used to produce hydrogen by electrolysis, hydrogen production is a net energy sink. The last time I checked, such an energy source (nuclear fusion) was still many many decades away. And has been many decades away for decades now.
Look toward Purdue University the brains of the country...
Yes, hydrogen is a way of making nuclear power portable. But the article errs in writing off fitful, opportunistic sources of energy (wind, wave action, etc. If a safe way can be found to bottle hydrogen between energy source and automobile, any of these sources can also be used to store energy as hydrogen. If the wind blows hard enough for one month of the year somewhere, that's still a valid source of hydrogen.
Not entirely a valid point. Traditional fuel cells do use platinum as a catalyst. But then so does the catalytic converter on your car's tail pipe. A hydrogen fueled vehicle wouldn't need a catalytic converter to convert unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust. So essentially it would just move the platinum from one end of the engine to the other.
I do have to give the hydrogen fuel cell pushers a little credit here. Most of the fuel cell research these days has gone into developing efficient membranes that do not contain platinum or other rare materials.
The fuel cells themselves are not really an issue in the hypothetical "hydrogen economy". Especially when there are so many problems with using hydrogen at the hydrogen production end.
Really? Well you must know something that everyone else here doesn't. Please, share your knowledge.
You'll need wheels and wheel bearings. Even the diesel-electric locomotive has wheels.
From the sun .... solar water splitting. Think of it this way .... how much energy does it take to power all the vehicles in the world compared to how much energy it takes to warm and sustain a sphere 25,000 miles in diameter 93 million miles away? The answer cannot be expressed in 'quads' if it is to be meaningful. The answer is 'a hell of a lot'. We have the sun ... we have the water (70% of the earth) ... we have only to learn how to take advantage of the obvious.
This seems to be a level-handed, hard-hitting analysis of the fallacy of running a car on hydrogen anytime soon.
And yet still, the Stupid idiot of a Governor in california.
Big doofus Arnold, says we must invest in Hydrogen as the next Fuell for cars...California's next Disaster.
He will probably be reelected.
Would that be with the classic hyperbolic cooling tower in the back?
Yes, it is the sports model, two seats.
The eight year estimate for solar panels producing the energy required to produce them is a little optimistic. Most estimates I've seen is ten to fifteen years. Solar panels, for the first decade they're used, are not so much an energy source but rather a way to pay for ten years of electricity up front. They are simply not efficient enough or cheap enough to be a viable means for efficient hydrogen production from electrolysis.
how much energy does it take to power all the vehicles in the world compared to how much energy it takes to warm and sustain a sphere 25,000 miles in diameter 93 million miles away?
But that's not the point. Yes, a lot of energy come to the earth from the sun every day. But how is that energy going to be collected, stored and transported? The real issues with energy use are always issues of collection, storage, and transportation. Why do you think we use fossil oil and coal? Because the energy in the fossil fuels has already been collected by plants over billions of years and stored by them in an easy to transport form that we can go out and dig out of the ground.
we have only to learn how to take advantage of the obvious.
But the "obvious" comes with a plethora of not so obvious pitfalls and technical hurdles for us to overcome. If a solar powered hydrogen economy were really so obvious and simple, we'd be running one right now.
I want to be the first one on my block to drive a coal-powered car. Very cool.
Up to now cheap oil has been selling for $20-25 per barrel. This will not be the situation in the future because demand will exceed supply ..... India and China have joined the demand side of the equation. Until now hydrogen was not economically competitive so capital was diverted to oil exploration, etc. This will not be the case in the future. Oil will be around for a long time but it will slowly be replaced by hydrogen and nuclear energy.
While looking for a photo of post war Japan with cars using hot coal vapor (they had a large bladder on the roof) I found some helpful tidbits.
Drive a Coal Powered Car
PROS: Uses cheap, clean coal.
CONS: Shoveling coal while driving is almost as distracting as talking on the phone. With the open flame there, you made need a drink to calm your nerves.
http://www.imao.us/archives/001506.html
ROPER, SYLVESTER HOWARD
Sylvester Howard Roper (1823-1896) was an American inventor from New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Roper developed a coal-powered, two-cylinder, steam-driven wooden motorcycle in 1867. Roper also developed a steam-driven car. Roper died at the age of 73 while testing a new motorcycle.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/transportation.shtml
LoL
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