The case for nuke cars—it's called 'hydrogen.' [Fuel cells make ZERO sense.]

Car And Driver magazine ^ | October, 2005 issue | Patrick Bedard

[newgeezer]

Funny thing about hydrogen cars: If we were all driving them now, the President's FreedomCAR initiative would be anteing up its $1.8 billion to invent the gasoline engine. Freeing us from hydrogen would be "the moral equivalent of war," to use the words of a long-past energy-crisis president. Gasoline would be the miracle fuel. It would save money by the Fort Knoxful. It would save energy by the Saudi Arabiaful.

To see why this is so, let's look at the numbers. And for once, we're talking about a miracle fuel without speculation. We can see exactly how the "gasoline economy" would work by looking back to a year that's already happened. In 2000, gasoline consumption averaged 8.47 million barrels per day. Gas contains 5.15 million British thermal units of energy per barrel. For big numbers like this, it's customary to think in "quads," or quadrillion BTUs. So the gasoline energy used by motor vehicles in the year 2000 worked out to 16 quads.

Now let's do the same driving in hydrogen cars. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element on earth, but there's no underground pool of it we can drill into. All of nature's hydrogen atoms come married to other atoms in earnestly stable relationships. It takes an industrial process to break apart those marriages to obtain pure hydrogen in a form that can be used by fuel cells.

Think of fuel cells as black boxes into which we put hydrogen on one side and oxygen from the atmosphere on the other. Out the bottom come water and a small electrical current. There is no such thing as free power, of course. If you get power out when you let hydrogen and oxygen get married in a fuel cell, then you must put power into the process of divorcing them.

The industrial divorcing of water molecules is known as electrolysis. This is fuel by immaculate conception, according to most greenies. To make the chemistry work, you must put in 39.4 kilowatt-hours of energy for each kilogram of hydrogen you expect to liberate. Unfortunately, the electrolysis process is only 70 percent efficient. So the total energy input must be 56.3 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of hydrogen.

This energy to be added must come from somewhere. The U.S. has an excellent supply of coal. Coal-fired powerplants are about 40 percent efficient, so 140.8 kilowatt-hours of coal energy are required to net the 56.3 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce our one kilogram of hydrogen.

My source for these calculations is Donald Anthrop, Ph.D., professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State University, in a Cato Institute report.

In a perfect world, the fuel cell in our car would produce 33.4 kilowatt-hours of useful energy from each kilogram of hydrogen, and 6.0 kilowatt-hours would go to water vapor, giving you back your net investment of 39.4 kilowatt-hours at the electrolysis plant. But the world is not perfect, and the best fuel cells are only about 70 percent efficient. So the energy yield is 23.3 kilowatt-hours.

One more loss must be reckoned with. Hydrogen is a gas. It's lighter than air. Remember, it was the stuffing for the airship Hindenburg. Hydrogen gas (at atmospheric pressure and room temperature) containing the same energy as a gallon of gasoline takes up 3107 gallons of space. To make a useful auto fuel, Anthrop says it must be compressed to at least 4000 psi (Honda uses 5000 psi in the FCX; GM is trying for 10,000). The energy required to do that further trims the yield to 17.4 kilowatt-hours. Pressures higher than 4000 would increase miles available from each fill but cost more energy for compression. Liquefying hydrogen, which BMW advocates, costs upward of 40 percent of hydrogen's energy content.

So far, the numbers say this: Starting with 140.8 kilowatt-hours of energy from coal gives you 17.4 kilowatt-hours of electrical power from the fuel cell to propel the car, or an energy efficiency of 12 percent.

Anthrop goes on to estimate the fuel-cell power needed for the 2.526 billion miles driven in the U.S. in 2000. According to Southern California Edison, the electricity needed per mile for passenger cars is at least 0.46 kilowatt-hour. For the whole U.S. vehicle fleet, that works out to 1.16 trillion kilowatt-hours. You'll need 32 quads of coal, which is twice the energy actually consumed in 2000 with gasoline.

As for global-warming implications, the use of hydrogen from coal instead of gasoline would produce a 2.7-fold increase in carbon emissions.

Of course, all of today's electricity doesn't come from coal. But even with the current mix of sources, including natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind, that much hydrogen would raise our carbon output to about twice the 2000 level.

The enviros like to talk about renewable energy. Anthrop has done those calculations as well. Hydro power is our largest source of green electricity, but it would take 15 times the current amount for an all-hydrogen vehicle fleet. Given the pressure to remove existing dams, it's unlikely we'll have any additional hydroelectricity.

Photovoltaic cells? Anthrop says it takes about eight years of cell output to make back the electrical power originally consumed in manufacturing the cell.

Wind power? It defies calculation, in part because wind blows only intermittently.

Virtually all the hydrogen produced today, about 50 million tons worldwide, comes from natural gas. The process, called "steam reforming," is only about 30 percent efficient, much less, he says, "than if the natural gas were simply burned" in the generating plant.

Producing enough hydrogen to replace gasoline by reforming natural gas would increase our gas consumption by 66 percent over 2002's usage. And don't forget the carbon emissions.

That leaves the unspeakable—nukes.

Presumably, BMW knows all of this, yet it has been thumping the tub for hydrogen since the 1970s. Along with hundreds of other invitees, I attended BMW's hydrogen hootenanny at Paramount Pictures in 2001. Mostly, it amounted to a day of corporate preening before California's greenies. Still, BMW is famously brave in confronting technology. Does it have a plan? I summed up the science of this column, in writing, and passed it up through BMW's official channels, along with the obvious question: Where will the necessary quads and quads of energy come from for hydrogen cars? That was nearly two years ago. BMW has not answered.

No answer, of course, is the anwer.

[RightWhale]

$5 per watt seems to have been the industry standard for a couple of decades. That's just the solar cells. All this new technology parades past and the price remain $5 a watt. They used to talk about 10 cents a watt and trash like that, but now they just talk installed systems. Preferably on municipal buildings.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Investor's Business Daily estimates that the Western shale can produce enough oil to provide for America's entire demand for the next 400 years.

Worth repeating.

[RightWhale]

the Western shale can produce enough oil

And then the cooked shale can make a very colorful, if crunchy, national park.

[newgeezer]

Of course there are trade-offs. And, most government-mandated recycling may indeed not make economic sense. However, I'm still looking for data to back up your claim that recycling has a net environmental cost -- that it does more harm than good to the environment.

[Entrepreneur]

Read the links sent earlier. It's there. It's easy to find more.

[Rocky]

Good article. Thanks for posting.

[mission9]

You seem to have an inexhaustible well of negativity about the "hydrogen economy." Unfortunately, you are not very well read on the subject and you have no practical experience. Yes, hydrogen is not a true energy source, but a energy storage element. Are there technical problems to be solved? yes.

You are not even asking the right questions. The real question is "can hydrogen find a place in reducing the dependence of the United States on carbon based fuels?" The answer of course is yes. Two technical innovations which are presently practical, yet are not contemplated by you nor the author of this hit piece are: Catalyzed hydrogen gas storage, and geothermal electrical generation (think Yellowstone).

Another point of the discussion must include that virtually every hydrogen energy solution is in the prototype stage. To compare hydrogen energy solutions on the experimental scale with this carbon fuel infrastructure misses the point. Economies of scale will solve many of the "problems" so craftily raised by this article. Trying to set yourself up as some kind of expert who knows the real problems of hydrogen, as opposed to the engineers and experimenters who are making this goal a reality, solves nothing.

Your attitude sums up a huge part of the problem - how does one enlist the average investor and consumer to do things which they have not done before? Arguments such as those as you are making remind me of city slickers who eat ice cream every day, yet view dairies as sources of pollution, and have never milked a guernsey, much less cleaned out the barn.

[pillbox_girl]

You seem to have an inexhaustible well of negativity about the "hydrogen economy."

No. What I have is an inexhaustible well of reality and perspective about the "hydrogen economy". But I can understand how a starry eyed pie in the sky hydrogen zealot might confuse that for pessimism.

Unfortunately, you are not very well read on the subject and you have no practical experience.

Actually, I do, and I have. And I also don't just take everything I hear from the various alternative energy promoters at face value. I actually bother to critically examine their claims and thereby avoid confusing optimistic possibilities for actual probabilities.

The real question is "can hydrogen find a place in reducing the dependence of the United States on carbon based fuels?" The answer of course is yes.

Please do me the common courtesy of reading some of my other posts before you climb up on your high horse and try to judge me. If you'd done that, you would have seen me say in this very thread:

Now don't get me wrong; hydrogen does have a place in a post petroleum economy, but not by itself. The real post petroleum world will see a much wider variety of energy sources in use. Right now we depend almost entirely on the big three fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. If we do things right, we will see many different renewable fuels, each being used where it is most useful. That means hydrogen, but it also includes biodiesel, ethanol, wind, photovoltaic, nuclear, and other energy sources.

As an aside, you're incorrectly stating our current energy problems. You seem to think the only goal is getting away from carbon based fuels. That is not correct or complete. Carbon based fuels are fine so long as they are part of a carbon neutral or carbon negative energy flowpath. And energy independence is also a big part of the equation.

Two technical innovations which are presently practical, yet are not contemplated by you nor the author of this hit piece are: Catalyzed hydrogen gas storage, and geothermal electrical generation (think Yellowstone).

Catalyzed hydrogen gas storage: Actually, we have covered this earlier in this thread. Go back and look. Catalyzed hydrogen storage is promoted as a method of getting around liquid hydrogen's very poor volume energy density. However, it introduces additional inefficiencies into the hydrogen energy flowpath because it adds the additional step of combining the hydrogen into the storage medium. If you are using a storage medium that is not recharged with hydrogen, then the used storage medium is nothing more than another waste byproduct, much like carbon dioxide is for the current "hydrocarbon economy". And besides that, the hydrogen energy flowpath already has enough inefficiencies that it really doesn't need any more. Remember: inefficiencies are multiplicative.

Geothermal electrical generation: Congratulations! You've just discovered yet another of the many many ways electricity can be generated to produce hydrogen. But that's all you've brought up. Geothermal power is just another geographically limited energy source. I'm also not sure you understand how much electricity can be practically extracted from geothermal sources. Did you know that the majority of existing geothermal energy projects do not generate electricity, but rather are used for steam heating local residences? Which brings up another problem for geothermal electrical generation: what about all the people who don't live near geothermal hot spots?

Another point of the discussion must include that virtually every hydrogen energy solution is in the prototype stage.

And they've been in the "prototype stage" for decades. I don't know enough about you to know if you're old enough to remember the 60's, but people have been pushing hydrogen as the "super fuel of the future" since before then. The very fact that hydrogen hasn't yet made any real impact shows just how many hurdles need to be overcome before it's really useful.

To compare hydrogen energy solutions on the experimental scale with this carbon fuel infrastructure misses the point.

No. People are promoting hydrogen as the end all and be all replacement of hydrocarbon fuels, so comparing the two doesn't miss the point; it is the point.

Hydrogen doesn't just compare badly with fossil fuels. It also fares poorly when compared with other alternative fuels.

A good example is BioDiesel. The diesel engine has been around for more than a century. It was originally invented to run on farmed fuels like peanut oil. Hydrogen, at best, is carbon neutral unless it comes from fossil fuel sources, in which case it is a massive carbon source (which kind of defeats the purpose). Yet BioDiesel is a carbon sink; it pulls more carbon from the air to make than it puts into the air when burned. Better yet, BioDiesel actually works, and works today. It is directly compatible with our existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

Economies of scale will solve many of the "problems" so craftily raised by this article.

Really? Well, you are entitled to your opinion. But in reality, you don't really know. Nobody does. But instead of admitting your ignorance and hope, you try to pass off your vague hope in the magic "economy of scale" solving the problems of hydrogen fuel as a fact. Well, the magic of "economies of scale" was also supposed to provide everyone with a flying car by now, and they aren't around either.

Trying to set yourself up as some kind of expert who knows the real problems of hydrogen, as opposed to the engineers and experimenters who are making this goal a reality, solves nothing.

You really have no idea who you're talking to, do you?

And as to making the "hydrogen economy" a reality? Yes, there has been a little progress. But nothing yet that definitively proves the endpoint feasibility of using hydrogen as a fuel. And nothing that proves hydrogen to be any better (or even a little better) than other alternative energy solutions.

Your attitude sums up a huge part of the problem - how does one enlist the average investor and consumer to do things which they have not done before?

Oh please. more like "how does one snooker the average sucker into pumping money into a rat hole of pipe dreams and promises".

There is a lot of flim-flam surrounding the current promotion of the "hydrogen economy". Not a little of it is coming from the fossil fuel companies because they know that unless someone brilliant somehow manages to magically overcome a lot of the many massive stumbling blocks to producing, storing, and transporting clean hydrogen, the majority of hydrogen will come from their dirty fossil sources. And they know that will mean greater dependence on their fossil fuels. And more pollution too, but they don't really bother themselves about that.

There are other, better alternative energy sources out there that work and work today. So long as we keep putting all our eggs into the hydrogen basket, we are making a high risk gamble with our economy and society with no real guarantee of any payoff.

Arguments such as those as you are making remind me of city slickers who eat ice cream every day, yet view dairies as sources of pollution, and have never milked a guernsey, much less cleaned out the barn.

Whatever. This just shows how quick you are to jump to baseless, unfounded, and incorrect conclusions about people. Just like you have jumped to unfounded, baseless, and wrong conclusions about hydrogen as a fuel.

[pillbox_girl]

It looks a lot like some of the thermal cracking research that's being done here in the states. If it is, then I'd say it has a high chance of being a good energy solution.

However, from what I've seen in this article, it is a little unclear as to what the non-fuel waste products are or the actual efficiency ratios. It says it's up to 90% efficient based on the feed stock, but that's not saying much. I strongly syspect that if it's only 90% efficient with an ideal source material, then its efficiency with real world feed stocks will be considerably lower.

All that being said, the fact that they are actually trying to sell working plants, and not just hoping for "investors" is a really good sign. That says to me they really think they've got something, and aren't just another "free energy" scam.

[pillbox_girl]

My ten to fifteen year investemnt return estimate for solar panels is for conductive polymer photovoltaics. Traditional silicon crystal solar panels take almost twenty years or more before they return on their investment. Of course, payoff times depend a lot on where the panels are placed and how much sun they get. Conductive polymer photovoltaics do hava a bit of an advantage there in that they accept a wider light spectrum and are more light level tolerant.

That being said, I strongly suspect conductive polymer technology will become cheaper as it matures. However, I'm still not convinced it has the same long term durability of silicon crystal based solar panels. It's a new technology. It shows a lot of promise, but we must remember that promises are not guarantees.

[Argus]

Thanks for the links.

[humint]

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.

We don't need photo-voltaics to do the job when mirrors are so inexpensive... the H-economy is possible but painful. In all the commentary in this thread I didn't read any one mention a major setback to the H-economy, hydrogen embrittlement. The small H atom works its way into the crystalline matrix of standard metal pipes and renders them brittle and very dangerous within a relatively short period of time. Pipelines required to move H are extremely expensive, but so is war. That is if you subscribe to the BS argument that we are at war for resources alone. There is a little thing called freedom that’s worth fighting for as well. But here’s the heart and soul of the new H-economy if the powers that be decide to move in the H direction.

An H-economy regime that makes sense is not in our cars but from the outlet in our homes. 1 -- Split H2O using focused solar energy. 2 -- pipe the H to FC power plants around the country or simply burn the H and use a typical turbine to produce E. 3 -- Connect H plants to existing electric grids. And if you're still concerned about the emissions from your car, buy one you can plug in at night.

The transition to the H-economy will be a big project... too big without major corp or gov sponsorship. But we’ve got folks working on that I’m sure.