Posted on 10/20/2005 6:58:40 AM PDT by ZGuy
It is unfortunate that the mayor of Columbia and several influential professors at USC have been snookered into believing there is a future in hydrogen fuel cells.
A lot of starry-eyed futurists have been telling us for the past 30 years that hydrogen fuel cells are the way of the future, but the science is not on their side.
Some fuel cell advocates continue to say that fuel cells are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, but the facts are otherwise.
The recent study by the National Academy of Sciences shows that proton exchange membrane fuel cells (the type that are light enough to be considered for use in transportation) achieve efficiency of 30 percent to 38 percent, and the typical efficiency of production units 10 years from now, after a few hundred hours of use, is unlikely to exceed 39 percent. Large diesel engines, on the other hand, currently achieve peak efficiencies above 52 percent, and they will probably achieve efficiencies above 56 percent a decade from now.
Even with today's high fuel prices, unsubsidized hydrogen gas for the small industrial user is still 30 times more expensive per unit of energy than gasoline. For the past decade, the fuel cell advocates have been saying the price of hydrogen will plummet within a few years, but instead it keeps going up.
The fuel cell advocates like to remind us ad nauseam that the fuel cell itself generates no carbon dioxide. But the recent study reminds us the production and distribution of hydrogen from coal, which is where it will mostly come from 15 years to 25 years from now, results in the release of considerable amounts of carbon dioxide. Hydrogen fuel cells won't do anything to reduce global warming. Rather, they will worsen it.
For the past four years, I've been trying to bring some rationality into future energy planning at the U.S. Energy Department, and it's gratifying to see that President Bush's recent pick to lead it, Sam Bodman, has a much better appreciation for sound science than his predecessor. Bodman has been quoted as saying he doesn't expect fuel cells to play much of a role in transportation or energy in general.
More and more energy scientists are beginning to appreciate that next-generation biofuels, including biodiesel and methanol, will play a greatly increased role in the future.
Responsible planning to avert a looming energy crisis would have us re-direct much of the hydrogen funding to next-generation liquid biofuels, renewable fertilizers, wind and solar. Otherwise, sustained oil prices above $120 per barrel seem likely within five years.
Hydrogen will never be a practical energy carrier, especially for automobiles. In contrast, I doubt there will be any faster-growing segment of our economy over the next decade than renewable energy.
Dr. Doty is an engineering physicist and president of Doty Scientific in Columbia.
Wonder if this includes output from cogen on the diesel's exhaust stream.
I believe I read (last year) that GE had demonstrated a combined-cycle gas/steam turbine plant with an overall thermal efficiency above 60%.
Unfortunately, everything seems to be futuristic. I doubt that they are truly next-generational, unless he means that our grandkids will someday have this after we're dead and gone.
Remember:
THINGS TO RUN AWAY FROM IN THE '90's:
"Dot.Com"
THINGS TO RUN AWAY FROM IN THE '00's:
"Hydrogen Fuel" (Hydrogen is not a fuel-it is an energy exchange or transportation medium.)
"Nanophase"
"MEMS"
Invest and weep later.
Darned, pesky reality. It sounded so great. Like a dream. Nirvana for car engines.
No wonder the left hyped it so much.
If reality were part of all American's thought process there would not be fools who can be convinced that, humans can control the global climate, a new Freon was required, separation of church and state exist in the Constitution, abortion is the business of the Federal government, there are free lunches, money is politically contributed without expectations, disarming is followed by peace, children should be taught what to think rather than how to think, and that freedom is free.
Thank goodness someone has a big flyswatter for the Hydrogen Fairy...
Heck, I use Hydrogen fuel every day - it's called gasoline.
Notably absent from the list of next-gen fuel production drivers is nuclear power.
I thought diesel engine efficiency peaked at around 40%. Perhaps the 50+ numbers cited are for a gen-set with cogeneration?
That is, hydrogen is the same trick they pulled ten years ago with battery-electric vehicles. GM was being forced by California to develop zero-emission vehicles, so they invested a few hundred million dollars in a seemingly sincere effort to develop battery-electric vehicles. These they leased, knowing full well consumers wouldn't want them (they had a range of 50-100 miles). GM's real goal was to force California to discard its mandate that 10% of all vehicles sold in that state would be zero-emission. It worked.
Now GM is panicky because the sudden increase in gas prices has caused their SUV sales to plunge. They've lost 3 billion dollars this year. They're still flogging hydrogen (the "Sequel") because they have nothing else to offer.
The good solution to the problem, for the next two or three decades? Plug-in hybrids (for smaller vehicles); diesel hybrids ("heavy" hybrids) for larger vehicles. People are already converting Toyota Priuses as plug-in hybrids. They charge these up overnight in their garage, and commute on mostly battery power (this requires adding more batteries to the vehicle). They get mileages above 100 mpg.
The trick is to tide us over for two or three decades before alternatives to (conventional) petroleum are developed. Conventional petroleum is in short supply (due to increased demand more than to reduced supply), and experts say we have 1 to 3 decades before world (conventional) petroleum production begins an inexorable decline. Unconventional petroleum will come into play thereafter: oil shales and coal gassification. These are already economic or nearly so; once it is clear that petroleum is in permanent decline, the energy companies will move forward on investments on these (Shell has already done a lot of research on oil shale, to be ready when it's needed.)
That's a misleading or disingenuous claim. There needs to be an accounting of the number of kilowatt hours consumed. My Buick Rendezvous will get 100 MPG too, going down a steep grade. Hybrid economy numbers that don't account for the battery state are a close analog to measuring mileage while driving down hill.
As an aside, the electric generation and transmission facilities in this country couldn't support a large scale shift to electric vehicles. And if those facilities were upgraded to meet the demand what would you have? Passenger vehicles that are essentially powered by coal.
They did a test here in Britain about which alternative source of fuel was the cheapest to run your car. The surprise winner was the use of vegetable oil.
I still maintain efficient diesel automobiles are the medium term answer to the problem. It's existing technology that we know that works.
Regards, Ivan
I think you're referring to a certain Hughes Electronics company in Los Angeles. A subsidery of GM. I was doing some proposal work then and thought we could use a power converter they had developed for their car. So we met with their engineering team to see if we could adapt it to our program.
While many of us did see the electric car as impractical, GM's Hughes subsidiary was upfront about it's limitations. No tricks.
There are market realities that must be dealt with. One of those realities is that politics often gets in the way of sound science. And in politics the perception is the reality.
I worked on a DOE study contract about 30 years ago whose funding was the result of political impulses. It was the result of the 'Three Mile Island' "disaster". We had a peanut farmer as president at the time. The study was of little importance and yielded little real useful information. IMO.
We call these kind of projects "boondoggles". There purpose is to appease the ignorant masses and demonstrate that our glorious leaders are on top of the situation. In the process we stay employed and get to do some nifty engineering.
Until they honestly audit their electric bill. They are already starting out by charging their batteries with energy that has lost 60+% upstream of them. It is a comforting illusion, though.
I was at a "Tour de Sol" alternative car race one year, in Plymouth, MA . At the end, all the drivers rushed to the power points and plugged in.
Across the bay,in plain sight, was Boston Edison's Westinghouse 670 MW BWR, grunting as it saw the sudden load of people who needed the Free Nonpolluting Whale-Saving Energy, and some miles away, the Brayton Point Power plant poured in more coal....
GM never lied. They just said, you want us to build an electric car, we'll do it. We'll make the best one possible for a reasonable price. They did. It's just that they knew it wouldn't be successful in the market place (even though many of the small number of owners became very devoted to their cars because they were fun to drive).
The reason we use gasoline in motor vehicles is not because of its efficiency nor because of how much it costs -- the reason we use gasoline is because it carries more energy per weight than other power sources for motor vehicles. Likewise, we do not use batteries, even though they are much more efficient, because they don't carry much energy per weight. Battery-powered vehicles tend to be heavy and have low range. This is changing. Plug-in hybrids are worth considering because they manage to combine the desirable attributes of batteries (efficiency, no dependence on petroleum) with the desirable characteristics of internal combustion engines (range and power).
This has nothing to do with the whales, granola or incense. This is national security: we power our transportation fleet with a fuel 60% of which is imported -- from places like Venezuela, Nigeria and the Middle East, which are unstable or hostile. The status quo is not acceptable. We might slide by for a while, but sooner or later, we will be in a world of hurt.
Zguy:
The use of fuel cells in autos don't seem to be going any where but Ford Motor Company developed a way to burn hydrogen in an Internal combustion engine and then dropped the idea.
The idea was picked up by former Ford people at:
http://www.hydrogenenginecenter.com/about.htm
The IC engine don't require pure hydrogen so should be cheaper to produce. Has any one figured out what the building of 200 or 300 nuclear plants would do to the cost of hydrogen as an engine fuel - cost per mile?
There is also a world wide effort to safely store hydrogen in autos in meaningful amounts which is also part of the problem.
Ben Martin
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