The Hydrogen Hoax

The New Atlantis.com ^ | February 8, 2007 | by Robert Zubrin

[Monterrosa-24]

Nope but I can't hold a kilogram of pure hydrogen either. Sitll the "pure" weight is interesting even if hydrogen is used in fuel cells.

[patton]

So, we are to believe that SUVs turning out 1% CO2 effect the climate, but SUVs turning out 100% water vapor do not?

Hmmmmm.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump
To read later

[dangerdoc]

Even compressed, you can't fit enough on a truck to make it economical and I've read that current pipe infrastructure would not work for hydrogen distribution.

[thackney]

BTTT

[Spirochete]

This, as should be obvious, is economic insanity.

So why all the bandwith and font to debunk such a preposterous scheme?

Hydrogen naysayers are getting louder and shriller these days.

[theBuckwheat]

Hydrogen fuel means more coal power plants. It also means more nuclear plants as well. In any case, it means abandoning at least a portion of the capital and infrastructure base of the petroleum-based fuels that has been built and sustained for generations. This means that new infrastructure will have to be built and in the case of nuclear plants, it may be a decade from the time the capital is committed until the very first penny of return on that capital is earned. Well, ten years is a very long time for anyone to commit their capital.

A lot of things can happen in ten years. New inventions that make the one you invested in nine years ago obsolete, a new and rabid idea could be sweeping through the environmentalist community or new legal theories could be yearning for their first real test in court. Any of a number of things could just destroy your investment. So, why bother? Or, if you want me to bother, if you want me to invest, you'll have to set the potential return high enough to compensate me for the tremendous risk I could be taking.

After all, I could just buy a 10 year US Government bond and not worry at all.

But, if you want to have your hydrogen power, you'll have to find somewhere to get the raw energy to generate it. And that amount of raw energy will have to exceed the amount of energy that is presently being burned in oil that you propose to replace. Hello, is anyone home?

A nuclear plant, that is one big enough to justify the costly studies and approvals, not to mention to justify fighting for years in court. One that can also justify the small army of private, machine-gun toting guards. One that can justify having full staff and security operating from the second that nuclear fuel has been ordered, and for as long as the plant remains a radioactive hazard. A plant of this size might cost over $10 billion when finished in ten years.

That amount of capital is immense to tie up for ten years. How many biotech firms could we fund with $1 billion in venture funding every year for ten years? How many other uses do we have for those funds? We cannot know what we will not have invented when we put such a giant drag on our available capital so as to fund upwards of one hundred new nuclear plants, A trillion dollars for ten years is what it will take for the nuclear plants necessary to replace gasoline with hydrogen fuel.

And nobody has yet speculated what the fuel might cost when we are all done.

[thackney]

Natural Gas, most of which is now wasted, or perhaps better said, allowed to escape, or is burned off.

A little of which, far from most of it.

[curiosity]

Ethanol is a great fuel.

Yeah, a great fuel that corrodes engines, has about 70% of the energy content of gasoline, takes massive amounts of energy to produce, depletes the soil, and drives up food prices. Yeah, it's a real wonderfuel.

It's current downfall is how it is made.

Okay, so how should it be made?

No matter how it is made, hydrogen is a bugger to store and transport.

That's true. I'm not sure exactly how this problem can be overcome, but ethanol sure isn't a viable alternative.

[Kenny Bunk]

How about ....Natural Gas, a lot of which is now wasted, or perhaps better said, allowed to escape, or is burned off?

[SteveMcKing]

Hydrogen works well in rotary engines. Mazda leases a seamless hydrogen/gasoline version of the RX-8 in Japan.

Because it offers separate chambers for intake and combustion, the rotary engine is ideal for burning hydrogen without the backfiring that can occur in a traditional piston engine. The separate induction chamber also provides a safer temperature for fitting the dual hydrogen injectors with their rubber seals, which are susceptible to the high temperatures encountered in a conventional reciprocating piston engine.

Also helping to maximize the benefits of the rotary engine in hydrogen combustion mode, the RENESIS Hydrogen RE features adequate space for the installation of two injectors per intake chamber. Because hydrogen has an extremely low density, a much greater injection volume is required compared with gasoline, thus demanding the use of more than one injector. Typically, this can be difficult to achieve with a conventional reciprocating piston engine because of the structural constraints that prevent mounting injectors in the combustion chamber. However, with its twin hydrogen injectors, the RENESIS Hydrogen RE is both practical and able to deliver sufficient power.

http://media.ford.com/mazda/article_display.cfm?article_id=17134&make_id=227

[Sherman Logan]

3/4 of the earth's surface is composed of water, as is up to 2% of the air. There is simply no way we can add significant water vapor to the atmosphere. Oddly enough, global warming will do so, as warmer air can hold more water vapor.

More importantly, when hydrogen is generated from water, you only get back the original water when it is burned, leading to no net increase at all.

[curiosity]

A trillion dollars for ten years is what it will take for the nuclear plants necessary to replace gasoline with hydrogen fuel.

Considering our GDP is about $13 trillion per year and growing, that's not huge expense. Over ten years, the costs would come to less than 1% of the total GDP produced during that time period. Seems like a bargain to me.

And nobody has yet speculated what the fuel might cost when we are all done.

We have a fairly good idea of our Uranium reserves, and we have a good idea of how much we will need to use. If we build breeder reactors, we can stretch those reserves for at least 500 years, and probably more. It's not as unpredictable as you think

Also, it's a lot less costly to make hydrogen from superheated water, which is how we would likely make it if we were to have widespread use of nuclear power. Of course, transportation and infrastructure are a huge issue for hydrogen. If battery technology improves dramatically oaver the next decade, it very well may be that plug-in battery-operated vehicles are a better long-term solution. Regardless, there is no question that we need to vastly expand our nuclear generation capacity.

[thackney]

Natural Gas, a lot of which is now used to be wasted, or perhaps better said, allowed to escape, or is burned off?

Now it is accurate.

[norwaypinesavage]

The author makes some good points. However, there are equally good points that argue against ethanol. Some of these include: 1)Not enough agricultural product is available
2)It's not east to ship in pipelines
3) Can't be used in older vehicles
4) Energy density half that of petrofuel
5) Takes nearly as much energy to produce as is obtained
etc. This is clearly a one sided view.

[Sherman Logan]

So why all the bandwith and font to debunk such a preposterous scheme?

Because people like our beloved President continue to promote it as a realistic answer to energy problems?

It is interesting that few of the posters critical of this article dispute his facts or figures. They just claim that it will all be worked out, without giving any rational explanation of how.

[SteveMcKing]

http://media.ford.com/mazda/article_display.cfm?article_id=22655

Specifications and lease price of Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen RE

Vehicle	Type	Mazda LA-SE3P ‘Kai' (modified model)
	Overall length/width/height	4.435mm / 1.770mm / 1.340mm
	Wheelbase	2,700mm
	Curb weight	1,460kg
	Seating capacity	4 adults
Engine	Class	RENESIS hydrogen rotary engine
		(Dual fuel system)
	Type	13B
	Displacement	0.654L x 2
	Maximum output	Hydrogen 80kW (109PS) Gasoline 154kW (210PS)
	Maximum torque	Hydrogen 140Nm (14.3kgm) Gasoline 222Nm (22.6kgm)
Fuel	Type	Hydrogen/gasoline switch
	Fuel tank	Hydrogen 110L/35MPa （ 350 bar ） high pressure hydrogen tank Gasoline 61L
Performance	Cruising distance (10-15 mode)	Hydrogen 100km Gasoline 549km
* Standard lease price (Price without tax indicated in brackets.)		420,000 yen (400,000 yen) per month

*Monthly lease payment for the 30-month lease period.

[theBuckwheat]

Engineer Zubrin was doing just fine with his fact filled article until he swerved into economics, where he just fell into his area of incompetence.

Even the brightest of people cannot allow a free market and free people to just make up their free minds and solve their own person issues in personal ways. Bright people especially find it impossible to believe that the self-organizing chaos of a free market outperforms a neat and well credentialed central plan far more often than not. Best of all, it does it peacefully, without having to resort to the implied use of armed government agents (which is what every single use of government regulation, intervention or law implies) or tax subsidies that only can originate by sending more armed agents out to collect money from perfect strangers who happen to qualify as "taxpayers".

There is yet to be a really better all around fuel source for motor vehicles (autos, trucks and aircraft) than liquid fuels like kerosene, gasoline and diesel. We have generations of experience in the chemistry, the transport, the refining, the engineering, the design and the repair of equipment for handing and using them. This experience counts for a lot, and it has counted for nothing in the rush to find alternates.

We have in our hands and lands more than plentiful sources of hydrocarbons that could be converted into these fuels at a cost that is not much higher than the market price today of crude oil.

This is the area we should be concentrating our efforts on, not on the tax-advantaged conversion of corn to a tempermental new liquid fuel

But let the market decide. When government fixates on a particular technology, it precludes and crowds out viable alternatives. Those alternatives include converting coal to conventional liquid fuels, or even converting turkey offal and sewage sludge into a liquid hydrocarbon that can be refined into conventional fuels.

Enviros are all atwitter about "sustainable" ethanol, a fuel that hardly breaks even in net energy production. What a crock of organic waste. They would rather plow up millions of acres of farmland than a few thousand acres of ANWAR!

[theBuckwheat]

>>
And nobody has yet speculated what the fuel might cost when we are all done.
<<

Sorry, the fuel could be free, but the capital cost and O & M of the plant is so astronomical that when it is allocated to the cost of each unit of output, it will be very costly.

For example, I don't believe that any nuclear plant in the US has costed out at a lower cost per KWH than the conventional capacity it replaced or supplanted.

[oneolcop]

But, but, but you mean we all won't be drinkin' that free Bubble-up and eatin' that rainbow stew?