In goes a hydrogen powerplant into a Ford Explorer at Virginia Tech
Posted on 02/07/2003 7:31:16 AM PST by Isara
President Bush, a former Texas oilman, is not exactly the environmentalists' favorite eco-warrior. Even so, he has put himself at the forefront of one of their crusades.
On Thursday, Bush called on Congress to approve $1.2 billion in research funding for hydrogen-fueled cars.
"I'm going to work with the Congress to move this nation forward on hydrogen fuel cell technologies," he said, repeating a proposal in last week's State of the Union address. "It is in our national interest that we do so."
Bush is proposing other hydrogen-related projects too. All told, he wants to spend $1.7 billion on research over five years.
Hydrogen promises a clean, renewable energy source that would end the need for foreign oil. But it has the same drawbacks as wind and solar: It has never proved itself efficient or practical.
Private industry has already made the first hydrogen cars, but the cost remains huge.
Absent a major breakthrough or government mandate, Americans will not be driving them for a long time.
"The problem with hydrogen is there are no hydrogen wells," said Sallie Baliunas, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "We can dig up petroleum, but hydrogen has to be created from, say, seawater. And that requires a lot of energy."
How Hydrogen Works
Hydrogen is an abundant natural element. It can be extracted through chemical processes from several sources, including water.
Hydrogen gas would then be stored in compressed form in a battery-like device called a fuel cell. When mixed with oxygen - an air filter would do it - the cell creates an electric charge. The only exhaust is water vapor.
For all of the benefits of hydrogen, there are major drawbacks. The main one is that it requires energy to extract it in the first place.
The most common method (called "steam reformation") mixes natural gas and water with a catalyst to produce hydrogen. Greenhouse gasses are a byproduct.
The process also requires heat, which must come from another energy source.
Solar or wind could be used, but vast tracts of land for windmills or solar panels would be needed.
The Cost Problem
Using the cheapest process, it costs $3,000 to make enough hydrogen to generate one kilowatt. That's four times what it costs a gas-powered generator to make the same amount of power.
"I can only say the expense is enormous," Shinichi Yamaguchi, a Toyota scientist, told the National Journal about his company's hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Baliunas is skeptical hydrogen can ever be made practical in a market-based economy.
"It takes energy, and you lose energy in the process, so it is never going to be worthwhile," she said. "That is just the laws of physics."
Others are more optimistic, but no one expects hydrogen cars for at least another decade or two.
A related problem is the logistics of hydrogen fuel cells.
There's no efficient way yet to make them widely available. Exactly how it would be done is a mystery even to the experts.
Oil companies are already looking into refitting their filling stations to provide hydrogen, but the infrastructure would have to be completely rebuilt. Only four stations exist now.
Despite these problems, hydrogen has replaced wind and solar as the preferred alternative to oil.
An alliance of environmentalists, corporations and state governors has emerged calling for federal subsidies to boost research.
Bush's remarks were seen as a bone for that group.
Many companies already have advanced hydrogen-fuel programs. General Motors () alone has 300 people devoted to it. Most would love a federal boost.
There's even a Hydrogen Infrastructure Investment Roundtable.
"We're interested in supplying energy to consumers, whether it be gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel or hydrogen," said John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, a roundtable participant.
The greens are also pushing hydrogen. They'd like to see internal combustion engines replaced with pollution-free hydrogen vehicles.
California Gov. Gray Davis upped the ante last year. He pushed through a law mandating that only low-emissions cars could be sold in the state by 2009.
California is the nation's largest car market. Other states are weighing similar rules.
Hydrogen is being pushed abroad as well. The European Union recently announced a $2 billion fuel cell research program.
A Job For Big Gov't?
Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Hydrogen Economy" and an adviser to the EU project, says the U.S. needs a similar approach.
"Assistance for industry, tax credits, research and development, investment opportunities: that's what is really called for," he said. "To make this real, there needs to be the same kind of public-private partnership that Europe has."
The $1.2 billion Bush has proposed isn't nearly enough, Rifkin says.
But he expects more funding. Once started, the pressure to expand U.S. research will ratchet up.
"Bush has opened the door a slight bit. What you're going to see right now is the industry pushing that door wide open," he said. "There is going to be tremendous pressure on Bush now to go much further than he is suggesting."
That's likely, says Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
But the rush to develop hydrogen could crowd out other research.
"Everyone will now focus on hydrogen fuel cells because that is where the research money is going to go," he said. "Other technologies that might be even cleaner or more readily useful will see their research funding dry up."
Burnett says it would be better to let the companies do the research independently.
"Eventually the markets will demand this technology, if it is the best technology," he said. "I don't think it is necessary for the government to subsidize it."
For all of the benefits of hydrogen, there are major drawbacks. The main one is that it requires energy to extract it in the first place.
The most common method (called "steam reformation") mixes natural gas and water with a catalyst to produce hydrogen. Greenhouse gasses are a byproduct.
The process also requires heat, which must come from another energy source.
Solar or wind could be used, but vast tracts of land for windmills or solar panels would be needed.
That's what I thought. "There are no hydrogen wells. We can dig up petroleum, but hydrogen has to be created from, say, seawater. And that requires a lot of energy."
In goes a hydrogen powerplant into a Ford Explorer at Virginia Tech
President Bush: How about an iota of accountability.
Please remove Q. Todd Dickenson and other corrupt officials at the Patent Office and State Dept. TODAY.
All true, however it can't, at least at this time, be made to satisfy the publics demand OR expectations. If these alternative methods cannot perform as well or better than fossil fuels, people will not use them.The technology does not exist yet...if it did, SOMEONE would be producing these products & would become the next Bill Gates.
My knee-jerk reaction: if Jeremy Rifkin is for it, I'm against it.
Article sez: Using the cheapest process, it costs $3,000 to make enough hydrogen to generate one kilowatt. That's four times what it costs a gas-powered generator to make the same amount of power.
I don't believe, however, that with the cheapest process only 25% of the energy from the gas is being stored in the hydrogen; this factor of four must include the efficiency of the fuel cell itself. It would be nice to see this figure broken down so that we could have some idea of how much of it might be gained back by research.
And that energy comes from...
PETROLEUM!!!!
Water vapor is the #1 greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Its far easier to use that same domestic energy to turn coal into gasoline, diesel and kerosene through coal gasification.
Hydrogen powered anything in practical form is 100+ year old pipe dream, right up there with urban Monorails and personal jetpacks.
Actually, we can "dig up" hydrogen, as well. Coal gasification very nicely produces large quantities of it (the final product syngas is pretty much carbon monoxide and hydrogen). Separate them, burn the carbon monoxide in gas turbines to produce electricity at the mine-site and for transmission locally, and send the hydrogen off by pipeline to wherever it is needed. We have MORE coal reserves in the US than Saudi Arabia has oil.
PETROLEUM!!!!
But not necessarily. Petroleum is an expensive power plant fuel. The cheapest thing right now would be to build fission reactors (and they won't have to be near populated areas this time). Ultimately, coal represents the greatest available store of energy.
That's true, but since most of the surface of the Earth is liquid water, you can take it as a given that we can't drive atmospheric water vapor very far out of equilibrium. The more water we pump into the air, the more will come out as rain.
I like the idea. How complete is it to burn CO from H2? Is it dangerous to burn something when H2 is around? Like Hindenburg.
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