Will Clean Hydrogen Power End U.S. Dependence On Oil?

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY ^ | Friday, February 7, 2003 | SEAN HIGGINS

[steve-b]

Coal is massively dirty and much more of a polluter than petroleum; to "scrub" it clean reduces any economic benefit to nil.

Much of that problem is solved by using a closed-system gasification -- the leftover crap remains confined.

It would also help to repeal the Stainmaker's gift to the Riady clan.

[chimera]

All the "primary energy" necessary to drive the process comes from the energy contained in the coal itself.

So you're not using an external source (primary energy) to drive the gasification process? Its just combusting the coal and capturing the products of that? If so, could one retrofit existing coal burners and use them to produce these products? Or is a slower process?

[Sloth]

Using the cheapest process, it costs $3,000 to make enough hydrogen to generate one kilowatt.

Quote makes no sense. 1 kW is a measure of power, not energy. It may well be 4X as expensive as gas generators, but $3000 generates 1 kW for how long? 7 seconds? 83 years? I hate journalists.

[cinFLA]

One loses about 35% in the H2 generation process. The gas generator is about 60% efficient but the fuel cell (I think) is a little less.

[chimera]

The "nasties" get carried away in the solid slag from the gasification process.

And the nature of that slag is...? And the slag goes where...? (I'm just trying to anticipate the questions that might come up.)

The other poster mentioned the scrubbing process and it certainly is an issue with the current generation of coal burners. The scrubber sludge outflow from the one big plant on the Ohio River south of here forms a sludge pond that is miles long, stretching out behind the plant. It sits there leaching alkaline effluent into the environment. I'm wondering about the net environmental benefit. They meet their SO2 emissions limits as the law tells them to at the expense of filling up a big pond full of alkaline waste. I guess it converts a dispersed pollution problem into a localized one.

[facedown]

My knee-jerk reaction: if Jeremy Rifkin is for it, I'm against it.

Ditto that!

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Chemist_Geek]

But wouldn't it be cool if we could make a nasty little bacteria that poots hydrogen?

They already exist... I'll look it up and post links later.

[Chemist_Geek]

All this crap about fossil fuels being a finite resource is just enviro=wacko, left-wing propaganda!

I don't know where to start... You really believe that there is an infinite supply of fossil fuel on Earth?

[AppyPappy]

Yes

[AppyPappy]

I don't care how dirty coal is. I don't care about the whackos. Hydrogen is home-grown and we don't have to rely on the Arabs for it. That is priority 1.

[Isara]

"How complete is it to burn CO from H2?

Not sure what you mean by this??

What I'm trying to get at is whether the burning processor gets rid of all CO to get pure H₂. If H₂ is contaminated with CO, is there any bad effect from using CO-contaminated H₂.

[Isara]

Which question is your "No" on post 36 for?

[Petronski]

The thread title.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Coal, wind, solar and nuclear.

Do you have any documentation on the percentage generated by wind and solar?

I thought not.

[ggekko]

We need to adopt an integrated enegery strategy that has beneficial environmental aspects and re-sources our raw energy imports from stable countries.

There is only one strategy that meets these requirements. That strategy involves the use of the new generation of nuclear power plants to generate Hydrogen as a byproduct of nuclear power generation. The net cost of generating Hydrogen in this way would be vanishingly small and every kilowatt generated in this way takes the US futher away from the unstable regions of the world and improves the balance of trade.

The new R&D money for Hydrogen energy could be used under this scenario to develop better ways to store and transport the gas. Getting Hydrogen from next-gen Nuclear power plants would be the equivalent of having a "Hydrogen well" .

[AppyPappy]

Do you have any proof that a station couldn't use solar power to create hydrogen fuel?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Do you have any proof that a station couldn't use solar power to create hydrogen fuel?

Do you have any proof that it could?