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."
When your hydrogen scam can do that, it won't be a scam.
The key to hydrogen isn't fuel cells or hydrogen, but cheap nuclear power.
By the way, is there any use of CO? It's toxic to human.
Of course there is not a infinite supply of fossil fuels on the planet. But as a practical matter, we will never run out of any fossil fuel.
Of course not--but by getting the fuel into a source that can be used directly in fuel cells, the MUCH higher conversion efficiency of the fuel cell more than compensates for those losses. It is the efficiency of the TOTAL CYCLE that counts---not just the efficiency of the gasification process vs. combustion.
And in fact, for central power usage, coal gasification/fuel cells is an even BETTER combination, as what is called the "solid oxide fuel cell" can eat BOTH the hydrogen AND the carbon monoxide.
It is the use of the fuel cell in the total conversion process that makes major gains in efficiency possible.
Yes--the carbon monoxide is itself a fuel. Burning it with more oxygen converts it to carbon dioxide, and the energy from it can be "harvested" to fed back as steam or electricity to help drive the conversion process. Some fuel cells will run directly on gasification syngas---converting both the carbon monoxide AND the hydrogen into electricity.
How big will the fuel cells be? We are talking about burning coal, saparating CO and H2, burning CO and combining H2 with O2.
I can see why you chose your screen name. Never is a long time.
Size of the individual fuel cell stacks won't be very large, but for a directly-coupled gasification-fuel-cell-gas-turbine combined cycle power station, there will be quite a few of them. With the solid oxide fuel cells, the only separation that needs to be done is to be sure the syngas has all the particulate matter knocked down, and probably scrubbed to remove sulfur-compounds --- then the mixed CO and hydrogen will be sent directly to the fuel cell to generate DC electric power. The "combination with oxygen" takes place in the fuel cell itself.
Yep, that's called "energy conversion inefficiencies".
Gee, Willie--what a TRULY intelligent and insightful comment. You could have farted and contributed equally to the discussion.
And the methane produced would've had more energy than an equal volume of hydrogen at the same pressure and temperature.
When the cost of fossil fuels exceeds the cost of the alternative fuels, the replacement of fossil fuels will occur. At that time we will still have considerable reserves of all types of fossil fuels still remaining in the ground, undisturbed.
Which leads me back to the stark truth of my original response, "we will never run out of any fossil fuels."
Most of it will come from natural gas.
I understand the advantage in the fuel cell replacement of the IC. It avoids the combustion step at the end use and that has environmental advantages, as its probably better to deal with fog than smog. But surely the gasification process is not without its share of effluents. You mentioned the slag. I'm wondering if airborne releases also occur. In conventional refining there is always some waste gas produced that is flared off. I've been around some refineries that were pretty smelly. Would a coal gasification plant present a similar environmental impact?
Again, I'm just running down the questions that might arise if a national effort were made in this direction. Trading impacts from oil refineries for those from gasification may not be a bad bargain if it helps us in other ways, like reduced dependence on imported energy, or more economical fuels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.