Posted on 05/07/2003 11:54:50 AM PDT by Jack of all Trades
Not long ago I wrote a commentary, "The Great Hydrogen Myth," in which I opined that throwing another billion dollars at more research for the purpose of replacing oil, coal, or natural gas was a huge waste. Recently, that commentary was posted on an Internet site for those who work in industries that provide and use various forms of energy. It's a favorite among the many engineers and scientists whose lives are devoted to energy issues.
Here are some of the responses my commentary received. The names of the innocent have been protected because their jobs depend upon it.
"I have often thought that this 'hydrogen economy' seems intuitively flawed; using energy to make hydrogen to then be used as an energy source. Intuitively, it feels like the Escher painting with the water flowing uphill."
Therein lies central issue that undermines the hype about hydrogen as an endless, virtually free, source of energy. First of all, it is not energy. It is what the engineers and scientists call "a carrier." You have to break the hydrogen molecule free from others to use it and that requires energy. Thus, you have to use a lot of energy in order to use hydrogen to make energy. In real life there is no free lunch.
A chemical engineer with 35 years in the chemical and oil industry who knows a lot about catalytic reforming units that make and use hydrogen in the reformation processes, had this to say: "Not only does H2 (hydrogen) require a lot of energy to produce, collect, and store, it presents rather nasty safety problems."
Need it be said he thinks that Ethanol (made from corn!) is another bad idea the environmentalists have foisted on us? Why? "Ethanol costs far more to produce than the fuel value it provides and the Environmental Protection Agency in its wisdom forced industry to oxygenate fuels only to discover that covalent bonds of all oxygenates are very soluble and stable in ground waters when released." In other words, this environmental "solution" has led to the poisoning of ground water supplies throughout the nation. It also forces up the cost of gasoline.
He wasn't through. "While I'm at it - Greens have our environmental experts at EPA on another even wilder goose chase to capture mercury from coal fired utility plants across the USA. If you add up all the Hg (mercury) released from coal combustion and compare it to global sources, the current analytical and statistical techniques and technologies probably will not be able to detect any reduction in the global Hq pool in the environment."
Thank you, thank you, thank you! The Greens live to conjure up endless scare campaigns, always shouting that everyone, especially children, are being "poisoned" by things that pose no real threat. Or they find ways to force government mandates that either end up poisoning us, i.e., ethanol, are represent no real threat, i.e., mercury. The end result is higher costs for energy use of any kind.
Part of the hydrogen hype is its use in fuel cells. A retired General Electric engineer wrote to say, "I previously analyzed and designed fuel cells and it is apparent to me that they will always be too expensive for all but very special uses. They are twenty times the cost of a piston engine and are very likely to remain at least ten times more in spite of all the research done."
Like all realists, engineers and scientists believe we are, in fact, running a risk in our dependence on petroleum. Even with a trillion and maybe even two trillion barrels of oil available, at the present rate of use, the experts estimate we will go through it in about forty years. Others, however, believe there are vast amounts of undiscovered oil reserves.
Part of the problem of energy costs, energy dependency, and the cost of oil can be found in the fact that the US has experienced a drop in its refining capability over the past twenty years. We went from being able to refine 18.5 million barrels to 16.5 million barrels. There has been an even sharper drop in the number of refineries, from 315 to 155! Thus, the US is highly vulnerable if even a small number of refineries stopped producing, even temporarily. A major factor for the dramatic increase in oil prices is this lack of refining capacity.
This may explain why the oil industry and auto manufacturers are willing to spend billions to find a way to make hydrogen the transportation energy of the future. Hybrid vehicles that utilize a fuel cell could get more than 75 miles per gallon of gasoline and that's a good thing. Environmentalists support this and, if the technology can be developed to a point of being affordable, why not? It remains, however, a very big "if".
The real answer, of course, is to build more refineries and, in part, to tap the reserves of oil known to exist in the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve. Environmentalists have fought both these options.
Here's the bottom line. Without energy, this nation shuts down, and so do all the others. The good news is that technologies are being developed whereby, for transportation and other uses, new engines will revolutionize the use of current energy sources. They will be far more efficient and they will be affordable.
Beware of the hype about hydrogen. Many engineers and scientists know it's baloney, and you should too.
How do you know that?
Is CO2 a threat?
No, it's not. NOx, SO2, Ozone and all the other stuff that comes from carbon combustion can be a problem but with the exception of environmental hell holes like India or China or Mexico City, I wouldn't even consider them a "threat".
But once again, what does that have to do with the potential economics of using H2 as a transport fuel? Why have you made up your mind that it is impossible?
A little over 100 years ago, people likely thought the idea of a global petrol-based fuel transport system was nuts. Where would we get all the oil? How could we distribute it? What would we do with all the "useless" hydrocarbon by-products of refining? Trying to think through all those technical and logistical problems in advance had to make their heads swim. No one person was smart enough to figure all of that out so some who considered themselves smarter than others probably said "it will never work and we shouldn't spend any money on it."
How would H2 be better suited for cars than gasoline or hybrid engines?
Energy wise I think we all agree that we get more energy out of the oil and its byproducts that we use to refine and distribute it. You agree?
Hydrogen only makes sense if we have sooo much extra energy that we can use it to achieve these other benefits of H2.
These benefits include reduced CO2 (if you think that's a benefit worth spending money to reduce), reduced NOx, SO2, etc, reduced dependence on nasty regimes for oil, reduced oil spills etc etc etc.
These are benefits, I agree. Are they worth what it would cost? Maybe. I think we keep getting mixed up on this thread between people who think H2 will reduce bad side effects of hydrocarbon use without realizing that it will take more energy (and money) to do it.
If you support massive construction of nuke plants to support the generation of H2, and the use of the H2 in cars in order to reduce our need for Arab oil, then we agree.
Solar power satellites would work as well.
If you don't think this transition will require a huge input of external energy, then you don't understand thermodynamics, not to mention economics.
Yeah, it's all impossible, just Omni magazine BS, right?
Funny. I make my living flying spacecraft. And a few friends of mine work here: Fusion Research at Los Alamos
Call them up and tell them they're all engaging in Brute Force trying to do things that just cain't be done, dontcha know. Maybe you could do it over your Nokia video enabled phone...which may soon be powered by a (gasp) fuel cell (double gasp, followed by shock).
By the way, Oh Seer of the Immortal Market, just what do you think the future of inertial confinement fusion might be? In say, the 30 to 60 year time frame?
" fuel cells are expensive, finicky, delicate, respond poorly to a need for acceleration power, are damaged by exposure to sub-freezing temperatures and have a limited life of less than five years"
A few thoughts from me on those points:
Over the last forty years, computing has changed so drastically that it bears little resemblence to what it once was.
What's the difference? Space travel is the domain of bureaucrats. Computing is the domain of entrepreneurs. Space travel is supported by taxes. The computing industry pays the taxes that make space travel possible.
Your friends have been saying fusion was twenty years off for the last fifty years.
By the way, Oh Seer of the Immortal Market, just what do you think the future of inertial confinement fusion might be? In say, the 30 to 60 year time frame?
When your done sniffing your navel and have time to actually read my posts, why don't you tell me?
You have no clue that it is entirely possible for something to be technically possible and economically unfeasible, do you?
And that is a distinct possibility. Solar and wind energy a jokes as far as sources for a grid. They are not "energy dense" and they can not deliver anywhere near the availability or capacity factors necessary to make a substantial contribution. They only drive up the costs of other forms of electrical generation by taking sales on the margin. Due to "basic physics", they never will be. But, they do churn out MWs when the wind blows and the sun shines and they do that in a "non-polluting" way. Why not consider putting them to use in ways other than grid operations. Building H2 crackers powered by wind farms and/or solar fields where 24/7 availability is not a fundamental requirement as it is in grid operations may be the best use of these technologies. Convert their electrical energy into H2 with zero environmental load, and if the delivered product is "cost competitive" with hydrocarbons, the market will decide. These "alternatives" would no longer be the nuisance to grid operators that they are now, would not drive the marginal price of electricity upward with every additional kwh they produce, but would actually add to a new economy.
Again, I qualify all of this with the note that we still have a ways to go in developing technology that would make an H2 transport system an economically viable option. But the excuse that producing H2 takes more energy input than it can deliver is not a valid reason to stop looking at it. A number of very viable energy sources such as pumped storage and batteries "use more energy than they produce", but for the applications they are used in, they are very efficient and economical.
If you don't think this transition will require a huge input of external energy, then you don't understand thermodynamics, not to mention economics.
I have spent the last 33 years working in the energy industry, 20 of those in nuclear. I know a little bit more about energy economics than you seem to assume.
It will simply get more expensive/annoying/societally unacceptable than the alternatives
Hell, I'm already annoyed!
You have just mentioned a host of technologies that are routinely lambasted by a lot of people. Yet you assert they are the 'optimal' ones. I merely asserted - in my first post - that a) things that people routinely say 'can't work' actually do work, and can be made to do so with the application of...thought! and that b) the real problem is a systems problem, i.e., which approach is 'optimal'? And I would also assert that the verdict - whatever it is - ain't anywhere near to being in. Energy independence? That is the goal. Do it like the military -- any way you can. But you have to know all the ways before you can make that decision. So, you look around. And after looking around, a rather large number of people have decided that...hydrogen based power production is promising. Is it..better than oil? Well, obviously, there's a lot of opinion about that. But we won't know until we try, and we haven't really begun to try. When $16 billion can go to Africa for 'AIDS awareness' but only $1.6 billion towards one branch of energy research, I know the government ain't trying too hard. But, the car companies seem to be, and it doesn't seem to all be political window dressing.
Uh, those diesels locomotives have always been hybrids (but not at all like the hybrid cars you are talking about), so using them as an example to disprove what people were saying ten years ago about a different transportation system doesn't make sense.
The question you refuse to address other than flippant dismissal is the actual per mile cost of all these schemes. Until it is so much cheaper to get electricity from nukes that nobody bothers to drill for oil anymore, gasoline will beat hydrogen.
Yup, that's right. They've been 'hybrids' for a lot longer than 10 years, because it's been well known for a long time that different machines have different torque and power curves and that one kind can augment another. And the different schemes employed are all examples of 'hybridization', in that they mix things like heat engines with electromagnetic engines. But, you know that, right? Tell me - what's you're ideal engine/frame? A 1958 Chrysler Imperial with a 383? After all, the extra cost of gas for a 10 mpg car isn't that bad. Why would anyone ever want anything different, right? The good old days.
The question you refuse to address other than flippant dismissal is the actual per mile cost of all these schemes. Until it is so much cheaper to get electricity from nukes that nobody bothers to drill for oil anymore, gasoline will beat hydrogen
What's the real cost of gasoline? You say the government shouldn't be involved in making economic choices -- so, should oil companies field their own armies to protect the oil fields? Your assertion that the cost of gasoline is an unsubsidized, free choice, fair market value is laughable. To compare the current cost of other technologies and fuels to oil without putting political and social costs into the analysis is ridiculous and dishonest. So when do you get honest and stop leaving that out of your question? I'm flippant?! You're obfuscating.
As soon as you field your own army to protect your backyard.
You can rant all you want, but if hydrogen was a good idea you wouldn't have to be demanding other people's tax money to promote it. Come on, show us you car and do the cost per mile analysis for gasoline and hydrogen. Look at the different chemical reactions yeilding hydrogen. Look at the price of electricity from various sources. Post it here.
That may be, but this was your first post :
The measure is what you put in versus the value of what you get out, and H2 as a transport fuel could have great "value" in the future. Gasoline has been a "great value" for transport fuel, but it would be way too expensive for use in generating electricity for the grid. It's the application of the fuel that determines it's value.
My point was, and still is, that the value (energy) we put into cracking the water (or other feed stock) into H2 is not offset by an equal or larger benefit. If you want to use nuclear energy to do it, then maybe I'll agree.
The point of the original article was that hydrogen will not replace oil, coal or natural gas. Nothing you've said shows that it will. Either nuclear or solar or wind will be needed.
Too many greens say "We need battery powered cars because they don't pollute" not realizing the batteries need to be recharged, most likely with coal generated electricity.
As soon as we have enough extra power from all the new nuke plants we'd need (I'm not holding my breath) then H2 becomes feasible (assuming we can keep the cars from exploding), until then, an H2 economy is a pipe dream.
Who's demanding tax money? As near as I can tell, GM/Daimler/Ford/Honda/Toyota are doing the lion's share of this all on their own. If any tax dollars are going there, it's because they have told the current administration it's a good thing. Why else would you think a guy like Spencer Abraham be talking about it? Because he cares? Right.
Come on, show us you car and do the cost per mile analysis for gasoline and hydrogen. Look at the different chemical reactions yeilding hydrogen. Look at the price of electricity from various sources
Do it yourself, junior. Then YOU post it. The information is at your fingertips (www.google.com). My point has been that the system possibilities haven't been explored yet, and that conclusions based on prejudice or political opinions are premature. I assume that the automobile companies HAVE done the analysis.
You have told us that no government money went into the development of computers. Oh please. Even ignoring the front end money in WWII, and the avalanche of money spent in the '50s and 60's, you'd still find that simply being an anchor customer for companies like SUN has dramatically influenced reasearch. It wasn't all done "because it was the best solution for the money". It was "we have to help the companies". You're simply making up nonsense to support your asssertions.
So, do you have an estimate of the political and social costs of oil?
Or, you could do it yourself and refute it for us.
And note that emissions in US cars have been reduced about 97% from 2 decades ago. Nox etc. is not a threat. This leaves one main output from cars that has not been reduced, CO2.
But once again, what does that have to do with the potential economics of using H2 as a transport fuel? Why have you made up your mind that it is impossible?
You need to hype the dangers of CO2 from cars in order to make even onsideration of gasoline alternatives worthwhile.
Other than being cheaper, more convenient, safer, well-integrated with existing infrastructure, flexible, robust, and easier to store, gasoline has no advantages over hydrogen.
NOT according to the author of The Deep, Hot Bisosphere.
You've bought into the mis-based argument that carbon-based fuels came from surface-based organisms and lifeforms ...
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