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.
Everyone should have one. Inherently safe. But don't tell Ralph. He'd be upset.
I don't know where you heard this but it's poppycock! The bulk of our defense budget goes to salaries of the soldiers. Next comes housing, board, medical coverage, and the like. You go a long way down the list before you get to R&D. On that part of the budget, what you say is true.
Be well...
Here is one for you. I have a 500 lb honda 750 shadow, it looks and sounds like a Harley, and it gets 60 plus mpg at 60 mph. My weenie neighbor, who has a shirt that says "femanist chicks dig me" which couldn't possibly make him more different from me inspite of the fact that he rides a moped, has a 49 cc moped. It top ends at 40 mph. You'd think a POS like that would get a thousand mpg but it gets...75 mpg. Can you believe it. It takes the same amount of energy to do the same amount of work. 2 cycle engines are grossly inefficient. I'd love to drive a 750 diesel motorcycle. I bet it would get over a hundred mpg and I can only imagine what it might sound like.
That wasn't what I suggested at all. Go back and read the post again. Energy sources are not fungible. Some are best suited for one application but totally wrong for others. A blind measure of efficiency even if technically accurate is meaningless economically.
No fuss, no muss and it's very clean.
No thanks, I'll use wind power to build efficient cars with diesel engines.
TRIGA
Everyone should have one. Inherently safe. But don't tell Ralph. He'd be upset."
Yes, but this is a swimming pool reactor, not a power reactor. James Bond's Dr. No notwithstanding, you cannot get usable power from a swimming pool reactor.
Uh-huh. Have you got that perpetual motion machine perfected yet, Mr. Wizard?
;O)
Why is bio-diesel better than ethanol (which I know you despise)?
Ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline which has less energy per gallon than diesel. Gas engines are also less efficient than diesel engines therefore low energy density over priced gas in an inefficient engine doesn't thrill me as much as a manly, efficient diesel.
It was quite a while ago. I think the idle was ok. It definitely wasn't up around 1500 since this was a fairly low rpm engine anyway. It just seemed that a big ole v-8 diesel in a midsized oldsmobile was more engine than it needed.
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