Hydrogen: the net-negative energy option

americanthinker.com ^ | 4/8/2015 | Viv Forbes

[rktman]

To extract hydrogen from natural compounds such as water, methane, or coal requires very large inputs of energy. Most commonly, hydrogen is produced from methane gas using heat and steam, or by electrolysis of water using large quantities of electricity.

Hydrogen can be used to power rockets, cars, and engines of all types. However, the energy used to produce the hydrogen can never be fully recovered from the energy in the hydrogen. It is thus not a source of energy. It is merely a storehouse for energy – a battery.

[thackney]

That info as NASA being the biggest user could be out of date without our shuttle programs. Just something I remember from years ago. Also, hydrogen in refining has grown in the past decades as well.

[RayChuang88]

While hydrogen sounds like a great fuel source, don't forget the following:

1. If there's any need to make liquid hydrogen, that cryogenic liquid is very hard to keep cold and is EXTREMELY dangerous to handle (that's why if a rocket fueled with liquid hydrogen explodes it goes off with the force of a tactical nuclear warhead).

2. Unfortunately, water vapor from hydrogen in a fuel cell automobile is a VASTLY more reactive greenhouse gas than even carbon dioxide.

I think I'll wait for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) so we can generate enough electricity on a gigantic scale to make burning any hydrocarbon fuel effectively obsolete.

[thackney]

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/hydrogen/

NASA is the largest consumer of liquid hydrogen in the United States.

NASA uses approximately 10 million pounds of liquid hydrogen per year at six locations in five states.

In the past 45 years, NASA has purchased more than 350 million pounds of hydrogen and transported it safely across millions of miles by truck, rail and barge.

[relictele]

I hate to oversimplify but my default response to every simpleton's 'green' suggestion is: You First.

I'm sick of reading preachy letters about global warming, selfish SUV owners, etc.

All the people supposedly concerned about the environment can cut emissions by 25% or even 50% TOMORROW by halting all use of the evil fuels they despise. No laws, no enforcement, no informing on your neighbor required.

[relictele]

Never mind all that. Falsify the data and you will be rewarded instantly as long as it meets the agenda.

[central_va]

am still a fan of the left thinking that plugging their electric car into an outlet attached to their house is saving energy.

At ten cents a kilowatt-hour electricity is bargain.. The problem is the time it takes to recharge.

[rktman]

Yup. We dabbled in using slush LOX and LH2 for the shuttle but very tough to maintain so we just stuck with the regular old liquid stuff. With the expansion rates so huge, no wonder the cloud hung out so long after Challenger met it’s demise. That soon into the flight, there was still plenty of LO2 and LH2 in the tanks.

[Boogieman]

“It is thus not a source of energy. It is merely a storehouse for energy – a battery.”

Technically, nothing is a source of energy, since energy can never be created or destroyed.

[rktman]

Got beans? :>}

[Boogieman]

“I actually had a greenie say we should put windmills on cars to power them.”

Haha. Why not just put sails on the cars, dump the engine and lighten the load?

[BitWielder1]

Moreover, electric cars do not reduce the oxygen content of city air – every tonne of hydrogen fuel consumes eight tonnes of oxygen to produce nine tonnes of water vapor. So instead of urban smog, we may get urban fog.

True but a BS argument still, present day combustion engines already consume oxygen and generate water vapor.
Hydrogen fuel merely gets rid of the CO₂ in your exhaust not the CO₂ generated elsewhere in preparing the hydrogen for you. Same problem for electric cars.
Yes, pure hydrogen is expensive to extract, contain and transport. And very flammable.
You can actually look at the carbon in gas as a way to bind hydrogen and make handling it a lot safer.

Sadly, this whole debate is driven by the notion that CO₂, which occurs naturally, is bad when humans make it.

[TexasGator]

“There are some ships that use “windmills” so that they can move directly into the wind and not have to track in the wind”

“For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.”

Conservation of Momentum

The momentum of an isolated system is a constant. The vector sum of the momenta mv of all the objects of a system cannot be changed by interactions within the system. This puts a strong constraint on the types of motions which can occur in an isolated system. If one part of the system is given a momentum in a given direction, then some other part or parts of the system must simultaneously be given exactly the same momentum in the opposite direction. As far as we can tell, conservation of momentum is an absolute symmetry of nature. That is, we do not know of anything in nature that violates it.

[servantboy777]

I saw a video of a former radio station owner that came across a way to extract hydrogen from saltwater utilizing high frequency radio waves.

He was attempting to find a way to treat cancer....His own cancer. He would take a hot dog Winnie, inject it with a metallic compound such as copper sulfide, then subject the Winnie to a particular frequency in an effort to heat the copper sulfide injected into a tumor...thus destroying the tumor. Pretty cool. Take a look at the video.

Now, before folks start poo pooing the experiment, two Universities picked up his work after he passed away and verified his results. Seems I remember, the energy source was far lower than the output. Check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhqldxU_cvA

[rktman]

LOL! Yup. Some of the local casinos are giving away Teslas and on the rear tag location the display models all say “Zero Emission”. Well except for the manufacturing process, the transportation, the provider of your recharge electricity, the tire manufacturer, the lubricants etc——————— And I’m not sure what the repair costs would be on these either.

[gingerbread]

Ah yes, FREEDOM. The hardest commodity in the universe to get and the easiest to lose. As long as there are people that are willing to give up their freedom for an easier life, there will always be politicians that will offer these people that opportunity. Along with FREEDOM, there is also “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY”. The old biblical saying of “YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW”, is as true today as it was when it was written.

[TexasGator]

“Seems I remember, the energy source was far lower than the output.”

Wikipedia:

Kanzius acknowledged that this process could not be considered an energy source, as more energy is used to produce the RF signal than can be obtained from the burning gas and stated in July 2007 that he never claimed his discovery would replace oil, asserting only that his discovery was “thought provoking”.[

[mountainlion]

I am not sure what you are getting at. A vertical windmill has been used to propel a ship directly into the wind but I am sure that it was not as efficient as a sail. I am sure that the wind resistance of the ship was a major disadvantage.

[TexasGator]

I post about a windmill satire and get two responses from people believing in perpetual motion machines.

[BitWielder1]

There are many ways to extract hydrogen, there are catalysts that lower the energy thresholds in the process, making it more efficient, but you can not get around the energy it takes to separate the hydrogen from whatever it was bound to.
Anyone with basic understanding to physics and chemistry knows this.

[servantboy777]

>>...as more energy is used to produce the RF signal than can be obtained from the burning gas and stated in July 2007 that he never claimed his discovery would replace oil<<

Go back and listen carefully to the video and follow up with other videos of University research. This is not what I took from it.

Oil will never go away. We need it. It will drive our economy for the remainder of this century for sure.

Also, this is Wikipedia...not sure I'd consider them a reliable source of information.