Posted on 02/02/2003 7:29:18 AM PST by Dutch Boy
NYT Snippit....
96 % of the hydrogen produced today is created from fossil fuels, natural gas, oil and coal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/weekinreview/02LIZZ.html
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They say this as if it's a bad thing ... yet their type is responsible for the lack of widespread nuclear power, which is g-g-g-global-warming-free. Some countries in western Europe are more than 50% nuclear, and without any Chernobyl-type mishaps. Here, the radical left prevents that, despite the environmental damage they allege from fossil fuels.
Environmentalism is only defined by their narrow agenda.
So which fuel isn't an energy storage medium?
They also prevent development of our domestic fossil fuel resources. Then they complain about our involvement in the mideast and blame it on big oil greed.
You're right, nuclear is the only future we have if we are to look forward to continuing prosperity and national independence.
The idea is to invest in NEW WAYS to extract hydrogen, from such sources as water. Remember, water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. By removing the two parts of hydrogen, the leftover product would be pure oxygen, right? In a closed environment, this should pose no hazard to our atmosphere or forests, should it?
The benefit of using hydrogen fuel cells is not that net air pollution is reduced. Rather, it's that the pollutants are redistributed from densely populated areas to sparsely populated areas. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's being overlooked.
Maybe someday we'll be able to generate an abundant supply of hydrogen with no pollution. But that's still many years away.
I think that is the whole point of spending billions -- to FIND alternative methods, not just to convert automobiles.
There are many ways to skin a cat,
but none of them can circumvent the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
With sufficient nuclear power this would not be a problem. Water has a "heat of formation" of 68,000 calories per mole. An electrolysis machine has to pump in lots of power per pound of H2 made by electrolysis. Electrolyzers are typically only 70% efficient. Possibly ion-exchange devices are more efficient but you will have to pay the cost of breaking that strong chemical bond.
Water is "hydrogen ash"--literally the ashes left after combusting H2 with oxygen, and it is hard to "unburn" it.
--Boris
Well, solar (I know) and hydroelectric (all fully exploited) might qualify; as might wind. Arguable.
But notice that all dense/highly-intense fuels are indeed energy storage media.
I suppose you could argue that nuclear isn't...in the traditional sense of "storage". The energy was put there by God a long time ago.
Maybe the zero-point vacuum energy (Casimir Effect) would qualify...
And then there is antimatter...
--Boris
The extraction of Hydrogen from water requires to much energy to be of practical value without the development of new electrical power generating sources. Some of this may come from solar farms but for any useable quantity to be produced the power will be generated by Nuclear.
That is far down the road. Phase one of the Hydrogen plan will have almost all of it extracted from, you guessed it, Hydrocarbons. The residual carbon is increasingly being used as a high tech material for items such as aircraft disk brakes. Other uses for the left over carbon are still in the lab such as carbon nano tube materials.
Picture pyrolizing (burning without air) Hydrocarbons on a massive scale to extract the Hydrogen. Pitch is used for this now but eventually the process may be adapted to coal.
You may be right it would require too much energy to get hydrogen from water--to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then react hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell to form energy and water probably is not economical (your going in circles if you do it this way)
Can't remember if splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen requires more energy than reacting hydrogen and oxygen to form water and release energy.
However using exsisting fuels to supply the hydrogen and increasing the efficiency of the fuel cell reaction, creates economies that are more competitive. Captial costs of fuel cell equipment is the big hurdle right now. Once enough fuel cells are in service more efficient cheaper ways of suppplying hydrogen for the fuel cells may become available.
This is a single reaction, in opposite directions. And the reduction of water to hydrogen and oxygen takes considerably more energy than can be extracted by recombination. The principle is called entropy, and can be described as "you can't win, you lose whenever you play, and you can't stop playing".
However using exsisting fuels to supply the hydrogen and increasing the efficiency of the fuel cell reaction, creates economies that are more competitive. Capital costs of fuel cell equipment is the big hurdle right now. Once enough fuel cells are in service more efficient cheaper ways of suppplying hydrogen for the fuel cells may become available.
Not really. A large part - for some, most or all - of the energy in fossil fuels comes from the oxidation of the carbon content to carbon dioxide. Any system that discards that energy, such as reforming hydrocarbons to extract the hydrogen, and only using it for energy, is inherently inefficient. If you are interested, check out some alternative systems for hydrogen storage. Hydrogen gas can be stored in a tank filled with a metal hydride matrix, or it can be stored chemically as sodium hydride or sodium borohydride. Check these links:
http://www.millenniumcell.com/solutions/white_hydrogen.html
http://www.powerball.net/concept/index.shtml
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