Posted on 02/10/2003 2:01:51 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Over the last twenty-five years, the government has spent $1.2 billion on fuel cell research and development. During his recent State of the Union speech, President Bush proposed spending another billion for further research. Automakers have already spent millions to no avail. The simple fact is that it still costs far more money to extract hydrogen, breaking its molecule away from others in order to use it to create energy. This is a bad idea.
Hydrogen is held out as a clean-burning, virtually inexhaustible source of energy, but as a Washington Times editorial pointed out in November, others "suggest it is a gaseous dream rising on the rhetoric of environmental windbags." If enough billions are spent, it seems reasonable to expect hydrogen to become an energy source, but like most environmental pipe dreams, this one has a silent agenda of eliminating petroleum as an energy source, nor can we reasonably expect a dramatic breakthrough. Did I mention this is a very bad idea?
Oil is the Green´s number one enemy after population. The object is not to make the Earth safer, but to continue the pressure to reduce reliance on it, putting everyone at a disadvantage when it comes to utilizing this primary form of energy.
Given the fact that the Earth shows no signs of running out of oil in the near or even far future, the notion of spending billions to replace it seems odd at best, foolish at worst. The Earth´s reserves of oil have been consistently underestimated for decades since it was first discovered. To the contrary, discoveries of new reserves occur every year and the technology to get at it has improved as well.
The mere fact that Greens have fought gaining access to the estimated 16 billion barrels of oil in Alaska´s ANWR area tells you more about their real agenda than anything else you need to know. The Department of Energy estimates there are at least one trillion barrels currently available worldwide.
If the Saudis were not sitting atop huge reserves, they would still be camel drivers and goat herders. If Saddam Hussein did not control the second largest reserve of oil, we might not being going to war to wrest control from this madman?
While it is true that a hydrogen-based economy is deemed inevitable for reasons of efficiency, environmental benefit and inexhaustibility, I remain wary of this. It is true, too, that hydrogen fuel cells have the potential to be almost twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, emitting only air and water vapor, there are huge problems involved.
Three experts, Lawrence D. Burns, Byron McCormick and Christopher E. Borroni-Bird, noted in the October issue of Science that, "Viewed from where we are today, fuel cells and a hydrogen fueling infrastructure are a chicken-and-egg problem. We cannot have large numbers of fuel-cell vehicles without adequate fuel available to support them, but we will not be able to create the required infrastructure unless there are significant numbers of fuel-cell vehicles on the roadways."
Breaking a hydrogen molecule into electrons and protons, and then sending it through an electric drive motor, and recombining the particles with oxygen to produce water poses an enormous challenge. "While hydrogen is universally abundant, it´s not cheap to get at", noted the Washington Times editorial. "At the moment, fuel cells are actually energy losers, since it costs more to free the hydrogen than is earned by running hydrogen through fuel cells." In brief, it costs more energy to turn hydrogen into energy than current technology would permit.
Writing recently on the topic, Llewellyn King, publisher of White House Weekly, Noted that "In an act of political brilliance, President Bush, in his State of the Union Speech, stole the Holy Grail of environmentalism, the hydrogen-powered fuel-cell car. For two decades, environmentalists have held out the ‘hydrogen economy´ as the pollution-free future for transportation. Unfortunately, it also has had about it the whiff of a free lunch." Five Presidents have put the federal government to work trying to achieve this goal. It remains a very bad idea.
The process involved is called hydrolysis, popularly called "cracking water." As King pointed out, "The former defeats the purpose because you still have to have oil, coal or natural gas to manufacture hydrogen." This is what the Greens like to gloss over. Why not, asks King, just run a vehicle on natural gas to begin with? Why burden a vehicle with a duel system of reforming the gas and then making electricity? This seems so obvious that one is also compelled to ask, why not just keep using gasoline? The entire, worldwide structure of extracting oil to transporting it to refining it would have to be changed. Why not just keep finding new sources of oil since there is no evidence we are in imminent danger of running out of it?
Hydrogen has a very low energy density. It would cost more to fuel your car with it than our current system. As King notes, "The energy density of hydrogen is about one-tenth that of natural gas." Hybrid engines, available only in "demonstration" vehicles, would reduce our dependency on imported gas and this well may be the President´s interest in this power source. That does not, however, make it any less of a bad idea.
Hydrogen is the new darling of the Greens as was nuclear energy a few decades ago until they abandoned their support and now actively fight the creation of new nuclear energy plants.
Forget about some spectacular breakthrough on hydrogen as an energy source. Do not be fooled by the Green´s claims because, like everything else they propose, their primary goal is to reduce the population of the Earth and anything that can serve their agenda will be pursued amidst a flood of lies.
Could you please enlighten us on what you mean by "massive quantities"?
We already lose 35% in H2 generation. How much more do we lose with this conversion?
The heck if I know.
They're going to have to use a LOT of energy from some other source to manufacture hydrogen somehow.
But Dubya doesn't want to talk about that.
I guess we're supposed to be too dumb to ask those types of questions.
Yes, but that isn't the point. We're not looking for greater efficiency or lower costs. We want vehicles that emit only water vapor from the tailpipe.
You missed the big picture. Please follow the logic. The Hydrogen car is to the Arabs what Star Wars was to the USSR. The threat that the yanks might actually pull this off makes them far more passive in dealing with an "angry customer".
If the hydrogen doesn't explode initially, if the tank is ruptured, the hydrogen will escape and go up, as opposed to gasoline, which will flow down. This would be safer on an accident scene. If the tank is not ruptured, no big deal.
I honestly don't know if the extraction issue can be solved, although the algae experiments in another post sound interesting, but even if the cost went up to the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon (gas equivalent), if the money stayed in the US, it could be a huge boon to our economy, and seriously damage the terrorists, as they would lose their funding. A huge part of our trade deficit is oil. I'd like to see this research continue.
Oh, as to the distribution system, start out with local delivery companies that always fill up at a company owned site. This will get enough vehicles manufactured to bring cost and distribution down. After that, kill local state and federal taxes for all expenses related to hydrogen power for about 10 years (manufacturing hydrogen, cars, stations) and I think you'd be surprised at how quickly hydrogen fill stations would start up.
For some reason, I find it hard to envision OPEC going broke in a race to produce hydrogen.
And it still doesn't explain where Dubya plans to get the energy to manufacture hydrogen either.
For all I know, he might be planning on having the Log Cabin Republicans putting their gerbils to work on tiny little treadmill operated generators to use electrolysis of water to get hydrogen. It would take an awful lot of gerbils, but mathematicly, it could be done.
Try your local State University's Physics Lab. That is after you take out your back seat.
The basic problem is that your are taking a very stable molecule H2O and splitting into two less stable elements with the hope that they will combine back into a stable molecule again. Theoretiaclly it is a simple matter of putting energy in when you split (or crack) the H2O and getting energy out when you recombine (through combustion). The bad part is that there are inefficiencies in both the splitting and and the recombining that ultimately make it more efficient to just burn Hydro-Carbons (ie gasoline).
I can remember as a kid in the UK hanging out at the town's gasworks, watching them dump water on the red-hot 'coke' (the solid remains of the process). The Coke was then used as an almost pollution-free fuel in fireplaces.
Just make sure your garage is WELL ventilated.
Toss a bone and meanwhile do the end-around.
The point is that all non-OPEC alternate energy sources, such as coal, natural gas, ethanol, hydro-electric and nuclear can be used to product hydrogen. The very possibility of this happening forces OPEC to make oil easier, cheaper and more dependable to use than they want. Additionally, they believe that the US can and will do ANYTHING we put our mind to.
Well, yes, but you get the same energy back when the H-O bonds re-coalesce into water.
As an example, look at the fire that comes out of the back of a Space Shuttle's main engines at launch.
I think you're confused. We do not create fossil fuels, we extract them. It does not take more energy to extract and process them than they provide upon combustion. The fact that such fuels provide more energy than they require for extraction and processing does not violate any law of thermodynamics.
Freeing up hydrogen is a much more energy-intense process to date. It currently requires more energy to free-up hydrogen than that hydrogen ends up providing in an automobile. Even if that ceases to be the case, no law of thermodynamics would be violated. Your misconception of fuels necessarilly costing more to produce than they provide for use comes from your misuse of the word create. If we had to truly create the petroleum or the water, you'd be right. And if we were "cracking water" and using the hydrogen to turn around and power a machine that combined hydrogen and oxygen to make water, then we would certainly be using more energy than it provided us for fuel.
And there are other problems involved in using hydrogen besides the processing issues. I'm not opposed to funding the research of alternative energy sources, but I think everyone's getting tired of hearing promises that no one can guarantee will be fulfilled. Pardon the pun, but they're just blowing smoke.
////////////////////////// you're going to have to put on a happy face when you say that. such confident predictions have very often proved wrong in the past.
I'm pretty sure we won't find a way anytime in the near future to break the laws of thermodynamics.
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