[Doctor Doom]

Coal is not "nearly inexhaustible" - the US has 250 years of coal at current production rates, and some skeptics think that after the easiest coal is produced, coal production will become net energy negative in as little as 40 years. Even if you accept the 250 year figure, it won't last nearly that long if we call upon it to meet transportation needs as well as to meet current uses (50% of US electricity comes from coal). Turning coal into hydrogen will result in a net energy loss - it would be more efficient simply to burn the coal. Perhaps if we bring back the Stanley Steamer we might power vehicles on coal.

Hydrogen has serious problems as a vehicle fuel. It easily escapes from containment and requires very heavy "tankage" to store it as a gas. As a liquid it requires cryo-cooling, which also requires heavy tankage including cooling apparatus.

Methanol and ethanol do not suffer from these problems. Ethanol has more energy per kg than methanol and would therefore from a pure energy storage density perspective would have the edge as a vehicle fuel (though still only 2/3 the energy of gasoline). Methane also makes a reasonable vehicle fuel, although it has some of the same tankage issues as hydrogen. Propane has a lot of potential as a vehicle fuel - the tankage issue is very easily solved as propane likes to be a liquid at suitable pressure with no cryo-cooling required. Propane and methane have energy densities that are favorable when compared to gasoline, though gasoline is still better when you throw in the weight of the tankage.

Ultimately it may come down to what is easiest and cheapest to produce from biomass and electricity. We probably won't be able to produce quantities sufficient to run cars for personal transporation. But we might be able to produce enough biodiesel, ethanol, etc. to run critical things like some farm and construction equipment, emergency vehicles, etc. Personal transport will likely be bicycles or at best motor scooters.

[grungerock]

what about hithane?

[OilBurner]

Hithane (methane and hydrogen) will suffer from the inherent supply problems of both methane and hydrogen. Although, the individual problems are lessend as we're using two different energy forms. That is useful, as we won't need as much electricity to generate the hydrogen and not as much land for crops for pure methane. It spreads the problems quite nicely.

It's still early days though, I did a search on Google and came up with more or less nothing on it.

What really counts against it is the idea of using it as a bridge to pure hydrogen usage, we'll have to change all the infrastructure twice then!!
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but we also don't know how much of an energy loser Hithane is. It probably depends on the exact mix.

[Whitecrab]

If you have some time, here's a nice report from BMO (Bank of Montreal) about the difficulties in a hydrogen economy and why it won't be the power source of our generation: http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/images/hydrogen.pdf

The only thing that sounds viable at all for transport is using metal hydrides to store the hydrogen:

Metal Hydrides

Powders of certain metal alloys, under certain conditions, form relatively loose chemical
bonds with hydrogen, permitting them to act as ‘sponges’ for the gas. In theory, these metal
hydrides appear to be the idea storage medium for hydrogen as they permit the storage of
relatively large volumes of gas in a relatively small volume and yet at comparatively modest
pressures (30% atmospheres or 435 psi), and with relatively good energy efficiency. For
example, certain metal hydrides store 80% or so hydrogen in the same volume as liquid
hydrogen without the associated challenges of ultra-cold temperatures.

Unfortunately, most metal hydrides are rather dense, and the weight of hydrogen stored is
only 2% of the weight of the metal hydride. Therefore, while a metal hydride storage system
capable of carrying 5 kg of hydrogen would only occupy around 90 litres, it would weigh
around 575 kg (over 1,200 pounds) not counting the pressure tank.

Hydrides based on alkali metals have considerably better energy densities, and can deliver
about 5% of the combined weight of reactants in hydrogen. In other words, 5 kg of hydrogen
could be produced from just under 100 kg of alkali hydride and water, which is a weight not
much different from that of a full fuel tank of gasoline in a small truck. Unfortunately, the
process of storing hydrogen in alkali hydrides is not very energy efficient. The process
requires around 60% more energy than that which can be extracted from the resultant hydrides.

While the efficiency of alkali hydrides storage appears to be less than that for compressed or
liquid hydrogen, this may be offset by the relatively simple storage systems required to hold
the product, and the inherent losses associated with storing cryogenic or compressed hydrogen.
Some schemes for using alkali hydride storage propose refueling by simply loading a
new set of fuel canisters, which are transported back to the manufacturers for recharging. The
change out process, which could be automated, would probably speed the refuelling process
considerably, and is one of the main drawbacks to gaseous storage.

There's also the fact that even if solve the technical problems and get it working, can we get enough of the metal?

[rowante]

More on hydrogen...

Found something interesting in an essay about how nanotechnology will help with coming energy problems.

http://nanotech-now.com/IMalsch-energy-paper.htm

There is so much criticism of hydrogen by 'armchair' scientists on this site who seem to believe without question assumptions about hydrogen fuel cells and energy systems. (I'm not saying I believe hydrogen to be the answer, however, I'm saying I'm keeping an open mind because I'm not an expert in this field and would like to read more from people who are.)

Millennium Cell is a U.S. company with a new patented safe way of storing hydrogen. http://www.millenniumcell.com/index_noflash.html

The "hydrogen" is stored at ambient conditions in a non-flammable liquid "fuel" - an aqueous solution of sodium borohydride, NaBH4. Sodium borohydride is made from borax, a material that is found in substantial natural reserves globally. The process supplies pure hydrogen for energy applications without the need (and associated energy penalties) for compression or liquefaction. Hydrogen produced by this system can be used for numerous applications, addressing a wide range of power requirements.

It is an interesting development not addressed in the linked report in the above post. There are many problems still to be addressed (production primarily), but it puts the problem with storage and transportation of hydrogen to bed.

The important thing to keep in mind is that we do not have to have societies organised in the way it is now. Many of the inefficiencies that people take for granted now will be eliminated by circumstance in the coming decades. Just because something on the surface doesn't seem as good doesn't mean it cannot help.

Nanotechnology is something everyone should have an eye on and learn about. If there is going to be a solution it will come from this field because it is the so called 'cutting edge' of science and technology. Amazing progress and investment has occurred in this field in the last 5 years... I guess we've still got about 4-6 years for the energy fairy

[Whitecrab]

I posted this on another forum I go to, the night after I went to a talk by a leading Hydrogen-for-cars engineer. Let me just paste:

(this was Feb. 2004):

Last night I was at a lecture by Dr. Ballard, CEO of Ballard Power Systems who are giving fuel cells their damndest try. The key points of his hour long lecture (skipping the technical details) were:

(* points are the most important)

-Moving to a hydricity (hydrogen/electricity) economy lets you use a multiplicity of primary energy sources. Right now, oil HAS to be the original energy resource. By under hydricity you can generate the power any way you want, according to your country's strengths.

-There are (at least) 5 basic fuel cell models. But, I took a quick look at this chart, only about 2, maybe 3 could be used as vehicles. Some were power plant-only, if anything (run over 1000°C and has a minimum constant output).

-Hydrogen, like oil, lets you scale power and energy. So you can have a big tank and a weak engine, or a large engine and a small tank, whatever you need. This is a plus for marketing

*He doesn't believe the corner gas station is going to set up the hydrogen infrastructure. There's a catch 22: no one will make any profit setting it up without hydrogen cars to service, and no one will make cars unless there is a NETWORK. Who'll buy a car if they can only fill it up at one place?

His plan right now is to try and sell hydrogen forklifts to "big-box" companies like Walmart and Target, with gigantic shipping yards. They can do it in a way that will save money. Then, once every gigant shipping yard has a hydrogen pump, try and get a few big rig trucks to switch (2% of the vehicles in LA produce 60% of the pollution: the giant shipping trucks). Start with niche markets like that. Then, once the automakers see this network in place, they can offer cars, get Walrmart to retool the pumps for cars and sell it, and we beat the catch 22.

*In order to be economical, the technology has to drop at least an order of magnitude in price. Drop from ~$500/kW to...well most people will tell you under $50/kW, but it's really under $37. Or, to look at it another way, you need to get $0.01/kWh, and we can't do much better then $10.

He doesn't believe "economies of scale" and incrementally improving our current designs will work: if you run the numbers, you can't even buy the raw materials by the parking lot load, magically turn them into product for free, and sell them at no cost while still beating the price for the family car. You cannot put a car onto the streets of America without a totally new engine geometry: a "quantum leap" in the technology. Every major automaker in the world is trying.

-Public cars will be the last thing to get fuel cells. They've got to be proven safe. I mean, just think about recalling a 1000s of cars when you accidentally misplace a bolt on an engine or screw up a tire, even though normal cars are century-old technology. Not gonna happen for awhile

-By the third generation of technology (out kids, grandkids?), you should be able to just go home and plug you car into the grid to fuel it for the next day. Or, in a power outtage plug the car in to power your house. Or drive to the cottage, run it a week from just your car (no power lines), and drive home.

*Where will the hydrogen come from? Realistically, water cracking with nuclear power is the only way that makes sense to him. Nothing else can do it on the incredible scales needed.

-Trend prediction is usually impossible, so "you can be sure what I'm telling you will end up wrong." Life doesn't follow a linear projection


Oh, and just out of interest, he actually studied as a geological engineer and did his thesis on volcanoes, so, you never know where you'll go in this world.

[Aaron]

Armchair science

Let's juggle the numbers

If we accept cracking seawater for hydrogen, and accept nuclear to generate the electricity to power the process then:

For example, nuclear Plant Hatch in Georgia withdraws an average of 57 million gallons per day from the Altamaha River and actually "consumes" 33 million gallons per day, lost primarily as water vapor, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

So if it takes 57,000,000 gallons of water per day per plant.

And we need around 5000 plants to meet electricity needs.

then 57,000,000 x 5000 x 364 = water requirements per year for nuclear.

103,740,000,000,000 gallons per year.

104 trillion gallons per year forever?

I wonder how much energy is required to move a gallon of water a given distance?

[Devil]

If we accept cracking seawater for hydrogen,

Sorry, Aaron, but seawater, per se, is unsuitable for hydrogen generation: you will get a lot of caustic soda and chlorine (so much you couldn't use it!) but precious little hydrogen. Sodium chloride dissociates preferentially to dihydrogen monoxide.

You would have to desalinate the water, first. Unfortunately, desalination is VERY energy-intensive, so you would need to have even more power stations

I calculated that if English cars were all hydrogen powered, you would need to use all the water in Lake Windermere (England's largest lake) every year just to electrolyse into hydrogen. And you would need about 100 average nuclear power stations just to do it.

Hydrogen? Forget it!

[OilBurner]

Devil, I'd be interested to see those calculations and I guess others might too.
How about popping them up on here?

Thanks.

[Devil]

Devil, I'd be interested to see those calculations and I guess others might too.
How about popping them up on here?

Thanks.

You can see the figures for Cyprus here http://www.cypenv.org/Files/hydrogen.htm
This translates to 1.6 GW running 24/7/52 and 1.5 million tonnes of water for 200,000 cars. You can extrapolate these figures to the UK car population.

[Guest]

Let's clear up some misconceptions as to what hydrogen can and cannot do.

Really? Are there currently any Hydrogen powered airplane, trains, ships, submarines, electrical generators, tractors, semis, bulldozers, and other modern machines besides the personal horseless carriage in existence? Will hydrogen make a feedstock for plastics? Will Hydrogen be able to be fuel for camping lights? Can I use hydrogen in my camping stove? Can I use hydrogen to produce Nitrogen to use in fertilizers when it is 6 elements away? Can I use Hydrogen to fuel my lighter so I don't have to quit smoking and also have a portable source of fire? Can hydrogen heat my house like LNG can? Can I cook with Hydrogen? Can I use Hydrogen to lubricate a squeaky hinge? Can I use Hydrogen for a lubricant in my car? Can I as easily transport Hydrogen in a 5 gallon jug for possibly 1000's of miles like I can with oil based products? Is Hydrogen as dense in energy as oil is? Can Hydrogen be a complete solution to all uses that petroleum has?

Hydrogen can be used in every energy application that petroleum is used for today. It cannot be used as inexpensively or easily but it can be used. Hydrogen can power aircraft, it can run your stove (minor burner modifications and attention to sensors etc.), your camping equipment, it is currently used for nitrogen fertilizer; it can run locomotives, submarines, bulldozers, semis, cranes etc. It cannot be transported easily or cheaply, it cannot be stored easily or cheaply, it cannot be used as lubricant. It cannot be used as plastic chemical feedstock.

It is one of the means to store renewable energy along with metal energy carriers like zinc, aluminum, flywheels, pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, batteries, SMEC (superconducting magnet energy storage) and ultracapacitors. It will never be cheap but it may be all we have in a fossil fuel starved world. We will use electricity directly to the greatest extent possible and resort to storage only under absolute necessity. It will not be transported over extremely long-distances but generated locally and regionally.

Regarding metal energy carriers, we need to investigate metal fuel cells like zinc and aluminum. They may be feasible and easier than hydrogen fuel cells.
http://www.metallicpower.com http://www.evionyx.com http://www.aluminum-power.com

[EnviroEngr]

Andy is that you?

Is the system behaving badly here?

[Andy]

Yes, That was me Enviro. Didn't realize that I was not logged on.

[MarkR]

Thanks for the links on Al and Zn fuel cells.

The Zinc technology certainly looks interesting, but I was rather underwhelmed by the Al ones.

As far as I can tell, the Al 'fuel cells' are just "Aluminium-air" batteries under which have been renamed by a marketing department.

Metal-air batteries are an old technology which are widely used in portable equipment (e.g. hearing aids) due to high energy density and low cost. However, the metal corrodes during use and therefore these are 'primary' (non-rechargeable cells).

This is rather cryptically mentioned on the web-site where they refer to 'mechanical recharging' presumably meaning, replacing the batteries with new ones, and shipping the old ones back for recycling.

Have I understood this correctly? The above scheme hardly looks practical, except perhaps for very isolated equipment with low power consumption.

[Dustin]

Everyone, It has been calculated that it takes 1.3 billion kWh 1 billion kWh of hydrogen (BioScience, Vol. 44, No. 8, September 1994.)

That means it takes 1.3 gallons of gas worth of energy to produce 1 gallon of gas worth of energy from hyrdogen. That is a ratio of .77. That of course means that it is losing energy, but its not too bad.

Its not the 6:1 someone through out.

Technical Problems aside, like storage and cooling and production, it makes a decent energy carrier.

[Devil]

Technical Problems aside, like storage and cooling and production, it makes a decent energy carrier.

Just a mere detail: as if storage, cooling and distribution don't also require energy.

OK let's go back to a few basics. If we obtain the H2 from CH4, the C is emitted as CO2, but we lose the energy stored in the C. This is not a solution because of the greenhouse gas emissions, for which we obtain nothing in exchange.

If we obtain the H2 from an electolyser, we need vast amounts of additional electrical energy and water. These come from where? Don't say wind and solar panels, because electrolysers need to work at 100% capacity 24/7/52 to remain efficient.

In both cases, this is inefficient.

[fecteau]

Devil wrote:

Don't say wind and solar panels, because electrolysers need to work at 100% capacity 24/7/52 to remain efficient.

Not according to Stuart Energy (http://www.stuartenergy.com/main_our_products.html), one of the leading producer of Hydrogen infrastructure. Their hydrogen generation is suitable for production from wind farms.

A way to store extra capacity, such as hydrogen production, is needed if we want to get a major portion of our energy from non stable sources like wind.

[Devil]

Devil wrote:

Don't say wind and solar panels, because electrolysers need to work at 100% capacity 24/7/52 to remain efficient.

Not according to Stuart Energy (http://www.stuartenergy.com/main_our_products.html), one of the leading producer of Hydrogen infrastructure. Their hydrogen generation is suitable for production from wind farms.

I didn't say it wouldn't produce H2. I said it would do it efficiently only if run at full capacity 24/7/52, which is true. In any case, somebody selling their own product is not going to advertise the problems, is he? If that were so, Microsoft would go bankrupt in 24 hours.

[MarkR]

I didn't say it wouldn't produce H2. I said it would do it efficiently only if run at full capacity 24/7/52, which is true.

It's not so much efficiently, as economically.

Electrolysers are so expensive that amortization of their purchase cost is a huge running expense, secondary only to the electricity to run them. Even at 24/7 use, the electricity costs may only represent about 70% of total cost.

Building an electrolyser to take the output from a windfarm would probably cost twice as much as the windfarm, yet it would be terribly under-utilised, unless you supplemented it with grid power.

[The_Virginian]

"Balphomet" wrote:

Sorry, Aaron, but seawater, per se, is unsuitable for hydrogen generation: you will get a lot of caustic soda and chlorine (so much you couldn't use it!) but precious little hydrogen. Sodium chloride dissociates preferentially to dihydrogen monoxide.

Ahhh Sheiss!

That does it for Hydrogen in my future plans.

If we cant use what covers 78% of the world and convert it to a usable carrier of Wind energy, Hydrogen is totaly "finito".

(even if we were to say that platinum could be replaced by Zinc).