Re: Hydrogen economy will never exist

From: brianb (bri1600bv_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/14/04


Date: 14 Jul 2004 09:07:09 -0700

william.mook@mokindustries.com (william mook) wrote in message news:<407c5321.0407131517.4c5a8188@posting.google.com>...
> "Fred B. McGalliard" <frederick.b.mcgalliard@boeing.com> wrote in message news:<I0sz4r.1J8@news.boeing.com>...
> > The power available to every person in a society in general is a
> function of the cost of power. The sun deposits energy at something
> like 171,500 terawatts of power. Humanity uses about 5 terawatts of
> power in the form of oil. Humanity spends around $600 billion per
> year on this energy.
>
> Spending substantially more than this will reduce the utilization of
> industrial energy by humanity with resulting reversals in living
> standards and all that implies. Spending substantially less than this
> will increase the utilization of industrial energy by humanity with
> resulting improvements in living standards and all that implies.
>
> Right now the cost of energy is largley dominated by discovery risks
> and discovery rates of hydrocarbons. Since the sun reliably shines
> for a known number of hours each year at any location on Earth, these
> risks are non-existant for solar systems. The costs of solar are
> dominated by their capital costs.
>
> Given the low utilization of solar power equipment due to the lack of
> adequate sunlight most times, replacing the 5 trillion watts of human
> usage with solar implies the construction of 25 trillion watts of
> solar collectors, along with adequate energy storage and conversion
> utilities. Dividing costs in half, and applying an 8% discount rate,
> and a 15 year lifespan for equipment, we can see that $600 billion per
> year yeilds a capital investment of $5.13 trillion.
>
> SO, if half the cost is chemical processing costs, and half the costs
> are solar panel costs we need to achieve $0.10 per watt to displace
> oil in a way that positively impacts the economy of Earth. We also
> need to process 28 billion barrels of synthetic crude from atmospheric
> CO2 and water at a capital cost of about $10 fixed capital cost per
> barrel per year capacity.

Couldn't some of the crude by supplied by existing sources initially?
You could ramp up slowly. Wouldn't it be cheaper to use coal for an
existing carbon source? Is it cheap to get the impurities out of coal
after adding hydrogen and liquifying it? Or does that add to the cost
so much you'd be better off with raw carbon?

How much does it cost per kg of carbon to get it out of the air? And
what percentage of oil is carbon and hydrogen? I'm thinking it's
(oil) is about 12% hydrogen.

Also, what efficiency and cost are your electrolyzers? Also would I
assume that a 1MW electroloyzer works at average 25%, for 6 hours of
sun per day? At peak sun it's taking in 1MW of electricity and there
are an average of 6 sun hours per day?

I think your site said you sell 1000cf of hydrogen for $2. 1000cf of
natural gas is about 1M BTU. How many BTU is 1000cf of hdyrogen?

> Both these numbers are achievable and will provide an alternative to
> natural oil extracted from fixed reserves while closing the presently
> open ended carbon cycle that drives our industrial economy.
>
> 25 trillion watts, at 40% efficiency implies 100,000 square kiometers
> of desert lands are converted to solar collectors. Can we control this
> much land?
>
> Sure!
>
> Mok Industries already has control of this much land - and has
> prospects of gaining control of more land.

That's alot of land. About 300 km on a side.

>
> http://www.mokindustries.com



Relevant Pages

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  • Re: "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook"...
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