Re: Hydrogen Cars, Trucks, and Buses Are the Answer Indeed

On Dec 16, 3:49 am, Don Lancaster <d...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
tyrone schneider wrote:
. Here is an excerpt of his official
statement;...

http://groups.google.com/group/waterforfueld

Totally ludicrous.

The arguments AGAINST the hydrogen economy appear athttp://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss:http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: d...@xxxxxxxxxx

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site athttp://www.tinaja.com

Don, that pointer that you give is SO biased and full of factual
errors and BALD FACED LIES, I wonder why you're so intent on
associating yourself with it? Sheez.

I spent an afternoon reading that balderdash and was so incensed I
responded to it point by point - with bibliographic references - and
you can look it up to read the truth about hydrogen.

Check out

http://www.usoal.com

to find out how the US and the world for that matter, can actually
make abundant hydrogen cheaply from sunlight and water and transition
from our present world of shortages to a future world of abundance.

Presently, the world consumes energy at a 15 TW rate and burns the
following primary fuels to produce most of this;

Presently the world burns
28.3 billion barrels of oil (3.86 billion metric tons)
5.2 billion metric tons of coal
2.2 billion metric tons of natural gas.

generating over 30 billion tons of carbon-dioxide in the process each
year. The world pays about $4 trillion per year for all these
fuels. In return it runs an industry that produces $66 trillion per
year.

Since hydrogen burns under conditions that allow ANY of these fuels to
burn, hydrogen can replace ALL of them. Its just the availability of
hydrogen that's the problem. A ton of hydrogen is equal to the heat
value of the following fuels;

6.2 tons coal
23.4 barrels oil
2.55 tons methane.

Altogether if we could produce 3.34 billion tons of hydrogen each
year, we could displace ALL the carbon based fuels listed above.

The world produces nearly 20 million tons of hydrogen per year, mostly
to produce ammonia;

The world produces 0.109 billion tons of ammonia
which needs 0.019 billion tons of hydrogen

each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production

This is the mass balance of the process;

3 H2 + N2 --> 2 NH3
6 28 34

Nearly all hydrogen produced commercially is used in the production of
ammonia, a liquid fertilizer. This hydrogen is made by steam
reforming of natural gas.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy01osti/27637.pdf

Which uses the following reaction;

CH4 + 2 H2O --> CO2 + 4 H2
16 36 44 8

So, each ton of hydrogen requires the consumption of two tons of
methane (the principal component of natural gas) and 4.5 tons of
water. (Note that half the hydrogen comes from WATER in direct
disproof of Lancasters ludicrous web page) - and there is 5.5 tons of
carbon dioxide formed for each ton of hydrogen.

So, the 2.2 billion tons of natural gas can be converted to 1.1
billion tons of hydrogen, which COULD provide the same heat value at
25.6 billion barrels of crude oil. The carbon dioxide COULD be
captured at the conversion plant and COULD be sequestered.

The real issue is one of supply. Natural gas is used for a lot of
things. The world is past its peak in natural gas output. Which
means output is on a general decline. That's why the major oil
companies are going around the world and capturing flare gas from
their oil wells, liquefying it, and shipping it back to the US.

As far as oil is concerned, the world is approaching its peak in oil
output. According to the American Petroleum Institute the major oil
companies spent a record high of $401 billion last year which yeilded
a record low 2% increase in resrves. API also reports that the
average quality of oil world wide is declining, a sure sign of an
approaching peak, and subsequent secondary production - which means
declining output. Experts know this, and discount it. Which is why
the price of crude oil has risen to record levels of late. The
world's demand for energy is accelerating, while its supplies are
getting tired.

There's plenty of hydrogen in water, but it takes a source of primary
energy to get it out. There are three primary sources;

CHEMICAL ENERGY
NUCLEAR ENERGY
SOLAR ENERGY

My company has specialized on reducing the cost of solar energy to the
point where hydrogen produced from sunlight and water costs less than
$800 per ton.

The world has abundant coal and all major fields are well known. The
producibility of coal varies. Easily produced coal is cheapest. Coal
that is difficult to produce is most expensive. One can get hydrogen
from the shift reaction involving coal and water as well. This
process produces CO2 as well. The CO2 occurs at the plant so it can
be sequestered as well.

C + 2 H2O ---> CO2 + 2 H2
12 36 44 4

Here's the mass balance. A ton of hydrogen made from 3 tons of coal
and 9 tons of water produces 11 tons of carbon dioxide. The US has
275 billion tons of easily recoverable coal. This is enough to make
91.7 billion tons of hydrogen. Converted to barrels of oil equivalent
that's equal to 2.14 TRILLION barrels of oil - which is MORE than the
PROVED RESERVES of oil on the planet today.

The AMSE has just completed this past year standards for practical
cost-effective fuel tanks and pipelines for hydrogen. Issues cited in
the stupendously foolish web page Lancaster pointed to have long since
been resolved. The existence of BMW's line of hydrogen powered cars
is proof positive of that. Its only a matter of time before these
type of vehicles are produced in larger numbers at lower cost.

http://www.apia.net.au/events/docs/IPChydrogen.pdf
http://www.bmwusa.com/uniquelybmw/efficientdynamics?panelid=4
http://www.bmwzentrum.com/exhibits/hydrogen_car.asp

Now it takes 3.3 liters of liquid hydrogen to replace 1.0 liter of
gasoline. It also costs about $10 in hydrogen tank equipment to
replace $1 in gasoline tank equipment. This makes hydrogen
impractical right? Not really, when one considers that less than 1%
of the volume of a car and less than 0.2% of the cost of a car is
contributed by its fuel tank. So, a fuel tank 3.3 times bigger and 10
times more costly than a gasoline fuel tank means that such a hydrogen
car is 2.3% more volume and 1% more cost than the exact same car
fueled by gasoline. The only missing piece is the supply of hydrogen
at a decent cost. If abundant hydrogen were conveniently available at
say 5% discount from gasoline prices (something that is easily
achieved if we don't add fuel taxes to hydrogen) then people would go
to hydrogen cars in droves with only a 2% premium on price due to the
fuel tank.

Coal can also be converted to liquid fuels as well as hydrogen by the
Fischer-Tropsch process. Higher quality liquid fuels are made by the
Bergius process, at a higher cost by direct hydrogentation. These
processes are wasteful of coal. Carbon from coal is combined with
hydrogen from water to create free hydrogen and the hydrogen is used
to create liquid fuels by adding it to more carbon.

Produce hydrogen by steam shift reaction;

9 C + 18 H2O --> 9 CO2 + 18 H2

16 C + 18 H2 --> C8H18
Then liquid hydro-carbons by direct hydrogenation

In practice this is done in one step, using a Lurgi Reactor and
synthesis gas, and a mixture of hydrocarbons are produced. But even
in this highly idealized reaction 3 tons of coal plus 9 tons of water
produce 1 ton of hydrogen and 11 tons of carbon dioxide as before.
Then the 1 ton of hydrogen is combined with 5.3 tons of coal to make
6.3 tons (46.4 barrels) of liquid fuel..

In all 8.3 tons of coal are used to make 46.4 barrels of liquid fuel.
In reality, about twice this much coal is used and twice this much
carbon dioxide is made because the shift reaction requires STEAM not
liquid water, and to make steam you need to burn something to heat
it. Then there are process losses which need to be made up. So, real
world systems produce 22 tons of carbon dioxide from 12 tons of carbon
to produce 36 barrels of liquid fuels and several tons of waxy
byproducts.

This means that the 275 billion tons of easily recoverable coal in the
US could be used to augment our petroleum reserves directly, by
producing 825 billion barrels of syncrude. As in the hydrogen
example, the carbon dioxide would be sequestered.

The hydrogenation of coal takes more capital equipment than the
production of hydrogen alone from coal. A lot of energy is wasted in
the involved process of making syncrude, and a lot of pollution
produced.

Clearly, making hydrogen even from coal, is a better deal than making
oil from coal. So, its something to consider short term until better
supplies are created.

There are other sources of hydrogen beyond chemical processes.
Nuclear reactors produce hydrogen from water by direct thermolysis or
photolysis, This is something that is being seriously looked at;

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/nuclear_energy_h2_plan.pdf

To produce the 3.34 billion tons per year of hydrogen that the world
needs using any of these processes, requires that around 35 TW of
nuclear reactors be built. There are fewer than 300 commercial
reactors in the world that produce around 0.36 TW - so we're talking
about a 100x increase in the number of nuclear reactors. The world
has spent $5 trillion over the past 50 years developing nuclear
reactors. There have been 2 major accidents involving nuclear
reactors in all that time. Three Mile Island, which didn't result in
the release of much nuclear material into the environment, but a total
loss of hardware and massive containment headache for all of future
history - and Chernobyl, which DID result in massive releases of
radiation and the creation of a 53,000 sq km permanent exclusion zone
around the reactor. This is an average of 1,000 sq km per year of the
nuclear age.

Averaged over the last 50 years, we can expect that even if reactors
are 10x safer in the future than in the past, and cost 10% what they
cost throughout the first 50 years, we would see a steady increase of
nuclear exclusion zones of 10,000 sq km per year - and have to bear a
total cost of $50 trillion to merely MEET our current needs.

China and India are growing at double digit rates. That means they
will be using energy on a per capita rate equal to the US and Europe
and Japan today - in about 30 years. This translates to a 10x
increase in the figures mentioned above. To supply all this with
nuclear hydrogen requires 1,000 times the number of reactors we have
today, and if they cost 1/10th of today's reactors, and are 10x
safter, you'd still have an average of 100,000 sq km per year added to
the permanent exclusion zone for human habitation and cost $500
trillion. Most would find this unacceptable on both counts.

Furthermore, EVERY nation that has developed a nuclear reactor
technology has ALSO developed nuclear weapons technology. So, we can
see that expanding the number of nuclear reactors 100x or 1,000x their
present level - creates new problems with increasing availability of
nuclear materials that might find their way into nuclear weapons and
be used by rogue states, terror groups, or even criminals.

For these reasons, while technically sweet, nuclear production of
hydrogen on Earth, seems to be a non-starter.

Solar panels produce DC electricity at low voltage. Low voltage DC
electricity is ideally suited to electrolyze water into its component
parts of hydrogen and oxygen;

2 H2O + 4 e- ==> 2 H2 + O2

So, each ton of hydrogen requires the splitting of 9 tons of water by
the application of 50 MWh of solar electricity and the release or use
of 8 tons of oxygen. No CO2. No waste. The only problem is the cost
of solar panels. In the past conventional solar panels cost $7 per
peak watt. This translates to a cost of $25,000 per ton of
hydrogen!!! Which is superlatively expensive - waay to much.

However, REDUCE THE COST OF THE SOLAR PANEL TO $0.07 per peak watt and
the cost of hydrogen drops to $250 per ton of hydrogen. At this price
hydrogen is competitive head to head with ALL OTHER FUELS. Not only
can it burn in the same burners and engines that burn all those other
fuels, but on a heat value basis, at $250 per ton, hydrogen is easily
the most cost effective fuel as well.

1 ton of hydrogen at $250 =
6.2 tons of coal at $41 per ton

1 ton of hydrogen at $250 =
23.4 bbls crude oil at $11 per bbl

1 ton of hydrogen at $250 =
2.55 tons natural gas at $98 per ton

My panels are described at

http://www.usoal.com

Now, my panels produce 180 MW per square kilometer. When placed in a
location that receives 1700 hours of sunlight per year, each square
kilometer of panels produces 6,120 tons of hydrogen each year. This
means that to supply the entire world's 3.34 billion ton requirement
to replace all our current fuels, requires the installation of 546,000
sq km of solar panels. At $0.07 per peak watt, this installation has
a total cost of $6.9 trillion. Since the total revenue for all fuels
totals greater than $4 trillion per year, one can see this is easily
affordable at these prices. In fact, by selling hydrogen at $800 per
metric ton, the world gets a discount on its energy while eliminating
all carbon emissions from fuel use.

Over the next 30 years as our economy grows our demand for energy will
increase. Low cost solar panels can be used to fulfill this increase
in demand. Total energy intensity on the planet could increase to 10x
its current level. This will require 5.5 million sq km of solar
panels with no technical changes. Some technical changes that might
be interestnig include;

(1) Improved efficiency of solar panels to 36%
(2) Use of powersat technology to beam energy from space

The first improvement reduces sizes by half. The second improvement
reduces sizes to one-tenth. What is very interesting is the
possibility that a half million square kilometers of thin film solar
concentrators on orbit would focus sunlight onto infra-red lasers in
space. These solar pumped lasers would then beam infra-red energy to
pre-existing solar panel arrays at intensities equal to about 1/2 the
intensity of sunlight. That is, equal to the infrared load produced
by natural sunlight. This efficiently powers the low cost panels 24/7
and increases total energy in a year to 10x the anbient sunlight
level. The cool thing here is that NO NEW TERRESTRIAL INSTALLATOINS
ARE NEEDED TO MEET EXPONENTIALLY INCREASING DEMAND. This is a HUGE
cost savings - provided the solar powersats are low mass enough.
Experience from the 1950s Echo satellite series indicates low mass
concentrators are possible, and a reusable NOVA class heavy launcher
placing 500 to 1000 metric tons on orbit - could cost-effectively
place suffiicent power sats to meet ALL our future energy needs
cleanly and safely as our global economy grew from $66 trillion to $1
quadrillion over the next 30 years and hydrogen sales increases from
$3 trillion per year to $60 trillion per year..

Don, put away your tired lies and mis-statements. The hydrogen
economy is here. Its time you embraced it and quit trying to fool
people.
..
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: H2 burner
    ...   WHAT SPECIFICALLY ARE YOU ... That is, what does it cost, and what does it produce. ... energy derived from burning fossil fuels. ... A metric ton of coal is converted by direct hydrogenation into 7.2 ...
    (sci.energy.hydrogen)
  • Re: USA urges scientists to block out sun
    ... You are a nasty fellow Brad. ... sunlight water and coal. ... The 1.1 billion tons of coal ... all take place through direct hydrogenation of ores. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: USA urges scientists to block out sun
    ... tons of steam, ... Now, once you have hydrogen, then you can add this to MORE carbon, and ... make 6.33 tons of octane - which is 46.3 barrels of octane. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Low cost hydrogen today
    ... conventional oil production this facility restores Indonesia to oil ... Each facility requires the direct hydrogenation of 32,300 tons per day ... Since the USA's economic problems derive ultimately from our energy ...
    (sci.energy.hydrogen)
  • Re: USA urges scientists to block out sun
    ... That hydrogen comes from water. ... and 9 tons of water and the production of 11 tons of carbon dioxide. ... coal to liquid fuel process. ... hydrogenation under high pressure. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
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