Re: Best Books on Hydrogen Future Possibilities

On Jan 4, 4:18 am, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Gary wrote:
I'm a total layman / novice. But for some reason I find myself thinking a
lot about the possibilities of hydrogen.

I'd like to get some books that explain the possibilities and obstacles for
hydrogen.

You don't need a book.

Here's what you need to know about hydrogen.

Hydrogen in its elemental form doesn't occur in nature so it has to be
manufactured.

Its manufacture requires sunlight and water, two of the most abundant
resources on Earth. Hydrogen once it is available burns under
conditions all fuels currently in broad use already burn, so very
little infrastructure change is needed to accomodate hydrogen -
especially in stationary applications. Hydrogen when consumed forms
water again, which is easily and cheaply converted to hydrogen and
oxygen again in a balanced system powered by abundant sunlight.

On the other hand, coal, natural gas, and crude oil, were made by the
action of sunlight on ancient biomass. In this way sunlight water and
carbon were converted into hydro-carbon compounds. A small fraction
of this was captured by random geological processes. An even smaller
fraction of that captured biomass was converted to hydrocarbon fuels,
coal, natural gas and crude oil. And a small portion of that, in
appropriate geological formations is produced using current methods of
drilling and mining. There are no ways to replace the oil coal and
natural gas that is burned. Burning these substances fouls the air
irreversibly and causes climate change.

To get an idea of the relative abundance of sunlight on Earth when
compared to coal oil and natural gas, if you took ALL the world's
remaining crude oil, ALL the world's remaining natural gas and ALL the
world's remaining coal and burned it, it would only take the Earth
1/5th of a SECOND to capture that much energy in the form of
sunlight. Burning this much coal natural gas and crude oil would
TRIPLE the amount of carbon-dioxide in the air.

Manufacturing hydrogen currently uses fossil fuels

Not true. While it is true that the production of hydrogen can
involve the use of fossil fuels AND WATER, manufacturing hydrogen also
includes its production via direct electrolysis of water powered by
sunlight, nuclear, hydroelectric power, tidal power and wind, and that
use is growing as the cost of these forms of energy drop due to
technical improvements while fossil fuel costs rise due to limited
supples.

so, aside from the possible
advantage of using it to reduce *local* air pollution,  there is no advantage in
terms of total pollution or CO2 footprint.

Not true. Carbon sequestration is an important technology that is
easily implemented when using fossil fuels to make hydrogen from
water. The simplest way to do this is to use the shift reaction;

C + 2 H2O ---> CO2 + 2 H2

Where 3 tons of carbon plus 9 tons of water produce 11 tons of carbon
dioxide and 1 ton of hydrogen. The carbon dioxide is easily
separated from the hydrogen by cryogenic processes, and the carbon
dioxide is easily injected in old natural gas wells for long-term
sequestration. The hydrogen may be burned to release the energy
formerly contained in the coal, without polluting the air at all.

This is not the only way to make hydrogen, as mentioned above, the use
of nuclear, solar, hydro, and wind generation is TOTALLY clean, and
produces hydrogen by electrolysis with NO carbon footprint at all and
no sequestration either.

In fact these may be worse when using
hydrogen as the processes require an extra energy input.

Anything MAY be worse if done stupidly. This is not an argument
against doing it wisely. Graham/Eeyore is famous for mistating facts
and misleading people with half truths and when that fails, outright
lies and intimidation. He needs to quote his sources and the
rationale for this statement. As it stands, there's no basis for it
at all.

Hydrogen so manufactured may be used as a fuel in many existing engines
(typically with slight modifications only) and in fuel cells.

Hydrogen made by ANY of the processes described above can be used in
this way.

When hydrogen is used as a fuel in internal combustion engines etc, most of the
energy value is wasted just like when burning fossil fuels in them.

Here is a prime example of how Graham twists the truth to make it seem
that hydrogen is inferior to fossil fuels when in fact if used in the
way he suggests, hydrogen may be replaced DIRECTLY wherever fossil
fuels are used with very little change in the way we do things.

What matters is the cost of the fuel and the cost of using it.
Hydrogen made at less than $800 per ton releases the same heat energy
as crude oil at $35 per barrel, or gasoline at $0.79 per gallon - and
can burn with slight modifications in the engines everyone already
uses. Obviously at these prices hydrogen is a good deal for the
average consumer - especially when considering that NO CARBON is
produced when using hydrogen.

Hydrogen used in  fuel cells may produce electricity at around 50% efficiency
(so only half the energy value is lost).

This is more than double that gas mileage of a typical car. Put
differently, a car that gets 40 miles per gallon with an internal
combustion engine will get over 90 miles per gallon with a fuel cell
powered electric engine. Combine this improvement in efficiency with
low costs, and its like getting your gas for less than $0.40 per
gallon.

Hydrogen manufactured using electrolysis requires vast amounts of electrical
energy.

This is true. But what is the cost of that electrical energy? If its
surplus energy produced by a hydro electric plant at night, or a
nuclear power plant at night, when there is not demand, or a wind
generator when the wind is blowing when there is no demand or a solar
generator that produces more than is needed when the sun is shining,
this surplus energy's value is lost unless somehow stored. The
lowest cost way of storing this excess is to make hydrogen with it.

And doing so is 'lossy', so you end up with less energy value than you
had to begin with.

This is true of any system that processes fuel. A barrel of crude oil
produces products that have only 80% of the original barrel's energy
after it goes through the refining process. To operate the refinery,
pipelines, ships, tankers, and pumps, takes another 20% of the energy
in that barrel. Does this make the use of crude oil uneconomic? Not
in the least, the value of a gallon of gas at the pump merely reflects
these added costs.

Lets put it this way. Lets say that HALF the energy in a ton of
hydrogen is used to get it into your tank. Its way less than that,
but lets just say that. That means that at $800 per ton - at the
generator - hydrogen would cost $1.58 per gallon of gas equivalent, or
$70 per barrel of oil equivalent - DELIVERED. Of course things are
way better than this, so hydrogen is even a better deal. When you add
in the fact that hydrogen doesn't produce ANY carbon when its burned,
and add in the fact that its vastly more abundant than dwindling
supplies of coal, natural gas and oil, you can see why the future
belongs to hydrogen.

Any 'hydrogen economy' would first require a 'crash
programme' of building huge numbers of new electrical power generating stations.

This is an important fact. That's why the COST of those generation
stations are important. I have developed a solar panel system that
produces hydrogen from sunlight - and the capital expense is $0.07 per
peak watt. In typical applications this makes hydrogen avaialable at
the panel for $200 per metric ton. When piping, storage, retrieval,
and other costs are added, the cost of production rises to $270 per
metric ton. We just saw that $800 per metric ton hydrogen is a real
value in today's energy economy. So, clearly there is PLENTY of room
for profit. And where there's potential for profit, capital is
attracted to earn it.

The world presently uses 23.8 billion barrels of crude oil, 5.5
billion tons of coal, and 2.2 billion tons of natural gas each year.
This produces 40 trillion tons of carbon dioxide each year. This
demand for fuel is rising at 4% per annum. Humanity spends $4
trillion per year on fuels, and creates $66 trillion in value each
year. ALL this fuel can EASILY be replaced with 3.34 billion tons of
hydrogen per year producing NO carbon dioxide. To do this with my
solar panels requires 554,000 sq km of panels generating 99.72 TW peak
power. At $0.07 per peak watt that's $6.98 trillion in capital
equipment. Less than what the stock market vaporized between 1999 and
2002.

There are 9.5 million millionaires in the world. Collectively they
control nearly $40 trillion. They are always looking for good
investments. Obviously, by risking less than 20% of their total
portfolio (not all at once obviously) they could earn tremendous
returns on investment solving the worlds energy problems.

In short, yes, new generator capacity is needed. The least expensive
generator capacity around is concentrating photovoltaic panels. These
scale well to the sizes we need. The land area is already under the
control of a handful of mining companies who will pay solar power
companies to take the land. Those mines are already well connected to
the industrial infrastructure.

In order not to vastly increase greenhouse gas emissions, the only practical
power source for these would have to be nuclear.

Nuclear is an option that is being looked at seriously. However the
cost of nuclear, both in out of pocket costs, and in security and
disposal costs, it appears to be a nonstarter.

Hydrogen is explosive over a wide range of air / hydrogen mixture values.

Yes, that means it works in every engine that uses any other fuels,
since internal combustion engines explode the air/fuel mix.

It
therefore requires *extreme* care in handling and the security of any storage
containers.

As does any fuel. Look at TWA flight 800, or the history of the Pinto
motorcar.

Hydrogen leaks from ordinary steel pipelines and will make them brittle too.

The ASME just completed issuing standards for the hydrogen economy in
2006. You can now buy off the shelf tanks, pipelines, valves, and all
the rest that are more reliable than any system in history and will
last 60 years. No other fuel infrastructure is as safe, reliable and
trouble free as hydrogen. From 1969 through 1972 the United States
launched rockets to the moon. These rockets were powered by
hydrogen. There were absolutely NO accidents of any type in handling
thousands of tons of hydrogen under very difficult conditions. The
hydrogen infrastructure was designed in the 21st century. Fossil fuel
infrastructure was designed in the 19th century. There is no
comparison as to the safety reliability and ease of use of the
hydrogen system when compared to antiquated, dangerous and dirty
systems used for fossil fuels.

Hydrogen occupies a very large volume for it's energy value and therefore
requires compression or liquefaction in order to be practically stored. This
wastefully requires additional energy inputs.

Yet those energy inputs are less than the losses incurred by
processing and distilling oil. Hydrogen airplanes and automobiles
have been built and flown and driven. There are no show stoppers in
the use of hydrogen throughout ALL of our industrial economy.

WillieMookclaims to have the answer to cheap photovoltaic solar power
generation of hydrogen but so far it's largely just talk.

You gotta start somewhere.

He vastly exaggerates
his claims.

Specifically how?

I wouldn't take him TOO seriously.

Specifically why?

His ideas are interesting

Yes.

but in
his enthusiasm for them, he appears to lost any sense of objectivity.

No, I tell it like it is, and that bothers you for some reason. You
are going out of your way to mischaracterize anything I say, and when
I defend myself, you mischaracterize THAT as being not objective.

Some of
his posts make him sound quite mad in fact.

Only when I am responding to mad statements that you make.

Graham

.

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