Re: Best Books on Hydrogen Future Possibilities

On Jan 4, 10:06 am, Don Lancaster <d...@xxxxxxxxxx> 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. I'd like to avoid anything that is all hype but also avoid books
that can't imagine a future that doesn't exist yet. Not looking for anything
too technical, but I'm not stupid either, so if there is a little background
in the chemestry needed to explain things, that't fine too.

So, suggestions for the best books?

Thanks,
Gary

Here are the arguments against the hydrogen economy:

If they're listed below, they're bogus arguments.


        1. Terrestral hydrogen is ONLY an energy
            carrier or transfer media and NOT a
            substance capable of delivering net NEW
            BTU's to the on-the-books economy.

By this accounting natural gas coal and oil are energy sinks since
they too are energy carriers made by ancient biomass that no longer
exists and cannot be replaced once burned. That is, every BTU of
energy released by burning coal, natural gas and oil irretrievably
diminishes the fixed supplies of the stuff made by ancient sunlight.
So, by this accounting hydrogen made from water and sunlight by solar
panels and electrolyzers is far superior than coal, crude oil, and
natural gas made from sunlight, water and carbon by ancient biomass
that no longer exists.

       2. Terrestral hydrogen creation is inefficient
            as considerably more energy of usually
            much higher quality has to be input than
            is eventually returnable.

By this standard terrestrial sources of coal oil and natural gas is
woefully inefficient and takes astronomical amounts of energy of very
high quality than is returned. Consider that to make a ton of coal
likely involved the processing of over 10,000 tons of ancient biomass
fed by sunlight water and carbon sources and further by geological
processes over millions of years to form. There is no way to
efficiently replace a ton of coal once it is burned. Not so a 140 kg
of hydrogen - which has the same heat value.

      3. No large terrestral source of hydrogen gas
          is known.

Yes there is - its called the HYDRO-sphere - aka the world's oceans -
and for each ton of recoverable carbon there are tens of thousands of
tons of recoverable hydrogen from this source.

Water, of course, is a hydrogen
         sink

This is a mischaracterization based on faulty analysis. Hydrogen is
produced today in laboratories and in fertilizer plants around the
world by a wide variety of means. Some involve electrolytic
decomposition of water to form hydrogen. Other processes involve the
shift reaction of water with carbon to form hydrogen. In all cases
the source of hydrogen is the same - water.

and, by fundamental chemical energitics,
         is the worst possible feedstock.

Another mischaracterization based on faulty analysis. Applying the
same analysis to the PRODUCTION of coal, crude oil and natural gas by
the action of sunlight on ancient biomass, produces the result that
water produced by electrolytic decomposition of water where the
electricity comes from solar wind nuclear or hydropower is VASTLY
superior to processes that no longer operate and are incapable of
replacing ANY of the coal crude oil and natural gas that's consumed.

This inability to replace coal crude oil and natural gas is the reason
for the price rises in these products over time.
These price rises are the only way the owners of a declining asset can
improve their profits.
An effcient effective alternative to crude oil natural gas and coal
puts downward pressure on rising prices.
Obviously, those who own fossil fuels would not want to see a hydrogen
economy arise until AFTER ALL the fossil fuels were sold.
Plainly, it is in the public interest to see strong competition emerge
between fossil fuels and alternatives to fossil fuels.

The world recently consumed 28.3 billion barrels of crude oil each
year, 5.5 billion tons of coal each year, and 2.2 billion tons of
natural gas each year and produced over 40 billion tons of carbon
dioxide. 98 TW of solar panels, covering 554,000 sq km of desert
lands are capable of converting 30 billion tons of water into 3.34
billion tons of hydrogen gas and 26.66 billion tons of oxygen each
year - this much hydrogen gas displaces ALL the fossil fuel use, and
ELIMINATES ALL the carbon production on the planet without reducing
the energy usage of ANYONE. At a cost of $0.07 per peak watt,
including electrolysis unit, this infrastructure can be easily built
on existing strip mines in desert regions and produce great profit
while reducing energy costs of everyone. The ultimate win-win
scenario.

      4. The CONTAINED energy density

Please define this term. I checked with ASTM Technical Handbook of
Engineering and Scientific Definitions and found it did not exist as a
real technical term. So, please clearly concisely and plainly, define
this term. Otherwise, its just bull***.

of terrestral
          hydrogen by weight is a lot LESS than gasoline.

Which is very important in aircraft and mobile applications where
hauling weight around reduces vehicle performance.

          And drops dramatically as the tank is emptied.

This is true as ALL tanks are emptied! haha.. I can't believe Don
is talking about this like its some sort of important technical
detail. Here's what he's talking about. You fill a 20 gallon gas
tank with gas. 20 gallons contains about 2.4 GJ. Right. So, you run
the tank down to 1 gallon and burn off 19. But the EMPTY tank still
COULD hold 20 gallons. So, the contained energy of the tank is still
20 gallons. So a 20 gallon gas tank only has 0.12 GJ - haha.. what
a trip. Fact is, ALL tanks as they are emptied CONTAIN less
energy. Why would you expect hydrogen tanks to shrink as you empty
them? It doesn't make sense.

          The energy density of hydrogen gas by volume
          is a ludicrous joke.

This is an emotional, not a technical logical or rational argument.
Fact is, the energy density of hydrogen is 1/3 that of gasoline. This
is true. But the weight is like 1/10th that of gasoline. SO, you
only have to carry about 1/3 of the weight around. This is a good
thing. The question here should be, is hydrogen worth the effort?
The answer is YES! Why? Because the weight of gas in a car is
something like 5%. The volume is something like 3%. The tank weight
is something like 2% of the weight of the gas, so its 0.1% the weight
of the car. In an airplane, the weight of the gas, can be as high as
47%, the volume something like 15%, the tank weight 1% of the gas
weight or 0.05% of the weight of the airplane. Okay, now switch to
LIQUID HYDROGEN okay? Now, the weight of gas in the car is 2% for the
same range and performance. The volume is something like 10% of the
total - larger but not a huge problem. The weight of the tank for car
applications is something like 20% of the fuel weight, so that's 0.4%
of the total car weight. Again, not a big problem. In an airplane
the difference is huge. Fuel weight drops to 15% of the aircraft, the
volume increases to something like 45% of the aircraft - which entails
increasing the size of the fuselage (Airbus and others have completed
studies for this and these modifications are easily accomplished) -
and the tank weight, which is 10% the weight of the hydrogen for
aircraft use - is something like 1.5% of total takeoff weight. So we
end up in cars, with slight improvements in performance or no change
in structure, slight changes in tank placement and so forth. In
aircraft we end up with MODERATE changes in fuselage dimension and
MASSIVE IMPROVEMENTS in performance. None of this suggests that the
use of hydrogen is a ludicrous joke, despite its low mass density.

     5. Virtually all bulk hydrogen is produced by methane
          reformation. And thus is EXTREMELY hydrocarbon
          dependent.

Hydrogen made to produce ammonia for fertilizers and explosives use
the shift reaction or the reverse of the Sabatier process.

C + 2 H2O --> CO2 + 2 H2 (shift reaction)

or

CH4 + 2 H2O --> CO2 + 4 H2 (inverse sabatier)

The first uses coal, the second natural gas. That's because when
Haber developed the process for making Ammonia in 1911 natural gas and
coal were the primary sources of energy for the planet. In 2008
supplies of these fuels are waning. As a result other more efficient
processes were developed. These include;

Electrolytic reduction of water

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

With electricity coming from nuclear sources, solar power sources,
wind sources, hydro-electric sources.

Thermolytic reduction of water

2 H2O + heat --> 2 H2 + O2

With heat coming from nuclear reactors, solar power sources, or waste
heat from conventional generators.


     6. Hydrogen has the widest explosive range known,

True. This means that it can burn under the same conditions as ALL
the following fuels;

Coal, natural gas, crude oil, crude oil products and
distillates.

This means that hydrogen can DIRECTLY REPLACE ALL THESE FUELS WITHOUT
ANY MAJOR CHANGE OF INFRASTRUCTURE. That is, you could burn hydrogen
in your car with slight changes. In fact, BMW, GM, Ford and others
have built hydrogen powered cars. NASA, Boeing, and others have built
hydrogen powered airplanes. Others have built hydrogen powered boats
- all very similar to todays fossil fuel versions - to demonstrate the
ease with which these engines can be made to use hydrogen.

         the least spark energy required for ignition,

Not clear what is meant by 'the least spark' But to the extent Don is
suggesting hydrogen is an explosive, he's wrong. Besides, its not
true that Hydrogen + spark will not ignite hydrogen. Not true at
all. Fact is, Hydrogen + spark + oxygen - MIGHT ignite hydrogen if it
is mixed in the appropriate range to support ignition and the spark
energy is sufficient. The spark energy to ignite hydrogen is
sometimes less sometimes more than the spark energy for other fuels,
depending on the fuel and the mix of oxygen and fuel and pressures and
so forth - but generally hydrogen has the same spark energy range as
any other fuel.

and
         has no known colorants or odorants.

That's not true. In fact I posted on three separate occasions to
Don's rants detailed peer reviewed articles that reported on a number
of odorants and colorants that were used with hydrogen. The fact
that he has quality information that is nearly 10 years old now, that
describes in detail the efficacy of colorants and odorants used with
hydrogen fuel, and he still repeats this falsehood, says a lot about
Don's LACK of commitment to truth and accuracy. Shame on you Don for
repeating this lie. It may have been true once, but as of 1998, it
wasn't true.

Its flame is
         often invisible or nearly so.

Depends on the details. The same can be said for a number of fuels,
such as certain alcohols. So what? That doesn't stop alcohol from
being used as a fuel, and it doesn't stop hydrogen either.

     7. There is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline
          than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.

The point of this statement is a mystery to me because it has nothing
to do with hydrogen as a fuel. There' s more hydrogen in a gallon of
water than in a gallon of gasoline. Yet there is NO useable energy
gained from a gallon of water.

There are 264.17 US gallons in a cubic meter. The density of liquid
hydrogen is 70 kg per cubic meter. The density of gasoline is 680 kg
per cubic meter. The density of water is 1,000 kg per cubic meter.

Liquid hydrogen is 100% hydrogen by weight.
So, there's 70 kg of hydrogen per cubic meter of hydrogen,

Gasoline is 15% hydrogen by weight.
So, there's 680x0.15 = 102 kg of hydrogen per cubic meter of
gasoline,

Water is 11% hydrogen by weight
So, there's 1,000 kg x 0.11 = 110 kg of hydrogen per cubic meter of
water

What does this have to do with hydrogen as a fuel? Nothing!
What's important is the energy contained in each fuel and its cost and
availability.

Hydrogen contains 143 GJ per metric ton, and is easily made from water
by a variety of processes, can burn under all conditions other fuels
burn, and produce no carbon emissions when burned.

Gasoline contains 46.9 GJ per metric ton, every drop is irreplaceable,
burns under more limited conditions than hydrogen, and produces
massive quantities of carbon dioxide sufficient to change climate.

Water contains 0.0 GJ per metric ton. there is tens of thousands of
times as much water as gasoline, and water is a byproduct of burning
hydrogen as well as a source of hydrogen.

      8. No effective vehicle compatible means of hydrogen
          storage is known that is remotely as cheap, safe,
          dense, and convenient as carbon bonded hydrides.

This is true as far as it goes. This is a mischaracterization however
if after reading this you believe that hydrogen can't compete with
gasoline and its distillates. That's because the size, weight and
cost of the fuel tanks in a vehicle drive train are very small parts
of the total cost of that drive train!! As mentioned above, hydrogen
vehicles have been built and operated and there appears to be no show
stoppers to making massive use of hydrogen once adequate supplies are
made available by investing in the needed technology to make those
supplies from abundant water and sunlight.

      9. No infrastructure exists for gaseous hydrogen
          distribution.

Hydrogen distribution systems have been in use since 1911. In Canada
and Europe, since the 1950s saw large pipelines built by the chemical
supply and fertilizer industries which allow cheap effective
transmission of hydrogen gas across continents. In 2006, after much
delay, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) completed
their standards for hydrogen infrastructure. It is now possible to
specify to any qualified supplier any component needed to store and
distribute hydrogen on any scale needed.

Pipelines in particular raise major
          density and embrittlement issues.

When Haber built his first hydrogen production system in 1911 to make
fertilizer, he noted that hydrogen caused embrittlement in certain
types of steel. He ranked this in importance as LESS troubling than
other challenges pipelines have, such as corrosion. In 1958 when NASA
was building its infrastructure to supply hydrogen fuel to its deep
space rockets and moon rockets, embrittlement was noted as a
contributing factor to its high cost relative to liquid oxygen.
Despite over a decade of use of this infrastructure, no failures,
accidents, or troubles were found in its operations despite sending
tens of thousands of tons of hydrogen off world. As mentioned above,
in 2006 ASME completed standards for the hydrogen economy. These
techniques created in the 21st century produce systems that are vastly
more reliable, cost effective, trouble free, and safe, than the
ancient methods of handling and transporting fossil fuels developed in
the 19th century. That is why today despite nearly a decade of
industrial use, you have never seen a pipeline accident, or shipping
accident with hydrogen yet these accidents routinely occur in the
shipping and handling of fossil fuels.

      10. Electrolysis from high value sources such as
           grid, wind, or pv is totally useless as a hydrogen
           source because of the staggering loss of exergy.

Exergy is not defined in ASTM handbook of technical and scientific
terms. Please clearly and concisely, with a formula, define what you
mean by exergy? Give me a clear cogent example of its use and why
its relevant?

Barring that, Don seems to be saying that electricity is more valuable
than hydrogen. That depends on the details. For example, certain
types of generation capacity produce when there isn't demand to accept
it. A hydro-electric dam that has a lot of water behind it from a
rain fall - needs to be emptied in the dead of night when there isn't
any demand for electricity. A nuclear power plant that can't easily
change its output, and doesn't change its cost hardly at all with
changing output, produces more electricity than is needed in the dead
of night. A wind generator is producing lots of electricity when the
wind is blowing, but the capacity isn't needed right now. A solar
generator is producing lots more electricity in the day than the grid
needs.

ALL these examples involve WASTING energy, dumping water over a dam
without generation, grounding the output of a nuclear plant to balance
the grid, taking the solar panels or wind generators off grid, or
alternatively, grounding out other generation that cannot be easily
cut back... ALL these would BENEFIT from STORING the energy
somehow. That is, this electricity isn't the same as highly valued
electricity. So, this electricity is conveniently used to convert
water into hydrogen and oxygen.

           There ALWAYS will be more intelligent things
           to do with the electricity.

Depends on the details. The owners of the hydro-electric dams, on
both sides of the border, have excess capacity at night. That's why
they have been seriously contemplating the production of hydrogen gas
from water, and the shipment of liquid hydrogen from the site to sites
in Europe.

     11. Improper burning of hydrogen produces highly
           polluting nitrous oxides.

Imrpoper burning of ANY fuel produces highly polluting nitrous
oxides. Don again is stating something that is true, but in a way
that mischaracterizes reality, if you come away thinking that hydrogen
properly burned, produces MORE nitrous oxides than other fuels. In
fact it does not. While it is true that its very easy for hydrogen to
burn hotter than other fuels, and thus produce nitrous oxides, its
also true that hydrogen being far simpler and more explosive than
other fuels, when properly burned in an appropriately designed burner,
produces LESS nitrous oxides than other fuels produce. Airbus and
others that explored the changes one could make in burner design of
jet engines needed to support a hydrogen fueled airliner, found that
when they tested hydrogen in modified engines on the bench in 1998,
they produced 1/40th of the nitrous oxides that today's jet engines
produce.

    12. Terrestrial hydrogen is basically a POLLUTION
          AMPLIFIER that INCREASES the pollution of
          its underlying sources.

Generally speaking this is not true. Even if we use hydrogen made by
the dirtiest process known, the carbon shift reaction, where 11 tons
of CO2 is produced by each 3 tons of carbon and 9 tons of water to
produce 1 ton of hydrogen - sequestration of the carbon dioxide at the
point of production is particularly easy to achieve.

When one considers sources of hydrogen where there is no pollution
whatever in the underlying source - say the hydroelectric dams of the
Niagra river - NO pollution is produced whatever. zero times any
number is still zero.

It is utterly ludicrous to
          claim that hydrogen is in any manner, way,
          shape, or form "nonpolluting".

Not true. Hydrogen is the least polluting of all fuels we can
imagine. When burned properly it produces less NOx than produced by
properly burned fossil fuels. When burned it produces NO carbon
emissions whatever. When produced from carbon sources that sequester
the carbon emissions, or when produced from electrical sources that
HAVE ZERO carbon emissions, the production of hydrogen is
nonpolluting. The burning of hydrogen produces water, which can
again be used to store energy - which is the basis of regenerative
systems, now being flown on solar powered aircraft, and automobiles.
The burning of fossil fuels reduces the amounts of irreplacable
hydrocarbons that are better used to make plastics and other high
value goods.

    13. Hydrogen rots most metals through embrittlement.

Rot is a non technical high pejorative term. It is true that certain
metals cannot be used with hydrogen. Just as certain materials cannot
be used with crude oil distillates. The ASME specifications for a
hyrogen economy detail cost effective, reliable, safe, and easy to
use, procedures to store, transmit and use hydrogen on an industrial
scale that exceed the standards of safety and reliability of anything
achieved in the fossil fuel industry. For example, gaseous hydrogen
tanks built to spec last over 60 years. No other tank as reliably and
safely fulfills its role as hydrogen tanks do.

    14. "Carbon Neutral" solutions would appear better
          than "Carbon Free" because

Please explain Carbon Neutral? The dirty little secret of the carbon
neutral movement is that it does very little to actually change our
carbon impact, while giving major coal natural gas and oil industries
a fig leaf of cover to continue polluting the planet. I saw an ad on
the side of a bus in Australia the other day from BP. It said that
this bus was carbon neutral. Why? Because natural gas the bus burns
produces SLIGHTLY LESS carbon than gasoline or diesel fuel. And no
particulates. This slight advantage per unit energy allowed BP
through fancy accounting to say that about 10% of the buses that
burned natural gas were 'carbon free' because 10% less carbon was
emitted. They avoided the fact that 90% of the carbon was emitted
before as after - and this may be an over-estimate. Because talking
to the bus drivers, natural gas powered buses underperform compared to
their gasoline cousins - and so, in operation, they may take more than
10% of the time to climb a hill, or navigate a difficult terrain - and
their actual emissions may not be less at all.

Bottom line, a highly theoretical calculation of carbon savings is
spun in a way to suggest that ALL the buses are carbon neutral - when
in fact, only a small fraction - if any - are.

(A) A significant
          measure of the energy of most fuels is in its carbon
          fraction,

Most fossil fuels sure. In hydrogen there is NO carbon - which is the
point.

(B) Carbon appears to be essential for
          convenient and safe room temperature liquids,
          and

Gasoline and jet fuel are room temperature liquids. They are not
particularly safe, as owners of the Ford Pinto, or passengers on TWA
800 found out. Gasoline is not particularly convenient, given the
number of cancer and lukemias caused by the fumes, the number of
deaths and disfigurements due to fires and inhalation, and the amount
of environmental damage leaky tanks and spillage cause to ground and
water.

(C) Reformation is not required or else
          is simpler, cheaper, and wastes less energy.

Not clear if Don is talking about chemical reformation of methane or
reformation of our energy system to use hydrogen. In any case, the
market will adopt a more efficient solution if the restrictive
regulations that prop up the oil coal and gas industries are removed
to allow alternative energy companies play on an even playing field.
For example, regulate liquid and gas emissions from oil and gas wells
and coal mines, the same way they're regulated from your tail pipe.

The market would freely adopt the better solution.

CHeck it out. The world spent $4 trillion last year to buy 28.3
billion barrels of crude oil and distillates, 5.5 billion tons of
coal, and 2.2 billion tons of natural gas. These were burned and
produced over 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide. ALL this fuel could
be replaced with 3.34 billion tons of hydrogen made from 30 billion
tons of water using 98 TW of solar panels covering 554,000 sq miles at
desert strip mine sites at a cost of $800 per ton - which totals $2.67
trillion dollars per year - a substantial savings over existing
systems

      15. An optimal hydrogen storage solution exists by
           carbon bonding as in heptane or iso-octane.

So? This actually reduces the energy in hyrogen. As you pointed out
above, MOST of the energy comes from carbon in these materials. These
materials when they occur naturally, are the result of sunlight being
captured by ancient biomass which is then processed geologically and
discovered by those looking for them underground. That means these
materials are IRREPLACEABLE. BURNING them increases their demand and
value to their owner, but it ELIMINATES them from ALL FUTURE USE.
This is a HUGE WASTE OF RESOURCES to satisfy the greed of the present
day owners. The use of fossil fuels should be restricted to use in
plastics, carbon composites and similar uses. Hydrogen should be
adopted whenever possible.

Both
           of these room temperature liquids ain't broke.

Residual oil, used in certain power plants, must be heated to be
pumped through the system. Jet fuel sitting in fighter jet tanks and
airliner tanks in polar regions, like Anchorage Alaska, must be pre-
heated to opereate in the jets. Since when is room temperature
operation a requirement? What is the rationale? Fact is, there is
non. Gaseous hydrogen tanks operate at room temperature. Liquid
hydrogen tanks do not. So what? What matters is the safety
reliability cost and ease of use of the fuel. Hydrogen is adequate on
all these counts, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with hydrogen.
Hydrogen ain't broke either.

On the other hand, coal, natural gas, and crude oil, have value beyond
their heat value. They are very limited when compared to the
availability of water and sunlight. If you burned all the oil coal
and natural gas recoverable in the world today in a big bonfire, you
would equal the amount of energy falling on the Earth for 1/5th of a
second. About the time it takes you to blink. There is no known
process to recreate coal, oil or natural gas as cheaply and
conveniently as it can be produced from known reserves. Hydrogen gas
made from low cost solar panels and water, competes head to head price
wise and in every other way against these other fuels. The value of
these carbon materials to future generations in inestimable. Today we
know how to make plastics, fertilizers, explosives, carbon fibers,
nanotubes, with these carbon sources. In the future, we will know
more than we do today. The value of these materials will be higher in
the future than they are today. These on a weight or volume basis are
dozens to millions of times more valuable than their use as a fuel.
It is obviously massively wasteful to burn something that is
irreplaceable as a fuel, when it can have more value in the future as
a constructive material. We are robbing future generations of these
valued irreplacable substances whenever we burn a tank of gas or a ton
of coal. Furthermore, we are CAUSING massive climate change and
hurting future generations that way. Fossil fuels ARE broke, and have
been broke for a long time. Hydrogen ain't broke, and all the
elements are coming together for a massive shift in the way people use
energy - moving away from the things that are broke, and toward the
things that are not.

--
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

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Don, we have had this conversation before. You have not usefully
responded to anything I have pointed out here. You have not even
acknowledged well known facts that put the lie to many of your
statements. You are certainly not a dumb or foolish person. But,
increasingly it appears, you are a dishonest one. That's too bad.

But you can change this. Acknowledge that ASME has indeed adopted
standards that allow the production, storage and transmission of
hydrogen on an industrial scale that are far safer, more reliable and
easier to use than any comparable system used by the petroleum and
natural gas or coal industries. Acknowledge that nearly all of your
points are red herrings that have little or nothing to do with
practical efficient systems. Then, maybe you can restore a little of
the trust you have lost with this massively dishonest post above.

.