Crunching the Numbers on a Hydrogen Economy 396
mattnyc99 writes "In its new cover story, 'The Truth About Hydrogen,' Popular Mechanics magazine takes a close look at how close the United States is to powering its homes, cars and economy with hydrogen — including a calculation of where all the hydrogen would come from to meet President Bush's demands. Interesting that they break down the future of hydropower not by its advantages but by its challenges: production, storage, distribution and use."
Hydro... power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, looks like the submitter just has no idea what it means. Only reference to that in the article is an link to another article that does indeed talk about water power.
As far as 'where to get it'... I've always wondered where they thought they'd get unlimited amounts of any limited resource. We can't destroy the oceans for it, and we can't scoop it out of the sun. (At least, I think we can't.) The article talks about nuclear and fossil fuels... That's the problem we already have... How is this a solution?
We're going to have to sit down and decide to be responsible about the environment some day. We can't keep putting it off forever.
Re:A wise man once said.. (Score:3, Insightful)
easier to make a bomb with Diesel then hydrogen
Re:Electricity + Water (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
It is this type of closed mind thinking that prevents innovation. When Brazil started the initiative for a total E85 fuel infrastructure if people listened to people like Joseph Romm saying "Whats the point, we have a plentiful cheap resource already, gas!" they wouldn't be declaring energy independance today. What's the point? Isn't it obvious?
*sigh* (Score:1, Insightful)
Please also note that because of the staggering loss of exergy, use of [tinaja.com]
electrolysis for bulk hydrogen apps is a really, really dumb thing to do.
It is the equivalent of exchanging two US dollars for one Mexican peso.
"Hydrogen power will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas admissions"
- Speaking on the topic of energy independence, Washington D.C., February 6, 2003 Or how about the mere announcement of spending "In 2003, President George Bush announced an $1.7bn investment to turn the US into the world leaders of hydrogen-powered automobiles."
Now....who ya gonna believe....Don Lancaster (who has more geek cred than most
Hydrogen Not A Fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is hydrogen not a fuel? I always thought fuel was a substance that when it goes through a chemical reaction releases energy. While many fuels are burned, the process of generating energy in a fuel cell is still a chemical reaction.
Secondly, aren't there other fuels that have to be made before we can use them? Gasoline and diesel have to be refined -- it's not like we find them naturally in the ground.
So hydrogen is just a way of "storing and transporting energy". I thought the use of fuels was a way to "store and transport energy".
Re:Hydrogen Not A Fuel? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's done for us over millions of years by mother nature.
With hydrogen, you're creating the fuel, the actual energy stored in chemical bonds.
Re:Electricity + Water (Score:3, Insightful)
There aer many strategies - I guess that I just picked one that doesn't put a bunch of hydrogen in one spot. I was located in an area affected by the blackout of 2003 so putting all of the eggs in one basket just never seems like a good idea to me anymore.
I suppose it would be a good idea to build a power plant on an empty natural gas formation and store all of the generated hydrogen in there. It would certainly help meet the needs during the day and do so with a smaller footprint of a conventional power plant.
The myth of peak oil (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen this prediction-of-doom vary from 10 years to 50 years.... projected at various points over the last 30 years. Chances are, you'll be able to see some headline in 2070: "Oil Running Out in 20 Years!!!"
Re:What about Iceland? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A wise man once said.. (Score:2, Insightful)
dumb enough not to know the difference between the average and the median?
Smart enough to not post as Anonymous Coward? From dictionary.com:
Average - typical; common; ordinary: The average secretary couldn't handle such a workload. His grades were nothing special, only average.
Seems to me that "average" is correct. If this crap got 5 points for being "funny" although wrong, I should get 5 points for being right.
EEstor or advanced flywheels seem better. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't a better battery be a much better solution. We already have the distribution network(electric grid). EEStor ultra capacitors seem to be that better battery if they deliver on promises, but there are also advanced flywheels (composite wheels in a vacuum, superconducting magnetic bearings, turning neark 100k rpm). These can be charged or discharge quickly and should last the life of the vehicle.
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/1
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.
Fuel cells don't solve any energy creation issues and as a deliver mechanism, it doesn't seem so hot, I would much prefer to stick with mechanisms we aleady have like the electric grid.
Re:Hydro... power? (Score:2, Insightful)
By which I mean, we wouldn't possibly be able to destroy the oceans via electrolysis in order to obtain hydrogen, even if wanted to. I don't think we'd be able to get enough energy - the ocean(s) is(are) just too big. If you thought your rich uncle's new swimming pool was big, think again - the ocean is heaps bigger. And in addition to the energy requirements of the electrolysis, we'd need somewhere to store all the hydrogen we'd have created long before there was a detectable change in the ocean. Not to mention all the oxygen we'd either have to store or release to the atmosphere (which would probably cause bushfires to run rampant through all the world's forests).
But I forget my own main point, which was meant to be that
Using water as a source of hydrogen for the purpose of using the hydrogen as a fuel does not "use up" water, at least not in the long term. Eventually the hydrogen and oxygen will be recombined to release energy, which also creates water (exactly as much as was used in the first place). So once we have siphoned off a (tiny) buffer of water that we can continually split and recombine, we won't need the ocean's water anyway. And any water accidentally or intentiaonally released to the atmosphere will end up precipitating out (probably). The one exception here is that hydrogen gas, being so light, tends to float up to the edge of the atmosphere where it can escape the Earth's gravity and fly off into space. But this would only be significant if we enefficiently leak hydrogen into the air wherever we handle it, and for some reason I reckon we can work out ways for that to NOT happen.
And that is a bad idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A wise man once said.. (Score:3, Insightful)
median
noun
3. Arithmetic, Statistics. the middle number in a given sequence of numbers, taken as the average of the two middle numbers when the sequence has an even number of numbers: 4 is the median of 1, 3, 4, 8, 9.
average:
3. Statistics. see arithmetic mean.
arithmetic mean
Statistics. the mean obtained by adding several quantities together and dividing the sum by the number of quantities: the arithmetic mean of 1, 5, 2, and 8 is 4.
(Also called average)
Since the OP is attempting to be humorous with the mathematical usage of the word average, it would be nice if it was at least correct. it was not. Unless you could demonstrate that in a large enough population the mean and median approach the same value, then it would be correct.
You should get 5 points for being right WHEN you are right. But you aren't. so can it.
Re:A wise man once said.. (Score:1, Insightful)
From wiki article:
the average in ordinary English, which is also called the arithmetic mean (and is distinguished from the geometric mean or harmonic mean). The average is also called sample mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean [wikipedia.org]
Climatology is full of scientific uncertainties (Score:5, Insightful)
Climatology is full of uncertainties, and the general agreement among scientists goes only so far. The most important area of agreement is that CO2 operates as a greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution within the overall system is commonly misrepresented.
CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, by a long chalk. Water vapour is the primary greenhouse gas on Earth, directly responsible for 95% of the global warming that keeps the planet from freezing solid to a dreadful -19 C or so. Global warming is essential.
Climate modellers who want to highlight CO2 choose not to make that known to the man in the street, and the way they treat water vapour as a "feedback" in the GCM models instead of as a key mechanism of "forcing" tends to brush the importance of water vapour under the carpet. It's a somewhat questionable scientific approach because pure feedbacks should really be invariant linear amplifiers and not highly variant in their own right (as is water vapour), but what's worse is that this creates a hugely inaccurate public perception.
The simple fact is that we live on an ice, water, and water-vapour covered globe moving in a somewhat complex way around a somewhat variant Sun, and that is the PRIMARY driver of climate, with water as its main agent of heat distribution and with just enough natural global warming to make it liveable, in between ice ages. CO2? Yes, it's relevant and it does have an effect, but it's not even close to being a primary player, and reducing our CO2 emissions will not have a significant effect in anybody's realistic scenario.
And that's not under dispute by any scientist --- they know the maximum extent of possible direct warming per ppm of CO2, and they also know the maximim warming amplified through water vapour feedback in a cloudless atmosphere. But they're not even close to understanding well the magnitude of interactions in the upper atmosphere nor being able to model cloud formation well enough to determine what the real effect of 2X or 3X CO2 would be. To claim that anything in that area of climate forecasting is "established without doubt" is a total distortion of the truth.
What's more, the natural variation in temperature across glaciation cycles totally swamps the changes calculated by any existing climate model, which just shows how we know very little in the larger context. We're right at the "natural" end of the current 18,000-year inter-glacial period, so expect a massive drop in temperature any century now. Can the GCMs predict that? Of course not.
The uncertainties in this area are LARGE. They will be worked out. In the meantime, only non-scientists claim clearcut knowledge.
Re:Hydrogen Not A Fuel? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where are the electricity mines/farms?
Electric current is the result of work being done. Unless you push 'em electrons are prone to just sit there minding their own business, like getting annoyed at being anthropomorphised.
It's the Sun that makes the world go around.
KFG
Re:Hydrogen transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
The posting that you are responding to claims that we shouldn't generate the hyrdrogen at the source of the energy production, but rather convert it to electricity and then use the electricity to generate hydrogen at the gas station, or whatever. I'd beg to differ on that point myself, but that's hardly an argument against a viable hydrogen economy!
|>oug
Electricity -- Not Hydrogen (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
There was no butyl rubber involved, but other than that, you have picked up on the revisionist Incendiary Paint Theory. It is voodoo science, nonsense on the face of it, and has been completely discredited through logic, investigation, and experiment; see Definitive rebuttal and many good links [colorado.edu]. The best minds in the field of airship history hashed this out in extreme detail, going over and over every angle. I know because I was involved in some of the debates.
Incendiary Paint Theory proponents who completely reject evidence and experimental findings are never able to explain away the DOZENS of other hydrogen filled airships which were lost through catastrophic hydrogen fires. None of them were doped with the Magic Incendiary Potion.
Re:Electricity + Water (Score:3, Insightful)
If you used BioDiesel as a fuel you wouldn't have to rely on the technology curve.
It's over 100 years old, proven, affordable, reliable, and can be ported from homes to cars with a MUCH higher factor of safety than hydrogen gas.
It's already has a distribution system infrastructure.
You can create BioDiesel from a wide range of plants that grow in all but one or two agricultural zones.