Ubiquitous Hydrogen Power Not Getting Any Closer 267
NewScientist has a story about the "hydrogen economy" that has been resting on the horizon for a decade or more. Despite a great deal of enthusiasm for and research into hydrogen-based power systems, the technology seems just as far away from everyday use as it's always been. A British startup, ITM Power, has recently claimed a breakthrough in lowering production costs by using a nickel catalyst (rather than platinum) with a membrane small enough for home use. But, even if their method is proven and adopted, it still wouldn't address huge energy efficiency problems in the process. "The point was made forcefully by Gary Kendall of the conservation group WWF in a recent report called Plugged In (PDF, pgs. 135-149). Kendall, a chemist who previously spent almost a decade working for ExxonMobil, highlights how the energy losses in the fuel chain - from electrolysis to compression of the hydrogen for use to inefficiencies in the fuel cell itself — mean that only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the fuel does any useful work on the road."
Nobody's interested (Score:2, Insightful)
Now oil prices are falling, bobody's interested. Till the next time.
Re:Nobody's interested (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats actually Wrong... I'm not a green freak (as can be attested by a number of my posts and the truth that real environmentalists commit suicide to lessen their impact on the planet...) BUT: I'd love a hydrogen vehicle... I don't care about the carbon being released by burning hydrocarbon fuels, etc... (Heck problaby more Carbondioxide released by brewing and drinking of beer...) I think we need a way to be free of the grasp of forign powers (some not so friendly) on our infastructure. My alternative to Hydrogen vehicles would be CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and even the CNG has home filling units available now. and CNG is something we have plenty of HERE at home (if you're a Non-USA Reader... Pardon the egocentricity of my post.)
Wind and Solar are ok ideas, but they can't be put into my tank...
So I put forward that for national security and protection of our transportation infastructure, that we need to CONTINUE to look for Hydrogen and/or CNG solutions for our transportation needs.
I've told my representative the same, but she replied back with a form letter about how solar is the future, etc... etc.. etc.. Even a solar panel on the roof of my car would probably just run the radio and airconditioning fans...
Just my .02 worth...
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Sure you might still need to suck some energy off the grid to create enough hydrogen, but even if the grid is burning fossil fuels to provide energy, it's doing it a HELL of a lot more efficiently than a car does.
The key is to get everyone producing as much as they can at home, and
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Batteries can already store electricity at 90% efficiency.
Electricity -> Battery -> Electricity = 90%
Electricity Hydrogen electrolysis is not very efficient, using fuel cells to create electricity is not very efficient:
Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Electricity = 40%
Hydrogen will only work as a fuel storage mechanism if you have an abundance of very cheap electricity(nearly free).
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Which is why we need to start building nuclear plants like its nobody's business. Aside from fast integral reactors available with current technology which greatly reduce waste, Dr. Bussard was supposedly on the brink of energy positive fusion reactions before his unfortunate death.
If we upgrade our power grid for more efficient transmission between different areas, built enough nuclear plants so we've got more electricity than we know what to do with, it won't matter as much that our storage mechanism isn
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I'd say it's debatable if Hydrogen is worth it. Although, I'd be curious about manufacturing methane from CO2 and hydrogen and comparing the efficiency then.
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Detroit makes more money off of the larger vehicles, which Japan does not sell, and so of course they sell more of them. Japan doesn't make good pickups, Detroit does, people and businesses buy pickups from Detroit instead of Japan.
You're trying to blame Detroit for catering to what people
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Japan doesn't make good pickups, Detroit does, people and businesses buy pickups from Detroit instead of Japan.
The Toyota Hilux [wikipedia.org] refutes that statement. Having near-legendary reliability (check out BBC Top Gear's attmept to destroy one Part 1 [youtube.com], Part 2 [youtube.com], and Part 3 [youtube.com]). This reliability manifests itself in the popularity of the Hilux (or whatever it's called in the States these days) throughout the developing world. From the Horn of Africa over to Central Asia, they are used as general purpose pickups, and in some local wars as technicals [slashdot.org].
On a personal note (and yes 1 anecdote != data), when my father was in Yugoslavia
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As the Hilux name was dropped in the US in 1976, any details listed here purporting to relate to the Hilux from that date may not be entirely correct when applied to the vehicle that continues to be marketed by Toyota as the Hilux throughout the rest of the world.
The product lines for the US and elsewhere diverged at that point and in many cases on a year for year basis the vehicles sold in the US only resemble the Hilux, with major mechanical/chassis differences.
This article is about the pickup sold in North America until 1994, and other markets as of today. For the 1995-present small pickup sold in North America, see Tacoma.
It appears to me that they don't sell the one you are referencing in the US. Even the Honda dealer I go to has a GM pickup truck. Looking at the US Honda Website [honda.com], it isn't even listed. A 'Ridgeline' is. Also, in case you want to say anything about non-US vehicles, we have been talking about the US vehicle market, not the overseas market.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plug-in_hybrid_electric_vehicles#2008 [wikipedia.org]
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actually as things go within 5 years it should be possible for even northern latitude homes to produce enough energy to cover 60% of there yearly energy use. Currently in active development between solar and vertical turbine wind generators the ability for roughly 10,000 watts to be generated at the average home. Now all wee need is a method of storage other than batteries, and a convertor that will allow the excess to dump back out onto the grid.(for when your not home anyways)
cutting down the need for h
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Flamebait? Who moderated this as Flamebait?
CNG is worth thinking about. South Korea has been pushing CNG (and natural gas, in general) for vehicles.
The politics implied by his post are worth thinking about. Paying a premium (even a 75% premium) may be better than sending our money out of the country for oil. Compare hydrogen's inefficiency to paying money to other countries, then using energy to transport the oil we buy.
And yes, some of that money we pay definitely does get spent on bullets on our tradi
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I've told my representative the same, but she replied back with a form letter about how solar is the future, etc... etc.. etc.. Even a solar panel on the roof of my car would probably just run the radio and airconditioning fans...
Given current solar panel efficiencies, a roof panel won't even run your AC, it might be able to run your radio, assuming you don't have some crazy one, and keep the volume down.
I've looked at the sizes of solar panels, with the intent to maybe get one to keep my battery on a float charge.
It should be noted that the solar car competitions in australia are done with NASA grade panels that are twice as efficient as the normal 'best' - but ~100X the cost. They're still essentially ultralight sleds and average
And ppl like you are the real problem (Score:2)
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to have an alternative - a real, no compromise one - for fuelling my activities without destroying the planet. Really.
But we ain't there yet. Not just because nothing - repeat nothing - comes remotely close to matching the energy density AND cost of fossil fuels. (And this after we've shipped the fuel halfway round the world).
No, the main problem is infrastucture. Be it public charging sockets for your Tesla or Chevy Volt, or H being available at your local gas (sic) station.
The only organisations with enough power - and money - to enable the promising technologies of the future to flourish is central Gov. As usual, they're doing nothing.
So how about it Pres Obama - ditch no-future subsidies for ethanol & Detroit, and use them to build nuclear powerstations (no CO2) and a nationwide H and elec infrastruture. Now that would be change I can believe in.
Re:Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I'm reading into this wrong, you're missing something...
For Obama's plan for the US to be the leader in alternative fuels we're going to need Detroit. He needs an auto industry that he can lay hands on and manipulate. Otherwise he's going to be relying on the goodwill of other auto makers to meet him half way to his goal and that's probably still going to involve subsidies. If these subsidies are going to exist either way I'd much rather have them here than abroad. By using resources in the US he will have some say and legislation will give him a hand to work with these assets.
We need to draw a line between the oil industry and the auto industry. As long as we treat them as the same we're never going to rise above the muck that keeps alternative fuels beached. It's a hard pill to swallow but it's still there regardless of our outlook on all of it.
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We need to draw a line between the oil industry and the auto industry. As long as we treat them as the same we're never going to rise above the muck that keeps alternative fuels beached.
Actually, we need to MAKE a line between the oil and auto industries. Do you honestly believe that one could exist without the support of the other in their present situations? And the subsidies? Do you reward your kids for making F's in school? They shouldn't receive subsidies, they should be PURCHASED and new management installed. Old management should be blacklisted. (Yes, blacklisting does happen).
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We're not building nuclear power stations for one simple reason: We don't know what to do with the waste byproduct yet. There are very few places on this planet that we can store it, and even then there's doubts. While I'm fairly certain that future generations will solve the problem of how to make it safe, that logic has not worked well for us in the past (hence the cause of any number of current social issues) so I will certainly respect if someone disagrees with my position here.
If you're that worried ab
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This compressed into blocks and placing at the bottom of the ocean sounds interesting. Do you have any links to share?
How do you compress it into blocks? Are we talking about making dry ice, here?
What keeps it in block form, down there? Is the pressure so great that it stays as dry ice? Or do you really mean increase the ocean's CO2 levels throughout?
And the $16 trillion -- I'm asking, not attacking, I really want to know -- is that a replacement cost, or is that primarily realestate for gas stations wh
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It is feasible, however it's more economical to chemically bind the CO2 to something solid at room temperature, brick it, then throw it in a landfill, which is what they're doing now at some newer coal burning plants.
Do you happen to have a source on this? I'm unaware of any major coal plants that are performing sequestration at this time.
Anyways - the problem with this method is 'what do you use to absorb the CO2?', the production of most substances that do this involve the release of CO2. Things not being perfect, that doesn't generally work out.
Mining and such are also generally CO2 intense activities.
I don't mind being green - but I get a bit irked at some of the stupidity - many 'green' initiatives aren't so gree
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We're not building nuclear power stations for one simple reason: We don't know what to do with the waste byproduct yet. There are very few places on this planet that we can store it, and even then there's doubts.
France seems to have a good handle on it. They generate almost 80% of their power from nuclear and reprocess the waste.
Re:Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. (Score:5, Informative)
I assume you're rejecting the solution presently used by the fossil fuel industry, which is just to dump it directly into the environment at the point of generation, right?
'cause if that's on the table, well, problem solved.
But if you, quite reasonably, reject this solution then it shouldn't be permissible for the fossil fuel industry either. So comparing apples to apples we see that nuclear power is much better off.
--MarkusQ
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The volume (and mass) of waste per kilowatt hour of power is orders of magnitude lower for nuclear than for fossil fuels.
Yes, but nobody's going to die from inhaling an equivalent mass of CO2 versus, say, a radioactive isotope of cesium. And if somebody releases a thousand pounds of CO2 over a populated city, I doubt anyone would notice... A thousand pounds of any radioactive compound and you're talking major ecological disaster. (and yes, everything is radioactive, for those in the peanut gallery... you know what we're talking about here though)
The bulk of nuclear wastes can be cost effectively reprocessed to make more fuel,
The bulk of nuclear fuel can only be reprocessed if and only if the plant was des
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Nobody's going to die from inhalation of CO2, but many people are going to die from hunger, draughts, hurricaines once the climate changes due to high levels of CO2.
Also, you DON'T need breeder reactors to reprocess fuel. Your current nuclear waste can be reprocessed just fine.
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And why exactly are you comparing two, outdated technologies when you really should be comparing them to solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, hydro, tidal and geothermal?
It's because rusted on nuclear proponents are still living in the 70's and honestly believing that nuclear is so good compared to coal, but they can never win the debate against renewables.
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Look at Germany and France. Germany tries to build renewable energy infrastructure.
France has already built essentially all-nuclear electrical grid.
Currently price of electricity is 2.5x lower in France than in Germany.
So stop comparing your outdated brain-dead USA nuclear industry and real efficient country-wide solution.
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You need to do some reading on fast breeder reactors. The waste problem was solved years ago - the issue now is one of political will. Your nuclear knowledge sounds like the "common wisdom" sort of thing, not something based on fact.
The only scheme I've ever heard of for storing CO2 in the ocean is to pump it beneath the ocean floor. There is not enough pressure to keep it in a solid state. Instead, it becomes a liquid:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5255444.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Can you point to evidence that shows
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We're not building nuclear power stations for one simple reason: We don't know what to do with the waste byproduct yet.
Arguably speaking, the nuclear waste is a whole heck of a lot easier because we're talking about a dozen or so orders magnitude less of it vs the amount of CO2 we produce any given year. Of course, I'm one of the ones that believes the problem is mostly political - the stuff remaining after reprocessing or running it through a breeder reactor lasts a lot less time. France has been reprocessing for years. And no, I don't buy any proliferation concerns - if anything all that waste sitting around increases
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Ethanol works just fine when done right. Problem being, due to sugar tariffs, corn subsidies, Detroit not making effective engines, etc. it is pretty much deliberately being done wrong.
Doing it properly requires 2 things;
1. A proper feedstock. Corn sucks for this, period. Sugar cane or sugar beets are far, far better and can be grown domestically just fine.
2. Proper engines. Current flex-fuel vehicles pretty much just replace fuel line components with stainless steel (high concentrations of ethanol will
Re:Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. (Score:2)
It would take a number of decades and great expense to develop and deploy a national hydrogen infrastructure. For the same amount of money and in considerably less time we can promote more efficient building codes and other energy-efficiency initiatives, carbon capture and sequestration, non-fossil energy (hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism, not an energy source), plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles (where low carbon power plants are available), etc. Read Joe Romm's book [wikipedia.org]. A hydrogen transportation in
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You want an alternative that helps the environment but compromises nothing at all?
And also, I suppose, to still be able to eat whatever you want without losing weight?
And also, I suppose, to buy all the gadgets you want without having to face credit card bills afterwards?
I think the best way forwards would be for society to lose the attitude it's gained in the past fifty years that we can get what we want without paying the cost.
Infrastructure is NOT the problem (Score:2)
No, the main problem is infrastucture. Be it public charging sockets for your Tesla or Chevy Volt, or H being available at your local gas (sic) station.
Those of us who actually drive electrics realize pretty quickly that infrastructure is only perceived as a problem. Electricity is already everywhere, but the reality is that several standard deviations of your charging is done at home.
Don't have a garage, or need to take long trips? That sucks for you, but statistics rather unassailably demonstrate that's not a problem for the other 80 or 90 percent of us. Electrics aren't going to be a 100% solution, but a 90% solution is well within our reach.
Surprised? (Score:2)
I'm not. Things died and got buried long ago (thousands to millions of years) for all that plant and animal matter to turn from living things into propane, oil, and what not. Quite a time investment, that.
re: solution. (Score:2, Funny)
I have a solution.
Clone dinosaurs. Bury them. Use the oil they turn into.
Cryogenic freezing in the meantime powered by the sun.
Over-seen by Skynet.
YAY.
Not necessarily (Score:2)
Not necessarily. There has been small, tiny voices peeping for a long time that dinosaurs, or plants, for that matter, might not be the source of oil. Recently some bacteria were discovered which create hydrocarbons.
Conventional wisdom definitely supports you, but you might just turn out to be wrong, and then we'd have wasted money cloning dinosaurs, and time, by waiting millions of years for them to turn into oil.
But what the hell. Let's give it a try. It'll be cheaper than bailing out GM.
Frivolous Argument (Score:2)
To imply that the process is somehow flawed because it consumes more energy overall than it produces is a trivial, straw man argument. The alternative would be a net positive energy, ie. perpetual motion/"free energy".
However, Kendall does imply the fact that the existing hydrogen production models consume hydrocarbons that are usable in the present form without additional processing. A hydrogen production method that does not use fossil fuels would be a boon. One that relies on fossil fuels serves only to
Re:Frivolous Argument (Score:5, Informative)
We have net positive energy right now with hydrocarbons, and it's not because of perpetual motion. It's because the energy we put into it (drilling, transport, etc.) is less than we get out when we burn it. That's because the majority of the energy to make the stuff was already put into it by the sun with some geothermal processes thrown in.
Thermodynamics applies to the universe as a whole. You can have net energy production or a decrease in entropy if you're limiting the scale (either in time or space) of your solution.
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The issue is that you can either use the energy source directly, which is always going to be more efficient, or you can use a more efficient method of storage / transfer than hydrogen.
Re: Frivolous Argument (Score:2)
That would be improved batteries. Because electrolysis and subsequent burning of the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine sucks, efficiency wise. Fuel cells are still at an experimental stage and not closer to mass usage than improved Li-ion chemistries.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-ion#Improvements_to_Lithium_Ion_Battery_Technology [wikipedia.org].
My favorite is the Lithium iron phosphate battery:
Safer than traditional Li-ion batteries, lasts longer and is made from cheaper raw materials (no cobalt). While the
Inefficiencies of conventional fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an important point but how come these issues are never brought up in discussions about the inefficiencies of conventional fuel? It takes energy to pump oil out of the ground, ship it to a refinery, distill it into gasoline, and transport the fuel to a gas station. With conventional internal combustion engines you get about 25% efficiency from the time you fill up at the gas station. Fuel cells get over twice that.
Well-to-wheel efficiency (Score:2)
I have not yet seen someone mentioning it, so I might just report the concept of well-to-wheel efficiency, i.e. the efficiency from extraction until consumption in a vehicle. IIRC That's about 10% for the oil-to-gasoline cycle. That makes hydrogen a 140% improvement over current situation, and that's according to a critic.
It was just another stupid Bush scheme (Score:4, Informative)
The "Hydrogen Economy" was partly the result of a stupid book by Jeremy Rifkin [amazon.com]. Read it and note how little it says about where the hydrogen comes from. It was promoted by the Bush/Cheney crowd as a means for diverting attention from electric cars.
Using electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, then liquefying the hydrogen, storing it as a liquid, then recombining it in a car (either in an engine or a fuel cell) is incredibly inefficient. The only advantage over batteries is that it looked like it might provide more range. Battery energy density has improved in the last decade, though. Battery cost is still a problem. But none of the hydrogen cars are cheap. Nor do they really have that much range. Arnold's hydrogen-powered Hummer only has a 60-mile range.
BMW actually built about 100 "hydrogen powered" cars. But they mostly run on gasoline; although they can optionally run on hydrogen, that's mostly for PR purposes. The liquid hydrogen tank has a "use it or lose it feature"; the BMW vehicle will evaporate all its hydrogen in about 10-12 days.
It looks like an idea whose time has passed.
It's hard to tax an electric vehicle (Score:2)
Another reason why governments don't want to push for electric vehicles is that you can not tax them. People will charge at home so the only option is to place a tax on all electricity - people would revolt. Hydrogen maintains the current structure for fuel / road taxes. Governments like this because it is a significant source of income (especially here in Canada). So even if electric vehicles are better, governments will still support building an expensive hydrogen infrastructure.
And fyi, with a little
Why insist on hydrogen? (Score:2)
I still don't get it. Why the insistence on a fuel source that needs new tech to store it effectively, transfer it to a vehicle, and to put it to use in a vehicle in the first place when we ALREADY have well established infrastructure for storage and distribution of methane and propane and conversion kits to run existing cars on it.
No new storage tank tech to avoid embrittlement and diffusion losses, etc. We even have fuel cells that can run on methane.
Seriously, do you read /.? (Score:5, Interesting)
I got all of those by doing a search here on /. Those are just some of the top ones too. These methods are to new to have become a fees-able opportunity so far; however, given a few years and another few gasoline panics (we all know they're coming), and they'll probably come around to being more standardized.
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Slashdot has stories about speculative technologies. None of those are actually a reality yet.
hydrogen sucks compared to batteries. (Score:2)
No new technology will come close to the 90% efficiency that is provided by current battery technologies. The batteries that power your cell phone are good enough and more efficient than any emerging technology.
Hydrogen doesn't occur naturally and any process that can be used to create hydrogen can be used to create electricity more efficiently.
Electricity:
90% efficient storage
existing distribution grid
domestic production
renewable sources
Hydrogen:
low efficiency, very very expensive fuel cells
hard to store,
And yet (Score:2)
Inefficiency of batteries (Score:2)
Batteries heat up when you charge them. They heat up when you discharge them.
I suspect that there might be other forms of energy loss, too.
So if we took the same energy we were making hydrogen out of, and put it in a battery, then put the battery in a car and got miles out of it, in the same way we would with a fuel cell, how efficient are batteries compared to this?
Anyone know?
What about ultracapacitors? Are they more efficient than batteries?
Yet Again, the obvious requires stating (Score:3, Informative)
HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL.
Not now, not ever, never.
WHY?
Because it takes more energy to MAKE hydrogen (i.e., snap the chemical bonds that embed it in various compounds) than you get out of burning it, EVEN AT !00% efficiency (which is impossible, of course.)
So, straight off, it's not a fuel. At best, it is an energy carrier.
TWO
IT SUCKS AS A CARRIER
A: Batteries and ultracapacitors are much better, and can be woven into the present infrastructure at a far lower cost.
B: There is no vessel on earth than can contain Hydrogen. It consists of a proton and an electron. Period. You cannot tighten the lid on a jar or whatever to contain it. It just leaks out. If it leaks out it either quickly bonds to something or it flies out of the atmosphere, gets ionised and then it's not even hydrogen - it's just an energetic proton. electronic bottles make the negative energy value of hydrogen as a fuel utterly farcical.
Therefore: HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL. IT IS NOT EVEN A GOOD IDEA FOR A CARRIER.
Those who seek "Business As Usual", i.e. the permanent continuance of the present energy glut circumstance are simply going to have to suck it up and deal with The Facts:
Petroleum is a limited resource that is either at or near peak or just recently past peak production. Its energy density and malleability are unparalleled - there is simply nothing like it. Hydrogen cannot substitute for it. We are simply going to have to re-order our society along the lines of the new reality. Don't like it? Tough shit. Those who resist will simply die off. Make plans or have them made for you.
RS
Re:Yet Again, the obvious requires stating (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, in terms of energy density per kg or per $, batteries are much, much worse than hydrogen. A typical 11V 6000 mAh laptop battery costs about $100 and holds 0.066 kWh of electricity (237,600 joules). Figure electricity costs $0.11 per kWh (average residential price for the U.S.) and your $120 battery is carry 0.726 cents worth of electricity - that's right, you pay a hundred dollars for your laptop battery to carry around less than a penny's worth of electricity. If you use it for 500 cycles (which is the typical life of a Li-ion battery pack), it's carried a whopping $3.63 worth of electricity in its lifetime.
Otherwise I don't disagree with anything specific you say. However, you're making the mistake of thinking that this is about making the cheapest fuel/battery possible. It's not. It's about making an energy storage medium which is a combination of cheap, lightweight, doesn't take much space, is safe, and doesn't destroy the world we live in. The best solution doesn't have to be the best in all those categories, heck it doesn't even have to be the best in any of those categories. The fuel/battery with the best mix will end up the winner. It can be sub-optimal in one or many of the categories as long as the combination is best. That's why petroleum is so ubiquitous - it fails miserably in the environmental category, but is or is near the best in all the others. Current electric vehicles can travel more than twice as far per dollar of energy as ICE vehicles, but the ICE still dominates because of its superior performance in the other factors.
Re:Yet Again, the obvious requires stating (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, please. Talk about selective data and card stacking.
1. $ per joule don't make any sense in this discussion. $100 per battery - sure - for retail!
2. right now eestor and others are developing ultracapacitors that have 3x the energy density of the best LIon batteres, and have many orders of magnitude more charging rounds than batteries, AND are cheaper to build AND they charge Really Really Fast. They will be expensive at first, but industrialism knows how to fix that through production.
3. The amount of energy per dollar per kg in gasoline blows all of them away. But gas is going away, so it doesn't matter.
I'm not worried about "cheapest" I'm more concerned about simple FACTS OF PHYSICS that people don't seem to understand too often or selectively forget when they talk about hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a BAD IDEA as a fuel. It is better left in water.
The other problem w/ICE vehicles is What Are You Going to Drive Them On? Peak Oil == Peak Asphalt. You can build your spiffy vehicles running on fucking pixie dust - if the roads are reduced to muck in the Springtime and frozen ruts in the winter, your aerodynamic cruiser car with its 4 cm clearance is going to stay in the garage...forever.
There's a lot more to the energy debate than substituting fuels - our entire way of life has been centred and modelled on a specific energy arrangement and density provided by fossil fuels. Without them, our civilisation itself is going to have to change, radically.
We've done it before. If you were born in 1850 and died in 1940 - think about it...
RS
Who Killed the Electric Car (Score:5, Insightful)
Exclellent movie, well worth watching. Really makes you want to see the big three go under rather then receive another big subsidy.
TFA should have interviewed United Nuclear... (Score:2)
From the people who brought you mail order polonium and other useful technologies such as portable butane bunsen burners, I proudly present http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ [switch2hydrogen.com]
It should be noted that research in this field has been stunted by politicians on the left and right side of the aisle, and that is the actual reason why hydrogen research has been as far out of reach as it has been.
When I can't even buy chemicals for my chemistry lab without the BATFE knocking on my door, don't expect scientists to come u
And another ad of how good smoking is by Marlboro (Score:2)
And another ad of how good smoking is by Marlboro
Geesh, are people really buying this junk science?
Go look up Humboldt State University, almost 10 years ago they had a very efficient and effective system of using solar energy to create Hydrogen cells and were driving cars around that took water and solar cells to produce ALL the energy for the car.
This is not 'rocket' science. Oh wait, the space shuttle uses hydrogen, weird I wonder why diesel isn't ALSO a better solution according to the gas companies?
Gees
chicken and egg situation + paranoia (Score:2)
In the short term we are talking about replacing the hydrocarbons of gasoline et al with the pure hydrogen burning in moving vehicles. How much energy it takes to create the hydrogen has to compare favourably with the life-cycle cost of creating and feeding batteries or capacitors including externalities such as polution.
24 percent.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kendall is apparently one of the few people who can analyze chemical energy storage systems rationally; the sorry truth is that hydrogen GAS - its default phase at the surface of this planet - is one of the least energy-dense materials we have. It's complete lunacy to think it can ever be EFFICIENTLY used as a fuel or source of stored energy.
What Kendall said of the "hydrogen economy" is also sadly true of virtually every other form of stored chemical energy we have or can envision: it takes more energy to create the stored form than can be recovered later as useful work. That is just my own restatement of what Kendall said. This is true of petroleum (though Mother Nature paid down the energy cost for us over millions of years), biodiesel, hydrogen as a fuel, batteries, and all the rest. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal generation are different, since they are not STORED chemical forms of energy, though even they are heavily dependent upon at least one form in order to be fully useful (to modern human society).
From where does the energy come to create the stored chemical fuels in the first place? We might possibly use solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal systems, but if the creation is significantly dependent upon the use of the very fuels created then it's a losing game of slow energy starvation.
If that's going to be the case, then we'd best just start getting comfy with having and using a LOT less energy than we do now: no more street lights, no neon signs, no more endless numbers of "wall warts" sipping power 24/7, no stadiums lit up bright as day in the dead of night, no more computer screens running screensavers every idle minute, no more "security" lights appeasing fears, no more giant metal birds shooting across the sky... and no more two hour commutes in Lincoln Navigators or Hummers.
I've been suggesting for some time that the "petroleum age" has been an energy anomaly, and one that we have not exploited wisely; we still don't have a sustainable presence in space or on another planet, for instance. Once the petroleum runs truly scarce, we will no longer even have the means to establish that sustainable presence; the heavy industry necessary to accomplish it is utterly dependent upon limitless supplies of petroleum.
Wanna know the real reason why we haven't been visited by ET? Poor little ET's species wasn't any more disciplined than we have been, they had their own Peak Oil event on their planet, and got trapped on their little rock for lack of energy to finish the exodus.
Bias (Score:2)
Much Better Than Gasoline (Score:2)
Gasoline engines get only an average of 25-30% efficiency out of the gasoline we fill them with. And it costs a lot of energy to make that gasoline from oil, and to get it out of the ground as oil. So if hydrogen's overall efficiency is 24%, then it's better than gasoline's. And that's without the scale economy gasoline has. So bringing hydrogen up to gasoline's scale is worth expending the extra efficiency from hydrogen to get there.
Unless there's something even more efficient than hydrogen, in which case
Volumetric Efficency of Hydrogen Carriers (Score:3, Informative)
Grams of Hydrogen in 1 liter:
Liquid Hydrogen -- 71 g.
Gasoline (C8H10) -- 118 g.
Diesel (C12H26) -- 130 g.
Re:What I still don't get is... (Score:5, Informative)
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I would not say it's a question if timescales, but a question of energy balance.
No matter the timescale, you can't use X amount of hydrogen to get more than X hydrogen. You need extra energy just to get your original amount of hydrogen, and even more extra energy to get more than you originally had. So it's not a source, it's a storage with energy loss, it has negative energy balance.
But you can use X amount of oil (and no other energy) to survey and pump up more oil, and you'll end up with more than X. So
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Even more accurately called the Franks, Dodd, Reid recession.
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How about the "Americans are idiots who spend money they don't have and now they defaulted on their loans" recession.
The average American carries $150,000 in housing and credit card debt. There is no other adjective that fits that situation than "idiot".
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Depends: Where is it?
If it's in the Sun, it's a source. If it's a tank we are shipping around, it's a way of storing energy, just like gasoline.
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Storing energy. And apparently not a very efficient one.
But then again, the first internal combustion engines weren't very efficient either and look where we are now.
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Storing energy. And apparently not a very efficient one.
But then again, the first internal combustion engines weren't very efficient either and look where we are now.
Ha ha ha... Wait...
I assume that was a joke? Because ICEs are one of the most inefficient sources of energy in the world, they waste about %80 of their energy.
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True, but compared to the engine of a Model A Ford, the engine in a modern car is a paragon of efficiency.
Hydrogen technology is still in its nascent stages. The best thing to do is to adopt it and then there will be a reason for companies to research more efficient ways of converting hydrogen to energy.
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But compared to a 90% efficient brushless electric motor, a ICE is kinda crappy.
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And where does the energy come from to power that 90% efficient electric motor? Your local power plant will run at 70% efficiency if it is very modern, probably more like 50% if it is not so new and it most likely burns coal. If it does not then its efficiency will be even lower. There is a further loss involved in transporting the coal to the plant and digging it up in the first place. There is the other issue as to what we do with variable power, I believe much is lost to heat anyway at off peak times. Th
Ford Model A MPG (Score:2)
Ford actually produced 2 cars called Model A.
1903 Ford Model A
engine: Flat-2
mpg: ???
mileage is not listed in wikipedia, but the motor is only a two cylinder, 8hp, it had skinny tires(low rolling resistance) and top speed was 45mph so It would probably get pretty darned good gas mileage on the paved roads we have today.
1923 Ford Model A
engine: L-head-4
mpg: 25-30
Modern ICEs are more efficient in terms of producing horsepower, and today's cars are generally heavier so they do more work per mile, but they haven
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Let's see, ways to make Hydrogen:
1. Use algae to generate it
2. Direct solar conversion of water to hydrogen using photoelectrochemical semiconductor panels.
3. Using high temperatures from a nuclear energy plant to heat and crack water into hydrogen and oxygen
4. Oh yeah! Neanderthal-style electrolysis.
BTM
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Mazda has abandoned the ICE and replaced it with a rotary engine. In theory it should be as efficient as a rotary electric motor, but in reality it leaks hydrocarbons like a seive and just-barely passes California's ULEV requirements.
So they are trying, but so far not much success has been achieved. Others are experimenting with battery-powered electric cars, but they still have not overcome the minimum two-hour recharge time. Gasoline/diesel still has the advantage there of being recharged in just 5 min
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Oh and regular piston engines are used in all Mazdas except the RX sport cars.
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... is hydrogen an energy source or a way of storing energy?
Depends whether you have a working fusion power plant which runs on regular hydrogen...
Well, damn, who'd have thought... (Score:5, Funny)
that converting chemical energy to heat, then to movement, then to electricity, then to hydrogen, then to electricity, then to movement might not be the be turning out to be such a great idea after all...
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... is hydrogen an energy source or a way of storing energy?
For the purposes the hydrogen fuel cells are aimed at, it's a method of storing energy, an intermediary much like a battery. Only, apparently, much more inefficient. Power still needs to be generated somewhere to produce the hydrogen, as it is not found in large underground deposits.
The only advantage I see in hydrogen power over pure electric vehicles is the convenience factor you get from being able to "fill it up". And while I know gasoline is explosive and we've done all right handling it so far, al
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what if they just fail to get he tank visually and/or hydrostatically tested at the proper intervals? These things are going to go through a lot more cycles in a year than your typical scuba tank.
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Of course, if you could ensure it wouldn't fail for two years, you could just have it done with the maintenance inspection.
BTW, I'm an EE not an ME so I'm working from a lack of knowlege and principles here.
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Couldn't the safety margin be increased? i.e., if you have a tank rated for 2400 psi, you only fill it to 1200 psi?
Sure, but you just doubled the size and cost of the tank or halved the range of the vehicle. It's already uneconomical, they're looking for any way to cut costs.
Would that solve the hydrostatic testing?
Not really. At most you'd extend the testing period a bit. The whole reason behind testing is that testing is cheaper than just replacing.
Re:What I still don't get is... (Score:4, Informative)
Neither, it takes more energy to make the hydrogen then you can get from it, and it is almost impossible to store...
Hydrogen is just a distraction, not a viable source of... well... anything really...
If hydrogen was so great, we would be all using it already, you can hose it directly into an IC engine and it would run with almost no modification.
The problem with hydrogen has been, and always will be 2 things.
1. Very difficult to produce, it takes a lot of energy, in the form of electricity. (Note: The concept of fuel cells is flawed inherently, because there is no way you can get more electricity out of the hydrogen then you put in to the water to make the hydrogen in the first place. Law of thermodynamics. I propose, we take that energy and store it in... say, batteries to power cars directly... There is no way that is less efficient then going from electricity to hydrogen to electricity.)
2. Very difficult to store. Needs to be kept under extreme pressure, and in some cases needs to be cooled.
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It depends on whether you stored it, or someone/something else did.
If you are collecting light and using it to break up water, then hydrogen is storage. If you find a cave full of hydrogen and you didn't do anything to cause that hydrogen to be there, then it's a source. AFAIK, no one has any plans that involve using hydrogen as an energy source.
Re:Of course not, Exxon doesn't make $ from H (Score:4, Informative)
Sure it does. Most of the current hydrogen (in its raw form) is generated from hydrocarbons.
Re:Of course not, Exxon doesn't make $ from H (Score:4, Funny)
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If it didn't have >100% net efficiency, it wouldn't be used.
Re:Thermodynamics? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not an energy source - it is an energy storage medium, little different than a battery.
The same as fossil fuels. The only "energy source" is the sun, that moves the wind and powers the waves and makes the plants grow and eventually turn into the mush we call petroleum, and nuclear energy which is finite in terms of ore and has its own refining/purification and infrastructure costs.
The smart bit is if you manage to find a way to harness a huge amount of a non-portable energy source - like sun in the desert or waves in the ocean - energy that is really available in excess, and use THAT energy to make smaller, PORTABLE forms of energy that lets us move about.
Either way our current society will end when petroleum becomes really scarce. There's no way we can maintain a world where everyone has a car. As you pointed out, the inefficiencies just won't allow it. Trains will be coming back in style in a BIG way, and there will HAVE to be changes to our town planning. History teaches us that probably quite a bit of people will have to die before we accept this as a society though.
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Geothermal and tidal sources are also energy sources besides the sun. Or, if you want to be really pendetic, there's no such thing as an energy source, since the sun/earth/moon/etc. all came about from energy that was already there, thus making the whole universe one big battery. But that's not very useful conceptualization of the universe.
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I have absolutely no understanding why you got modded insightful, considering that is the very last thing your post is.
Do you think there is one team of scientists and engineer
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The only problem there is the byproducts of nuclear power are nuclear weapons and Israel really doesn't want that to happen considering they'd probably be the target.
Incorrect. There are ways to run nuclear power plants without generating weapons material just as there are ways to make weapons grade material today without involving power plants.
So so far we have two "problems" that are solvable with technology we have TODAY but can't due to politics.
Agree with you here, and pretty much the rest of your post as well. The problems we have with starvation aren't industrial food production, and it isn't even transport, it's political.
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Hydrogen is a power source, just bang a couple of atoms together with enough velocity and you get Helium + a lot of enrgy.
However we have not yet developed a working fusion reactor.
We'll just have to use the nearest one we can find, its only 93 million miles away, and has enough hydrogen to keep going for a few billion years.
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Let's say it works. (I suspect it would, but I don't know.) Imagine the heat you're creating to accomplish that. How much of that heat would escape? That would be the most obvious measure of the process's inefficiency.
And I think another point here is that a lot of inefficiency comes from pushing the hydrogen, once you've made it, around in tubes which will leak a little. Tiny little molecule, hydrogen. Hard to keep from oozing out of things.
The upshot is that you might have a 10% better solution, the
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Now that's where you are wrong! Gasoline is 100% efficient at being gasoline.
BTM
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methanol.
Take your hydrogen and make methanol. You can even get the carbon from CO2 in the air if you like. Then use the usual liquid fuel transport system, although you will have to change out some gaskets and hoses.
If you don't like methanol, use that as the feed stock to make ethanol or butanol.
By the way, the chemical you need to extract CO2 from the air is monoethanolamine. Very old technology.
The limiting factor is all the renewable energy you will need to run the electrolysis cells, CO2 scrubbers, an