Someone educate me here... just how do we make

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

all the Hydrogen ** is claiming will help us out?

Coal?

I am confused.


Also, considering how much petroleum is needed for modern American farming techniques, how effecient is ethanol to make from corn?

Anyone point me in the right direction(s)?

Thanks

[Massacure]

1. Hydrogen can be made a lot of ways.

Electrolysis probably being the cleanest provided it is done with other renewable energy. Fossil Fuels are by far the easiest way to produce it on a large scale currently, though.

Ethanol data tends to be all over the place. Some say it is energy positive, others not so.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Remember Hydrogen is not a fuel

It's a storage medium, like batteries. There's no way to "mine" hydrogen.

It has to be produced by electrolysis or chemical means - and that takes energy.

Although, some say that wind or solar is the best way to produce hydrogen. Clean energy to make it and no pollution or greenhouse gases using it.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. I understand that. What I can't find are

details on just how they plan to make it all.

[Canuckistanian]

5. There is only one simple way - electrolysis

Two electrodes in two containers with water in them - Apply some electricity and one collects oxygen (not useful) and the other collects hydrogen.

But, to generate the electricity in the first place takes energy

[NNadir]

10. Electrolysis is not necessarily the best way to make hydrogen.

There are much better and more efficient ways.

One way is supercritical oxidation of carbon compounds - they can be biomass or (at much greater environmental cost) coal. This is, in fact the process used widely to make hydrogen now - supercritical oxidation of methane.

Thermochemical catalytical cycles will probably be the route most widely used in the future if there is a future. These offer very high efficiency, as high as 60%, whereas electrolysis offers efficiency as low as 10%. These cycles work only on a pilot scale now, but they are extremely promising. They are contemplated for certain types of nuclear plants and - on a smaller scale - certain types of solar plants.

Electrolysis is only workable industrially today for the production of hydrogen as a side product in chlorine and caustic manufacture. It wastes a lot of energy for the amount of hydrogen obtained.

[Canuckistanian]

12. What about HTE? (Steam Electrolysis)

Does it have any promise for large scale production?

[NNadir]

17. According to this blurb, it does.

http://www.ne.doe.gov/hydrogen/HTE.pdf

I don't know as much about the practical limitations on this technology to be honest.

40-50% thermal efficiency is good, but combined cycle gas plants have higher efficiency. Thermochemical hydrogen from catalytic decomposition water is expected to produce thermal efficiencies of close to 60%, which is better.

I note that combined cycle gas plants are not environmentally acceptable inasmuch as they contribute to global climate change. They aren't really going to be fiscally acceptable either as natural gas prices rise.

[jpak]

18. Electrolysis to produce H2 is ~80% efficient - not 10% efficient

That statement is false.

Furthermore, Norsk Hydro has been using molten carbonate electrolyzers to efficiently produce industrial-scale quantities of hydrogen for many years.

ChimpCo is currently spending $1.25 billion to build 2 prototype high-temperature hydrogen producing nuclear reactors (one 200 kW thermal, the other 500 kW thermal).

No one has demonstrated that the hydrogen produced by these pilot projects will be free of tritium - (and it will be the most expensive hydrogen ever produced).

In contrast, Norsk Hydro and German collaborators built a 1.2 MW combined wind power and hydrogen fuel cell system that provides power to the Norwegian island of Utsira - for less than $6 million US.

$6 million for a complete working 1.2 MW wind/H2 system vs. $1.25 billion for 0.7 MW worth of nuclear H2 production capacity (with no fuel cells or electrical distribution system).

Which is the better way to go??????

[NNadir]

19. If you live in Norway, and have lots of hydro power, you can ignore

thermal generation costs.

If you live anywhere else, you can't, you have to include the cost an efficiency of the power plant.

Without the addition of hydro power, the world renewable capacity is basically trivial.

Wind power has yet to produce a single exajoule on earth, and a mega"watt" hasn't changed into a unit of energy since you went off to do whatever dubious thing you do.

By the way, if we tried to represent the cost of research and demonstration plants at the final cost - the solar industry would be much, much, much, tinier than the already pathetic less than 0.1 exajoules of energy ito produces.

All pilot facilities cost more than their final numbers because of FOAKE costs. That's why their pilot facilities.

In any case it doesn't matter what Bush does with hydrogen producing nuclear reactors. The rest of the world is way ahead of the US in any case on this technology.


"Billion dollars" to you is just another scare word you throw around without comparison and with low comprehension of what it means. Although usually this comes under the general rubric of "making stuff up," even if you were not making the costs up, you clearly understand anything about how industrial design works. In fact the first nuclear reactor, built by Enrico Fermi, produced less than a watt and cost a shitload of money. On the other hand modern nuclear reactors produce the cheapest energy in the world - especially if one includes external costs.

By the way, did you see the costs listed here elsewhere for the cost of the 1 mega"watt" solar trough plant? Six million dollars. In other words, for a 1000 mega"watt" plant, the cost would be 6 billion dollars, and this in a desert. If we assume 30% capacity loading (in other words use physicist watts and not magical "peak" solar watts), 30% being outstanding for a solar plant, it would be the equivalent of an 18 billion dollar plant.

If Norway is going to produce a hydrogen economy, why don't they just do it? No one objects. In fact, I'm kind of rooting for the Nordic countries with these kind of resources (Iceland being in an even better position because of its geothermal resources) to use them, i.e. to stop talking, and start producing. But that's always the problem with renewable energy - it's all talk and very, very, very few exajoules. The emergency is so important that we must hope for success with all non greenhouse gas technologies.

You don't know very much about tritium production either, apparently, (and please spare me the pathetic tripe about your micropipet filled with microcuries of tritiated amino acids and nucleosides provided in a cute little glass vial by GE Nuclear) and are totally unfamiliar with the process engineering of hydrogen cycles. No one is suggesting placing the hydrogen in the reactor neutron flux. In fact, in the sulfur iodine cycle, the decomposition of hydrogen iodide is a relatively low temperature process, the high temperature portion being the decomposition of sulfuric acid, again out of direct exposure to the neutron flux.

I missed you while you were away, and in honor of your return, I'll post the energy flow chart again, and a little explanation that tells the whole damn story.

Read it and weep:

Biomass/Other

By far the largest portion in this category comes from “wood, waste,
and alcohol,” which accounted for 2.756 quads of energy produced
and consumed in 2002. Geothermal energy accounted for 0.304
quads; solar for 0.064 quads; and wind for 0.106 quads. (AER2002,
Tables 1.2 and 1.3)

You can see the portion that represents the grand renewable future, can't you? It's that really, really, really small line.

1 Quad = 1.055 exajoules.

Exajoule. Boo!

http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/pdf/ucrl-tr-129990-02.pdf



I note that the alcohol subsidy to ADM is also huge and it comes with this little tidbit:

George Bush (whom Nixon chose as national party chair in the midst of the Watergate scandal), invited $100,000 donors back into the business of financing presidential elections and influencing the White House. Several Team 100 members in fact were CREEP donors, including insurance executive W. Clement Stone; ADM Chair Dwayne Andreas; Florida developer Alec Courtelis, who took over Team 100 from Robert Mosbacher in 1989; and Mosbacher.

I guess by the "guilt by association" argument - ethanol should be banned on the grounds that Dwayne Andrease is a member of that famous Bushco too. I also note that ethanol contributed less than a single exajoule - even with "billion dollar" subsidies.

Should we add Sam Wyly ("Green" Mountain Energy) to the mix and ban wind energy?

[jpak]

21. Typical

"Billion dollars" to you is just another scare word you throw around without comparison and with low comprehension of what it means. Although usually this comes under the general rubric of "making stuff up," even if you were not making the costs up, you clearly understand anything about how industrial design works. In fact the first nuclear reactor, built by Enrico Fermi, produced less than a watt and cost a shitload of money. On the other hand modern nuclear reactors produce the cheapest energy in the world - especially if one includes external costs."

**** a billion dollars is 1 x 10^9 dollars - I know exactly what it means.

**** "making stuff up" is what I replied to in the previous post.

**** "you clearly understand anything about how industrial design works" - the answer is "yes", thank you.

"You don't know very much about tritium production either, apparently, (and please spare me the pathetic tripe about your micropipet filled with microcuries of tritiated amino acids and nucleosides provided in a cute little glass vial by GE Nuclear) and are totally unfamiliar with the process engineering of hydrogen cycles. No one is suggesting placing the hydrogen in the reactor neutron flux. In fact, in the sulfur iodine cycle, the decomposition of hydrogen iodide is a relatively low temperature process, the high temperature portion being the decomposition of sulfuric acid, again out of direct exposure to the neutron flux."

**** I have used tritiated substrates for over 20 years, I know how they are produced (and I use a few dozen mCi - not µCi - per year).

**** I know all about hydrogen cycles and I know that claims that chloro-alkali processes are used to produce hydrogen are false. (they're used primarily to produce chlorine, hydrogen is a minor minor by-product). Alkaline, molten carbonate, and PEM electrolyzers are used to produce hydrogen - cleanly and with high efficiency.

**** I am also not impressed by psuedoscience gooble-dee-gook - this might impress people who don't have a real science background - but it doesn't fool me at all.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sam sarrha]

6. Nuclear Power Plants.. that is why. got to get gas up to $6 to change the

attitudes of the people about a Chernobyl in their back yards..

it is a Bogus Plan.. you cant store H2 it being the smallest atom, nothing can seal it up, it will leak out of anything you put it in.. it will have to be make locally and literally on demand.

totally Bogus, Pie in the Sky. simply to make Hemp Oil a non solution, Hemp oil could make us free of Foreign oil. long non carbon chain oils like AMSOIL with 200,000 mile oil changes and extended engine wear up to and over 1,000,000 miles will be kept a state secret.

[Canuckistanian]

9. I'm not aware of this "leaking problem"

Compressed hydrogen, liquefied hydrogen and metal hydrides store hydrogen for long periods quite well.

NASA has been using the LH2 storage method for decades.

[sam sarrha]

15. here is a >link>>

http://www.princeton.edu/~chm333/2004/Hydrogen/atmosphere.htm

[Canuckistanian]

16. Thanks

It doesn't exactly show a tremendous problem with short-term storage, but informative, nonetheless.

[sam sarrha]

8. Neculear Power Plants.. that is why they are raising the price of oil.!!

[applegrove]

4. Isn't it hydrogen which is the most abundant element in the world?

But you have to use energy to break the hydrogen out of water. So you use wind farms or hydro or something that is environmentally less bad for the environment... and you take that energy and make hydrogen fuel cell batteries.

And you put the batteries in a car.

Someone once wrote that one wind turbine on a windy day could produce twenty hydrogen fuel battery packs to put in twenty vehicles. And then the exhaust - is water.

[sam sarrha]

7. H2 will divide the classes much wider, it is costly technology, creating

Rio division in society... poor living in festering tight Ghettos and the rich on large estates.

h2 is BOGUS... Hemp oil is the answer and can free of foreign oil.

all patients relating to fuel efficiency and energy conservation should be made public domain after being dormant for 2 years, funds should be bake availer for small inventors to produce energy devices.

[JohnWxy]

Interesting idea on dormant patents.- use 'em or lose 'em!

[JohnWxy]

27. Interesting idea on dormant patents.- use 'em or lose 'em!

[Kolesar]

11. Rifkin, in "The Hydrogen Economy", thinks we will make it in our garages..

..through electrolysis. It would the ultimate phase of distributed electrical generation. The Avenger is skeptical.

[Canuckistanian]

13. No thanks

I don't want to keep large quantities of an explosive gas around my house.

And burning hydrogen is nearly invisible in daylight - Some firemen use rags on the ends of poles to find the source of hydrogen fires, so they don't walk right into the fire.

[CabalPowered]

26. IdaTech is working on the concept

http://www.idatech.com/

Looks like they'll have something commercially available this year. I don't think it's a classic electrolysis process though.

[Ready4Change]

14. Bush plan is to use coal, petroleum products.

H is plentiful, but it bonds VERY easily with other materials. Breaking it free from those materials takes energy. (Like electricity is needed to electrolize H from water.)

The vehicular fuel cells the WH touts are to take gasoline, split the (H)ydrogen from it, then burn that in an engine. The energy needed to part the H from its molecular bonds comes from the gasoline itself. This process still produces pollutants, and is of questionable efficiency.

Or, they would use existing coal burning power plants, and use that electricity to electrolize the H out of water. Problem there is that you've got to transport the H to "gas" stations, then to cars. In the process you lose a LOT more H than you do when transporting gasoline or other liquid fuels. That's because the H molecule is REALLY tiny, and seeps out of nearly any container, even when chilled down to liquid form. (Loss of H is one reason NASA doesn't leave rockets fueled on launch pads very long. They have to keep trickling more fuel into the tanks to replace what is lost.)

If it seems like the White House plans are not much of an improvement over what we are doing right now, you are correct. It's solely a plan to look like progress, while still funneling money to the existing players. It doesn't free us from foreign oil, it doesn't reduce our green house emissions. Basically it doesn't do a thing except waste our research efforts.

I know we could do this with nuclear, but I've not seen that promoted in WH plans. Just gasoline and coal.

I'd love to do it with renewables, like wind, solar, hydro, ethanol, biodiesel, etc... But at this point we don't have enough of those for the task. And it is VERY questionable whether producing H is the best way to use them.

In the meantime, the prospect of the Hydrogen Economy is just a distraction from our real problem, which is our dependancy on a dwindling and growingly expensive resource.

[JohnWxy]

20. United States Dept of Agriculture finds ethanol contains 67% more energy

than was used to produce it.


Net Energy Balance of Ethanol Production


Journal Science Ethanol Energy Balance Report: January 2006.


"Two of the studies stand out from the others
because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and
petroleum inputs (11, 12). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed
that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by incorrectly assuming that ethanol
coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with
solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should
not be credited with any of the input energy..

and ...

by including some input data that are old and
unrepresentative of current processes, or so
poorly documented that their quality cannot be
evaluated (tables S2 and S3).

The two studies they are referring to are those by Pimentel and Patzek. These two are the ones most responsible for the vast amount of disinformation re ethanol. pimentel is a retired professor of entomology (the study of insects). Patzek founded the UC Oil Consortium which recieves funding from a number of oil companies. There used to be a web-site for the "UC Oil Consortium" but it longer can be found on the web. Patzek was once employed by a major oil company as a petroleum engineer.


Currently, ethanol is made from corn, beets and sugar cane. Work is being done to make it from cellulosic sources (plant waste and energy crops such as Switchgrass). Cellulosic ethanol is expected to be commercially viable in 5 to 6 years. Cellulosic sources of ethanol will be much more productive sources of ethanol than corn, sugar cane etc. After cellulosic sources of ethanol are commercially viable it will take several years to build up the volume of production. IF the facilities have already been expanded to make ethanol from corn and other starch based ethanol feed stocks this will greatly facilitate bringing cellulosic ethanol up to large scale production.

you will hear that ethanol doesn't get as good as mileage as gasoline. This is not quite true. In low compression engines its true. BUT, ethanol has a higher ocatane rating than gasoline (105 vs 92-93 for premium grad gas). By using turbo=charging or super -charging you can effectively raise the compression inside the engine and get more power out of the ethanol than gasoline. the result is you get just as good or better mileage from ethanol (85%) as you do from gasoline. The Saab 9-5 BioPower uses computer controlled variable valve timing and turbo-charging and gets just as good as mileage on Ethanol85 as it does when using gasoline (it has to lower the boost from the turbo charger when using gasoline).

Now if you are talking about 10-15% ethanol (85% - 90% gasoline) you can run that in ANY CAR THAT RUNS ON GAS. And there is virtually no detectable difference in miles per gallon.

Flexible Fuel Vehicles can use 85% ethanol. You do not get a tax rebate when you buy a FFV BUT THEY DON'T COST ANY MORE THAN A REGUALAR CAR!


BTW another promising bio-fuel is bio-diesel. IF farm machinery operate on bio-diesel (which I believe is a blend of bio-fuel and petroleum fuel) you significantly reduce the amount of fossil fuel used in the producing of the ethanol feed stock.

Ethanol production is expanding rapidly. Right now, even with this rapid expansion, they are struggling to keep up with the demand as the oil companies are buying ethanol to replace MTBE.

[Coastie for Truth]

25. Based on my review of the Pimentel-Patzek paper

and some of the cited references, it is less credible then some of the scarier, Malthusian claims in Kunstler, and it doesn;t jive with the therm I studied and taught.

Coastie, PhD (ChemE)

[woodstockny]

22. If the emphasis on hydrogen represents reality

I believe we can learn much about it's potential development by examining carefully the people around the Bush administration to learn what they are investing in. If they have inside knowledge about the long term prospects for our energy production, one would expect them to lock in their ownership of this well before we are ever told what they have in mind.

[JohnWxy]

23. Ethanol will be used in fuel cells in near future. The Japanese are

signing up with Acta to be able to use market this technology.

http://www.acta-nanotech.com/technology/benefits.aspx


This approach is far superior to using free hydrogen. Free hydrogen for general transportation is too dangerous and will be too expensinve to build all the infra structure that will be needed to handle the free hydrogen. Ethanol fueled fuel cells will not need any new infrastructure and ethanol is much safer to handle than free hydrogen.


fuel cells are 2.5 to 3 times more efficient than ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines).

[JohnWxy]

28. Don't be fooled by disinformation re ethanol see Science article:

http://www.ethanol.org/documents/ScienceJournalJanuary2006_000.pdf

The journal Science reviewed six studies of Ethanol's Net ENergy BAlance. They found that all but two found a positive balance for ethanol. The two that they refer to in the excerpt are by Pimentel and Patzek. They are the source of the misinformation that it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get in the finished product. (actually the study by Michael Wang of The Argonne National Laboratory showed that not only did ethanol have a positive energy balance but that gasline has 19% less energy than the amount of energy needed to produce it). Pimentel is a retired entomologist (the sudy of bugs) and Patzek was employed for a while by one of the major oil companies and is the founder of the UC OIl Consortium. HE recieves ample remuneration from several oil companies.

Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy
and Environmental Goals

Two of the studies stand out from the others
because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and
petroleum inputs (11, 12). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed
that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by incorrectly assuming that ethanol
coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with
solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should
not be credited with any of the input energy and
by including some input data that are old and
unrepresentative of current processes, or so
poorly documented that their quality cannot be
evaluated (tables S2 and S3).

REgarding producing hydrogen from coal it is extremely polluting and is very expensive.

Fuel cell cars will never be practical using free hydrogen - too dangerous and expensive (infrastructure investment would be huge). The only way fuel cell cars will become practical reality is by using hydrocarbons or carbohydrates to supply the hydrogen to the fuel cells in a safe and easier to handle way. Work is being done on this technology right now and will be emerging soon (for smaller applications - e.g. notebook computers).

As it turns out ethanol is a better choice than gasoline for this use too. THere are a few companies, at least one of which is particularly interested in ethanol, are developing lower cost catalysts which will make this technology practical (i.e. affordable).