Experimental 'wind to hydrogen' system up and running

[jpak]

http://www.physorg.com/news87494382.html

Several dozen journalists, environmental leaders, government officials and Xcel Energy managers today toured the joint venture, which is located at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center between Golden and Boulder, Colo.

“Today we begin using our cleanest source of electricity – wind power – to create the perfect fuel: hydrogen,” said Richard C. Kelly, Xcel Energy chairman, president and CEO. “Converting wind energy to hydrogen means that it doesn’t matter when the wind blows since its energy can be stored on-site in the form of hydrogen.”

The facility links two wind turbines to devices called electrolyzers, which pass the wind-generated electricity through water to split the liquid into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be stored and used later to generate electricity from either an internal combustion engine turning a generator or from a fuel cell. In either case, there are no harmful emissions, and the only by-product from using the hydrogen fuel is water. On site is a new building that houses the electrolyzers and a device to compress the hydrogen for storage; four large, high-tech tanks to store the hydrogen; a generator run by an engine that burns hydrogen; and a control room building, where computers monitor all the steps of the process. Xcel Energy and NREL are each paying part of the $2 million budget for the two-year project.

“The project allows our researchers to compare different types of electrolyzers and work on increasing the efficiency of a wind-to-hydrogen system,” said Dan Arvizu, NREL director. “And, it has the potential to point the way to a completely emissions-free system of making, storing and using energy.”

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[SnoopDog]

1. Question on hydrogen energy....

Lets say that we implement hydrogen energy on a massive scale. We take solar/wind energy add in water and out comes hydrogen.

Do we ever stand a chance of using up all the water on earth?

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

2. Every time you burn the hydrogen, it turns back to water

nm

[SnoopDog]

3. Thanks - I should have googled before I asked a silly question...

[ArbustoBuster]

8. Questions are never stupid.

It's when you stop asking them that stupidity creeps in. (Perfect example: Bush.) :D

[LSK]

4. I am not sold on hydrogen as an energy source

We do not have the infrastructure right now to make it a source for cars. Hydrogen refueling stations would have to be built nationwide. Hybrid and Hybrid/Electric cars can pretty much plug in at home or wherever theres an outlet.

Bush backing it makes me even more suspicious.

They had a lot of criticisms of it in Who killed the Electric Car.

[jpak]

5. This is an energy storage medium - not an energy source per se...

Electrical energy storage technologies like this (Vd flow batteries, flywheel systems, etc.) will be needed to manage renewable power grids in the future...

[kestrel91316]

15. Fossil fuels are also an "energy storage medium", silly.

[Nihil]

25. Can I have a look at your patent please?

The one that uses fossil fuels to store energy from wind-farms?

:silly:

Now that would be neat: wind-farm energy + renewable wood input
and coal output!

(Yes, I understood you really but it just made me chuckle! :hi: )

[kestrel91316]

27. kestrel's smartaleck reply:

God holds the patent on fossil fuels as an ultra-long-term energy storage medium for solar energy from the Earth Farm.

How d'ya like THEM apples?!

[Nihil]

28. *snigger* (n/t)

:pals:

[SnoopDog]

9. But we do have the infrastructure mostly in place...

They are called gas stations. They are all over the place. And, remember, the oil/gas industry did build the huge oil pipeline infrastructure and gas station industry in order to dispense gas.

The only problem with hydrogen energy is that it takes energy to produce it. To use coal or nuke energy defeats the process - you are polluting one area to save another. Using solar and wind energy results in a win-win situation.

[LSK]

10. you are assuming hydrogen can be stored/transported the same as gas

These are 2 different materials with different chemical properties. I dont think you can just take a gas tanker and put hydrogen in it.

Can hydrogen be stored at room temperature? Does it have to be heated or frozen to store or transport?

What are the corrosive properties of hydrogen? How does it react to hoses and tanks found at gas stations?

What about the pumps that move the hyrdogen from the tanks to the cars?? They are certainly not the same.

It is not that simple.

[SnoopDog]

13. I learn something everyday....

So, what about natural gas? I guess the properties of hydrogen and natural gas are very different?

I would hope our scientist can figure out how to deal with all these situations.

And also I want to clarify my statement about gas stations - at least the physical buildings are in place and people know to drive up and refuel.

Also, what about the buses and cars that already run on hydrogen...? How are they serviced?

[LSK]

16. most of those are fleets, like a taxi fleet

They return to the central depot every night. So that would mean 1 refueling center for hundreds of fleet vehicles.

See if you can find the Documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?". It discusses hydrogen vehicles and shows how electric vehicles are much more viable today.

[jpak]

32. The petrochemical industry makes, transports and processes lots of hydrogen

Much of the current propane distribution network can handle hydrogen too.

Furthermore, hydrogen can be produced on site by electrolysis (i.e., the electrical grid can "transport" energy for hydrogen production without using pipelines).

And you can store hydrogen at ambient temperature...th Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt University uses PV to produce H2 and stores it in low pressure tanks.

They do the same thing on Utsira Island off the Norwegian coast (they use wind turbines to produce H2 for fuel cells that run the village electrical grid).

and...storing and transporting liquid hydrogen is not that much different from storing and transporting LNG...

[GliderGuider]

11. Sorry, you need to do some more reading on the subject.

Infrastructure problems are the primary obstacle to using hydrogen as a fuel. A hydrogen dispensing station is a totally different beast than a "gas station". Hydrogen migrates through most most materials, makes many metals brittle and contains very little energy per unit volume, whether as a liquid or a gas. Liquid hydrogen is very difficult to handle (ask NASA). The existing infrastructure is in no way suitable for hydrogen distribution. Not to mention that the cars would need replacing, and wouldnt be able to carry enough hydrogen to go very far (that pesky energy density issue again).

Hydrogen may have its uses, but a vehicle fuel ain't one of them.

[SnoopDog]

14. Thanks for the directive...

I believe that our scientists can come up with solutions.

It has to be easier that nuclear energy that requires a massive infrastructure to implement.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

17. There is an infrastructure in place for using nuclear power

It's called the power grid. We already use it.

Make electricity, run it through the wires, charge the electric cars.

Hydrogen would have to be highly compressed to be used as a fuel, otherwise you would have to stop for gas every 50 miles. It has a lot of problems, as described above.

[mhatrw]

31. Bush likes hydrogen because Big Oil is poised to control its

distribution.

Wind to hydrogen is theoretically marvelous. The devil is in whether it can be produced locally and distributed in a decentralized manner or whether the same (type of) energy oligarchy can remain in control of both its production and distribution as they do now with oil and natural gas. Bush is betting on the latter.

[phantom power]

33. I'm pretty sure he "likes" talking H2 for two reasons:

1) it's not likely to ever happen, in the sense of being a widely-used motor fuel

2) even though it's a boondoggle, hydrogen motor fuel has lots of buzz, and so it gives lots of people a warm fuzzy to hear presidents making speech about it.

[mhatrw]

35. Yes, at least in the short term.

BushCo = Big Oil + Big Mil/Intel contractors

[GliderGuider]

6. OK, everybody do the Technofix Tango

Gotta keep everyone looking at the flashing lights or they might figure out what's really going on.

Sorry, I just can't get excited about an experimental electrolysis setup. Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and always will be.

[jpak]

12. "Techno" got us into this "Fix"

and "Techno" can "fix" it too...

:evilgrin:

[GliderGuider]

18. The solution to any problem caused by growth is more growth?

That's effectively your argument. It's like Bush's approach to Iraq, or Johnson's approach to Vietnam: if what you're doing isn't working, just do it harder.

A much smarter man than me once said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." I suspect he was as right about that as he was about relativity.

[jpak]

19. Where did you get all that from???

not from anything I have ever posted...

(nice try though)

[GliderGuider]

20. You don't see the parallels?

"Techno" got us into this "Fix", and "Techno" can "fix" it too...

If you believe that, then you are contradicting Einstein's observation at the very least. If you don't then I must have misinterpreted your post.

[Ready4Change]

22. I disagree.

To say that techo can't fix techno problems is to say we should revert to pre-tool using society. The plow, the axe, fire, clothing. All these, and all that followed, are "techno."

However, if you and your out of context Einstein quote are correct, we will eventually wind up back in pre-tool use society, regardless. In the meantime, I'm interested in seeing if techno can beat the odds.

[The2ndWheel]

24. They haven't fixed any problems though

They either just made the existing problems bigger and more complex, or simply created new problems, which are then to be solved by the same process, which then leads to the same result, etc.

Until we figure out how to cure death and pain(which, strangely enough, would create a whole set of new problems), nothing will get fixed, just delayed or reshaped into something that looks different but isn't.

[GliderGuider]

26. Actually, we have "cured death and pain" -

at least to a first approximation, and the problems you predict as a result are precisely what we are seeing today - massive overpopulation and resource use. Technology is what has made this dramatic reduction in mortality possible, and is therefore the proximate cause of the trouble we're now in. Global population is increasing by 75 million per year because we have been so successful at reducing mortality. This is why, even if we miraculously reduced the global fertility rate below 2 next year, the population would keep growing for the next 50 to 100 years.

Here's how I see it. We are in a population/resource overshoot of at least 25% right now. Our increasing technological capabilities and the human drive to maximize comfort (i.e. our innate greed) put us there. Arguing that more technology will fix things is as outrageous as suggesting that increasing our greed might be a solution.

[jpak]

29. I don't see any parallels at all

The Techno Fix means using less energy and raw materials in a sustainable manner without sacrificing essentials like food, shelter, sanitation, transportation, communication, lighting, etc.

Example...

I replaced all the incandescent light bulbs in my parent's and brother's homes this Christmas with compact fluorescent bulbs.

My brother and my parents were able to light their homes for less electricity than would be consumed by a single 100 watt incandescent bulb.

How is this a Bad Thing?????

How does this contradict Einstein???

(clue: it isn't and it doesn't)

I'm in the process of replacing all my compact fluorescent bulbs with LEDs. When I'm finished with this project, I will be able to light my home with less electricity than would be consumed by two "older" 14 watt compact fluorescent bulbs.

That's a 95% reduction in electricity consumption relative to incandescent bulbs - what have I sacrificed???

Nothing - except lower electric bills - and I don't live in a cave either...

edit: on the materials use side of the equation - CF bulbs last many times longer than incandescent bulbs and LEDs last many many times longer than CF bulbs.

A significant reduction in energy and materials consumption (not to mention the money saved) whilst sacrificing absolutely nothing

[GliderGuider]

30. You're right of course, using CFLs isn't a bad thing.

The problem is, it's not a fix. The scale is all wrong, which is the case for every personal-level mitigation proposal I've ever seen.

My main objections to pursuing technological fixes are twofold. The first is that most technical solutions have some level of unintended and unforeseen consequences that themselves need mitigating. My second (and more fundamental) objection is that the development of ever more specialized and sophisticated solutions to our growing list of problems is reducing the overall system resilience of our civilization. Gradual loss of resilience makes it ever more likely that a shock to one part of our industrialized civilization will result in cascades of breakdowns. For a look at resilience and adaptive loops look here.

I believe that technical approaches are fundamentally the wrong way to try to address a problem set this big and interactive, as they tend to increase the susceptibility of the system to breakdowns, just when it is already incredibly fragile.

I've got nothing specifically against CFLs, wind, solar, tidal, biomass gasification, electric cars or any other mitigation technology. My objection is to accepting them as parts of the solution when they are not. Believing we can find a solution to a technical crisis in technology (speaking abstractly now rather than specifically) prevents us from fully analyzing the problem and consumes energy that might well be used more profitably in other endeavours. At the moment we still have spare energy, so it doesn't hurt to try this approach. Once the decline sets in, however, continuing with this "cargo cult" mentality of the techno-fix risks throwing us into catabolic collapse.

[jpak]

34. System resilience is a non-issue with distributed-grid and off-grid energy systems

Denmark currently operates over 530 small (2-10 MW) municipal CHP power plants without any problems whatsoever. If one goes down for maintenance, it represents an small (insignificant) fraction of Denmark's power pool - there is no potential cascading system-wide failure.

If Denmark operated three 1000 MW central station power plants instead of its 530 distributed CHP plants, and one of them tripped, it would be a real problem.

For this to happen with its municipal CHP plants, several hundred would have go down simultaneously - an extremely low probability event.

It's the same for a large wind farm or PV array - if one turbine or one PV module goes down, it's not a problem.

The same for a village where all the dwellings/buildings have their own off-grid power systems.

If someone's inverter gets fried, there are no consequences for the neighbor's system.

So no - I don't buy this at all...

[GliderGuider]

36. You're looking too closely at the nuts and bolts of a single subsystem

When I talk about systems, I'm thinking in terms of the entire edifice of industrial civilization. The electrical generating system is one part of it, but so is the banking system, the road system, the computer and telephone networks, the oil wells and pipelines and refineries and storage farms and tanker trucks and filling stations, the schools, the television networks, the factories and their supply chains, the municipal, state and federal governments, the taxation systems, the hospitals and their underlying health care bureaucracies, food production and distribution, water systems, waste disposal systems and on and on.

When you introduce distributed elements into any of those systems you do make them more reliable, but if this distribution also requires coordination of the distributed elements, that coordination adds complexity and a potential failure point. The biggest risk posed by this kind of complexity is that all these very different systems described above interact. For example: if the computer networks go down, the banking system suffers; if the road system is disrupted, factory supply chains and food distribution chains are broken; if a pipeline is broken, the transportation system will suffer from a lack of fuel; if the telephone network crashes the hospitals can't coordinate their activities.

Each element in the system depends on others, because the level of interconnection is so high. If one goes down, another that depends on it will fail, and systems that depend on that one will in turn fail. This is what I mean by a cascade of failures. It is far worse than a failure mode cascading though a single subsystem, though that is bad enough as we saw with the electrical blackout of August 2003.

Every time a level of complexity, integration or interconnection is added to this larger system, the risk of failure increases. The whole system in effect becomes more brittle. It has more points of failure; the risk of subsystem failures affecting other subsystems increases because the level of interconnection is higher; and the ability of the system to recover from a failure is compromised because systems needed for recovery may have been damaged in the original failure cascade.

The reason redundancy and distribution increase system resilience is that they essentially subdivide the system into smaller islands of lower complexity. Some of this advantage is lost due to a need to interconnect those islands to coordinate their activities, but there is still a net gain in resilience.

The real problem shows up when one subsystem is critically dependent on another different subsystem. An example could be multiple wind farms connected to an electrical grid which supplies power to its customers through a switching station. The system can be viewed as a series of subsystems - the turbines, the connections from the wind farms to the switching station, the switching station itself and the connections to the customers. The system is resilient when it comes to the loss of a turbine, a single wind farm, the grid feed from that farm. However if the switching station goes down, the system fails. If the switching station depends on an internet connection and that connection goes down, the system fails. If the grid wiring from the wind farm requires regular maintenance by helicopter and aviation fuel is not available because a pipeline was down because a repair crew didn't get to a pipe break because they weren't notified because the telephone system was down, the system may fail. These are examples of lowered system resilience.

Resilience is a much broader and more fundamental issue of system dynamics, I'm convinced it's the one that will bite civilization as a whole right on the ass if we don't start paying more attention to it.

[The2ndWheel]

7. "to create the perfect fuel"

No such thing. This is Earth. Maybe in the universe with our evil twin perfection exists, but not here.

[poverlay]

21. With the proper will, our entire system could be realistically changed to a

wind/wave/solar powered, run through our existing grid, sort of set-up.

It won't happen until it's profitable though.

[Ready4Change]

23. Until it is more profitable than the current alternatives.

Fossil fuels, plus their existing infrastructure, are more profitable than renewables. Plus, shifting to renewables introduces the risk that the reins of power might shift hands. Those with the currect grip on those reins aren't willing to take that chance.