Earthday: Bush lie #732 - "Hydrogen is the fuel of the future"

[garybeck]

I know, I know, the true number is probably much higher than 732.

This CNN article is complete propoganda and BS. It says "hydrogen is produced domestically," "doesn't require gasoline," and "pollutes less." And it never mentions the most important thing about hydrogen - it is not an energy source. it is only a storage of energy. in other words, it takes energy to produce hydrogen. the source of the energy can be anything - coal, nuclear, oil... it only removes the pollution point away from the vehicle and moves it to the production of the fuel.

-

Bush: 'Hydrogen is the fuel of the future'
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/22/bush.hydrogen.ap/index.html

WEST SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- President Bush had an Earth Day message for drivers worried about soaring gasoline prices: The nation must move more quickly toward widespread use of hydrogen-powered cars.

Running vehicles on hydrogen fuel cells would help reduce oil consumption, as the technology does not require gasoline, and lower pollution, as water is the only emission. But the technology is far from being a reality in the marketplace: The cells are prohibitively expensive and require a new distribution system to replace today's gas stations.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. oh good lord.

The costs of refitting our fuel delivery system are enough to convince a rational person that Hydrogen is not an option. Don't get me started on the costs to produce it. :eyes:

:(

[Oversea Visitor]

2. What a mad moron

Say what he wants do what he does never think.

[SlipperySlope]

3. K&R

[NYC]

4. Hydrogen was the fuel of the Hindenburg.

Just mentioning.

[garybeck]

5. actually not

hydrogen was used to fill the blimp, to raise the zeppelin

the fuel was diesel.

studies have shown that hydrogen actually did not cause the fire; it had something to do with the paint used in the coating of the blimp, which was some kind of chemical that was also used in rocket fuel!

but hindenburg or no hindenburg, hydrogen is meaningless until you have a way to create it that doesn't pollute. to say it doesn't pollute is a lie, unless you have intentions to use solar or wind to create it. and if that were the case, why aren't we using them for utility power now?

[Random_Australian]

9. I cannot remember the material, but I think Aluminium was the

thing also used in solid rocket fuel, because the other flammable thing, acetone, - which was used to either wash or cure or similar - isn't nearly as good a fuel as the other liquid fuels.

IIRC!

[NYC]

10. But, the hydrogen burned quickly.

I wonder why we always look for problematic fuel, exhaustible fuel.

Nearly 50 years ago, I saw a small transistor radio that was solar powered.

[Random_Australian]

11. Locomotion. It is physically impossible to move a domestic

car on sunlight alone.
Yes, I am aware of the solar car races in my country.
That is why we ought to have, for instance, wide solar arrays and then store the energy in something like hydrogen. That's the point; the OP's main problem was with the initial generation, the hydrogen itself is not a problem. Just getting it.

[garybeck]

14. except that

vegetable oil is a form of solar energy, and it is fairly easy to move a vehicle on vegetable oil, so techincally speaking I say that a veggie car is running on solar energy.

[Random_Australian]

15. Umm, vege oil, Hydrogen fuel, same transformation, mate.

Sun>Storage>energy.

But Hydrogen is less damaging to the environment to obtain, and much, MUCH safer, cleaner and much better for the environment to burn.

[garybeck]

17. um

vegetable oil is part of a cycle. the plant absorbed C02 from the atmosphere while it was alive - actually MORE than you are putting into the air when you burn it. so there is a net loss of C02.

I agree solar hydrogen is a good idea, part of the solution, but h2 is not necessarily "less damaging to the environment to obtain" when you consider the entire cycle.

IMHO, they're both part of the solution

[Random_Australian]

20. I understand, they're BOTH part makes sense. Thought you were talking

'Instead of' rather than 'with', but as for vege oil, here are your two main nasties:

1) Whenever something is valuable to farm, people keep on farming it ridiculously. You know, knocking down the rainforest which is a major x(.

2) vege oil doesn't burn clean. The CO2 isn't much of a problem, the unburnt products are. Even occurs for petrol, which is pretty simple - the smoke is unburnt products, which are not nice for the smog and photochemical smog. Therefore, I'd put H2 in cars. For more controlled environments, ir if we get much more efficient burning cars, vege oil will be great.
(But you don't want demand to get too big or the land degrading mega-farms start x()

[garybeck]

12. as fuels go, hydrogen is relatively safe

because it is so much lighter than air, hydrogen fires rise up very quickly, as they burn. one could make a very good argument that hydrogen is safer than gasoline.

[Random_Australian]

13. Indeed, unless it is already mixed to a fair extent with Oxygen,

it merely forms a rising cloud of fire - not all that hot, either.

[dipsydoodle]

25. German rocket fuel

was hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide. Both in concentrated form are highly corrosive. Given that information you could probably design your own rocket engine. Warn me to stay away if you do so and do not store the chemicals near each other in your kitchen. The German ME 163 had a repution for killing more of their pilots than anything else - the fuel lines corroded and those two chemicals need only to combine to produce an explosian.

[Random_Australian]

7. The Hindenberg ran on diesel, and floated with hydrogen.

Yes, I can be rather picky, but still......

[Union Thug]

6. I thought bmw had a hydrogen powered prototype running years...

ago. ???

[garybeck]

8. there are many hydrogen cars now

actually running a car on hyrdogen is no big deal. a standard vehicle can be converted to run on compressed hydrogen without much modification. I've seen a few of them myself. I even saw a film where someone collected the h2o vapor from the exhaust of a hydrogen vehicle, and DRANK it!

the problem with hydrogen has always been production. if there was lots of cheap hydrogen, we'd all be running our cars on it now.

[rman]

22. The problem is not the technology, the problem is lack of investment

to use it on a massive scale - massive as in replacement of the oil infrastructure.

[garybeck]

33. that is not correct

the problem is the technology. it doesn't really solve anything because hydrogen is not a source of energy, it is only an energy carrier. it can be used for storage or delivery of energy a variety of ways, but you still need to use energy in order to get hydrogen. so it leaves you back at square 1: how do you produce hydrogen?

[shenmue]

16. Oh give me a break

Like he supports real energy change?

My ass. Then all his oil friends will go broke.


:dunce:

[garybeck]

18. hydrogen = no change

cars can already run on hydrogen today. the problem is getting the hydrogen, and if they are serious about using more hydrogen in the future, you can bet they intend to use coal and fossil fuels to make it.

[sakabatou]

19. Solar-powered electralysis...?

[PFunk]

21. Actually Honda (of all companies) may have found away....

...Around the hydrogen producing problem for both home and cars as pwer this link.

http://world.honda.com/news/2005/c051114.html

It's for their 'Experimental Home Energy Station' It's not much of a leap but it's a start.

[greenman3610]

29. this is a good long term approach

the key is getting there.
We will use a multiple fuel approach,
ethanol, Biodiesel, and increased efficiency with
hybrid cars.
As Toyota has wisely foreseen, hybrid cars are the
development platform that the electric or
fuel cell cars of the future will be built on.

Home energy production, widely dispersed,
with the electrical grid modelled on the
internet, a huge number of individual nodes,
hardier and more resiliant, less vulnerable
to shortage, breakdown, or attack.

That said, Bush's statement, with no
policy backup or vision, is bullshit as usual.

[garybeck]

35. no, that is NOT a solution

read what it says:

"the Home Energy Station uses natural gas as its base energy source."

natural gas is a fossil fuel that pollutes and contributes to global warming. it is not a solution at all. they might as well just run the cars on compressed natural gas or propane.

the only significant thing about this product is that it changes the source from petroleum to natural gas which is only a small step in the right direction. the use of hydrogen to store and transfer the energy in Natural Gas is really a side show.

[Jose Diablo]

23. I don't know about hydrogen as a fuel, energy storage maybe

if the problems with storage can be overcome. The biggest problem with hydrogen as energy storage is it's atomic area cross-section. It's very small and building a tight enough container to keep it from leaking out is difficult. Hydrogen can even leak through 'solid' steel. True it leaks slowly, but it's practically impossible to store for long periods of time in a 'central' storage facility. Therefore, making hydrogen with say a nuke plant and then distributing the hydrogen as fuel like what we have today with petroleum would be difficult. Then there is the refilling the automobiles with hydrogen. It's very explosive, I wouldn't want an amateur trying to refuel their car. We can expect many more fueling station explosions with hydrogen being the fuel. By and large, people are idiots on the average.

Now if we had a decentralized energy system with a much shorter hydrogen delivery/storage to the user system, maybe hydrogen fueled transportation systems could work. Say for example, people charge their automobiles with electricity and the cars had a hydrogen generator and hydrogen storage system built right in, that might work. Sounds expensive though. What would this cost?

Edit: Just speculating, but I wonder if it would be posible to take carbon dioxide from the air and somehow using a chemical/energy process make propane or even octane and continue using cars for transportation. But the energy would not come from sequestered carbon (petroleum) and the carbon would come from the carbon that had been previously burned petroleum.

[amandabeech]

24. Almost all the hydrogen produced in the U.S. uses natural gas

both for process heat and as a feedstock. As many of you know, natural gas primarily consists of methane, which has four hydrogen atoms and only one carbon atom.

One of the problems of using hydrogen made from natural gas, in addition to the release of the carbon atoms in processing, is that natural gas supplies in North America are running short. Matthew Simmons, a respected figure in the oil and gas field despite his association with Cheney, has been shouting about North American natural gas depletion for several months.

Until 15 or 20 years ago, natural gas was used primarily as a feedstock for plastics and chemicals, process heat and some home heating. Since then, not only have gas-heated McMansions popped up like dandelions in the spring, but most new electrical power plants have been natural gas fired. In addition, Canada's expansion of its tar sands production has been fueled by natural gas, which is used to heat water to steam for extraction of the bitumen and for generation of hydrogen used in upgrading the bitumen. The U.S. imports considerable amounts of natural gas from Canada, and the tar sands' use has or will limit the total amount of natural gas available for export.

LNG imports are extremely expensive, and often come from the same volatile parts of the world as oil. Geopolitically, running our transportation system on LNG may be no different from running it on oil.

Producing hydrogen from water using power from the sun or wind may be possible in some locations, but not all. For example, some areas have lots of sun, like Arizona, but not much water. Some places have lots of water, like Maine, but not much sun, particularly in the winter. In addition, hydrogen cannot be transported in existing oil and gas pipelines, in part because the hydrogen turns the pipeline material very brittle, causing leaks and breakdowns.

In the final analysis, it seems that hydrogen could play a role in some locations, it doesn't seem to me that it will replace oil generally across the U.S. and North America.

[truth2power]

26. Takes energy to produce hydrogen...

Had a discussion about this with a Bushbot last week. I was trying to explain, in my own flawed way, that the problem is PRODUCING the hydrogen. He seemed not to be able to understand that you don't just pull it out of the air.

Could someone point me to a concise article that explains how you have to use coal, oil etc. to get it into a form you can use in your car? Would much appreciate this. Thanks so much. :)

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. Bingo! Right now, making hydrogen into fuel takes more energy than

the energy that is produced.

[truth2power]

31. Yes. Edit to my post above...

I was editing, but got a phone call and now I think my time has expired.

edit> Ok. I should do my own research. But I'm still not sure I understand how feasible this is. I found this article, from National Renewable Energy Laboratory, saying that hydrogen can be obtained by means of electrolysis, by using solar, biomass, etc.

http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/proj_production_delivery.html

Is this workable on a large enough scale to run all our cars?

And where is the sticky wicket here? The energy it takes to convert the biomass? I'm really sorry for my ignorance. Maybe some chemists or engineers here can explain.

[gizmo1979]

27. There are insects that produce hydrogen

and could be farmed through technology.

[cally]

28. Doesn't the H2O emissions contribute to global warming?

I haven't read the analysis recently, but I seem to remember that hydrogen burning contributes to global warming. Hydrogen seemed like a good idea when we concerned primarily with air pollution but makes no sense with current knowledge.

[cally]

32. I'm wrong...Here's some great info about the potential for hydrogen

The problem is that most of this cannot be implemented in the immediate future. We need to go to hybrids immediately and think about hydrogen long term.

"America cannot afford to wait 20 years before we begin to curb our oil dependence and global warming pollution. President Bush touts hydrogen R&D programs with attractive names -- "Freedom Car" and "Freedom Fuel" -- but these have only long-term pay-off. At the same time, his administration opposes meaningful efforts to reduce oil dependence, air pollution, and global warming now with strong federal performance standards to raise the fuel economy and reduce the global warming pollution of the 17 million conventional cars and trucks that will be sold each year for the next 20 years. In fact, the administration just recently extended alternative fuel mileage credits that actually have the affect of increasing petroleum consumption and more then offsetting the modest 1.5 mpg increase in light truck fuel economy that the administration recently adopted.4

...

It really matters, however, where the hydrogen comes from. It can be produced from a wide variety of sources: fossil fuels, biomass, or electrolysis of water, where the electricity used for electrolysis can also be generated from a range of sources. One of hydrogen's primary advantages is that it can be produced from a diverse number of entirely domestic and renewable sources. Hydrogen can increase our energy security if it is made from the former. It can improve our environment if it is made from the latter (e.g., biofuels or electrolysis powered by wind or solar electricity) or if the carbon pollution from fossil fuel sources is successfully pumped back underground for permanent storage.

It also matters how hydrogen is used, whether in fuel cells or conventional internal combustion engines. Fuel cells are inherently more efficient then gasoline engines. They convert hydrogen to electricity efficiently and without high temperature combustion, through a chemical reaction, much as a standard battery does. In this reaction, the hydrogen fuel reacts with oxygen from air to produce electricity, and the only emission from the vehicle is water vapor. There is no smog-forming or global warming pollution from the vehicle."

NRDC

[AlienGirl]

34. "...and always will be."

[VTMechEngr]

36. Hydrogen has many problems - and Engineering challenges.

Hydrogen is the least dense material on the planet. Storage is one major issue. A kilogram (~2.2 lbs) of H2 contains the same energy as a gallon of gas. To a non-science guy that may sound like a great thing. However, to have a kilogram of H2, you'd need 10 (assuming standard size) of those propane tanks you use for your grill. 10 tanks = 1 gallon of gasoline!

Hydrogen is also very destructive to steel. A standard fastener tightened to the usual 2/3 Yield strength can break neatly in half from brittle failure after exposure to a high concentration of H2. This effect is more terrifying in that the fastener falure is delayed and can happen long after the H2 is gone. This is known as Hydrogen Embrittlement.

Unlike Methane, CH4, Hydrogen poses a threat to the very pipes that would carry it.