See other Science/Tech Articles
Title: Hydrogen: More polluting than petroleum?
Source:
C|Net Green Tech Blog
URL Source: http://news.com.com/2061-11128_3-6172950.html
Published: Apr 3, 2007
Author: Michael Kanellos
Post Date: 2007-04-03 22:11:32 by mirage
Keywords: None
Views: 119
Comments: 7
Once touted as the clean wonder fuel of the future, hydrogen fuel cells for cars or homes are now routinely panned as inefficient and impractical, particularly when compared to technologies like electric cars or solar thermal water heaters. Joseph Romm, a physicist, author of, among other books, Hell and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and the Politics--or Hydrogen and editor of the respected ClimateProgress, also points out that the gas can be worse for the atmosphere than regular gas, depending on the circumstances. Hydrogen burns clean out of the car's tailpipe, but producing hydrogen at a factory generates significant amount of CO2. The standard hydrogen process involves mixing methane with water at 815 degrees Celsius. It takes about a megawatt-hour worth of electricity to produce enough hydrogen to drive a fuel cell car 1,000 miles. If the electricity came from a coal-burning power plant, it would generate about 2,100 pounds of carbon dioxide, according to Romm's calculations. By contrast, a gas-powered car that gets about 40 miles per gallon would produce 485 pounds of CO2, or less than a quarter. (The MIT Technology Review does an extended analysis of the book..) Of course, different variable will impact the results, but none really upend his argument. Here are some hypothetical options. You could get electric power from a plant running on hydroelectric or solar power. Coal fired plants, however, produce a substantial amount of the electricity in the U.S. ( Coal produces 23 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S.--it's bested only by oil at 40 percent, according to stats from the National Renewable Energy Lab.). Therefore, on average, a hydrogen car would likely result in more CO2 than a standard car. Hydrogen can also be produced at nuclear power plants or through biological or chemical reactions. These methods would short-circuit coal, but neither are considered practical or economical alternatives for mass production at the moment. Similarly, solar-powered stations for splitting water into hydrogen and water via electroalysis wouldn't pollute, but they also don't exist. To top it off, the conventional hydrogen generating techniques produce lots of CO2 independent of the CO2 produced by the coal: for every kilogram of hydrogen, 9.3 kilograms of CO2 are produced. Hydrogen backers, though, assert that many of these problems can be ameliorated through better, non-coal-burning electrical plants. Unlike gas cars, hydrogen cars belch out their CO2 at the factory, so the gas could be stored underground someday. Sequestration experiments are just getting underway. So it's not completely dead, but the arguments against it are getting stronger. Municipalities are tinkering with the idea of deploying hydrogen cars as fleet cars, which never have to travel too far from a central filling station. These trials could become a big indicator if hydrogen has much of a chance in the coming decades. Of course, this doesn't mean other alt fuel vehicles won't make it. There's a lot of work going on in biofuels and batteries and even hydrogen hybrids.
Poster Comment: Everyone forgets about "pollution transfer" when talking about hydrogen....
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: mirage (#0)
That's because the hydrogen Fairy sprinkles them with magic dust...
"pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels – bring home for Emma"
Know the article is about transportation, but a well insulated house can save vast amounts of energy, and few are so well equiped to do so as a straw bale based house, as Yertle Turtle posted several weeks ago. From an engineering standpoint, most houses are built as radiators of heat, standing, mainly, upright into the winds and weather. As the builders will never pay the heating and cooling bills, they have no incentive to insulate well. And the insulation they do use is factory formed Tyvex and fiberglass batting, fabricated from far away, using more petrochems just to get to the site. Yet excellent insulation is usually available in the form of strawbales and dirt from the job site , as per "earth ships". Enough of this rant - TaTa (TTM) Industries, from India, has announced it is committed to manufacture a $2500 four pass car, cutting the lowest priced econ o car by 75%. They claim the demographics are compelling for the vehicle, and are the largest, o close to that, conglomerate in India. I have about $12,000 invested in it and am looking to forget about it for four or five years. They are the builder of many (most?) trucks and buses serving India's One Billion people.
Does this mean I should or shouldn't replace my home's automatic stoker?
Alan Bernstein had warned him. In the fall of 2000, the president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research heard Dr. Collins speak at Harvard about there being no significant differences between races. “That's going to come back at you,” he said.
Go ahead, but make sure you are going with nuclear.
Press 1 to proceed in English. Press 2 for Deportation.
There is the alternative energy people that claim there's a way to crack water into O2 and H gas in an overunity fashion with electric current at particular frequencies. If true it would, of course, solve all kinds of problems.
If that can be utilized on a large scale, it would solve the pollution problem but would not solve the storage or transmission problems. Hydrogen cannot be shipped via pipeline currently and storage is an issue because if there is a leak, it will find the leak due to the small size of the molecule. Its a great idea, but still decades away from the ability to use on a large scale if it ever gets there. My data is based on *current* knowledge, not future or "in the pipeline" stuff. Pointers to breakthroughs are always welcome.
Press 1 to proceed in English. Press 2 for Deportation.
Given the alleged technology, hydrogen transmission storage is not a problem because it's produced as needed where it's needed. Cars, for example, would take water as "fuel" (but not really fuel as it's not consumed) and split the H2O into H and O2 using special frequency electric current, then recombine them (burn) which, supposedly, gives off more energy than was used to split the molecule. Hense, an over unity / perpetual motion engine is/would be possible, if true. Obviously such a concept violates the current laws of conservation of energy, unless there is something different going on we don't yet appreciate, like possibly cold fusion in the water spliting process OR something about our universe which is very misunderstood, like an extra dimensional source of power which the water splitting taps into. But because it goes against conventional science little seriousness is paid by the science community into this alleged power source. On that note, Nikoli Tesla comes to mind, a genious so far ahead of his time he was ridiculed in spite of his many inventions so there is a precedent for blatent close-mindedness in the science community. You can check youtube for "water car" and "zero point energy" and find some very interesting things. I posted a few threads here.
Everyone forgets about "pollution transfer" when talking about hydrogen....
#2. To: mirage, yertule turtle (#0)
#3. To: mirage (#0)
#4. To: Tauzero (#3)
Does this mean I should or shouldn't replace my home's automatic stoker?
#5. To: mirage (#0)
Everyone forgets about "pollution transfer" when talking about hydrogen....
#6. To: Neil McIver (#5)
#7. To: mirage (#6)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest