Hydrogen! It’s the obvious and perfect answer to global warming caused by human CO2 emissions. Instead of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) we can leave out the carbon part, burn just the hydrogen, and emit nothing but pure water vapor. H2 + O = H2O! Thus, no more CO2 emissions . Why didn’t anyone think of this before now?
Actually, the geniuses are way ahead of you on this one. President George W. Bush was touting the coming “hydrogen economy” as far back as 2003. (“In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush launched his Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to work in partnership with the private sector to accelerate the research and development required for a hydrogen economy.”). Barack Obama was not one to get left behind on an issue like this. In the run-up to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 Obama’s Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced, “[F]uel cell technologies [i.e., hydrogen-fueled motors] are paving the way to competitiveness in the global clean energy market and to new jobs and business creation across the country.” Then there’s the biggest hydrogen enthusiast of all, PM Boris Johnson of the UK, who promises that his country is at the dawn of the “hydrogen economy.” (“Towards the end of 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson released details of a 10-point plan for a so-called ‘green industrial revolution.’. . . This year will also see the government publish a Hydrogen Strategy that will “outline plans” to develop a hydrogen economy in the U.K.”)
And let us not forget California. If you look at my post from two days ago about California’s plans for “zero carbon” electricity, you will find a chart showing that by 2045 they plan to have some 40 GW of what they call “Zero Carbon Firm” resources. What does that mean? In the print below the chart, they reveal it: “hydrogen fuel cells.” (Their current amount of hydrogen fuel cells contributing to the grid is 0.)
So basically, hydrogen is the perfect answer to our problems, right? Wrong. Only an idiot could think that hydrogen offers any material useful contribution to the world’s energy supply.
For much of the information that follows, I’ll be relying on a June 6, 2020 Report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by John Constable. However, and not to downplay Mr. Constable’s excellent Report in any way, but I made many of the same points in one of the very first posts on this blog in November 2012, titled “The Hydrogen Economy.” That post was based mostly on my layman’s understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Really, that’s all you need to know to realize that hydrogen as a major source of energy for the economy doesn’t make any sense at all.
So what is the fundamental flaw in the idea of a hydrogen-based energy economy? Constable puts it this way: “Being highly reactive, elemental hydrogen, H2, is found in only small quantities in nature on the earth’s surface but is present in a very wide range of compounds.” In other words, the hydrogen is not free for the taking, but rather is already combined with something else; and to separate the hydrogen so that you have free hydrogen to use, you need to add energy. Once you have added the energy and you have the free hydrogen, you can burn it. But that’s where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes in. Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up. No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.
Do you think somebody in our political leadership or bureaucracies might understand this? Don’t count on it.
Constable then goes into much more detail, and the deeper he gets into it the more ridiculous the hydrogen project looks. Since essentially all of the hydrogen starts out combined with something, where might you look to find a source of large quantities of hydrogen? Constable: “[T]he sources are few in number, being limited to either water, fossil hydrocarbons or biomass.”
The bond of hydrogen and oxygen in water is a high-energy thing that therefore takes a lot of energy to undo. So let’s consider getting the hydrogen from natural gas. Indeed, that is the main source today of substantial quantities of pure hydrogen for industrial purposes. Constable describes a well-established process called “steam methane reformation” (SMR) by which steam is passed through natural gas (methane, or CH4). The bond is broken and the hydrogen breaks free. Voila! Oh, but what happens to the carbon? Why obviously, it is released also, and thereupon combines with oxygen from the air forming CO2.
Wait a minute! The whole idea behind undertaking this expensive process was to avoid the release of the CO2. So clearly, we need another step. In the British proposal to create the “hydrogen economy,” they have had to include the addition of processes for “carbon capture and storage” to capture the CO2 before it gets away and prevent it getting into the atmosphere. Except that they haven’t figured out how to capture it all. They are hoping for capture rates of maybe 85 – 90%. So it turns out that this process, for all its additional costs, is not emissions-free at all.
And then there’s the next obvious question: Why not just burn the natural gas? Instead of having to input energy in the “steam reformation” process, this way you will release a large amount of useable and useful energy when the carbon gets burned. And as to CO2, you get the exact same amount. If you have a fetish that the CO2 must be captured, you can try to capture it from this process instead of from the “steam reformation” process. Again, you will not get 100%, but it’s really no different.
Except for the optics. In the first scenario, you claim you are burning “clean, pure hydrogen.” In the second scenario, you are burning natural gas, just as we have been doing for decades. Can people really be fooled by this?
This is not a useful post as it provides no actual information to justify the position that hydrogen is not a useable fuel. The problem of using hydrogen as a transportation fuel is not so much a question of technical feasibility as it is economics. Fuel cell powered vehicles are a proven technology. Fuel cell powered vehicles have major advantages over pure electric vehicles in that they have better range and much faster refueling. A major obstacle to using hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is the lack of infrastructure. Of course, we didn’t start out with all the infrastructure we now have for gasoline and diesel. It can be built, but it will take a very, very long time. It will also take a long time to convert the vehicle fleet. So there is a huge cost, and it takes forever, but it could happen. The other big problem is simply the cost to make the hydrogen, which can be produced electrolytically, with solar power being the obvious choice (making it from natural gas makes no sense since the natural gas can be burned directly and it accomplishes nothing as far as reducing CO2 emissions, if that is important- not saying it, but that’s why the interest in hydrogen). The DOE estimates that in order for hydrogen to be economic as a vehicle fuel, the cost of electricity needs to be at about $0.03 per Kw-Hr. For solar, the energy cost is essentially zero, but even if conversion of solar energy to hydrogen were 100% efficient, the capital and operating cost still puts the cost of electricity from solar out of reach for it to be an economic source of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel. In addition to the solar collectors, you need the electrolyzer equipment along with some hydrogen compression and distribution system (pipelines). Some have suggested that hydrogen pipelines are impossible because of metallurgical limitations, but this is nonsense. Better electrolyzer technology is being developed, but the economics will always be challenging relative to fossil energy.
I have always said that the first step toward net zero has to be to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
Didn’t Japan already fool Australia into an arrangement were a fossil fuel plant in Australia would be used to make hydrogen to ship to Japan for fuel leaving Australia with carbon deficit and Japan with the virtue signaling hydrogen benefit?
So, I guess, yes, the elite can be this easily fooled.
Read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232983331_The_Future_of_the_Hydrogen_Economy_Bright_or_Bleak and you will have a clear understanding of the problems of using Hydrogen as energy in an economy. It simply will not work.
Apparently presidents and prime ministers at least. It is the “idiots’ answer” after all.
Producing Hydrogen by water electrolysis requires very pure water you cannot produce but only through bidistillation: First energy loss.
Then electrolyzing water is a second energy loss since the hydrogen yield is 60 p.c. when compared with the electricity input in the electrolyzer.
To make the hydrogen easier to handle you have to compress it at very high pressures circa 800 Bars. Everybody knows that gas compression is another energy waste producing amounts of non usable heat: Third energy loss. In addition compressed hydrogen makes metallic H.P. cylinders becoming frail and dangerous. But that’s another story…
Last but not least: Transforming hydrogen into electricity in fuel cells to feed the vehicle’s motor has a 60 p.c. yield: Fourth energy loss, though the heat exhaust may be used sometimes to heat the vehicle during cold times.
Now everyone may easily understand why an electric with a Li/Ion rechargeable battery (90% p.c. yield) wastes much lesser amounts of energy than Hydrogen powered ones.
THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY WILL BE HIGHLY UNLIKELY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hydrogen-economy
EXCERPT
As part of the quest of having energy sources that produce near-zero CO2 emissions, energy systems analysts have looked at hydrogen as one such source. They see hydrogen as a possible fuel for transportation.
In California, the hydrogen economy movement has received support, in the form of subsidies and demonstration projects, from the state government and environmental groups, often supported and financed by prominent Hollywood actors.
Current Hydrogen Production: Hydrogen is used by the chemical, oil and gas industries for many purposes. The US produces about 11 million short tons/y, or 19958 million kg/y.
At present, about 95% of the H2 production is by the steam reforming process using fossil fuels as feedstock, mostly low-cost natural gas. This process emits CO2.
Hydrogen for Transportation: Proponents of H2-powered fuel cell vehicles, FCVs, in California think the hydrogen economy will be the future and a good place to start to reduce CO2 emissions from internal combustion vehicles, ICVs, would be to have near-zero-emission vehicles.
Here are examples comparing the fuel cost/mile of an FC light duty vehicle, an E10-gasohol IC vehicle, and an EV:
– Honda Clarity-FCX, using electrolytic H2 in a fuel cell, mileage about 68 mile/kg, or 14.8 c/mile, at a price of $10/kg at a fueling station in California. About $7/kg is electricity cost, and $3/kg is station cost. The H2 is not taxed. The average commercial electricity rate in California is 13.41c/kWh, which ranks 7th in the nation and is 32.9% greater than the national average rate of 10.09 c/kWh.
http://www.airproducts.com/Company/news-center/2017/03/0306-air-products-california-fueling-stations-offering-hydrogen-below-$10-per-kilogram.aspx
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/california/los-angeles/
– Honda Accord-LX, using E10-gasohol, mileage about 30 mile/gal, or 8.3 c/mile, at a price of $2.50/gal at a gas station in California; this price includes taxes, surcharges and fees.
– Tesla Model S, using 0.38 kWh/mile, includes charging and vampire losses of batteries, at user meter, or 7.6 c/mile, at a price of 20 c/kWh at user meter; this price includes taxes, surcharges and fees.
Have understood everything mentioned in this article for years, however there is one process in Mother Nature that splits the water molecule all the time, phtotosynthesis. I know there is much research in this area, we can only hope
To answer the final question: yes. After more than a year of COVID mask silliness, we know people can be fooled by anything.
If math is racist, physics must be too. How else can you explain its adamant refusal to progressive climate dogma.
The only argument for the use of hydrogen (if there is one) would involve its use as a means of storing energy from surplus electricity, such at that produced by nuclear plants (which are hard to shut down) during slow demand periods or from nuclear plants that could be cheaply placed away from populated areas, where the approval process that can multiply costs would be a lot less onerous. I’d like to see nuclear submarines (which, having an unlimited supply of cooling water and being portable, could have a huge advantage over land-based nuke plants) with much larger reactors in place of the usual crew and weaponry, being offered to any customer who could run the necessary cables. Then any excess capacity could be used to generate hydrogen. But, perhaps more importantly, any process that generates hydrogen could generate methanol, which wouldn’t require pressurized or super-insulated storage. So would nuclear-generated hydrogen or methanol be the “solution to global warming”? Of course not; no one technology will meet the needs of everyone. But it might be a useful addition to the array of sources and methods we already have.
You’re kind of missing the point here. Using hydrogen has the same effect as electric cars. The idea is to shift the pollution away from rich city dwellers to poorer people in more rural areas or hopefully, red china. Thus the hydrogen car, like the electric car, doesn’t pollute – for them.
Meanwhile the people living near the power plants get it.
Strange that your post appeared here along with your claim of being “officially banned”.
There is no need, or benefit, for me to respond to the rest of your inane musings.
When people want to be fooled, it usually is not hard to do so. In fact they will assume most of the work for you.
For someone who’s officially banned, you are still quite annoying.
Oh, BULL SHIT! Prove me wrong, Mark!
Steel production should become climate-friendly – and the solution is hydrogen. At the manufacturer Georgsmarienhütte, however, one wonders where the gas is actually supposed to come from.
Steel stoves lack green hydrogen
The problems the greens have don’t get as far as The Second Law.
They don’t even get The First Law: There is no free lunch.
I still think hydrogen could be useful. Not as an energy distribution system, but as a large scale local storage mechanism when electricity prices are consistently low enough to overcome the inefficiencies of electrolytic hydrogen generation.
All roads still point to nuclear power.
I spent much of my 40 year career working on solar hydrogen, including my PhD thesis in the 1970s. I am here to tell you these morons pushing the hydrogen economy don’t even have a clue.
Late in my career at a major national laboratory, I taught a course on hydrogen. I started out stating that the hydrogen economy is stupid, impractical, crazy, moronic, etc. – but some day will become essential. My point was that using hydrogen as a fuel makes no sense. It is hard to handle, ship, and store and that fossil fuels such as gasoline are hard to beat. I would state that there is a tremendous amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline and that if they did not believe me to try pushing their SUV 20 miles! I liked to point out that if we ever come up with a cost-effective way of producing solar (or nuclear) hydrogen the first thing to do was to ship it to the gulf coast to hydrogenate heavy crude.
However, eventually our fossil fuel resources will run out. It may be 100, 200, 500 or even a 1000 years, or more, but it will eventually become scarce. When that happens producing hydrogen from water (or CO from CO2) with persistent energy sources such as solar (gravitationally confined fusion) or nuclear will be needed to produce synthetic hydrocarbon fuels.
There are things we could start doing now to introduce hydrogen into the fuel mix, namely steam or CO2 reforming of natural gas using solar or nuclear thermal input, The resulting syngas mixture of CO and H2 has a heating value that incorporates the thermal input. The product syngas heating value is increased by up to 25% to 30%, depending on whether it steam or CO2 reforming, respectfully. As I recall this become economically viable with natural gas prices at above $6/MMBTU or so. Of course, because this is not pure renewable hydrogen, it is not supported and is even fought tooth-and-nail by zealots.
BTW, I studied heat transfer for my masters and PhD and routinely applied it throughout my career. After retiring I looked at global warming theory and found it terribly flawed. There is NO CLIMATE CRISIS. Mankind has plenty of time to figure this out.
Because of the amount of energy it takes to produce, store, and transport hydrogen I can tell you the exact date when it will be practical as transportation fuel- the 12th of Never.
A reasonably priced, mass produced fuel cell that ran on gasoline would quickly replace battery and generator technology around the world.
Lipo batteries store a pitiful amount of energy for their cost and size. This makes fossil fuels very attractive because they hold a huge amount of energy for their cost and size.
Imagine a small low cost fuel cell that could convert a gallon of gasoline to electricity with 90% efficiency. The internal combustion engine would be dead overnight.
Please, please, go away.
That is the last time I will ever interact with you.
A very smart and accomplished engineer I know wants desperately to get in to the hydrogen technology sector, not because he thinks there is any value in it to society, but because he knows our government and the voters are so stupid and/or malicious that they are likely to pour money into this till long after he retires. They won’t know how ridiculous it is till it runs up and bites them all on the afterparts.
Hydrogen causes cancer. There is not one instance of a cancer cell anywhere in the world where hydrogen is not found.
Your writing is becoming even sloppier as your ideas grow more absurd. You haven’t been banned, Skippy … just caged and sidelined like a circus freak. You’re now here just for our amusement.