Future of Hydrogen

[matrixscarface]

What are your own thought of an hydrogen ecomony? likely? all B.S. what do you think?

[infamous]

What are your own thought of an hydrogen ecomony? likely? all B.S. what do you think?

If science can find an economical method to break down sea water into it's constituents, Hydrogen and Oxygen, the future of Hydrogen is very bright. Hydrogen fuel cell efficiency improvements are being developed as we speak. When and if cheaper supplies of Hydrogen thru the process of electrolysis become available, the future of Hydrogen will shine like the sun..................Infy

[cwes99_03]

Let me just ask the "original" question.

 

In order to break a water molecule apart into H2 and 02, electrolysis is used and an amount of energy equal to or greater than the energy output of the recombination of the two is required to do so.

 

This energy must come from some sort of other fuel (solar, wind, hydro-electric, fossil fuels such as coal, or biomass.) Why waste so much energy in dividing water into two gases so that when they recombine they give a smaller amount of energy back. Why not just find another way to use the original source of energy? Reasons so far, wind and hydro-electric are out because you can't take it with you. Solar can't provide enough energy right now to fill the demands of the american populace, and it is too dependent on the weather, no coal burning engine is small enough, and it takes too much time (as the technology is still old) to get the fire up to a point where it is functional, besides the fact that you'd have to take a lot along with you.

 

Biomass seems along the same lines as coal, it is still highly inefficient and exudes pollutants in the form of ashes and gasses.

 

Biodiesel and ethanol seem th emost likely solution right now instead of hydrogen fuel cell. Reasons: technology already exists. Infrastructure already exists. US is #1 producer of these goods already. It isn't hard to convert engines over to ethanol or biodiesel.

 

Then to reduce emissions we need to simply find a better battery (with almost no hysterisis) to last at least 20 years (the average life of a car in the US) so that truly electric cars can be used. These you would simply plug in at night and then all the above can provide the eltricity with no loss due to splitting some water molecules apart.

[P-man]

cwes99_03 says a lot about what is good for the U.S. but not much about the rest of the world. Why does every thing revolve around what the U.S. has or does? Why can't we talk about Iceland, that small island in the middle of the north Atlantic ocean on the brink of a hydrogen economy? If they succeed (and the stats are looking extremely good), more countries will follow. I must say, the future of hydrogen and fuel cells looks extremely positive. If the U.S. wants to keep on burning fossil fuels, then so be it. If the rest of the world shifts, however, the U.S. might be, well, not quite as well off.

[matrixscarface]

cwes99_03 says a lot about what is good for the U.S. but not much about the rest of the world. Why does every thing revolve around what the U.S. has or does? Why can't we talk about Iceland, that small island in the middle of the north Atlantic ocean on the brink of a hydrogen economy? If they succeed (and the stats are looking extremely good), more countries will follow. I must say, the future of hydrogen and fuel cells looks extremely positive. If the U.S. wants to keep on burning fossil fuels, then so be it. If the rest of the world shifts, however, the U.S. might be, well, not quite as well off.

 

he is right.. the rest of the world also has to be counted.. and america or anybody else can't burn fossil fuels anymore.. they really have no choice since oil is almost gone and because of the ice melting there is alot of extra water... if fact now.. more than ever.. we need to stop.. hydrogen is the future.. im gambling the rest of my life on it.

[engware]

Hi guys:

 

I would like to point that by using renewable energy coupled up with hydrogen generation and having hydrogen powered fuel cells in wireless on the move applications (wireless laptops, mobile phones, etc.) should get going the hydrogen economy.

 

Yes, there are many obstacles, but this should be the way to go ...

 

Hydrogen era looks good and it is coming in the near future ...

 

Thanks,

 

Gordan

[Racoon]

The Problem with hydrogen is its explosive capability coupled with inventing a feasible storage, refueling, and transportation system/network ...:confused: The investment costs would be astronomical!

 

Bio-diesel seems more plausible and practical until a true Space Age occurs.:Waldo:

[arkain101]

The trick might lie in turning water into hydrogen and oxygen instaniously as a fuel. Water turned into a plasma spray which is electrified or maybe some magnetic fields.. and make a hydrogen turbine deal. The efficiencies would be all wrong there.

 

But if water could be sprayed into a high voltage electric current and instantly seperate then ignite, then combine, then seperate, in a hot enviroment to use in the engine. Instead of slowly making a big stockpile and then transfering it to your vehicle. that would be good.

[HydrogenBond]

Hydrogen can be stored within solids such as LiH. Maybe a sci-fi way would be to use some type of photsynthesis algae that makes hydrogen as a product. Right now, all plants use solar energu to make reduced carbon C-H bonds, which are not too far in energy from H-H bonds. We would need to alter the genes to make special proteins for this function.

[hallenrm]

:hihi:

Hydrogen can be stored within solids such as LiH. Maybe a sci-fi way would be to use some type of photsynthesis algae that makes hydrogen as a product. Right now, all plants use solar energu to make reduced carbon C-H bonds, which are not too far in energy from H-H bonds. We would need to alter the genes to make special proteins for this function.

 

My thoughts about this subject almost concide with those of Hydrogenbond. The future lies in finding means to safely package hydrogen for transportation and distribution. The main obstacle now is the technology to conveniently package hydrogen by some other means other than in cylinders. An idea that has often occured to me is by absoption, like on palladium. Once such a method is invented, the means to produce hydrogen by means other than electrolysis will not be too difficult to invent.

 

I forsee such technology within next two decades;) .

[cwes99_03]

The solid state storage and algae ideas are already being used. I don't have the data, but I was watching a PBS show about 6 months ago, comentated by Alan Alda on the subject.

The reason I spoke about the US is because I live in the US. You might think that other economies can do it, and maybe certain ones can (like Iceland, where they have other raw material concerns and abilities, and they have already installed a couple of Hydrogen refueling centers.) It is simply not a feasible method to be used in the US without some major changes. Based on my dealings with other scientists from Argonne National Lab and whatnot, they have turned their attention away from fuel cells largely, for studies in other methods.

The most renewable resource in the US and many other industrialized nations is ethanol and soy-oil. Not only will these two things boost the American economy, they will reduce the small dependency we have on foreign oil, but also the dependency we have on domestic oil (I've read that something like 75% of the oil we consume is American, but that American oil costs as much as foreign because they are greedy SOBs.)

I just forsee a much stronger push for these types of technologies rather than wasteful creation of hydrogen (as I pointed out the sheer amount of energy needed to create the bottled type of hydrogen for use in fuel cells requires obscene amounts of coal or nuclear power to supply the driving demands of the US.)

[CraigD]

Based on my dealings with other scientists from Argonne National Lab and whatnot, they have turned their attention away from fuel cells largely, for studies in other methods.

I get the same impression from reading the popular literature.

 

I think the reason practical technologists are disillusioned with fuel cells is that, after a decade of promising prospects and disappointments, manufacturing cost is still prohibitively high – from US$5 to $1 /watt. Even using a good power assist system like Toyota’s Synergy Hybrid, a US passenger vehicle needs about a 45 kw powerplant, increasing the most optimistic estimate of total manufacturing cost of a fuel cell vs. conventional hybrid engine car from $5,000 to $55,000, retail from $20,000 to $70,000. Even with good advertising, generous government incentives, and customer friendly hydrogen distribution, it’s hard to sell a lot of $70,000 Priuses!

 

It would help if fuel cells could be very long lived, allowing them to be transferred whole from old vehicles into new ones, but they remain practically very sensitive to “poisoning” by C02 and other hard-to-avoid contaminants, resulting in life expectancies under 10 years. As the major reason for what reduction in manufacturing costs have been achieved is reducing the amount of expensive, but relatively easily recyclable platinum in the cell, the value that can be recovered through teardown and recycling has become smaller.

 

Not an encouraging picture.

 

I find myself hoping for a “big breakthrough” – eg: cheap PEM fuel cells that can be made of undoped silicon using computer chip manufacturing technology – but I’ve been waiting, following the promising progress of some very bright people, and being disappointed, for about 10 years.

The most renewable resource in the US and many other industrialized nations is ethanol and soy-oil.

…

I just forsee a much stronger push for these types of technologies rather than wasteful creation of hydrogen (as I pointed out the sheer amount of energy needed to create the bottled type of hydrogen for use in fuel cells requires obscene amounts of coal or nuclear power to supply the driving demands of the US.)

Somewhere in the many posts of the legendary Uncle Al are several references to the energy cost of the various bio-fuels. An unhappy truth appears to be that many or most of them require as much or more energy to refine into fuel as the fuel produces, making them as bad a hydrogen for consuming power from conventional sources.

 

I don’t like sounding like a prophet of gloom and doom, and am an enthusiastic supporter of alternate fuels, so here’s my happy ( :) ) thought (be warned that I’m a simpleton when it comes to chemistry):

The cars we have now work quite well burning refined petroleum.

Refined petroleum is just hydrogen and carbon – in essence, a hydrogen storage medium.

Carbon is not rare, nor hydrogen, if one has plenty of energy to separate it from oxygen.

Until the engineering issues around fuel cells can be resolved, is it not possible to have the future of hydrogen consist of using it to create refined petroleum :hihi:

[cwes99_03]

Somewhere in the many posts of the legendary Uncle Al are several references to the energy cost of the various bio-fuels. An unhappy truth appears to be that many or most of them require as much or more energy to refine into fuel as the fuel produces, making them as bad a hydrogen for consuming power from conventional sources.

 

I don’t like sounding like a prophet of gloom and doom, and am an enthusiastic supporter of alternate fuels, so here’s my happy ( :) ) thought (be warned that I’m a simpleton when it comes to chemistry):

The cars we have now work quite well burning refined petroleum.

Refined petroleum is just hydrogen and carbon – in essence, a hydrogen storage medium.

Carbon is not rare, nor hydrogen, if one has plenty of energy to separate it from oxygen.

Until the engineering issues around fuel cells can be resolved, is it not possible to have the future of hydrogen consist of using it to create refined petroleum :hihi:

 

I remember reading those posts as well and remember why they were good, and yet naive.

The costs he was calculating included the cost of production of the crops themselves. The reason we can ignore these costs, is that these crops are going to be produced one way or another. Farmers absorb these costs with or without industries to convert their crops into fuel for automobiles. That reduces the cost of producing ethanol (according to his posts) by more than 75%. Additionally, the same costs for refining ethanol exist in refining oil. No new cost there, means that producing ethanol uses less energy than producing petrol based gasoline.

Many people will argue that if we start to use these resources, that farmers will have to produce more, thus leading to new energy usage by farms. Simple fact, 1) we already overproduce millions of bushels every year, and 2) there isn't enough land sitting unused to support that kind of a thought. Sure technology will catch up with the new demand and we'll start growing 250-300 BPA corn and 150 BPA soybeans, but on the same land with the same equipment using the same energy as now when we harvest 180 BPA corn and 70 BPA beans. What about wheat or rice? These too can be used. Science can look into that. China produces so much rice that it could probably make up for it's needs with rice based ethanol concoctions.