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53 comments on Liberal markets create an addiction to gas - the Oil Drum in the Financial Times

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Hothgor on February 2, 2007 - 3:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thank you for the kind words.

I don't see hydrogen used for transportation in anything but mass transit. Hydrogen, even when pressurized, takes up far to much area to be practically used in a passenger car. Buses on the other hand are more then large enough for hydrogen fuel cell setups.

That being said, in this setup, Hydrogen will not be directly used for transportation. Its only uses are for a hydrogen gas fired power plant for peak energy output, the creation of ammonia fertilizers and the upgrading of very heavy hydrocarbons that currently use NG to enhance them.

And as I already mentioned, using hydrogen in this manner virtually eliminates the carbon emissions associated with energy production.

But as I said, can you burn hydrogen in power plants in place of NG?

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treeman on February 2, 2007 - 5:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hothgor, Yes you can burn hydrogen to make electricity in turbines or ICE's. Combined cycle would probably get you up to 55% efficiency. But clean Hydrogen from electrolysis, as you suggest from nuclear plants, would be best used in fuel cells with higher efficiencies. The waste heat could drive the Haber Bosch process to make ammonia, which by the way is a very effective scrubber of fossil fuel exhaust from generating plants or cars.

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Hothgor on February 2, 2007 - 11:39am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The only fuel cell that I know of that doesn't use a platinum catalyst uses a sodium borohydride solution. All other fuel cells are grossly expensive and will never be adopted in any transportation vehicle outside of mass transit. I already mentioned the ammonia creation as a by product of this process, and we won't need the hydrogen to scrub fossil fuel exhaust if we adopted this scheme.

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