H2CAR: Another blind alley
Posted by Engineer-Poet on March 27, 2007 - 10:22am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: biomass, H2CAR, hybrids, hydrogen, PHEV [list all tags]
One of my repeated criticisms of the current US administration1 is that it is dishonestly opposed to real alternatives to petroleum (and fossil fuels in general), and acts to obstruct those alternatives outside the public eye rather than having a fair and public appraisal. Some of this obstruction is more or less direct (cancelling a domestic hybrid-car program set to deliver product in the 2007 timeframe and also suitable for PHEV modification, and replacing it with a program of dubious feasibility and a very long time horizon), but some of it is more subtle, taking the form of misdirection.
This misdirection is evident in the shameless promotion of unready and perhaps impossible fixes, such as:
- Cellulosic ethanol.
- Oil from ANWR (at best, a fraction of what we could save with better CAFE or just plain price-driven demand destruction), and last but not least,
- Hy(pe)drogen.
An ambiguous entry from Purdue
In this climate of disinformation comes a paper from Purdue, titled Sustainable fuel for the transportation sector. The premise is rather simple: US production of biomass contains sufficient carbon to replace all our transportation fuel, but barely enough energy; a lot of that energy and a great deal of the carbon (roughly 2/3) is lost in the conversion to liquid fuels. The Purdue researchers propose to supply additional energy to the conversion process via hydrogen, allowing all of the carbon to be turned into motor fuel; they call this a Hybrid Hydrogen-CARbon process, or H2CAR. They mention certain advantages for H2CAR, such as compatibility with the existing fuel-distribution infrastructure. Presumably this will also save the Non-Negotiable American Way Of Life.
At a completely unaffordable price.
The cost of compatible renewability
In the H2CAR paper, figures such as 239 billion kg/year of hydrogen from 58,000 km2 of solar PV panels are tossed off rather casually. These numbers bear deeper analysis than they receive. For instance, 58,000 km2 of panels could be made by assembling an array of about 46 billion BP SX 170B PV panels (at roughly 1.26 m² each). At a future cost of $2/Wpeak, this array would cost about $15.7 trillion; today's cost would be closer to $40 trillion. Clearly we're not going to do this.
Another example of the disconnect between the researchers and reality is their proposed quantity and method of hydrogen production. Their most optimistic (smallest) quantity of hydrogen required is 239 billion kg/year (see Table 1), which they propose to produce from renewable electricity via electrolysis. The quantity of electricity required (at 100% efficiency, no less) is a staggering 9810 billion kWh/year2; this is nearly 2.5 times current annual US electric production. (Worse than that, it's roughly 6-10 times what it would take to power all ground transport directly with electricity3.) Even if produced from nuclear energy by a thermochemical process of 50% efficiency, this rate of hydrogen production would require nuclear plants equivalent to more than 8 times today's capacity4. This may be possible in the realm of physics and even engineering, but it's very doubtful that a sane and sober nation would even look at it twice.
Guessing at an unstated agenda
At the very end, the authors toss out a bone: hybrids, and especially plug-in hybrids, can slash the required production of liquid fuels and all the upstream items with it. This is a backhanded and very obscure way of acknowledging that the major problem to be overcome is not the essential energy requirements of ground transport, but the horrendously inefficient internal combustion engines we currently use for the job. (In so doing, they proved that Al Gore's much-ridiculed statement that the nation's #1 enemy is the internal combustion engine... is absolutely correct.) In short, they wrote a whole paper in order to address what they know is the wrong problem in a way which is far too expensive to be put into practice.
Why didn't they say so up front? I suppose it depends who is expected to grasp only the text, versus who is expected to read and understand the subtext.
- One possibility is that it was written to please the administration. A paper which is properly down on the non-solutions like hydrogen doesn't fit with the priorities of the political minders of the scientific process (e.g. NASA's erstwhile editor and head-of-Minitrue-wannabe, George Deutch). Had the researchers been working for e.g. NASA, this could have helped their chances of getting published without having conclusions re-written. However, as they are from Purdue and the NAS isn't a government organization, this seems unlikely.
- Could it be intended to mis-direct the old-school proponents of renewables? If so, it doesn't seem to be working. Making hydrocarbons for the same old engines will still dirty the air and contaminate water.
- The last possibility that occurs to me is that it was written to be gobbled up by the cornucopians and others on the political right. A straightforward paper wouldn't have received anything like the attention this one is getting from them. The surface conclusions are bait; the numerical data within is the poison. The numbers like 239 billion kg/yr say, in language too sophisticated to be seen on the political radar of the clueless, that the present course is untenable. Having flown past their intellectual defenses and into the embrace of their prejudices, these inconvenient truths are utterly devastating to the cornucopian position.
Maybe, just maybe, this will help slay one more of the non-options so we can get on with the things that might actually work.
[1] Some might consider this conspiracy-mongering, but in the light of the documented abuses and obsessive secrecy coming out even in the mainstream news media, the notion must be considered seriously. Besides, it is relatively safe to assume that a politician is lying if his lips are moving. (back)
[2] 2.39*1011 kg/yr * 500 mol/kg * 70600 cal/mol * 4.184 J/cal / 3.6*106 J/kWh = 9810 billion kWh/year, assuming 100% electrolyzer efficiency. At the authors' figure of 60%, this rises to 16.3 trillion kWh/year. (back)
[3] As of 2003, US energy consumption in road vehicles of all types was approximately 184 GW average, or 1610 billion kWh/year. This is about 1/6 the raw electric requirement to produce hydrogen under the Purdue scenario, or about 1/10 of what's required using 60%-efficient electrolyzers. (back)
[4] 9810 billion kWh/year * 2 / 8760 hr/yr = 2240 gigawatts thermal. Current US nuclear capacity is around 270 gigawatts thermal. (back)
I'm sorry about the broken footnote links, but something in TOD's default HTML setup is setting the base URL to the main page instead of the current page.
EDIT: SuperG fixed it, and all's well.
Another possibility. The scientists themselves are human and are themselves in denial and are unable to admit in print the fix we are in. It is kind of like going to a doctor and having him tell you that you have 4-6 months to live - how easy would it be to go out and tell others this grim news?
I think that most Americans would take a prescription to switch from gasoline to batteries a lot better than one to stop eating hamburgers and fries and live on salads instead. It's the oil companies (any change away from oil is painful) and auto companies (hurting no matter what) which have the troubles; the public doesn't care what makes the car go, just if they can get enough of it and what it costs.
Yes, it seems that whoever has the capital naturally wants the most profit possible from its use. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Somehow, the paradigm has to be changed. How to get the maximum possible benefit for the largest part of the entire world -- can't forget the plants and the animals we share it with, and totally depend upon for survival -- from capital, rather than the maximum narrowly-defined "profit" for a small group. But how to define the groups -- who profits? who pays?
So far in history all human systems have tended to collapse toward basic greed -- monarchist, free capitalist, socialist, caudillo, whatever. It takes a lot of energy to maintain complexity.
Probably in 100 years a tiny elite will be driving cars and the rest of the survivors of the great technological collapse will be cutting sugar cane for ethanol to power them. And the politicians and religicos will be justifying the god-blessed nature of the system, and the poets will still be busy questioning it all. But there won't be so many people, and the rivers might run clean again (if only seasonally, since the glaciers are all melted.)
This is a good place for history. Ford and Edison were to produce an electric vehicle, a century ago. Delays because Edison’s batteries suffered performance problems due to the cold were a problem, but loss of Edison’s labs were the clincher. Notice no one is saying firebombing in the following quote. Book is full of seldom heard history. Black favors a natural gas powered Honda as one solution to our dilemma; not a good idea really.
Based on what I've read about the history of electric cars and transportation in general -- it would appear that the fourth law of thermodynamics is that no mass produced transportation system will be allowed to run on anything other than liquid hydrocarbons.
I agree with you, of course.
But I think there is more to it than that. In Germany for example, there are no Big Oil lobbys obstructing alternative research but the car makers are still attached to hydrogen. They completely neglected the Hybrid/Electric car as much as the American car makers, and they have been playing with hydrogen for quite a long time. Daimler with fuel cells and BMW with direct Hydrogen combustion.
I think the problem runs deeper. PHEVs are technically ready, and should have been long ago. They can compete with the combustion engine as a useful car, but not as a 200PV monster. And that is what the car makers know how to sell. Look at their commercials. Car = Power, Freedom, Style... A car is a tool for God's sake, not an status symbol. That is what the car makers don't want to loose. Perfectly useful EV that top 80mph and 80kw is not a world they want to live in.
There is an old argument for the existence of God: Believe, because if you are right you get the benefit of heaven. If you are wrong, you will be dead anyway and won't care.
In the present case, the logical argument is: Believe that peak oil and global warming are a left-wing conspiracy. If you are right, we get to continue our comfortable lifestyle. If you are wrong, we are all condemned to a miserable, Orwellian existence no matter what we do.
Actually that argument isn't that old; it was first stated by Blaise Pascal [1623-1662].
E-P makes a very timely point, how interested is the U.S government in finding viable energy alternatives? If you look at research funding for NREL you get the answer. Ethanol is a trojan horse, this will never fuel the fleet, major conservation and efficiency measures are the only way forward.
Right, I'll start believing we're serious (or, we're a "sane and sober nation"--loved that qualifying line!) when we begin with the simplest, cheapest, easiest ways to conserve, starting with lowering the speed limits back to 55. Hmmm, haven't heard much talk about that one...
During the gas "crisis" of '67 and again in '73, I remember that the saving by driving at 55 mph was said to be around 5-10%. Proper tire inflation saves between 2-5% of fuel usage.
I would think that reducing the speed limits in normal commuting areas to 55 mph, and encouraging all gasoline retailers to have functioning air supply, to facilitate proper tire inflation would make for a potential gross saving of 5-10% fuel immediately.
In a related vein; people buy cars to meet most of their total needs. Which means the vehicles are generally too large for daily routine use.
What if car were made with a trailer hitch adapter already in the bumper? With my Jetta I know that that would meet just about 99% of my needs, if I can conveniently attach the trailer hitch and pull a small trailer, capacity no more than what two people can comfortably lift.
In some places, putting speed limits at 55, in real life would result in persistent traffic lockups (variance in speed would be even higher as fewer would obey and this causes perturbations and accidents), and cause lots of additional fuel use and frustration.
Cars (but not really trucks) are more aerodynamic than in 1975, and have more gears in transmissions. Efficiency gains might not be as big today.
It would be much better of course to reduce the silly high-frontal-area trucks used for commuting.
By the way, the auto makers and even car magazines rarely tell the whole story about "Cd" the coefficient of drag.
Of course, lower is better, but total drag equals Cd TIMES the frontal area. So even if a big Lexus can have an impressive Cd, it still means more drag than a Mini with a higher Cd number. I'd prefer a standardized drag number relative to a standard size frontal area.
When you think of it this way the Hummer is even worse.
Another proposal, and this would be easy. Have the 'trip computers' now nearly ubiquitous have an input for fuel costs. Then you could display, like a taxi-meter, running fuel cost for each tank. I think people would respond to real-life $ better for changing their driving habits.
So, mbkennel, your solution is no solution? The two ideas you presented are hi-tech nonsense, and wouldn't have an impact anyway.
The first step is lowering speed limits to forty and using draconian enforcement - 10 over = 1 month in a Mexican-style jail [provide your own bed and food]. The problem is very serious and pussy-footing won't solve it!
Solutions must also be politically and economically possible. If your solution were politically possible, demand would drop and gas would get cheap, then someone would use it. In the long run there is only one answer, energy must be more expensive. This will almost certainly happen.
I think that 55MPH is too slow. As stated above, today's cars are probably most efficient at higher speeds. My Prius has a sweet spot around 62MPH.
Rather than lower the speed limit we could simply enforce existing speed limits. Where the speed limit is usually 65MPH you mostly see people traveling well over 70MPH.
I also agree that simply adding a dash indicator showing current mileage would be a big help. I recently drove a loaner Lexus from the dealer that had this. I was stunned to see it drop to under 3MPG as I drove up hill on the freeway.
Almost everyone who drives a Prius or Insight knows the fun of trying to maximize one's mileage.
The "double nickel" holds such a stigma that even people that weren't around in the 70's have an instantaneous negative emotional response to it. If you want to go with a standardized slower speed it should be 60mph. No stigma, and barely any difference from the 5mph increase. One of the keys, as you note, is merely enforcing the current speed limits since many people drive well beyond even what's posted.
Putting a prominent fuel mileage indicator in the dash I think is a good attempt at a technofix since it is targeted at social engineering.
As many have pointed out here, and I basically believe as well, there is no technofix to this situation. There are techofixes that could allow us to build a comfortable and high quality of life without having to revert back to the 1800's, but they all hinge on people's acceptance of a new way of life. One of the most ingrained is out current transportation system. I don't believe you'll ever get people to give up personal transportation. People across the world want cars, crave them, and even dogs love cars - the experience spans species. But no one needs a 350 horsepower race car to commute in bumper to bumper traffic on speed limited streets to their desk job 20 miles away. No one needs a 3 ton, 7 passenger aerodynamic brick to carry one person. No one needs a gigantic, poorly insulated house that's kept at 78 degrees in the winter and 68 degrees in the summer and built with no passive or active solar features. No one needs a poorly insulated refrigerator, poorly insulated water heater. Yes...these would all be technofixes I've listed here, and they would go a long way to solving energy problems - but they can't work - not without people wanting them to work. That's why no technofix can work. People want to commute to work with race cars and tanks - they want to commute "period." They don't want to live where they work. They want the bigger house and not the more efficient one, the bigger fridge not the smaller and more expensive fridge, the cheapest water heater. They want to have 5 kids and a million grand kids. Every technofix will either be rendered useless, or even worse, facilitate more problems if the social aspects are not addressed.
If you want to make an impact on vehicle choice without hiking CAFE standards or fuel taxes, a 55 MPH speed limit for all uneconomical vehicles (designated by special plates) and perhaps restriction to the right lane on 4-lane freeways would do it. People could drive what they wanted, but the conspicuous consumers would also be official pariahs.
If a relatively innocuous suggestion like the one I made generates this much resistance on TOD, what chance do we really have for more drastic, but necessary changes? Thanks, you guys, (excluding the author of the post) you have helped clarify my thinking...
That's why I'm a doomer. You will never get enough people to cooperate towards the end goal when it involves their vehicles and lifestyles -- that is until it is too late.
I was thinking of that as well, but didn't mention it. Sort of a societal shaming of a sort. Such a thing would be extremely effective in the goal of retiring low fuel economy vehicles. An example (without the stigma) of how something like this can work can be found in California's allowing hybrid vehicles to use the HOV lanes with a single person. Many people there are buying Priuses not because they're environmentally conscious, but because they get to zip by everyone else stuck in the non-HOV lanes.
removed
yeah - you are right btu -
the only way is freeze and when you thaw - bend your knees - and ultimately start to crawl.
Hehe - sounds like some kind'a sombre reversed life cycle ...
In the (unlikely) event that the hydrogen cars are magically made to work, the cost of the solar panels is absorbed in the cost of the hydrogen, and the cost of this small sea of solar panels--however large--is paid for by the people doing the driving. That's the virtue of market capitalism.
That cost, however, is from your numbers something like $100/kg H2/year, which on a highly hypothetical 20 year life span for the panels is something like $5/kg H2. That may be too expensive to be practical, especially ir straight electric is as much cheaper as you report.
phillies, it's where to find the capaital [and silicon] to build the solar array; secondly, a much smaller array would suffice to power all USA ground transportation, as the article states.
If you see this I can post comments, but I can't open an article with comments.
Imagine if (when) TPTB address food and water shortages the way they have handled energy/transportation: Lots of public money given to well-connected firms for projects that will never bear fruit.
I think probably a fairly normal combination of naivety and self-promotion is enough to explain the genesis of the Purdue paper...
Hi Stuart,
Your reservoir simulation visualization of rock permeability in 'Ain Dar and Shedgum has gray vertical lines all over it. Can you tell us what they are? They don't look like wells because the length varies so much. Is it depth of oil column or Arab D? There could be a hidden message there.
Thanks for that stunning post. I found it very educational. TOD has got really busy since then. Lots of posts.
The german Open Source Car (OSCar) is driven by solar energy only.
Darmstadt University has a roof of only 10 square meters with solar panels that give OSCar 20.000 km/year. They say they didn't drive more than the roof produced - and that was enough for 100.000 kilometres.
Akasol and their partners intend to build 1.000 cars now to test them under real conditions.
BTW - OSCar really looks weird somehow (it was called "smooching bowl" in a newspaper article) but it accelerates 0-100km/h in only 6 seconds! Almost as powerful as the Tesla ..
Quoting from OSCar site:
“ If you still don't like the short term "Solar vehicle" may be we can agree on "Grid combined Lightweight electric vehicle".”
That's right; I don't. And all electricity is not equal...
But good-enough-batteries for PHEV or even some BEV is at least feasible – whereas the H2 track seems to be thermodynamically and economically flawed
“It’s not that I’m stupid; I just have bad luck when I am thinking”
"BTW - OSCar really looks weird somehow"..
I suppose "smooching bowl" is a translation of the German "schmuse Schüssel" meaning a cuddly dish or something you can melt your heart into.
It's just plain cute.
-------------
My grandfather pumped oil with an engine-house,
my father pumped oil with a 20 lb. electric motor,
can't I just pump it online?
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/
George W. Bush, Meet M. King Hubbert
March 26, 2007
By: Jeffrey J. Brown
Hi Jeff,
Based on your work and Stuart's work, what message would you craft to convince your average American that we have a serious problem if you were given one of those 2 minute sound bites on CNBC or some news channel?
How do we craft a short message that really gets their interest without going over their heads and that doesn't "turn them off" or cause them to outright dismiss peak oil claims. Some of Simmons' sound bites aren't bad, but I'm never left with the feeling that we have a real crisis. Maybe it's due to the reaction of the interviewer, most of whom either don't seem to have a clue (like MariaB seeming to relax when Matt said that the world isn't running out of oil) or have an agenda of their own (shills like the Larry Kudlows of the world).
It seems we need repeated opportunities to get a concise, motivational sound bite of our own out there--short sound bites that they can't escape. After repeated barraging, they they might be interested enough to actually watch that 1/2 hour detailed program. In other words, use that same marketing technique they use to convince us to buy, buy, buy.
I also ask because at some community meetings we each get a chance to say a few words about our top concerns, but we aren't given a lot of time and don't get to go up front with charts, etc. I could use some help.
What struck me about this non-solution was that it seemed more designed as an "everybody gets a piece of the action" plan. Farmers, biofuel enthusiasts, H2 proponents, nuclear proponents, automakers. Think of all the jobs this would create...
I had similar goals for "Sustainability", except that I was trying to pull old interest groups away from the current dysfunctional system rather than create new ones.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree.
In reality if such a plant was built it would consume coal and use nuclear reactors to produce the hydrogen.
Working with some of the stated figures you'd need 276 billion kg for 13.8 million barrels/day of synthetic fuel.
So I make that to be about 54.8kg of hydrogen per barrel produced.
Working on the assumption that you might want a 3000MW thermal nuclear reactor producing your hydrogen at 50% efficiency you need 74kWh to make 1 kg of hydrogen. Assuming about 20hrs of production per day averaged over a year you're looking at 810 tonnes of H2 per day.
Enough for about 14,800 b/d
It wouldn't be beyond the imagination for 10 such plants to be in operation in the UK by 2050.
By 2050, 148,000 b/d plus whatever dregs we're getting from the north sea will be enough to run agriculture and road distribution systems and will be most welcome.
I wouldn't be so quick to write off this technology. The world revolves around diesel fuel. We're not going to give it up easily.
Andy
There are now 1600 MWe reactors now almost in production, so perhaps 4000 MW thermal might be reasonable.
And considering that a "plant" might have 3 reactors (big economies of scale of course since the infrastructure for one plant is already huge), it's not completely insane.
Though I think it is more likely that Russia will combine its large amounts of CH4 with hydrogen-poor coal (Russian? Chinese?) and continue exporting liquid fuels at great profits. And a top-down system can order nuclear reactors and chemical processing plants with little NIMBY interference, they'll be able to heat and power their population. As global warming will be to their benefit, agriculturally and in arctic access, I see little reason they'll deviate from their current course.
Russia might be a superpower again soon.
It probably still is a broken idea but if you were going to try and produce hydrogen from solar energy you would probably
want to use solar concentrators and thermochemical splitting
such as the sulphur hydrogen process. 20,000 km² of reflector are better than 58,000 km² of solar cells but still fairly preposterous.
Hydrogen only makes sense if you assume that electricity is cheap and transportation fuels are expensive. That's not true now, but it's not inconceivable for "some day" -- say, after we get the bugs worked out of fusion ("Just another 20 years now, this time we mean it"). So I'm not opposed to the basic research in these fields. But I agree with the author that it's irresponsible to promote it as a solution to the current crisis. It's a technology whose time is still decades away.
peace,
lilnev