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Earth Day Open Thread
Posted by Super G on April 22, 2006 - 10:48pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]
I hope everyone had a good Earth Day!
http://tinyurl.com/ntqh3
As to your point about nuclear, there are a number of ways to produce hydrogen. There is some flexibility there. Nuclear is certainly in the mix. It may not matter that much if fuel cells remain a niche vehicle.
I quote LATOC:
Alice Friedemann weighs in:
The laws of physics mean the hydrogen economy will always be an energy sink. Hydrogen's properties require you to spend more energy to do the following than you get out of it later: overcome waters' hydrogen-oxygen bond, to move heavy cars, to prevent leaks and brittle metals, to transport hydrogen to the destination. It doesn't matter if all of the problems are solved, or how much money is spent. You will use more energy to create, store, and transport hydrogen than you will ever get out of it.
If we could very, very efficiently harness solar, wind, & hydro power, then fuel cells could be a possibility.
Just a few ponts, after years of studying hydrogen, (remember, the most abundant element in the universe (!)
First, folks say, "hydrogen is only a carrier of energy." Well, they actually have it a bit backwards...hydrogen is THE ENERGY, but it is aways bound to a more stable carrier on Earth, meaning it has to be detached from it's carrier to be useful as energy/fuel.
Secondly, where hydrogen can come from...again, due to it's abundance, it can come from just about anywhere...even you, when you pass from the mortal coil, will leave what will sooner or later be pretty much a cloud of hydrogen (methane) as will all living things...hydrogen can come from waste, from oil, from natural gas, from coal, from water, from uranium or Uranus or Jupiter!
Thirdly, On Earth, almost all hydrogen used for fuel or chemical industrial purposes has come from natural gas. It's the cleanest and easiest way to get it (and has formerly been the cheapest way), but not the only way. Some hydrogen has been extracted from oil and more importantly coal, but not a great amount. It is agreed that hydrogen from fossil fuels is a dead end. If it is extracted from coal or oil, you still have the Carbon (CO2) problem (and greenhouse gas issues), if it is extracted from natural gas, it is cleaner, but we still have the limited supply and price issues.
Fourth, it is true that hydrogen can be extracted with renewables. This is not science fiction and has been demonstrated by some very important research and by some major firms.
Some fascinating links to get you started:
http://www.ieahia.org/case_studies.html
Residential photo voltaic hydrogen production and use in a single family home:
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/chapter2.pdf
Xerox CAN Clean Air Now project, using PV cells to produce hydrogen for trucks, bus:
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/chapter7.pdf
An integrated approach:
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/grimstad.pdf
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/chapter6.pdf
More efficiency analysis:
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/chapter8.pdf
Lastly, take a look at Honda Motor Company's very well developed concept for the car, refueling, and solar PV hydrogen production:
http://www.ieahia.org/pdfs/honda.pdf
The Honda work is stunning in it's forward thinking.
Fifth, fuel cells do have a market, but it is limited at this point and may remain so. The idea place for them is where there is ready supply of reasonably clean excess (cheap) hydrogen, and in a stationary application, and to make it even better, where their power to produce excess heat is put to use. Of course, this would be the conditions found in sewer plants and landfill "gas" capture. The ability of the fuel cell to use waste methane that would otherwise be a danger or an annoyance is great.
In fact, if a large hotel, hospital, etc, uses it's sewage waste gas to feed a fuel cell, it can produce CHP (Combined Heat and Power) in great efficiency on site. This is the as yet unexplored and fantastically promising world of Distributed Energy. Decentralized, redundant, flexible, and efficient and clean, it could save America hundreds of billions of dollars in wasted energy simply by reducing "line loss" and transport costs of energy, and using waste and renewables in imaginative new ways. There will be billionaires made in this industry IF it is true that fossil fuels are "peaked" or ever more difficult to recover.
And lastly, the big picture, I mean the BIG picture: Every energy industry, beginning with sailing ships (using the wind from the heat of the sun, itself hydrogen powered) to draft animals (fed from plants grown by the sun, hydrogen powered), to steam trains (coal, burning the hydrogen and discharging the carbon, hydrogen powered), to gas and oil (hydrocarbon fuels, burning the hydrogen discharging the carbon, hydrogen powered) to nuclear (enriched uranium to create heavy elements, and then collide the atoms together to release even the atomic force in hydrogen (they didn't build a "hydrogen bomb" and call it that for nothing!) hydrogen powered.
So will hydrogen power ever take off? Well so far, there has been NOTHING ELSE. The great possibility implicit in going directly to renewable hydrogen is simply this..you cut out the waste of time, money, and resources that all the intermediate steps cost....you go directly to what sooner or later, MUST become the only possible path to the future, and the only one, that for all practical human civilization purposes is DEPLETION PROOF.
That is why Honda and others are trying to end run the game, and why, in the LONGER VIEW, President Bush, for one of the few times in his career, is right on the hydrogen future, OVER THE LONG VIEW. They say even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This may be President Bush's time, he deserves to get credit even if all he did was stumble blindly into the truth.
I'm afraid I don't share all this recent enthusiam for hydrogen. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person in a room full of laughing people who doesn't get the joke.
First of all, in terms of the possible role of hydrogen as a fuel, it is totally and completely irrelevant that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. However, what is relevant is whether hydrogen, in the form in which it exists on the surface of planet Earth, has any available free energy to give up. That is the only thing that really matters.
But unfortunately, the surface of planet Earth is largely an oxidizing environment. Consequently, the vast majority of the hydrogen on the surface of planet Earth is water, which is basically what you get when you 'burn' hydrogen in the presence of oxygen. All the trillions of tons of hydrogen in the waters of the world do not have a single BTU of chemical energy to freely give up. Ergo, water may be a source of hydrogen but it is not a source of chemical energy.
Now, as you have indicated, reduced hydrogen is present in both fossil fuels and biomass. But from a energy source standpoint, that too is of little relevance. If you separate hydrogen from either fossil fuel or biomass, you will not have a single BTU more than when you started, and in fact you will have significantly less because of the energy losses inherent in the hydrogen extraction process. Therefore, I do not view the hydrogen content in fossil fuel or biomass to be a separate energy source - just a different form of the energy that was already present to begin with.
In this oxidizing environment we exist in, the only way to get free gaseous hydrogen, i.e., hydrogen that can give up its free energy, is to make it. As you know, this can be done by electrolysis of water or through some of the more high-tech membrane separation processes. And that requires an amount of energy that has to be at least as great as will be released when the hydrogen is used as fuel.
So even in this sense, hydrogen cannot be legitimately be considered an 'energy source'. Rather, it is a form of energy the was converted from some other energy input, or more simply, a means of energy storage.
If say we build a dedicated nuclear power plant that uses all of its energy output to manufacture hydrogen gas, the 'source' of the energy is the uranium and the 'form' of th output energy is the hydrogen. Such a scheme may have many benefits, but one cannot really say that we have converted to a hydrogen energy source.
In conclusion, one cannot talk about hydrogen without first talking about what energy sources you are going to use to make it.
I will buy that for all practical purposes, the hydrogen "burning" in the sun is the source of all of our energy (maybe not nuclear power) - but this is not of any real importance, as hydrogen is not the form in which that energy arrives on earth.
First, thanks for a very interesting and thoughtful reply. Great food for thought...
I only aim to clarify my thinking here, not argue with your major points, which I see as essentially correct:
Your first sentence,
"I'm afraid I don't share all this recent enthusiasm for hydrogen."
I am not sure I have great "enthusiasm" for hydrogen, it would be better defined a long time fascination with what has been a technical and scientific mystery. You speak of a "joke", and I sometimes think that nature is playing a "joke" on us humans, and laughing at how hard we are trying to figure it out, it's like one of those "Chinese puzzle" toys with interlocking links, that look so easy but turn out to be very difficult, until you figure out that ONE twist of the pieces!
Here we are, surrounded by hydrogen, bathed in sunlight, wind blowing our houses apart, lightning spitting out more energy in a month than we have used in our modern fossil fuel history and we can't find enough energy!
The jokes on us!
Nature goes one better. It manages to "lock" hydrogen, or "bond" it to other chemical elements almost as a second hand operation right in front of us, and then de-lock it if it so chooses! Think of the lowly fish, with it's magic "membrane", the gill, that splits hydrogen off water to get it's oxygen, talk about your "high tech membranes", or the leaf on a tree, a giant machine for converting energy from sunlight and carbon and spitting oxygen back at us, right in our yard.
Your remark that "...it is totally and completely irrelevant that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.", is in one way correct, but then...not exactly so. That it is there and we are there also, makes the technical mind look at the possibility....but, you are again correct when you say "However, what is relevant is whether hydrogen, in the form in which it exists on the surface of planet Earth, has any available free energy to give up. That is the only thing that really matters." True indeed. If we then assumes that the amount of hydrogen is great (per our first discussion point "the most abundant element") and that it does contain great energy potential (and again, we assume it must, since all energy consumed by man to this point has been hydrogen based, as well as the example, the great poetic ones, of nature), then it becomes essentially a technical, not a theoretical problem.
Further down this string, I accepted with gratitude a clarifying way of talking about the energy supposedly in hydrogen from a TOD fellow poster called Step Back. His more elegant and correct definition of the energy is and I quote:
" The energy is stored in the chemical bond" between hydrogen and the carrier, not in the hydrogen or other element it is attached to. That of course is exactly correct, and much better than the way I and others here are trying to define the situation!
Thus, the whole effort must be in breaking the bond, but this is not as hard as it looks when dealing with fossil fuel, is it? We just set it afire and burn it...as the bond breaks, we get the destabilized energy, the hydrogen burns, the carbon goes off into the atmosphere as that not at all helpful greenhouse gas (CO2) and we have energy, usable energy! What it took the sun millions of years to do, undone in a second!
And of course, that's the issue. Another TOD poster, Jamie, in this string said, "All roads lead to less energy intensive lifestyle."
That of course goes without saying.For those who may see hydrogen as a road ahead to allow the prodigious waste of energy in the world I would like to warn them that they will be sorely disappointed, and are just wrong. If hydrogen as a "useful" form of energy is ever to occur, it will be, at least for the fist several decades a hard, expensive, and technically challenging route to go, and will not yield enough for DECADES for anyone to even think of wasting it. All analysis indicates it will be VERY EXPENSIVE FUEL. It holds the promise, however, of at least being usable energy, as the cheap dirty stuff gets harder and harder to find. It offers a way to salvage modern technical culture to be carried on until a possible more prosperous future can take hold, and stability returned.
You say, near the end of your post, "So even in this sense, hydrogen cannot be legitimately be considered an 'energy source'. Rather, it is a form of energy that was converted from some other energy input, or more simply, a means of energy storage." Again, that's true, but of course that's true of any energy source.
Even oil and gas are only "potential" energy until you go out and find it, gather it, transport it, refine it, design and build an engine to convert it or a burner to burn it, and a way of converting it's heat energy to mechanical energy. It has taken almost two centuries and trillions of dollars, and even tens of thousands of human lives to do it. (and it is to be noted that as successful as fossil fuel has been, it still is not used but a great percentage of the world population in any real way. Automobiles and electric power are reserved for the comparatively wealthy of the world)
So, oil and gas looks easy at the user end, with the infrastructure already built. Back at the front end, no sane person could have bet on the whole venture (industrialism, the fossil fuel age) having any chance of success. (Such it is now with hydrogen)
But fossil fuel had a great advantage. Nature had done us a favor (or cursed us, depending on how you want to look at it!) by making the "bond" between the Carbon and the Hydrogen rather weak in fossil fuel. Coal, Oil, and Natural gas can be "destabilized" very easily, with the millions of years of hydrogen "bonding" being undone simply by burning. And with high hydrogen content (compared to say rock or dirt) it gave humans a "booster shot" of energy.
The issue we are now facing is that the "weak bonded" easy burning, and relatively clean burning fuels (think of natural gas, just enough in the world to get us addicted to the sweet easy, to taunt us, and then...(:-(
So we began the mad hunt. We used natures "energy batteries"(Alvin Toffler's great term in "The Third Wave") as we outpaced what the sun could do (grow trees, drive wind, grow food for out beast of burden) and tapped the reservoirs, first coal, dirty, too much "C" (carbon) not enough "H" (hydrogen) in the hydrocarbon mix, but it burned and was plentiful, then oil (a bit better on the "C" vs. "H" scale), then light sweet crude oil (pretty stuff, good "H" content, not so much "C", sweet is the word!), and then this century, natural gas, the environmentalists darling for a while, closest to clean "H" on the scale, not nearly so much of the "C" problem....and we RACED through it, the light sweet and the natural gas went like crazy. But now, they are expensive, getting rare:
We must go one of two directions: back down the scale, looking for fuel even though it is "dirty", high "C" content stuff: Heavy oil, tar sands, peat, and the hardest to "unbind", shale oil (which, as a technician once explained, is misnamed, having no shale and no true oil...it is essentially attempting to burn rock!), and back to coal, which although it is filthy, at least the "C" vs. "H" can be easily unbound, but at potentially horrendous cost on the "C" side, with tons of CO2 to try dispose of (a GREAT technical challenge).
Or, we go to the top of the scale, and leave out the middle steps:
Try to unbind the "H" in water, where there is no "C" component, just release the oxygen "O".
Is it doable? yes, we know it can be done.
Is it viable? We don't know, that will rely on the technical ability and the concentration of the effort.
Will it be difficult and expensive? YES. IT WILL NOT BE A FUEL THAT CAN BE WASTED. It will be one of the greatest technical, economic, and organizational challenges in the world history.
Should we start? In small ways, we already have, and are now starting to unlock what can and cannot be done.
Should we do it with renewables? There is NO CHOICE. USING THE HIGH CARBON CONTENT FOSSIL FUELS TO MAKE NO CARBON CONTENT HYDROGEN IS SHEER IDIOCY, AND DOES NOT TAKE US AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUEL DEPENDENCY OR CARBON FUEL DEPENDENCE, WHICH IS THE GOAL OF THE WHOLE OPERATION. Hydrogen from fossil fuels is an idiotic dead end.
So, should we develop hydrogen using renewable energy?
WE HAVE, IN THE LONG RUN, NO CHOICE.
While that is not exactly an "enthusiastic" endorsement of hydrogen, it is my view of why, in the end, we will move more and more in the direction of developing it, IF we hope to have anything resembling a modern technical state, with any hope of forward progress in making humankind at least "human" in that we are different that the animals, who know a future of only birth, struggle, breeding and death.
In the longer view, all of what we now call "civilization", art and culture may find this struggle as the only way forward. We are now preparing, in our small ways, to leave the "Carbon" age behind. This is one of the biggest steps in human history. There is no guarantee of success. It is what Alvin Toffler saw and published in 1980. We thought at the time he was exaggerating for effect, and engaging in hyperbole when he said it will be a change on the order of magnitude equaling when man developed agriculture, or birthed the shock of the rampaging, destructive and creative forces of the "Industrial Revolution". This, he claimed, was the dawning decades of an era that would leave nothing unchanged. The death of the Carbon age, and the carbon chase, and the birth of a hydrogen age, for the moment, seem the only path forward.
Sorry to go so long, and thank you for allowing me to expand in a real way just how I came to be, if not "enthusiastic" about the hydrogen economy (I was one who laughed at it myself only a few years ago) at least a thoughtful student of how it potentially could, and in fact, must be done.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Fish gills don't dissociate water. Rather a fish combs the oxygen that exists in its free state between the water molecules. This is known as dissolved oxygen (DO) and is what gets consumed in fertilizer driven algal blooms leading to fish kills, etc. The gill is an impressive apparatus, but it is no magic membrane.
If fish could really break the bonds of H2O, the would never suffocate as long their gills were underwater. But that is not the case, as any fishkeeper can tell you.
I trust you see the error in this plan. It will always take more energy to pump the water uphill than we get back from it.
This doesn't mean it's not a useful technique. We use it sometimes, basically to store energy during times of low demand for use during periods of high demand.
But it's not an energy source. Because of that, we cannot scale it up very much.
- Do we agree that hydrogen would be a chemical element?
- Do we agree that hydro-carbon fuels are essentially a mix of the two main chemical elements, hydrogen and carbon?
- Do we agree that it has been a long standing practice to find, gather and refine the hydrocarbon chemicals and use them as chemical fuel?
- Do we agree that the use of the term "fuel" refers to a relatively useful burnable chemical, and that it is the hydrogen that burns that makes it such?
- Do we agree that until the fuel is burned, it is only potential energy, whether it be wood, oil, gas, peat, tar sand, or whale blubber? This is why we would regard tar sand as potential fuel, and at this time, limestone is not.
- So when we say that hydrogen is only a "energy storage" not energy source, that is also true of any "fuel". Until it is gathered and in some way processed, it is not a power source?
- If we need energy, and do not have any "liquid fuel" source, can assume then that we can only use solar, wind, tidal, or other forms of sun driven power directly, or is it possible that there is a way to extract a usable liquid fuel from a common element on Earth?
- Can we assume that if we have NO readily available liquid fuel, water is a common store of hydrogen, which may be able to be extracted using some renewable energy imput, to make a desired liquid fuel?
- Can we assume that if that's the only way to get a portable liquid fuel, then humans have two choices: Either sit around on their lazy arse and say it cannot be done, and go back to Ken Deffeyes awaited "stone age by 2030", or get off our lazy arse and at least try to do it?
TENTH and final point: I am just glad some of your guys were not around at the birth of the industrial age. We wouldn't have had to worry about it's effects because you guys could have proved that IT COUND NEVER BE DONE.Point 9. is becoming of extreme importance: Here is the cutting edge of the discussion: If you believe for moral or philosophical reasons, that modern technical society SHOULD not exist, then the pursuit of hydrogen or any alternative is inmoral and incorrect. But this does not mean that it is a fanciful dream, or that it somehow violates the known laws of physics.
I would in short like to deal directly with Leanan's sentence:
"You might as well argue that we are going to run our economy off hydroelectric power. After all, water is extremely abundant.All we have to do is pump it uphill so we can run turbines with it when it comes back down."
I trust you see the error in comparing extraction of a chemical element from common materials (the birth of all chemistry in history) as different in not only degree but in kind from a perpetual motion machine, which is what you are describing. I am not an idiot, and appreciate least of all condenscending attitude, and will reply to such in like fashion. I will go ahead and recognize your insult, but do feel compelled to let you know that I am fully aware of it's intentionally non useful nature to this discussion.
Roger Conner known here as ThatsItImout
If they can vastly improve fuel cells, I could see hydrogen becoming the portable energy of the very rich. I can't see it being cheap enough for the average person, or even for a break-even transit system, except in places like Iceland, where they use cheap thermal energy to make hydrogen.
A lot of energy that could go towards heating homes could be diverted to making negative-EROEI hydrogen, just as NG is now being used to make synthetic oil from bitumen.
The Swiss got by in 1945 with enough oil to keep the US going for 19 minutes. A long stable democracy, good standard of living and quality of life.
A better way than liquid fuels to provide energy for transportation is via a wire.
Limitations in several specific areas (farm tractors, fishing trawlers, airplanes going accross bodies of water (hard to rail more than 35 miles underwater) but methanol will do just fine for those limited requirements if we totally run out of oil.
Hydrogen is 1) not a necessity and 2) not a very good choice. Methanol works much better for a "synfuel/energy carrier".
Thanks for the really helpful information :)
No, I don't mind, and thank you for the interest and consideration, I have posted on UK TOD several times and enjoy the idea of a British audience! :-)
Roger Conner ThatsItImout
(By the way, using only the screen name is fine. My logic for beginning to attach my real name to my writing is that I feel we have let the "protective" anonymous nature of the web allow many to say things without having to take responsibility for what they said. Think of it as a free way to "take charge" of at least a small portion of one's own life! :-)
I am afraid that question is too philosophical. I myself ask that question often enough. Right now, just think of me as the person who has tried to break the TOD habit on repeated occasions, due to my extreme dislike of pessimism, but keep coming back for the fascinating and involved discussions, and then can't help getting embroiled in the debates myself! :-)
Roger ThatsItImout
IOW..."Hydrogen is only a carrier of energy."
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. When we "use" energy, we don't destroy it, we turn into different forms of energy. Generally, far less useful forms. That's the problem we face. Not scarcity of energy, but scarcity of useful forms of energy.
Interesting way of trying to say it ... but not correct.
The energy is stored in the chemical bond, more specifically in the C-H and C-C bonds which break in the presence of heat and oxygen to produce lower energy CO2 bonds (O=C=O).
Coal has little or no hydrogen. It is mostly carbon. Yet it is a source of what we refer to as "energy". The reason is because we live in an oxygen rich atmosphere and coal (C-C=C-...) has its higher energy bonds broken and converted into lower energy O=C=O bonds during burning of coal, this releasing excess energy in the process ... this being otherwise known as an exothermic chemical reaction (one that releases thermal energy rather than absorbing it).
step back, your exactly on! I give the point on how to define, because your choice choice of words and structure of definition makes so much sense, and beats the "hydrogen is carrier"-something is energy", "hydrogen is energy-something is carrier" way of trying to think of it hands downs,
"The Energy is Stored in the chemical bond." This defines exactly the way it works....break the bond, which gives up what the hydrogen is attached to, and destablize the hydrogen (by burning, or shaking those pesky little electrons loose through a fuel cell, and by jove, you've done it, energy!
Good job, and thanks for giving a much better semantic way of saying it!
:-)
Not if it took more energy to break the bond than you ever get back.
Which the laws of nature and thermodynamics suggest will be the case. There's a reason why all that hydrogen is bound in the first place.
Just use wire to deliver power directly to electric trolley buses, light rail, commuter rail and Rapid Rail (AKA subways).
Simple, efficient, VERY well proven technology. Start building tomorrow with plans already in motion. Miami is already committed and funded a plan to put 90% of the population within 3 miles, half within 2 miles, or a Rapid Rail station in the next 25 or so years. 1/2¢ sales tax just to build.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2005-02.htm
http://www.miamidade.gov/trafficrelief/RailMap.htm
In color open or in active planning. Darker brown is rest of plan.
Build all 103 miles in 8 years, not 25. Repeat in city and city.
He noted that Austin has a commitment to meet 20% of all its energy needs with renewables by 2020, but hinted that it could be bumped up to 50%.
The Austin City Council approved on Thursday, April 6, two requests to purchase new power sources that will enable Austin Energy (Austin's municipality-owned electric company)to double its renewable energy supply and to proceed with plans to retire the Holly Power Plant next year.
One contract involves the purchase of the annual output of electricity for the next 20 years from 225 megawatts (MW) of new wind generators to be built in West Texas. That request is for up to $685 million of spending authority for that purchase. The new wind power will bring Austin Energy's renewable energy portfolio to 450 MW of capacity, 11% of its total generation demand and well on its way to its goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020. The contract with RES AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT INC., of Austin, requires the contractor to build the wind turbines and have them producing power by December 31, 2007.
He also mentioned that he has directed the city auditor to conduct a "Sustainability Study" for the city of Austin, specifically that pertains to energy, which should be ready soon.
He's up for re-election next month -- I wonder what will happen?
Take those nameplate ratings and multiply by 0.21 to get actual average output (lower in summer unless from South Texas coast). Without hydro or pumped storage, Austin will have problems keeping the lights one without buying power from others if they get 20% of their energy (about 3,500 MW nameplate of wind turbines).
Unfortunately wind can reduce use of Holly, but it simply cannot replace it. Especially in summer when wind is at a minimum.
Not that diesel powered commuter train to teh sprawl subrubs, but a useable rail system for the City of Austin ?
Oh, you voted it down in 2000 and forgot about it ?
Austin, is in the bottom half of US cities for "renewable Living", Sprawl and freeways and soon tool roads EVERYWWHERE !
Once great potential, now lost.
BTW: I used to live there. Could not stand the way Austin was becoming Phoenix.
Does it matter? We'll see how it plays next week.