Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:41 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
Anyway... Converting electrical energy into chemical energy for later use ain't nothing new, it's just horribly inefficient, with something like ~20-30% of the original available being available later on. Course, depending on site, this is only about 20% more than the average, and maybe cheaper than power from nat gas peaker plants. _________________
this is actually an interesting idea first proposed by Amory B. Lovins and is the basis of his so-called "hydrogen economy." Hydrogen generated by electrolysis of H20 powered by sunlight, wind, waves etc. is benign and effective.
I see nothing wrong with the reasoning but the article is a bit superficial and confusing: i.e. fuel cells do not 'store' energy; the article confuses home generation and utility-sized systems; it does not discuss the energy expense and danger of compressing hydrogen; and the most important problem with H2, that of storage, is not even mentioned. H2 does not 'want' to be contained because it leaks, even through stainless steel.
I am glad this is being seriously considered as it is really the only sustainable solution to PO. However the 'hydrogen economy' is a wholistic solution with many interdependent parts that must be created in unison. You kind of end up with a creationism issue. While it is fun to envision roof-top solar panels electrolyzing hydrogen in the basement, the truth is we would have to redesign the entire infrastructure of a modern country really fast.
The scale of such an undertaking would be unimaginably huge and I see no political will to undertake it. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Joined: Sep 29, 2004 Posts: 2330 Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 10:33 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
yesplease wrote:
Kingcoal wrote:
TheAntiDoomer wrote:
I think you missed the point. I believe they were implying that making Hydrogen via renewable creates no greenhouse gases, whereas creating hydrogen from natural gas produces 4 pounds of greenhouse gases.
Actually, I believe it is you who missed the point. Electrolysis requires electricity. If the electricity comes from a coal or natural gas plant, then greenhouse gases are released creating the hydrogen.
The point isn't to store fossil fuel energy for later use, it's already stable and we can crank it up and down as needed. The point is to store renewable energy for later use, so that we don't have problems with it's intermittent behavior and the operators get more usable electricity out of it.
Kingcoal wrote:
Compare that to mining natural gas, which comes out of the ground under its own pressure, putting it into pipes and making hydrogen out of it using reformation. Why not skip the reformation and just burn the NG in a automobile engine? It's a hell of a lot easier to store than hydrogen and its supply line is far more efficient with much less production of greenhouse gases.
Natural gas has a GWP of 35 over it's first 20 years, so every molecule of NG is equivalent to 35 of CO2. That's why NG that's escaping into the atmosphere is flared. Better to burn it and get one molecule of CO2 than leave it alone for the equivalent of 35 molecules of CO2. This also means that if just one or two percent of NG escapes during extraction, the global warming impact of it as a power source will increase by ~35-70% over the next couple decades. At least hydrogen, in this context, from renewables, won't do that. And it ain't like we haven't run ICE's offa hydrogen just like NG. The only downside being range, not that most people need more than ~30 miles/day.
So you want to generate hydrogen from water using ONLY electricity from renewables such as solar, wind and hydropower? Good luck with that. You see, that's the problem; scalability. We could do a hell of a lot if we had almost limitless, cheap electricity, but we don't. Sure, covering a huge area of the Mojave Desert with photovoltaics is doable, but transporting all that electricity thousands of miles is a problem. The hole just gets deeper and deeper. Your renewables project just keeps getting bigger and bigger, requiring the rebuilding of the entire electrical grid. My locality can't even get a measly $200 million to rebuild a much needed railroad, let alone the trillions needed for your project.
When you add it all up, it's far cheaper just to power down and ride a bike! _________________ "That's the problem with mercy, kid... It just ain't professional" - Fast Eddie, The Color of Money
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
Kingcoal wrote:
So you want to generate hydrogen from water using ONLY electricity from renewables such as solar, wind and hydropower? Good luck with that.
There's no point in converting fossil fuels into Hydrogen, we'll just loose energy compared to using 'em.
Kingcoal wrote:
You see, that's the problem; scalability. We could do a hell of a lot if we had almost limitless, cheap electricity, but we don't. Sure, covering a huge area of the Mojave Desert with photovoltaics is doable, but transporting all that electricity thousands of miles is a problem.
Transmission isn't much of a problem in Mojave, outside of the LADWP not wanting to go through SCE's lines in the area and instead wanting to create a new corridor, which isn't exactly pleasing to the locals. That being said, solar thermal isn't the best for hydrogen storage. It's nice overall since it mirrors energy consumption during the day, which allows for reductions in expensive peaker use, but otoh storing the energy from it would put it at a significant economic disadvantage. Wind otoh, is what has the most trouble with intermittent operation, and since there's class 4 and above resources throughout the nation, the problem isn't the transmission from Mojave to the rest of the US, it's transmission from the nearest class 4 resource to local corridors. I specified class 4 because of it's cost as of 2005 at 4.2cents/kWh, which is low enough to take the efficiency hit of hydrogen storage compared to current average rates, and will likely drop even further. We'll still probably end up with a nuclear backbone in terms of power generation, unless we all go zombie, but using hydrogen to store excess energy from wind farms allows for competitive load responsive power from renewables during the high cost times while increasing revenue for wind farms. Ironically enough, insulating our nation's transportation backbone against oil shortages would provide many electricity transmission corridors through class 4 and above wind sites, further reducing the costs of building the transmission infrastructure.
Kingcoal wrote:
The hole just gets deeper and deeper. Your renewables project just keeps getting bigger and bigger, requiring the rebuilding of the entire electrical grid. My locality can't even get a measly $200 million to rebuild a much needed railroad, let alone the trillions needed for your project.
When you add it all up, it's far cheaper just to power down and ride a bike!
I don't disagree w/ that, nothing beats a velomobile in terms of efficiency and simplicity. But eventually we will need renewable power sources, and in order to overcome intermittent operation some form of energy storage. Wind power in specific areas as well as hydrogen storage can provide that, especially in conjunction with electrifying most of America's rail for further insulation against oil shortages. Granted, the current administration is nothing but a shill for the companies who own large portions of various oil companies and have benefited greatly from the deliberate increases in demand as well as reductions in available supply right around peak. But, they've gotten theirs, and it's time for the "good" cop. I think of it as something analogous to medieval warfare, economics style. If we switch to other energy sources too quickly, certain companies won't get theirs, and since they control the resources right now they can make things sticky for anyone who wants to transition. As a result everyone goes to the bargaining table and the older companies agree to step down gracefully at some later point in time in exchange for some form of predetermined monetary compensation. So we get a "bad" leader. Then, as we transition away from the "bad", we get a "good" leader to "help" us during the transition. We can avoid economic "warfare" by coming to settlements as to what exactly will happen. IMO of course. _________________
Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
Why bother with electrolysis when you can just use the heat from high tempurature nuclear reactors? Using Sulfur and Iodine as a catalyst, the heat can split water, and the catalysts later get reused. A system like this can scale up pretty easily.
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 6:24 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
Iono. I mean, we tend to build nuclear as baseload, but if it's idling at night and it's cost effective to store some energy for use during peak, I don't see why not. I'm curious about the costs compared to electrolysis via wind. I imagine there would be some optimum grid mix wrt baseload throughout the day. _________________
Joined: Jul 18, 2008 Posts: 4 Location: California
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:37 am Post subject: Re: Two big Hydrogen developments
T. Boone Pickens rolled out his plan for the U. S. last week concerning using wind energy and CNG vehicles. What he neglected to cover was storing the excess wind energy as hydrogen. He is building wind farms starting in Texas and going northwards towards Canada and it’s hard to believe that he doesn’t have some plan in mind for hydrogen storage of the wind energy. _________________ hho generator
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
If we switch to other energy sources too quickly, certain companies won't get theirs, and since they control the resources right now they can make things sticky for anyone who wants to transition. As a result everyone goes to the bargaining table and the older companies agree to step down gracefully at some later point in time in exchange for some form of predetermined monetary compensation. So we get a "bad" leader. Then, as we transition away from the "bad", we get a "good" leader to "help" us during the transition. We can avoid economic "warfare" by coming to settlements as to what exactly will happen. IMO of course. 
