Article

2003-02-08

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Posted by Raptor, w_r_manues@yahoo.com 2003-02-08 11:36 am|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Maybe because a government subsidy for alternative fuels does more harm to our economy than theirs. The taxpayers are the ones who should be screaming

Posted by Arnold Kling 2003-02-08 08:40:50|| [econlog.econlib.org] 2003-02-08 08:40:50|| Front Page Top

#2 I haven't seen any reaction at all from oil companies, not that I follow them very closely. I don't think the Soddies take it seriously.

Hydrogen-powered cars makes a lot more sense than driving around with solar panels on the tops of our vehicles, and the mechanics would be less of a kluge than the hybrid electric approach.

The few articles I've seen on the hydrogen subject have mentioned extracting the hydrogen from methane. It would seem to make more sense to me to extract it from water, but I'm anything but an expert. If I remember my high school chemistry correctly, passing a current through water will break it down into H₂ and O. If it's really that simple, we're a nation of dumbasses for not having done it around the time gas went above 25 cents a gallon.

The oil companies could no doubt figure a way to make their money by running hydrogen plants up and down both coasts and along the Mighty Mississip.

Posted by Fred 2003-02-08 11:28:47|| 2003-02-08 11:28:47|| Front Page Top

#3 More likely the electrical utilities and the NGas pipelines would make the profits. But the DoE studies going on now have H2 production prices at the source at a $5/gas gallon price level. Is that going to sell in Peoria?

Posted by Tom Roberts 2003-02-08 11:50:31|| 2003-02-08 11:50:31|| Front Page Top

#4 The problem with Hydrogen always goes back to the
Hindenburg moment. New Jersey I think in 1933. Not Hitler's finest hour.

Posted by john 2003-02-08 11:56:34|| 2003-02-08 11:56:34|| Front Page Top

#5 The hydrogen fuel cell makes a pretty innovative use of energy, but I don't know if it's exactly the solution that Bush seems to be pushing it as. Den Beste's work on the subject is probably the most thorough. Yes, you can hydrolize water into H and O, but you need the electricity to do it. A straight Hydrogen engine would conceivably utilize hydrogen produced as a byproduct of other fossil-fuel refining processes--it would likely be too expensive to use hydrogen created by electricity from other ~~marginal~~ alternative energy sources such as solar or wind power. Yes, Hydrogen would store the energy produced by sources that produce electricity when you don't need it, but that makes it more expensive.
The true beauty of the hydrogen fuel cell technology is that it runs on a system of ramped catalytic conversion. You can get hydrogen out of methane through other processes that require less energy than electrical hydrolysis--the fuel cell uses a long process that isn't quite a perpetual motion machine, but close. It's just really, really, expensive.

Posted by therien 2003-02-08 11:59:42|| 2003-02-08 11:59:42|| Front Page Top

#6 I for one am all for exploring new and better technologies.

But consider this: by combining hydrogen with oxygen you get electricity to run an electric motor with "clean" wator vapor as the by-product. Now for a given amount of hydrogen/oxygen you can go a given amount of miles. What that might be I do not know, but with enough information you can quantify it.

Now the amount energy obtained by combining hydrogen with oxygen exactly equals the amout of energy needed to create the hydrogen and oxygen from water. Now add in losses due to ineffiencies in production transmission and use you end up with a net energy loss.

This is good?

Extracting hydrogen from methane is ok, but it's cheaper and more efficient to burn the methane.

I'm not against using hydrogen. But it is not a panecia. Maybe not even a good idea. Ultimately economics will decide what the right thing is.

Re the evil oil companies. They are in business to make money. If there is a better way to produce energy they will be leading the band wagon because they want to make even more money. If you want it and they got it they will sell it to you. They don't care. But if the technology means that you will have to pay throught the nose, you won't want it and they won't sell it.

Good for them.

Posted by Michael 2003-02-08 12:05:48|| 2003-02-08 12:05:48|| Front Page Top

#7 Seems like if the solar power/wind power/pedal power advocates were serious, they'd be using the power output from those sources on a large scale to produce barrels of hydrogen to power those clean, non-polluting cars they claim to yearn for.

If I had any business sense - which I don't - I'd design a small-scale plant that would, with the addition of water and electricity, produce those barrels of hydrogen. I think the problem with the solar power set is that they have no more business sense than I do, or less. What they'd really like is to live in the 12th century and be serfs.

When cheap and affordable hydrogen power comes, whether from hydrolysis or from fuel cells, it'll be because some big, bad oil company or power company figures they can make profits from it. The initial euphoria will be followed by the usual demonstrations in favor of ignoring the development costs and handing it out free, followed by "excess profits" taxes imposed by those who had no hand in development.

Posted by Fred 2003-02-08 12:30:19|| 2003-02-08 12:30:19|| Front Page Top

#8 Actually, the Hindeburg tragedy was overblown. The deaths were caused by people jumping rather that waiting for the gondola to be pulled down. Hydrogen is actually less volatile than gasoline. The biggest problen with hydrogen would be refueling the car. Are ya gonna have to replace fuel cells to refuel?

Posted by Denny 2003-02-08 12:34:01|| [www.grouchyoldcripple.com] 2003-02-08 12:34:01|| Front Page Top

#9 Who is old enough to remember Jimmah Carter (world's greatest monster and peace prize winner)and the synfuels boondoggle? That was intended to reduce dependence on foreign oil. After hundreds of millions of dollars the project produced nothing (how very Carteresque). Some shadow of synfuels is still with us and still soaking up government dollars.

Here we go again.

Posted by Anonymous 2003-02-08 12:49:55|| 2003-02-08 12:49:55|| Front Page Top

#10 Like engine development, development of new fuels takes decades to do economically. There is no easy fix. There is no free lunch. Energy from oil was created millions of years ago by solar power. It is hard to beat it except in specialized situations. Like the exploration of space, development of alternative sources of energy will require a long-term committment which will pay dividends in the long term. We need that long term commitment, and not "trendy" science. We should be working with Russia and others to build a network of oil and gas sources to get around the Middle East. Despite corruption problems, more people in Russia and nearby countries will benefit from the oil wealth that a few Middle East despots. Getting some of the oil money out of the middle east will help dry up some of the terrorist dollars and life will be better for the rest of us. Would you like your energy supply to come from more stable rational business-like people, or would you like to continue to kiss the asses of psychopaths?

Posted by Alaska Paul 2003-02-08 14:19:56|| 2003-02-08 14:19:56|| Front Page Top

#11 Re: the Hindenburg - saw an interesting documentary a few years ago about that. Their theory was that the hydrogen wasn't the problem. They got a piece of the fabric skin of the Hindenburg, did chemical analysis and discovered the "dope" used to seal the fabric was pretty similar to the composition of modern day solid rocket fuel - they didn't understand the chemistry well enough in the '30's to know they had encased a big bubble of hydrogen in a high intensity fuse. Once the treated fabric sparked the destruction would have been just as total with helium lift. Judging from the films, they didn't think the hydrogen even ignited until after the structure started to collapse. FWIW.

Posted by VAMark 2003-02-08 14:47:07|| 2003-02-08 14:47:07|| Front Page Top

#12 Here's a link to a website detailing how a car can use a methanol fuel cell. At the moment, the technology obviously isn't here, but its worth pursuing.

Posted by Ptah 2003-02-08 19:46:40|| 2003-02-08 19:46:40|| Front Page Top

#13 Older Internal Combustion engines used to run around 50% of theoretical. Now they're substantially better. However, it's worth noting that 'theoretical' is only about 22% efficient for a 12-1 compression.
Boilers typically run fairly close to theoretical, achieving 33-45% actual efficiency (at much higher temperatures). This is roughly 3x as efficient as IC engines.
Delivery of electricity (the grid) is about 50% efficient. Most of the rest is released as heat from power lines and transformers.
Fuel cells are very efficient. I've seen numbers in the 90+% range (energy out vs. energy in).

In theory, it would be possible to achieve a modest improvement in efficiency using existing electrical infrastructure and fuel cells. This is not even taking into consideration the possibility of using fuels like methanol or methane in the vehicle itself. It also does not consider the possibility of power from sources like Solar Power Satellites.

In theory, it is possible.

Perhaps the reason we speak of it being so far off is that we do not want to piss off the Soddies until we're ready.

It would be unpleasant if OPEC embargoed us unless we dropped this research.

Posted by Dishman 2003-02-08 20:27:43|| 2003-02-08 20:27:43|| Front Page Top

#14 Here's another link to a possible source of electrical power from the Ocean.

Essentially, the design uses cold water pumped up from the deep ocean depths to create a vaccuum so that tropical ocean water partially vaporizes, creating "steam" that drives a turbine/generator. At the moment, the efficiency is 3 to 4 percent, so a lot of water has to be pumped to overcome the cost of running the pumps (to move the water and run the vaccuum pumps), but a plant already exists.

THIS is where we get the electricity to split water to get hydrogen.

Posted by Ptah 2003-02-08 21:22:08|| 2003-02-08 21:22:08|| Front Page Top

#15 As far as fuel cell cars go check out what GM is doing with their Autonomy project (the 'Skateboard')
http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/environment/products/adv_tech/autonomy1_010702.html
I think that the system is buildable at this point but the fuel cells are about twice the height (12" vs 6" or something like that) that GM wants.

I've also seen some interesting things about solar power from the University of Las Vegas using closed cycle Stirling engines and solar power. A stirling engine needs heat from any source to run so they are simply using mirrors to track the sun and reflect it off the generator. Talked to a guy there about a year ago and it was looking promising to the point where they were about to field test some generators in the power grid (it's been a while so I might not get the numbers right but I think it was about $100,000 to build a unit that would power 20 homes with a lifetime of 20 years, I assume that that's daytime use only since there was no power storage mechanism i.e batteries)

We're also making advances in wind and wave technology for power generation.
Wind generated power can now be had for about 5 cents per kwHr in favorable areas (http://www.awea.org/faq/cost.html) which is approx what we pay for electricity today in some areas (http://www.soredi.org/Page.asp?NavID=363)

The bigger problem is that we don't have a hydrogen power infrastructure (hydrogen gas stations etc). We're gonna have the old chicken and egg problem. No one will want to buy hydrogen fuel cell cars because there wont be any places you can fuel them and no one will want to build hyrdogen stations since there will be no cars to fuel etc.

So the way I see it we are getting closer to the point where we could be energy independent in say 20 years or so. There is a lot to do but the task is not unsurmoutable.
Never underestimate human ingenuity.

Posted by CujoQuarrel 2003-02-09 01:54:24|| 2003-02-09 01:54:24|| Front Page Top

08:34 liberalhawk
08:21 Mike
01:54 CujoQuarrel
00:45 Hugh Jorgan
00:45 Hugh Jorgan
23:58 Anon
23:55 JAB
22:17 Alaska Paul
22:14 Anonymous
22:09 Anonymous
21:43 Bomb-a-rama
21:35 Bomb-a-rama
21:34 Alaska Paul
21:32 Bomb-a-rama
21:23 Alaska Paul
21:22 Ptah
21:17 Dishman
21:11 Fred
21:04 Ptah
20:27 Dishman
20:08 Ptah
20:07 Ptah
20:05 Ptah
19:46 Ptah