Future Hydrogen Power Rip-off?

[JoeOh]

A while ago, I seen dick(less) cheny on a talk show. (I think it was larry king live, not sure) He talked about why the gas prices are so high and gave one reason that I can remember, he said before the price increase, the gas companies were "barely" making a profit and it'd be only fair to raise the price of gas to make them happy. Or something along those lines...

When we get into using hydrogen-electric vehicles and they become mainstream and the infostructure has been established, do you think they'll still keep the price of hydrogen 4-5 dollars a gallon?

If so, I'm sure those like dick(less) cheny will tout reasons like, "oh, but you're getting better milage and we don't have to depend on the middle east no more. Oh yea, and the vurtual non-pollution will make you environmentalist tree-huggers happy, Right? Is it worth it to keep hydrogen at this price?" And of course they'll think so...

I dunno, If they can make a killing off you breathing, they will

Thoughts?

[drdongle]

Don't hold your breath for "Hydrogen powered cars" any time soon. It sounds great and if it can be pulled off great, but there are serious obstacles to overcome, no one like to talk about those.

Carpe Vigor

Dr.D

[jacquesm]

Hydrogen powered cars are on the road *TODAY*.

That being said it will take a long time be practical, but it holds a lot of promise for large scale application. Why ?

Simple, there is a lot of money in the gasoline business, and in the long term the oil companies and governments (tin foil hats on please) will need something to replace their revenue streams with, and hydrogen is the closest they can get to that. The govt' likes it too because it has the same kind of taxing possibilities. Airlines like it because the powerdensity is comparable and so on.

Possibly there are other major reasons for this push.

One way or the other, hydrogen probably will happen, and it probably will happen fairly soon (within 20 years on a large scale according to most experts, sorry no links for that but I can dig them up if it is desired).

As to the myth of hydrogen being clean:

Hydrogen is NOT a fuel. It's a storage device. You have to *make* hydrogen first, and how you produce it is a much bigger factor in determining whether that particular batch of hydrogen is clean. The combustion of hydrogen (2H + O -> H2O) is obviously cleaner than the combustion of carbon based fuels.

Say you use a windmill or solar bank to power a hydrogen splitter, take the hydrogen with you in your fuel-cell+electric motor powered vehicle, then that is 'clean'.

Otoh if you buy your hydrogen from the corner gas station and say 'Shell' or 'Esso' produced it using natural gas to meet demand then that's almost as bad as burning gasoline directly.

This is exacly the reason why big oil would far prefer hydrogen to other technologies, essentially a 'seamless' path from their point of view between the current situation and the hydrogen economy. Evolution rather than revolution, and that is - on a global scale - probably the best for everyone. A revolution would probably be driven by a global oil shortage and that would nottg be a pretty picture.

The myths are that hydrogen is hard to produce, impossible to hane (not true, partially true), unsafe (so is my pocket knife, it's all about following procedures). Someone on this remarked that making and storing hydrogen in useable quantities is outside of the 'home experimenters' capability.

I suggest you speak for yourself I think that basic fuel cell technology is within reach of the amateur, and if you live long enough to get to the level where you can pull off that kind of thing you'll probably live to tell about it.

Fuel cell technology is being patented left right and center at the moment, everybody wants a slice of that pie (Ballard, Daimler-Chrysler, Shell and probably lots of others) are investing unbelievable amounts of money in order to get some kind of lock in.

In the long run, don't be surprised if producing 'hydrogen' privately is outlawed (some convenient explosion somewhere as the excuse) just so you won't be able to avoid taxation. If you think that is crazy then check your local laws wrt distilling your own alcohol. 10 to one it's illegal. Just like it will possibly be illegal one day to have a windmill. And if you don't believe that, there are already areas where you are not allowed to own or operate one.

The fuel craze is all about 'control', and the price we pay for our mobility is in a large part diverted towards taxes and oil company revenues (a few percent mr. Cheney hah ! I should know, but that's another story). The gas stations make pennies per liter, the governement roughly 35%, the oil companies take the rest and their bookkeeping is pretty murky, even though they are public companies.

[LEXX]

Good points, hey, where can I find a good DIY design for a tinfoil hat again??

LEXX

[nobicus]

Here in the UK Hydrogen is being put forward for the same reasons - the tax income stream.  The true alternative for vehicles is some form of vegetable oil or biodiesel.  Gasoline, from the supermarket forecourt, at the moment costs (and I shall translate all values into dollars for you) $6.96 a gallon.  Of this the oil company takes $1:95 and the government takes the rest $5:01.  (Now you know why the oil companies call England Treasure Island) Waste vegetable oil can be begged for free from the local fast food outlet and after filtration can be mixed with dino diesel and used in diesel engined cars.  I have a Fiat Tempra Station Wagon with a 1929cc Turbo Diesel and am using 75% dinodiesel and 25% filtered waste vegetable oil in it.  Even so I have to register with the Government rip off department and pay $1:28 for every gallon of the waste oil that I use.  The last chap that didn't register and got caught had his car impounded until he had paid the $900 dollars he had been fined for not registering.  It is easy to get caught 'cos your exhaust smells like french fries!!!!

The rip off department is having difficulty with veg oil because they haven't yet found a dye that is stable enough to use with veg oil like the red dye put into agricultural diesel or the yellow dye that they put into central heating kerosene!!!!!  And veg oil is too easy to acquire and use!!  

The ripoff department have also not realised that car diesel engines do not collapse as soon as the bodies and I have just paid $90 for a small Peugeot car that has 100,000 miles on the clock but needs a new rear end and much body work.  I shall have the engine out of it and put it into a frame.  I shall make my own PMG a la Piggot or like the one on this website and use the car, powered by waste oil on which there is nothing to pay because it is not on the road, to turn it!!!  So with a "yah boo sucks" and a thumb up the nose to the rip off department I shall have almost free juice!!!

There is a massive treatment plant being built in Scotland costing nearly $50 million to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil and Daimler (yes the German car company) is financing a massive biodiesel production plant that is being built in India.

So forget hydrogen go veggie!!!!!!!

[jacquesm]

vegetable oil is useable in unmodified (almost) diesel engines, which is a great thing. But on a planet wide scale there is not enough arable (sp?) land to provide us with enough bio fuel for all our transportation 'needs'.

I'll get back to you on this, I have a bunch of notes somewhere about converting acres to barrels of oil produced. It's pretty scary. And the conversion from biomass to vegetable oil is far from effecient.

Funny story: one reason the vegetable oil in dutch supermarkets shot up in price is that small eco-diesel car owners (like the opel 1.2 L and the volkswagen lupo) would walk in and buy everything they had in stock to throw into their cars since it was so much cheaper than gassing up.

[JoeOh]

Can hydrogen gas be compressed? I heard somewhere that it can only handle so many psi before becomming unstable. (I dont see how) Is this true? Or did I read wrong? if so, whats the limit on pressurizing hydrogen?

Thanx

[nobicus]

I rent a small farmhouse from one of the agri-business men of Olde Englande.  He lives on his main plot about 25 miles away. He farms in total about 1800 acres.  He was telling me only today that he if puts half the farm down to rapeseed and uses the harvested seed to create his own rapeseed oil from which he would make biodiesel he would have enough to run the farm and it would be cheaper than his existing diesel bill!!!  He could also sell the created seedcake and the glycerol as seperate products.

If one were to calculate the yields (I too have the oil per acre figures somewhere)on all the agricultural land unused in America or in Europe "set aside" (farmers get paid by the European Economic Community for not growing crops)if it were all put down to rape or other oil bearing crop there would be sufficient for farming and food production with a big chunk left over for transport.  If electricity generation was all down to renewables instead of(in UK at least)oil or natural gas there would be even more left over.  Small hybrid cars take less oil; even diesel engined cars take less than gas engines.  I get between 48 and 60 miles per gallon out of my dino-veggie mix.  Gas guzzlers and six and eight litre SUV's should be a thing of the past.  For all you guys wanting to go out into the countryside and kill something try a Landrover 110 inch diesel.  These monsters will carry six chaps, guns etc.  a couple of deer on the front wings and still climb trees with diff-lock and low ratio plugged in.  And all on a 2.5 litre disel engine. (My favourite motor ever!!!!)

Jerry Pournelle in his book "A Step Further Out" written some years ago calculated that if mylar greenhouses were erected on top of all the skyscrapers in America there would be sufficient room in them to grow all the food crops needed to feed the whole population!  

If this were done more oil crops could be grown on agricultural land.

But if all this were done where would be the profit for the oil companies?  Where would be the reason for war against the OPEC and other oil producing nations so where would be the profit for the arms manufacturers?  Profit would be back where it belongs with the local producers and not with the company shareholders and stockholders.  So who funds the political parties?  Etc., etc.  And now I had better shut up so that I am not accused of being a "pinkie"!!!!

[tecker]

   Tin foil dosent work and you sweaty up there and the reaction does wierd things to your scalp . Why why I know a that's what made my hair fall out. How do you know he's without a third member . Don't answer that . Iknow for shure he passes gas in the oval

office.

[jacquesm]

pinkie !!!

[tecker]

   All the brown's gas devices use it as it is made the electrolysis makes it's own pressure and it's more than enough to create positive pressure to  input to most applications  but a check valve is in order there

[MelTx]

 

   Hello    Chain-head is not without a third member.In fact he possess an extreamly large apprature.Him and haliburton & the dummy have been sticking it to the american public mucho-bucoos for nearly 4 years.This years deficit alone is 442 billion last year it was 375 billion....Bill clinton had a balanced budget.... But heck anyone can make a mistake, lets give the dummy & and chain-head another 4 year chance maybe they will give back the money.......

[JoeOh]

brown's what devices? I meant, can hydrogen gas be even more compressed than in it's natural state?

[tecker]

   Very specialized equipment leak detection and trnsport methods. The best method is to make what you can used and avoid the compression or transporting a hazard like that.

Useing multiple cells and and making a setup to power high use devices is fairly low tech.

[jacquesm]

hydrogen can be compressed like any other gas, but it has some peculiar qualities.

Hydrogen molecules (H2) are the simplest molecules that exist (a hydrogen atom will not exist solitary, it immediately bonds to another hydrogen atom to for H2).

They have exactly one proton and one electron, no neutrons. They are the smallest molecules possible and because of that they exhibit some unusual behaviours. For instance hydrogen gas will permeate most 'solids'. To a hydrogen atom, what you and I think of as a solid wall looks more like a fence (the crystal lattice) with holes in it. The fence holes are actually LARGER than the hydrogen molecules, mostly because most solids are made up out of molecules far larger than hydrogen. This allows the hydrogen to escape from containers that will hold most 'ordinary' gases without any problem whatsoever. On a molecular scale the world is a very strange place.

This makes the confinement of hydrogen, and in general the manipulation of it as a gass under pressure (where the atoms have relatively high speeds relative to each other) a bit of a problem. It can be solved (with special 'liners' in the tanks that are chemically composed to have an extremely tight lattice) but that usually requires a lot of $ to pull off. As tecker noted the easiest way to use hydrogen is to produce it and use it immediately, however that somewhat defeats the purpose of hydrogen as a storage device. The whole point here is to hold on to it as long as neccessary, and if you use it right away you might as well connect those wires and save yourself the trouble of converting from one form to H2 and then to some other form. More effecient as well...

There are some interesting stories about hydrogen explosions, it doesn't take a whole lot to set one off either. One university in the states had their whole outdoors storage facility blown up, and Ballard in Canada had in their early days a facility in Mexico I believe where they had constructed everything so that it would blow up 'gracefully' because they fully expected that at least once (don't remember if it did or not).

A big problem with working with hydrogen is that it is absolutely odorless, you could have a very dangerous concentration and never know it until the fridge kicks in. That would really ruin your day...

Hydrogen production is - in principle - easy as pie, stick two electrodes in water, turn on the juice, presto hydrogen. And oxygen. Mixed. Bad idea... one little spark will allow the gases to recombine to the lower energy state of 'water', and it will do so at the slightest pretext liberating all the energy that you expended in separating the elements in one go. That's called an explosion. The trick is to separate the hydrogen and the oxygen at the electrodes (where they are produced) and to let the oxygen vent into the nvironment, then capture and pressurize (and presumably bottle) the hydrogen.

Then if you 'recombine' the hydrogen with oxygen in a controlled way you get back the electricity that you put 'into' making it with near 100% efficiency (you always lose some gas and you'll always have some heat loss, but overall it's pretty good, much better than a lead acid cell). That's called a fuel cell.

Fuel cell technology is pretty well understood. Again, in principle it's quite simple. In practice however there are numerous problems. Most of these have to do with the tiny area where the recombining gases interact, the so called 'membrane'.
A membrane is a very thin sheet of some material or other that allows the controlled interaction between the two gases, basically a fence with very  precisely determined hole sizes and spacings (in 3 dimensions, it does have thickness, however flat it may seem).

A big problem with these membranes is that they always foul up, and that is where Ballard Power comes in. Ballard has spent some 35 years or so developing and patenting various membrane materials and are so entrenched in this that it is almost impossible to make a basic fuel cell without running into some ballard power patent (or multiple patents). That's why all the big automakers are either licensing Ballard technology or pursuing joint ventures. Basically they locked in the whole of the fuel cell market while everybody else was asleep at the switch.

[tecker]

   An auto alternator has all the output to run a 20 or 30 cell unit more than enough

hydrogen to run the vehical but unless you run a high head temp if drowns at low rpm.

[jacquesm]

I'm not sure I follow that, an auto alternator is driven by the engine, mainly to charge the battery and to run accessories. I'm not aware of auto alternators in the 40 Kw range, which is roughly what a small engine puts out. Most alternators are rated somewhere around 70 Amps, big ones may be 100 or so. If you remove the regulator portion of a car alternator it will produce much higher voltages, but even so the body of the alternator is limited in the maximum amount of heat you can dissipate and even with good cooling they will top out around 1 Kw. Not bad for a little thingy like that but nowhere near enough to run the vehicle directly (disconnect the engine driveshaft and hook up an electric motor to the altnators output, most produce 3 phase ac) unless you want to gear it down to the point where you drive .3 miles per hour...

Unless of course I'm really not following you, in that case please correct me.

[ADMIN]

It all boils down too.....what power source is being used to separate the hydrogen from the water? If you are making hydrogen with coal-fired or nuclear-fired electricity, the whole environmental point is moot.

Hydrogen is not a power source, because of those incredibly strong hydrogen/oxygen bonds in the water molecule. Takes lots of power to bust them, at least the way we are doing it now. As a way to store energy, hydrogen has promise, but unfortunately it's also terribily inefficient converting hydrogen to electricity, and vice versa...with current technology anyway.  The whole "hydrogen economy" hype seems based on 'future technological advances' that hopefully some government will fund. Iceland is putting tons of money into it, with researchers developing new metal salts for more efficient hydrogen storage that can be used as structural members for a vehicle, for example....so your car's metal frame IS the fuel tank! But this is all at least a couple decades away from reality...and Iceland is a small country with a proportionally smaller infrastructure.

Certain governments (I won't name them, hmmmmmm) see the "hydrogen economy" as a way to appear very concerned about environmental issues, convincing the public that hydrogen is an energy source, while making coal- and nuclear energy companies happy too, since we'll need the power to separate all that hydrogen out....and nobody could afford that many solar panels or wind turbines.

ADMIN

[stop4stuff]

Don't believe the hydrogen hype... make an electrolyser and find out how much power it takes to make hydrogen.

As previously mentioned, confinement of compressed hydrogen requires expensive containers... these containers are heavy making their use in vechicles a bit pointless considering current electric car technology.

When using hydrogen to power a vehicle, about the only way that makes sense (to me) is this example from Central High School, and their solar-hydrogen vehicle. http://www.centralphysics.com/index.htm. Even then the efficiencies are horrendous... maybe a solar stirling powered car could be feasable, with a backup heat source for night driving on the luxury models!

As for safety of a confined gas explosion, see here; http://yarchive.net/explosives/oxy_fuel.html for examples of stupidity and human injury.

For hydrogen properties, see http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/properties.html

Making hydrogen is easy, and expensive in terms of wasted energy...

...great fun for launching plastic bottle rockets tho )

One of my homemade electrolysers gives off hydrogen and oxygen mixed which is bubbled thru water into the 'rocket'. The gas in the bottle ignited and whoosh. 50ml of mixed gas sends a 330ml bottle 45ft up.

The electrolyser runs at 75w, and around 48% efficiency in converting water and electricity (100w in) to hydrogen and oxygen (48w out)... very poor compared to a high efficiency electric motor.

For transportation, Bio-fuels are definately the way forward. One gallon of properly prepared bio-diesel contains a similar amount of energy as 1 gallon of regular diesel and more energy than a gallon of regular unleaded gas.

A comparison chart of transport fuels energy equivalent can be found in the National Associationof Fleet Administrators, Resource Center (visit http://www.nafa.org )

Properly prepared bio-diesel involves the transesterifaction of the feed stock, and removal of unwanted (clogging) fats. The process is described here, http://www.bio-power.co.uk/makeit.htm very simple to do at home.

Check out the article by the UNH Biodiesel Group on the University of New Hampshire website about bio diesel production from algae. Enough biodiesel to replace all US petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles.

see: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

At least in the UK our future looks like bio fuels will play a part, with EU directives dictating 5.75% bio fuel useage by the end of 2010; see http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/biofuels_breakthrough.htm

Thumbs up for bio fuels

Big rip off for hydrogen enconomy.

paul

[jacquesm]

Hey Paul,

Thanks so much for those links ! Especially the UNH article about biofuel through algae production. That was an interesting read, even if you probably should derate it a bit seeing that it is from a university that is looking for funding and that plans on patenting the resulting technology.

I was not aware the power density achieveable from algae could reach such high levels. This is quite interesting. For now though, it seems as though they are a long way away from anything remotely practical, let alone volume production.

The Iraq war could have nicely funded all the neccessary research though. If only humanity would spend as much on research as we spend on wars I wonder where we'd be...

[tecker]

Strap an extra 60 amps pull the ac off put two marine batteries in the back keep em up with the 60 amp set up to 12 cell electrolysis units and pipe it in with lp adapter .you'd have to have lpgas on board to start up and to use in heavy traffic to keep the head temp up . Dump brown's gas down her gullet and work out the condensation problems in the exhaust . Have to get a separate emissions exemption so you could mess with the motor the water is a problem you need to keep the exhaust hot out the tail pipe .

[thunderhead]

The problem with biodiesel is that even though it does solve the problem of global CO2 emissions, it doesn't solve the problem of local CO, O3 or NOx emissions, nor of particularates.  These things are what is choking our cities (I live not far from London, and I have asthma) and no amount of biodiesel is going to fix that.  It is a problem inherent in the internal combustion engine.

The solution for a tiny island like the UK is lithium electric.

The government probably realise this, which is why electric cars have zero congestion charge and zero road tax - and why the Department of Transport want road pricing so they can still soak the motorist when everyone runs on mains electricity.

That and David Blunkett's "private security wet-dream" of being able to track every citizen as they drive about. But "nothing to hide - nothing to fear", eh?