Possibly politically incorrect solutions to the western world's problems

[shereads]

I have no way to evaluate this stuff, but I am aware that there are cautions about the hydrogen fuel solution and a quick Google found this example. (NOTE: this is definitely not the Sierra Club's publication; "Sierra Times" has a funky logotype made of Lincoln Log drawings and carries a big "Keep and Bear Arms" display banner.

Also please note that this is definitely not from an environmentalists' perspective (this guy is anti-alternative fuels, period) so he's not a tree-hugger journalist of my choosing. I don't have a clue how many revinnu-ers he's got locked up in the cellar, either, just that he writes anti-alternative-fuels rants for heavily armed mountain men and/or the energy industry, and that his real name may be Lynn Cheney. I'm passing this along to help you cold climate persons save fuel oil by getting a blood pressure lift from this jerk. I skipped the good parts because I have an early day tomorrow. Going to buy my hybrid car.



I grit my liberal teeth and post...


Hyping Hydrogen: The Energy Scam

By Alan Caruba © 2003
Not long ago I wrote a commentary, "The Great Hydrogen Myth", in which I offered my opinion that throwing another billion dollars at more research for the purpose of replacing oil, coal, or natural gas, was a huge waste. Recently, that commentary was posted on EnergyPulse.Net, an Internet site for those who work in industries that provide and use various forms of energy. It's a favorite among the many engineers and scientists whose lives are devoted to the issues and news about energy. SR NOTES: There's a surprise.

Here are some of the responses my commentary received. The names of the innocent have been protected because their jobs depend upon it!

"I have often thought that this 'hydrogen economy' seems intuitively flawed; using energy to make hydrogen to then be used as an energy source. Intuitively, it feels like the Escher painting with the water flowing uphill."

Therein lies central issue that undermines the hype about hydrogen as an endless, virtually free, source of energy. First of all, it is not energy. It is what the engineers and scientists call "a carrier." You have to break the hydrogen molecule free from others to use it and that requires energy. Thus, you have to use a lot of energy in order to use hydrogen to make energy. In real life there is no free lunch.

A graduate chemical engineer with 35 years in the chemical and oil industry who knows a lot about catalytic reforming units that make and use hydrogen in the reformation processes, had this to say, "Not only does H2 (hydrogen) require a lot of energy to produce, collect, and store, it presents rather nasty safety problems."

Need it be said he thinks that Ethanol (made from corn!) is another bad idea the environmentalists have foisted on us? Why? "Ethanol costs far more to produce than the fuel value it provides and the Environmental Protection Agency in its wisdom forced industry to oxygenate fuels only to discover that covalent bonds of all oxygenates are very soluble and stable in ground waters when released." In other words, this environmental "solution" has led to the poisoning of ground water supplies throughout the nation. It also forces up the cost of gasoline.

He wasn't through. "While I'm at it. Greens have our environmental experts at EPA on another even wilder goose chase to capture mercury from coal fired utility plants across the USA. If you add up all the Hg (mercury) released from coal combustion and compare it to global sources, the current analytical and statistical techniques and technologies probably will not be able to detect any reduction in the global Hq pool in the environment."

Thank you, thank you, thank you! The Greens live to conjure up endless scare campaigns, always shouting that everyone, especially children, are being "poisoned" by things that pose no real threat. Or they find ways to force government mandates that either end up poisoning us, i.e., ethanol, or represent no real threat, i.e., mercury. The end result is higher costs for energy use of any kind.

Part of the hydrogen hype is its use in fuel cells. A retired General Electric engineer wrote to say, "I previously analyzed and designed fuel cells and it is apparent to me that they will always be too expensive for all but very special uses. They are twenty times the cost of a piston engine and are very likely to remain at least ten times more in spite of all the research done."

Like all realists, engineers and scientists believe we are, in fact, running a risk in our dependence on petroleum. Even with a trillion and maybe even two trillion barrels of oil available, at the present rate of use, the experts estimate we will go through it in about forty years. Others, however, believe there are vast amounts of undiscovered oil reserves.

Part of the problem of energy costs, energy dependency, and the cost of oil can be found in the fact that the US has experienced a drop in its refining capability over the past twenty years. We went from being able to refine 18.5 million barrels to 16.5 million barrels. There has been an even sharper drop in the number of refineries, from 315 to 155! Thus, the US is highly vulnerable if even a small number of refineries stopped producing, even temporarily. A major factor for the dramatic increase in oil prices is this lack of refining capacity.

This may explain why the oil industry and auto manufacturers are willing to spend billions to find a way to make hydrogen the transportation energy of the future. Hybrid vehicles that utilize a fuel cell could get more than 75 miles per gallon of gasoline and that's a good thing. Environmentalists support this and, if the technology can be developed to a point of being affordable, why not? It remains, however, a very big "if".

The real answer, of course, is to build more refineries and, in part, to tap the reserves of oil known to exist in the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve. Environmentalists have fought both these options.

Here's the bottom line. Without energy, this nation shuts down. All others, too. The good news is that technologies are being developed whereby, for transportation and other uses, new engines will revolutionize the use of current energy sources. They will be far more efficient and they will be affordable.

Beware of the hype about hydrogen. Many engineers and scientists know it's baloney and you should too.

--------

Don't mess with this guy. He looks like Colonel Sanders, but he bears arms. And arms bears, with coal-burning real-man weapons. SR

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Re: Possibly politically incorrect solutions to the western world's problems

But I understood that most hydrogen was locked up in water (or hydrocarbons) - and to liberate it you need electricity, provided from...

Dr M mentioned Hydro electric -- a good choice because ther is plenty of both electricity and water to elecrolize at a hydroelectric facility.

However, there are many other sources of electricity for electolizing Hydrogen from water -- a floating solar cell array could produce huge amounts of Hydrogen from seawater and fill blimps with it to transport itself to shore.

Hydrogen CAN be liquified, but it requires very special cryogenic handling whenit is liquified -- not practical for installing in cars, but more than practical for shipping large amounts.

Hydrogen can also be produced through chemical reactions and form other materials than water. Hydrocarbons are the next most plentiful source of Hydrogen, but the carbon is left to deal with after you extract the Hydrogen -- essentially the problem we have now with pollution from hydrocarbon fuels.

There are two main problems with pure Hydrogen as our primary fuel:

1: As the smallest atom/molecule that can exist, Hydrogen is very difficult to seal into containers -- a seal that is tight enough to stop anything else has to be twice as tight to stop Hydrogen. Not an insoluable problem, but a continuing expense in the manufacture of hydrogen fueled vehicles and distribution systems -- closer tolerances always cost more to attain.

2: Producing Hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen provides, or it produces more localized pollution than it's use would remove globally, or both. The pollution problem can be minimized by concetrating on producing Hydrogen from Seawater where the only "pollution" is essentilly a localized increase in salinity around the production array. The real killer is the production and distributin costs in terms of energy requirements.

Fossil fuels ultimately produce over 90% of the "power" used in any form. To simply convert those fossil fuel applications to use hydrogen instead of fossil fuels by eletrolizing sea water with Electricity would mean generating something like TWICE as much power in the Hydrogen Production Facilities as the rest of the world gains from the Hydrogen they produce -- or using Three times as much "power" as the entire world produces now. (Three times, because it takes half again as much power as theHydrogen would return to produce it and half as much as it produces to distribute it, plus the original power usage we're trying to replace.

And that's the rub - the only raw fuel that there's enough of (since while wind/wave/tidal/hydro-electric etc. can certainly contribute, there ain't enough to do the whole job) is atomic!   (20 years ago, there was already enough 'spent fuel' - which can be 'burnt' in breeder reactors - in UK bunkers to generate more power than we've ever got from coal.  Yup - ever!)

Nuclear is certainly an option for providing power to non-mobile installations, and for charging electric vehicles that use Battery technology or mass transit that uses a hot rail or overhead wire.

It's not much good for replacing Gasoline/Diesel as an energy source that can be moved easily to where it's needed.

More Nuclear Fission plants are needed, because they're proven technology that doesn't pollute -- except in a very localized fashion in it's spent fuel storage area and/or a centralized spent fuel repository.

 

[SlickTony]

i'm glad all the chemists etc. have come out to point out the obstacles that have to be dealt with in order to change what we use as energy. We are going to run out of oil one day, and then the lives of people in communities based on the automobile are going to be severly compromised.

I noticed the sprawl phenomenon when I was coming out--it was the direct result of gas that cost less than a quarter a gallon, the booming post-war economy, air conditioning and the GI bill, under which you could get an FHA loan for a new house but not an existing house in an urban neighborhood.

When I was a little girl we moved to a Houston subdivision called Meadow Creek Village which had been carved out of cow pastures--a guy my dad worked with still had to chase cows out of his back yard who were puzzled and resentful of the loss of their former habitat. This was supposed to be good for kids. Nice and safe. No buses and trolleys and pushcats rattling past. A swingset in every back yard.

I began to notice the flaws, and the disconnects, after I'd started to learn to read. It was puzzling to me that kids in books, if they set out to walk somewhere, actually gotsomewhere--candy stores, bookstores, libraries, newsstands, dress shop, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the hardware store. In my neighborhood, a walk of a corresponding length brought you to miles and miles of subdivisions not unlike the one you lived in, until you reached the boundary streets of--in my case, Almeda-Genoa, Allendale, and Richey, which had such fierce automobile traffic on them that I was discouraged from crossing them on my bike, or really, having anything to do with them at all. One could go into what undeveloped woodland was left and pretend one was in the Forest Primeval, but the flowing bodies of water were lined with conrete.

I experienced some of the positive aspects of urban living when I was in Pittsburgh, and even Tehran, if only I'd been in better company. When the crunch comes, hell, maybe I'd rather be in Philadelphia--except no, they still have winter there. I think I have to stay in the south. Maybe New Orleans, another pre-car city, and hopefully I can manage to find a green building there.

I read that out west, green buildings existed--one knew what direction to face the house in, how to build so that the good breezes were directed through the house when it was nice, one could hide away from the brutal desert sun at its height, and retain heat in the winter. But after the A/C was invented, no one paid any attention to stuff like this and houses got built that made no account of their natural surroundings, and which would become outposts of hell once the A/C went off.

To go back to the political aspect of our dependence on oil. Oil has poisoned our relationship with the middle east practically from the beginning. Most conservative/republicans I talk to solemnly pronounce that, of course we didn't go to Iraq on account of oil, and they expect that because they've said this so loudly, so confidently, so repeatedly, it's self-evident, and if they're like members of a certain other forum I was hanging out in until Lent, they'll call you a fuckwit for not seeing that this is self-evident, but what else can be the reason?

Our country's gummint looked the other way while most of Rwanda was butchering the rest of Rwanda. It was far more public than the Holocaust. You could see it going on on TV. The orders for machetes imported from China by the dozen gross is a matter of public record. But wait, there's no oil in Rwanda, is there? But I hear tell that there've found oil in Nigeria or someplace, so I suppose our policy toward Africa is in for a change.

 

[fifty5]

Right.

No matter how frustrating...

Raw energy is where it's at.

Most 'renewable' sources (for which, read solar powered in something like real time) simply have an inadequate 'density' (space required for energy produced) to take the full load.  (Think back to the last time you sat in front of a wood fire; then think of how long it took that wood to grow, and how many square metres - or yards - were needed).

Or one can do some sums: πr² applied to the radius of the earth - and multiplied by the solar energy density - gives something like 10^14 kw (100,000,000,000,000).  Sounds a lot?  Well calculate mc² and remember that c is the speed of light (so c² is 10^17 - 100,000,000,000,000, i.e. 1000 times more). Conversion of 1 gram of mass (mc² refers to mass in killograms) generates the same energy as the entire insolation of the earth (which is what drives all 'renewable' energy sources - and god alone knows what proportion of solar energy is actually needed to keep the planet - as opposed to mankind - alive).

I find that very uncomfortable, since I really, really don't like the legacy of nuclear power.

On the other hand, estimates of how long the petroleum stocks (generated from solar energy over a geological time span) will last are around 40 years 'at current consumption rates'.  That means with none of the third world allowed to approach the living standards of 'the west'.

Why don't I stop smoking?  Well, that seems a good way not to be around when the shit hits the fan!



f5

PS I'm fascinated that I'm discussing something like this on a site devoted to erotica!

 

[SlickTony]

I think a lot of people who haven't been in Literotica very long are, and probably people who've never been in a place like Literotica just flat don't believe it; we're just a buncha porn writers, what do we know?

The problem with nuclear power seems to be

1. What do you do with the waste?
2. People keep wanting to make bombs with the material.
   [/list=1]

 

[fifty5]

I think a lot of people who haven't been in Literotica very long are, and probably people who've never been in a place like Literotica just flat don't believe it; we're just a buncha porn writers, what do we know?

The problem with nuclear power seems to be

1. What do you do with the waste?
2. People keep wanting to make bombs with the material.
   [/list=1]

1. Hi Tony,
   1. Right, and
   2. Right.
      [/list=1] I agree.
      
      So where do we get the energy?
      
      Some really ought to be from car brakes.  That might sound daft, but the big inefficiency with the car (and trucks, trains, etc.) is that we spend energy making the things go faster, then when they need to slow down, the energy is wasted into heat that gets lost.
      
      In contrast, the endurance 'one offs' reclaim that energy by using it to spin up flywheels, or re-charge batteries - and get hundreds of mpg as a result.  Every hill we drive down, every set of lights we stop at, ought to store the energy removed from the vehicle.  It's staggering how little fuel we need to keep up a steady speed...
      
      f5

 

[amicus]

Oh, my, another Liberal/left wing scratching post, my how I hate cats....

Fossil fuels will still be abundant 2500 years from now. Point the first...

It was the liberal left, tree hugging ecologists, Ralph Nader included, that for the past 30 years have prevented the contruction of a single nuclear plant.[in the US] (Nuclear energy, clean, non polluting and safe and could be cheap without the law suits)

As John Galt said, if you want a solution to high energy prices and shortages(I.E. California), turn it over to private enterprise and get the hell out of my way.

No new inventions or creations have ever emerged from government studies. Even the tax funded University system has fallen far behind the laboratories of private enterprise in terms of new ideas. And that does not surprise me in the least. It is just another failure of tax supported education by government edict.

Global warming is a cock and bull story. Read my lips: "No evidence exists to even suggest that the industry of man has any effect on global temperatures."

Yes, I know, challenging the Liberal Mantra is akin to telling a Babtist there is no God.

Alas, alack, woe is me.

amicus...(with a grin and a chuckle)(did you know that lightning creates ozone?)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It was puzzling to me that kids in books, if they set out to walk somewhere, actually gotsomewhere--candy stores, bookstores, libraries, newsstands, dress shop, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the hardware store.

That made me laugh. I grew up in Chicago and we used to walk everywhere. I live in the burbs now and never will get used to it.

HYDROGEN: I think most plans for using H2 as a fuel are looking towards using (as yet undiscovered) catalysts to produce the stuff from seawater. Chlorophyll can split water into Hydrogen and oxygen using only sunlight, so maybe we could figure out how it's done too.

Hydrogen is absorbed by certain metals just like water is absorbed by a sponge and in such a state is non-explosive and safe to handle. It can be released by heating. The problem here is that the best hydrogen sponges are the precious metals, platinum, palladium, rhodium, and--not as good--nickel, which are kind of expensive.

NUCLEAR: I used to work at Argonne National Laboratory where we were doing a lot of work on waste disposal. Spent nuclear fuel can be mixed with sand and "vitrified", or fused into little glass pellets which are very stable. I don;t worry about the waste disposal problem as much as I worry now about the fuck-ups that can happen at nuclear plants. Three-mile island was very close to a real worst-case scenario, a lot closer than most people realize, and they were using state-of-the-art equipment and controls. It's really scary. Murphy's Law in spades.

So I was a big advocate of nuclear until I learned the details of TMI. Now I just don't know.

But it's hard to think that if we can spend 500 billion on a white elephant like the Star Wars missile defense system, we can't throw a few billion at energy research and see what shakes out. God knows our scientists and engineers could use the work.

---dr.M.

P.S. Amicus, your points aren't even worth discussing.

 

[shereads]

So where do we get the energy?

Some really ought to be from car brakes.

Not daft at all, fif. It's one of the reasons why the Toyota Prius gets even better gas mileage in the city than it does on the highway, unlike Honda's hybrids. The Prius somehow uses the energy from braking, to recharge its batteries.

 

[Liar]

Oh, my, another Liberal/left wing scratching post, my how I hate cats....

Fossil fuels will still be abundant 2500 years from now. Point the first...

It was the liberal left, tree hugging ecologists, Ralph Nader included, that for the past 30 years have prevented the contruction of a single nuclear plant.[in the US] (Nuclear energy, clean, non polluting and safe and could be cheap without the law suits)

As John Galt said, if you want a solution to high energy prices and shortages(I.E. California), turn it over to private enterprise and get the hell out of my way.

No new inventions or creations have ever emerged from government studies. Even the tax funded University system has fallen far behind the laboratories of private enterprise in terms of new ideas. And that does not surprise me in the least. It is just another failure of tax supported education by government edict.

Global warming is a cock and bull story. Read my lips: "No evidence exists to even suggest that the industry of man has any effect on global temperatures."

Yes, I know, challenging the Liberal Mantra is akin to telling a Babtist there is no God.

Alas, alack, woe is me.

amicus...(with a grin and a chuckle)(did you know that lightning creates ozone?)

Although you are wrong about many things you do have one point:

Nuclear power is reasonably safe. In modern plants, with a good economy, that is.

I live within spitting distance from a plant (Ignalina, Estonia) that would make Tjernobyl seem like a firecracker, and is just as poorly run. I don't really care if we build more nuclear plants, as long as we do it right. But before we do, let us see to that our neighbors don't accidentally blow themselves up. Because that would probably spread enough radioactive litter to make your Whooper glow green too.

#L

 

[fifty5]

Or one can do some sums:

Or one can do the right sums...

First the numbers are wrong - since the first - insolation - is, as stated, in killowatts, but the second is in Joules (watts time seconds) so 1 Joule is 1 watt for 1 second. Watts versus kilo-watts cancels out the 1000 : 1 ratio - and that kilogram (not gram) of mass generates the solar equivalent of 1 second's insolation...

Second, the concept is wrong.

Point 1 is that the earth reflects 30-40% of the sun's radiation straight away.

Point 2 is that the other 60-70% is re-radiated later.  If it wasn't, then the earth would warm up (as, indeed it has) until a balance was the result.

Accordingly, those sums are simply irrelevant. Sorry - that's alcohol mixed with brain-power for you: the latter misfires...

Nevertheless, the point for which I was trying to provide evidence is still valid, even though that "evidence" was spurious.

Renewable sources of energy are 'low density' - wind farms occupy far more space than thermal power stations, no matter what fuel is used in the latter. Thermal power station outputs are measured in thousands of megawatts, wind turbine outputs in hundreds of kilowatts.  The same thing applies to almost all sources of renewable energy.

(The exception is hydro-electric generation, but that isn't open to a decision, plus cash.  Hydro-power is dependent on nature already having provided the required flow of water down a sufficient drop in height.  Such sites are rare.)

Also valid is that the UK has more energy locked up in spent nuclear fual, than it has generated from coal in its entire history.

Forget my crappy arithmetic, the facts remain.

I only wish they didn't...

f5

 

[fifty5]

HYDROGEN: I think most plans for using H2 as a fuel are looking towards using (as yet undiscovered) catalysts to produce the stuff from seawater. Chlorophyll can split water into Hydrogen and oxygen using only sunlight, so maybe we could figure out how it's done too.

Doing it is easy, but...

The chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen releases energy (it gets hot when it burns). After they are combined, it requires the input of an equal amount of energy to separate them again. And exactly the same equality applies if you start with water, separate that into H & O, then burn the H again (that's the law of conservation of energy). In practice, of course, it's impossible to get all the energy you have available to go into splitting the water into H & O - there are inevitable practical losses.  Thus, however you store it, however you move it, every Joule (or whatever unit you choose) released in a hydrogen-powered car costs more than a Joule (generated at a power-station of some kind) to make it available.

At noon on the equator (strictly anywhere where the sun is directly overhead) the power of the sun's radiation is 1.37 kilowatts per square metre - but about a third of that is reflected before it gets to the earth's surface, so call it 1kw - and 1 horsepower is 3/4 of a kilowatt.  So if you have a 100 hp petrol/diesel engine, that is equivalent to 75 square metres of perfectly efficient solar energy conversion, perpetually at noon in the tropics.  The latter is, of course, impossible...  I can't get my head round the mathematics, but you must have to divide by 2 for night & day, plus more because of the curvature of the earth.  Taking a guess at another factor of 2 (my intuition is that it might well really be π again), that means the combustion engine can generate the same power as 300 square metres of solar power plant.  How big is the engine in your car? (Mine's something like a quarter of a square metre.)

That's what I mean by "renewable energy sources are low density".

Don't worry that combustion engines are inefficient - so will be the production of Hydrogen from from the solar radiation - even with catalysts.

NUCLEAR: I used to work at Argonne National Laboratory where we were doing a lot of work on waste disposal. Spent nuclear fuel can be mixed with sand and "vitrified", or fused into little glass pellets which are very stable. I don't worry about the waste disposal problem as much as I worry now about the fuck-ups that can happen at nuclear plants. Three-mile island was very close to a real worst-case scenario, a lot closer than most people realize, and they were using state-of-the-art equipment and controls. It's really scary. Murphy's Law in spades.

So I was a big advocate of nuclear until I learned the details of TMI. Now I just don't know.

But it's hard to think that if we can spend 500 billion on a white elephant like the Star Wars missile defense system, we can't throw a few billion at energy research and see what shakes out. God knows our scientists and engineers could use the work.

I agree that research would be well worth the cost, but in the meantime, not knowing is pretty scary.

Nuclear waste disposal is another case of swings-and-roundabouts: the longer the half-life, the lower the radiation - and vice versa; and the more sand & so-on that's mixed with the spent fuel (to dilute it and protect it) the greater volume of waste that's produced.  (Doc, as one who knows, can you confirm that's right?)

I don't know either!

P.S. Amicus, your points aren't even worth discussing.

I agree.

f5

 

[SlickTony]

What I'm wondering, what's an objectivist type like Amicus doing living where he is? What was that, Seattle? Usually a hotbed of lefitistas and tree-huggers (according to stereotype)? Unless he's bought him a gulch somewhere.

 

[amicus]

Hey, Tony...no It was Portland, Oregon...did a talk show there for 10 years...but that was a long time ago...yes, not the West Coast any more, but the Left Coast, they have Californicated both Oregon and Washington, alas...I have no home...

 

[lucky-E-leven]

alas...I have no home...

I've heard there's some nice swamp land for sale in Florida.

~lucky

 

[SlickTony]

Oh, OK! Portland. My bad.

some nice swamp land for sale in Florida.

No, I think that's the Everglades, which are in the process of being restored. I think they found out that draining it interfered with the aquifer, or some pesky thing. And much of the swamp is drying up, thanks to the semi-drought conditions we're under. Still, Florida might be an option. Nearly every square foot of Florida that isn't already owned by someone is up for sale.

 

[minsue]

Nearly every square foot of Florida that isn't already owned by someone is up for sale.

I'm sure this is a stupid question so please forgive me, but I must ask: If it isn't already owned by someone, who is selling it?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I'm sure this is a stupid question so please forgive me, but I must ask: If it isn't already owned by someone, who is selling it?

C'mon Min! We're talking about Florida here. No rules = Just right! You know how things go there...

~lucky

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Do you have to supply your own alligators or do they come with the property?

See Min, my question was stupider, feel better?
~A~

 

[SlickTony]

Oh, the alligators go where they will. Their argument is that they were here before the people were, which of course is true. If they get too close to people or eat someone's child or dog, they're killed. But that's true all over the south. They have just as many in Louisiana. Remind me to tell you how I skipped past a ten-footer that was lying sprawled asleep on a sidewalk at the nature center in Cameron Parish.

My comment about Florida was just my snarky way of saying that the place is getting overdeveloped. The latest dustup around here is that the town of Ponte Vedra wanted to take over Guana River State Park to put up their own high school, even though the park is a state park and wildlife preserve, bird sanctuary etc., and there's already a high school that the Ponte Vedrans can go to.