H2 And You: The Debate at TreeHugger
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 6.08
The Hydrogen Education Foundation "educates people about how incorporating hydrogen within the world's energy portfolio will simultaneously reduce our dependence on oil, while improving the world's carbon footprint by reducing greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and spark worldwide economic development." It has also set up a website to promote hydrogen at ::H2 and You.
There is a reason Graham set up TreeHugger with correspondents all over the world; we might throw things at each other if we were in the same room. I called it blatant greenwashing, paraphrasing Mary McCarthy: Every word in it is a lie, including "and" and "the". Tim thought otherwise, as did John. I took the page "ten things to remember about hydrogen" and made a point about each. Tim responded with a counterpoint. I copy it below the fold.
H2: Did you know that the world produces enough hydrogen right now to fuel 130 million fuel cell-electric vehicles (FCEVs)? More than 40 billion kilograms of hydrogen are produced globally each year (the equivalent of 40 billion gallons of gasoline).
POINT (LA) and it is all made from natural gas, which we are running out of.
COUNTERPOINT: (TM) It could be made directly from solar and novel enzymes that split water into hydrogen far more efficiently than electroloysis.
53% of the hydrogen produced in the U.S. is already dedicated to transportation. It's used to make gasoline cleaner by removing sulfur from petroleum at refineries.
POINT (LA): where they actually need it, so if we run out of natural gas what are they going to do?
COUNTERPOINT (TM): If hydrogen production is bumped up using alternative sources this wouldn't be a problem.
A system of hydrogen fueling stations may not be as expensive as you think. A $10 - $15 billion investment would put you within two miles of the nearest hydrogen station in the top 100 metro areas (where 70% of the population lives).
POINT (LA): You can't pipe the stuff, it leaks out of everything, building an infrastructure will be completely unaffordable.
COUNTERPOINT (TM): Produce Hydrogen On-Site, from geothermal, wind or solar power only.
The bottom line: a hydrogen infrastructure is economically viable and doable.
POINT (LA): No its not. worst of all, it is not a fuel, if it is made from electricity it is a battery, a storage medium. If it is made from natural gas, why bother?
COUNTERPOINT (TM): ummmm...your right. It's not viable given the current state of technology. The primary problems are how to store hydrogen (as some type of fuel as opposed to a battery), and how to generate hydrogen at a source cheaply- both of which are just in the experimental stages.
John then piped in: You're missing the point. Natural gas is a hydrogen carrier. Gasoline is a hydrogen carrier (1/3 of the energy liberated in gas combustion is in creation of water). Biogas is a hydrogen carrier and can be made very economically from biogas reactors using renewable inputs. The hydrolysis route is still impractical.
Editor Meg sums it all up: Bottom Line: Hydrogen is an omnipresent element that could hold a place in our energy future. But it's not silver bullet, and at present it looks like it may even shoot itself in the foot.
What do you think? There will be a survey tomorrow.
"POINT (LA): No its not. worst of all, it is not a fuel, if it is made from electricity it is a battery, a storage medium. If it is made from natural gas, why bother?"
WTF?? Would anyone care to give an explanation of chemical potential energy?
Repeat of above, hydrogen is not a viable alternative until you get hydrolysis working. Good luck with that, people have been at it for more than 30 years.
I think the important thing to remember is to think about WHY you would want to have a H2 economy or logistic infrastructure.
All of the proponents hold up hope for fueling infrastructure based on hydrolysis of water using renewable energy. I have to assume that there are two reasons why you would want to do this: local emissions of criteria pollutants (SOx, NOx, CO, HC, PM) or emissions of greenhouse gas.
The first problem may be addressed somewhat by the use of fuel cell vehicles, but it is at GREAT cost. Optimistic estimates for the cost of vehicles would have them coming down from their current cost of over a million per vehicle (not counting R&D) to over 100k per vehicle. You think 700bar gas tanks, high density electric motors, and a PEM stack full of platinum will really be able to compete in price with conventional or even EV technology on price? The money is likely better spent on advanced conventional vehicle technology or better emission controls, or even more simply by buying a new yaris or something for everyone out there driving a gross polluting vehicle. California is doing something smart by buying gross polluters off the road.
The second problem, CO2 emission, is also not best addressed by attacking cars. Right now the fraction of renewable power generation is tiny in this country and the fraction of Coal powered generation is significant. As was shown in "the hype about hydrogen" (not a conservative hack job, actually, it was written by Clinton's secretary of energy - look it up), you can abate far more CO2 by simply TURNING OFF coal plants as you bring renewables online rather than using this electricity to generate H2 to generate electricity. Come and talk to me when there is an excess of renewable on the grid, or even when there are ANY projections of that being a problem.
Using renewable energy to generate H2 to generate electricity when we are getting so much of our power from a source as carbon-intense as coal is like worrying about a papercut when you have a sucking chest wound.
The problem is that this kind of pie-in-the-sky keeps people thinking that science has a solution to problems, be it the limited supply of oil, air pollution, or CO2 emission, when really this doesn't seem to hold much promise other than making us feel like we are trying.
I've had an in-depth conversation with Dan Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT who has beend studying this for years and is wayyyyyy deep into it, more than I could ever be. http://blog.gmnext.com/?p=114 The bottom line is that in 30 years or so, our global energy needs even with the most ardent of conservation methods, is going to triple to 45 terrawatts, 45-trillion watts, of energy. Where are we going to get this energy? Hydrogen. His big idea is sunlight+water=fuel. Perhaps the tehcnology in place now isn't the most efficient for storing or making hydrogen, but technology will develop to answer the need. Right now GM is helping with standards and practices for automotive onboard storage of hydrogen, a necessary step for automotive adoption of this technology. And GM's Larry Burns and Toyota as well, issued a call for the development of the infrastructure, pegging the cost at $2 million per fueling station and strategically placing 12,000 of them to reach 70% of the U.S. population, at a total cost of $24 billion. Now for me personally, seeing what is spent on a monthly level in Iraq would more than pay for this infrastructure in a very short period of time if the fed'l gov't deemed it a priority. Listen to his address to the NHA Conference here : http://www.gmnext.com/uploads/assets/TheFutureofAdvancedPropEncore-Larry%20Burns.mp3
Sure they aren't developed enough to implement soon, but there are some exciting ways to convert waste products into hydrogen.
http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2005/techprogram/P31059.HTM
and
http://www.summerscience.org.uk/08/factsheets/Exh20_TodaysWaste.pdf
This makes me think of the car in Back to the Future II. Maybe we will get there someday.
I would like to hear what LA has to say about what we SHOULD be doing. It is easy to be pessimistic about transportation, energy, and our terrible dependence on fossil fuels. We are abusing the usage of energy, there is no argument there, but we also have to remember that in order to be successful with renewable energy technologies we MUST be able to store the energy. The intermittence of renewable technologies such as solar and wind make the replacement of fossil fuels very difficult. Many progressive European countries have struggled with this, they install enough wind turbines to supply 50% of their capacity and only achieve 20-25% in their yearend calculations. Hydrogen creation and on-site storage in conjunction with high efficiency turbines could assist with “buffering the grid”.
I believe that there is no perfect “drop-in” technology that will allow the same inefficient and wasteful use of energy that has occurred over the past 80+ years, but hydrogen maybe the answer to assist in supporting the unreliability associated with most renewable technologies. Its combustion characteristics are such that future Combustion turbines and fuel cells should begin to achieve very high efficiencies. The creation of hydrogen is another story, but I think it maybe biologically possible and therefore very clean!
Don’t be a pessimist, once you start to hang your hat on only the negatives, why spend the time trying to fix the problem?
LA: I am not at all negative. 52% of all energy in America is used in buildings, 40% to heat and cool, 12% to build. 50% of the energy input in a power station goes up the stack as waste heat. 92% of the energy burned in an automobile is moving the car, not the people in it. Go after the low-hanging fruit and we won't have a problem.
Point for Hydrogen:
Even if you use oil or natural gas to create hydrogen at a hydrogen plant, it is a lot easier to deal with the C02 emissions at each plant than trying to deal with the
emissions of millions of cars. Hydrogen plants could phase out natural gas, replacing it with renewable energy.
A further comment about hydrogen infrastructure:
Yes, a 10-15 billion dollar might get everyone to within 2 miles of a refueling station, but who is going to invest that kind of money without hydrogen fuel-cell cars on the road? Who is going to buy a hydrogen fuel-cell car if there is nowhere close to fill up?
Finally:
Pipes? Really? Why not use fuel-cell powered refueling trucks like they already do for gas? Hydrogen may be the solution for vehicular power but not for anything else.
fred: The point that he is making is that hydrogen is not a primary energy source, it is a synthetic energy carrier.
Let's consider the case of cars, since that is what the article here seems to be concentrated on:
If you start with electricity you have
Grid electricity => hydrogen => electricity => shaft work
Grid electricity (from a mix of nuke, hydro, coal, gas, whatever) is converted at about 75% efficiency to hydrogen, which probably has to be compressed, which is then converted back into electricity using a fuel cell (hopefully) at again, 75% efficiency, and finally used in a motor to produce shaft work.
So in this case the "chemical potential" in the H2 is like a battery, only one that is .75^2 = 56% efficient (round trip efficiency), not counting compression.
Contrast that with the round-trip efficiency of a battery (85%) and it doesn't really compete, especially when you consider the cost of the fuel cell and the associated infrastructure.
In the case of H2 produced by steam reformation:
Methane (natural gas) => hydrogen => electricity => shaft work
Most steam reformation is about 50% efficient (50% of the heating value is preserved), and maxes out at about 85% efficient for high temperature reformation. The rest is the same as above.
So this time we have:
.85 *.75 = 63% efficient not counting compression
Contrast this scenario with an IC engine powered by the methane directly, or by an EV powered by electricity produced in a gas-fired power plant. Actually, the fuel cell vehicle comes out ahead in this one because the IC natural gas engine is ridiculously inefficient. Still, the fuel cell itself costs so much that it will never pay for its savings in efficiency.
The synthesis of H2 and back to usable shaft work or electricity has efficiency penalties that can be avoided by using other means.
More here: Wikpedia: Hydrogen's Efficiency as an automotive fuel
It's hard to say that H2 is a better solution to a lot of problems than other technologies.
We’d like to thank Treehugger.com for starting a conversation about hydrogen. Our mission at the Hydrogen Education Foundation is to help people increase their understanding about hydrogen and how it will play a role in our lives in the future.
Hydrogen offers an alternative solution to support our energy needs. Just as financial advisors recommend that people should diversify a financial portfolio, as a society, we should explore and develop a range of energy alternatives including wind, solar, hydro, and other alternatives – all can be used to support hydrogen production. Each alternative has its own dilemma, which is why we need to adopt all alternative energy solutions being explored, including hydrogen, instead of seek a single alternative solution. Because hydrogen is already being used, it actually makes a little easier to adopt. To answer the question about pipelines from above, According to Air Products and the Gas Technology Institiute, there are 700 miles of hydrogen pipelines (compared to 1,100,000 for natural gas distribution and 290,000 for natural gas transmission) in the U.S.
As you state above, there is no “silver bullet” to solve our energy crisis, but the energy solutions we adopt must include a way to improve the environment while simultaneously reducing our dependence on energy imports. Two leading fuel cell manufacturing companies, Ballard Power Systems and Plug Power, released a joint report that confirms fuel cells can drastically improve the environment by reducing greenhouse gases, and even when using hydrogen produced from natural gas, emissions are reduced by 50%. The report is readily available at Plug Power’s website at http://www.plugpower.com/news/documents/GHG%20FINAL.pdf.
We must also consider that hydrogen technologies go well beyond the automotive industry. This is because hydrogen’s versatility as an energy carrier, not an energy source, makes it accessible for use in different applications. For example, hydrogen forklifts offer a way for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and toxic waste. What this means for use as consumers is the products we purchase would use cleaner energy reaching store shelves. The next set of tires you purchase from Firestone, or the next cereal box you purchase from Wal-mart could have been transported by a fuel cell forklift.
Companies are also looking at how to use waste to support electricity needs. For example, HydroGen announced that it will be working with the ASHTA Chemical Corporation to install multi-megawatt fuel cells that will use the hydrogen waste from its chemical processing at its chlor-alkali facility as fuel to produce electricity: http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/04/fuel_cell_maker_deploys_waste.php.
We’d love to hear from you about what you’d like to know about hydrogen. Please write us at info@h2andyou.org. We hope the information available at www.h2andyou.org improves your understanding about hydrogen.
Great points Tom. Hydrogen is a carrier, not a source, and therefore other sources must be used to create it. The problem is that a lot of energy is lost during this process (some sources say more than 50%). Miquel makes some good points, but he fails to address this issue.
Hydrogen is attractive because it is a liquid fuel (allowing for quick refueling). One of the main drawbacks of electric vehicles is that they cannot be quickly charged. While converting electricity to hydrogen would solve this problem, the energy loss in conversion as well as the exorbitant costs of a hydrogen infrastructure significantly reduce its allure.
One last comment and I'm done :)
Energy necessary to liquefy H2 is significant, 10% or more of its energy content. Liquid H2 boils at -253 C, which makes boil-off a significant problem, akin to a battery with a very high self-discharging rate. Can you imagine if even 5% of your gasoline evaporated each day you didn't drive your car? Add to this the problem that filling a tank requires you to cool it by boiling off about as much hydrogen as you end up having in the tank when you are done filling it.
Quick charging IS a problem for electric cars, but I can't believe that a solution as full of inefficiencies as H2 is being seriously considered as a potential replacement for liquid hydrocarbons.
no to hydrogen
H2 leeks and that goes into inter galactic space so we will push H2 from earth into space and that will be a drama