November 28, 2004
SCORIN' SOME H:
Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies (MATTHEW L. WALD, 11/28/04, NY Times)
Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, raising the possibility of using nuclear power to indirectly wean the transportation system from its dependence on oil.The development would move the country closer to the Energy Department's goal of a "hydrogen economy," in which hydrogen would be created through a variety of means, and would be consumed by devices called fuel cells, to make electricity to run cars and for other purposes. Experts cite three big roadblocks to a hydrogen economy: manufacturing hydrogen cleanly and at low cost, finding a way to ship it and store it on the vehicles that use it, and reducing the astronomical price of fuel cells.
"This is a breakthrough in the first part," said J. Stephen Herring, a consulting engineer at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, which plans to announce the development on Monday with Cerametec Inc. of Salt Lake City.
The developers also said the hydrogen could be used by oil companies to stretch oil supplies even without solving the fuel cell and transportation problems.
Mr. Herring said the experimental work showed the "highest-known production rate of hydrogen by high-temperature electrolysis."
One notes first of all that it's government research, not private, as so often the case with great technological advances. But the question it really raises is: how long until someone writes that President Bush is a tool of the hydrogen interests? Posted by Orrin Judd at November 28, 2004 11:11 AM
Whether or not we follow this route, we'd better start getting very serious about nuclear power real soon. Oil will only get more expensive from here.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 28, 2004 1:01 PMIt never does.
Posted by: oj at November 28, 2004 1:11 PMAs usual I cheer such technological advances, but a hydrogen "breakthrough" that requires the building of a new type of nuclear power plants isn't a very good breakthrough in my book. (If this could be done with the cheap/safe/modular pebble bed reactors, then fine, but it requires very high temperature steam.)
Posted by: PapayaSF at November 28, 2004 1:47 PMForget about hydrogen.
It's a means of storing energy (and a very inefficient one at that), not a true source of energy such as fossil fuels, uranium or even wind and solar. It takes much more energy to create hydrogen than is gotten out of hydrogen used even in the most efficient fuel cell.
Now if you could use a true source of energy (say fossil fuels) to operate a fuel cell, that would make sense. See:
http://www-cms.llnl.gov/s-t/carbon_con_news.html
Or do a Google on "direct carbon conversion" to learn more.
Hydrogen, no matter how it's created, is a white elephant and a waste of time and money.
Robert:
While true in the long run, say over the next hundred years, it's emphatically NOT true of at least the next twenty years.
You continue to ignore Canadian oil supplies; they have more oil than Arabia, and it's hardly been tapped yet.
Daniel:
Hydrogen is as you describe it.
However, electricity is an even worse source of power for vehicles, so it makes sense to use electricity to produce hydrogen, which can be stored and is much cheaper to transport.
We can always use wind and solar systems to produce the power used to generate the hydrogen.
If not hydrogen, then what ?
Coal ?
If not hydrogen, then what ?
Coal ?
Exactly. Coal is the perfect fuel stock for "direct carbon conversion" fuel cells.
See the link I provided.