What About Free Hydrogen? (Part 1)
Over the next couple of Green posts I will discuss the matter of free hydrogen. Yes, just make hydrogen free by, say, 2020, and let industry, with government assistance, develop the infrastructure and systems to handle the Age of Free Hydrogen. At first glance, the concept appears insane. For one, many (mainly government officials, actually) of the responses I received to this suggestion expressed concern that energy use would get out of hand, for then no one would conserve. Well, maybe that might actually be okay, but, clearly, the matter is complex. The details will need to be well thought out. For example, the hydrogen, in this context, must, of course, come from renewable energy. Then, will it be possible to differentiate between cheaper dirty hydrogen and the more expensive clean hydrogen? Also, who will be providing this free energy? As to be discussed, you will, the taxpayer. However, this simple solution should ultimately be able to eliminate the negative repurcussions of Peak Oil and onset of Global Warming. Interestingly enough, over the past year since the book was published, I began to appreciate the value of, possibly, a more logical sustainable pathway, to be revealed in the final post of this series. Anyway, the following is from Chapter 3 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth (see box on right):
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On March 21, 2006, at the annual luncheon of the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Conference in Long Beach, California, I received the Spark Matsunaga Memorial Hydrogen Award, usually given to an elected official. However, as I was the individual who U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga assigned in 1980 to write the first draft of his hydrogen bill, I guess I was considered to be close enough to qualify. The second recipient, in 1992, was U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, whose letter of congratulations was read by Jeff Serfass of NHA. Other awardees have included Congressmen and Senators, although Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger received this honor in 2004. Walking up to the podium, aside from the assorted obligatory thank you, I wondered what I was going to say. (Pardon me for mentioning all this, but a degree of credibility helps when one leaps beyond the edge of the envelope.) It then came to me in a moment of splendid inspiration, bursting forth from a third of a century of deliberation--MAKE HYDROGEN FREE. Deep in my memory might well have been a statement by Jeremy Rifkin in his book on The Hydrogen Economy, where he imagines a future a century away where the cost of producing unlimited amounts of hydrogen should virtually be zero. This sounds too much like atomic power being too cheap to monitor, but let me proceed.
Some say that hydrogen will always be a bit, if not a lot, too expensive. Then, too, this is a chicken or egg problem. The dilemma is in the infrastructure and free market system for what is an artificial commodity. Where do you start?
As great as, say, clean hydrogen sounds to some romantics, you can't force this gas on society just because it seems to them so logically sensible as the universal fuel of choice. If mankind is, indeed, at a decisive juncture, a means must be found to more effectively induce the world to quickly transition from a fossil economy to something better.
We'll come to the how later, but an ideal alternative worthy of discussion would be one powered by clean and sustainable hydrogen. The fuel would be produced everywhere. There would be no OPEC, no nuclear terrorism, and only a vibrant and healthy Planet Earth. World Wars would be minimized because most of the big ones, including the current action in Iraq, were fought over limited resources.
WHY NOT CONTROL THE ISSUE BY MAKING HYDROGEN FREE? What a heck of a simple solution for energy and our environment! If the perfect vision of 2020 is not possible, push the operational date back a bit. If the crisis is upon us, do it now. As opposed to waiting for economies of scale reducing the price to a competitive level in a century, start with zero and keep it there. There will be a transition period for the hardware to become available, but there are ways to administrate this process, and wouldn't it be wonderful if it works? The Free and Clean Hydrogen Age would eliminate our growing climate warming problem, while going a long ways towards preventing world wars forever (see Chapter 1 of Book 2 in box on right) and enable our civilization to hurdle over the Peak Oil problem.
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(To be continued.)
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how do you propose producing something that takes energy and work for free?
maintaining windmills and solar plants isn't free either.
you are dreaming...
Free is a good price. But if studying economics teaches anything it's that nothing is free.
I like a good bit of flim-flam and exciting fantasy as much as the next person. But until I get a good hard look at how, how much and where the energy to do it is coming from it's a scam or a crock.
Hydrogen at $0/kg?
Why not hydrogen at minus-$100/kg, or minus-$10000/kg? That, essentially, is the deal the lessors of today's hydrogen-air fuel-cell prototypes are getting when they lease million-dollar machines for hundreds of dollars a month.
Understand that hydrogen cars have been repeatedly prototyped, some of them with a high degree of apparent market-readiness, for over 30 years. The only thing missing has been the throngs of eager prospective early adopters, each shoving a million in ready cash at the prototype developers to get them to make another prototype.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html
Mr. Takahashi is right - the way to entice people do use something is to make it free. That model has been used successfully for generations and makes great sense, not only from the perspective of the environment, but it's often the best economic model long term.
Sometimes it's cheaper (long term) to give things away to change the consumer behavior. (Ask Drug Dealers)
I live out in the country with a Well for Water and a 500 gallon pig for Propane. I was thinking about sinking another Well, extracting Hydrogen from the water, compressing it into a high-pressure tank, and using it to power my entire house. I have dreams of making a single unit that would include the extraction equipment, compressor, Storage tank, generator for Electricity, that runs on Hydrogen, and connectors to the Well and house. I wanted to use the Hydrogen to power the Generator for Electricity that would be stored in a Bank of Batteries and pipe the Hydrogen into the house to regulate down for the Forced-Air-Furnace and Water heater and Dryer. If I had the money to get started I believe I could have a working unit in three to four years. My idea is to refine the unit down to a size that could be dropped in a backyard and installed in just a few hours.
Dream on, Dream on.
I am waiting for parts 2 - ? where I hope you will describe how we can store significant amounts of hydrogen. Since it is unreasonable to liquify hydrogen due to the required pressure and temperature, we are stuck only being able to compress the gas. Compressed gas does not give an 'energy density' anywhere near that of liquids.
That leaves two other possibilities: creating hydrogen 'on board' or finding more efficient ways of storing it. Palladium crystal matrices have shown some, but not enough promise yet. I am interested to hear what you have to tell us.
Won't nitrogen oxides still be produced if hydrogen is burned in internal combustion engines? Certainly the temperatures would be high enough for those competing reactions, so would the use of hydrogen in these kinds of devices still be "pollution free?"
Thanks
Providing an alternative to petrofuels is an intriguing idea.
However, I am not convinced that Hydrogen should be that fuel, or that it is "clean"/"without environmental ramifications."
you gotta wonder....http://www.efcf.com/reports/E21.pdf
Thank you for your comments, However, Parts 2-4 are still to come, so keep tuned. Aloha.
The sun falls on the Earth every day for free whether we use it or not.
You don't have to mine it, or pump it out of the ground, or go looking for it. It's already right there and pretty much everywhere.
Once you build a solar furnace, solar oven, solar panel, solar collector, it just keeps converting energy for decades until it wears out. Then you build another one. Not quite a perpetual motion machine but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be a better choice than what we are using right now and it is for so many reasons.
No miners will have to be trapped underground and die anymore. No wars need to be fought over control of the oil fields. Much much less Co2 and other contaminants will be pumped into the air each day. People will get healthier and happier. The balance of wealth in the world will return to a more even advantage for all. All Americans can leave the Middle East forever and the terrorists will then have no reason to come after us. If they do we can just stop them at the border.
Solar, Wind, and hydrogen will help us break the oil, coal, and nuclear habit once and for all.
come on people...,
get real....
what do i know 'bout energy?
except the red bull i buy when i'm sleepy
all i know is it's there..., it likes to even out..., and when it evens out it can be used to do work
then after things have evend out..., it's now useless
have to go out and find more density
and time flows in the direction of increased entropy
or to put another way
time flows in the direction of waste, pollution, background heat, poop disorder etc.
that's all i know
wind energy and solar have at least some merit in the sense that they are primary energy sources
although they are very diffuse forms of energy
can it do useful work?
yes
but the energy density is low
so you must not just scale way up
i admit i never heard of "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion," until
today..., but talk about diffuse energy.....
temperature differences between surface water around the equator and cooler water further down?
this all sounds like an elixer or panacea to me
i like concentrated solar energy
and i like wind energy
but not every place is like the drive to palm springs
i doubt there is any way getting around the fact that we will have a lower standard of living
and that's ok
we waste alot of energy anyway
make do with less
Why not just use the electricity?
I sincerely hope the answer to that question comes to you without someone having to tell you..
yeah dude....,
like..., my beautiful high school physics teacher just whispered the answer in my ear
got to say...,
i'm hot for teacher!
she's da bomb!
i love electricity
it's very useful
but it's not a primary source of energy
anymore then hydrogen
I don't believe Dr. Takahashi was suggesting that Hydrogen could be converted from water at no cost; rather, I believe he was suggesting that it be provided to Hydrogen consumers as a free fuel to boost the use of it.
In point of fact, Hydrogen is relatively common. The most common element in the universe. And there are now several very inexpensive methods of obtaining it in commercial quantities with more on the way.
One is described here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/705615/new_highly_efficient_hydrogenmaking.html?cat=15
"A new process that is said to be highly efficient in producing hydrogen (from plant sugars) has been developed to cheaply power vehicles with a hydrogen fuel cell. The new process was presented here in New Orleans at the 2008 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.
The study titled "Complete conversion of carbohydrate and water to hydrogen and carbohydrate dioxide by a synthetic enzymatic pathway" was presented by Dr. Percival Zhang, lead researcher from the Virginia Tech University. Dr. Zhang is a biochemical engineer.
Assistants to this presentation were very excited about the new process to produce much needed alternative fuel hydrogen to power up car's engines. The new process is said to be highly efficient, cheap, could be widely available, and do not leave any contaminants on the environment."
This is the most complicated way to make it: http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/001.1/index.html
hydrogen does not exist in a free state
you can't drill for hydrogen
it never will be a primary source of energy
as a result, it can't solve the peak oil crises
it can be used as an energy carrier
nasa relies on hydrogen for power
but it can never be anything more then electricity
and you can't drill for electricity either
The important thing about hydrogen is that it can be generated on site. One does not need the infrastructure that was needed for oil and gas. This makes one hell of a difference in many many ways.
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