Talk:Hydrogen economy

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Contents 1 Lots of material deleted 2 Concern over weasel-words 3 Pulled an line about "expensive transport fuel" that doesn't hold up 4 Request specific examples of "inherent inefficiencies" of hydrogen economy 5 Economic rewrite 6 electric load balancing? 7 Notes 8 Fuel cells 9 Production efficiencies 10 Analysis of Solar/Hydrogen/Fuel Cell Efficiency for US Vehicle Transportation 11 Analysis of Battery Electric Vehicles as Alternative to Hydrogen Powered Vehicles 12 Confabulation 13 Transportation 14 Water Vapor as a greenhouse gas 15 sundry minor changes 16 Steam reforming = cracking steam? 17 elided "however...fuel." 18 Cleanup 19 if the externalitiess of conventional energy sources are factored in, (but the policies of the world's major governments do not factor them in 20 Under Storage - what safety issues are you refering to 20.1 Storage 21 Maybe you should consider breaking this article down into several different ones 22 The Hydrogen economy article is extremely worthwhile, but .... 22.1 Reminder: the nature of WP 23 load balancing ? 24 Page looking better and better now that you guys are working on it! 25 Unit Confusion 26 Hydrogen Myths 27 Liquid hydrogen merge to hydrogen economy 28 Hydrogen's effects on the weather 29 Article needs organisation and less repetition 30 Hydrogen production of greenhouse neutral alcohol 31 "Information" icon transparency 32 Apples and oranges 33 "Envisioned centralized hydrogen sources" sillyness 34 Proposed expanded LEAD 35 Hydrogen Fuel 36 Provide some specific references, or I'm deleting load balancing. 37 The existing hydrogen economy

[edit] Lots of material deleted

In the past few days, a huge amount of material was deleted from this article. Is there an explanation? --Ssilvers 16:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the deletions since I see no justification for them. The page does seem long, muddled in several parts, repetitive. I will see if I can help. Quasarstrider 20:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's definitely better. You deleted my statement that "in Europe and the U.S. the majority of petroleum that is imported is used automobiles." Isn't this a useful fact in the Rationale? Western economies are spending huge amounts of money to import petroleum for cars. However, as the entry shows, hydrogen fuel cells are not a feasible solution to this problem. The best immediate alternative is hybrid cars, and serious commitment to research on battery technology, which is stated in the entry, but perhaps not prominently enough. I'll leave it to you if you want to put the quoted statement back in somewhere (or not, if you don't think it's useful). --Ssilvers 17:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Oops. Sorry about that. Yes, that is indeed useful info. I put it back with some sentence restructuring. Please comment. -Quasarstrider 20:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I added to the sentence to clarify that the two biggies for the proposed hydrogen economy are cars and stationary fuel cells. Should we also say in the intro that the article explains why it ain't likely to happen any time soon, if at all? As it stands, it may look like we are saying that the "hypothetical" hydrogen economy is going to happen, and the reader has to read down pretty far to get the picture.

Also, the last sentence of the intro says: "The large market and sharply rising prices have also stimulated great interest in alternate, cheaper means of hydrogen production." What does this mean? Is it referring to sharply rising fossil fuel prices or sharply rising prices to obtain hydrogen, or what? --Ssilvers 21:08, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Concern over weasel-words

Recent edits (WpZurp)

Nice work - thanks for the cleanup and wikification.

But-

Isn't replacing "It may be" with "Critics argue" just replacing some slightly weasely words with more weaselly words? ;-)

I suppose. Still, it's a step to a lesser weasel state; also, "critics argue" creates the impression in the reader's mind that specific individuals are out there and that some kind of controversy exists. The final and concluding step out of the weasel-state would be to name such "critics" and give specific references to their criticism where they criticize specific industries or government actions. I remember seeing such criticisms in the past (which prompted my edit) and, if I run across those criticism again, I'll put in some specific links.

Thanks again, Leonard G. 04:35, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pulled an line about "expensive transport fuel" that doesn't hold up

By anon. user: 61.88.9.148

Once all hydrocarbon based fuels are either exhausted or outlawed, renewable Hydrogen, generated from wind, wave, hydro or tidal power would consume massive electricty generating capacity resulting in a transport fuel that is quite expensive, and perhaps leaving daily motoring beyond the reach of the average worker.

I pulled this as it does not seem to quite hold up as a well developed concept, paragraph, or sentence - relative to the theme and organization of the article. There will not likely be a point of hydrocarbon exhaustion - only that the price will make its use uncompetative with other sources - so it is not the price of renewables that is controlling but the price of alternative fuels relative to one another. Most of motoring at the present time is overly consumptive of energy, by a factor of at least three and possibly five or six, owing to the cheapness of fuels. It is well known that the the wind energy in a few northern tier states could supply all of the U.S. energy requirements if only it could be transported. One form of transport could be to make hydrogen and pipe it about - much as natural gas is piped around the country. It seems more likely that modern modular pebble bed reactors will have a place in the energy portfolio as they can be located closer to demand points. These are unlikely to be developed by the large U.S. companies, who have a vested interest in what is a 50 year old technology (large pressurised water reactors). Instead it appears that China will lead these developments - not because they need the energy but because they need to get away from the intense air pollution associated with coal, their primary domestic energy source.

In urban areas, daily motoring is already becoming impractical, not due to cost but due to congestion resulting from population growth combined with roadway limitations - a problem to be solved only in a relatively distant future by modern control technologies such as automated driving with "platooning", transportable micro vehicles, separation of various classess of traffic and other means of improving mobility (and parking).

Also, motoring and other travel as we know it is a social phenominum - a result of complex interactions between expectations and capablilities, driven by forces beyond individual and even collective control. A utopanist can costruct visions of postmechanical societies in which almost none of what we deal with now is necessary. Why drive daily when you can "be" anywhere in a virtual sense. Today (Sept 17, 2004) I was in the office of a patent attorney, to whom I demonstrated a software implementation related to a patent application. The examiner is in Washington, DC. Rather than carry a portable computer on a flight to Washington DC for a demonstration he will admit the examiner via telecommunications and specialized software to view (on the examiner's computer) an exact image of the screen on his computer as he demonstrates the implementation.

Note that almost no international tourists are driving individually, but travel by mass moving machines - ships, riverboats, aircraft, trains, and busses, interspersed with lots of walking.

---

Also by the same editor (left in) ...however whether Iceland can generate and store the equivelent amount of Hydrogen to displace the estimated 16,000 barrels a day ( 2001 data ) of oil it currently imports remains to be seen.

I'll work out some calculations on this when I get time (Ha!)- one need compute how much geothermal energy plant capacity is required to displace the 16KBD, allow for conversion efficiencies (especially if cryogenic hydrogen is to be used), etc. I'm rather busy right now - if anyone has the skill to do the calcs, especially capital cost/payback time etc., please do so. Better to put some real numeric projections in place of a "remains to be seen" (which it still will), but we will have a better article. It does appear that the authorities in Iceland have run the numbers and they look good to them.

Leonard G. 04:46, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Request specific examples of "inherent inefficiencies" of hydrogen economy

I see this line:

Some commentators are dubious about the success of a hydrogen economy due to the inherent inefficiencies in producing and consuming the hygrogen.

I would like references to specific commentators and, especially, need to learn some of the "inherent inefficiencies". Also, as a point of argument, would these inefficiencies be resolved if hydrogen use became widespread? That is, which inefficiencies are a result of tooling up and which inefficiencies could be long-term?

  Here are two links concerning the inefficiency of a hydrogen economy:
  
  European fuel cell forum
  Teslamotors technology comparison--85.218.17.222 07:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Economic rewrite

Hi Leonard. Let me know how you like the rewrite.

Oh -- I noticed you're a fellow Bay Area native!

Iain McClatchie 09:31, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, I'll go find references, but I'm pretty sure that hydrogen cannot be transported in natural gas pipelines. Apparently NG pipelines leak, and the same technology used to move hydrogen would leak more -- a lot more. Which is then a problem because hydrogen breaks down the ozone layer 20 times faster than NG. But I'll find a reference to quantify that, because I don't remember if 20x was volume-to-volume or BTU-to-BTU.

Greetings Iain:

This is a substantial and well thought out contribution. I am tempted to make some minor text modifications - but probably will not (is the en.WP primarily US English - that is an ongoing argument). There are a number of arguable points, but the one I notice particularly is that solar PV is not competitive - the reason it is not due to the externalized costs of its competition (coal: unhealthy emissions, acid rain, etc. Oil and gas: favorable tax subsidies: nuclear power - deferred downstream costs of waste disposal). If the externalized costs were fairly paid then solar PV would be competitive and large wind farm power a "no brainer". Also, the hydrogen car is a pipe dream boondoggle sold to the politicians by the automobile manufacturers to defer what should be done immediately - increased efficiency, reduction in large vehicle mass and aggressiveness (32 inch high bumper bottoms are legal in California, about the height of a sedan's door handle - make the roads safe for smaller cars) and useable (45-50mph) and effective (30-50 mile range) battery electric vehicles for errands and commuting that can replace a very high percentage of trips (each trip in an ICE contributes highly to the polution, due to the cold start problem) and a substantial amount of the mileage.

Leonard,

• Just go ahead and edit. My parents were English and I've apparently picked up some of their spelling. I have no problem with other people fixing my stuff.
• If you think a point is arguable, that means I haven't backed it up with enough facts. Sometimes more facts make me change my mind. Go find some. If you aren't sure how to rewrite the article, but you have references, stick them in here and I'll do the rewriting.
• This article isn't done yet.
• Solar PV: I really wish this worked. It's around $4-$6 per peak watt right now, and it needs to be around $1/peak watt to be competitive. Note that windpower is at about $1/peak watt right now -- very exciting! (But only in good windy spots.) I agree that there are externalized costs of oil and nuclear. But there are externalized costs to everything (PV is ugly to other people who have to look at the roof, and get ready for the environmental impact of disposal and degredation on-site of all that semiconductor). Part of the externalized costs for oil and gas are part of a massive 100 year investment, and you can't just junk that, nor can you replace it overnight. I'd like to see a carbon tax used to pay for our overseas military adventures, but realistically all these things have to happen slowly or too many people lose their jobs.
• Alternative energy development: This really needs a seperate article, as it's a fascinating subject independent of hydrogen economy rubbish and wind turbine technicalities.
• Hydrogen cars: boondoggle. Bingo. I would really like to add a history section to this article that explained how this stupid idea got started and who was responsible for pushing it into the mass media and politician's heads. I suspect RMI is near the root. Do you want to look into this?
• Hydrogen economy: more stupidity. I can't believe anyone seriously considers moving energy around in the form of hydrogen after they run the numbers, yet there are international conferences of people looking at this crap. We might be better off synthesizing ammonia and using that for a gasoline replacement. This is the only realistic option that I see for Iceland's fishing fleet if they are serious about cutting off most of their hydrocarbon imports. I haven't done research into burning ammonia yet in internal combustion engines. Might be pretty hard.
• Electric transmission: I don't really understand the economics of this yet. Multigigawatt long distance transmission has been done before: the Grand Coulee had to move 7 GW hundreds of miles to get to an interesting market, and no HVDC in the 70s. I've looked at some of the numbers and as far as I can tell, wires are not a significant portion of the cost of a electrical route (around 1%), nor a significant burden on the towers. If that's the case, getting a big wind farm's energy to cities 1000 miles away is just a matter of using thicker wire. But something must be wrong with this analysis, otherwise California wouldn't have a bottleneck on Path 15, and they wouldn't need to put up new towers to fix the thing.

Not sure I see the transmission problem

If H2 is generated from coal or oil - transport the coal or oil by pipeline, sea, road or rail to local H2 generation stations

If H2 is produced by electrolysis - generate the H2 at plants next to the power stations, or send the electricity to local stations and generate the H2 there.

I don't see why we'd want to centralise H2 production and send large volumes of it across long distances.

That said, I agree overall that H2 isn't the panacea imagined by politicians and media imagining we'll be able to continue to drive big fast cars when oil runs out.

Exile 14:48, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Somehow you've read the article without understanding some points, which means the article needs to be fixed. Please help me understand how you missed the following points, so that I can fix them. If you can point to specific spots in the article which are misleading or confusing, that would help a lot.

• If H2 is generated locally by coal or oil, yes that solves the transmission problem, leaving only the problem that hydrogen from hydrocarbon sources just uses more hydrocarbon to move the same cars the same distances as direct burning of that hydrocarbon.

• If H2 is produced by electrolysis, you have to transport the electricity to the electrolysis plant. Electricity is harder to move than hydrocarbons.

Thanks, Iain McClatchie 23:25, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I added a bit about escaping hydrogen, which mentions the ozone problem in passing. I believe it is worth mentioning, because a lot will be lost (I believe the best car tanks made leak about 1.7% per day = half life of about 40 days) and will affect how we use hydrogen. If that is the best we can do, then a lot will be lost to space if indeed it is lost (I can't find proof one way or the other) like helium.

Also, I had a thought (and posted it (and the article was then destroyed by vogons and the page redirected here minutes later)), that the best arguement *for* hydrogen cars (don't say "it is cleaner" or I'll hit you) would be the ease of transition later. Hydrogen will be available for a long time and will only get easier to make, while hydrocarbons will go the way of the dinosaur eventually (pun). If we left all our energy habits the same but converted cars to hydrogen, we would soon find that when we did run out of hydrocarbons, we'd only have to replace a few thousand power stations slowly, instead of a few million cars all at once. Or something. Worth inserting? Splarka 06:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, the ozone depletion may be "unsubstantiated info", but I believe it is worth mentioning. Some of the major arguements for hydrogen are protection of the ozone layer and reduction of the greenhouse inducing CO2. To remain neutral, all viewpoints should be discussed. How about something like "There are as yet unsubstantiated theories that free hydrogen and/or methane might deplete the ozone layer". BTW a quick google will show this is a hot topic: [3] (I also included the helium comment because it is the one other substance that will escape completely into space and never be recovered, however... it is continually being produced by the underground decay of thorium and uranium) Splarka 20:13, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The argument for hydrogen has nothing to do with better ozone layer protection. Hydrocarbon fuels do not interact with it AFAIK. The ban was on CFCs. The problem with them was the Cl IIRC. A clean ICE vehicle will release pure CO2 and H2O as exaust. This is usually done with the help of a catalyzer. Same as us humans breathing. Or trees, they also emit these as gases on their breathing cycle. As for the greenhouse effect, that is different. This is due to CO2 or CH4 emissions. Some say H2O is also a big problem, but personally I doubt it. Regardless of how much H2O our vehicles will produce, it will pale in comparison with the H2O evaporated by solar rays hiting oceans, which are 2/3 of the planet surface. Quasarstrider 16:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quasarstrider: On the contrary, I believe it does have something to do with the arguement better ozone protection (along with cleaner air, greenhouse reduction, etc). Remember, "hydrogen economy" implies a large scale replacement of energy carriers with "clean" hydrogen. One of those gasses replaced will be methane (and remember, all fuels pollute not only from combustion, but by leakage). "Methane generates more ozone in the tropopause, which is below the stratosphere, and this layer can hide the holes in the stratosphere above it." -- how can we protect it if we don't know how bad it is? Aha. Now, this may or may not be true, especially now with satellite instruments that can measure just the top layers (SCIAMACHY), and that most methane comes from animal sources. But the fact that people believe it would make them believe switching to hydrogen would be better. And, there is the possibility that escaped molecular hydrogen would actually deplete the ozone layer. A hydrogen economy would produce a lot of hydrogen leakage. So, even if the arguments for hydrogen do not include ozone protection, the arguments against it should indicate that we do not yet know if it will deplete the ozone layer. Hydrogen naturally only makes up 0.00005% of our atmosphere, and a hydrogen economy could increase that significantly. I believe the best place to address this is in Hydrogen_economy#The_storage_problem. Do you still disagree? Splarka 20:44, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is pure speculation AFAIK. I think the text which is there now: "The possible interactions of hydrogen released in this way with the atmosphere are poorly known." provides an adequate blanket statement for your concerns. I think we should try sticking to the facts as much as possible. If you still think this is important, perhaps you should discuss it with the people working on the Hydrogen page and trying to add it there first?

As for pollution reduction, it is like I said. An ideal clean internal combustion engine (a catalyzer equipped unleaded gasoline burning vehicle is close to it) would produce just CO2 and H2O. An ideal clean hydrogen vehicle produces H2O. The only different is the extra CO2, which AFAIK only has possible negative implications on the atmosphere by exacerbating the greenhouse effect, i.e. global warming. Yes, sources like methane may leak, but like you said, methane is produced in nature as well (decomposition of biomass) and gasoline, which is the fuel we use the most, doesn't evaporate as quickly. Quasarstrider 12:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Of course it is speculation; but so is a hydrogen economy. I just think that any possible benifit used in arguing for hydrogen, should be balanced with the possible negative side effects, to remain neutral. Hydrogen is becoming a political tool, and when that happens a lot of the negative aspects magically disappear. Splarka 20:07, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is interesting, the most convincing site against the "hydrogen destroys ozone layer" theories that I could find is this: Hydrogen/Ozone Study Based On Faulty Assumptions, however, it makes no claim to say that ozone is not depleted with hydrogen, just that the leak estimates were exaggerated. Contrarily, there is sufficient theory that increased hydrogen levels will harm the ozone layer. section 2.4 "Ozone _is_ destroyed if an O atom and an O₃ molecule meet: O + O₃ -> 2 O₂ This reaction is slow, however, and if it were the only mechanism for ozone loss, the ozone layer would be about twice as thick as it is. Certain trace species, such as the oxides of Nitrogen (NO and NO2), Hydrogen (H, OH, and HO2) and chlorine (Cl, ClO and ClO2) can catalyze the recombination. The present ozone layer is a result of a competition between photolysis and recombination; increasing the recombination rate, by increasing the concentration of catalysts, results in a thinner ozone layer.", combined with "Vertical transport in the troposphere takes place by convection and turbulent mixing. Only at much higher altitudes do mean free paths become so large that _molecular_ diffusion dominates and gravity is able to separate the different species, bringing hydrogen and helium atoms to the top." I think it is worth mentioning IMO. Also see: [4] for another possible method hydrogen could affect it. Splarka 20:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oxides like OH and NO are produced if the reaction is imperfect yes. The reaction is as perfect as you are willing to expense for it, with filters etc. Gasoline vehicles reduce NO emissions by using catalyzers which decompose these further. I am unsure of what is the emission level for something on hydrogen fuel cells, but it is probably real low. Nothing is 100% pollution free, there is no such thing, the best we can do is to try to reduce pollution as much as is economically possible to do so. In that respect, hydrogen powered vehicles seem better than regular internal combustion vehicles, even if just sligthly. This is why I haven't focused on that as a negative point, it doesn't carry much weight IMHO. I do find it curious that you think its necessary to add more damning information about the hydrogen economy however. I think the page is pretty damning in of itself :-). If you feel this is an important issue, we could link from this page to a page which describes these issues in more detail. Quasarstrider 21:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am not talking about just oxides. Hydrogen (H, OH, and HO2). And I am not talking about combustion pollution, but fuel leakage. If we use hydrogen, some will leak, and that will increase the hydrogen in the air, and that could damage the ozone layer, perhaps significantly, and IMO that is worth mentioning. I am not trying to damn hydrogen, there are many positive aspects, but there are many negative. Splarka 21:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A clean hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle would not emit H (a free radical), but H2. "Hydrogen gas" is basically H2 gas. If you can generate and store free radical H in quantity, be sure to tell NASA about it, they would make you very rich because it is high ISP fuel [5]. :-) Quasarstrider 21:48, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sure, it is called the stratosphere. "In the upper atmosphere free radicals are produced through dissociation of the source molecules by solar ultraviolet radiation or by reactions with other stratospheric constituents." I believe Nasa has been through there a few times, except for the fake moon landings of course. The thing is, there aren't many sources of hydrogen atoms (bonded in molecules, which can be broken into H radicals) that high up. The stratosphere is somewhat dry (water vapor condenses and comes down as rain). CFCs are one source of stratospheric hydrogen, but so is molecular hydrogen gas. BTW, I think we are about at the colon limit? Splarka 22:04, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I think we are about to break the limit, I have to widen my browser page already, and I have a 1280x1024 screen :-D. You sure do seem to know a lot about atmospheric chemistry, so I think you should pour all that knowledge into a page describing all this stuff. I will be more than happy that we link to it from here. This page tries to be synthetic, even if sometimes it doesn't seem like it! :) There are lots of important details about this matter, I even thought about not putting the chemistry for extracting H2 from CH4 in here to begin with. IANAC (I Am Not a Chemist). Quasarstrider 22:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Colonectomy! (continuation of Quasarstrider 22:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Well, this goes back to the "poorly understood" nature of atmospheric chemistry in general, meaning no one really knows (I am not a professional chemist, I'd much rather have the opinion of a chemist who gets paid for this (and *not* paid by anyone who has any interest in oil vs hydrogen as fuel! darn lack of neutral POVs)). The best way to see the effects hydrogen would have on the ozone layer is to have a hydrogen economy. I don't think there is enough information to make a new article. Even just switching all our cars to hydrogen probably wouldn't have much of an effect, so no need to mention it on hydrogen car. Any mention on ozone depletion of this theory should mention and link back to hydrogen economy for more info, because hydrogen-ozone depletion (if it exists) is a natural continuous cycle at current H₂ levels. Those are my reasons for the logic behind putting a mention of ozone in this article. Does that make me fanatical? :) ... Anywho, perhaps in a new section called Hydrogen_economy#Environmental_concerns (or under 'the storage problem') "Hydrogen gas (H₂) may also form free radicals (H) in the stratosphere due to ultraviolet radiation, that can then act as a catalyst for ozone depletion. An increase in stratospheric hydrogen from leaked H₂ could exacerbate the depletion process." Then if any new information comes, it can be added. Thoughts? Splarka 22:56, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Addendum: I put a crude (hardly encyclopedic yet) sketch of a possible article or section at User:Splarka/Sandbox:hydrogen. We could move our discussion to User_talk:Splarka/Sandbox:hydrogen as well, if you like? Splarka 00:09, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm amazed at your power of synthesis! In your sentence goes, out goes the old one. We can still link to a more complete article, or add an extra section if you wish. Quasarstrider 00:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hehe, thanks. I am not sure if it needs an article or section yet, let us wait for a third opinion. One of my side reasons for aruging that ozone be mentioned in the article, was to generate a tiny bit of controversy/interest, and maybe some stratochemists will see it and tell us for sure (if anyone knows for sure, that is). I must say I learned quite a few things myself in this discussion (I knew the basic scenario at the outset, but not the exact mechanics of how it could/might happen). Splarka 00:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] electric load balancing?

Might just be me, but I don't know what "load balancing" is. Would you mind adding a few words to the wikipedia page by that name? Thanks. Nice article. Archie Paulson 01:54, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm working on it... naming an issue like that helps me focus on cleaning it up.

notes:

• pumped storage efficiency: total 70% [6] (and batteries: 72%) (and compressed air at the McIntosh Alabama plant of 74.7%)
• pumped storage efficiency: 90% (motor/pump) + 90% (turbine/genset) + ?% friction = 75% round trip efficiency. [7]

I was a bit surprised at the low efficiency here. There is an interesting comparison to be made between the current, mature efficiencies of pumped storage and hydrogen electrolysis and fuel cell efficiencies.

This page also has a side note on how nearly-synchronous generators work: they excite their coils with low-frequency AC rather than DC. This detail probably goes on a generator page somewhere...

Other notes: Wynn-Burr energy bill in the U.S. contained $2.5 billion over 5 years for development of hydrogen vehicles. [8] Iain McClatchie 03:59, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe the emphasis on load balancing as a rational for hydrogen is overdone. The article says that load balancing is already achieved by varying output. So hydrogen would be an optimization of storage, but is not needed. Yes, hydrogen storage has some nifty advantages, since as the article notes, storing electricity chemically (batteries) is not effective given the high power demands of the grid. Hydrogen could be produced at night, off-load, which could then be used in a fuel cell during periods of higher demand in the daytime. As the article further notes pumped hydro storage does this, too. (By the way, I don't follow why, when you're talking about the power grid, it matters whether pumped storage does not work for portable applications.) So hydrogen "arbitrage" so to speak would be an improvement, but it's nothing like the transformation of automotive propulsion that would be accomplished by the hydrogen vehicle.--PotomacFever 12:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I vote for removing the secondary rationale section all together. Using cars as some distributed storage network? I simply don't believe it. At a minimum it needs some referencing. This sounds like "original research" to me.

132.229.116.79 21:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notes

In May 2005, NYMEX price for natural gas was $7/million BTUs. Hydrogen is 134700 BTU/kg, and at a conversion efficiency of 35%, that gives $2.70/kg, which is in good agreement with [9].

At a current worldwide production rate of 50 million metric tons per year, that's $135 billion/year of hydrogen.

Iain McClatchie 01:09, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

"As of 2005, the economic value of all hydrogen produced is about $135 billion per year." (from article)

Which dollars are those? US dollars? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 03:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

"The potential savings, just for the existing hydrogen market, could be substantial. General Atomics predicts that hydrogen produced in a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) would cost $1.53/kg. In 2003, steam reforming of natural gas yielded hydrogen at $1.40/kg, making the new scheme unattractive. At 2005 gas prices, hydrogen cost $2.70/kg, so a savings of tens of billions of dollars per year is possible with the nuclear-powered supply. Much of this savings would translate into reduced oil and natural gas imports." (from article)

Again, which dollars are we talking about? The link above clarifies a couple of references to be $US, but it comes from an Australian site. That page doesn't say 35% - where did that come from? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 04:43, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Nice overview of current hydrogen economy: [10] Iain McClatchie 11:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fuel cells

From the page: An example of a CO2 emission-free system, possible with near-term technology, would be if renewable energy sources such as concentrated solar thermal power collectors and wind turbines were used to produce hydrogen from water, using high-temperature electrolysis.

Should this sentence go next: "Hydrogen fuel cells would then be used to produce electricity for mobile applications."

I don't think so. Hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars are not near-term technology. They can be made as research vehicles, but the economics are not there now, nor are they close at hand. Research on fuel cells may be a worthy pursuit, and justification for such a pursuit may be a reasonable point in this article, but today, they aren't near-term technology for ordinary automobiles.

Furthermore, in the near term, hydrogen is far more valuable as a chemical feedstock than as an energy supply. It's use as a chemical feedstock can suck up a very large amount (11 million tons/year just in the U.S.) of any developing cost-effective renewable supply before there is any need to burn the stuff for motive power. Iain McClatchie 02:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind if the fuel cell comment were in there. Your objection is that FCVs are a future technology and don't have a current relevance. However you're forgetting that the so-called hydrogen economy doesn't really exist yet either. Since we are talking about a hypothetical energy distribution system here, it is relevent to explain how the hydrogen economy would affect transportation. In this case, the fuel cell reference serves that purpose. Either way, I'm not too concerned if the sentence stays or not since FCVs can be mentioned under the Transportation section anyway. Solarusdude 06:03, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I understand your point about it not mattering either way. One thing that bugs me about many articles, this one included, is repeated information in the same article. As you say, the FCV proposal is covered elsewhere.

Regarding the entire article, of course the subject is a hypothetical proposal. But that doesn't mean that the constraint to facts is removed. Heat engine physics imply that chemical industry usage of hydrogen will trump FCV usage until the chemical industry is saturated. So if FCVs are to be mentioned specifically as consumers, I think the chemical industry must be mentioned first. Iain McClatchie 01:06, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Production efficiencies

If someone knows figures for the efficiency of each production method, could they please put them in the Production section? ie "energy in" vs "energy out" Barrylb

A posting at http://www.biketas.org.au/FAQ/2003/20030522-1.php says "Technical advancements cannot overcome the thermodynamic hurdles that make hydrogen production and its utilization in fuel cells, a net energy loss". I think the article needs to mention this, if it is true. Barrylb 16:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Here is a detailed efficiency analysis of a hydrogen economy European fuel cell forum--85.218.17.222 17:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Analysis of Solar/Hydrogen/Fuel Cell Efficiency for US Vehicle Transportation

I don't have the data for each method, but the biggest problem for hydrogen is definitely production. I think that should be emphasized in the article. Namly hydrogen is not an energy source, but a method of energy transport. This misunderstanding is so pervasive, it would help if the article could clarify.

The second big problem is the misconception that hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles would solve much of the energy problem. In fact the % of total energy consumption by gasoline vehicles is small even in the US (which consumes more transportation energy than many other countries).

A frequently mentioned hydrocarbon-free method is producing hydrogen via electrolysis via solar or wind power and using it in fuel cells.

Let's evaluate the feasibility of powering 50% of the gasoline cars in the US via fuel cells with hydrogen from solar-driven electrolysis:

Background data:

• US gasoline consumption is 117 billion gallons/yr
• US oil consumption is about 7.5 billion barrels/yr
• Total annual US energy consumption: 102 quadrillion BTUs
• Gasoline energy content: 120,000 BTU/gal
• Liquid hydrogen (LH2) energy content: 34,000 BTU/gal
• LH2 required to replace 50% of US gasoline: 103 billion gallons (Fuel cells are roughly 2x the efficiency of a modern gasoline engine)

% of total crude oil used for gasoline: 32%
% of total US energy consumption used by gasoline: 13.7%

Energy required to produce 103 billion gallons LH2 via water electrolysis: 2.27 quadrillion BTUs (liquifaction 50% efficient, electrolysis 70% efficient, overall production efficiency 35%). Therefore it takes 65% of liquid hydrogen's energy content to produce it.

2.27 quadrillion BTUs = 6.7E14 watt hours

Overall solar cell efficiency: 10% (crystaline cells can't be used in huge industrial quantities due to cost. Amorphous cells would be needed. Also must use real-world efficiency, not laboratory efficiency). Also solar cell output degrades several % per year, so after 20% output is about 1/2. Thus 10% is VERY optimistic.

Average solar insolation in US southwest: 5000 watt-hrs/m^2/day, or 1.8E6 watt-hrs/m^2/year Annual solar cell power: 186,000 watt hrs/m^2/year

Solar cell area required to produce 6.7E14 watt hrs: 3.6 billion square meters, or 890,000 acres, or 3,600 square km.

However we must factor in 20% for LH2 storage losses in transport and consumption, so say 4,320 square km

Must also add space for structure, maintenance roads, etc: say around around 5,000 square km, roughly the size of Delaware.

Summary:

A gigantic program consisting of:

• A solar photovoltaic farm in the US Southwest the size of Delaware
• Totally new LH2 manufacturing and distribution infrastructure
• 50% of current US gasoline vehicles replaced by fuel cell vehicles

Would save:

• 16% of crude oil consumption
• 6.9% of US energy consumption

Since energy consumption increases at about 2-3% per year, within about 3-4 years total US energy consumption would be back where we started. Not being a pessimistic, just realistically looking at the numbers. Joema 19:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Sources:

• http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/S/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_2004.pdf
• http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html
• http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1.html
• http://www.apolloalliance.org/strategy_center/reports_and_resources/energymemo.cfm

I do not think that Hydrogen Fuel Cell powered vehicles are the answer either, but I would like to mention several facts:

From my POV people are pushing for alternatives to petroleum because of:

1. Perceived cause of global warming because it is a fossil fuel which emits CO2 on combustion.
2. Political concerns about access to petroleum sources (some say the Iraq war was fought over oil).
3. Concerns about how much petroleum is left (i.e. Peak oil).

We already have alternatives for CO2 free or neutral electricity production (Nuclear, Hydro, Wind, Geothermal, etc).

France, for example, produces some 77% of its electricity from Nuclear power.

Coal, used for electricity production, also emits CO2 but is a large natural resource in the USA, Australia and China unlike oil.

The biggest problem is how to displace fossil fuels for transportation. Hence the noise about the Hydrogen Economy based on fuel cells.

Most serious proposals I have read on how to produce Hydrogen in an adequate scale involve the use of near future Nuclear or Solar thermal using thermal electrolysis or thermochemical processes (e.g. Sulfur-Iodine). Solar Photovoltaic is too low efficiency to make enough of a dent, I agree.

Quasarstrider 19:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is people are apparently just assuming "hydrogen must work" since the petroleum alternatives are unfavorable ("There's gotta be something better"). Yet the most basic back-of-the-envelope calculations show it cannot possibly work. For example, consider the number of nuclear plants required to produce hydrogen for ONLY the US gasoline vehicles, which ONLY comprise 32% of total US petroleum consumption and 13.7% of total US energy consumption:

• Annual energy used by US gasoline vehicles: 4.1E15 watt hours
• Annual energy production by a 1GW nuclear plant: 8.76E12 watt hours
• Overall LH2/electrolysis production efficiency: about 28% (see above)
• Number of 1GW nuclear plants required: ((4.1E15 / .28) / 8.76E12) = 1,671 nuclear plants

There are just 103 nuclear plants in the US. So building SIXTEEN TIMES the total number of nuclear plants now existing would only reduce US petroleum consumption by 32%. Whether you use solar thermal, wind, or nuclear, the required real estate or infrastructure is so gigantic and the payback so limited it's just not feasible. There is a huge disparity between the common perception and the mathematical reality -- so much so that it's amazing. This isn't politics -- it's physics.

I have no problem with articles on the hydrogen economy, but information providers have a responsibility to convey reality, not the common perception. The reality is the hydrogen economy is deeply flawed, and it appears to be totally unworkable based on any technology we have today. In 100 years if we have near limitless fusion power, it might work then.

It appears hydrogen is a technical "blind alley". The only semi-feasible transportation fuel alternative I've seen capable of scaling to the gigantic levels needed to support most of the gasoline vehicle fleet is biodiesel from algae: biodiesel, http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html, and even that requires more investigation to know for sure. Joema 17:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

There may be another alternative, as biodiesel is still limited by the poor effeciency of internal combustion and may also be limited to the poor effeciency of photosynthesis in it's current ethanol implamentations. I consider Battery electric vehicles and Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to be the best, and potentially final, solution. They would instead address both parts of the problem while at the same time being transitional, versital, flexable, and implamentable today, right now by:

• 1. Increase the effeciency of the vehicles from ~30% to ~80-90%, thus reducing energy requirements.
  2. Decrease electricity requirements, versus the above stated requirements to crack hydrogen, instead you send that electricity directly to vehicles via an already established distribution network.

• PHEV's further offer a transitional technology capable of using both existing sources (FF, Electricity) and can also take advantage of bio-fuels.
• BEV/PHEV's are a perfect complimentary tech to the intermitent nature of Wind power which could easily supply all our traditional electricity and transportation requirements. [11]

These two factors combine to make BEV/PHEV's appear to be the best option of all by getting to the core problems of the energy effeciency in transportation and our ability to find suitable renewable energy resources to fuel them. --D0li0 11:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Analysis of Battery Electric Vehicles as Alternative to Hydrogen Powered Vehicles

While it's true that BEVs could handle a fair % of transportation needs (US national average commuting distance only 18.2 km or 11.3 miles), it would not save significant energy or petroleum. What counts is overall energy efficiency, not just vehicle efficiency.

For battery electric vehicles, this is: power plant generation efficiency 40%, transmission line efficiency 95%, charging efficiency 88%, vehicle efficiency 88%. This gives overall BEV energy efficiency of .4 * .95 * .88 = 33%

By contrast a modern diesel automotive ICE using common rail or piezoelectric injection has about 40% thermodynamic efficiency. Fuel production and processing is about 92% efficient, vehicle efficiency 88%, for an overall efficiency of about 32%, roughly the same as a BEV.

Even if BEVs use spare night generation capacity to recharge, it's not saving petroleum. The capacity is spare because the plants are throttled back at night. More nighttime demand to recharge BEVs necessitates burning more petroleum to service that.

There's also insufficient generation capacity to recharge a nation of BEVs. Total annual US gasoline energy consumption is 1.45E16 joules (4.25E15 watt hours). A 1 gigawatt power plant produces 8.76E12 watt hours per year. It would thus require about 500 new power plants to service that, or a combination of those plus using existing unused night capacity. In either case you'd be burning nearly as much petroleum in power plants as diesel cars would consume.

Wind power cannot possibly provide the needed energy (either hydrogen or electric) to service US or world transportation. US gasoline cars consume 4.25E15 watt hours per year. We already know the possible wind energy generation per acre from large current wind farms like the Desert Sky facility in Texas. A wind farm using the largest, most advanced wind turbines available would require 2,500 1.5 megawatt turbines on 225,000 acres to match ONE gigawatt power plant (wind turbine capacity factor is typically 25%). Therefore each 225,000 acres provides 8.76E12 watt hours per year. You'd need about 500 225,000 acre wind farms, or 112,500,000 acres, or 455,000 square km -- larger than California.

Even if every gasoline car in the US switched overnight to Mr. Fusion, that would only save 32% of US petroleum consumption, and only 13.7% of total US energy consumption. That's because all gasoline cars collectively only consume those percentages of petroleum and total energy. Joema 00:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

You assume that electricity is generated from petroleum. From Electricity generation we find that approximately 40% of electricity comes from coal, 20% each from natural gas, nuclear and renewables, and only about 5% from petroleum. pstudier 23:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I should have said electricity generated from hydrocarbon energy sources, not just petroleum. But it doesn't change things much. Most utility electricity is generated from hydrocarbon sources, thus a huge increase in electrical load to charge BEVs OR to produce hydrogen would result in a huge increase in burning hydrocarbons. As the above figures show, solar and wind can't remotely provide enough power, so the choices are (a) burn more hydrocarbons or (b) build about 500 new nuclear plants, or (c) become transportation energy independent via biofuel from ultra-high-yield feedstocks such as biodiesel from algae.

And the main point remains: whether you replace all gasoline road vehicles with hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles or BEVs or biodiesel, or Mr. Fusion, that only constitutes 32% of US petroleum consumption and only 13.7% of total US energy consumption. BTW that's only 9.3% of WORLD petroleum consumption, and only 3.7% of world energy consumption. Peak oil would hardly be delayed at all even if every US automobile disappeared overnight.

There are geopolitical, financial, and environmental advantages to having vehicles powered by non-hydrocarbon energy sources (nuclear, biofuels, etc). However hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles or BEVs powered by current energy sources would save very little hydrocarbon fuels, or the environmental impact of burning them. Joema 00:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

LNG powered cars, while not saving total hydrocarbon emissions or energy consumption (as I believe they are less efficient than petrol) would, however, allow a switch to biofuel-petroleum gas (propane) mixtures, given methane-powered internal combustion enegines aren't particularly long-lived mechanically, especially the fuel systems. Propane-methane fuel mixtures are also quite good in terms of energy density, about 66% of petroleum, meaning the typical 30 gallon SUV tank would only need to be expanded to ~50 gallons, or kept the same for a reduced operational range. This isn't a huge problem for SUV's because most only get used to drop the kids off at school.

However, energy density of hydrogen is less again; metal hydrides are better than pressurised hydrogen (and, of course, safer), but also more dense and weighty, meaning that your typical hetal-hydride car weighs more and is therefore less fuel efficient.

Bit of a quandary, this whole cars and modern energy consumption thing. Personally, I think the US's answer to mid-east oil is LNG powered cars, because this can be implemented swift and cheaply, and requires no new technology at all, and minimal new infrastructure. Gas stations just need a big LNG tank instead of petrol tank, and LNG is already piped to most American cities, versus a whole new hydrogen economy with hydrogen plants, etc etc. Rolinator 03:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem with LNG is supply, like all other conventional hydrocarbon sources. There's enough natural gas for about 60 yrs at current consumption rates. At expected consumption increases (2% per year), about 40 years. If you greatly increase natural gas consumption to power vehicles, it won't even last 20 years. Joema 04:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confabulation

Consider this snippet that was in the 'Rationale' section:

... A system that produced hydrogen from other energy sources would centralize carbon emissions at the production site. This could be an advantage in that the emission control system may be better maintained and easier to inspect than systems on automobiles owned by individuals. Unfortunately, pure hydrogen is not widely available on our planet. Most of it is locked in water or hydrocarbon fuels. Pollution reduction at the production site may be offset by energy losses when converting to hydrogen. This is called the production problem

The above is nonsensical because of several confabulations and confusions among some editors. Facts:

1. Hydrogen isn't really an energy source, as the [12] section immediately above explains.
2. CO₂ is not a major urban pollutant ; it's not directly damaging to humans, so moving a pure CO₂ source from the city to the country doesn't help. (Other byproducts of burning fossil fuel are major urban pollutants!)
3. CO₂ emissions are not reduced by current commercial emission control systems. (Other byproducts of burning fossil fuel are, and sequestration technologies are in pilot testing.)

I edited the section in an effort to make it sensible. Similarly, there was confabulation between H₂ and other emissions as suspected ozone hole creators, but I think the discussions Quasarstrider had here cleared this up.

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/120.html mentions two reports that I've read that inform the debate over hydrogen economy feasibility.

[edit] Transportation

The section on transportation was Americanocentric, particulaarly with respect to LNG.
LNG is regularly piped hundreds if not thouands of kilometres from reservoir to market; this implies it is energy-efficient and cost-efficient to do so. It is also a much more readily accessible and utilisable source of energy than crude oil, as it does not have to be refined, cracked and reformed before use. It may need to be scrubbed and have water or sulfur dioxide taken out depending on whether it's wet gas or sour gas, which is usually done nearer the well-head than the market because otherwise energy is wasted pumping water or noxious gases, but essentially you can hook up your stove to the wellhead and cook.

It is also shipped in liquid form from Australia to China. If its inefficient at a small scale, you scale it up and build bigger ships.

In fact, the whole transportation issue boils down to cost, not energy efficiency. Cost is also worked out in terms of on-costs of refining, waste disposal and infrastructure. Shipped LNG meets the needs of societies, unlike California or the USA, where gas is in short supply and there is a deep penetration of LNG infrastruture and strong demand, with limited local supply, particulaarly for heating, industry and cooking. California also has its own oilfields and gas reserves, which is why alaskan LNG isn't utilised, because there is a nearer source.

Alaskan oilfields may also be reinjecting LNG to enhance oil recoveries via reseroiv repressurisation. If, as is the case in Australia, 3-5% of vehicles in the U.S. used LNG, then the case would probably be that more LNG would be used and the Alaskan oilfields would be piping it down via Canada to the lower 48 states.

Rolinator 02:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Water Vapor as a greenhouse gas

After looking through this article, I've noticed that there's no mention of the fact that water is much better at trapping heat than CO2. Of course, this isn't that surprising since most of the discussion about turning to a hydrogen economy seems to be all about independance form oil and reduced CO2 emmisions. I've added a note on the greenhouse effects of water in the main article. BioTube 18:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've taken the greenhouse activity of water vapor out completely. It's not relevant. Take a quick look at Earth's atmosphere. CO₂ is about 0.04%, and over a century we've changed that a bit. Water vapor varies up to about 4%. We're not going to change that significantly with water-emmitting cars, even if you ignore all the control mechanisms built into the water cycle.

132.229.116.79 21:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sundry minor changes

Added references, removed some POV and replaced part of the 'water as a greenhouse gas' chapter by hyperlink to greenhouse gas which covers the water effects amicably.

Overall, the current article makes it clear that H2 is an energy carrier, not an energy source and addresses other issues well. However, some parts to me still appear to be circling around problems such as efficiencies and costs; both not fully encompassed, e.g. by a life-cycle analysis. I see a few near misses of some actual issues such as energy capacity, which ironically are clearly addressed in this talk. Would the contributors care to transfer these to the main article? Also, I see some ignorance of the engineering solutions which are existing for more than a century that hydrogen has been commercially in use, where such things as "embrittlement" are not a problem at all.

Time permitting (for myself or better authors around here), I would like to see more comparisons of well-to-wheel efficiencies and cost updates and to address the main rationale for the switch to H2 - sustainability, a major part of which is to have a CO2-neutral economy to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect (which appears unlikely from water vapor).

Per the data available to me (the book by Roy McAlister) CO2-neutral energy stored as hydrogen can be replenished from solar energy at about 10% overall efficiency, whereas fossil or biofuel generated from solar energy by plants can be replenished at about 0.5% efficiency, which would simplistically spoken, just require 20 times the acreage. We can speculate whether maintaining solar cell farms is likely to remain more cost-efficient than farming and processing crops for fuel. And then what do we eat? Bernd in Japan 15:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Good question. But plants (organic biomass) are notoriously inefficient at storing sunlight energy as hydrocarbon fuel (plant oil, alcohol etc), using CO2 from the atmosphere. But that's not a thermodynamic problem, so far as I can tell, and can be solved in principle. Probably, humans would be a lot better at it, using hydrogen (or some reductive mix of same, like "producer gas") to take CO2 from fossil fuel burning plants and use it to re-create methanol or the hydrocarbon of your choice. The nice thing about all these liquids, is that they store way more hydrogen per liquid gallon than does liquid hydrogen, and our transportation (including hybrids) is already adapted to burn them. No new infrastructure to put in place, after you get done with the chem or nuke alcohol-making plant. And because CO2 emitted by autos in such a process would be the same CO2 used to make the fuel, it would be greenhouse-neutral.

What remains is figuring out how to do it. This is a sort of semi-hydrogen economy, but the hydrogen never gets to the primary user. Instead, it's used to get rid of CO2 from fossil fuel burning, to produce greenhouse-neutral liquid transportation fuels like alcohols, that don't need any special handling or special cars, and could be fed into our present system (for example, hybrid fuel-cell cars could use methanol, etc). Is there a discussion of this anywhere? Sbharris 00:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Steam reforming = cracking steam?

I just read about the ability to acquire hydrogen gas from 'cracking steam' in pebble bed reactors, and I wanted to learn more about this process. Steam cracking is not listed in the 'Sources' section in this article -- so is it essentially the same as steam reforming? Chris 07:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] elided "however...fuel."

I've taken the following phrase out, again:

however steam reforming and indeed any production of hydrogen from fossil fuels necessarily produces carbon by-products like CO2, which in some sense defeats the purpose of producing hydrogen as fuel.

It's true. But it's not relevant to the point of the paragraph, which is comparing the costs of different production methods. Please keep it out or explain otherwise here.

Iain McClatchie 01:40, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

This article needs some major cleanup. There are run-ons allover the place, as well as typos and simple grammar errors. I have marked this page with {{cleanup}} xxpor ( Talk | Contribs ) 16:39, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how helpful such marking is. If you see such simple editing problems, be bold and fix them yourself.Sbharris 16:59, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

That was my first instinct too, just prune it down to managable size and topic, but running through the Talk page scared me off. It was a relief to get down here and see that there are some people who see it as I do. There are too many sections. The sections go on too long. Personally, I don't think much of a rationale or a history of power use is needed. Get on with the hydrogen economy part. KarenAnn 00:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I trimmed down the rationale, taking out some stuff that seemed OT. I also made a few other touch ups. Feel free to rv or fix if anyone disagrees. There is a lot of repetition, but I don't have the technical background to confidently delete stuff. Isn't the "problems" section very similar to the "Other challenges..." section further up? It would seem that these could be combined? --Ssilvers 02:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

O.K. And of course you can always revert. My first desire is to trim the opening statement. Why start out by saying something else needs to be addressed first (renewable energy) and that, along with all the other problesm related to development of hydrogen as a universal medium, it will probably will be decades etc....That should go at the end in a summary or conclusion section. KarenAnn 12:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

No, this doesn't belong in the conclusion section. Recipies for Elephant Soup need to start out with the direction "Procure 1 (one) fresh elephant". As well have an article detailing the problems of producing a star-trading economy and Federation of Planets, without noting the small problem that something like warp-drive needs to developed *first*.Sbharris 19:27, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Your edits certainly add clarity--nice job. I like your idea of a conclusion section too, so I added it, and I also tried to make the intro a little more understandable--see what you think. But it still looks like there is a lot of repetition in the article. If you agree, can you take a crack at trimming? You obviously know much more about the topic than I do, and I am afraid to cut stuff that might have a technical aspect that I don't understand. --Ssilvers 13:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The page is much better! I especially like the intro. The stuff from "problems in implementation" onwards is a mess though. Quasarstrider 10:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] if the externalitiess of conventional energy sources are factored in, (but the policies of the world's major governments do not factor them in

What does this mean? I can't figure it out. Could you be more specific? KarenAnn 13:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Where does this language appear? --Ssilvers 13:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Under Production

...Some 'Green' energy sources are capable of generating energy in a cost effective way if the externalities of conventional energy sources are factored in, (but the policies of the world's major governments do not factor them in). Moreover, most 'green' sources produce rather low-intensity energy, not the prodigious amounts of energy required for extracting significant amounts of hydrogen (e.g. high-temperature electrolysis). KarenAnn 13:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I really don't know what the original writer meant. I agree that it's not clear at all, and it seems to be arguing about some political viewpoint. Go ahead and edit it so that it makes sense in the context. Regards, --Ssilvers 15:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

What it means is that, if the externalities / external costs (different articles, which should maybe be merged) of 'conventional energy sources' were included in their prices, they'd cost more than 'Green energy sources'. But current government policies don't do this.

But since that's saying something critical of conventional power, the following criticism of Green power, "Moreover,..." doesn't fit--unless an inability to manufacture hydrogen is supposed to be a good thing.

—wwoods 17:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. External costs is a term of art, though, and I don't think we should make the reader click all over the place just to understand what is being said. Can you lay it out in plain English? Then it would be easier to reconcile the two statments. --Ssilvers 17:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Any such statement would have to be more specific -- which government? all the governments in the world, or what? Also, statements that are not facts obvious to everyone must have references per Wikipedia policy See Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources KarenAnn 20:13, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Under Storage - what safety issues are you refering to

[edit] Storage

Hydrogen also has a poor energy density per volume. This means you need a large tank to store it, even when additional energy is used to compress it, and the high pressure compounds the issues of safety, as well as adds weight. KarenAnn 13:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. There are two different sections called Storage. Couldn't they be condensed and put in one place? KarenAnn 14:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S.S. Previously I condensed to different sections called Transportation. Hope that was O.K. KarenAnn 14:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Go for it! This is as much your article as anyone's. Wikipedia says, "be bold", and since you seem to have a good grasp of the subject, and you are obviously a fine editor, do what you think is best. If people don't like it, they can edit it. --Ssilvers 15:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe you should consider breaking this article down into several different ones

For example, there are two different sections headed Production. One of them is long enough to be an article of its own.

Maybe the second Production could be a new page, and under the first Procution you could have a link to main article:Production KarenAnn 14:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I have removed one section (Production) but there is a link in the acticle to the full section I removed. I severely edited another - but there too there is a link to the full section unedited. So nothing has been deleted. And, of course you are free to revert everything.

I'm getting confused about what to do with the rest of the article as it seems to go off on a whole new tangent. Maybe what you are really interested in is the last part. The new pages I made to connect to your article are:

• Hydrogen production - under Problems in implementation > Production
• Challenges to the hydrogen economy - under Challenges to the hydrogen economy

please feel free to give me any feedback or suggestions. KarenAnn 19:38, A1 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not my article, it's yours!  :) I don't think we need the separate section on "challenges". What you have left in the main article would seem to cover the topic, and the stuff in the separate section seems to be full of the older, less efficient language. The "production" article seems useful, though, but needs to be brought up to date with the edits you made (and are making?) in the main article. Just my 2 cents. --Ssilvers 19:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not the one to bring "production" up to date because I don't know anything about this subject. (I learned a lot by editing the article, though.) Why don't you, especially since you seem to be the only contributer that's interested in the article right now.

The "challenges..." page I originally named "Alteratives...." and everything was O.K. for about 20 minutes, and then it got slapped with two labels 1) that it is being considered for a merger with "alternative fuel" Alternatives to the hydrogen economy -- go look at it! and 2) it needs to be wikified. so I snatched a copy of the content and made the "challenges" page. But that incident says to me that "challenges" isn't contributing anything. KarenAnn 21:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

After seeing alternative fuel I think you're right. I'll see what I can do, and kill the new one. Then perhaps a synopsis 'alternative" paragraph in the hydrogen economy needs to be done, with a simple Main Article reference to alternative fuel. However, the hydrogen economy article itself is still worthwhite, as "hydrogen" now only has a paragraph in the alternative fuel wiki, so it's pretty straightforward to make it the "Main Article" for THAT section there (which I have done). That works everything out nicely. Sbharris 22:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I can nominate it for speedy deletion {db-author}} since I'm the author of that page the "challenges" page, since I created it. The material still exists in it's alternate form over as "alternatives..." and if anyone really cares it can be restored from the history. I'll do that. I'll change the links in the article to go to "alternative . . ." And then it can be removed it all together soon. KarenAnn 23:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

O.K. It's been nominated. There is a "Discussion" page there if anyone wants to stop it from happening. Challenges to the hydrogen economy KarenAnn 23:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I put the "challenges" heading back to "alternatives", since we now have only the alternatives there, ok? BTW, why are we talking about solar in that section? Or if solar, why not also wind? --Ssilvers 03:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Hydrogen economy article is extremely worthwhile, but ....

That's at the top of the page your "Challenges/Alternatives section is going to be merged with,unless you go to Alternatives to the hydrogen economy discussion page and plea your case.

Your article has good work. You guys know what you are talking about. (Unlike you, I know little about the subject, but I learned alot today trying to edit it.) But your article really did get totally out of hand.

It might be a mess now because I started to go crazy late today, and had to chop stuff out because I felt like I was in a Stephen King maze. I ended up just throw paragraphs into the catagories that seemed to me most suited and will clean it up tomorrow. But only you guys know the subject matter so you have to tell me.

Please offer your suggesting, like where fuel cells should go. Ideas welcome. KarenAnn 03:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The other section that went out on its own (still linked) but now inspected by the Wiki people is Hydrogen production (check the link). It did not fare badly, but needs much work before it should be allowed in again. KarenAnn 03:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reminder: the nature of WP

KarenAnn, may I suggest patience? "The best is ever the enemy of the good" but that's a bad thing when the best isn't available yet. We don't have to burn our Saturn V blueprints because we want a Space Shuttle (and if we do, we usually regret it).

Progress is a process and sometimes (usually) an ugly one. As Bismark said ( quote loosely), anybody who has any taste for sausages or laws should not watch either one being made. This is to some extent also true of children and Wiki articles. Many (most) Wikis start out as stubs, or stuff no better than high school papers. They progress then through better and better quality of writing, with pruning and fights along the way. At some point they read decently, like a freshman journalist's effort, but with info quality an expert would sniff at them. But this is the point where expects are more like to jump in to fix the tech problems, because all the heavy lifting of writing (or most of it) has already been done by other people. And it may take a while for that to happen. Meanwhile, patience. This is how WP draws in genuine experts, without paying them anything. It's devilishly clever--- or would be, had it been planned. But it wasn't. It happened spontaneously, like evolution. You see, evolution happens everywhere, on all levels, all the time. It only looks like planning from the outside, over the long term.

Wikipedia started out as Nupedia which had all kinds of levels of professional review to make sure it was kosher. It didn't work. It evolved into what you see today. I suggest you read that link and draw some lessions for why it didn't work and why it evolved and why we have now what we have. Learn from the past.

When you say "Remember Wikipedia is an Encyclopia. Your article must not only be accurate, it must be concise, focused on your topic, and have a clear structure remember that you're talking about an eventual GOAL of articles, not what they need to look like all the way through their development process. Most of Wikipedia doesn't look like that-- it looks like a sausage factory or a senate fillibuster. But don't let that fool you. The end product comes out well. WP is not a regular encyclopedia. The essential differences are what you're complaining about. The guts are ugly. But they are the whole key.

You say: Further, it must be understandable to the general reader who wants information on the topic I agree. But you also said you learned a lot in editing hydrogen economy, so we're already there, on that. You know enough about the major claims, issues, problems, etc, to discuss it and ask good questions, even at a confab of experts. That's progress. Some of which you youself made. So again, patience. Sbharris 17:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks for the feedback. I'll stop. I think I'm beginning to get confused anyway. Had to spend a long time reading up on electrity grids, storage etc. - not my strong area. Time for me to move away for a while. Thanks for your encouragement and feedback! (I took your advice and added the stuff on production.) I'll just go back and make sure the links are correct. KarenAnn 18:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I fiddled with the first paragraph because I had no idea what it meant until this morning. But I don't think I did a good job. It needs work. KarenAnn 18:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S.S. If you've looked at the proposed policies lately, the Wikipedia people are going to crack down and be much more strict. They want to be taken just as seriously as the Encyclopedia Britanica. It's going to be very hard on some people initially, especially those who write about fictional characters - check this out: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)

KarenAnn 18:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] load balancing ?

Is that an insiders term, since according to the link it means "Grid energy storage"? Is there a way of phrasing the first paragraph so the general reader clearly understands how your article relates to our everyday life)? KarenAnn 15:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page looking better and better now that you guys are working on it!

A main task now is referencing. Take a look at Fidel Castro to see how Wikipedia wants referencing done. Check out the reference section. (There is so much fighting going on over that page that anything that doesn't have a footnote is going to be removed.) There are 112 footnotes today and there are still whole sections that haven't been tackled yet.

See Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources for more information about Wikipedia's policies on these matters.

Also the load balancing issue. I'm the person who wrote the definition on the page load balancing is linked to now (and I know nothing about electricty). But the page you originally had it linked to didn't even mention load balancing. So I pretty much made up the definition. Make sure it's right! It probably could be worded better also. KarenAnn 00:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unit Confusion

In the present hydrogen market section, a reference is made to "200 gigawatts of energy". A gigawatt is a unit of power. This requires some attention.

128.151.161.49 Iain Marcuson.

I used information available at Heat of combustion and Ton of oil equivalent to convert the figure of 50 million metric tons for global production into MTOE. Also, I attempted to find a source for the production by technology figures, but it looks like they come from an IEA report that is not freely available: [13] Kyle Cronan 10:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't address the problem that energy units are still not being used here. My sources [14] give 2003 total US electricity generation at about 2 billion MWH, which is roughly 7 exojoules = 7 EJ = 7 x 10^18 J = about 7 Quads. The figure in the article is "442 gigawatts". Gigawatt-WHATs? 442 gigawatt-years is about 12 Quads, which at least is the right order of magnitude, but almost a factor of 2 off my figures. I'm going to remove energy units here until somebody comes up with some ENERGY figures. BTW, a mega TOE = MTOE (mega ton oil equivalent) is 45.2 PJ (petajoules = 10^15 J). That's about 1/20th of a Quad. SBHarris 17:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see the source of confusion now. I had edited the figure for world production, the one the OP referred to, but forgot to do something about the US production figure. Thanks for removing it. I doubt it was meant to be gigawatt years--a lot of the people involved in this debate who are, shall we say, more politically motivated just don't bother too much with accurate figures. The page on The Hype about Hydrogen mislabelled million cubic meters as gigajoules, and I'm pretty sure that was sourced from the popular book!

[edit] Hydrogen Myths

--newjediorder 15:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I was extremely disapointed with the "Direct Dangers in Use" section of this article. It was very negatively weighted and not very objective. I wanted to post things here before overhauling an entire section. I will outline a few myths that are misrepresented here.

• While it is true that hydrogen does have a lower energy need for ignition than natural gas for example, natural gas can still be ignited by a static electricity spark. In addition, for hydrogen to explode it must have a much higher density than natural gas needs.

• The Hindenburg disaster has been one of the greatest hydrogen myths of all time. In truth, the Hydrogen was not the primary cause of the fire. The flames in all pictures of the disaster are bright orange, while hydrogen flames are nearly invisible. In addition, a garlic scent was added to hydrogen to help detect leaks, and no one reported smelling garlic. Later testing showed that the treatment compound that the blimp had been painted with contained a cellulose acetate or nitrate (gunpowder) as well as aluminum powder, a common ingredient in rocket fuel. Of the 35 that died, 33 died from jumping and 2 died from diesel burns (the fuel that powered the blimp). The hydrogen did burn but did so upwards and very quickly rose away from the passengers due to it's bouyancy.

• Hydrogen does burn with a nearly invisible flame, but as i said, it rises quickly away from the vehicle. In addition, hydrogen flames radiate very little energy (which means that you must actually touch the flame in order for it to warm you or burn you) and produces no deadly fumes like carbonmonoxide or smoke. Gasoline fires are much more dangerous because the fuel pools under a leak and radiates much more energy.

--SmithGM 04:50, 3 September 2006 (UTC) (Possibly still a bit rough, this is just a first-pass for reaction here)

Perhaps the remedy is to use a more neutrally titled section called, “Hazards.” This seems more in keeping with the preceding sections (problems, alternatives, environmental concerns) and the term has more neutral connotations for me. Such a section could also be made largely factual in nature:

Hazards

The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, like the use of any fuel, entails hazards—and, thanks to the Hindenburg disaster, there is good general awareness that hydrogen is a flammable gas (its primary hazard). Further, the hazards of hydrogen differ from those of carbon based fuels like coal, gasoline, diesel and natural gas, so different hazard management strategies are required.

Hydrogen is in fact a flammable gas (making it most comparable to natural gas). Hazards associated with this flammability include:

• the widest range of flammable compositions of any gas (4-74 % by volume in air)
• the widest known range of explosive compositions (18-59 % by volume in air)
• an extremely low ignition energy (20 μJ)
• the highest known heat of combustion with air (286 kJ/mole – needs conversion to a gravimetric basis)
• a hot flame (2045 oC)
• poor warning properties: no odor or color, a colorless, nearly invisible flame, and relatively low radiant heat from the flame.

Conversely, hydrogen has properties that mitigate its hazards:

• it is buoyant and diffuses rapidly – so leaks rise away unless contained and diffuse rapidly
• it is not toxic or poisonous, posing only an asphyxiation health hazard and then only in a confined space

Together, these create a high hazard potential (easy to initiate high-energy combustions with poor warning properties for many compositions) which, however, only comes into play in very limited circumstances (tight containment and a very nearby ignition source). Risk is a function of both consequence and likelihood, so evaluating the safety of hydrogen vs. carbon fuel alternatives requires professional, case-by-case analysis.

References/Links:

• http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/safety/index.asp
• http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/general/factSheet_safety.pdf
• http://www.llnl.gov/es_and_h/hsm/doc_18.04/doc18-04.html#2.0
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen

[edit] Liquid hydrogen merge to hydrogen economy

so far votes are to keep the Liquid hydrogen article separated, please read: [[15]].Mion 00:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC) Merge proposal is withdrawn, case is closed. -:). Mion 11:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen's effects on the weather

A hypothetical question: If all the automobiles in Los Angeles were magically changed into hydrogen cars(either fuel cell or combustions), then their exhaust would be changed from "smog+misc." to water. How would all this water exhaust affect cloud formation, warming, and the weather in a region?

--User:christgg 11:08, 21 September 2006 (PST)

[edit] Article needs organisation and less repetition

This article is almost impossible to understand. Seems like I read it a while ago and found it very interesting and informative, so I came back to it today to show it to a friend. But now I can't make any sense out of it at all and I am really disappointed. Timmy12 15:46, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how this happened. One problem is the rationale has expanded and gotten muddy. I trimmed some of it, but more needs to be done, both here and in the rest of the article. One problem is (again) that the problems of primary energy production vs. greenhouse emissions have not been separated clearly at the beginning of the article. The hydrogen economy is really TWO problems: one of non-fossil (renewable) energy; a second one of finding something to replace fossil fuels with AS transportation fuels (see methanol economy for an answer there which doesn't involve hydrogen-- it really doesn't matter what is used, once one has the energy to use to make it). SBHarris 02:37, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

problem is the structure, follow the DOE structure, and you can move every comment into its own section.. reg. Mion 02:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen production of greenhouse neutral alcohol

"Hydrogen in a full "hydrogen economy" has been envisioned as a way to make renewable energy available to automobiles which are not all-electric. A final theoretical alternative to hydrogen would do this by using hydrogen locally (captive use) to make liquid fuels from a CO₂ source. To be greenhouse-neutral, this source would be from air, biomass, or from CO₂ which would otherwise be scheduled to be released into the air from non-carbon-capture fuel-burning powerplants (of which there should still be many in the future, since carbon-capture is site-dependent and difficult to retrofit). These alcohols would then act as greenhouse-neutral additional energy stores and carriers for transportation, but without disrupting present methods of liquid fuel transport and use. Rather than be transported from its production site, hydrogen may thus instead be used centrally/locally to produce renewable liquid fuels which may be cycled into the present transportation infrastructure directly, requiring almost no infrastructure change."

Bascially have all power plants capture the CO2 as liquid (maybe dry ice), ship it to a processing site, and get back gasoline/diesel/methanol/ethanol, and ship it back. Have the automakers develop an engine (probably some membrane/fuel cell type, you'd still have an electric car) that operates with two tanks, one a gas tank, the other a liquid CO2 tank, and either emit the water vapor through the exhaust, or see what soaps you need to keep the water/CO2 mixture well mixed, or just let it separate, and periodically vent the water(soda pop) liquid layer onto the asphalt (Liq. CO2 density=1.03, water=1.00 g/mL). Since carbon is such a good hydrogen/energy carrier, this recycling scheme may or may not beat any kind of battery setup as far as energy density/longterm robustness is concerned - lithium ion has limited life span, and it's expensive, but may not be as expensive to recycle lithium batteries as building such a CO2 capturing engine. Also lithium ion or most other batteries cannot be instantly recharged, except for zinc/air batteries that can be mechanically charged, but have low energy density. With a CO2 capturing engine, you'd pull up to a gas station and while the gas is pumped, the CO2 is unpumped, and with correct density differences/immiscibilities the two liquids might even be in the same tank, and if you don't emit the water, then have a 3 layer liquid tank, co2/water/gasoline, and let the gas station do the proper water/CO2 separation based on the slight density difference/immiscibility, which should automatically happen in the large holding tank. This way when a truck brings gas to the gas station, and it makes an empty trip back, it woudln't be empty, but ship the liquid CO2 back, up the chain. The logistics would be the same, only the infrastructure would need to be updated to correct pressure-handling and 2 fluid line systems. As far as the gas station water/CO2 separation goes, you'd have to make sure to skim only the very bottom CO2 layer and replace the very top gasoline, and have the transient separating layers intact - basically the trucks would always take only a little bit of the storage tank home, and you'd never completely drain it. Because of this water/CO2 separation need, hydrocarbons might be better than alcohols, because most alcohols are highly soluble in water. On the other hand, emmitting ethanol to the environment is not a big deal, but gasoline tainted water is. So ultimately you mgith have to develop a membrane that separates water from CO2, and just exhausts it while the car moves. Another problem with the CO2 capturing scheme that the car's weight increases as it runs, as the CO2 is 3-4 times heavier than the gasoline (Molecular Weight 12 C vs. 44 CO2), while with litium ion it stays the same as it runs. But any metal/air battery type would have similar issues, having to store the oxidized metal, except for gaseous hydrogen that can be just emitted as water. If you had a system that just carried hydrogen better than ultrasupercold liquid hydrogen or noble metal dissolved systems, that'd be great. Perhaps there is chemistry to strip off hydrogen from a carrier, such as hydrcarbons like butane, pentane, hexane, octane, that are the best carriers, and convert them into graphite, and ship the graphite back to get reloaded with hydrogen. Perhaps not quite all the way to graphite, but just some PAH's that are easier to react back (also carcinogenic). But that'd be a waste to have all that carbon uncombusted, when you could get some extra juice out of it, but every time you react carbon with oxygen, the shipping weight increases similar to CO2. Still, instead of PAH's, you might find that some partially oxidized carbon material is the best carrier to ship back, that's easy to convert back to octane, but it's also easier to handle than high pressure liquid CO2 (example citric acid solid, lactic acid liquid (muscle strains are because of lactic buildup from lack of oxygen), but these need sophisticated reactions in an engine, while CO2 doesn't.) In the end you might find that best carriers are sugars as far as ease of reaction goes, or fats as far as energy storage, and just ship liquid CO2 back to the processing plant, and ship fat back from there, and practically have a second "biosphere CO2 geologic cycle" constricted to human built pipes, but at least this would keep it out of the atmosphere to cut global warming effects. Life pretty much optimized its dealings with energy, even though probably better systems are possible, because, for instance, photosynthesis is only 2% efficient maximally, more like 0.25% on a global scale, while humans can build metallic silicon solar panels that are 8-15% efficient directly to current, but if you have to take that current and make octane from CO2 with it, you may not be able to beat photosynthesis too much, unless you find a scheme like the sulfur-iodine cycle, that takes heat inputs instead of electricity to produce hydrogen, and you can probably collect solar heat with 70-90% efficiency into a black body and store it in a salt reservoir, but you'd need a chemical cycle that does carbon dioxide to octane, CO2->C8H18, or lactic to octane. There might just be a way to beat life by a long shot in efficiency of producing fats from solar/wind energy, because things such as pn-doped metallic silicon or 1000C temperature are not available to life. Maybe pn-doped metallic silicon is available to life, we just haven't witnessed enough evolution for it to show up, most photosynthesis is based on chlorophyl, animal oxygen transport on iron based hemoglobin, even though there are some deep underwater creatures that use geothermal energy to survive based on a sulfur cycle, or species such as octopuses use copper based oxygen transport. So who knows, maybe there is a chance for a species to evolve a pn-junction silicon method of solar energy collection one of these days, just like some bacterial life can bind atmospheric nitrogen through sophisticated catalysts at normal pressures, as opposed to humans using 200+ atm to accomplish the same thing. Sillybilly 21:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Uh, you have a lot of ideas up there, some practical and some not. It's easy to suggest having all powerplants capture their CO2 as dry ice or liquid and ship it somewhere-- it's something else to get it done. Carbon capture is a whole speculative subject with its own article. Even if we're going to do it, the people who advocate it have never suggested any practical means of doing it except to inject it into ocean or land at the powerplant, not for transport. And certainly nobody has a method of doing it "on the fly" for vehicles. Carbon capture is a large-scale enterprise, at BEST.

And what do you expect anybody to say to your suggestion that some species might someday evolve a pn-junction silicon solar energy collecter? That's so far off-topic it's, well, silly. SBHarris 22:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Information" icon transparency

The icon at the page header has a white opaque background, or at least it appears that way using Internet exploder version 6. 67.113.49.201 20:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apples and oranges

Once more we find statements like this rot:

Produced in this fashion, hydrogen will generate less CO2 than conventional internal combustion engines, if emissions throughout the entire fuel cycle are compared, and thus contributes less to global warming (Wang, 2002; Kreith, 2004)

Sitting around doing nothing produces less CO2 than conventional internal combustion engines. Unless, of cource, the ICEs aren't running. Logic, people! I assume that this statement is supposed to be about per unit distance travelled in a car, or some such. It needs fixing! Amount of CO2 per kilo of H2 can't be directly compared to amount of CO2 per km driven without a lot of other information. 132.229.116.79 15:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Since you ask for logic, it's material implication [16], something lacking in your counterexamples. As is stated in the now deleted references and in the Wikipedia article itself [17], the comparison is between quantities of gasoline and h2 having equal enthalpies (and I'm sure you know whether I'm talking about LHV or HHV)--a detail best left to a footnote. But if you must add it to this "rot" as you call it, understand that your comparison between "CO2 per kilo of H2" and "amount of CO2 per km driven" has no physical meaning, which I thought they knew at Univ of Leiden where your signature's IP is sourced. --PotomacFever 17:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean that "CO2 [emmitted] per kilo of H2 [produced]" and "amount of CO2 [emmitted] per km driven" have no physical meaning? They're what are being referred to in the sentence in question!

Material implication may well be the structure of the sentence, but that's not the logic that was being referred to. There's no material implication in comparing apples with oranges.

(And by the way, I can't quite see what demonstrating that you know how to do a reverse DNS lookup adds to the discussion.)

129.16.97.27 22:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Envisioned centralized hydrogen sources" sillyness

No-one is seriously considering replacing the electical distribution network with hydrogen distribution (except for some guys I know at a particular large British-Dutch petroleum company with too much time on their hands and a desire to justify their existence to their bosses... but I digress).

If you're primary source is producing electrical power, hydrogen makes no sense for anything but the most niche of niche stationary applications. For mobile applications and direct hydrogen production (not via an electrical stage) both centralised and distributed hydrogen production scenarios are being discussed by all and sundry. Both have advantacges and disadvantages and there is not yet a clear preference in policies.

Does anyone object to me nuking this section and replacing it with something more in tune with reality?

132.229.116.79 21:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any objection to your citing the people who are trying to push hydrogen pipes in place of high tension wires (LOL), and pointing out the reasons why yet others think this is impractical. But you should give one argument first (as here given already) then the second one, after. Try to keep the whole controvery fairly neutral, though of course you can't be neutral within a section. But at the end, the reader should know that there are people out there who really think that H2 is going to replace the high tension interstate electric grid, and the local grid will be run off fuel cells in plug in hybrids, running in reverse half the time. IOW, in the era of half-million volt inter-state and even inter-country power transmission (going over the pole one day, I have no doubt, so that we can do a global 12 hr cycle), there are people seriously proposing plug-in hybrids to fix load-balancing. Sigh. We can only note it. SBHarris 22:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed expanded LEAD

This article once had a much larger LEAD section, and we're now down to only a couple of sentences, which isn't enough for a major article like this.

I've proposed a LEAD with three paragraphs. The first one says what the thing is, and notes that it gets confused with several other energy issues. A next paragraph says why the proponents are pushing it. The next says why the critics pan it. I've given them equal space. I think reading just this gives some kind of overview of the article. Anyway, it's better than the previous LEAD. Feel free to modify, but don't just delete. The LEAD section here NEEDS to be longer, even if you don't like MY version of it. SBHarris 01:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen Fuel

Guys, I'm guna make "hydrogen fuel" article because it's another alternative and one more thing, Sbharris wins prize for being biggest vandalizer in wikipedia (Comment added anonymously by user talk:68.75.29.43)

sbharris isn't the one being a vandal here. - furrykef (Talk at me) 08:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, furrykef. I didn't think so either, but in these edit wars with the clueless, you tend to wonder about your own sanity without outside opinions. More are appreciated. And thanks for the unsolicited revert, also. SBHarris 20:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Provide some specific references, or I'm deleting load balancing.

Just what the title says!  ;-)

Using hydrogen storage in vehicles as a distributed load balancing network is simply illogical unless on-board hydrogen storage capacity is stupidly large. When everyone's trying desperately to come up with a system to cram enough hydrogen into a car to make it viable, talking about consumers allowing their hydrogen charge to vary at the whims of the grid is simply ridiculous.

Unless someone can provide some specific references to people seriously considering hydrogen vehicles as load balancing tools I'm going to delete it all. From the bottom of every edit page, I quote: "Encyclopedic content must be attributable to a reliable source."

(I will leave in the notion that distributed hydrogen can be used for load balancing, but that's got nothing to do with what the article currently says.)

129.16.97.227 13:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, it's gone.

129.16.97.227 06:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The existing hydrogen economy

I had a section in this article a year or so ago called "the existing hydrogen economy". It's gone. I think it was useful for a couple of reasons, but I'm loathe to do all the work to put it back in if a bunch of you are just doing to take it out.

Here's the deal:

• A really large amount ($135 billion US per year in the US alone) of hydrogen is currently made from natural gas and used to make fertilizer and refine oil (about half to each).
• If some other form of energy supply (wind, nuclear, coal, whatever) can be used to produce that hydrogen domestically, it would save a lot of money. If done without coal, it could reduce CO2 by an interesting amount.
• Because refineries and ammonia production tend to be centralized, this benefit can be realized without storing or transporting hydrogen at all.
• This benefit needs no change to car fleets or other diffuse infrastructure.

My sense is that replacing the exiting natural-gas-based hydrogen supply with something domestic is the real but unstated reason for the US government subsidy of nuclear HTE and coal->hydrogen projects. Both subsidies are large (many $100 million/year).

I think this direction of economic evolution matters, and should be in the hydrogen economy article. The existing production numbers are real. The cost of making that hydrogen is really ballooning, and the US government is funding real R&D to do something about it. This entire thrust is far more practical and near-term than most of the fuel-cell-car fantasies in this article.

But it's been deleted, for reasons I don't understand (and would like to hear). If you want it back you can dig it out of the history.

Iain McClatchie 17:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)