Bush Pushing Hydrogen Fuel As Alternative

Bush said "Hydrogen is the wave of the future. We're too dependent on foreign sources of energy." He just doesn't get it. Hydrogen is not an energy source; it's just a way to carry energy around and put the pollution burden on power plants rather than cars. We don't have hydrogen wells spitting out hydrogen - at present we can only get it from processes like electrolysis and steam refining that require an input of energy.

 

I should be easy for many people to generate all of the hydrogen they need through the use of a solar cell array mounted on their roof or through the use of nuclear piles to generate electricity to disassociate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Nuclear piles would have the advantage of not having loses through the use of transmission lines.

One advantage of hydrogen is that the fuel would be lighter. I believe 100 pounds of hydrogen would have the equivalent energy of 228 pounds of octane, or about 29 gallons of gas.

I believe the two main problems with hydrogen is storage as well as lack of infrastructure for refueling. 15 years sounds plausible but the early adopters will probably have to generate their own hydrogen and be limited on the range of their commute.

 

This is what I don't get.

Why use electricity to produce hydrogen to power the car? Why not just use electricity to power the car? Isn't energy lost along the way? So it takes more electricity to produce enough hydrogen to power the car than to use electricity to power the car in the first place.

So....shouldn't advances in all things related to using electricity in a car be advanced? I really think we've tried to produce an electric car before the proper technology has been in place.

I mean....look at the Prius. There's some pretty sophisticated computer software in that car. Could the a version of the 2004-5 Prius have been produced 20 years ago? Or even 10? Look how far the car improved over the 2000-1-2-3 model? We can only guess at the advances the next redesign will take.

While I don't think hydrogen, natural gas, methane, ethanol or any other alternative solutions should be scraped, I really think there should be a push for electric, if only because if photovoltaics can also advance...it becomes clean and simple. And I think the simpler, the better. Making hydrogen doesn't seem so simple to me.

 

we'll just have to wait and see what happens, (though i think those hydrogen fueled cars will cost an arm and a leg when they first come out) but in the meantime, hybrids are the way to go.

 

The Hydrogen that Bush is talking about is to be made from natural gas. This is what this administration is funding.

The USA is NOT funding the making of hydrogen from water so don't talk about Bush and the splitting of the water molecule in the same paragraph. One has nothing to do with the other. Making hydrogen from water might make sense -- though I think the practicality of it is closer to 100 years away than 15 years. But making it from a fossil fuel is simply stupid.

And Hydrogen is not the fuel of the future. Hydrogen is a energy storage medium that best preserves the financial future of corporations like GM and Exxon. Electric cars that really work, and by that I mean those powered by much better batteries than currently exist today, are a threat to the business model of those corporations

This is the reason, and the only reason, that so much money is being spent to brainwash the population that hydrogen is the future.

Let's face it. The needs of populations are irrelevant in 2005. It's profit that matters. So populations are forced to make progress not with the help of people like GW, but in spite of them.

 

ditto, prius 04.

I've tried and tried to explain to people that hydrogen still requires fossil fuels. They say, well, I made hydrogen in chem class, and we didn't need gasoline to do it. Well, sorry, but the energy that lit the lights powered the bunsen (sp?) burners and all the "un-associated", hidden devices WAS fossil-fuel derived.

People just see the tip of this hydrogen iceberg. Just like the Prius, where people just see it as slow, uninspiring, got to plug it in (not that that would be bad!). People are lazy and have no desire to learn what the Prius is or learn why hydrogen is not the ONLY answer.

 

ditto to you too Finman.

I tried to point out that decisions RE hydrogen and other energy sources that get made by those in power in 2005 are being made based upon business model reasons and not what is best for the planet nor Americans.

I don't think I made this point strong enough. The Bush administration does not make decisions based upon science. They manipulate science to further a corporate agenda. Hydrogen -- at least the way they are using it -- is part of that agenda. Yes, there is some true scientific facts scattered through their programs, but only those facts that support pre-existing conclusions and their overall agenda.

 

The fossil fuel industry sees hydrogen as the "next step," only problem the perspective is obtaining hydrogen from oil. Methane, a green house gas, is a released byproduct of obtaining hydrogen from oil. The perspective is based on centralized processing and power plants.

Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using photovoltaics is decentralized production and operates at a slower rate or "trickle," with no methane or other green house gas byproducts. Hydrolysis is not seen as feasible because a select few are still trying to figure out how to "control the sun." If I can recharge my vehicle via photovoltaics on my single family residence, I bypass those who would control the sun. Hence, from a corporate perspective, photovoltaics are not feasible for maximizing profit.

 

Prius04 has this absolutely right! The only reason Bush is supporting hydrogen it is allows him to sound like he is doing something about energy and the future without actually having to do anything to change the status quo. The "hydrogen economy" is a complete sham and brainwash tatic.

Hydrogen is a useful tool when and only when we have developed a way to manufacture it on a massive scale without using fossil fuels. We can't do that now. We must first develop nuclear fusion, or cheap solar power or etc. Promoting hydrogen is analagous to promoting development of the television before the discovery of electricity. Its stupid and pointless, except as an evasive political tatic.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(altaskier\";p=\"92833)</div>

You guys are the ones who don't seem to get it.

We will never get rid of fossil fuels if we continue to put fossil fuels into our vehicles. While it is true that hydrogen used by hydrogen fuel cell cars will most likely be produced by processing Natural Gas (a fossil fuel), what consuming hydrogen does is provide a path moving forward in which we can break the link and produce hydrogen by other means.

Who says that the "input of energy" has to be from a power plant? I read about a year ago about a German company that had a brilliant idea. They were converting a tanker ship by adding a windmill to it. They will sail the ship out into the open ocean, where the winds are strong, and use the electricity generated by the windmill and sea water to create hydrogen. When the ship is full, it sails back to port and drops off its load of hydrogen. Since a ship is mobile, it can move to where then winds are whenever weather patterns change.

Oil is already delivered to most countries by ship. Imagine a fleet of such ships on both coasts of North America. They sail out 100 miles, sit around generating hydrogen using wind power, and then sail back into port. How much more efficient can you get than that?

And to top it off, you break up the oil monopolies. Oil production requires owning a piece of land with oil deposits. As such, entry into the production business requires owning a finite resource, thereby creating monopolies. However, ocean winds and sea water are abundant and can't be owned. Anyone with the money to build a ship with a hydrogen tank and a windmill can get into the business.

And why stop at special purpose ships? We will continue to ship freight by ship for centruries, if not forever. Why couldn't you add hydrogen generating capability (on a smaller scale) to every ship that sails the ocean? Shipping companies would make extra money selling hydrogen they generate simply by doing what they've always done, which is sail from port to port. Everyone else gets more hydrogen in the market.

Again, you will never break the dependency on fossil fuels if you continue to put fossil fuels into your gas tank. Even if in the near term, hydrogen fuels cells simply shift the fossil fuel usage from the car to the hydrogen production, it provides us with a way to break the link in the long term.

 

Saw that picture, and thought:

"George, remember what Bill Clinton said! Don't inhale!"

:mrgreen:

 

BTW, if we're going into the pros/cons of hydrogen fuel, take a look at this PriusChat thread. A lot of this has been covered before.

 

Bush killed a program that works (hybrids) and replaced it with a program that is mainly intended to provide yet another subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. While we are waiting for the magic future, let's do what we can now by raising the CAFE standards to at least 40 mpg.

Looks like Bush is trying to eat the nozzle.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tstreet\";p=\"92951)</div>

I think we are past the point where the Federal Government needs to subsidize gas-electric hybrid research in order to bring it into production. The evidence is the prius you own. What's needed now is not research subsidies, but consumer subsidies. Consumer subsidies, ie. tax deductions, still exist, and in fact Bush has in several speaches mentioned doubling it.

However, the next step is hydrogen fuel cells. This is an industry that still needs research subsidies in order to speed it's introduction into the marketplace.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tag\";p=\"92840)</div>

The cars exist now. However they are expensive. The current research is in making them cheaper. The 15 years has more to do with hydrogen distribution than with fuel cell car production.

If I could wave my magic wand and build 100,000 hydrogen stations and distribution systems to supply them, I would.

 

rcroft,

You correctly recognize that our dependence on fossil fuel to power our vehicles is a problem that needs to be addressed. However, you miss the point about hydrogen. It isn't the answer until we develop the technology to efficiently manufacture it on a MASSSIVE scale. Here's why.

Approximately 2/3 of our oil supply is used for transportation.
Unfortunately, solar and wind cannot be used as industrial-scale transportation fuels unless they are used to crack hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy it produces. This is a 30% efficiency loss.

In 2003, the US consumed 98 quadrillion BTU's of energy. A whopping .171 quadrillion came from solar and wind combined. Do the math (.171/98) and you will see that a total of less then one-sixth of one percent of our energy appetite was satisfied with solar and wind combined.

Think about it. If we are going to generate hydrogen from solar and wind power, or even nuclear power, we need MASSIVE breakthroughs and investments in these technologies FIRST. Then, once we can meet a reasonable portion of our energy demand with alternative technologies, we can start thinking about using it to make hydrogen.

So hydrogen fuel cells and "infrastructure" are meaningless dead ends until we figure out efficient solar, wind, nuclear fusion or whatever else. And that's what we need to be investing in and thinking about. Not hydrogen.

Hydrogen technology today is like TV's without electricity, or roofs without walls and foundations....pointless.

BTW, Bookrats, thanks for the refernce to the hydrogen thread. Thats informatioive.

 

Has anyone seen anything about a hybrid hydrogen car? That might work I think. The hydrogen would last even longer or are hydrogen cars like our Prius (ie electric and hydrogen motor, engine shuts off when stopped at a light, etc.)?