Hydrogen may be accepted by automakers as a prime green energy alternative

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Instead of environmental issues being hijacked for bigger Government, new ideas are the better solution in my opinion.

Hydrogen utilization is such a (relatively) new idea. At least in a modern production sense.

New ways of hydrogen sequestering too are appropriate.

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Hydrogen may be accepted by automakers as a prime green energy alternative

Hydrogen needs to overcome the ‘blues’ before it’s accepted by automakers as the green energy alternative​

DOUG FIRBY

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED 20 HOURS AGO



Hydrogen is being touted by automakers as the clean-energy alternative to battery-electric vehicles.

KIM HONG-JI/REUTERS

Hydrogen is being touted by automakers as the clean-energy alternative to battery-electric vehicles. But to claim the clean-car crown, the technology has to overcome one major obstacle – the way most of the world’s supply is made.

Sure, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles emit no exhaust fumes – just heat and water vapour. But critics say the concern is with what happens before hydrogen gets into your car.

Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth. Yet, it is almost always found as part of another compound, such as water, and must be separated from those compounds before it can power your vehicle.

The most common refining process is natural gas reforming. . . .

. . . Because it is a relatively cheap process, about 95 per cent of the hydrogen used in North America is made this way. Yet, it involves fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the product has been labelled “blue” hydrogen because it is less clean than the less-common green hydrogen, which is produced with renewable energy, but not as bad as the dirtiest processes, which produce “grey” hydrogen.

“Blue hydrogen is the lowest-cost production pathway,” . . .

. . . a vice-chairman of China’s national advisory body for policy making, told Bloomberg News that his country now wants to build a “hydrogen society," and aims to have one million hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on the road within a decade.
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. . . even blue hydrogen achieves lower carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline . . .​

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Wan is called China’s father of electric vehicles. . . .

. . . Japan . . . wants to have 40,000 fuel-cell electric vehicles on the road by 2020, and 200,000 such vehicles within six years. . . .



The hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai.

MARK BLINCH/REUTERS

. . . combine the best of both internal combustion engine (ICE) and battery-electric vehicle (BEV) technology. Unlike BEVs, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles have a refuelling range similar to tried-and-true gasoline-powered vehicles. They can also be refilled in minutes, rather than the hour or more it takes at the highest-capacity recharging stations. . . .

. . . hydrogen produced through steam methane reforming is still 50 per cent cleaner than gasoline produced for ICEs in the United States on a “wells-to-wheels” basis.

“Hydrogen is definitely not a dirty fuel,” he said.

Pembinaʼs Plumptre agrees, saying that even blue hydrogen achieves lower carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline used in ICEs . . .

. . . there are affordable ways to create green hydrogen. In Europe, for example, companies buy excess electricity produced by wind farms during off-peak hours at next to no cost to create hydrogen through electrolysis. It can be produced, compressed and delivered to the customer at cost-parity with diesel fuel, he said. . . .

. . . . Even cleaner processes are possible. In late September, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology unveiled a water-splitting technology they claim is 98.7-per-cent efficient and could reduce the cost of the equipment to produce hydrogen by half.

Plumptre says the success of the electrolysis method “will be driven by the electricity price.” . . .
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ThinkingSapien . . .
Hydrogen isn’t an energy source.
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It is a medium for energy transfer. (A potentially very CLEAN energy transfer).

What IS your idea of an “energy source” TS?
 
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Ah hydrogen, the lightest element in the periodic table and the most abundant element in the universe.
 
Given the difficulties and unique dangers I still think the key to making hydrogen viable will be to create ludicrous amounts of clean electricity and improving electrolysis methods.

A hydrogen vehicle is basically carrying around a highly compressed gas. Sure, a gasoline tank and rupture and catch fire, but a failed hydrogen tank is practically an explosion (without the flames initially) as the contents are 350 - 700 times atmospheric pressure.

To accept the various risks I’d need the hydrogen to be created cleanly and at a competitive price.
 
Do we really need to create it if there’s so much of it around? Or by create do you mean refine?
 
I suppose “refine”. When they say hydrogen is plentiful they mean it’s bonded to lots of other things. Technically sugar or even your body has a lot of hydrogen.

To me, refining it from natural gas seems problematic since it releases carbon and consumes natural gas that could have been used in other applications. OTOH, water so plentiful most pay under a dollar to have a literal ton of it piped to our homes. But refining hydrogen from water takes a lot of electricity.
 
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tomarin said:
Do we really need to create it if there’s so much of it around? Or by create do you mean refine?
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As an element it is abundant. But to use it some work is necessary. For example, water contains hydrogen bount to oxygen. If you run electricity to it you can separate it. Ofcourse with every energy conversion energy is lost. The energy that can be extracted from the chemical reaction of bringing oxygen and hydrogen together is less than the energy that was used to produce it.

There are other means of extracting hydrogen and other means of using it for energy. But unless it is in a form ready to be used or in a form that requires little “refinement” (to borrow the phrase of HerCrazierSelf) it is better viewed as being like a rechargeable battery; energy is still needed to charge it.
 
TS . . .
A resource for which the potential to do work extracted is greater than the work required to extract that potential and use it.
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The “work” from what?

Nature only? Man only?

Do you understand you cannot get any energy transfer without some loss of energy?

Petroleum products had great “work” or energy to form them over time.
They did not just form de novo.

So are hydrocarbons NOT an “energy source” with your definition??

What would be an “energy source” (examples) using your definition?
 
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I am investing in the first company to patent methane-powered transportation. Talk about self-propelled vehicles; sign me up.
 
Cathoholic said:
The “work” from what?

Nature only? Man only?
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Work in this sense is a physical change done through the transfer of energy. Work is done on a car (changing it’s momentum) through the conversion of some form of energy into momentum.

If you wanted to move some physical goods the work (displacing the position of the goods) could be done by machines, animals, or humans; each of which has different requirements for the resources for providing energy.
Cathoholic said:
o you understand you cannot get any energy transfer without some loss of energy?
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Yep. Mentioned above.
Cathoholic said:
Petroleum products had great “work” or energy to form them over time.
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Agreed.
So are hydrocarbons NOT an “energy source” with your definition??
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Being a hydrocarbon is neither sufficient nor necessary for something to be a resource from which energy can be extracted. Some things to consider.
  • Is the substance that contains energy accessible? - if it cannot be accessed then it is probably a good idea not to consider it a resource. Jupiter has an abundance of methane (a hydrocarbon) but we don’t have access to it. Methane on Jupiter is not currently an energy resource for us.
  • Do those that have access to a resource (directly or indirectly) have the capability to extract energy from it? If not then don’t consider it a resource for energy. To use an above mentioned example, say someone is in possession of uranium prior to the 1890s. While uranium contains energy this wouldn’t have been an energy resource for them.
We source our energy from processes that have either already happened (in the case of fossil fuels) or are continually or regularly happening (in the case of renewable sources). Note that I am not talking about ultimate sources of energy; for the energy resources that we use their energy can be traced back to the nuclear activity of either the star that we are all familiar with or from nuclear activity in our own planet or of a star that is now long dead. If it were found that an abundance of hydrogen could be found in a form that was ready to be consumed or in a form that required less work to prepare it for use than the amount of work that then processed result could do then it would be considered an energy source. Otherwise view it as being like a battery; holding the energy that we extracted from another resource.
 
I looked at your reply TS and I still have no idea why you would say hydrogen is not an “energy source” yet hydrocarbons are an “energy source” (using your own ideas)??
 
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Cathoholic said:
I looked at your reply TS and I still have no idea why you would say hydrogen is not an “energy source” yet hydrocarbons are an “energy source” (using your own ideas)??
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I went to Cuba last year. To buy things I needed a locally accepted currency. Going to the local money exchanger i can give them a hundred dollars and they will calculate the equivalent amount in their own currency. They take a 3% fee as they do on all transactions and an additional 10% fee that is applicable to to exchanges from USA currency. I walk away with $87 in currency. I could then engage in local commerce.

I have a job. To get to that job I spend a little under $2 for gas, a couple of bucks for food, and there are some other expense such as the car that I use to get to and from work, the clothing I specifically have for work, and other tools that I’ve paid for. Using these items and my abilities I perform some tasks. While some of the money I already had was consumed I get money back in the form of a pay check.

I had some money I knew I could go without spending for at least a year. I put some of the money in a high interest savings account and some of it was put on a CD. Every month the bank ads money to the accounts.

My job is an income source. The amount of money I get from my job is greater than the money that I consumed to do it. The bank accounts are an income source; the amount of money I have increased because of it.

The money exchange in Cuba wasn’t an income source. I had to take money from my income source and have it converted with a loss to have it in a form that could be used locally.

Apply these concepts to what I said about energy sources. Some energy could be invested in the production of a wind farm, a solar farm, building a petroleum processing plant, or uranium refinement facilities and a nuclear power plant. With enough operation time the energy output of these things will exceed the energy that humans invested into their construction.

Some of the energy output from the above could be used for hydrogen processing so that the hydrogen could be used for energy storage such as in fuel cells, rockets, so on. But the energy potential will always be less than the energy resources consumed.

Btw: to avoid confusion (and acknowledge the law of the conservation of energy) none of these things is creating energy. They are capturing or utilizing existing energy. There is already energy in the wind and a wind turbine captures some of that energy.
 
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