Out of masterresource
By David R. Legate
“Hydrogen energy will no longer become viable if the subsidies that are made available by the governments of the world dry out. Hopefully the new administration will recognize that hydrogen prices apply not only to metals, but also to our economy. “
Hydrogen. The first element in the period breeder and the most common element in the universe. It is also the simplest element – the most common isotope has only a proton and an electron. It was referred to as the “future of energy”; After all, the sun is dependent on hydrogen to continue to emit light, and if it is good enough for our sun, why is it not good enough for us?
You have undoubtedly heard the energy industry based on a hydrogen in connection with water management. Jeremy Rifkin published a book entitled The Water Wolf Economy: the creation of the global energy website and the redistribution of power on earth. He claimed that “globalization is the final stage of the era of fossil fuels” and that “is a fault for a safer world in the direction of hydrogen towards hydrogen”.
In his speech by the Union, the President explained that “with a new national commitment our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles” in order to be operated with hydrogen, “from the laboratory to the exhibition area, so that the first child born today from one of one of one Child born today could be powered with hydrogen and environmentally free. “The administration then announced a joint effort with the European Union to develop a hydrogen economy, including technologies that” need safe and affordable hydrogen drive vehicles for mass production “, and explained that this” reduces the energy safety of America by considerably Need for imported oil. “
The Chicago Sun-Times achieved a story that announced: “The first steps towards the supporters of the hydrogen economy are 1739926638 be taken. “And the US representative house held the first of two” investigation hearings on the subject of hydrogen – on production, use and potential effects on our energy industry of the future “. The chairman of the hearing claimed hydrogen” had the potential, in our energy system the same role in our To play energy system like today ”.
Therefore, hydrogen as a silver ball that solves the climate crisis and solves us from an energy supply to fossil fuels.
But wait. Don't you remember that? Well, the Rifkin book was published in 2002. The administration was not the second Trump presidency, the presidency of Joe Biden, the first Trump presidency or the first or second Obama presidency. It was George W. Bush's state of the Union in 2003. The article by Chicago Sun-Times was published in 1996. And the hearing of the congress? Well, that took place on June 10, 1975.
But doesn't the sun run on hydrogen? Yes, but not in the same way. In the sun, hydrogen atoms are merged by fusion to produce helium with a lot of energy. Every second, about six hundred billion kilograms of hydrogen in helium and about four billion kilograms of matter are converted into energy. On Earth, this process of the merger is about twenty years away and, like the MEM, will always be. And apparently hydrogen is also a fuel source.
How do we get hydrogen?
Is mining or hole for hydrogen the problem? No, that's how we get hydrogen.
Hydrogen is generated by separating other elements in different compounds. The most common methods are the electrolysis-wing water for the formation of hydrogen and oxygen gases-and steam methane reformation, whereby hydrogen atoms are separated from the carbon atoms. The former is generally how hydrogen is produced in the high school chemistry classes, but was recently advertised as the only “clean” way to produce hydrogen. The latter is the process through which hydrogen is currently produced commercially in the United States.
However, reforming the steam methane requires high temperatures (about thirteen to eighteen hundred degrees of fahrenheit) and high pressure (between three and twenty-five times, that of atmospheric pressure). In this way, engineers can use steam as a catalyst to produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Therefore, the production of hydrogen uses steam methane reforming methane, a fossil fuel and creates carbon dioxide (the supposedly bad gas) and carbon monoxide (a really fatal gas).
But the laws of physics have something interesting. There is no free lunch. We often talk about the second law of thermodynamics and a system is more disturbed over time, unless energy is added from the outside. We say that the entropy of the closed system increases over time. But there are other ways to say this. For example, we can say that you cannot create a heat machine, extract the heat and convert everything into useful work. If you interpret this for our discussion, the energy contained in steam and methane cannot be completely transferred to the hydrogen – some of them are lost to the production of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and some are lost as heat.
This means that the production of hydrogen from methane leads to less energy in the hydrogen molecules than in the original methane molecule. How much less?
The First The hurdle of hydrogen energy is its energy deficit. In order to get enough hydrogen to produce two megawatts of energy, a total of three megawatts are required. This does not include the energy loss – or the intervention of the second thermodynamics – in the production of this electricity from other sources. In the words of Robert Bryce, hydrogen energy is “incredibly expensive, in energy representative to produce them”.
So why not only send these three megawatts of electricity into the power lines to heat and cool houses, cook food and perform other tasks that make our lives better? Since hydrogen is supposedly a clean fuel source, the energy is usually generated by methane and delivers our supposedly evil gas, carbon dioxide, as a by -product. In addition, hydrogen is environmentally friendly -not in environmental care, but the subsidies for companies that want to pursue the hydrogen all -conveys.
Storage problems
The second The hurdle in connection with hydrogen as an energy source is that it is difficult to use and hard to save. Hydrogen gas does not play well with metals and something that is referred to as “hydrogen preliminary”. As the name suggests, hydrogen prices mean that metals over time brittle and crack, especially when the metal is stressed. As a small molecule, hydrogen easily escapes from the smallest cracks. In general, hydrogen prices do not occur at temperatures of about three hundred degrees; However, it is not possible to heat pipes and warehouse tanks to this temperature. In ambient temperatures and pressing on earth, hydrogen prices for many metals such as steel, iron, nickel, titanium, cobalt, copper and aluminum as well as alloys they contain are a significant problem.
Contributors argue that hydrogen can be stored as a liquid. This would apply, but this requires compression to seven hundred times atmospheric pressure and cooling to minus-four-hundred and twenty degrees. And of course even more energy would be required to achieve and maintain this compression and cooling.
If we cannot transport and save hydrogen in existing trucks, tanks and pipes, how is hydrogen best used as an energy source? It can be mixed with natural gas and consumed by turbines and activities. However, this includes two disadvantages. On the one hand, we lose energy by storing it in the production of hydrogen – why not simply use the methane in the turbine instead of waste energy by converting it into hydrogen? That just has no advantage and costs us energy. The second is that activists in methane can no longer promote the hydrogen source as “clean and green renewable energies”, since methane is still in the mix. Sigh. Virtue signals the ugly head again.
The best way to use hydrogen is probably the fuel source in a fuel cell. However, fuel cells are already running to methane, and the loss of energy when converting methane into hydrogen excludes any benefit that the use of hydrogen would provide. Except, of course, that activists and those in the hydrogen production industry would not be able to advertise their fuel cell as “clean and green renewable energies”. In my home state of Delaware, however, the state legislator said that methane, which was consumed by a Bloom -Energy fuel cell, is renewable energies. Ah, the almighty legislator that can easily change physics through a majority vote!
User
A third Lord when using hydrogen as a fuel source is that it is dangerous to use it. Like methane, it is colorless and odorless, and undoubtedly hydrogen would have to become a widespread source of fuel, it would have to be mixed with a smelly gas, since stinking mercaptan is mixed with methane so that a leak can be recognized. And yes, hydrogen is very explosive.
For this reason, the leading fleet of the early 20th century was built in the USA using helium for buoyancy, not hydrogen, although helium is more expensive to produce and worried less. If you do not understand the explosive potential of hydrogen, the catastrophe of Hindenburg should tell you everything you need to know.
Unadorned
Finally the fourth Hurdy should now be obvious. The use of hydrogen as a source of fuel is expensive – in terms of production costs, expensive storage and energy that is required for production. Hydrogen as a source of fuel enables virtue signal providers that they have developed and use a “clean and green” fuel source that “saves the planet from the evils of fossil fuels”. In reality, however, it will only make energy more expensive and send a larger part of the planet back below the poverty line.
As we often said here at the Cornwall Alliance, inexpensive energy was the solution to raise billions of people above the poverty line and increase their standard of living. Hydrogen energy will stop becoming viable if the subsidies that are made available by the governments of the world dry out. Hopefully the new administration will recognize that hydrogen prices apply not only to metals, but also to our economy.
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David R. Legates, PhD, is the director of research and education for Cornwall Alliance for the administration of creation and the retired professor of climatology at the University of Delaware. He is the co -editor of climate and energy: the case for realism.
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