[The Eschaton]

Originally Posted by bluesdave

Robert Zubrin is relying on the readers of his article to be untrained in chemistry. It sounds impressive to those readers. His costings do not reflect potential savings in mass production if hydrogen was widely used in our day to day lives. Do not forget that plasma televisions were several times their current price, only a few years ago. The same economic principle applies to nearly all manufacturing.

Every means of providing energy is going to involve the use of energy in the production of the base materials. Until we find some magic energy cell, that will always be the case. Some of the waste recycling prototypes that I have seen, produce hydrogen as a byproduct. This could be compressed and marketed. Obviously these methods would only produce large quantities of hydrogen if they were implemented on a large scale. I am simply saying that it does not have to be an expensive exercise.

wait, for an answer you simply character attack zubrin? No, i dont think zubrins trying to fool people and i dont rely on him for my information. Its a simple reasoning and all the information is elsewhere. I just pointed out the article because he puts it all together in an easy to understand essay. Since you did not read the article i will restate the point.

Hydrogen is not and energy source!!
Hydrogen is simply an energy storage and transmission method and a very inefficient one.
Hydrogen is made from steam reforming natural gas or from electrolysis. The current cheapest and most efficient method is through reforming natural gas but that does not solve anything. You are still have more energy wasted and produce more carbon than just simply burning the natural gas. Using electrolysis is much more expensive and you can only get about 50% of the energy converted.

The reason people think hydrogen is the fuel of the future is that they see a fuel cell, you put hydrogen in it and you get out water and energy. No wast and no carbon. But considering the whole problem including production of hydrogen and its the worst and most inefficient method. The only way to get a hydrogen economy is to massively increase electricity production and the only reasonable way to do that is to start building 100's of nuclear fuel plants now. If you do build the excess electricity production hydrogen still does not make sense. Its more efficient just to have a pure electric car and just charge it.

Here is the information from a nuclear industry paper May 2007. The whole paper is worth reading its very clear and not to technical.

Nuclear power already produces electricity as a major energy carrier. It is well placed to produce hydrogen if this becomes a major energy carrier also.

The evolution of nuclear energy's role in hydrogen production over perhaps three decades is seen to be:

* electrolysis of water, using off-peak capacity,
* use of nuclear heat to assist steam reforming of natural gas,
* high-temperature electrolysis of steam, using heat and electricity from nuclear reactors, then
* high-temperature thermochemical production using nuclear heat.

Efficiency of the whole process (primary heat to hydrogen) then moves from about 25% with today's reactors driving electrolysis (33% for reactor x 75% for cell) to 36% with more efficient reactors doing so, to 45% for high-temperature electrolysis of steam, to about 50% or more with direct thermochemical production.*

* From hydrogen to electric drive is only 30-40% efficient at this stage, giving 15-20% overall primary heat to wheels, compared with 25-30% for PHEV.

Low-temperature electrolysis using nuclear electricity is undertaken on a fairly small scale today, but the cost of hydrogen from it is higher (one source says: $4-6 per kg, compared with $1.00-1.50 from natural gas, but another source says cost will be same as electricity @ 4c/kWh when natural gas is US$ 9.50/GJ - cf $7 in July 2005).

High-temperature electrolysis (at 800°C or more) has been demonstrated, and shows considerable promise. US research is at Idaho National Laboratory in conjunction with Ceramatec.

So for alternative fuels there are really 2 choices, hydrogen which will take decades to implement, hundreds of nuclear power plants, and a whole new infrastructure plus some break through in storage. Or you can use biofuels which can be done now, use all the same infrastructure and combustion engines and be close to carbon neutral. The only reason hydrogen is pushed is because big energy companies would control the production of power plants and and the infrastructure. With biofuels entry costs are much lower and small players could compete with big energy so there is little interest. Ethanol from corn is probably not a very good idea but the farm industry supports it so its popular in the US.

I dont know how you could have missed to problems with a hydrogen economy. Just look anywhere on the internet for information. Even wiki has picked it up.

This is a good place to read about it here and here. It explains better than i can and in a very short format. Please read it before answering.