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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Marimike6@cs.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Hydrogen
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 10:35:35 EDT

In a message dated 6/16/2003 10:32:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, lflier@mindspring.com writes:
It takes several times the energy to extract hydrogen from water, than the hydrogen will provide.  The only thing that switching to hydrogen power does is remove pollution from the point source and hide it at the point of manufacture.


This very valid point has been missed by most of the reporters and popularizers. It is also ignored by the energy industry, who want hydrogen just because it will make them sound like they're more eco-friendly. But it's pretty obvious to the scientific world.

One great danger will be that heavily funded research by folks like Exxon-Mobil will pick up patents on all the best processes before anyone else operating on a shoestring can get the research done, and they'll deep-six any promising methods that will become competition for their principle products-- fossil fuels. We've seen this before, and it's a real danger.

Currently, most hydrogen fuel cells are NOT being made from water, the hydrogen

is extracted from natural gas which is much more efficient than extracting it from water.  Yet, of course, it would be much more efficient to simply burn the natural gas.

Sorry but there is no free lunch, and the hydrogen hypers are spreading a dangerous myth.  In fact, the fossil fuel and nuclear power companies are in on the myth, because as of right now the only way to make hydrogen workable as a fuel is to use natural gas, oil and coal plants and/or nuclear power to extract and purify the hydrogen.  Hydrogen cells are useful in some applications, but NOT as a way to replace conventional fuel.

--Lee


Please offer any information you've seen about the efficiency of converting water to free H and O. I think it's a little better than that.

Also you could put it more accurately by saying that the major fuel corps are hyping conversion from natural gas, as they sell more gas that way. I alluded to that in my first post. That is not to say that disinterested research isn't being done by independent scientists. There's quite a lot of it, in fact, and the promise I was suggesting was that offered by renewable energy sources. Obviously any conversion of renewable energy like wind power into vehicle fuel is going to reduce demand on fossil fuels.

My concern is that when you dismiss the whole notion as "dangerous myth" you throw out the potential for useful applications being discovered. Right now, research is going forward in a dozen different directions to find new methods of producing energy sources from low-value agricultural products like feedlot wastes, offal and chaff. If these methods can create more biogas than can readily be used in the form of gas, why not convert some of the product into an energy store like hydrogen? That way it has more uses.

Think of hydrogen as being the same thing as a battery-- it makes energy more portable.

Mike Elvin




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