Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Hydrogen Power is Coming

Uncle Al's objections to progress notwithstanding check this out:

The Icelandic government has passed legislation requiring all vehicles operate on renewable energy fuels by 2050. Iceland's topographical features have benefited its green tech movement; volcanoes that formed the island nation long ago formed rivers which power hydroelectric plants and still heat underground water sources used to heat homes.

Three buses running on hydrogen fuel are currently being tested in Reykjavik, the capital city. Though three times more expensive than petroleum fuel, these vehicles get three times the mileage of conventional buses. Iceland is the first country to set a timeframe for banning gasoline.

Source:
http://www.philoneist.com/50226711/iceland_to_ban_petroleum_fuel_by_2050.php

Imagine that ... 3X more expensive but 3X more mileage. I think that's called economical. How could that have happened?

Yeah Iceland!

Tell us how "mileage" is calculated. There is no thermodynamic definition that could give that result. Not nearly. Not within a factor of 10. Tell us how the hydrogen is tanked in the bus.

Uncle Al doesn't consider a political manifesto to be a scholarly article. The 10-50 billion bbl of petroleum under ANWAR makes much more sense to harvest. At today's $68/bbl, that is up to $3.4 trillion waiting to be pumped. Even Presidente Boosh cannot disappear that much money.

$3.4 trillion divided amongst 300 million Americans is $11,300 each. Would you prefer receiving an $11K check in the mail this 15 April or sniffing hydrogen promises?

Imagine that ... 3X more expensive but 3X more mileage. I think that's called economical. How could that have happened?

- Will that ratio change when the hydrogen supply chain is established?

Blacknad.

I guess the Bus seats are never filled, 'cause there is no overcrowding in Iceland. So they don't care.
Another words, the Hydrogen fuel tanks would have to be somewhat larger than Diesel fuel tanks, at the expense of less seated passengers?
I wonder if they have worked out the true cost over the life of the bus.

Uncle Al: Sour grapes. You know as well as anyone else over 5 years old how mileage is calculated.

Blacknad: Of course. The more mainstream the less expensive. Well except for software from Microsoft and diamonds from DeBeers.

Mike: No doubt the technology is in its infancy. Note they are giving the country another 45 years to comply. Forward strategic thinking ... not what can we do this week. What a welcome change from American attitudes.

Shut up and calculate.

The BTU content of No. 2-D diesel fuel is about 130,000 BTU/Gal. A 20 gallon tank holds 2.6 million BTU.

20 gallons of hydrogen at 5000 psi (339 atmospheres pressure because one stays in the tank) is 25,675 liter-atm or 1042.5 moles of H2 at STP. /_\H(comb)H2 = 285.830 kJ/mole. We thus have 282,437 BTU.

2.6 million/282,437 = 9.2 times as much energy in the same volume of diesel tank. A 20 gallon H2 tank (that is an insanely bad engineering idea, BTW) is equal to a 2.2 gallon tank of diesel.

It doesn't stop here. /_\(PV) is energy, 101.325 J/liter-atm. Calculate how much (non-recoverable) energy is required to compressively fill the hydrogen tank at pressure. Uncle Al gets 2466 BTU. SCUBA tanks get real hot when you fill them - they sit in a tub of cold water or overheat and fail (explode). Looks to Uncle Al like 1% of potential hydrogen mileage is simply discarded by filling the tank - and pay the cost of energy expended to cool the tank during filling, as in Carnot cycle. Lose another 1% at least.

You are a Liberal idiot. Physical reality does not care what you believe.

I love it when the Titans clash.

Blacknad.

Uncle Al ... I'm more conservative than you, your grandfather, and his grandfather before him.

Being capable of reading a report from Iceland does not require a label like liberal, communist, arch-demonic presence, or neo-fascist running-dog paper-tiger imperialist puppet.

I would think someone of your intelligence could consider ideas without spin-doctor inspired labels.

Blacknad ... Uncle Al is a very intelligent person who, unfortunately, often leads with his attitude rather than his aptitude.

I've no doubt he is capable of complex thought and can get past the eco-whiner liberal-socialist label if he puts his mind to it.

If he has a problem with what the government of Iceland has published he is more than capable of finding fiction in their facts.

Quoting BTUs is a good start. And I respect it. But if those buses exist, those buses are running on something, and if it is hydrogen ... then it works. Perhaps Al hasn't considered how much of the power generated from burning a fuel is wasted due to inefficiencies in pollution controls or carbeuration, or whatever. If he gets past the cheap-trick spin-doctored labels no doubt he can and will get to the truth.

Who knows ... he might have to change his mind or I might have to say "Oops!" but right now we just wait and see.

It works, but so does burning dried cow dung in a Stanley Steamer. It doesn't work efficiently. It works under goverment subsidy. Enviro-whinerism: whatever you have of quality or value, we are against it. Cf.: Luddism.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760

Get it through your thick Liberal skull: You cannot legislate thermodynamics. Calculate or die.

If you think I'm a liberal you are either totally out of touch with reality or just assign the label LIBERALly to anyone you disagree with.

I think George Bush is a radical revisionist ultra-liberal moron. Though mostly moron. But what does a label have to do with science Al?

Thermodynamics is not legislatable. But the efficiency derived from a fuel is subject to engineering. Is inefficiently burned diesel more efficient than efficiently burned hydrogen? You know it isn't. So how about more aptitude and less atitude.

Yes using H2 is out of the question unless we can safely store it in large quantity and we do not need a lot of enerfu to do so.
That problem had been approch by somody in europe.

Here is the quote:
"Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.
With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.

Dr. Tue Johannessen

The hydrogen tablet is safe and inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other hydrogen storage technologies. You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a “shot” of ammonia and it is ready for use again.

“The technology is a step towards making the society independent of fossil fuels” says Professor Jens N?rskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He, Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and Rasmus Zink S?rensen are the five researchers behind the invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are numerous. It is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy sources, e.g. wind power.

“We have a new solution to one of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel. And we need new energy technologies – oil and gas will not last, and without energy, there is no modern society”, says Jens N?rskov.

Together with DTU and SeeD Capital Denmark, the researchers have founded the company Amminex A/S, which will focus on the further development and commercialization of the technology.


Contact persons:

Prof. Claus Hviid Christensen, Center for Sustainable and Green Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Building 206, Technical University of Denmark, phone: +45 45252402, chc@kemi.dtu.dk

Prof. Jens K. N?rskov, Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark

Building 307, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark, phone: +45 4525 3175, norskov@fysik.dtu.dk


Dr. Tue Johannessen, CTO of Amminex A/S, Kemitorvet, Building 206, DK-2800 Lyngby, phone: +45 22546242, tj@amminex.com "

The choice really comes down to hydrogen or disaster. Learning to capture, store, transport, and efficiently burn it are questions of engineering not basic chemistry or physics.

Al is correct that there is more energy per unit (pick pretty much any unit you wish) than hydrogen. But hydrogen has one thing going for it that can't not be underestimated ... an unlimited supply (oceans, lakes, rivers) and its combustion does not produce carbon dioxide or monoxide.

If we fail to go fusion (hydrogen) and/or combusion (hydrogen) we should seriously look at universal birth control Chinese style.

There seems to be some controversy about hydrogen. Tech Review published an article before the State of the Union that spoke about the future of alternative fuel. Hydrogen, the article said, is far down the road. Oil prices have skyrocketed, but have we seen dollars put into energy research? This is a hot button issue! I'd keep my finger on this issue for a while.

http://www.technologyreview.com/NanoTech/wtr_16217,303,p1.html