Objective View On Hydrogen
- From: "lkgeo1" <lkgeo1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 26 Mar 2006 05:16:50 -0800
Objective View On Hydrogen
Publication Date:17-March-2006
06:25 PM US Eastern Timezone
Source:www.informnauka.ru
"Hydrogen power engineering - is energy of the future", efforts
are being undertaken in the US, Europe and Russia to implement the
above postulate. We have tried to calculate the quantity of hydrogen
needed to transfer to it all transport of big cities, i.e. the quantity
that will be required to replace engine fuels. All calculations were
based on maximum coefficients of efficiency and the most optimistic
figures. The conclusions made from the obtained figures seem
interesting not only for scientists but also for general public:
thoughtless implementation of hydrogen programs might require much more
significant quantities of mineral weath than it does at present and
result in disastrous deterioration of environment. In hydrogen power
engineering, hydrogen is the main vehicle for power transfer. Hydrogen
is just the power carrier, but not its source. Energy is required in
the course of getting hydrogen, the methods for getting hydrogen are
not that numerous: chemical conversion of organic matter (combustible
minerals, biomass); water electrolysis; thermal water disintegration,
including that by nuclear energy.
To replace all engine fuels in the world (2,200 million tons, out of
which 60 million tons are consumed in Russia), 679 million tons of
hydrogen should be produced, that is the required amount is almost four
times less as hydrogen is a more power-consuming fuel. If hydrogen is
obtained through water electrolysis to which all adherents of hydrogen
power engineering are standing up for, than 29,700 billion
kilowatt-hours of electricity will be required for this purpose.
However, all electric power stations of the world taken together
produce only 15,500 billion kilowatt-hours! Therefore, to transfer
motor transport to hydrogen, it will be needed to increase global power
generation by 3 times (current ordinary consumers are still in place)!
By the way, more than a half of all global electric power, or more
precisely 63-64 percent of it, is now generated at thermoelectric power
stations where combustible minerals are burnt. This figure is unlikely
to change significantly in next years unless nuclear fusion or
something similar starts working. This is a very important fact as any
increase in plant output that will be needed for hydrogen generation
through electrolysis will result in expansion of burning fossil
minerals combustion.
Hence, the fundamental conclusion is - transfer to hydrogen fuel in
the next decades would require quite a different way - hydrogen
re-orientation of oil-refining and gas-processing industry. That is,
instead of engine fuels production, combustible fossil minerals will
have to be reprocessed for hydrogen. Then, discharges from big cities
will be indeed removed and transferred into hydrogen generation
locations.
The next key question is - what method to apply to get hydrogen and
what it should be received from? Apparently, from natural gas as it has
the highest hydrogen content as compared to mineral oil and coal.
Generation of one ton of hydrogen would require 2.8 to 3.1 tons of
natural gas or 3.4 to 3.6 tons of mineral oil. There exist several
processes for getting hydrogen from natural gas, and temptation is to
choose a simple, lately smooth-running solution (the so-called steam or
steam-oxygen convert conversion), which would be a mistake. These
processes are well studied, hundreds of companies are able to design
them perfectly, they are not very expensive. Under these methods, gas
is required not only directly for technology, but also for concomitant
processes. There exists a new, not quite familiar technology -
membrane partial oxidation. If all capital and operational expenses are
calculated accurately, it would turn out that the little-developed
partial oxidation process requires almost 10 percent less methane. That
is the difference of 3.1 and 2.8 tons per1 ton of hydrogen - these
are well and poorly organized hydrogen obtaining methods. The price
under consideration is very high.
Another important aspect is the CO2 discharges and execution of the
Kyoto protocol. As of today, about 7 million tons of CO2 are excreted
on the Earth as a result of engine fuels combustion. Emission is
concentrated in cities, and if gasoline is replaced by hydrogen, the
discharges in the cities will be decreased. However, they would not
disappear completely, they would simply be moved out to hydrogen
production locations, which is all the same to global balance of
carbonic acid gas.
Electrolysis will provide deterioration of carbonic acid gas discharges
by twice as compared to the present-day situation. Only if methane is
applied, some decrease in the CO2 discharges is possible (the optimal
result - 5,340 million tons of CO2 in case of hydrogen generation via
a little-developed method of partial oxidation). But if hydrogen is
received from mineral oil (to say nothing about coal), ecological
winning will be significantly less.
As a result, we have to acknowledge that regardless of the fact that
hydrogen is very good as the energy carrier, calculations should be
made thoroughly before a certain technology is implemented or a
research direction is developed.
It should be noted that getting hydrogen via biomass conversion or with
the help of solar energy have the right to exist but only as a local
solution to the problem. It is impossible to sow billions of hectares
with rape and to cover the entire territory of the Earth with
photoelectric cells. By the way, in the latter case we shall hardly
achieve the present-day capacity of all electric power stations of the
Earth. http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage4794.html
.
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