Preface:
Hydrogen fuel can be used
as a renewable energy medium with immense potential. It is the
energy carrier most likely to replace fossil fuels. Hydrogen Fuels
Technology (HFT) will transform our largely fossil fuel economy to
a new hydrogen powered economy. This transformation will ensure a
sustainable and environmentally sane energy future throughout the
21st century, and beyond, for as long as the sun
continues to shine.
Is it possible for
hydrogen to compete with oil in a global market? The answer is
that as fossil fuel reserves dwindle to extinction, the human race
must migrate to a new energy regime with similar energy output as
a prerequisite to maintaining a contemporary, high standard of
living. The alternative is to regress to a pre-industrial
civilization, and that of course will be unacceptable.
Let’s examine all aspects
involved in making the transition a reality, including political,
economic, environmental, and safety issues, taking in to account
what’s already been accomplished with the technology, and what’s
in the works.
When these aspects have
been fully comprehended it will be clear that hydrogen fuels
technology is the only viable replacement for the combustion of
fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants.
Introduction:
When most people think of
hydrogen, they think of the first atom on the periodic table, the
Hindenburg, and perhaps the hydrogen bomb. On earth, the hydrogen
atom contains a single proton, around which orbits a single
electron. It is also the lightest element, the most abundant, and
most explosive. Each second, our sun converts 500 million metric
tons of hydrogen to helium. It’s through this thermonuclear
reaction that we on planet Earth receive the life supporting
energy that maintains our atmospheric temperature within a range
that supports a “zone of life”. Solar energy powers the process
of photosynthesis. Decomposing plants and animals have over
millions of years accumulated into the huge reserves of
hydrocarbon deposits, reserves that the human race has exploited
and consumed in an astonishingly fast fashion.
Hydrogen is an energy
storage medium which can be produced quite simply. The most
efficient and environmentally sane method of producing hydrogen is
to crack the water molecule with electricity produced from
alternative energy systems- wind power, photovoltaic panels (solar
cells), and photoelectrolysis, which is a one stage production of
hydrogen from water. At present, fossil fuels are combusted to
generate the electricity needed to crack the water molecule. In
our near future, only environmentally friendly and renewable
energy sources will be used to create electricity. The US
currently produces 100 billion cubic feet per year of hydrogen for
industry, and the space program.
Hydrogen is the heart of
all hydro-carbon fuels (fossil fuels) When we combust fossil
fuels, it’s the hydrogen we’re after in the hydro-carbon. When
we combust hydro-carbon, the carbon combines with free oxygen to
make carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas
which contributes to atmospheric absorption and retention of solar
heat radiation. Hydrogen can power virtually every application
where other fuels are used today. Hydrogen can be directly
combusted in internal combustion engines or used in a fuel cell
power plant both in vehicles and new generation electric power
plants.
Unlike many schemes for
replacing fossil fuels, hydrogen remains the only viable
alternative to fossil fuels. Hydrogen fuel is not “alternative
energy” any more than fossil fuels were alternative energy sources
during our civilization’s transition from a wood burning economy
to a fossil fuel economy. It’s important to note that absolutely
critical in the formula for creating a hydrogen powered economy,
alternative, renewable forms of energy will be used to generate
the electricity needed to produce hydrogen. In discussing energy
issues, this distinction must be made to appreciate the hierarchy
of energy production in a hydrogen economy.
The Perfect Fuel:
Hydrogen cars have been
touted in magazines like “Popular Mechanics”. The technologies
involved are mature or nearing maturity, but it will take a
collaboration of the public and private sector to bring hydrogen
to the fuel station. Energy companies such as Exxon, Mobil,
Texaco, BP and Shell have been investing in hydrogen fuel
technologies for decades anticipating the point in our near future
where fossil fuel use becomes prohibitively expensive. “We believe
in hydrogen as one of the world's principal energy resources far
into the future” says Don Huberts, Chief Executive Officer of
Shell Hydrogen.
Auto manufacturers
Daimler-Chrysler, Honda, Ford, GM, Toyota and BMW have developed
mature prototypes of hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles as well
as running stock internal combustion models on hydrogen. “Hydrogen
powered cars feel and drive just like a like a gas powered car.
And so the feeling for our customers will be, they have a high
powered car, a normal car with clean emissions”, comments Klaus
Pehr, head of concept cars for BMW. Countless others are all
trying to get in on the action. The new BMW 750hL sedan
hydrogen/gasoline, hybrid works runs on both hydrogen and
gasoline. It has two gas caps, when a hydrogen fueling station
isn’t available you just flip the switch and run on gasoline.
The era of cheap oil is
almost over. It is estimated that hydrogen could theoretically
be cost competitive at seventy-five cents per gallon, equivalent
of gasoline. This estimate is if solar dish gensets (Distributed
Generator Systems) were used as the electricity source for
hydrogen production. Solar gensets hold the world’s record for
converting solar energy to electricity. Using this method, a
relatively small area of land could manufacture enough
Solar-Hydrogen to supply the entire energy requirements for the
United States. According to a study funded by Saudi Arabia, even
if less efficient photovoltaic cells were used, a relatively small
area of land could displace all their oil exports (Phoenix
Project). It costs 45 kilowatt hours to produce 1 gallon of
gasoline equivalent hydrogen. The fact remains, no matter what the
alternative method utilized for the production of hydrogen,
hydrogen power is the key to a sane a sustainable energy future,
replacing petroleum, coal, and natural gas.
Current Uses of
Hydrogen
NASA has used it as a
rocket fuel since the 1940’s. Most people don’t notice it, but if
you watch a shuttle lift off you can see that the three main
onboard rockets burn with a light blue almost clear flame. This
is the on-board hydrogen propulsion system. NASA spacecraft also
uses hydrogen for its primary fuel in orbit, and for making
drinking water. One pound of hydrogen when combined with oxygen
will make nine pounds of pure distilled drinking water. Through
the process, it will also generate a significant amount of usable
electricity as a byproduct. The Navy has been using electrolyzers
for their submarines to make oxygen for long missions turning sea
water into hydrogen and oxygen. The American Hydrogen Association
has one of the original electrolyzers from a submarine. It is
still fully functional, and has over one hundred million life
support hours to its credit since 1955 as an oxygen generator for
submarines and NATO.
When most people think of
alternative renewable energy they think of the electric car. You
charge it for three hours and only get a fifty mile range. It's
slow, small, uncomfortable, and batteries need replacement every
twelve months. With hydrogen you don’t have to give up any of your
luxury. In fact, hydrogen is more powerful than gasoline. Liquid
Hydrogen has a BTU (British Thermal Unit) of 60,000 per pound
where as gasoline has a BTU of 18,000 per pound. This means that
hydrogen is lighter and more powerful; it can go further for its
weight. When hydrogen is used in a fuel cell powered vehicle to
create electricity, it’s much more efficient, powerful and
light-weight than gas powered internal combustion engine vehicle
Hydrogen fuels will
fulfill virtually all fuel requirement now serviced by the use of
gasoline and natural gas. Existing internal combustion engines
can be modified to run on liquid or gaseous hydrogen. Fuel cell
vehicle technology is optimized for the use of hydrogen fuels and
may be the dominant power plant for vehicles in a hydrogen
economy.
Hydrogen can be used as a
cooking fuel, to heat your home, drive your car, and mow your
lawn. Hydrogen can run an electric generator and supply
electricity for your home through the use of an in-house fuel cell
power pack. It’s quite probable that a significant portion of
private residences and commercial buildings will generate all of
their electrical needs from hydrogen powered fuel cells resulting
in a major decentralization of national electrical production grid
Hydrogen power is a
democratic fuel. Any country can produce it for its domestic
needs. As a consequence, a hydrogen powered civilization will
never have to compete for an energy source that is localized to a
handful of countries but rather will be fully distributed in
production by its very nature.
Political & Economic
Implications:
Oil is critical for a
vast range of industrial, agricultural, and medicinal
applications, but once burned its forever lost. Remaining oil
reserves are being consumed primarily for transportation and
heating and cooling needs at an ever increasing annual rate on a
global scale due to increasing population and per capita
consumption. Between 2010 and 2020, world production of oil will
peak and then start to decline at 3% per year, year over year.
This decline will occur during the time that huge numbers of
people in China, Indochina, India and elsewhere will enter the
middle class, all demanding the benefits of increased purchasing
power including the acquisition of personal transportation
vehicles.
The US will be competing
with the rest of the world at an ever more intense level for
remaining oil production. The net result will be accelerating
fossil fuel energy costs and all the negative consequences that
arise from diversion of national wealth into supporting an ever
more expensive energy regime.
The United States
consumes approximately two point two billion plus barrels of oil
per year. Supplementing with hydrogen now could reduce the trade
deficit by sixty billion dollars. Factor in the expenditure of
taxpayer dollars the United States spends maintaining the military
or, “protecting our investments” in the Middle East. And you will
get a more accurate cost of a gallon of gas. “People who are
willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security
deserve neither freedom nor security.” Benjamin Franklin once
said.
There are those who
believe that involvement in the Middle East, taking on the role
of, “world police” may be jeopardizing our national security.
Energy self-sufficiency will take the politics out of energy
policy.
The estimated remaining
petroleum reserves are about one trillion barrels of oil. Human
civilization consumes twenty five billion barrels per year,
incrementally increasing each year at 3% to 5%. Current
calculations of the rate of consumption to exhaustion of reserves
demonstrate that there is thirty to fifty year supply left,
depending on what expert authority one uses to calculate remaining
reserves and other variables such as disruption due to war. It’s
clear, according to a Shell Oil executive, that “shifting to
hydrogen is not a question of whether but when”.
One proposal for change
would be a fair accounting act, which will factor in environmental
and other external energy costs. “Bringing market prices in line
with energy’s hidden burdens will be one of the challenges of the
coming decades,” said Harold M. Hubbard of Scientific American
Magazine.
These “hidden” costs
include: the maintaining of a military in the Middle East,
corrosion of buildings from acid rain, crop loses, billions of
dollars of environmental damage, as well as aggravated healthcare
costs due to pollution. If these hidden costs were all factored
into fossil fuel production, hydrogen would clearly be revealed to
be the less costly of the two energy regimes.
The present Republican
administration has given lukewarm support for hydrogen fuels
technology with an initiative that will produce hydrogen using
electricity generated from fossil fuel combustion. While the
project does demonstrate that hydrogen can be produced in
meaningful quantity for public consumption, the use of fossil fuel
is counter to both the spirit and pragmatic necessity to use
alternative renewable, non-polluting means to generate the
electrical power
Hydrogen fuel
technology will quickly evolve under one of three conditions.
Condition One:
There is an economic meltdown due to war in the Mideast
whereby petroleum exports from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC
countries are disrupted. Under this condition, the US as well as
the rest of the industrialized world will be forced to migrate to
hydrogen fuels, but not before an economic depression similar to
that of the American great depression is played out.
Condition Two:
As previously stated, somewhere between 2010 and 2020 world
production of petroleum will peak and then decline at 3% per year,
year over year. Energy costs will skyrocket and the American
public will demand from our government that something be done
about it. Most average people will not demand or support change
until gas prices begin to skyrocket. Once prices accelerate to
say, five to ten dollars per gallon a speedy move towards a
hydrogen economy will occur. But not before an economic meltdown
as severe as that of the great depression occurs.
Condition
three: The US, with the strategic proactive
collaboration between the private and public sectors, migrates to
a hydrogen powered economy before an economic meltdown occurs.
With the transition to hydrogen comes the “hydrogen economy,” a
whole new industry and infrastructure will be put into place
creating new jobs for both the blue and white collar workers;
thousands of permanent scientific and industrial jobs. Building
plants, manufacturing parts, selling equipment, and developing
technology, not just in the US, but the rest of the world as
well. Transitioning to a hydrogen powered civilization will have
a similar revolutionary economic effect on the world economy as
did the transition from a wood powered civilization to a fossil
fuel powered civilization.
Environmental Impact:
Hydrogen fuels technology
is the permanent solution in resolving a number of our most
pressing environmental issues; atmospheric particulate pollution,
waste greenhouse gas production, oil spill and groundwater
contamination, elevated levels of respiratory illness and other
health risks.
The exhaust (water
vapor) from an internal combustion engine vehicle running on
hydrogen is cleaner than the air it mixes with. This is the
concept of “minus emissions”. Engine oil remains clean for an
extended period of time because there are no sulfur or carbon
compounds to degrade the oil. Engines using hydrogen will last
much longer and start faster in any weather. Existing cars could
be converted to run on hydrogen. In fact, introducing 2% to 5%
hydrogen into internal combustion engines that currently run on
gasoline, diesel, or natural gas increases the efficiency,
improves gas mileage, and reduces pollutants quite remarkably.
“I believe that water
will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen will
constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an
inexhaustible source of heat and light . . .” - Jules Verne,
Mysterious Island.
More oil is dumped into
the ocean by routine oil tankers every year, then from an oil
spill. This is because ocean seawater is used to clean out the
ships gigantic tanks before refilling. In order to insure a “fresh
batch,” or so to speak. (Phoenix Project)
Hydrogen can be produced
form water, sewage, garbage, landfills, agricultural biomass,
paper product waste and many methods. Hydrogen is naturally
produced by plants and is colorless, odorless tasteless and
nontoxic.
“In our every
deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the
next several generations.” - The great law of the Iroquois Nation.
Safety:
Hydrogen is not commonly
thought of as a safe fuel, this is in part due to the wide spread
belief/myth that hydrogen is to blame for the Hindenburg disaster
of 1937, but there is new evidence to discredit that theory. Brian
DiChristina, a scientist at Cape Canaveral has discovered the
probable cause. “Neither the hydrogen in the hull nor a bomb was
to blame, but a special fabric for the outer skin that, when
ignited, burns like dry leaves”.
His suspicions of the
Hindenburg fabric covering were raised when he learned that a
cellulose nitrate (gun powder) dope with powdered aluminum (a
fuel) might have been used on the Hindenburg. He was able to
obtain a 60 year old piece of the fabric to test his hypothesis.
Furthermore, a hydrogen flame is almost invisible in day light, it
burns a light blue. We know from many eye witness accounts as well
as actual photographs, that the flames were red and orange. This
supports his theory that hydrogen was not the source of the
flames.
He was able to prove his
theory into fact, and the plaque in the Kennedy Space Center has
been changed reading a more accurate portrayal of the history of
the Hindenburg. It would appear that the Germans agree with his
claim. German electrical engineer, Otto Beyersdorff, on 28 June
1937 wrote “The actual cause of the fire was the extreme easy
flammability of the covering material brought about by discharges
of an electrostatic nature”.
Cultural bias towards
hydrogen as an explosive substance was formed in the aftermath of
the Hindenburg disaster. But in truth, hydrogen is no more
explosive than gasoline under anticipated normal use. Both
gasoline and hydrogen fuels need to be handled with care. Energy
companies and auto manufacturers have spent decades working on the
safety issues regarding production, transportation, distribution,
and use of hydrogen fuels anticipating the day that our fossil
fuel powered civilization migrates to hydrogen fuels.
BMW has done extensive
crash testing to prove the safety of its test fleet of hydrogen
powered vehicles. Hydrogen fuel tanks were subjected to a series
of accident simulations that included collisions, fire and tank
ruptures. In all cases, the hydrogen cars fared better then
conventional gasoline vehicles. This is due to the fact that when
a hydrogen tank is ruptured the hydrogen typically harmlessly
escapes into the atmosphere. Hydrogen also burns quickly, and must
have the right ratio of oxygen to hydrogen in order to be
flammable, (7 to 1). Pure hydrogen is not flammable. Therefore,
under normal anticipated use in a hydrogen powered vehicle,
hydrogen is relatively safer than gasoline.
Health:
The burning of fossil
fuels creates a host of particulate and gaseous pollutants which
results in elevated levels of respiratory tract diseases.
The health consequences of
particulate matter, the solid or liquid particles found in the air
can originate from a variety of mobile, stationary, and natural
sources, including power plants, any engine that burns diesel
The chemical and physical composition
of particulates varies widely. Most of the smallest particles
result from burning fossil fuels. These small particles can remain
aloft for days, even weeks, and can travel thousands of
kilometers. For example, researchers at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's station at Mauna Loa Observatory have
tracked carbon particulates to Hawaii from specific smokestacks in
Beijing
Particulates pose a major
hazard for human health. The adverse effects have been traced
mainly to small particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10
microns or less, which can reach deep into the lungs. Smaller
particles can go even deeper into the lungs, where those that are
still tinier can enter the blood stream. These particles can
disturb the lungs physically and chemically. They can directly
irritate the lungs, and they can carry toxic heavy metals and
other pollutants.
The average person breathes
several million liters of air a year. Children take in even more
air relative to their body weight and size. Those who exercise
heavily or work hard, of course, breathe even greater volumes of
air. Breathing finely polluted air can produce slow and insidious
effects or devastating and immediate ones. Over a lifetime,
regular breathing of contaminated air can impede the ability of
the lungs to breathe in oxygen and get rid of pollutants. Polluted
air can cause immediate or acute effects ranging from asthma
attacks to death in those whose lungs are already weakened.
Complete conversion to the use of hydrogen fuels would
eliminate the health risks
Conclusion:
Hydrogen truly is the
perfect fuel; the fuel which may save us from geopolitical
catastrophe in the Mideast, the fuel that brought us to the moon,
the fuel which can save our race from global ecological
destruction and severe economic fallout from the effects of global
warming. By mid-century, the fossil fuel energy regime will have
run its course.
We The
People of the United States now have a clear choice. Make the
transition to a hydrogen economy proactively now, and in so doing
avoid an economic meltdown, or continue to exploit every last
barrel of oil, every last ton of coal, and every last cubic foot
of natural gas while magically wishing a hopeful future for our
children, and our children’s children