This was brought up in a conversation here. I thought Michael Crichton would be perfect since the speech seems so real and was given 20 years ago.
What brought it up was the conversation on Hydrogen. Without any government push, we have been moving toward Hydrogen as a fuel source for a long time. We are starting to get it directly, but it's not working perfectly. I expect all of that to be figured out soon enough.
This speech is what broke me from the lefty at the theater and design scene, to hiding what I actually believed out of fear. As he said in a different speech, this is all a religion in the guise of information. I would be a sinner and shunned.
Guy, if you think that Hydrogen is a viable method of energy storage then you are not living in this reality.
Hydrogen isn't a fuel. A fuel is a source of energy. You can make hydrogen out of fuel, but that isn't a good use of that energy source.
Hydrogen is a low density gas. To make it energy-dense enough to be viable for energy storage, it needs to be liquified. That requires energy in-put in the form of refrigeration.
To refrigerate hydrogen to a liquid uses more energy than the energy contained in the hydrogen.
To remain a liquid, hydrogen boils off as a gas, using the phase transition to carry away heat. Without active refrigeration (and remember just putting it in a commercial freezer isn't even close to cold enough) the hydrogen will all boil away within about a month.
Using hydrogen as energy storage neatly doubles or triples the energy required for any given use. More than 100% more for liquification and transport. This is ignoring the shelf-life and transport difficulties.
And where are you getting all this energy that you can waste so much playing with cryogenic liquefied gas? Natural Gas turbines? Coal Fire Power? Photovoltaic Solar Cells?
Here is a brain wave! How about you just run a fucking cable instead of pissing about with cryogenic liquids and tanker trucks?
If you are going to burn it anyway, like in ship IC engines, jet turbines or whatever, then what advantage does Hydrogen have over Methane?
Here is the process of liquid hydrogen production in a nutshell:
Methane Gas - > Hydrogen Gas [Hydrogen Steam Reforming is the only industrial process that scales up] between 30 and 39% efficiency. That is you put in three
times as much methane as you want to get hydrogen.
Hydrogen Gas - > Liquid Hydrogen (below -194 degrees C) Energy Efficiency of 30%. Cooling the Hydrogen to a liquid represents about 80% of the costs of the final product.
Transport of the Cryogenic Liquid: Who fucking knows. It evaporates every minute of every day until it is used. Keeping a liquid at -194 degrees C is energy intensive.
Hydrogen is a low density gas. To make it energy-dense enough to be viable for energy storage, it needs to be liquified. That requires energy in-put in the form of refrigeration.
Hogwash. Toyota Mirai has a range of 400 miles with a pressurized tank. It's somewhat bigger than a gasoline tank, but 400 miles is okay and point being it's not liquified H2. It leaks about the same as a li-ion self-discharges.
We might wish we could distribute liquified H2, but like you said it's not cost effective. Luckily there's not really any need to do so, as pressurized H2 is fine for cars, off-grid houses, and grid storage in caves and such. And there are alternatives like distributing ammonia and turning it into H2 on site.
Other common misconceptions are that it takes a lot of energy to pressurize H2, but for example it can be created from electrolysis while already under pressure for a minor 1%-2% overhead; the idea that you have to first create the H2 at atmospheric pressure and then compress it is junk bunk. Or that it embrittles metals - which is true - but they use carbon fiber and other materials instead. Or that it takes a lot of rare materials, but H2 cars already use less platinum than a catalytic converter.
Really there's only a few open questions: can the total cost get cheaper than batteries (car H2 tank plus fuel cell are well below $2k, but energy cost is higher), how much explosions will be a problem, and whether gasoline will be banned by policy.
Even then, pressurized hydrogen gas has a lower energy density than wood chips!
A reaction that converts ammonia to hydrogen occurs at about 600 degrees C, and is very slow. Even the most recent metal catalyzed reactions only bring that down to 500 degrees C. Lets say they halve that number and get a scalable process that operates at 250 dgrees C; that still is a major use of energy to produce the gas.
Industrial Conversion of Ammonia to Hydrogen in a nutshell:
Fossil Fuel -> Ammonia using the Haber–Bosch process at 550 degrees C.
Ammonia -> Hydrogen using a metal catalyzed reaction at about 500 degrees C.
All of those nice, high temperatures are supplied at the moment by burning fossil fuels. I'd bet that the whole process, plus shipping to your Toyota Mirai has a woeful energy efficiency.
As for catalytic reactions; Last time I checked Polymer Electrolyte Membrane cells were both expensive and ablative. That is, they were used up in the process of making hydrogen gas. As a result there was not yet a scalable process for industrial scale electrolytic hydrogen production, and there are no other serious contenders for a process right now, AFAIK.
The only way that I can see Hydrogen energy storage as having a future is if it is required by the government by outlawing everything else.
At which point we will still be using fossil fuels, just at very, very big an inefficient industrial plants far away from the point of consumption.
Energy for vehicles will cost four times as much, and the world will not be any greener.
So are you acknowledging that you don't need to have liquified H2, or are you pretending Mirai and other hydrogen cars don't exist? Sealed caverns can't store grid levels of hydrogen at pressure, it has to be liquified?
Energy density of wood chips is a red herring; does the Mirai have 400 mile range or not? The temperature of the reaction doesn't really matter at all to the efficiency; there are high temperature processes that are also efficient. Your comments are just long lists of these false premises, like that H2 has to be liquified.
What's great about H2 as chemical energy storage is that it's a common denominator that can be more easily converted to or from than other fuels. Ammonia is one of many ways hydrogen can be transported and there's no physics reason why it can't be efficient.
This was brought up in a conversation here. I thought Michael Crichton would be perfect since the speech seems so real and was given 20 years ago.
What brought it up was the conversation on Hydrogen. Without any government push, we have been moving toward Hydrogen as a fuel source for a long time. We are starting to get it directly, but it's not working perfectly. I expect all of that to be figured out soon enough.
This speech is what broke me from the lefty at the theater and design scene, to hiding what I actually believed out of fear. As he said in a different speech, this is all a religion in the guise of information. I would be a sinner and shunned.
Guy, if you think that Hydrogen is a viable method of energy storage then you are not living in this reality.
Hydrogen isn't a fuel. A fuel is a source of energy. You can make hydrogen out of fuel, but that isn't a good use of that energy source.
Hydrogen is a low density gas. To make it energy-dense enough to be viable for energy storage, it needs to be liquified. That requires energy in-put in the form of refrigeration.
To refrigerate hydrogen to a liquid uses more energy than the energy contained in the hydrogen.
To remain a liquid, hydrogen boils off as a gas, using the phase transition to carry away heat. Without active refrigeration (and remember just putting it in a commercial freezer isn't even close to cold enough) the hydrogen will all boil away within about a month.
Using hydrogen as energy storage neatly doubles or triples the energy required for any given use. More than 100% more for liquification and transport. This is ignoring the shelf-life and transport difficulties.
And where are you getting all this energy that you can waste so much playing with cryogenic liquefied gas? Natural Gas turbines? Coal Fire Power? Photovoltaic Solar Cells?
Here is a brain wave! How about you just run a fucking cable instead of pissing about with cryogenic liquids and tanker trucks?
If you are going to burn it anyway, like in ship IC engines, jet turbines or whatever, then what advantage does Hydrogen have over Methane?
Here is the process of liquid hydrogen production in a nutshell:
Methane Gas - > Hydrogen Gas [Hydrogen Steam Reforming is the only industrial process that scales up] between 30 and 39% efficiency. That is you put in three times as much methane as you want to get hydrogen.
Hydrogen Gas - > Liquid Hydrogen (below -194 degrees C) Energy Efficiency of 30%. Cooling the Hydrogen to a liquid represents about 80% of the costs of the final product.
Transport of the Cryogenic Liquid: Who fucking knows. It evaporates every minute of every day until it is used. Keeping a liquid at -194 degrees C is energy intensive.
Hogwash. Toyota Mirai has a range of 400 miles with a pressurized tank. It's somewhat bigger than a gasoline tank, but 400 miles is okay and point being it's not liquified H2. It leaks about the same as a li-ion self-discharges.
We might wish we could distribute liquified H2, but like you said it's not cost effective. Luckily there's not really any need to do so, as pressurized H2 is fine for cars, off-grid houses, and grid storage in caves and such. And there are alternatives like distributing ammonia and turning it into H2 on site.
Other common misconceptions are that it takes a lot of energy to pressurize H2, but for example it can be created from electrolysis while already under pressure for a minor 1%-2% overhead; the idea that you have to first create the H2 at atmospheric pressure and then compress it is junk bunk. Or that it embrittles metals - which is true - but they use carbon fiber and other materials instead. Or that it takes a lot of rare materials, but H2 cars already use less platinum than a catalytic converter.
Really there's only a few open questions: can the total cost get cheaper than batteries (car H2 tank plus fuel cell are well below $2k, but energy cost is higher), how much explosions will be a problem, and whether gasoline will be banned by policy.
Not Hogwash!
How do you produce industrial scale quantities of Hydrogen and get it to where you fill up your Toyota Mirai?
Put it in a tanker truck at 700 PSI?
http://www.olicognography.org/graph/energydensity.jpg
Even then, pressurized hydrogen gas has a lower energy density than wood chips!
A reaction that converts ammonia to hydrogen occurs at about 600 degrees C, and is very slow. Even the most recent metal catalyzed reactions only bring that down to 500 degrees C. Lets say they halve that number and get a scalable process that operates at 250 dgrees C; that still is a major use of energy to produce the gas.
Industrial Conversion of Ammonia to Hydrogen in a nutshell:
Fossil Fuel -> Ammonia using the Haber–Bosch process at 550 degrees C.
Ammonia -> Hydrogen using a metal catalyzed reaction at about 500 degrees C.
All of those nice, high temperatures are supplied at the moment by burning fossil fuels. I'd bet that the whole process, plus shipping to your Toyota Mirai has a woeful energy efficiency.
As for catalytic reactions; Last time I checked Polymer Electrolyte Membrane cells were both expensive and ablative. That is, they were used up in the process of making hydrogen gas. As a result there was not yet a scalable process for industrial scale electrolytic hydrogen production, and there are no other serious contenders for a process right now, AFAIK.
The only way that I can see Hydrogen energy storage as having a future is if it is required by the government by outlawing everything else.
At which point we will still be using fossil fuels, just at very, very big an inefficient industrial plants far away from the point of consumption.
Energy for vehicles will cost four times as much, and the world will not be any greener.
So are you acknowledging that you don't need to have liquified H2, or are you pretending Mirai and other hydrogen cars don't exist? Sealed caverns can't store grid levels of hydrogen at pressure, it has to be liquified?
Energy density of wood chips is a red herring; does the Mirai have 400 mile range or not? The temperature of the reaction doesn't really matter at all to the efficiency; there are high temperature processes that are also efficient. Your comments are just long lists of these false premises, like that H2 has to be liquified.
What's great about H2 as chemical energy storage is that it's a common denominator that can be more easily converted to or from than other fuels. Ammonia is one of many ways hydrogen can be transported and there's no physics reason why it can't be efficient.