Converting UK Cars To Hydrogen Would Require Wales-Sized Wind Farm

[hatrack]

Converting Britain’s oil-burning road vehicles to hydrogen power would require the construction of 100 nuclear plants or a windfarm the size of Wales, according to an academic study.

Researchers at the University of Warwick estimated that 100,000 wind turbines would be needed to generate enough electricity to create “greener” hydrogen fuel to keep the nation’s cars on the roads.

Economist Professor Andrew Oswald and his brother, energy consultant Jim Oswald, laid out the startling calculations in an article entitled “The Arithmetic of Renewable Energy” to be published in Accountancy magazine.

Jim Oswald, whose consultancy is based in Coventry, said: “The enormity of the green challenge is not understood. “Many people think that hydrogen is a simple alternative to oil, but in fact it will require a huge investment in either windfarms or nuclear plants.”

EDIT

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3607332

[Goldom]

1. Does Wales have anything better to do?

I know I don't. I'll be a wind farm. *stands outside and spins*


..really though, how exactly would hydrogen cars require nuclear power plants? That makes no sense.

[hatrack]

2. Nuclear plants to provide the electricity to do the electrolysis . . .

to split the hydrogen from the water.

You could do it with any form of electricity, but if you're thinking about long-term sustainability, the short list of renewable generation options doesn't leave you many choices.

[NNadir]

8. You do not need to have an electricity intermediate to produce hydrogen

from nuclear energy.

Doing so requires three energy conversions, nuclear to thermal, thermal to electricity, and finally electrical to chemical. This is very wasteful, and has low efficiency because of the inevitable loss of heat, especially in the last part of the process, electrolysis. Electrolysis is also very difficult from an environmental standpoint because of side products like chlorine gas. (Industrial processes now exist that eliminate the need for Mercury electrodes, although such processes are hardly used universally.)

However a process exists for converting thermal energy directly to chemical energy. It is known as the Sulfur Iodine Cycle. In this process, water is split thermally through a cyclic series of reactions. First, sulfuric acid is split into oxygen, sulfur dioxide, and a molecule of water at 830C. The heat is discharged (where it can be used to generate electricity) and the temperature is reduced to 120C. A molecule of I2 is added and an additional water molecule is added - the molecule to ultimately be split thermally. This mixture reacts to give two molecules of hydrogen iodide (hydroiodic acid) and a molecule of sulfuric acid which is cycled back to the original sulfuric acid splitting reactor. The oxygen generated in the first step is removed at this point as well. The Hydroiodic acid is heated to 320C and decomposes to give hydrogen and I2. The I2 is cycled back to the second reactor and the hydrogen removed.

The net reaction is just the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen. The sulfuric acid is catalytic, as are the iodine and hydrogen iodine.

This is not a pie in the sky process. It has been piloted successfully and will probably go into commercial operation in China in the later part of this decade.

Because one can recover electricity from the waste heat, the process operates at very high efficiency, better than 60%, much better than the electrolysis process which has overall efficiencies of less than 10%.

I do not know what types of efficiencies were assumed by the accountants when they calculated the number of nuclear plants necessary to fuel British automobiles, but I'm guessing that they used the electrolysis process and not the sulfur iodine cycle.

This cycle is not the only such cycle. Another such cycle is the UT cycle which uses Ferric Bromide and HBr, CaO, and bromine in a similar fashion.

Folks who are familiar with my repetitious rantings will recognize that I think there are few things more disastrous than hydrogen powered cars. The hydrogen is, however a very useful intermediate for making fuels via the hydrogenation of carbon compounds, including the dioxide.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. The Hydrogen Economy – Energy and Economic Black Hole

The Hydrogen Economy – Energy and Economic Black Hole
By Alice Friedemann

<snip>

Getting hydrogen using fossil fuels as a feedstock or an energy source is a bit perverse, since the whole point is to get away from them. The goal is to use renewable energy to make hydrogen from water via electrolysis. When the wind is blowing, current wind turbines can perform at 30-40% efficiency, producing hydrogen at an overall 25% efficiency, or 3 units of wind energy to get 1 unit of hydrogen energy. The best solar cells available on a large scale have an efficiency of ten percent, or 9 units of energy to get 1 hydrogen unit of energy. If you use algae making hydrogen as a byproduct, the efficiency is about .1% (4).

No matter how you look at it, producing hydrogen from water is an energy sink. If you don't understand this concept, please mail me ten dollars and I'll send you back a dollar.

Hydrogen can be made from biomass, but then these problems arise: 1) it’s very seasonal, 2) contains a lot of moisture, requiring energy to store and dry it before gasification, 3) there are limited supplies, 4) the quantities are not large or consistent enough for large-scale hydrogen production, 5) a huge amount of land would be required, because even cultivated biomass in good soil has a low yield -- 10 tons per 2.4 acres, 6) the soil will be degraded from erosion and loss of fertility if stripped of biomass, 7) any energy put into the land to grow the biomass, such as fertilizer and planting / harvesting will add to the energy costs, 8) delivery costs to the central power plant, and 9) it’s not suitable for pure hydrogen production (5).

One of the main reasons for switching to hydrogen is to prevent global warming caused by fossil fuels. When it’s made from natural gas, nitrogen oxides are released, which are 58 times more effective in trapping heat than carbon dioxide (6). Coal releases large amounts of CO2 and mercury. Oil is too powerful and useful to waste on hydrogen–it’s concentrated sunshine brewed over hundreds of millions of years. A gallon of gas represents about 196,000 pounds of fossil plants, the amount in 40 acres of wheat (7).

www.culturechange.org/alt_energy.htm#H

[phantom power]

4. Of course it requires energy to crack water.

That's the whole point. A sustainable system requires an energy source to run the cycle. For the last 200 years, we've been using an unsustainable energy source (fossil fuels) that double as our energy storage and transport medium.

This has become so ingrained in our society, that people don't even understand that energy source is actually a separate thing from energy-storage or energy transport.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. And the size of Wales is ...

... 0 square miles, if you believe the Eurostat map



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3715512.stm

[hatrack]

6. What have they done with the Taffies?

Where is my beloved Wales? Where's that Valley, and How Green was it?!?!

[meow mix]

7. now were talking, and use the military to maintain the thing...

so theyll have something to do besides exploding babies and women.
join the NRG Corps! woot.

if i was the anti-christ this would be very high on my list of new commandments.