Hydrogen: It's Not Just for Global Warming Anymore

Now that the alternate energy series has had a little time for viewing, hopefully some of you readers have looked around and seen all the negative articles on building a hydrogen economy. Some if not most of these articles are based on older information and do not take into consideration recent advances. Not only are recent technological advances important, reasonable predictions of future advances are required to build a case for a hydrogen economy.

One of the opportunities of developing a hydrogen economy is transportation of the hydrogen. Hydrogen is the lightest of all elements. While one kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline, it occupies four times the space of the gallon of gas. Storage vessels for liquid hydrogen have to be much more substantial than vessels used to transport gasoline. That means that it will cost about four times as much to transport hydrogen over the road.

Extremely long hydrogen pipelines are not considered a cost effective method of transporting hydrogen. Hydrogen being the lightest and also the smallest of all elements is difficult to contain. A standard pipeline used for hydrogen would either leak too much of the tiny atoms or the cost of materials and construction for a H2 tight pipeline would be too high with current technology.

Hydrogen produced through electrolysis requires energy to produce. Two times as much energy is required to produce hydrogen than the hydrogen produced delivers. Hydrogen produced through methane high temperature processes still generates CO2 so the net carbon lost is more than just burning gasoline.

There are more negative comments on hydrogen but let me just address these for now. Starting with the first and then moving down the list.

Using wind turbines and tidal/wave power generation plants in remote locations was one of my recommendations for generating hydrogen. This doesn't mean that I intend for hundreds of thousands of little hydrogen plants produce and then truck hydrogen all over the nation. Groups of these remote power plants would be combined to deliver electricity to a common location where in conjunction with a heat generating process, i.e. nuclear power plant, alcohol distillery or other heat intensive manufacturing process, the hydrogen would be cost effectively produced. Using the waste heat of these processes greatly reduces the cost of hydrogen.

From that central location, hydrogen can be transported by short pipeline, rail or ship to its ultimate destination. The closer the consumer is to one of these points, the lower the price at the pump. Coordinating the locations of the hydrogen dedicated energy sources to transportation hubs is important to minimize transportation costs.

Extremely long pipelines may never be a cost effective means of transporting hydrogen. Mentioned in the preceding paragraph short pipelines of less than 200 miles can be cost effective if sufficient hydrogen demand is available. Shipping hydrogen from remote locations via large ocean going vessels can be a cost effective method of transporting hydrogen. Since a very large portion of our population is very close to major ports, shipping will be a primary method of transporting hydrogen.

Finally, hydrogen requiring two times as much energy to produce than the hydrogen produced can deliver. So? Hydrogen used properly is twice as efficient as gasoline. I have never gotten this argument. Low cost power is required to produce hydrogen for wide scale economical use. The options given use low cost green energy generated in areas where that energy is not easily delivered to customers. Storing that energy in the form of hydrogen is a viable cost effective option.

The United States will probably fall behind in the use of hydrogen because of the same general attitudes that held us back in other energy areas. The US steel industry suffered because it did not upgrade technology in time. US nuclear energy production fell behind because of fear and what the heck we got coal. The US auto industry fell behind because what the heck we got cheap gas. Well the times they are a changing folks. It just might be time to look at creative ways to move into the future before the past bites us in the butt.