Problems with a hydrogen transportation future

I felt that statement about electricity generation was an exaggeration.

Plus, EVs aren't really here yet. So, energy trends are important, not just current production.

 

Nuclear is considered a clean energy source. There is toxic waste, but it's not continuously spewed into the atmosphere and doesn't include greenhouse gas.

So, I believe I'm justified in pointing to the 40% number.

Plus, you need to look at trends. Fossil fuel is gradually declining, as clean energy solutions continue to grow with improvements in technology and increasing investment.

We're a long way from having a problem with intermittent production coming from "too much" clean energy. Plus, that's an industry that is also getting serious investment.

 

Let's consider natural gas. CH4 has little carbon to release into the air. And if you add an extra 20% hydrogen and the carbon release is even less. It is a readily available fuel. It can be produced from garbage....that degrades into natural gas anyway.


I feel the automobile market is being manipulated by government regulation. They are pushing expensive and unreliable technology on poor boys like me. Every natural gas auto would use no gasoline. The fuel could even be produced "green".

 

The automobile market (and virtually every market you can think of) is being manipulated by "climate change" idiocy. The only enemy of rationality in this debate is that one can simply eliminate CO2 from energy production. Can't be done. CO2 is the desired outcome of all combustion no matter what the fuel is. The simple chemistry equation of combustion is HC + O2 => CO2 + H2O. Period.

Doesn't matter what the hydrocarbon is- gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, methane, nitromethane, etc.- they ALL combust with the same exothermic reaction. All of them. The only differences are stoichiometry (how much air is required), engine cycle (diesel vs. Otto), and energy output.

Natural gas is the same as gasoline except it carries more oxygen thus burning at a lower stoichiometry and natural gas combustion yields about 60% of the energy. Hydrogen itself only yields about 10% of the energy of gasoline and it typically doesn't exist as a free molecule in the real world so it needs to be extracted from other hydrocarbons (like diesel) with electricity- bunches of it. It's really not even worth the effort.

The outright fraud of climate change- that virtually 100% of the worlds atmosphere could be driven hotter by 0.04% of the atmosphere (somewhat like trying to heat up a full bathtub with 4 oz. of boiling water) is simply nuts. You're all being lied to by the IPCC for the benefit of the already wealthy who would just love to kill off the rest of us poor stiffs and have the entire planet to themselves.

And if you're wondering, all these "amazing" alternative fuels have been tried in the real world for the last half century. The work trucks I drove in High School (I worked for the city I lived in) were fueled by propane. Even electric vehicles have been done and done literally to death. Heck, Tesla's a 20 year old company. Before that GM, Honda, and Ford at a minimum had all done commercially available full electric vehicles. The technology itself is about 100 years old. There are no great new ideas. Just perfectly politically useful old turds of ideas.

As my late father-in-law used to say, "Wish in one hand, shiite in the other. See which one fills up first."

 

CA had rolling blackouts because smoke from the fires interfered with solar, and the problem time of day wasn't during the heat of the day, it was in the evening when the sun set and the wind died down, but, if you consider Nuclear to be "green", that's a huge help because nuclear is "on demand" power, as is hydroelectric. Add that to the green mix, helps a great deal.

 

I've never heard such a claim concerning blackouts caused by smoke impacting solar. Please cite.

Forest fire smoke can reduce efficiency of solar panels. That's well known. Homeowners are advised to keep their panels clean.

The major interruptions have been caused by fire impact on transmission lines. That was certainly the case in 2018, and also in 2022.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-hea...4/california-wildfires-heat-blackouts-burning

In fact, PG&E has been severely penalized for their responsibility in 6 of 10 fires in CA due to poor maintenance. And, they cut power in various areas throughout the state both due to the chance of causing more fires and disruptions of their equipment.

90% to 95% of fires in CA have been traced to human cause.

There is no solar facility in northern CA that could possibly be responsible for a brownout.

 

You don't have a search bar?

https://news.ucar.edu › 132875 › california-wildfire-smoke-dimmed-solar-energy-2020
California wildfire smoke dimmed solar energy in 2020
'The smoke from intense California wildfires in September 2020 darkened the skies so much that it slashed the state's solar power production during peak hours by 10-30%, according to a study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).'

 

Don't remember what you said?

You claimed this caused blackouts.

Please cite.

 

Called green hydrogen.

The exhaust from a hydrogen vehicle is H2O. An EV needs a battery with toxic chemicals mined from the ground. The dirtiest part of an EV is the battery, so over the lifetime of the car, you will only reduce your vehicle's carbon footprint by only 17% to 30%.

Life starts to die out with when co2 falls to approx 150ppm. In commercial greenhouses, the optimum co2 level sustained for good plant growth is 1,500ppm. The dinosaurs flourished in co2 levels above 2,400ppm until that pesky rock hit them. Ice cores have shown co2 levels being upto 8,000ppm in the earth's history. Earth has experienced ice 5 times, we are still in the latter part of an ice age. The Sahara desert was once a thriving rain forest, so was Antarctica.

Yet today, a segment of the earth's population are having a melt down over 450ppm co2.

 

It was tried by Toyota and was a mess. They built the cars, they sold poorly, and gas stations who promised hydrogen refueling bailed.
The theory is great except for the cost of production.

 

It's kind of funny, but Hydrogen is in group 1 of the periodic table, which is the alkali, metals, but of course, Hydrogen is not a metal, but it fits there better than any other group in the periodic table.

 

Methane (CH4) is FAR worse than CO2 in the atmosphere in terms of affect on heat leaving Earth. CO2 gets the nod as the worst only because we emit such a gigantic volume of CO2.

So, any idea involving methane would have to be SURE to not allow escape to the atmosphere.

Producing "green" fuel for autos has been an objective for a long time. Remember Bush and his "switch grass" idea. Remember Big Corn and their corn ethanol idea (burning food to make fuel!!). There are serious ongoing attempts to grow algae and other stuff for use as biofuel in places where gasoline and natural gas are used.

I hope they find a solution!

 

Methane breaks down into CO2 over time...bout 7 years....and methane produced from garbage or cow manure....or even switchgrass would be green. The leftover organic matter would go a long way toward rebuilding soil and sequestration of carbon contained in the black waste leftover from composting. Considering most hydrogen comes from natural gas anyway just burn the gas. I will buy a conversion kit and install it myself before I would buy an electric vehicle. I could convert to propane and use 20lb butane cylinders as fuel tanks.

 

For reference, since you're obviously unfamiliar with science, methane makes up 0.0017% of the atmosphere. CO2 is around 0.04%.

Nitrogen is roughly 79% and oxygen is about 21%. Methane and CO2 partially fill the gap between those two.

 

It's still the case that methane is FAR worse than CO2 from a greenhouse gas point of view.

Yes, some of the ways of producing hydrogen are very definitely NOT good from a greenhouse gas point of view. So, the whole cycle has to be considered. For instance, if the method of production is electrolysis using solar power, that's majorly green. If it's just by burning fossil fuel, then not so good.

Whatever the source of electricity, it is a LOT HEALTHIER to not be burning fossil fuel on our city streets. We pay a LOT in healthcare for doing that.

 

There are lots of natural sources of methane, CO2, etc., and those have always been part of the steady state of Earth - part of the balance between solar heating and heat escaping to space.

The greenhouse gas issue is how much we add to the natural production, thus changing the balance by slowing heat from escaping to space. Thus Earth heats.

The health issue is that burning fossil fuel on our city streets is costing us a LOT of dollars in healthcare - through taxes, higher insurance costs, higher costs for those who "self insure", etc.

 

Yes.

The issue is how changes in those percentages affect the rate of heat escaping Earth.

Earth's temperature is a balance of solar heating and heat escaping to space. If you slow heat escaping to space, Earth warms.

So, there is less methane, but it has a significantly greater affect on the rate of heat escaping to space.

CO2 gets mentioned more as we produce gigantic amounts of CO2. Also, we have more control over how much CO2 we emit.

 

The health problems from burning gasoline and diesel are much more severe than burning natural gas. But if you wish to wind up stranded in your 100,000 ev that is your business. Remember to allow for mileage at night while powering your lights and radio.

 

So you're as bad at math as you are science.

 

What's a 100,000 EV?

 

Mercedes, Audi, GM hummer etc. And don't expect electric vehicle prices to go down. Automobiles never go down in price.

 

A new exclusively electric (not hybrid) 4 door Chevy Bolt or Nissan Leaf sells for less than $20K.

You can get EVs and ICE cars in all price ranges.

It's always the case that new technology costs more at the beginning, as it takes a large design, engineering and manufacturing investment before even 1 can be made.

Wide screen TV's originally cost $15K. Now, you can get much better ones for 1/10th of that. The same thing happened with personal computers. Now, you get way more computing power as a feature of your smart phone.

Car manufacturers aren't going to give up on any significant market segment.

 

They will just add bells and whistles to keep the price up. Automobiles have never went down in price from year to year. Never.

 

Teslas did. So, I can't agree with your proclamation. Also, they have increased function without changing price. In fact, they can update cars that have been sold due to web connectivity. That includes adding new features and fixing issues with software updates that are always free. They even added a heat pump in their new cars without raising prices for that.

Overall, it is more common for manufacturers to come out with models that address different market segments.

So, you get the EV Bolt, the EV Nissan Leaf, etc. And, in the ICE market you get the Toyota Yaris, NOT a cheap Lexus (a Toyota subsidiary aimed at the high end).

These cars were created from the bottom up as aiming for those who don't want to spend more on their automobile or don't need what more expensive cars offer.

Capitalism won't let that market segment be ignored.