FC: Are Feds wasting tax money on hydrogen full cell technology?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:32:25 -0500
From: Steven Thomas Bond <stbond () citynet net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: fuel cell cars

Actually this is as big a scandal from a scientific standpoint as any
you handle regularly:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0110/p1s3-usgn.htm


My reply to Christian Science Monitor:

Subject:
         Hydrogen fueled cars
    Date:
         Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:20:25 -0500
   From:
         Steven Thomas Bond <stbond () citynet net>
     To:
         oped () csps com




This concept reflects the danger of decisions made by politicians
unfamiliar with chemistry and and articles written by reporters who have

been trained primarily in the use of language.  There is a lot known
about the use of hydrogen.  The "hydrogen economy" has been discussed
for decades.  There is an article in Scientific American, now a decade
or more old, about the use of hydrogen when fossil fuels runs out.
There are some serious problems with hydrogen as a fuel, and only one
good point - that it makes water only as a result of combustion.

The really big problem with hydrogen is where to get it.  It is so
highly reactive there are no stores of uncombined hydrogen in nature.
None!  Any little wisp that gets into the atmosphere is shortly combined

with the highly reactive oxygen already there.  Industrial hydrogen at
the present time is made from methane, natural gas.  When one molecule
of methane  burns it forms two water molecules and one carbon dioxide
molecule.

Consider what happens if you intend to use methane as the source of
hydrogen which is subsequently to be used as fuel. Compared to using the

methane directly, energy is lost converting the methane to hydrogen and
carbon, and you loose the energy obtained by oxidation of carbon.  The
greater efficiency of the fuel cell, compared to the internal combustion

engine, offsets this loss to some degree.

Since the carbon atom gives off much more energy on being converted to
carbon dioxide than hydrogen does on being converted to water,  liquid
fuels like gasoline (C8H18) and diesel fuel (C16H34), are much more
energy dense fuels than methane.  So the proposition of using hydrogen
for fuel boils down to where do you get the hydrogen?  A vast amount of
hydrogen?

Fifteen years ago the answer was to use hydrolysis of water, which, of
course, is very abundant.  This reaction requires energy be supplied to
break the hydrogen free of the oxygen. This energy is a little more than

the amount of energy that is recovered when the hydrogen recombines
with  oxygen in a fuel cell.  The "hydrogen economy"  thus requires
another source of energy.  The hydrogen fuel (and oxygen from the air)
is only an intermediary between some advanced energy source and the
energy used to power the vehicle.  If natural gas is to be the source of

hydrogen, we are choosing a lower grade chemical source of energy, which

requires a wasteful conversion, and a natural resource that is only
slightly less limited in quantity than oil.

A few years ago nuclear fusion (not nuclear fission, the current
"nuclear power") appeared to be the shining light on the horizon.  Now,
for reasons I will not go into in detail in this letter, that prospect
has dimmed.  Nuclear power folks think interference of the wealthy and
powerful fossil fuel industry with getting appropriate funding and
recognition of need for fusion by government may have something to do
with fusion's decline, along with the unanticipated technical
difficulties and long time to payoff.

Right now there are a lot of chemists and physicists who are quietly
laughing up their sleeves about the adoption of a nonfeasable technology

for energy sufficiency.  But they are also amused by the "star
wars"missile boondoggle, another technical lead balloon.  And other
things.

God bless America!  People don't realize how much we need that kind of
help.

S. Thomas Bond,  Ph. D.
304-884-7352




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