The Hydrogen Economy

Yesterday had a guest lecturer in Thermo who was a dude with a lot of industrial experience with Mobil and spent some time with AIChE as a policy adviser to the government. He gave his take on the hydrogen economy, which as we all know is the magic bullet which will provide energy independence, smogless emissions, and zero CO2 emissions in the future. The Bush administration, either out of wishing to score some points with the Sierra Club or genuine concern, is dumping a lot of money into this research. His take was that in general it is a wash - and the most interesting thing I found was that it's an argument all based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I tried to find a post to CEP (AIChE publication) but you must register there, so I'll search for one. Meantime, here's the gist of it.

Economists (and, ahem, engineers with an economist's mind) know the biggest problem with the 'hydrogen economy' is that we have no proven reserves of H. It's all locked up in water or hydrocarbons. To recover it (by hydrolosis or steam reforming) we have to burn fossil fuels. So much for zero emissions and energy independence. But fuel cells are more efficient, right, so we use less? Wrong - the combined steps in recovering H create about as efficient a process as the current fossil-fuel smokin IC engine - nature's "tax" due to the second law (and the current state of the technologies) makes it unfeasible. In fact, the lecturer showed that diesel (as opposed to today's standard IC engine) is so efficient that it rivals the fuel cell in total emissions! On top of that, we have the added costs of building the infrastructure of an H economy as well as the unknown costs (safety, storage, etc.) that are ultimately not worth the benefit. His take, and I think this sounds about right, is that as oil becomes more expensive to recover (and prices go up) consumers in America will turn to diesel, just as Europeans have with their highly taxed gas. And the most efficient means of transport is probably going to be a diesel hybrid w/regenerative braking. But I love this argument because the policy proposal is so nice, so sensible, so conservative - do nothing! The market will best dictate our direction. The Bush Administration is pumping a lot of money into a pipe dream. Just like everything the government directs (the idiotic ethanol subsidies come to mind, and of course the vile Social Security pyramid scheme) the net result is wasting our money.

There is some worthwhile research in this area though. I certainly think fuel cells are "a" (maybe not "the") way of the future, so we shouldn't pull all funding. But ultimately we need a way to recover H that is net cost positive, and not dependent on fossil fuels - and this is where we should direct our resources. Alternative energy sources, and viable ones, not stupid gigantic windmills. Honestly I think nuclear energy is where it's at, we just need people not to get their nuclear energy education from The China Syndrome - and when's Mikey gonna develop cold fusion? There was some talk of solar energy options, and I think that's also a viable option (it will make NM more important, certainly). Also crazy talk of biomass or biological systems, but again, second law makes it tough to implement fully. So, nuclear energy is my guess on where we go, barring some unforeseen breakthrough. It was so interesting to me because I rejected my one nuclear engineering school (TAMU) that I applied to because nuclear engineering seemed on its way out and it was too much of a gamble since it's so dependent on the political winds. But if we keep electing sensible (read: Republican) administrations I think nuclear's the way to go. Big time. Zero dependence on foreign energy sources, zero emissions. Plants are extremely safe today. Just that nasty little problem of waste storage, but out of selfish self interest (my WERC minor) I say we begin putting some resources into how to store this stuff....

I'll keep searching for that editorial from CEP. It's pretty interesting.