What's new
What's new

Hydrogen technology

Status
Not open for further replies.

David675

Plastic
Joined
Sep 30, 2019
I was thinking about the environmental benefits of hydrogen vehicles and lots of stuff was going through my mind. I heard that hydrogen vehicles help in 100% zero emissions. The European Commission has described hydrogen as an energy carrier with "great potential for clean, efficient power in the stationary, portable and transport applications." Is hydrogen technology the real future? Share your opinions.
 
We HAVE hydrogen-powered vehicles, trains, aircraft, and power-generation stations for electricity generation and thermal use, and have had since we begin burning grasses or wood, even before coal and oil.

"The problem is..." that the cheapest, most effective way to produce, store, distribute, and put all that Hydrogen to practical USE?

.. has, ever since one-celled algae were invented, been to mate it to CARBON atoms.

So:

"Our mission, if we choose to accept it..."

.. is to keep-right on using that cheap and convenient means of transport and storage of Hydrogen.... but figure out a way to recapture and recycle the damned CARBON "container" - itself useful, too - in better ways than we have so far managed to do.

It is even starting to to "happen". Carbon need not be a curse. Put to work wisely, it can become a valuable asset.

It just is not (yet) happening often enough, fast enough, widely enough. Nor is it yet being improved and spread 'til it reaches a "critical mass" or break-even point - as solar has finally done.

WHEN, not IF, that point is reached Carbon becomes.. ta da.. a self-sustaining and highly PROFITABLE renewable ASSET instead of a vexing problem.

We can do this. We might make more "stuff" out of Hydrocarbons - even foodstuffs - eat it, sit on it, shelter under it, fly in it, watch videos on it, make body armour or ethical pharma out of ... hydrocarbons ... but FULLY recycle rather than wastefully BURN so damned much of it as we ramp-up wind, solar, better batteries and - someday, maybe, even cleaner and safer nuclear.

Regardless of the "how", one way or many ways, all that Hydrogen-carrying Carbon tech advancement is already happening. It will continue to happen. It will accelerate. It will coin "new" fortunes as well.

Nano-tech is showing the way to cheap artificial photosynthesis.

Nano tech is showing the way to cheap catalytic cracking of H2O to Oxygen and Hydrogen.

Herds of cattle fart too much? Beans are the "musical fruit"? Guess what? We now know WHY, which microbes are the cause, and that if kerbed, more energy goes into the animal and less waste gas goes into the atmosphere.

Next challenge is to apply that to the US House of Reprehensibles, UK Parliament of Whores, EU's mob of idiots, etc, etc, round the globe, and - just maybe - even save the whole damned world from viral stupidity, grossly overpaid!

:)

We can manage this. We MUST DO.

Well. Maybe not Politicians and their Screws Media just yet? Have to start with the Earth first if only because THAT part is actually do-able!


Ex:

Aluminium soda cans, plastic water bottles, or steel automobiles get recycled far more effectively than plastic bags if only because there is enough MONEY involved to make it worthwhile.

Supportive rules, regulations or NONE AT ALL - "the money is THERE".

Great fortunes will be made off "the problem". Write that on the wall.

And go Hell for leather after earning YOUR FAIR SHARE.

Did I fail to mention "nano-tech"? Or REAL recycling - at a profit, even?

There are no "problems". Only opportunities.
 
hydrogen is an energy transport material.

not the spam you were looking for

"Spam" -for real, as "comes out of a tin" - is an alleged nutrition-transport adulterated meat and fat by-product.

I'm OLD enough, and have BEEN poor enough to recognise it as having helped keep me ALIVE.

Not yet old enough to have forgiven the ghastly stuff for the vile taste of that over-salted, too fatty and far too heavily nitrited sin... not just yet, anyway!

:D
 
I have looked at burning hydrocarbon fuels where the hydrogen burns first and the carbon next if there is still oxygen available. If you restrict the oxygen, you get a bright, smoky flame. That is burning the hydrogen and not the carbon, which is heated white hot, desireable in an oil lamp, not in your furnace. To make a furnace that only burns the hydrogen, the problems are getting what heat is produced into whatever you want to heat and collecting the carbon. When you collect the carbon, which can be done with something like a rotating disk that the carbon sticks to and is scraped off into a bin. The collected carbon retains a large part of the heat, so we need to extract it somehow, the old bugaboo of trying to salvage low temperature heat energy. When you have all that working, burning methane, the main component of natural gas, perfect efficiency will only produce half the energy we get by completely burning it. Half the energy of methane is in carbon, the other half in hydrogen. As you go down the scale of hydrocarbons through the heavier gases and light to heavy liquids, ending with coal, the carbon to hydrogen ratio gets worse. Coal is almost all carbon and the term "clean coal" is an oxymoron.

The other means of producing hydrogen such as electrolysis of water require putting as much energy in as you can get out. Hydrogen produced that way becomes a substitute for a battery as an energy storage and transport method. Storing hydrogen in a dense enough state is a formidable problem. The three main ways are under pressure, adsorbtion into something like magnesium shavings, or as a liquid. Liquid hydrogen as a long term storage method is not practical because it is very cold and requires a lot of insulation. Fine for rockets but not for cars.

A lot of smart people have looked at this and haven't come up with a good enough answer yet.

Bill
 
A lot of smart people have looked at this and haven't come up with a good enough answer yet.

Bill

*yawn* Somebody. Or something. Came up with a good 'un. Billions of years ago, even.

Can't even seem to STOP pesky life forms "doin' the dirty"...

Carbon is the near-universal means of storing and transporting Hydrogen. No special steels nor cryogenic temps. Even stays in the ignorant ground for a billion years or so..

Hydrocarbons JFW, y'see... petroleum to plastics to ....instant ramen noodles.

May as well "Just Deal With That". Like near-as-dammit all other life-forms on-planet do, unicellular to trees and fungi.

The Heaviest Living Organism in the World

The largest living thing on Earth is mostly hidden from view - Business Insider

:D
 
Hydrogen Train. Yeah,right.

Well.. sanity check.

We MUST find more than one way to deal with the Carbon issue, no matter HOW it is cut if we never burned another ounce of Diesel since Friday, last.

Think clathrates. Marginal stability temperature & pressure sensitive Methane hydrate ones, especially. In the soil, waterway beds, lakes, seas and oceans - or in Canadian and Siberian tundra.

Temps are already up? A massive and accelerating Methane release is already underway.

NOW WTF shall we do?

Find a means of taking advantage of that rather than being wiped-out by it make sense, perhaps?

It's what humans do. F**k things up. Then take advantage of our f**k-ups. Or die.

You didn't think a God or Gods would settle for BBC or CNN as their only form of entertainment, did you? Fat chance of THAT insipid s**t being welcomed on screens in Hell, the Kremlin, or even the dreadful streets of the drugged-up Kalifornikyah SSR, let alone Heaven! No Fine Way!

What the deities have instead is we chikn's. Or dinosaurians. Or dust-cloud and star system life-cycles and black holes. They are impartial about their celestial TV shows, after all. Anything but the damned "shopping channel", Brexit, Hong Kong riots, or the never-ending saga of muslim tribal vendettas or the Westernized version AKA "impeach the motherf**ker" suits.

Plants, animals, humans... a mere skin disease on a ball of rock and dirt, any of those, so to speak. But an interesting and unpredictable - even comical - "skin disease", even so! Most especially when stressed to extinction. Or near-as-dammit.

All part of life's bitch travesty, "opportunities" be, yah?

:D
 
I was thinking about the environmental benefits of hydrogen vehicles and lots of stuff was going through my mind. I heard that hydrogen vehicles help in 100% zero emissions. The European Commission has described hydrogen as an energy carrier with "great potential for clean, efficient power in the stationary, portable and transport applications." Is hydrogen technology the real future? Share your opinions.

On youtube, type in 'Jack Nicholson hydrogen car' (the actor), it's a clip from 1978, only a few minutes long and very interesting. I would be interested to hear if Thermite or 9100 remembers this from back then. I do not remember it, because at that time, I was only interested in what my female jr high classmates looked like.
 
On youtube, type in 'Jack Nicholson hydrogen car' (the actor), it's a clip from 1978, only a few minutes long and very interesting. I would be interested to hear if Thermite or 9100 remembers this from back then. I do not remember it, because at that time, I was only interested in what my female jr high classmates looked like.

Never did date but the one HS girl, and not for long. Grown-up girls were simply more interesting, on all metrics (I started to say "counts" but some 'ere cain't talk plain, so...?)

:)

Enjoyed Chemistry all thru school and into Collitch. Found meself involved with distilling air into Oygen '67-'68, Long Binh, RVN. With the "additional duty" the responsibility for ALL OTHER compressed gas storage, safety, etc. Saigon Support Command. Wars as they be, we had some of the DAMNDEST stuff in depot storage. Near as I could figure, somebody got a FSN wrong ever' now and then on a requisition, and there we were - whole pallets of weird and dangerous gases no one wanted nor even ever HEARD of.

Hydrogen (and Helium) have REALLY TINY atoms. Those itty-boogers want to get right in amongst big-lattice metals, alter their characteristics, even leak clear through.

Cylinders are HEAVY. Top of my head a 7 Cu meter Oxygen bottle held about 7 or 8 lbs of gas in - typically - 153 lbs of non-shat steel & valve.

Hydrogen is ACTIVE. Fast, free, and promiscuous as to marrying-up with other elements. Not so easy to pry it loose without more energy, money, risk, or all of the above than is usually worth the effort.

Safe and economical storage, handling, and transport, are a serious PITA, - any not-readily liquifiable gas in general, Hydrogen one of the worst.

Hydrocarbons exist. Can't seem to prevent that if even we WANTED to do.

Find better ways to manage those? Ride two birds with one saddle.

We don't really have the choice of ignoring Carbon in any case. Nor a great deal of TIME to avoid better ways to address that need, either.

And I mean profitable technology, almighty dollar chased at a combat speed. AND NOT a lot of noisy, useless "accords", "credits". nor vacuum-headed fuckwits marching about with posters and vicious speeches as should be working at something actually useful.

"PS".. besides Swedens' hormane-shortchanged bitter-about-it, hence viciously spoilt Greta Thundermug?

Multi-tasking a blitz-quick, advert-free *BSD box as I am wont to do?

Seems "AOC", self-styled Joan 'd Dark of the "Green New Deal" scam, has finally been out-done at one of her own "town hall' meetings:

'''Get rid of the babies!''': Distraught woman at AOC town hall urges '''eating babies''' to fight climate change | Fox News

What next? Bee TOE O'Rourke going contrary, suggests de-hydrate 'em and burn 'em for renewable fuel, go vegan, instead?

What a collection of nut-jobs! Ripofflican advantage? Focus.

ONE CLOWN AT A TIME! Take a number, and wait yer TURN, dammit!
 
I have looked at burning hydrocarbon fuels where the hydrogen burns first and the carbon next if there is still oxygen available. If you restrict the oxygen, you get a bright, smoky flame. That is burning the hydrogen and not the carbon, which is heated white hot, desireable in an oil lamp, not in your furnace. To make a furnace that only burns the hydrogen, the problems are getting what heat is produced into whatever you want to heat and collecting the carbon. When you collect the carbon, which can be done with something like a rotating disk that the carbon sticks to and is scraped off into a bin. The collected carbon retains a large part of the heat, so we need to extract it somehow, the old bugaboo of trying to salvage low temperature heat energy. When you have all that working, burning methane, the main component of natural gas, perfect efficiency will only produce half the energy we get by completely burning it. Half the energy of methane is in carbon, the other half in hydrogen. As you go down the scale of hydrocarbons through the heavier gases and light to heavy liquids, ending with coal, the carbon to hydrogen ratio gets worse. Coal is almost all carbon and the term "clean coal" is an oxymoron.

...

A lot of smart people have looked at this and haven't come up with a good enough answer yet.

Bill

You have described a carbon black plant. A place where, after you visit, they will suggest you throw your clothes away. You will get nasty dirty, even through a tyvek suit.
 
I was thinking about the environmental benefits of hydrogen vehicles and lots of stuff was going through my mind. I heard that hydrogen vehicles help in 100% zero emissions. The European Commission has described hydrogen as an energy carrier with "great potential for clean, efficient power in the stationary, portable and transport applications." Is hydrogen technology the real future? Share your opinions.
Can those same people say, "Hindenberg" ?????
...lewie...
 
You have described a carbon black plant. A place where, after you visit, they will suggest you throw your clothes away. You will get nasty dirty, even through a tyvek suit.

Right. The hydrogen is burned off each molecule, one molecule at a time and they are not especially joined together so you have something that can get through almost any opening. Folks used to think Diesel smoke was harmless until they found that it was the particles too small to see with an optical microscope that gave you cancer.

Bill
 
On youtube, type in 'Jack Nicholson hydrogen car' (the actor), it's a clip from 1978, only a few minutes long and very interesting. I would be interested to hear if Thermite or 9100 remembers this from back then. I do not remember it, because at that time, I was only interested in what my female jr high classmates looked like.

In 1978 I was trying to get my shop off the ground, working every day and evening. I went to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner and went back to work. I wasn't paying attention to Jack Nicholson but along the way I did read a lot about hydrogen cars. The was a club called The Hindenberg Society promoting its use. I don't know if it is still operating.

They make a lot about the exhaust being water, but it must be forming some NOx at the same time if they are burning it.

Bill
 
When you can take greed out of the equation for energy efficient use of resources, then hydrogen will be a major contributor to a much better environment. I have worked with water to hydrogen oxygen generation assisting an inventor with machining and electrical support. The results were significant, for the end user of energy that is. Someday the time will be right to introduce the technology, I am not seeing it yet.
 
I did read about one interesting use case. They were testing hydrogen fuel cell forklifts in a 24/7 warehouse. Unlike propane, the exhaust is pure water. I think the theory was that refueling with hydrogen would be better, cheaper, and/or faster than swapping batteries and charging them offline.
 
I'm picturing in my mind, a middle aged housewife driving a minivan while texting and yelling at her snot nosed kids in the back seat, and the minivan is filed with compressed hydrogen. Don't want to be in the same town.
 
I did read about one interesting use case. They were testing hydrogen fuel cell forklifts in a 24/7 warehouse. Unlike propane, the exhaust is pure water. I think the theory was that refueling with hydrogen would be better, cheaper, and/or faster than swapping batteries and charging them offline.

That makes sense when the fuel source is right there and the vehicle doesn't have to carry a large load of fuel.

What did you do with the oxygen?

Bill
 
Status
Not open for further replies.








 
Back
Top