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07/21/2004

Hydrogen in Our Future?

Following up on last week’s column, I tried Edy’s Grand Light
vanilla ice cream, made by the ultra low temperature extrusion
process discussed in the column. It’s truly creamy, to my taste
even creamier than Edy’s Grand ice cream, with over twice the
fat (8 vs. 3.5 grams per half cup) and 40 percent more calories
(140 vs. 100) than the Grand Light. If you missed the column,
the “slow-churned” (Edy’s phrase) Grand Light’s creaminess
derives from the finely divided ice crystals and fat aggregates
formed in the low temperature extrusion. (Correction - last week
I quoted the article that prompted the column as saying the
process eliminates the need for additives. However, both the
Grand Light and Grand labels list the same additives. The quote
should be that the process “doesn’t rely on additives.”)

So much for ice cream. Another consumer product that I tested
recently was the Toyota Prius. OK, it wasn’t much of a test – a
friend allowed me to drive her Prius around the block. I was
quite impressed with this hybrid vehicle, which decides on its
own whether to use its battery or its internal combustion engine
to power its journey and, when stopped, there’s no idling of its
engine. With many more miles per gallon, widespread use of
hybrid vehicles would significantly reduce oil consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions. While the hybrid is here today,
vehicles powered by fuel cells have been touted as the way of the
future leading to a “hydrogen economy”, the subject that I’ve
been putting aside in favor of ice cream and space weather.

The optimistic outlook for the future of fuel cells is exemplified
by President Bush’s 2003 state of the union proposal of a $1.7
billion R&D program to develop a practical vehicle powered by
fuel cells. I’ve written about fuel cells earlier (columns posted
4/18/2000 and 5/2/2000) but let’s review the fundamentals. In a
typical battery, all the active ingredients are packaged in the
battery. These materials react to produce the voltage and current
the battery delivers. One exception is the small zinc-air hearing
aid battery, in which one ingredient is oxygen in the air that
enters the battery when the customer tears open a protective seal.

In the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, oxygen from the air is also one
of the ingredients, while hydrogen is the other. Hydrogen is fed
to one electrode and oxygen is fed to the other electrode. As
long as you keep feeding in the hydrogen and oxygen, the fuel
cell supplies the power to run your vehicle. The hydrogen reacts
with the oxygen to form water, H2O - an environmentalist’s
dream. No carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides
pollute our atmosphere and contribute to global warming. In a
future “hydrogen economy”, you drive to your “gas” station, fill
your tank with a real gas, hydrogen and proceed on your way.

This sounds wonderful, but I’m reminded of the period from
1972 to 1989, when I worked in the Battery Development
Department at Bell Labs. During that period, it was the battery-
powered electric vehicle that was to be our salvation. Vast sums
of money were spent on projects to develop new battery systems
and California passed laws mandating low- or zero-emission
vehicles, expecting that electric vehicles would soon be mass
produced. It isn’t going to happen, at least in my lifetime.

Is a hydrogen economy any more likely? How does the hybrid
vehicle, available today, fit into the picture? The article
“Questions about a Hydrogen Economy” in the May issue of
Scientific American gives some answers. The article is by
Matthew Wald, a reporter for the New York Times who has
specialized in energy-related issues for the past 25 years. Wald
does a good job of getting to the heart of the matter, the true
costs and environmental aspects of a hydrogen economy. The
Department of Energy Web site also provides a wealth of
information. However, as the agency charged with pushing
through the fuel cell program, it’s more optimistic in its outlook.

The problem with a hydrogen economy is that hydrogen is not
like oxygen, which is present as pure oxygen molecules in our
air. Hydrogen is tied up in compounds such water (lots of that),
petroleum, natural gas, etc. So, in effect, you have to “mine”
hydrogen from these compounds for shipping to your “gas”
stations. While the fuel cell, emitting only water, is truly
“green”, the production of its hydrogen fuel is a different matter.

How to generate hydrogen most cleanly? If you’ve had any
chemistry, chances are you’d say to electrolyze water. We’ve
had plenty of water from the skies in New Jersey this past week!
You just hook up a couple electrodes to an appropriate power
supply, stick them in water, pass current through the cell and
collect hydrogen. All neat and clean, right? But wait, where did
the electricity come from and how was it generated? To get a
true picture of the total monetary and environmental costs, you
have to consider both the “fuel chain” and the fuel cell together.

We have to sum up the greenhouse gas emissions from the power
generating company and from the electrolytic production of
hydrogen (the fuel chain emissions) plus the vehicle emissions.
According to Wald’s article, the greenhouse emissions per mile
of driving turn out to be higher for the fuel cell than for the
internal combustion engine! Why? Coal is the cheapest fuel for
power generating plants; however, burning coal feeds lots of
carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

With fuel cells, all the greenhouse gases are emitted in forming
the hydrogen, essentially none in running the car. On the other
hand, our gasoline-fueled cars emit a lot more greenhouse gases
than are emitted during the production the gasoline. What about
our hybrid car? Surprisingly, the total emissions for the hybrid
are quite a bit less than for the fuel cell car fueled with hydrogen
from electrolysis of water.

Actually, about half of the world’s hydrogen is produced by a
process known as steam reforming of natural gas. If we fuel our
fuel cell car with this hydrogen, the total greenhouse emissions
go down markedly and the fuel cell car becomes the cleaner
alternative. The downside is that natural gas is a fossil fuel and
as it becomes depleted the monetary costs will rise. The use of
solar or wind power or other alternative energy sources to
generate the electricity to electrolyze water is the ideal solution,
but widespread use of these sources is far in the future.

Other kinds of fuel cells are in the research or developmental
stage as, for example, fuel cells in which gasoline, methanol or
ethanol are used instead of pure hydrogen. Wald’s article gives
the total emissions for the methanol and gasoline fuel cells as
about half the total greenhouse emissions of the conventional
hydrogen fuel cell. I was shocked to see that the ethanol fuel cell
is cited as having almost no total emission of greenhouse gases!
How can this be? The Department of Energy figures that ethanol
comes from corn and that most of the emissions from the
production of the ethanol (especially carbon dioxide) will be
reabsorbed by the growth of more corn to make more ethanol!
Nothing is simple when it comes to the environment.

Here, I’ve stressed the environmental aspects of a hydrogen
economy. There remain daunting scientific and engineering
challenges, not to mention the problem of money. Today, the
cost of a watt of power from an internal combustion engine is
about 5 cents. To produce that same watt of power in a fuel cell
costs about $4! Obviously, the cost must come down. Wald
notes that fuel cell cars and NASA’s manned trip to Mars are on
roughly the same time schedule and suggests that both are about
equally likely. While I tend to agree, and would love to see men
and women on Mars, I think the fuel cell-powered car is much
more feasible.

Meanwhile, in keeping with my profound disgust with SUVs, I
suggest you SUV owners consider a small hybrid vehicle. OK,
in a spirit of complete disclosure and even more disgust, I admit
that I know there’s already a hybrid SUV on the market!

Allen F. Bortrum



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-07/21/2004-      
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Dr. Bortrum

07/21/2004

Hydrogen in Our Future?

Following up on last week’s column, I tried Edy’s Grand Light
vanilla ice cream, made by the ultra low temperature extrusion
process discussed in the column. It’s truly creamy, to my taste
even creamier than Edy’s Grand ice cream, with over twice the
fat (8 vs. 3.5 grams per half cup) and 40 percent more calories
(140 vs. 100) than the Grand Light. If you missed the column,
the “slow-churned” (Edy’s phrase) Grand Light’s creaminess
derives from the finely divided ice crystals and fat aggregates
formed in the low temperature extrusion. (Correction - last week
I quoted the article that prompted the column as saying the
process eliminates the need for additives. However, both the
Grand Light and Grand labels list the same additives. The quote
should be that the process “doesn’t rely on additives.”)

So much for ice cream. Another consumer product that I tested
recently was the Toyota Prius. OK, it wasn’t much of a test – a
friend allowed me to drive her Prius around the block. I was
quite impressed with this hybrid vehicle, which decides on its
own whether to use its battery or its internal combustion engine
to power its journey and, when stopped, there’s no idling of its
engine. With many more miles per gallon, widespread use of
hybrid vehicles would significantly reduce oil consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions. While the hybrid is here today,
vehicles powered by fuel cells have been touted as the way of the
future leading to a “hydrogen economy”, the subject that I’ve
been putting aside in favor of ice cream and space weather.

The optimistic outlook for the future of fuel cells is exemplified
by President Bush’s 2003 state of the union proposal of a $1.7
billion R&D program to develop a practical vehicle powered by
fuel cells. I’ve written about fuel cells earlier (columns posted
4/18/2000 and 5/2/2000) but let’s review the fundamentals. In a
typical battery, all the active ingredients are packaged in the
battery. These materials react to produce the voltage and current
the battery delivers. One exception is the small zinc-air hearing
aid battery, in which one ingredient is oxygen in the air that
enters the battery when the customer tears open a protective seal.

In the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, oxygen from the air is also one
of the ingredients, while hydrogen is the other. Hydrogen is fed
to one electrode and oxygen is fed to the other electrode. As
long as you keep feeding in the hydrogen and oxygen, the fuel
cell supplies the power to run your vehicle. The hydrogen reacts
with the oxygen to form water, H2O - an environmentalist’s
dream. No carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides
pollute our atmosphere and contribute to global warming. In a
future “hydrogen economy”, you drive to your “gas” station, fill
your tank with a real gas, hydrogen and proceed on your way.

This sounds wonderful, but I’m reminded of the period from
1972 to 1989, when I worked in the Battery Development
Department at Bell Labs. During that period, it was the battery-
powered electric vehicle that was to be our salvation. Vast sums
of money were spent on projects to develop new battery systems
and California passed laws mandating low- or zero-emission
vehicles, expecting that electric vehicles would soon be mass
produced. It isn’t going to happen, at least in my lifetime.

Is a hydrogen economy any more likely? How does the hybrid
vehicle, available today, fit into the picture? The article
“Questions about a Hydrogen Economy” in the May issue of
Scientific American gives some answers. The article is by
Matthew Wald, a reporter for the New York Times who has
specialized in energy-related issues for the past 25 years. Wald
does a good job of getting to the heart of the matter, the true
costs and environmental aspects of a hydrogen economy. The
Department of Energy Web site also provides a wealth of
information. However, as the agency charged with pushing
through the fuel cell program, it’s more optimistic in its outlook.

The problem with a hydrogen economy is that hydrogen is not
like oxygen, which is present as pure oxygen molecules in our
air. Hydrogen is tied up in compounds such water (lots of that),
petroleum, natural gas, etc. So, in effect, you have to “mine”
hydrogen from these compounds for shipping to your “gas”
stations. While the fuel cell, emitting only water, is truly
“green”, the production of its hydrogen fuel is a different matter.

How to generate hydrogen most cleanly? If you’ve had any
chemistry, chances are you’d say to electrolyze water. We’ve
had plenty of water from the skies in New Jersey this past week!
You just hook up a couple electrodes to an appropriate power
supply, stick them in water, pass current through the cell and
collect hydrogen. All neat and clean, right? But wait, where did
the electricity come from and how was it generated? To get a
true picture of the total monetary and environmental costs, you
have to consider both the “fuel chain” and the fuel cell together.

We have to sum up the greenhouse gas emissions from the power
generating company and from the electrolytic production of
hydrogen (the fuel chain emissions) plus the vehicle emissions.
According to Wald’s article, the greenhouse emissions per mile
of driving turn out to be higher for the fuel cell than for the
internal combustion engine! Why? Coal is the cheapest fuel for
power generating plants; however, burning coal feeds lots of
carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

With fuel cells, all the greenhouse gases are emitted in forming
the hydrogen, essentially none in running the car. On the other
hand, our gasoline-fueled cars emit a lot more greenhouse gases
than are emitted during the production the gasoline. What about
our hybrid car? Surprisingly, the total emissions for the hybrid
are quite a bit less than for the fuel cell car fueled with hydrogen
from electrolysis of water.

Actually, about half of the world’s hydrogen is produced by a
process known as steam reforming of natural gas. If we fuel our
fuel cell car with this hydrogen, the total greenhouse emissions
go down markedly and the fuel cell car becomes the cleaner
alternative. The downside is that natural gas is a fossil fuel and
as it becomes depleted the monetary costs will rise. The use of
solar or wind power or other alternative energy sources to
generate the electricity to electrolyze water is the ideal solution,
but widespread use of these sources is far in the future.

Other kinds of fuel cells are in the research or developmental
stage as, for example, fuel cells in which gasoline, methanol or
ethanol are used instead of pure hydrogen. Wald’s article gives
the total emissions for the methanol and gasoline fuel cells as
about half the total greenhouse emissions of the conventional
hydrogen fuel cell. I was shocked to see that the ethanol fuel cell
is cited as having almost no total emission of greenhouse gases!
How can this be? The Department of Energy figures that ethanol
comes from corn and that most of the emissions from the
production of the ethanol (especially carbon dioxide) will be
reabsorbed by the growth of more corn to make more ethanol!
Nothing is simple when it comes to the environment.

Here, I’ve stressed the environmental aspects of a hydrogen
economy. There remain daunting scientific and engineering
challenges, not to mention the problem of money. Today, the
cost of a watt of power from an internal combustion engine is
about 5 cents. To produce that same watt of power in a fuel cell
costs about $4! Obviously, the cost must come down. Wald
notes that fuel cell cars and NASA’s manned trip to Mars are on
roughly the same time schedule and suggests that both are about
equally likely. While I tend to agree, and would love to see men
and women on Mars, I think the fuel cell-powered car is much
more feasible.

Meanwhile, in keeping with my profound disgust with SUVs, I
suggest you SUV owners consider a small hybrid vehicle. OK,
in a spirit of complete disclosure and even more disgust, I admit
that I know there’s already a hybrid SUV on the market!

Allen F. Bortrum