Thank you for quoting from Amory Lovins. I wouldn't begin to dispute Amory Lovins' thermodynamic efficiency figures because he's probably one of the most well informed experts on these matters in the world. However, I have some reservations about the applicability of his theoretical figures into the real world. His end-figures regarding the costs of producing and running either hybrid fuel cell-gasoline cars or pure fuel-cell cars can't be substantiated yet. The only figures for the efficiencies of fuel cells are derived from experimental rigs in ideal laboratory conditions. Daimler-Benz have been running small experimental fleets of buses using fuel cells for some years and I keep my eye on their figures from time to time because I receive their (luxuriously produced) house magazine. They are nowhere near the stage yet when they can extend their experiments to fully practicable local bus services because the necessary infrastructure for even modest systems will be very expensive -- even for Daimler-Benz! -- and has not been built yet. Until they (or some other body) do that then we really do not know what the real figures will be.
However, the essential point to make is to repeat what I was saying to Ed -- and on which Lovins agrees by implication -- that the cost of a hydrogen economy (if the hydrogen is derived from fossil fuels) has a fixed relationship with the cost of our present fossil-fuel economy. In other words, as the cost of fossil fuels goes up, so will the cost of hydrogen/fuel cell technology. (Without being too doomsterish it might also be said that if the cost of fossil fuels starts going up exponentially in times of scarcity, so will the cost of hydrogen. Even if the rate is different it will still be hard to adjust to if we rely solely on fossil fuels or hydrogen derived from fossil fuels. It doesn't really matter whether Lovins' theoretical figures or my gvuesswork are more accurate -- costs will still shoot up. It might also be mentioned that if resources such as the Athabasca tar sands become economic to develop -- as they undoubtedly will be -- their prices will also start going up exponentially unless and until it became a very large world supplier of a size equivalent to the traditional oil fields. The costs of gasoline-at-the-pump derived from tar sands would take decades, perhaps a century, to reach its a stable price.
Amory Lovins book "Small is Profitable" is an amazing piece of work (and cost me £80 -- US$120!) and I have nothing but admiration for the precision and detail of his work. He is also making out a very powerful case (for the decentralisation of electricity production and other aspects of energy technology) with which I would agree in principle (and, indeed, which I think will come to pass in the longer term future). However, if his figures are to be accepted in their entirety and with the accuracy he accords them, then it is surprising that his work and ideas haven't been snapped up by the largest electricity generators or energy corporations. I don't want to appear to be carping, but something doesn't quite add up yet in applying his ideas as widely as might be imagined to the real world.
Incidentally, where you write:
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KEITH - You're a certified chemical engineer [:)]. I think it would be interesting to send your tutorial on the bacterial generation of hydrogen off to Lovins and see what he and the folks at RMI have to say. You might get invited out to Snowmass, CO for a briefing/debriefing!
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I must reply that I am not a certified chemical engineer, but was just a bog-standard industrial chemist (otherwise known as a "bucket chemist" !) -- though I spent most of my later years in quality control management (Massey-Ferguson), mainly of metallurgy and engineering. As to sending my 'tutorial' to the RMI, well the most important point I was making is that the future of the bacterial production of hydrogen is as yet very unclear. It's theoretically sound (and I mentioned the German research which already produces hydrogen at low concentrations from bacteria) but far from being an efficient production system yet. Even Craig Venter -- one of the most prominent genomic scientists on the world -- has no idea at the present time how long it will take to produce even a minimal bacterium that will serve as his 'starter-kit' never mind an all-singing, all-dancing DNA that will produce hydrogen efficiently. I doubt whether anybody at RMI would have anything useful to say about this future technology.
There we are. Even though, as I wrote, I was making guesses as to the thermodynamics efficiencies of making hydrogen from fossil fuels, the case I was making to Ed is still sound.
Just one more point which is rather interesting. The main advantage of bacterial production of hydrogen is that one is tapping directly into the prodigious quantities of energy we receive from sunlight. There's a one-page article in this week's New Scientist about current photovoltaic methods of tapping into solar radiation. And who are putting a lot of money into this technology (rather than fuel cells!)? The oil corporations. Just like Craig Venter, they want to cut out the middlemen and get at solar energy directly!
Keith
At 09:21 04/09/2003 -0700, you wrote (quoting Amory Lovins):
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So why incur these losses to make hydrogen? Because hydrogen's greater end-use efficiency can more than offset the conversion losses, much as an electric heat pump or air conditioner can offset fuel-to-electricity conversion losses by using one unit of electricity to concentrate and deliver several units of heat. That is, conversion losses and costs are tolerable if the resulting form of energy is more efficiently or conveniently usable than the original form,
hence justified by its greater economic value. Making hydrogen can readily achieve this goal.
Crude oil can be more efficiently converted into delivered gasoline than can natural gas into delivered hydrogen. But that's a red herring the difference is far more than offset by the hydrogen's 2-3-fold higher efficiency in running a fuel-cell car than gasoline's in running an engine-driven car.
Using Japanese round numbers from Toyota, 88% of oil at the wellhead ends up as gasoline in your tank, and then 16% of that gasoline energy reaches the wheels of your typical modern car, so the well-to-wheels efficiency is 14%. A gasoline-fueled hybrid-electric car like the 2002 Toyota Prius nearly doubles the gasoline-to-wheels efficiency from 16% to 30% and the overall well-to-wheels efficiency from 14% to 26%.
But locally reforming natural gas can deliver 70% of the gas's wellhead energy into the car's compressed-hydrogen tank. That "meager" conversion efficiency is then more than offset by an advanced fuel-cell drive system's superior 60% efficiency in converting that hydrogen energy into traction, for an overall well-to-wheels efficiency of 42%. That's three times higher than the normal gasoline-engine car's, or 1.5 times higher than the gasoline-hybrid-electric car's.
This helps explain why most automakers see today's gasoline-hybrid cars as a stepping-stone to their ultimate goal - direct-hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
[all notes deleted - SS]
[Copyright © 2003 Rocky Mountain Institute. All rights reserved. www.rmi.org >>>>
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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