OT: "Science" on the other side of the pond

It's being promoted in the USA, too. Looks like an expensive, wimpy car.

Hydrogen cars are crazy. Where is the hydrogen going to come from?

(answer: natural gas, inefficiently)

You can at least charge an electric car from an outlet, even though it may take overnight. Where are you going to get a hydrogen refill in the wilds of Montana?

It's an article in the Daily Mail, which isn't exactly a quality newspaper

- not that English-language newspaper science journalists are up to much at the best of times.

That's one answer. Electrolysis also works. In the longer term, people are playing around with photosynthesis, and one of the scheme produces hydrogen gas from water and sunlight - inefficiently, of course. It's years since I saw the abstract and I've got no idea where I saw it.

By the same argument, the gasoline-powered car would never have replaced th e horse.

The best way to store hydrogen is to attach it to carbon.

Not only that but when you make the hydrogen from natural gas, you throw away all the energy contained in the carbon. And, the carbon just goes to make CO2.

Not to mention the ~80% energy content associated with said carbon.

The best way to pump carbon is to attach it to hydrogen!

What we need is a cheap, open, highly efficient catalyst that converts primary energy sources plus atmospheric CO2 and H2O into O2 and hydro[xy]carbons (even simple ones like formic acid, formaldehyde or methanol).

Plants are dreadfully slow, inefficient, picky, susceptible to disease, and require loads of nutrients. They use sun and air directly, which is a plus. They're also edible, unlike most industrial products, so they're better suited to that purpose than for use as industrial feedstocks.

Electrolytic processes are already known; but they are inefficient (I think it's the electrolytic reduction of carbonate to formate, then further reduction or disproportionation to methanol, that has a ~2% overall efficiency).

There was one announcement about a highly efficient (~80%) process, but I haven't heard more about it.

A method to work directly from thermal means (geothermal, nuclear, really poor grade chemical fuels?) might be handy, too. Solar and electric are probably the most likely and/or practical, at least in the lab.

Tim

That does make it hard to get it back. Attaching hydrogen to nitrogen - making ammonia - is actually slightly endothermic, so it's a lot easier to get the hydrogen back, and ammonia is a lot easier to liquify than hydrogen.

Diborane is even more endothermic, and rather harder to liquify than ammonia, not to mention it's thoroughly nasty characteristics.

Or invent a car that runs on coal.

We are blessed with all those hydrocarbons underground, enormous quantities and fairly easy to extract. Civilization runs on fossil fuels.

Jim Thompson blogged:

Did you actually READ the article? Or just look at the pictures.

What I like on this side of the pond, away from your racist unrest, fascist supporting military industrial complex that is busy destroying country after country, is that government that...

Well, let me put it this way: The reason US does not have a large WW2 liberation military show is that it would have to include flying a formation of F35s, and that would be too dangerous for them poor blacks standing under it,

That's misleading. Firstly, CH4 (methane, 'natural gas' component) has lots of energy, but there's no way to burn it to oxidize the hydrogen and leave C residue (nor to burn it to oxidize the C and leave 'H4'). The association of its stored energy with one atomic species or the other is ... specious. One ought not believe the "80%" number. C, however DOES constitute 75% of the mass of that molecule.

Hydrogen is safe to handle, transport, store, in a variety of forms. Intercalation compounds (solids with spongelike absorption capacity) are the winning storage scheme so far.

Fuel cell 'burning' of hydrogen is far more efficient than any combustion engine. are

The best way to separate hydrogen from carbon is to burn it.

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It's been done. During WW2 the English had cars that had a water-gas genera tor in a trailer, and a flexible pipe to route the water-gas into the carbu retor.

Not terribly convenient - water gas generators are slow starting - but bett er than nothing.

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Civilisation has got underway on fossil fuels. You should be able to run ou r civilisation on solar power alone. If we don't get on with making the swi tch, we are going to have to rebuild all our coastal cities once we've pers uaded the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to slide off into the oce an (as the Canadian ice sheet did at the end of the last ice age).

If we can't manage that, we haven't got much of a civilisation, and what we 've got will deservedly go all the way down the tubes when stocks of econom ically accessible fossil carbon run out in a few hundred years.

John Larkin can't get his head around anthropogenic global warming as a thr eat - although it's going to be more of a problem than sea-level rise, and sooner - so we won't go into that here.

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That's what most of the electric cars do here, and it makes perfect sense

The local coal fired power plant is remarkably efficients even more so when the excess heat is used for district heating. The smoke is washed and filt ered so it is probably cleaner than what comes out of a gasoline powered ca r. And it isn't put out right in the city where people live.

afaict the overall efficiency of generating electricity from coal, charging batteries and running electric motor comes out to about the same as using g asoline to power a car

-Lasse

The artificial Leaf;

It just seems there is or will be a bacteria, that as a by product of life produces hydrogen. Billions and billions. Mikek

That doesn't seem right

Sylvia.

e playing around with photosynthesis, and one of the scheme produces hydrog en gas from water and sunlight - inefficiently, of course. It's years since I saw the abstract and I've got no idea where I saw it.

Bill, what do you think about this process, specifically the high-temp electrolysis? (see process diagram)

Audi's press release:

Detailed description:

Most of the diesel process looks like hype--e.g., they use biogas as feedstock(?)--but the 70% efficient energy storage claim suggests that, by any stretch, the electrolysis would have to be unusually efficient.

If true, that supplies hydrogen.

They also say it's 'reversible'--they can turn H2 into electricity.

Cheers, James Arthur

That's OK, if you (sensibly) ignore the CO2 delta. But electric cars are slow to charge, short range, don't work well in cold weather, and need a few tens of kilobucks of batteries now and then.

The gasoline powered car is not something that needs to be fixed.

I think there will be used-car lots (and junkyards) glutted with Teslas and Leafs in a few years.

are playing around with photosynthesis, and one of the scheme produces hydr ogen gas from water and sunlight - inefficiently, of course. It's years sin ce I saw the abstract and I've got no idea where I saw it.

It's a press release. There's no information there. The Germans made quite a lot of oil from coal during WW2, and it sounds as if somebody has revived the process to work with biomass rather than coal. The "70%" refers to the process as a whole, which leaves room for a lot of fudging.

Heating to 800C gets the water a lot hotter than is required to turn it int o steam, and seems to be at the bottom end of the region where enough of it is dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen. It sounds more like a process for making "water gas" which is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

It's a press release. I'm sure it was checked by a lawyer to make sure that it didn't actually say anything meaningful.

Fuels cells have been turning hydrogen into electricity for most of my adul t life. You need to throw in oxygen to make a fuel cell work.

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hen the excess heat is used for district heating. The smoke is washed and f iltered so it is probably cleaner than what comes out of a gasoline powered car.

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g gasoline to power a car

But the CO2 it emits is a problem, even if you lack the scientific training to appreciate why.

You are betting that anthropogenic global warming isn't going to create rap id sea level rise by persuading the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to slide off into the ocean. That's what happened to the Canadian ice shee t at the end of the last ice age - it didn't have the good grace to melt in place, but rather slid off into the Atlantic where it could raise sea leve ls immediately, and melt when it finally got into a southward flowing curre nt.

The Gulf Steam turned off for 1300+/-70 years around then - presumably aft er the ice had slid away because the interior of North America was a lot co lder during the Younger Dryas. The west antarctic ice sheet would mess up P acific rather than Atlantic ocean currents, which might make life interesti ng in California.

I'm not sure you understand chemical potential.