[ausev] hydrogen efficiency

[Carey King]

To add to the hydrogen for electric vehicles:
1. I think the Argonne GREET analyses are good places to look for 
well-to-wheel efficiency
2. Hydrogen can be obtained from fossil fuels (coal) and biomass via 
gasification, and if hydrogen storage becomes economically feasible for 
cars with good ranges, then those sources will likely be the source of 
the hydrogen due to better efficiency than electrolysis.  So if you're a 
big company and don't care much about clean energy or climate issues, 
you can get the H2 from coal (think of the FutureGen projects from the 
DOE that were reorganized).  If you do care, you can sequester the CO2 
from the gasification process using biomass or coal/natural gas.

The hybrid FCV Bus at the UT Pickle center gets it's hydrogen from 
methane (e.g. from natural gas). I can't recall the details of the H2 tank.

The winner of the battery storage "EV vs. the H2 storage FCV-EV" battle 
will likely be the one that provides cheapest storage. 

Carey King


Gil Dawson wrote:
> This message has three subsubjects: 1) Capacitors in Austin, 2) 
> Hydrogen in the atmosphere, and 3) A new plea for Production electric 
> cars.
>
>
> 1) Capacitors in Austin
>
> At 2:02 P -0500 6/2/08, Ian Ward wrote:
> >we also have a local company working on potentially amazing capacitors.
>
> In Austin?  Oh, who, Ian?  Tell! Tell!
>
>
> 2) Hydrogen in the atmosphere
>
> At 12:57 P -0500 6/2/08, m. edmund howse wrote:
> >I can't believe hydrogen if set free could escape the atmosphere
>
> You're quite right.  Some does leave* (it's lighter than helium, after 
> all), but most is reabsorbed into the soil or, as you pointed out, 
> recombined into other chemicals.  So much is constantly being 
> generated that there's plenty of hydrogen gas (H2) still here in our 
> atmosphere.
>
> I Googled "hydrogen in the atmosphere" and got several very 
> authoritative-looking papers measuring how much hydrogen gas (H2) is 
> in the atmosphere and how it's changing (automobiles emit a lot.)  
> You're right -- there's tons of hydrogen gas -- H2, not part of any 
> other molecule -- in the atmosphere**.
>
> Helium does get lost to space***, apparently, but then there's much 
> less of it being generated (from radioactive decay.)
>
>
> 3) A new plea for Production electric cars
>
> As we're off topic anyway, I'd like to point out that advances in 
> technology are not needed for us to own electric cars.  Most messages 
> on this list (until this past week) are all about people building 
> electic cars with technology that's on shelves somewhere right now.
>
> Those of us unwilling to do the work to make ourselves a car, however, 
> don't have much in the way of alternatives.  Here's a cool video 
> posted just hours ago that laments this lack in an engaging way:
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVdEKuQR1g
>
>
> --Gil
>
>
> References:
>
> *-Hydrogen is ... the most abundant [element] in the universe...  
> Because hydrogen gas is so light, most of it escaped from the lower 
> atmosphere early in the Earth's history.
>
>    http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1001.php
>
>
> **-The troposphere has an estimated 155 Tg of hydrogen gas:
>    [I think Tg means Teragrams. --Gil]
>
>    http://www.princeton.edu/~chm333/2004/Hydrogen/h2_atmosphere.htm
>
>
> ***-Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe,... makes 
> up about 0.0005% of the earth's atmosphere. This trace amount of 
> helium is not gravitationally bound to the earth and is constantly 
> lost to space.
>
>    http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele002.html
>
>
> --Gil
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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