Wind to Hydrogen Project Kicks Off

[jpak]

http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=8896

It could potentially change the way we live, and provide an alternative to gasoline. North Dakota is now home to the first hydrogen fueling site in the nation at Minot. It will convert wind to hydrogen for energy use.

The Wind to Hydrogen project is full of hope...A hope to convert wind to hydrogen that can be used in, among other things, power vehicles and as a different way to create electricity.

U.S. Senator, Byron Dorgan (D, ND), says, "We`re on the trail of billions of dollars of research for hydrogen and fuel cells, because we believe that will be America`s future fuel. And it will allow us to be independent of the need to ask the Saudi`s, and the Kuwaiti`s and others if we can buy some of their oil. I hope at some point we`re able to say, `We don`t need your oil`."

Dorgan is funding the project through the U.S. Department of Energy`s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Division. The project will cost $2 million. Several energy companies and research institutions are teaming together to make this all possible.

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[Gregorian]

1. Why not just wind to electricity?

I keep wondering why this hydrogen thing won't go away. It just seems like an unnecessary process.

[krispos42]

3. Can't fill up a car on electricity like you can other fuels.

Takes hours to charge up a battery. If you pay at the pump, maybe five minutes for gas, diesel, E85, hydrogen, propane, LNG, or anything else they can come up with.

That's why.

And existing internal-combustion engines can also burn hydrogen as a fuel, so the automakers will not have to scrap the billions invested in engine research, development, and production lines.

Or we can run the hydrogen through a fuel cell and go over to all-electric cars.

The other thing is that the states with the greatest wind-production potential have sparse populations and as a result a sparse power grid. The system simply can't handle moving the megawatts from South Dakota (population 780,000) to, say, the Twin Cities (2.8 million in the Metro area).

[jpak]

4. Hydrogen can also be used as a storage medium for wind farms

Fuel cells would be used to produce electricity when required...

[krispos42]

6. True, that

I just always figured that, if you can't pump it into the grid directly, use it to distill ethanol instead of the LNG and coal they are using now.

[NNadir]

16. Like Utsira?

I believe you were here telling us about the wonders of Utsira a few years ago.

The last time I looked, Norway was still pumping dangerous fossil fuels out of the North Sea and still powering 10 houses with wind based hydrogen.

You told us it was the greatest thing in the world several years ago.

How many huge hydrogen wind plants has Norway now under construction?

Here's a report on the wonderful ten houses powered by wind based hydrogen from March 2003:

https://www.hfpeurope.org/uploads/699/808/UTSIRA.pdf

It would seem that the data was in two years ago.

Some facets of the wonderful experiment according to the company that ran it:

1. Wind power production
is decreasing
2. Demand exceeds supply
3. The flywheel covers deficit
for a short time until
4. H2-power starts and runs
(until wind is back)

The, um, challenges:

Marketing.

You are here, I believe, to do the marketing. How's the sales of wind/hydrogen systems? Any big orders?

You're not here to tell us that those billions of dollars are going to be spent on marketing are you?

The big deal seems to be an extension to 2008. If it worked so well, one would think it would be extended forever, no?

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydro_to_extend.html

How long do you guys in the marketing department estimate that it will take to produce the first exajoule of wind based hydrogen?

Hydro and its partner Enercon have decided to extend their combined wind power and hydrogen facility on Utsira until spring 2008. The demonstration project on the island Utsira off the coast of western Norway started operating in summer 2004 and was originally scheduled to run two years.

Two wind turbines at the combined wind and hydrogen plant on Utsira produce power for 10 households.

Let me guess. You're planning on it for 2050, no?

We'll check back with you in another generation or so, if any of us are still alive.

[Gregorian]

7. I don't buy that.

We're working on fast charging batteries.

There's no good reason to use hydrogen. Especially when there is no infrastructure.

And I see no reason to design for new technologies that we're trying to aim towards. I mean, we're working batteries, ultimately, not hydrogen storage.

Mark my words, if this happens, other than using as a storage medium, it will not be around long. Not unless we magically discover a way to create hydrogen easily.

[jpak]

8. That's the whole point of this project - to produce hydrogen easily

Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen IS easy and efficient (>80% of the electricity used is converted to hydrogen chemical energy).

Hydrogen storage is even easier - low pressure tanks on- or off-site. Existing propane tanks could be used.

[Gregorian]

10. Here's the bottom line.

Ultimately one converts the hydrogen into electricity. Am I wrong about that?

And so it goes that there is one more step in the process, when hydrogen is introduced. Another complexity. Storage, conversion of the hydrogen to electricity, conversion of electricity to hydrogen through hydrolysis, and the losses involved.

It's an unnecessary step.

I am just not seeing why people are going in this direction. And I'm not some novice. I'm a mechanical engineer who took courses in thermodynamics. There are so may people falling in love with hydrogen, and I really can't figure out why. I even abandoned a project I was working on over this. A fuel cell powered hot water heater. I got the patents for the guy, and then finally told him this very stuff we're talking about. And I guarantee his company is going nowhere. Photovoltaics and a resistance heating element. Done.

[krispos42]

12. New nuclear reactors can boost that even higher

<snip>

Starting next year, both China and South Africa intend to build full-scale prototype pebble beds based on a design developed in Germany in the 1960s. However, the concept being considered in Idaho will produce hotter gas. “The Chinese and South African reactors will be close to 1550 F,” says Weaver, who is coordinating the pebble-bed program in Idaho, “and we want 1650 to 1830 F. Those 100 degrees can make a huge difference.” The extra heat will run the electricity-generating turbines more efficiently, and--crucially--meet the threshold for efficiently generating hydrogen from water.

Hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas by a process called steam reformation, which releases 74 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. As a cleaner alternative, researchers are trying to figure out the best way to split the H from H2O. A team at Idaho National Lab recently showed that electrolysis--using electricity to split the water molecule--is nearly twice as efficient at the high temperatures made possible by a pebble-bed reactor.

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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/3760347.html?page=4

<boldface mine>

Of course, doubling the efficiency of the process would imply that the regular elecrolysis process is less than 50% efficient.

I guess it would ultimately depend on the method employed for converting the hydrogen back into energy, either via direct combustion or a fuel cell.

[jpak]

21. The 2 protype hydrogen producing reactors under development (500 and 250 kW)

will cost 1.2 billion dollars.

"Regular" electrolysis is >80% efficient - and using wind power is a *whole* lot cheaper than nuclear.

[Blackbird_Highway]

15. No It's Not Nearly That Efficient

Converting electricity to hydrogen is only about 50% efficient. Converting the hydrogen back into useful work is only about 50%. The total is only about 25%. The whole process is woefully wasteful. The amout of hydrogen you can store in a car will only get you about 40 miles, so plan on refueling a lot. There will never be a practical hydrogen car.

The modern lithium battery is 99.9% efficient. An electric motor is about 90%.

How long does it take to charge your cell phone? Do you plug it in and sit and wait for it, or do you plug it in at night and it recharges while you sleep? Same with the electric car. You start out each day with a full charge, ready to go. It's much less hassle than stopping at a gas, (or other fuel) station.

Big Corp. doesn't like you to plug in, they want you to fill up. More profit that way.

[krispos42]

9. "Working on"... is the operative phrase

And then there is mass-production, including the satifying of the exploding Chinese and Indian consumer markets for automobiles while replacing the hundreds of millions of cars currently on the road in America and Europe.

Hell, we can't even get lithium-ion batteries in our cars yet, and we've been running laptops, PDAs, Blackberries, laptops, and portable power tools on them for years.

Nuclear fusion can create hydrogen easily via electricity, simply because hydrogen fusion power is essentially pollution-free, safe, and has unlimited potential.

I personally think we need to make the car I described in my Journal and use the wind power in the Midwest to make E85 for the auxillary engines to run on. E85 has a higher octane than pump gas, so the engines can use a higher compression ratio to get a higher thermodynamic efficiency and to partially mitigate the lower energy per gallon of ethanol. Midwest wind and corn (and hopefully one day hemp and switchgress) make ethanol to burn when the cars can't be plugged in.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/krispos42/2

[Gregorian]

11. Even so. Here's a simple solution.

Interchangeable batteries. You drive up to the station and they pull yours out and slip another in. That's a lot easier than taking the totally unnecessary steps of creating hydrogen, storing it, and then converting it back to the thing you already have- electricity.

Actually I admit that is a stupid solution. Every design has it's complexities. But I'm arguing from a very basic point. No, stations aren't going to have thousands of already charged batteries on hand. However, that doesn't differ very much from stations having tanks of hydrogen. My point is far more basic.

[krispos42]

13. And it just might work, too

They already do that with propane tanks now. You don't 'own' your own tank anymore. You take your empty to a station, drop it off, and for like $18 get a different, full tank. I think the very first tank you buy is like $40.

The problem is that the car manufacturers would want to make different sized batteries to fit into the nooks and crannies of otherwise-empty space in the bowels of the cars to get more total capacity.

But standardization can maybe overcome that. Something to think about, right?

[oldhippie]

17. Huh?

"Nuclear fusion can create hydrogen easily via electricity, simply because hydrogen fusion power is essentially pollution-free, safe, and has unlimited potential."

I REALLY hope you realize that you meant "electrolysis" and not "nuclear fusion." The only fusion reactor in the neighborhood is 93 million miles away, does not have "unlimited" potential, and doesn't create hydrogen. Uh, it actually kinda destroys hydrogen while turning it into helium. Chemistry and physics refresher class, pehaps? ;-)

[krispos42]

18. "Via electricity"

Nuclear fusion reactor heats water.

Pressurized superheated water flashes to steam in a turbine.

Steam turns turbine.

Turbine turns generator.

Generator makes electricity.

Electricity (direct current) flows through saltwater.

Hydrogen forms at the cathode, oxygen at the anode.

Oxygen is bottled and sold.

Hydrogen is filtered. Deuterium or tritium is diverted to be used as fuel for the fusion reaction Regular hydrogen is sold as a motor fuel.

How's that?

It is effectively unlimited because we have uncountable billions of cubic miles of seawater to play with. The technology is not limited to a fossil fuel or the agricultural output of the Great Plains.

We just have to get off of our asses and do it instead of drilling in Anwar.

[oldhippie]

19. You still don't get it.......

Where are you going to get your "nuclear fusion reactor"? Which uses hydrogen for fuel, by the way. So you are going to use hydrogen as fuel to produce hydrogen for fuel? Perpetual motion, anyone?

If you had said "nuclear fission reactor" you would have been correct. Is that what you really meant?

[krispos42]

20. No, I mean nuclear fusion

It is the only long-term solution to our energy needs. Which is why, of course, Newt Gingrinch and the GOP slashed federal funding for nuclear research fission after the Republican Revolution about a decade ago. Can't mess up Big Oil and all that, yanno...

I know we don't have viable commercial fusion yet. But we can, if we start throwing serious money, engineering, science, and brainpower at it. The money we're spending on Iraq probably could have done it. The Europeans are making the effort, while we're busy trying to rape away a country's oil.

The energy we get from a fusion reaction, per kilogram, is a lot more than we get from a chemical reaction. So a kilogram of hydrogen, fused, will create enough energy to make many kilograms of hydrogen by elecrolysis. So that's not an issue.

Until we have that, we're going to be burning far to many fossil fuels at too many dollars per kilowatt-hour and fighting too many wars for those fuels.

[kestrel91316]

22. If some locale in ND perhaps wants to make wind-generated hydrogen for

use locally by hydrogen-powered farm equipment to grow the nation's wheat crop, you have a problem with that?

There's no need to keep thinking inside that tiny little box......

[razzleberry]

23. energy density of gaseous hydrogen is a joke

hydrogen as fuel for a vehicle ,is wishful thinking.
much better would be natural gas

[krispos42]

2. A good start, but...

It would probably have a greater reduction in CO2 emissions if they just pumped that juice directly into the grid to reduce the consumption of coal.

However, North Dakota is far from being considered a 'crowded' state, and the power grid may not be suitable. If that is true, and it probably is, then the second-best thing they could do is to use that electric power to distill ethanol, instead of buring natural gas and coal, like they do now.

Turn prairie wind power into liquid ethanol power that can be exported on a truck or a train, rather than spending billions upgrading the electrical grid.

Once we get nuclear fusion, we'll have plenty of juice to make all they hydrogen we need to power our cars, and losing 60% of the fusion energy to make hydrogen doesn't matter, since fusion power is non-polluting and limitless.

[silverweb]

5. Good news.

I hope the project is a wild success and there are lots of clones!

[IDemo]

14. The best storage solution ultimately will be V2G

Vehicle to Grid

Vehicle to Grid Power as Wind Storage (pdf)

V2G Gaining Momentum

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. Wind Energy and Production of Hydrogen and Electricity — Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39534.pdf

...

Conclusion

Hydrogen produced from wind electricity appears to have potential to meet the DOE HFC&IT program goals. If aggregate wind electricity is available at the filling station for 0.038/kWh, it is possible for production, compression, and storage to cost below the target of $2-3/kg delivered hydrogen. Hydrogen production at the wind site makes fiscal sense if cost reductions offset delivery cost, and cost reductions need to be between $0.27 and $0.70/kilogram to meet the DOE HFC&IT cost targets. Researchers at NREL are working to determine if optimized hydrogen/electricity production applications can help improve the efficiency and costs of renewable hydrogen productions systems.

...

This scenario, is the best of both scenarios examined by the study. (i.e. the electrolysis, wind turbines and filling station are all at the same location.)