What? You’re a politician? Sheeiiittt!
After the Senate passed a controversial energy bill Tuesday, Rep. Bob Inglis [R] promoted hydrogen as a safe and abundant fuel source that would help wean the United States from imported oil.
Ah yes, safe. It’s so safe, in fact, that it is never used in things like blimps. Now why is that?
Well I’ll let you know if I can remember why hydrogen isn’t considered so safe.
evan Says:
Hydrogen storage technology is rapidly advancing. We are WAY ahead of where we were when the Hindenberg caught fire. Sure, hydrogen is volatile, but it’s on par if not safer than nuclear or fossil alternatives.
The problem I have with Hydrogen is that to extract it we need to expend energy. The savings by going to hydrogren is (I think) minimal. That is, we’ll still need to burn something else to split water into O2 and H. But if that “something” is in the form of a high efficiency turbine, then the efficiency gain is somewhat significant when compared to the average efficiency of a normal car. And if that “something” is nuclear, I think it’s most sensical.
nobrainer Says:
Hydrogen storage is moving quickly upward. If it is stored in a gaseous form, you have to worry not just about storage, but leaks. Whereas you can see gas dripping from a leak, you would probably never notice a H2 leak until there was an explosion.
If using electrolysis to generate H2, and it has to be compressed, you actually end up with a pretty low efficiency.
Here’s part of what I meant to post last week about another method for H2 separation.
Next generation (Gen IV), high-temperature, nuclear reactors can be combined with thermochemical hydrogen production processes to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen through a series of thermally driven chemical reactions. Nuclear fuel and water are the only consumables, and the process generates no air pollutants or greenhouse gases. By avoiding the need to generate electricity prior to water-splitting, thermochemical cycles are the most efficient means of using high temperature heat to produce hydrogen. Heat is needed at 900 to 1000 ºC, and it can be supplied by either solar receivers or high temperature nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors have the advantage of providing continuous heat at very high capacity factors, thus avoiding the need for high temperature energy storage that is necessary for solar approaches to thermochemical hydrogen production.
I imagine Inglis’s love of hydrogen and his proximity to Clemson U. which just got close to a million dollars in grant money to study hydrogen are related.
Actually, after reading the article to which I linked above, I found some more information about the production hydgrogen — all of which I had never been aware of before. I’ll post on that later today.
Errr, well, I’ll post on it later. Anyway, go nukes!