Steve Firth wrote:
Aidan Stanger wrote:
Steve Firth wrote:
Aidan Stanger wrote:

Even if you believe that it's unlikely to ever become commercially
viable, that does not excuse your assumption that hydrogen generation
will continue to be as environmentally inefficient as it currently is.


Me and Ricardo Engineering eh?

If that is what they're assuming then yes.

They are assuming nothing.

Well in that case, no - 'tis just you.

The lack of fasibility lies in the energetics
of the transformation of the feedstock. This is not going to change,
ever, because it's a physical constant.

I supplied an example of how it is likely to. If and when Iceland (or
somewhere with surplus renewable energy) starts exporting that energy as
hydrogen, your assumption will be disproven regardless of physical
constants.

You appear to be advocating basing your opinions on the assumption that
it will never happen. IMNSHO that isn't a sensible belief.

Why should "belief" replace "evidence"? The only people who do that are
religious fanatics and the hydrogen "economy" appears to the source of a
new religion "cheap clean power for everyone, if only you beleive".

Belief shouldn't replace evidence - that's my point! Your assumptions
are based on beliefs not facts. Even though some of those beliefs are
themselves based on evidence, they're not based on ALL the evidence.

Nor do I claim that they are. However you appear to be short of evidence
yourself. What you have posted above is belief, not evidence. You
beleive that if someone knows ALL the evidence that they will conclude
that hydrogen is a feasible fuel. Fine, you don't even need to post ALL
the evidence, just the relevant part.

You are the one making the claim that the future situation will be the
same as the status quo! I'm merely telling you why I consider that to be
unlikely.

Off you go.

I regard hunting URLs as rather boring, so will not just collect
evidence because you tell me to!

What evidence would be sufficient for you to conceed the point?

I need no excuse for being sceptical of the claims of snake oil
salesmen.

Nor should you.

I need no "belief" in miracle solution to producing hydrogen,
because pysically it simply is not possible.

No, you believe it is not possible. Evidence suggests otherwise, because
places like Iceland have abundant renewable energy that can't be
exported in the conventional way (unless there's an enormous rise in the
cost of electricity, construction of very long undersea electricity
cables is unlikely to ever be profitable). Exporting hydrogen is the
obvious solution for them, and it's not a coincidence that Iceland's
more enthusiastic about the hydrogen economy than any other nation. As
long as there's a demand for it, there will be some hydrogen available.

Care to quanitify what proportion of the world's energy needs can be
produced by Iceland? No, I thought not.

Who said anything about THE WORLD'S energy needs? This is about whether
or not it will be available in the forseeable future, not whether or not
it will gain a large market share.

There's also nuclear energy, where power generation is cheap but the
output can't easily be varied. I believe hydrogen generation is probably
going to be a good way of using up the surplus produced in offpeak
times. You may believe it isn't, but that is just a belief, not a fact.

No, the figures for the cost of generating hydrogen from nuclear fission
wer eone of the issues I addressed early in this futile thread.

I can't find any mention from you. What's the messageID?

It's one of the more expensive options, even using off-peak energy.

The figures for hydrogen production for the next 20 years have been\0
estimated by Ricardo and the DfT. Unless some mystic moonbeam technology

Is electrolysis from geothermal energy a "mystic moonbeam technology"?

Is electrolysis from geothermal:

1) Clean (A: no, there is the evolution of hydroxide radicals and

AIUI those have a pollution-reducing effect (although I'd be very
surprised if the quantity produced were enough to make any measurable
impact anyway).

chlorine to consider,

Obviously the equipment would have to be designed not to emit
significant amounts of chlorine. Do you think this would be a problem?

not to mention the potential for global warming and depletion of the ozone
layer that results from the escape of hydrogen gas during manufacture.
Hydrogen is as significant a greenhouse gas as methane.)

Hydrogen is far more easily oxidized than methane, so won't be around
for as long. As for the ozone layer, do you really think it's a threat?
Although it reacts with ozone, it doesn't catalytically destroy it the
way chlorine monoxide does.

2) Globally significant (A: No. Good luck to those countries with
geothermal energy but on a global scale they represent a tiny fraction
of the world's energy needs.)

Hence my next comment:
appears then it's simply not feasible to rely on a hydrogen economy.

That depends on what you mean by "rely on".

I know as well as you do that hydrogen isn't going to be the main form
of energy distribution. However, I do think people are going to start
using it for certain purposes, of which city buses may be one.

(And no, I don't think we'll ever reach the situation where ALL the
buses are hydrogen powered - 'tis more likely they'll only use them on
the routes where the air pollution levels are highest).

as well as rubbishing/trying to discourage others from
pursuing the research.

I'm not trying to dissuade anyoen from research. However farcical
publicity stunts without any relevant end application such as these
crazy bus scheme do nothing positive.

Why do you not consider running buses on hydrogen to be a "relevant end
application"?

One million quid a bus,

This is only the cost for the prototype. They'd be a lot cheaper once
they got into series production.

The buses in question are costing a million a package,

No, this particular question relates to a relevant end application, not
the trial itself.

it is not a relevant end application

Answer the question: why not?

and it does nothing positive.

IMO reducing pollution in city streets is something positive.

Your belief in what may happen in future is irrelevant to discussion of
the motives for this particular cynical piece of explotation and
manipulation of public perception.

That is merely your belief!

energy costs that are unquantified bu at present hydrogen costs likely to
be ovr 10 times the cost of running a bus on diesel, greater emissions (in
total) than runnign the same bus on diesel.

None of which will be true when hydrogen from renewables becomes readily
available.

Ow, just look at that beleif system click into action. When will this
mythical cheap renewable hydrogen come into being then?

Did I claim I knew??

In what way is this scheme relevant to anythign other than a bit of
advertising and an attempt to shoehorn development costs out of
government (i.e. out of the pockets of the taxpayer)?

It is relevant to understanding the obstcles to the commercialization of
this technology. You seem to think that generating the hydrogen is the
only problem, but that's far from the case.

It is the immovable, unanswerable, unaddressed problem that the
advocates of a hydrogen economy want to ignore.

Not all of them want to ignore it - many of their jobs depend upon it!

It's not research,

Does this mean you think that the results of this trial won't lead to
either a better design of hydrogen bus or an abandonment of the idea?

In what way is doing somethign that we already know is possible, but
economically and environmentally pointless "research"?

Because economic factors change, and in the future it may be worthwhile.
And just because we know something is possible doesn't mean we know how
best to do it. Unforseen problems may take a long time to solve, so it
is sensible to start sooner rather than later.

Answer the question.

I thought I did! I guess I'll have to break it down a bit more so it's
easier for you to digest!

We know it's possible, but finding out what the best way of doing it,
and what the pitfalls to avoid are is research.

The fact that it is currently economically and environmentally pointless
does not mean the research is worthless, because there is a signigicant
chance that the economic and environmental factors will change - there
are certainly a lot of people working on trying to change them.

This is as much research as those people that telephone during
dinnertime and say "I'm doing research on behalf of insert scamming
company here."

These buses won't interrupt your dinner, so what's the problem?

Your failure to understand an analogy is noted.

Your incorrect assumption that I failed to understand an analogy is
noted.

all it is is cynical marketing at its worst.

What IYO makes it "cynical"? Do you regard every publicity stunt as so?

Those responsible for the bus know that it cannot be sold to operators
without massive subsidy.

They're not trying to sell these buses. In the future it is likely that
they will be able to sell hydrogen buses to operators without massive
subsidy.

They are selling the buses. They are obtaining the money fromt he
ockets of public via taxation but the buses are nontheless being sold.

I was under the impression they were being leased.

They know that it's not even a viable form of transport.

They do not yet know under what conditions it will become a viable form
of transport. This trial should help to establish that.

Utter hogwash. This 'trial' is a marketing showcase and nothing more.

Evidence?

They claim environmental benefits while knowign that not only
are there *no* environmental benefits,

The reduction in local pollution on busy city streets is an
environmental benefit.

Not to those of us who live outside cities.

Even they might want to visit some time!

Anyway, surely people don't personally have to benefit from something in
order to consider it an environmental benefit!

It's no more than NIMBY technology, moving the pollution of the city into
the extra-urban environment.

Moving it from where it has a significant impact to where it doesn't.

Besides, as others have pointed out, pollution can more easily be
controlled in fixed locations than in vehicles.

It also saddles those who have no need for such a solution
with the costs of implementing that solution.

Not if those who need a solution are the ones paying.

And it remains not much of a solution.

That's a different issue.

Pollution on city streets is currently represented more by
diesel than by other fuels.

Which supports what I've been saying.

Indeed in my own immediate area,
measurements of urban pollution showed that pollutions was increasing as
cars were removed from the streets by provision of park and ride and
gating the city centre to prevent access by private vehicles.

It's difficult to confirm that data because once it became available,
the local authority pulled all the reports and stopped measuring the
decline in air quality. After all they don't want facts to obscure dogma
do they?

I don't know. Who are your local authority?

but that use of hydrogen as a
fuel is less sustainable and less efficient than use of hydrocarbons.

That only applies to hydrogen generated from hydrocarbons,

No it applies to hydrogen generation from almost any source. It is less
efficient to generate hydrogen then to oxidise it to produce electricty
than it is to use that electricity directly. It is less efficient to
produce hydrogen from a fuel source than it is to use that fuel directly
in the first place.

You are of course correct on that. Sorry, I was trying to make the point
that there are fuel sources for which your statement does not hold true.

and even then it may be possible to do it efficiently (making use of the
heat generated in the process).

We produce waste industrial heat now. Any of our industrial processes
could be made more efficient by re-using that waste heat. yet in general
heat recovery schemes are few and far between. Why should this change
for hydrogen production?

I hope it will change for the other things!

BTW there is another scenario that I think you should consider. IMO it's
unlikely, but since your predictions of future events are so different
to mine, I'm wondering what you'd make of it:

Cheap oil runs out (or at least production peaks and declines). Much of
the remaining oil is very deep and can not be (environmentally or
economically) efficiently extracted. Instead, fuel is made synthetically
using natural gas and a zeolite catalyst. Hydrogen is produced as a
byproduct.

Uh huh, and why should natural gas be more available than oil? In the UK
it looks likely that natural gas supplies will be exhausted before oil
reserves. Although it's a fine margin of error.

AIUI the opposite is the case in Bahrain. And around the world (notably
in Australia and NZ) there are many gasfields that don't produce oil.

Let me put it to you this way:

About 20% of the nation's energy consumption is represented by
transport. The overwhelming majority of energy used goes upon industrial
and space heating requirements. Much of that energy requirement can be
provided by electricity, directly, no need for hydrogen as an
intermediate carrier.

So if we are serious about reducing atmospheric pollution, we don't have
to **** around with hydrogen, all we need to do is to generate all our
electricity without emissions.

True to some extent, but atmospheric pollution is not proportional to
CO2 emissions. Vehicles contribute much more to atmospheric pollution.

That technology exists today, in the form of nuclear energy. So all we
have to do is to stop using natural gas, oil and coal for power
production and to build nuclear. At a stroke (about a five to ten year
development cycle) we would reduce CO2 emissions to the level where we
would have no need to worry about the minority use of fuel in transport.

Indeed, one of your own solutions was electrolysis of water usign
nuclear energy. So why **** about with this energetically unfavourable
process? Just use the electricity where it is needed and save emissions.

Because the output of nuclear reactors can't easily be varied, so if you
rely more on nuclear energy then as well as electricity when you need
it, you get a lot of it when you don't. Hence my suggestion of using the
surplus to generate hydrogen.

However, there may be a better way of doing it. I think thorium reactors
are the way of the future - they give you more control of the process
and don't produce the radioactive waste that conventional fission
reactors do.

They do this "research" in order to gain publicity and public support
from unthinking dupes.

They certainly try to gain publicity from it (as many companies do) but
that tells us nothing about the validity (or otherwise) of the research.

It tells us a great deal, the publicity is more important than the
research.

It tells us the publicity is important. It does not tell us about the
relative importance.

Utter ********. If any body proposes something with as far
reaching consequences as a change to hydrogen as a fuel then they
had better damn well ahve *done* their research.

And there's an awful lot of research to do. This is only a small part.

This is not research.

Have you got any evidence for that claim?

Have you any evidence that it is research?

Not much - just their claim, the fact that it's been officially
accepted, and simple logic (they've got everything set up to do some
reaearch so it would be incredibly stupid for them not to).

Do you have any evidence that their claim is fraudulent?

Not be asking the rest of us to follow along as an act of faith.

Just how exactly are the hydrogen bus builders doing that???

Do keep up.

I'm way ahead of you! I know why you think the hydrogen bus builders are
doing that, but have you actually got any evidence?

sigh Hydrogen, costs more to produce than nydrocarbon fuels, less
energetically efficient to produce than hydrocarbon fuels, results in
greater emissions of CO2 rather than reducign emissions. No prospect of
clean hydrogen in the pipeline in the forseeable future.

That last sentence is your opinion, not evidence.

hence any adoption of hydrogen as a fuel can only be an act of faith and
in the short term more damaging than status quo.

Could you not think that out for yourself?

But nobody's going to buy a fleet of hydrogen buses until that changes.
I see no evidence that they're expecting us to follow along until we
have proof of the viability.

Fuel cells are a diversion from the real issues. Claiming hydrogen
to be "zero emission" is a dioversion from the facts and does the
proponents of a hydrogen economy no favours.

Apart from H2O and heat, there are no emissions - it will actually
reduce the amount of pollution in the air.

Untrue.

Evidence?

[Note that in the article you were replying to, I was referring to
hydrogen use NOT hydrogen generation]

I know you were trying to duck the issue, but you cannot. You cannot
consider point of use in isolation. To do so is the mark of an idiot or
a liar.

Claiming that I cannot consider the point of use and the point of
manufacture separately marks YOU as an idiot or a liar!

Your claim to know that I was trying to duck the issue is a lie. If I
were trying to duck the issue I wouldn't've mentioned it in the very
next sentence! I was making the point that for the purpose of these
trials (which are about how well the buses work) it should be seen as a
separate issue.

Moving pollution elsewhere is not reducign pollution.

Some types of pollution are more of a problem locally than globally.

Again, hogwash. Pollution is pollution.

Ozone is a good counterexample. Near ground level it's pollution, but
higher up it isn't.

How would you measure the cost of pollution?

Hydrogen generation is a different issue. It can be zero emission and I
expect that in the future most of it will be. However, you should
remember that this is only a trial of the hydrogen buses. At this stage
it is best to get hydrogen from the most readily available source,
whatever that is.

It's best to forget the damn things until hydrogen can be manufactured
from renewable or at the very least carbon-neutral sources. Otherwise
it's just ****ing in the wind.

Hydrogen can ALREADY be manufactured from renewable sources!

Yes, yes, of course it can. Where can I buy a cylinder of this mythical
moonbeam hydrogen then?

How should I know? Hydrogen is hydrogen!

AFAIK it's not in commercial production yet, BICBW.