How much longer?

Jim Logajan wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
The volume thing is a non-issue with metal hydride tanks as well as
the safety issue.

The information I've found on metal hydrides is not nearly so
optimistic. Allegedly about 4 times heavier per unit of energy than
gasoline and many of the known metal hydrides (e.g. lithium)
themselves being health hazards.


Well, they're tanked for life and like for like the crap that's in
modern gasoline is probably worse. Metal hydrides are heavy, no doubt
about it. Very heavy. Too heavy for airplanes, certainly. There's a
number of hydride combinations that look to improve on that. They do
provide a practical way of carrying H2 safely in a reasonable volume,
though. I'd be a lot more comfortable driving a car so equipped than an
H2 powered car with a simple pressure tank. They have another drawback
as well. Temperature. The hydrides only release the H2 at a usable rate
when the temperature in the tank is high enough. How high depends on the
hydrides used, but it's warmer than ambient most of the year. So you
need to heat it up a bit. Not a big problem, but it is an added
complication.


Bertie

cavedweller wrote:
On Apr 9, 3:05 pm, wrote:
cavedweller wrote:

The engineering problem for wide spread use is hydrogen embrittlement.

For instance?

For instance the only existing distribution plumbing that will handle
hydrogen is on liquid hydrogen trucks; you can't run it down existing
gas pipe lines.

Hmmmm. I see that I should have asked rather "Of what?" (relative to
hydrogen embrittlement)

If you want to use hydrogen on a large scale, you have to have some
way to distribute it such as is done with natural gas. Huge fleets of
liquid hydrogen tankers isn't going to cut it.

Because of hydrogen embrittlement, any such distribution system will
have to be built starting from zero as no existing system can handle
hydrogen and building such a system will be both an engineering and
economic challenge.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

Martin Hotze wrote:
romeomike schrieb:
A bigger reason that new oil refineries aren't being built, as well as
nuclear waste facilities, is that no one wants one near his playground.

So maybe Jay should jump in and start a petition (he is good in such
things) for an oil raffinery close to his hotel and to the airport and a
nuclear power plant close to his home.

#m

No, he'd want some environmentalists to come use all those regulations
he detests to save HIS environment.

Jim Logajan wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
The volume thing is a non-issue with metal hydride tanks as well as
the safety issue.

The information I've found on metal hydrides is not nearly so
optimistic. Allegedly about 4 times heavier per unit of energy than
gasoline and many of the known metal hydrides (e.g. lithium)
themselves being health hazards.

One other issue with metal hydrides for storage of hydrogen is the energy
needed to load/unload them. The loading with hydrogen is an exotherm
process, while refuelling your typical family car in 5-10 minutes for a
range of 300 miles (comparable to a liquid hydrocarbon fuel), you would have
to dissipate around 400 kW of heat energy. To retrive the hydrogen, you have
to put that same energy back into the storage unit by heating it.

regards,
Friedrich

On Apr 9, 5:15 pm, wrote:


Hmmmm. I see that I should have asked rather "Of what?" (relative to
hydrogen embrittlement)

If you want to use hydrogen on a large scale, you have to have some
way to distribute it such as is done with natural gas. Huge fleets of
liquid hydrogen tankers isn't going to cut it.

Because of hydrogen embrittlement, any such distribution system will
have to be built starting from zero as no existing system can handle
hydrogen and building such a system will be both an engineering and
economic challenge.

'mkay..

I'm well aware of the phenomenon related to hardened steels and
electroplating, but have no experience with embrittlement effects on
pipeline type steels (other than extreme cold) and was intrigued to
learn that Hydrogen was a concern.

On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:38:30 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

You can't blame environmentalists for everything you don't like. Over the
last almost eight years I haven't noticed any environmentalists running
the show in Washington. Quite the opposite, in fact, but the price of oil
continues to climb, obviously due to factors other than your phantom
environmentalists.

Reality check he Politicians in Washington don't run the country --
bureaucrats (who persist from election cycle to election cycle) do.
Whether it's Republicrats or Democrans matters not, in the short term.

Over the last forty years, environmentalists have innocently and quietly
influenced the wording and structure of our regulations in a way that has
ultimately made it quite impossible to address our current energy issues.
It's all been innocuous, and "for the children" -- but it's completely
hog-tied us now that we really ARE in an energy bind.

Horse hockey.

We've painted ourselves into a corner by building an economy based on
unrenewable, cheap energy.


Which, of course, anyone who knows the "Law of Unintended Consequences"
predicted long ago.

Anyone knowing the law of supply and demand, you mean.

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 19:58:20 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Where's he off about hydrogen?




Well, he dismisses it pretty much out of hand for all the wrong reasons.
The volume thing is a non-issue with metal hydride tanks as well as the
safety issue.

Seems like a non-starter for a number of other reasons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel


I only mention it because it calls into question the rest
of his article in my mind. If half of what he says about algae based
diesel is true, though, it sounds very promising.
In any case, there are a number of potential sources of fuels that have
recently become cheaper options than petro-chemical fuels. All it takes
now is a little education and a little will to get moving on them.

Yes, and the removal of oil men from high office in the U. S.

Dan Luke wrote in
:

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 19:58:20 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Where's he off about hydrogen?




Well, he dismisses it pretty much out of hand for all the wrong
reasons.
The volume thing is a non-issue with metal hydride tanks as well as
the
safety issue.

Seems like a non-starter for a number of other reasons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel

Well, if it were al we had it would certainly be made to work. Hell, f
all we had was wound up rubber bands that technology would be a lot
further along as well.


I only mention it because it calls into question the rest
of his article in my mind. If half of what he says about algae based
diesel is true, though, it sounds very promising.
In any case, there are a number of potential sources of fuels that
have
recently become cheaper options than petro-chemical fuels. All it
takes
now is a little education and a little will to get moving on them.

Yes, and the removal of oil men from high office in the U. S.

That would go hand in hand with education!


Bertie

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 01:30:03 +0200 (CEST), Nomen Nescio wrote:



You sound like another MX sockpuppet.
Or worse, you just think like him.

Hee-hee!

****.

Right. And would you want that unregulated refinery built upwind from
your hotel?? Didn't think so.

Ah, yes -- another person who apparently hasn't flown over most of the
country -- which, by the way is almost entirely VACANT. Of course you
wouldn't build a refinery in a populated area.

It's too bad all those existing refineries were shut down. It would
be a lot easier to expand those than to build new ones. By the way,
from 1975 to 2000 the EPA received exactly 1 permit request for a new
refinery. The oil companies haven't exactly been tripping over
themselves trying to build new capacity.

Wow, talk about confusing "effect" with "cause"! The plain and simple
reason there have been almost no applications is because the draconian
environmental rules have made building a new refinery a multi-billion-dollar
nightmare of paperwork, hearings, and a never-ending web of interlocking
regulations that would keep a fleet of lawyers busy for decades.

What new American oil fields have they been prevented from developing?

Here's a quote from 2005 -- when oil was at "record prices of $50/barrel":
************************************************** ************************************************** *********************
"America has no shortage of oil. Washington has a shortage
of political will to let American workers go get it."
- Chairman Richard W. Pombo

Washington, DC - As oil prices climb to record highs above $50 per barrel,
some have asserted that we are "running out" of this resource. In truth, we
are not running out of oil in America. We can safely increase domestic
production by at least 17.2 million barrels per day by 2025.

"America has no shortage of oil for the foreseeable future," House Resources
Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) said. "Washington has a shortage
of the political will required to let American workers go get it. We have
not increased domestic supply in thirty years. As a result, our dependence
on foreign oil has skyrocketed to the point where we are sending $200
billion overseas to import this resource every year. At least a fraction of
that sum should be spent at home to increase supply, lower prices, and
create jobs."
************************************************** ************************************************** *********************
You might want to check this DOE document, which was the source of his
information: http://tinyurl.com/5fv3nj
It's even more pertinent today than it was in 2005.

Here again, from 1978 until 2007 the NRC received exactly zero
requests for nuclear plant permits. The problem isn't that the
industry is getting turned down. The industry isn't trying to build
new plants. The reason is that nuclear plants are so hideously
expensive, and the payback period is so long, that it is a huge
financial risk to build them.

Again, you've got the cart in front of the horse. The reason reactor costs
are prohibitive isn't because the technology is any big deal -- just check
out the way the Navy builds reactors for the fleet, without incident -- but
because the regulation of domestic reactors has been made purposefully so
convoluted that they CAN'T be built without literally spending years in
court, supporting another fleet of lawyers.

But before we ramp up the use of these, we need to
have a solution for long-term (10,000 years) storage of the
radioactive waste. Right now it's just sitting around at the existing
plants.

Another environmentalist-induced catastrophe waiting to happen. The safe
nuclear waste storage facility has been built (at a cost of billion$) and
has been ready for years -- but "environmentalists" (and I use the term
loosely) have the whole concept of long-term storage tied up in an endless
series of lawsuits. So, all of our ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear
waste continue to be stored unsafely at each power plant. It's criminal.

Sounds good, but where do you get the hydrogen??

Why, from the newly-built plethora of safe, non-polluting nuke plants that I
(as King) decreed -- of course!

:-)

I can see that you really want to believe that it is environmental
regulations that are causing these problems. That gives you a nice
boogey man you can rail against. But it is more complicated than
that.

I didn't say environmental regulations are "causing" the problems -- I said
over-regulation has made the problems virtually unsolvable. Bottom line:
Until these onerous agenda-driven regulations are relaxed, we will continue
to see our economy thrashed by ever-increasing energy costs.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"