But what IS the cost of power ?????
The cost of energy as perceived by the public has no scientific justification
Oil cartel (!!!!)
Taxes
Political manipulation
Ignorance
Emotion
Environmental and social impact
JAKARTA (AFP) –
Les négociations sur le réchauffement climatique cette semaine à
Bangkok s'inscrivent dans un contexte de critiques sévères contre les
biocarburants, qui ne sont plus désormais considérés comme une
solution miracle.
La combustion d'un carburant issu de la canne à sucre, du maïs ou du
palmier à huile est plus propre que celle d'un carburant fossile.
Mais les experts assurent que la demande en biocarburants entraîne des
effets fâcheux pour l'économie et la sécurité alimentaire mondiales, et
pourrait
finalement
l'environnement.
02/04/2008
causer
davantage
de
mal
que
de
bien
à
"It is widely understood that as populations and
economies grow global demand for energy will
increase, but the hard truth is that energy demand is
accelerating.
Under
a
business-as-usual
scenario
worldwide
energy demand is estimated to grow by 60% over
today's levels.
Demand for energy in China and India alone is
expected to grow at over 3.4% per annum to exceed
5300 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2030."
"If provided by an energy system similar to
today's, that is to say largely using energy from
fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions can be
expected to exceed 14.7 billion tonnes by 2030, an
increase of fifty five percent above current levels.
This would spell imminent disaster for mankind."
"We believe that coal use will increase under any
foreseeable scenario because it is cheap and abundant.
Coal can provide usable energy at a cost of between $1
and $2 per MMBtu compared to $6 to $12 per MMBtu for
oil and natural gas. Moreover, coal resources are
distributed in regions of the world other than the Persian
Gulf, the unstable region that contains the largest
reserves of oil and gas."
"In particular the United States, China and India have
immense coal reserves. For them, as well as for importers
of coal in Europe and East Asia, economics and security
of supply are significant incentives for the continuing use
of coal. Carbon-free technologies, chiefly nuclear and
renewable energy for electricity, will also play an
important role in a carbon-constrained world, but absent a
technological breakthrough that we do not foresee, coal,
in significant quantities, will remain indispensable."
GM awards battery development
contracts for Volt : Detroit, June 5 2007
(Reuters) - General Motors Corp. said on
Tuesday that it had awarded two
advanced battery development contracts
for work on its electric-driven Chevrolet
Volt car.
A division of Germany's Continental AG
and Compact Power Inc., a unit of South
Korea-based LG Chem Ltd. won the
contracts to develop the next-generation
lithium-ion batteries for the Volt.
GM has said it was aiming to build the
mass-market Volt by 2010 if it makes a
battery pack to drive the vehicle cheaply
enough and ensure its safe operation.
.....
The push to develop environmentally
friendly cars is an attempt by GM to
distance itself from its close association
with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, a
reputation executives say has hampered
its sales in some markets.
This misleading nonsense is worth 4 080 000 pages of free web publicity for BMW.
Once the media have convinced the general public that
hydrogen is the key to our energy future, no politician will
dare to claim the opposite.
Search Google for:
"Hydrogen sustainable transport" : 2 470 000 web pages
"Hydrogen inefficient transport" : 511 000 web pages.
How many press articles ask the question where this
marvellous fuel came from, and how much energy was
consumed (elsewhere) to produce it ?
"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to
splitting and dividing all things as a means of
control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be
reminded that, in operational and practical fact,
the medium is the message."
Marshall McLuhan,
University of Toronto, 1964
Four months later, on May 31, 1807, Emperor
Napoleon granted a 15 year patent to Isaac
François de Rivaz, citizen of the Republic of
Valais, for his discovery of the hydrogen-fuelled
Internal Combustion engine. The decree was
published in the October 1807 issue of the
"Bulletin des Lois de l'Empire Français".
For a brief historical introduction, please refer to the
hydrogen page of www.aecono.com. Many thanks to
the personnel of the Archives de l'Etat du Valais, in
Sion, who kindly provided numerical copies of the
1807 patent granted to Isaac de Rivaz, a remarkable
personality who more than 200 years ago invented
the hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine.
Who says science does not pay?
In 1789 Napoleon was elected member of the
French Academy of Sciences
In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and became
First Consul of the French Republic
In 1801 he was appointed President of the
French Academy of Sciences
In 1803 he became Mediator of the Swiss
Republic
In 1804 he crowned himself Emperor of the
French
In 1805 he was crowned King of Italy
Mass
Liquid Vol.
Gas Vol.
kg
l, 1 atm
m3 15°C, 1 atm
1
0.0708
0.0852
14.13
1
1.204
11.74
0.831
1
Hydrogen
para
normal
Any analysis of the hydrogen-vehicle concept
must take into account the steps necessary to
make the hydrogen and then get it into the fuel
tank. And any comparison between hydrogen
vehicles and other existing and potential
technologies must include all steps in the
technology, a process called well-to-wheel
analysis.
From a paper in Mechanical Engineering. The original research cited in
this article was first published in Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1,
Winter 2002 (pp. 51-73).Frank Kreith is ASME's Colorado State Government
Coordinator. R.E. West is professor (emeritus) of chemical engineering at
the University of Colorado.
ABSTRACT : The establishment of a sustainable
energy future is one of the most pressing tasks
of mankind. With the exhaustion of fossil
resources the energy economy will change from
a chemical to an electrical base. This transition is
one of physics, not one of politics. It must be
based on proven technology and existing
engineering experience. The transition process
will take many years and should start soon.
Unfortunately, politics seems to listen to the
advice of visionaries and lobby groups.
Bossel: Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?
Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 94, No. 10, October 2006
Hydrogen for Energy Storage? – Probably, but not in my Car,
and preferably not in yours either.
Thomas R. Govers
Aecono Consulting
59, rue de Prony, 75017 Paris, France
www.aecono.com
(Presented as "Hot Topic" at SASP 2008, Les Diablerets, Switzerland, January 2025, 2008)
http://sasp2008.epfl.ch/
Air Liquide's LH2 plant at Waziers, in the North of France
10 Ton = 141 300 liter LH2 = 117 400 m3 GH2 per day
1 000 000 small car km per day
Louis Schlapbach & Andreas Züttel,
Nature 414 (2001) 353 – 358
Courtesy Toyota
Note: autonomy of a diesel car to-day most often exceeds 1000 km
As access to oil and natural gas becomes more difficult
and costly, hydrogen will increasingly be produced by
gasification of coal under the form of syngas (a mixture of
hydrogen and CO) which is burned in a gas turbine to
drive an electricity generator. Such IGCC (Integrated
Gasification Combined Cycle) technology can also be
fuelled by asphalt, refinery waste or petroleum coke. The
syngas
can
also
be
converted
by
Fisher-Tropsch
technology to produce synthetic high-quality diesel fuel,
naphtha, LPG and methanol. The methanol can be used as
base chemical, it can power fuel cell vehicles, or it can be
upgraded to high-octane gasoline.
Coal-based
power
generation
and
fuel
synthesis,
however, generate large amounts of CO2, and are
sustainable only if the carbon dioxide is efficiently
captured and sequestered. Industrial sites that integrate
coal gasification, power generation and the production of
syngas-derived chemicals with reliable sequestration of
CO2 will provide opportunities for buffering electric
power requirements through large-scale storage of
hydrogen. Such storage facilities may also serve to fuel
buses and other transportation vehicles for which the low
energy to volume ratio of hydrogen is not as serious a
problem as for private cars.
http://www.hyweb.de/Knowledge/w-i-energiew-eng4.html
The British chemical concern ICI stores hydrogen in three
brine compensated salt caverns in Teeside, England. The
hydrogen is stored at pressures up to 50 bar in these up to
366 m deep caverns. From 1957 until 1974, GAZ DE
FRANCE stored towngas with a 50% hydrogen content
without problem in a 330 Mio. m3 aquifer storage. This
underground hydrogen storage method is about two
orders of magnitude cheaper than tank storage.
http://www.h2cars.biz/artman/publish/article_152.shtml
Madrid, Spain; partners are Air Liquide, Gaz Natural, Repsol YPF and EMT
Madrid; hydrogen is produced onsite from natural gas by a Carbotech compact
reformer, H2 back-up supply is provided by CGH2 tube trailers from chemical byproduct generation, This is the first CUTE station to become operative by
APR2003 (http://www.h2cars.de/filling/h2fueling.html)
High-energy career lines
Virginia Gewin, Nature 434, 936-937 (14 April 2005)
In
addition,
safety
precautions
required
by
the
characteristics of hydrogen (low ignition energy, broad
flammability
range,
risk
of
destructive
shock-wave
detonation when confined) will be more reliably mastered
in an industrial site than at a highway gas station.
Preparing a possible future for hydrogen as an energy
carrier, I would argue, does not require highway filling
stations, but technology for large-scale sequestration of
CO2, development of industrial fuel cells and efficient
electrolysers for power buffering, and large-scale, safe
storage of hydrogen that preferably avoids energyintensive liquefaction.
Thanks for your interest !