Rex Murphy on Govt Policy toward Bombardier and Jet Fuel

[photofly]

The accepted figure appears to be 33.4kWh / gallon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasolin ... equivalent

A 55 litre tank fillup is nearly 500kWh.

The price for electricity in Toronto is 17 cents/kWh. Let's say my annual electricity usage is $1700, that's 10,000kWh annually, or 20 car fill ups. If I fill my car weekly, my electricity usage is going to go up by 2.5 times.

For that matter, my "electric" fillup is going to cost me $85 per tank, at today's prices.

Not taking into account the losses due to inefficiencies in generating and using the hydrogen, etc.

[B208]

Barring some quantum leap in cold fusion, hydrogen is not a practical source of energy. First off, it does not naturally exist in a usable form; it must be manufactured. This manufacturing will always require more energy than is obtained from burning the H2. Second, it lacks the energy density of other practical fuels. Hydrogen is a dead end. We would be far better off developing bio-diesel or ethanol.

[photofly]

Another interesting factlet: the gas pump that delivers a gallon in 20 seconds is pushing out energy into your car at the rate of 6 megawatts.

[Rockie]

Barring some quantum leap in cold fusion, hydrogen is not a practical source of energy. First off, it does not naturally exist in a usable form; it must be manufactured.

We're getting there. What's required to speed it up is political will to dedicate the necessary resources. By that I mean money.

https://www.iter.org/

[photofly]

You mean higher taxes. No thanks.

[Rockie]

You mean higher taxes. No thanks.

Well in the first place I think unlimited clean energy is a goal worthy of your tax money. Second it's simply a matter of choosing where tax money goes. For instance the US Congressional Budget Office estimates the long term financial cost of the last gulf war (not Afghanistan - just Iraq) at $1.9 trillion. That's Trillion , with a "T". 1 Billion dollars multiplied by 1900.

Which do you think would have better served the world, fusion research or that war?

[photofly]

Unlimited clean energy isn't on offer. It never has been. No matter how much of my money you feel entitled to spend.

[CID]

Barring some quantum leap in cold fusion, hydrogen is not a practical source of energy. First off, it does not naturally exist in a usable form; it must be manufactured.

Unlike gasoline right? Gasoline just pisses up out of the ground. No refining process, no manufacturing process......

Another interesting factlet: the gas pump that delivers a gallon in 20 seconds is pushing out energy into your car at the rate of 6 megawatts.

A watt (even 6 million of them) is not a unit of energy. A litre of gasoline contains about 34 MJ of energy which equates to about 9.5 kW/h which is one of the imperial measures of energy. So if you pump about 15 litres in your tank in 20 seconds you would have pumped fuel with a potential energy of 142 kW/H. I'm not sure where you're getting the "mega" from. An average airliner generator these days puts out about 90Kw (for comparison). So...what's your point? That gasoline is a convenient medium to transport large amounts of energy? It is. Unfortunately, it's environmental impact is huge, it's not sustainable and the viability of producing is tenuous.

Doing simple high level energy comparisons isn't very useful. Hydrogen can be produced from various methods and if for some reason we use electricity to make it, the only challenge is developing more power plants. Right now we are deriving our electricity from many different sources and fuels including coal, oil, hydro, nuclear, thermodynamic, wind, tidal and solar. If there was a bigger market for it, corporations would meet the demand. That's a no brainer.

Converting to a hydrogen economy doesn't mean simply commanding instant change. The infrastructure needs to be built and the consumer products produced. That process is under way already albeit at a small scale. In some parts of the world, hydrogen filling stations are already available for hydrogen powered cars. Even in Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_station

And let's not forget the idea of using solar power hydrogen generators in your yard. No addition to existing power infrastructure on the utility side.

As far as the economic impact on Canada, did you know that the entire energy industry in Canada amounts to about 10% of our GDP but significantly less in percentage in jobs? Bombardier's revenues are a fraction of the oil companies but they manage to employ a much higher number of people in relation to their sales. So where should our money go?

With some government will, the money we're flushing down the oil patch can be used to convert to hydrogen and quickly reap the benifits.

[Rockie]

Unlimited clean energy isn't on offer. It never has been. No matter how much of my money you feel entitled to spend.

Fusion is absolutely clean, it turns small amounts of hydrogen into helium resulting in massive amounts of energy. The biggest consequence of exposure to helium is sounding like Donald Duck.

[photofly]

Father Christmas will be along shortly.

[Rockie]

Did you bother to look at the site I linked Photofly? They've made some remarkable advances recently including igniting hydrogen plasma and suspending it in a magnetic field. Read a bit about it, it's very interesting.

[cgzro]

Doing simple high level energy comparisons isn't very useful. Hydrogen can be produced from various methods and if for some reason we use electricity to make it, the only challenge is developing more power plants.

The comparison tells you N, the mumber of times we must increase over our current generating levels. It is agnostic to how. So N tells you the magnitude of he problem amd helps you plan. Seems very useful to me. N near 1 all good. N more than 2 oops we got work to do, N near 3 or 4 yikes bring in the nukes!

I am not aware of any process to make Hydrogen that uses less energy than the Hydrogen produces when its Oxydized.. and if it existed you could use it to self power and presto there is your infinite source of energy.

[photofly]

Did you bother to look at the site I linked Photofly? They've made some remarkable advances recently including igniting hydrogen plasma and suspending it in a magnetic field. Read a bit about it, it's very interesting.

I visited JET in C u l h a m (that's a town in Oxfordshire, not the author of a tediously crap flight training manual, but apparently it's similar enough to be removed by the software here if written normally), in 1988. They were a scant few years away from free energy, back then, also doing very interesting stuff.

The tooth fairy is alive and well and lives with Rockie.

[cgzro]

They've made some remarkable advances recently including igniting hydrogen plasma and suspending it in a magnetic field. Read a bit about it, it's very interestin

It is, and personally I have no problem with some of my tax money going to a gamble that if it works the payoff is immense and could let us tripple or more our energy supply. Its the 5% gambles that annoy me.

[B208]

Barring some quantum leap in cold fusion, hydrogen is not a practical source of energy. First off, it does not naturally exist in a usable form; it must be manufactured.

Unlike gasoline right? Gasoline just pisses up out of the ground. No refining process, no manufacturing process......

Dude, let's talk some basic chemistry and thermodynamics:

The reaction to burn H2 is this:

2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + energy

If there were large and untapped sources of free hydrogen here on Earth, then hydrogen would be a great fuel. It still could be if you were to build a pipeline to the outer planets, as the gas giants are made up of a large amount of hydrogen. Sadly, hydrogen here on Earth is mostly already bonded to something else; for instance oxygen to form water (like in the example you gave). Here is the equation for getting hydrogen out of water:

2H2O + energy -> 2H2 + O2

I will bring to your attention the law of conservation of energy as applied to a chemical reaction: The energy released when a bond is formed is equal to the energy required to break it. In other words it is physically impossible to get more energy out of burning hydrogen than it took to manufacture the hydrogen in the first place. Couple this with hydrogen's low energy density, (i.e. the hydrogen equivalent of a tank of gasoline would require either cryogenics or a pressure vessel that I sure wouldn't want moving at 120 km/h), and hydrogen is a dead end. Much better to focus on bio-diesel or ethanol.

Another interesting factlet: the gas pump that delivers a gallon in 20 seconds is pushing out energy into your car at the rate of 6 megawatts.

A watt (even 6 million of them) is not a unit of energy.

It's a unit of power, and the fellow that you are quoting used it correctly.

What's required to speed it up is political will to dedicate the necessary resources.

Oh man oh man, you were born on the wrong side of the iron curtain. The Soviets thought everything was a matter of politics; You'd have fit right in. Hell, you would have stood a good chance of running the place.

[B208]

They've made some remarkable advances recently including igniting hydrogen plasma and suspending it in a magnetic field. Read a bit about it, it's very interestin

It is, and personally I have no problem with some of my tax money going to a gamble that if it works the payoff is immense and could let us tripple or more our energy supply. Its the 5% gambles that annoy me.

Well put.

[Rockie]

I don't know what the iron curtain has to do with it B208. Arguably the last really great achievement was putting a man on the moon in under 10 years, and that would not have been possible without the political will driving the effort. That was in the United States B208, but being only twelve years old you can be excused for not knowing that.

[CID]

Barring some quantum leap in cold fusion, hydrogen is not a practical source of energy. First off, it does not naturally exist in a usable form; it must be manufactured.

Unlike gasoline right? Gasoline just pisses up out of the ground. No refining process, no manufacturing process......

Dude, let's talk some basic chemistry and thermodynamics:

The reaction to burn H2 is this:

2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + energy

If there were large and untapped sources of free hydrogen here on Earth, then hydrogen would be a great fuel. It still could be if you were to build a pipeline to the outer planets, as the gas giants are made up of a large amount of hydrogen. Sadly, hydrogen here on Earth is mostly already bonded to something else; for instance oxygen to form water (like in the example you gave). Here is the equation for getting hydrogen out of water:

2H2O + energy -> 2H2 + O2

I will bring to your attention the law of conservation of energy as applied to a chemical reaction: The energy released when a bond is formed is equal to the energy required to break it. In other words it is physically impossible to get more energy out of burning hydrogen than it took to manufacture the hydrogen in the first place. Couple this with hydrogen's low energy density, (i.e. the hydrogen equivalent of a tank of gasoline would require either cryogenics or a pressure vessel that I sure wouldn't want moving at 120 km/h), and hydrogen is a dead end. Much better to focus on bio-diesel or ethanol.

Another interesting factlet: the gas pump that delivers a gallon in 20 seconds is pushing out energy into your car at the rate of 6 megawatts.

A watt (even 6 million of them) is not a unit of energy.

It's a unit of power, and the fellow that you are quoting used it correctly.

What's required to speed it up is political will to dedicate the necessary resources.

Oh man oh man, you were born on the wrong side of the iron curtain. The Soviets thought everything was a matter of politics; You'd have fit right in. Hell, you would have stood a good chance of running the place.

B208, when you can't even get the units of energy right, you have absolutely no basis to start lecturing on subjects like chemistry and thermodynamics.

Furthermore if your main argument against the use of hydrogen is simply that there is no free hydrogen to scavenge then you're just simply speaking of something you have no clue about. A double whammy.

Hydrocarbon fuels can't be used in the form that they are extracted from the ground. That goes double for the dirty oil in Alberta. In fact, a serious amount of energy goes in to mining, refining and distributing fossil fuels. Ignoring that is just ignorant. The energy used to extract/refine/distribute fossil fuels is expended because it's a conveniently portable source of energy.

Hydrogen fuels simply represent a conversion of energy into the portable potential energy found in hydrogen fuel tanks. Not unlike converting fossil fuels into electricity (to possibly charge batteries) or heat or energy for mechanical devices that do work.

I assume that you will not be at the forefront of the eventual necessary conversion to hydrogen. You obviously don't have a clue.

[Rockie]

Did you bother to look at the site I linked Photofly? They've made some remarkable advances recently including igniting hydrogen plasma and suspending it in a magnetic field. Read a bit about it, it's very interesting.

I visited JET in C u l h a m (that's a town in Oxfordshire, not the author of a tediously crap flight training manual, but apparently it's similar enough to be removed by the software here if written normally), in 1988..

Really? Were you flown in to consult?

[cgzro]

Hydrogen fuels simply represent a conversion of energy into the portable potential energy found in hydrogen fuel tanks. Not unlike converting fossil fuels into electricity (to possibly charge batteries) or heat or energy for mechanical devices that do work.

The main difference is that with Hydrogen 'we' are the supplier of the energy that makes it and we have to supply slightly more energy to make it than it gives back when its "burned". Fossil fuels on the other hand give back far more energy than is used in their extraction/refining because they were created by natuaral energy sources eons ago and we simply take a portion of that to separate out the different liquids. So we us a bit of energy to heat it up and then we get MORE back including all manner of useful products including the material we use to make roads to drive on and raw materials for lots of other products we need as a society.

So Hydrogen is not your source of energy its just a way to move it around while fossil fuels are both the source of energy and also the way to move it around. This comes back to my "N" discussion which asks what amount of energy do we need to have available if we get rid of fossil fuels.

Even if we did have the N times electricity generating capacity required to replace fossil fuels we still need a better way to move the energy around in sufficiently dense form as to be usable in our vehicles. I suppose its possible to reverse the fossil fuel combustion equations and actually make 'fossil' fuels from energy and the raw materials. If so then that would be a much better approach than hydrogen because our entire infrastructure would still work without pressurization and assuming the energy generation system was 'carbon' free the entire system would be carbon neutral. We'd also be able to make all the other liquids that come from oil that are essential to our modern society.

This is why nuclear of one form or another is the likely answer if you wish to get rid of extracted fossil fuel (the energy required is impressive) and is N times our current generating capacity and the very small energy density of solar and wind is so far not up to the task.

Of course if you cut back on usage by not flying unnecessarily (what travel really is necessary?) and not owning multiple cars etc. thats a useful thing to do but unfortunately few people walk that talk.

[photofly]

I'm still waiting for someone to learn me my 'lectrical units

[B208]

I don't know what the iron curtain has to do with it B208. Arguably the last really great achievement was putting a man on the moon in under 10 years, and that would not have been possible without the political will driving the effort. That was in the United States B208, but being only twelve years old you can be excused for not knowing that.

Wow, not only are you under educated in the sciences, you are also woefully ignorant of history and politics. I suggest you read up on the old Soviet Union, (esp things like collective farming), they to thought reality could be bent to the will of politics. You might also take a moment to read up on Mao's great leap forward.

Your assertion that any problem can be solved with "political will" and taxation has been tested before. It did not fair well.

[Rockie]

What, did you find a book on communism at the library or something kid? Trying to impress with some new knowledge that has nothing to do with the subject at hand?

Here's a tip, instead of books on communism pick up a dictionary.

[CID]

So tell us cgrzo, why are we wasting our time powering anything with hydroectricity when we get all this free energy from fossil fuels? Why waste time on anything other than coal and oil powered generators?

Do you think that we have teams of people carrying buckets of water up a hill to pour down the turbines? How about wind generators? I guess we use really big diesel powered fans? And solar? Imagine how much the batteries cost for all the flashlights used to shine on the solar panels. Man...you really don't have a clue.

[cgzro]

So tell us cgrzo, why are we wasting our time powering anything with hydroectricity when we get all this free energy from fossil fuels? Why waste time on anything other than coal and oil powered generators?

The US figures look something like below. So 6% or so from Hydro. Canada I presume is a bit more because we have more terrain which is better suited. So nearly 70% comes from fossil fuels, 20% nuclear. These numbers are easy to find, for any country you want. Some countries are much higher coal and some are much higher nuclear. A few are higher hydro because of geography where it is a good choice renewables are of course a pretty small percentage at the moment.

Coal = 39%
Natural gas = 27%
Nuclear = 19%
Hydropower = 6%
Other renewables = 7%
Biomass = 1.7%
Geothermal = 0.4%
Solar = 0.4%
Wind = 4.4%

Do you think that we have teams of people carrying buckets of water up a hill to pour down the turbines? How about wind generators? I guess we use really big diesel powered fans? And solar? Imagine how much the batteries cost for all the flashlights used to shine on the solar panels. Man...you really don't have a clue.

I suppose I am not explaining sufficiently clearly. However please try to be polite, I see no reason to be rude when I'm simply presenting numbers and math which I am very happy to discuss or correct. Anyway let me try again.

If you want to generate sufficient Hydrogen (or charge batteries) to replace the currently energy that we consume from fossil fuels, then you would need an additional 2.2 times our current generating capacity. Ie multiply our current capability by about 3.2. (Photofly's calculation is pretty close to mine, both are simple and you can do it yourself without trusting me). Now in order to get to such a new capacity look at the above distribution of energy sources (for whatever country you want). It is fairly easy to see how much any individual source would then need to be increased if the others stay the same. That tells you how hard it is and how much money you need to spend etc.

For example, wind at 4.4% represents 1/23rd of the energy source so to increase the entire supply to 3 x using wind we need (leaving the rest alone) to increase the wind capacity by 46 x. So to use your illogical statement somebody would have to blow 46x stronger on all the turbines (unlikely) or more logically we'd need to build 46x more of them.

For example, solar at 0.4% represents 1/250th of the energy sources so to increase the entire supply to 3 x using solar we would need (leaving the rest alone) to increase the solar capacity by 500 x. So to use your illogical statement we'd have to shine powerful lights on them 500x stronger than the sun or more logically build 500x as many of them.

etc.

You will note that I'm not making any statements for or against any particular source of energy or storage, nor have I ever presented the illogical assertions you impolitely attribute to me, I'm simply presenting numbers which I find a very useful way to 'get a clue' as to the difficulty of different options.

Anyway if you wish to discuss numbers I'm happy to do so and happily correct and learn from those corrections but anonymous illogical barbs have zero impact on my way of thinking about these issues.