The Hyperlogos

Hydrogen gas (H²) is a lighter-than-air gaseous fuel. The smallest molecule known to exist, H² hydrogen gas passes right through many materials and is very difficult to contain. It has energy density somewhere between chemical batteries and typical fuels like gasoline or diesel fuel, but burns truly clean; the output of the combustion of hydrogen is heat and water. Hydrogen is difficult to store and work with, and expensive to produce; there are no natural deposits of hydrogen as there are of oil or natural gas.

Hydrogen is currently being touted as some sort of solution to our energy problems, but of course, it is anything but. Hydrogen is not an energy source, simply because there are no (known) reserves of hydrogen waiting to be pumped out of the ground. Most hydrogen gas is produced either from natural gas or through electrolysis of water, in which a voltage applied to water through dissimilar electrodes puts enough energy into the water (H²O) molecules to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. Oxygen forms at the anode (negative) and hydrogen gas forms at the cathode (positive). If this is done with saltwater, the process also produces chlorine gas, so the water is usually distilled.

Hydrogen has a bad reputation in the safety department largely due to the Hindenburg disaster, but if anything this was actually an example of the safety of Hydrogen gas. The airship was reportedly ignited by a spark from an ungrounded line jumping to the skin of the airship, which had been painted with compounds containing many of the key ingredients of rocket fuel. In spite of the fact that this happened while the craft was launching and had already left the ground, most of the passengers escaped.

While the debate over the various causes and effects involved in the aforementioned incident will likely continue for many years (and has in fact been going on since it happened in 1937) the fact is that most of the burning hydrogen escaped upwards as it burned due to its light weight. Today, almost all dirigibles not operated with hot air are filled with Helium, but "peak helium" has allegedly been reached, and the price of Helium gas is expected to rise. Regardless, the current interest in Hydrogen is centered around its use as a fuel, especially a motor fuel.

As we currently produce Hydrogen, this is a completely wrongheaded idea, much on the order of topsoil-based fuel feedstocks. For instance, most of the Hydrogen comes from the separation of natural gas. This is a mixture of gases like methane, ethane, propane, and butane, all of which are primarily comprised of hydrogen and carbon (in varying amounts.) Natural gas is a finite resource, it takes energy to separate it, and meanwhile it is useful in its unadulterated form for many purposes. We remove sulfur-based gases from it and then add sulfur back in before piping it to houses for heating and cooking. Any new fuel not based on renewable resources is, quite simply, a bad idea - it doesn't solve our problem, only pushes it off for another generation or so.

Electrolysis of water has the advantage that in itself it is a clean activity, but the electricity has to come from somewhere. While the process is theoretically over 80% efficient, in practice it is closer to 50%. Given the inefficiencies inherent to the generation process (including the efficiency rating of the power plant, and losses due to transmission) it winds up being even worse.

However, there is one benefit to the use of the electrolysis of water. Current power plant designs require a significant amount of time to start up or shut down, and they generally have a certain minimum output level. This can be well over fifty percent, which is especially unfortunate considering that we only need a small fraction of the plant's output at night. This is where hydrogen can make itself useful; the unused power from the plant is currently wasted. Even at "The Geysers" here in Lake County, one of the largest geothermal plants currently operating in the USA, there are many kilowatts of floodlights wasting electricity and causing light pollution all night long - they light up the sky over our house, over a dozen miles away. This excess power can be used to produce electricity and the very best part of the whole situation is that the power need not be used at the point of production. That is, after all, why we have a national power grid. Hydrogen production facilities can be located anywhere they are convenient, within a reasonable distance of the plant.

Unfortunately, it's less clear how we're going to store and actually use hydrogen. While it's possible to convert existing gasoline engines to hydrogen through the use of a different computer, different injectors, high compression pistons, and an electric supercharger, this is clearly not a reasonable upgrade path for existing automobiles; there is simply not enough automotive labor out there to do it, nor would it be cost-effective. As hydrogen has less energy density than gasoline, it cannot provide you with as much range unless you reduce the weight of the car or use a more efficient technology than an internal combustion engine. Hydrogen fuel cells are not expected to be ready for production vehicles for at least a decade, which leaves us with turbine engines which have very hot and loud exhaust. All of these problems are solvable through engineering on a long enough time scale, but the fact remains that the issues with production, energy cost, storage, transportion, and developing a market (not to mention a fueling infrastructure!) are extremely prohibitive.

In summary, Hydrogen can be a small portion of our overall strategy for clean energy going forward, but the only energy available for its production today is a result of our inherently inefficient power generation system and as such is neither renewable nor, in the long term, desirable. Ultimately, coal and oil power plants are both counterproductive to the goal of our continued survival on this planet and rather than applying band-aid fixes like capturing their CO2 for feeding algae or using their excess output to produce hydrogen we should be looking at ways to eliminate them entirely. In the USA alone, coal power plants emit more radioactive material into the atmosphere every year than all the nuclear testing, waste spills, and plant failures combined. Even nuclear would be preferable if only we would reprocess fuel with breeder reactors so that it can be reused, reducing the amount of fuel needed by at least two orders of magnitude.1

• 1. Current nuclear reactor designs use only about 1-2% of the potential of their fuel.