Originally Posted by Geof  For your information the product of natural gas combustion is mostly water with a bit of CO2; natural gas is CH4. You can burn it safely inside using a catalytic heater and you get far too much moisture inside with resulting mould problems where the moisture condenses on cooler walls.
But anyway using hydrogen in place of natural gas is not sensible: As I mentioned much earlier there are currently in use two sources for hydrogen; natural gas and electricity. Either of these can be used for home heating with better overall efficiency.
Many of the ideas, suggestions, etc to combat global warming are no more sensible and no more logical than this.
P.S. Dig up a chemist friend that you trust, maybe also a physicist; both of whom have no vested interest in making money from global warming or conning you into investing in their wonderful ideas. And ask them about the energetics of generating hydrogen. You display the same attitude of many people do who do not have a good education or understanding in science and technology. They believe the people who tell them the message they want to hear and do not believe the ones who, correctly, say it will not work. |
Hi Geof,
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I take no offence at all to your saying that I don't have a good education or understanding of science. You don't know me so you couldn't know my background. I don't profess to have your understanding of chemistry or Mariss' knowledge of electronics. I have taken college level chemistry and physics however. I've also studied electronics. So I'm not a complete idiot when it comes to things scientific. I think to assume that everyone who is doing research in this field is only out to garner research grants is a stretch.
I did a little more research and came up with this:
"The results from this analysis show that the price of hydrogen from a 50,000 kg/day wind-hydrogen system can range from $5.69 per kilogram of hydrogen in the near term to $2.12 per kilogram of hydrogen in the long term."
They are talking about producing hydrogen from a wind turbine conventional electrolysis system.
It goes on to say:
"In the previous explanation, the amount of energy needed to produce one kilogram of hydrogen was presented for a reason. Typically, when discussing hydrogen for transportation fueling needs, a kilogram of hydrogen is the unit used. This is because a kilogram of hydrogen is roughly equivalent in energy to a gallon of gasoline. A gallon of gasoline has roughly 108,000 – 123,500 British Thermal Units (BTU) per gallon, while hydrogen falls between those two values at 116,000 BTU per kilogram."
So the upshot is that hydrogen would currently cost about $5.69 to produce the energy equivalent of a gal of gas, not too good. But the calculations are that in the future the price could come down considerably and probably here there is some speculation.
The source:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/38210.pdf
So it just may be that hydrogen will prove viable, you can't discount it entirely. Again, I went in and did a rather cursory take on the article, cheery picked as you say. Just to let you know.
Donna