Just heard an announcement by Bill Shorten in Gladstone that the
Labour Government will contribute $1 Million to the Hydrogen project.
He seems to think that hydrogen is a source of energy.
He said it several times. It is a worry when politicians are so
ignorant on energy matters.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier, just like electricity is an energy
carrier. It can be used in cars, trucks etc equipped with fuel cells.
There are significant disadvantages, it is not as efficient as the
coal, electricity, battery and electric motor chain.
Another disadvantage is hydrogen vehicles cannot be parked in underground parking areas.
Tests by bus manufacturers found that the lifetime of fuel cells is uneconomic.
Hydrogen can be used by internal combustion engines directly but the
efficiency is worse than fuel cells.
As an export product it is probably viable.
Japan (Toyota) has been pushing it for some years but only California
seems to have developed any interest.
I would be interested in hearing any contrary opinions.

wastage on steroids under Greens/Labour. Who could forget the 'fiscal conservative' Rudd. Australians are clueless.

Bazz we once saw critics yell about e 10 fuel too
Why if Japan is pushing it is it not viable?
Future fuels will see many things we do not yet, see as worth while

Belly why on earth would you mention Japan on this topic? If you think they don't make stupid mistakes, just think December 7, 1941.

Hydrogen is about as bad a transport fuel as is E10, & other such ethanol fuels. Anyone with enough math to make change from a bus ticket, & is interested enough to do a little research knows that it takes more energy, & produced more Co2 to produce a liter of ethanol, than the energy it can provide, or CO2 it can save.

Shorten is obviously a scientific illiterate, but so were Rudd, Gillard & Turnbull, so nothing new there.

The amount of money should have read $1Billion !
Hasbeen, I mentioned Japan, that is why Belly brought it up.
Not sure why they are interested Toyota has been producing some cars
for hydrogen for a while. One of the inefficiencies with hydrogen is
the continuous leaking. It can't be stopped because the hydrogen atom
is so small.
I think the inefficiency in the system is the number of energy
conversions where energy must be lost.
Manufacture of the solar system, conversion of electricity to hydrogen
and oxygen, convert the hydrogen to ammonia, compression of the
ammonia, energy to transport the ammonia, conversion of ammonia to
hydrogen, compression of the hydrogen, decompression for use in fuel
cells, loss in generation of electricity, loss in motor.

It is worse than I thought, apparently they use ammonia as a medium to
transport the hydrogen as it is cheaper than super cooled trucks and ships.
Still I do not have any real knowledge on all this except what floats
around the system, and pollies seem to know even less.

The fundamental problems with hydrogen are that it liquifies at -268C and is highly explosive.

The consequences is that it is stored in expensive cylinders at high pressure, which if installed in a car gives it very low mileage, and the tendency to blow up in an accident.

Hasbeen do you read others comments
Did you see it was Bazz who first introduced Japan
Your self confidence is miss placed

I was about to say sorry Belly, but then you have to try to put the boot in. However I will simply say it was a rather foolish comment, appealing to the authority of Japan. A simple lefty attitude, which makes the left look stupid.

Yes Bazz, I know Honda spent a small fortune gambling on the success of their research on the hydrogen fuel cell, then bailed out before it sent them broke.

I know nothing about hydrogen, but isn't there an ever present danger of it going bang?

Yes, that is why you cannot park them in underground car parks.
Leaking gas lies on the ceiling keeping fluorescent lights company

//Anyone with enough math to make change from a bus ticket, & is interested enough to do a little research knows that it takes more energy... to produce a liter of ethanol, than the energy it can provide//

Well, yeah. Because if it was the other way around, it'd break the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

//The fundamental problems with hydrogen are that it liquifies at -268C and is highly explosive.//

"To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below hydrogen's critical point of 33 K. However, for hydrogen to be in a fully liquid state without boiling at atmospheric pressure, it needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (-423.17 °F; -252.87 °C)."

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

Are you sure you're not thinking of He, which liquefies at -268.9 °C but isn't highly explosive because it's a noble gas?

Good Question Toni, but no one has said anything about H2.
No, I think they are talking about common or garden variety
hydrogen.
It would be the same as hydrogen used for cars in US & Japan.

//Good Question Toni, but no one has said anything about H2.
No, I think they are talking about common or garden variety
hydrogen.//

H2 is common or garden variety hydrogen, Belly. It's a diatomic gas... they're all diatomic except for the nobles.

Sorry, Bazz, not Belly. Nevertheless, the point still stands: hydrogen is H2.

____

‘ OH COME ON..YOU ALL BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING AND THE CARBON TAX ‘ YOU ARE AUSTRALIANS!!

INTERESTING.

Hmmm - saving the planet - here we go!

Here's a small sample of how many coal plants there are in the world today.

The EU has 468 plants building 27 more for a total of 495

Turkey has 56 plants building 93 more total 149

South Africa has 79 building 24 more total 103

India has 589 building 446 more total 1036

Philippines has 19 building 60 more total 79

South Korea has 58 building 26 more total 84

Japan has 90 building 45 more total 135

AND CHINA has 2363 building 1171 total 3534

Here come our AUSTRALIAN politicians that are going to shut down our 6
remaining plants and save the planet !

Toni Lavis- I've learned to be patient with those that don't have a science background. Bazz seems to be still substantively correct. He is correct about it leaking through the tank walls due to the size of the hydrogen atom- which influences the size of the hydrogen molecule- sounds correct about the means of production of hydrogen- correct about hydrogen in confined spaces.

Historically I've been a fan of hydrogen- but I suspect he is correct about it being less efficient than the coal/ electricity/ battery/ electric motor cycle. Efficiency isn't everything though- maintenance, cost, fleet compatibility is also important.

Hydrogen burns fairly clean though in the vehicle and using electrolysis can be produced cleanly using renewables.

Large scale electricity and transport energy is a big problem.

Perhaps some cheap small generators can be developed for home renewable installations that use hydrogen as a storage mechanism. If it works at small scale then it can be scaled up.

Overall I think Bazz did a fairly good job of a complex subject.

Toni,

Even at "only" -253C this is technically a difficult problem to solve, as the hydrogen will slowly have to leak off as it warms, and cars made to use hydrogen presently cost more than $100 000 to build and still suffer from the problem of driving with a bomb in the back.

Lpg (197psi at 43C) has 2.5 times the energy density of hydrogen gas compressed to 10000 psi. LNG, with an energy density of about twice that of hydrogen at 10000 psi, exerts a pressure of over 5000 psi at room temperature. That is why there are lpg powered cars and not lng powered cars. Unless there is some breakthrough that allows a low pressure/high energy density storage, it is hard to see the technology commercialised. For LNG, the research to this end has focused on storage as clathrates. All pie in the sky atm.

More ideologically driven idiocy from the left. If you want low carbon 24/7 energy, the only answer at present is nuclear. If the elusive low cost long life battery is developed, and it is not from want of trying, there will be a huge power demand to run electric vehicles. With the current insane state energy policies, Australia is unlikely to satisfy domestic power demand alone. The scary thing is that loony left and greens don't even see a problem, and think we should view the the deprivations as we would the cost of fighting a war. I despair at at seeing the damage inflicted by tilting at windmills.

Fester, I guess from your comment that you have seen de Natali's
response to the blackouts in Victoria.

What alarms me is that no one seems to realise that we will have this
situation for the next five years if we are lucky.
They can't say they were not told.
It may well get worse as the coal fired plants are being starved of
their income by the renewable's priority on the market.
Their maintenance levels must decrease, and mtbf will decrease.
The policy of politicians is to decrease Mean Time Between Faults.
They are going about it the right way so as the Greens say,
"Suck it Up and Live With It !"

Yes, it is terrible, Bazz. Without cheap and reliable power the economy suffers. The only way to reverse the madness is to have an electricity supply market with enough 24/7 supply contracts to cover base load power needs. That way there will be the economic incentive to build desperately needed coal fired power stations. As for putting a thousand million dollars toward a hydrogen economy, you may as well just rake it in a pile and set fire to it for all the good it will do.

I have just watched a panel discussion at Davos by speakers from
Int Energy Authority, Russia, the US and The Middle East. 1 hour.

Towards the end the Russian representative Dimitriev warned that there
is a real risk of supply difficulties for oil somewhere in the coming decade.
All in all it was a very interesting discussion for any one with an
interest in energy in all sources.

http://tinyurl.com/y7u44zfj

Thanks for the link, Bazz. From what I saw they downplayed the role of efficient coal generation but did concede it an essential source of energy. I didn't hear electric vehicles mentioned, yet they spoke of carbon capture and storage which I put on a par with hydrogen as a vehicle fuel. I have been around long enough to regard anything at or beyond a five year prediction as totally unreliable. Yes it was a good point about the $200 billion investment shortfall, but I have heard things like that said in the past. The challenge is to place the projection in the context of future circumstances.

BILL SHORTEN IS CORRECT!

From an energy consumer's viewpoint, all energy carriers are sources of energy.
And (though less relevant to his point) from a physicist's viewpoint, all sources of energy are (depending what you mean by sources) either energy carriers or means of energy conversion.

In future we're going to have a lot more electricity generated from solar PV, and it will frequently exceed electricity consumption. Production of hydrogen (and related chemicals such as NH3, aka ammonia) will be a sensible way of using the excess. But it's likely to be a long time before NH3 is used either for hydrogen storage or as a fuel in its own right (aside from small amounts added in internal combustion engines for emissions control purposes). Instead it will replace the inefficient synthesis of NH3 from fossil fuels.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Hasbeen,
I suggest you update your research, because the days when ethanol required more energy inputted than it returned are long gone.
[Note to Toni Lavis: obviously this excludes solar energy captured by plants.]
____________________________________________________________________________________

Fester,
Is that an attempt at irony?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Shadow,
Absorbers (which absorb hydrogen at high pressure and release it at lower pressure) are sometimes used to address that problem. Historically these have been metalic, but now AIUI there's a lot of research into carbon based absorbers.

Aiden said;
BILL SHORTEN IS CORRECT!

From an energy consumer's viewpoint, all energy carriers are sources of energy.

Aiden I am well aware that is Bill Shorten's view.
I do not want a PM with the consumer's view, I want a PM with the
technical view of the problem. By now he should have been sat down
and had it explained to him. I listened carefully to what he said and
I am as near certain as it is possible to be that he thinks it can be
just what we need.
Re ammonia, well that is what is proposed. I have no idea whether
that makes it possible or impossible. I suspect that is a financial decision.

Bazz,
> Aiden I am well aware that is Bill Shorten's view.
But you wrongly thought it was incorrect.

> I do not want a PM with the consumer's view,
Are you sure about that? The government, and many on this forum, try to deride Shorten for being out of touch with consumers.

>I want a PM with the technical view of the problem.
Which problem exactly? The technical problems of doing various things with hydrogen don't alter the fact that it's very useful stuff!

> By now he should have been sat down and had it explained to him.
Yet you're the one who needed the basics explained to him (hydrogen is normally H2; I can tell you the exceptions if you like).

Aidan, "Hasbeen,
I suggest you update your research, because the days when ethanol required more energy inputted than it returned are long gone.
[Note to Toni Lavis: obviously this excludes solar energy captured by plants.]"

Well what do you know, Aidan tells us tractors & the like now run on fairy dust. I suppose it is what you would expect from someone who believes wind generation is now cheaper than coal fired.

Well mate, have a look at the cost of power for Victoria & South Australia last Thursday 24Th Jan., when it got a bit warm.

Their grid was paying up to $14,000 per Mwah for their wind/solar power, where in NSW & Queensland they were paying $105 for coal fired power. That works out that the power for each average household in SA cost $565 for the day, only a little less than my bill for 3 months coal fired power. Even with that 26,000 consumers were cut off in rolling blackouts. It cost $932,000,000 {yes that is almost a billion] for just the 3 states power for one day.

I suggest you go back to re do your research mate, the utter garbage you are pushing is just that, garbage.

As someone pointed out, 3 days of those prices for wind power would pay the total cost for a HELE plant with the money wasted.” That’s a power plant that could last 70 years, and provide electricity at under $50/MW.

Just watch the next round of power price increases in Vic, & SA for their power.

Nothing so stupid as a green politician, unless it is those who elect them.

Aidan,

The method of storage of energy efficiency is measured by the amount of energy released by a unit stored, compared to the amount of energy required to produce a unit stored, and the production and storage of hydrogen is energy intensive. So today to store enough energy in hydrogen to generate 1kWhr, you need 3kWhrs of energy, so much so that any other battery is many times more efficient.

Secondly, as hydrogen is one of the most explosive substances (while the explosive limits of hydrogen in air range from about 18 -- 60 % the flammable limits are from 4 -- 75 %) the use of hydrogen gas comes with vast risks for producers and consumers.

just saw this.

https://arena.gov.au/blog/hydrogen-future-australian-renewables/

Zeppelins might fly. Ammonia as commodity may be viable if it can be made cheaply enough using solar energy, but using an explosive gas at 50 times the pressure of lpg to power vehicles in populated areas is unwise. No wonder some people don't question fifty year projections.

I think this link sums up the lack of multi-national support for hydrogen as a vehicle fuel. Just because the Japs have wasted 15 odd billion is no reason to act like a lemming. EVs are far more developed yet are still not competitive. Ammonia as a means of renewable energy storage for applications other than transportation makes more sense.

https://cleantechnica.com/2015/06/26/hydrogen-cars-lost-much-support/

Hasbeen,
It sounds like you've been snorting the fairy dust again :-)

I never ever implied that tractors and the like use no fuel

Seriously though, fairy dust is neither an energy source nor a hallucinogen; it's an audio effect similar to an echo changing pitch.

Tractors use a lot less than the energy value of what they harvest, and I'm amazed you have so much trouble comprehending it that you have to resort to silly supernatural explanations.

I don't know where you got your figures from as wholesale electricity prices, when I checked on Thursday, were high in all states. And the source of the high prices wasn't high generation costs; it was insufficient competition to enable the market to work efficiently. Partly this was because one of the coal fired power stations was closed for scheduled maintenance and another broke down.

We need more peakload capacity, but coal is not a cost effective way to provide that.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Shadow,
Being lighter than air, hydrogen usually gets out of the way pretty quickly.

Regarding efficiency, please keep in mind two things:
• Scientific and technological improvements are likely to increase the efficiency.
• What's most efficient and what's most cost effective aren't always the same thing. Batteries aren't as cost effective for long term storage.

Aidan, your credibility is not only in shreds, but is now totally nonexistent.

Go fly your fairy dust somewhere else, & do stop smoking that stuff.

Touched a nerve have I, Hasbeen?

FWIW I've never been a smoker.
Am I right in thinking you regard everyone you disagree with as having no credibility?

Aidan,

Firstly, Hydrogen does not disperse as fast as you think and the fact that it can burn at 4% makes any dispersal problematic. (think Hindenburg)

Secondly, efficiency gains cannot break the laws of physics. That compressing hydrogen to the very high pressures required to store it as a gas uses roughly 15% of the chemical energy gained, Electrolysis is inefficient etc makes hydrogen a very poor storage of energy. Lithium batteries are 80% or more efficient compared to hydrogen at 30-40%.

That super high pressure containers are also vastly expensive is another nail in the coffin.

Add to that the fact that the reaction to produce ammonia from a fuel cell proceeds at a small fraction of the rate of the Haber process.

Shorten could better waste a thousand million dollars of taxpayer's money by trying to establish a multi-national collaboration to build a gen four nuclear reactor. Renewable power displacing coal fired power has been a disaster for Australia. Enough!