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Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and The Tomorrow’s Energy This page intentionally left blank Tomorrow’s Energy Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet Peter Hoffmann The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2001 Peter Hoffmann All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Set in Sabon by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hoffmann, Peter, 1935– Tomorrow’s energy : hydrogen, fuel cells, and the prospects for a cleaner planet / Peter Hoffmann. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-08295-0 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Hydrogen as fuel. I. Title. TP359.H8 H633 2001 333.79'4—dc21 00-054613 Contents Foreword by Senator Tom Harkin vii Acknowledgments ix 1 Why Hydrogen? Buckminster Fuller, Sheikh Yamani, and Bill Clinton 1 2 Hydrogen’s Discovery: Phlogiston and Inflammable Air 19 3 A History of Hydrogen Energy: The Reverend Cecil, Jules Verne, and the Redoubtable Mr. Erren 27 4 Producing Hydrogen from Water, Natural Gas, and Green Plants 53 5 Primary Energy: Using Solar and Other Power to Make Hydrogen 79 6 Hydrogen for Cars and Buses: Steaming Tailpipes 99 7 Fuel Cells: Mr. Grove’s Lovely Technology 141 8 Hydrogen in Aerospace: Clean Contrails and the Orient Express 161 9 Hydrogen as Utility Gas: The Invisible Flame 187 10 Non-Energy Uses of Hydrogen: Metallic H2, Biodegradable Plastics, and H2 Tofu 211 11 Safety: The Hindenburg Syndrome, or “Don’t Paint Your Dirigible with Rocket Fuel” 233 12 The Next 100 Years 247 Notes 265 Index 283 This page intentionally left blank Foreword Senator Tom Harkin When I was born, in 1939, there were 2 billion people on the earth. When I turned 60, there were 6 billion. When my daughter turns 60, there will be 9 billion. Many of these people will want heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. They will want to use refrigerators, radios, televisions, and cars. The question is not whether nations like China and India will develop or whether they will consume more energy than they do now. They will and they should. They have a right to seek a better life just as we did. The question is: What kind of world will we create? If we continue to base our economies on coal and oil, we will create a world with toxic air, filthy water, and debilitating diseases. Global warming will likely bring droughts and hurricanes, tropical diseases in the North, and widespread coastal flooding. There is an alternative. We can replace coal and oil with clean, renewable energy sources that can generate electricity, heat buildings, and power cars. Renewable energy sources are abundant throughout the world. India is flooded with sunlight, and China’s entire current electricity consumption could be powered by the wind in Inner Mongolia. In the United States, the Midwest is sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of wind. However, we must remember that solar, wind, and most other renew- able energy sources are intermittent and regional. They can only become major power sources if we find a way to store and transport their energy efficiently. Hydrogen can make the renewable vision real by storing renewable ener- gy and making it available where and when it is needed. Hydrogen, the sim- plest molecule, is non-toxic and can be made from plain water using viii Foreword electricity from renewable sources. Used in fuel cells, hydrogen generates electricity and emits only water vapor. And cars run on hydrogen fuel cells are 2 to 3 times more efficient than gasoline engines. Fuel cells can be made in any size to fit everything from pocket-held devices to large power plants. They are perfect for a dispersed and robust energy infrastructure. This book is the culmination of Peter Hoffmann’s work over the past three decades to chronicle the progress of hydrogen energy from a vision to a niche market to its position today on the brink of full commercialization. He describes the various ways hydrogen can be made, stored, and used, and offers insightful analyses of the remaining technical and economic obstacles to the widespread use of hydrogen. Throughout my career in the Senate, I have worked to promote the devel- opment of a hydrogen economy. I’m glad to say I’ve seen tremendous progress. Today there are hydrogen fueling stations and fuel cell buses scat- tered in cities around the world. DaimlerChrysler intends to sell fuel cell cars commercially by 2004, with other automakers close behind. The First National Bank of Omaha is using fuel cells to provide secure power for its credit card service operations. And recently, the New York City Police Department installed a fuel cell to power its Central Park Police Station because it was cheaper than extending power lines. Hoffmann’s vast knowledge and insight on hydrogen will be an invalu- able tool for continuing these efforts, and an important resource for any- one who cares about our environment. After reading this book, one can see the dream of a hydrogen-based economy becoming a reality. I am confident that I will one day walk from my hydrogen-heated office through clean air to my hydrogen fuel cell car. And when I do, I will be carrying this book. Acknowledgments This book started out as a revision and an update of The Forever Fuel— The Story of Hydrogen, published by the Westview Press in 1981. I hadn’t really intended to ever put myself through the wringer of writing a book again, but I gave in to the entreaties of a few people who thought such a book was needed because hydrogen and fuel cell energy have in fact made progress since The Forever Fuel and because a new and improved version might help accelerate the process a bit more. As I began gathering new mate- rial (aided greatly by having to report each month for The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter, which I and my wife, Sarah, had started in 1986), the book just sort of grew beyond a revised edition. The MIT Press and I think it’s a new book, although quite a bit of the historical material has been retained in condensed form. Thanks are due to many people for all sorts of reasons—providing infor- mation and input, suggesting new areas, reading early parts critically, sug- gesting changes, offering moral support when I was ready to chuck it all. Some of them are mentioned in the book. They include, in no particular order, Alan Lloyd, Shannon Baxter, Sandy Thomas, Jesse Ausubel, Henry Linden, Dan Brewer, Gary Sandrock, Joan Ogden, Bob Williams, Bob Zweig, T. Nejat Veziroglu, Bob Rose, Frank Lynch, Karl Kordesch, Peter Lehman, Oliver Weinmann, James Provenzano, Chris Borroni-Bird, Venki Raman, Firoz Rasul, Neil Otto, Debby Harris, Carl-Jochen Winter, Ulrich Schmidtchen, Ron Sims, Cesare Marchetti, Hjalmar Arnason, Heinz Klug, Hans Pohl, Reiner Wurster, Ulrich Buenger, Vahe Kludjan, Martin Hammerli, Karen Miller, Bob Mauro, Lowell Ungar, Ranji George, Barbara Heydorn, Olof Tegström, Curtis Moore, Marcus Nurdin, John Turner, x Acknowledgments Paul Weaver, Sandy and Andrew Stuart, Glenn Rambach, James Cannon, John O’Sullivan, Jeff Bentley, and Dr. Ulrike Gutzmann. Special thanks for helping me obtain financial assistance are due to Bill Hoagland, Susan Leach, Neil Rossmeissl, and Cathy Gregoire Padro of the US Department of Energy. Finally, I want to thank Clay Morgan and Paul Bethge of The MIT Press, my wife, Sarah, and Taylor M. Briggs, who spent untold hours checking copy, making suggestions, removing some of the more egregious errors, and in general helping to pound the manuscript into shape. Without them, there would have been no book. Tomorrow’s Energy This page intentionally left blank 1 Why Hydrogen? Buckminster Fuller, Sheikh Yamani, and Bill Clinton There are two prime sources of energy to be harnessed and expended to do work. One is the capital energy-saving and storage account; the other is the energy-income account. The fossil fuels took multimillions of years of complex reduction and con- servation, progressing from vegetational impoundment of sun radiation by photo- synthesis to deep-well storage of the energy concentrated below the earth’s surface. There is a vast overabundance of income energy at more places around the world, at more times to produce billionsfold the energy now employed by man, if he only knew how to store it when it is available, for use when it was not available. There are gargantuan energy-income sources available which do not stay the processes of nature’s own conservation of energy within the earth’s crust “against a rainy day.” These are in water, tidal, wind, and desert-impinging sun radiation power. The exploiters of the fossil fuels, coal and oil, say it costs less to produce and burn the sav- ings account, This is analogous to saying it takes less effort to rob a bank than to do the work which the money deposited in the bank represents. The question is cost to whom? To our great-great-grandchildren who will have no fossil fuels to turn the machines? I find that the ignorant acceptance by world society’s presently deputized leaders of the momentarily expedient and the lack of constructive, long-distance thinking—let alone comprehensive thinking—would render dubious the case for humanity’s earthian future could we not recognize plausible overriding trends. —R. Buckminster Fuller, 19691 The big powers are seriously trying to find alternatives to oil by seeking to draw energy from the sun or water.
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