On Fuel Cells and Windmills …

In 1980, the engineering team I worked with (under Energy Department contract) delivered a fuel cell to Sandia National Labs. It was installed in a two-seat compact auto prototype. The fuel cell worked fine. The auto worked fine, except for low range. With a tank of twice the volume and ten times the weight compared to a gasoline tank for the same size auto, the hydrogen at 200 atmospheres pressure provided 40 miles highway and 25 miles city per tank. They tried liquid hydrogen. This got better range, but the higher weight degraded acceleration and hill-climbing performance. This could have been offset by a bigger fuel cell, but that would have reduced the range. Besides, liquid hydrogen incurred constant loss due to boil-off venting (with concurrent flame hazards) and raised a big question, "Would you trust a gas pump jockey to fill your car with liquid hydrogen?"

Over the past 22 years many approaches have been tried in hydrogen fuel storage for autos, but the results are well illustrated in the May issue of Popular Science ["Your Car, 2022," by Michelle Krebs]. It features an article on GM's present fuel cell auto platform in glowing terms of high expectation, but notes the hydrogen fuel presents "engineering challenges." I truly hope to see fuel cells for many applications, but I understand the problems. One is that hydrogen fuel may never be practical for autos.

Actually, the auto fuel cell was way down on our list of applications. I particularly liked the fuel cell system we were working on for residential use. Adaptable in size for single homes to multistory apartment buildings, it not only supplied the electricity, but using the fuel cell's waste heat, it supplied hot water and central heating and A/C. We had a sweet little prototype up and running when Prez Teflon killed all the Energy Dept. R&D. Truly, I wish I had that system installed in my basement. (Note: I still have my copy of the original manufacturing specs including all equipment, material and processing for those fuel cells.) However, I must point out the system included a hydrogen generator to produce hydrogen for the fuel cells from natural/ bottled gas and water. We certainly did not expect to see hydrogen pumped into residences anytime soon.

While hydrogen is an almost perfect fuel environmentally, it's an extremely frustrating fuel for any present practical purpose because it can't simply be substituted for natural gas within a system designed for natural gas. Volume for volume, hydrogen has 1/8 the mass and 1/6 the energy of natural gas. Joins and seals adequate for natural gas will leak the much smaller hydrogen molecule. This is exacerbated by the need to push six times the volume through the system to produce the same energy levels. Higher pressure causes more leaks. In fact, the hydrogen molecule is small enough to penetrate the surface of metals and imbed itself into the crystalline structure—which eventually leads to hydrogen embrittlement. And hydrogen burns so cleanly the flame's not visible in full light … which entails an obvious hazard. Nor can hydrogen be mixed with natural gas. Ever shaken a bottle of oil and vinegar salad dressing? You get about 15 seconds before they separate. There's a 20% difference in density between oil and vinegar. There's an 800% density difference between natural gas and hydrogen. No, you can't run a partial hydrogen mix.

There are other problems too. In fact, the only full cost engineering analysis I've ever seen clearly indicated that switching the natural gas system to hydrogen would require system changes so extensive as to be prohibitively expensive. It would more affordable, and best accomplished, by building a new system parallel to natural gas and gradually switching over by geographic areas. (That's the way street lighting was switched from gas light to electric light.) So don't think I'm arguing against hydrogen as a fuel. I wish we'd been working on it seriously for the past quarter century and that we'd get serious about it now. However, I won't make blithe statements of how cheaply and easily this change can be made. I'm not trying to sell something. Nor am I an ideologue who merely pitches "alternate energy" as an introduction to conspiracy theories and slander.

I should also note that wind energy has great potential, but it is not quite as abundant as some would like you to believe. This is another area real engineers studied back in Prez Peanut's reign. Oh, it's true the Great Plains/ Midwest could produce enough wind power for the entire country. In fact, wind power could theoretically generate four times the power presently consumed—if it could only get there in usable form! Line losses prevent direct transmission. The energy can be changed to hydrogen, transported and burned elsewhere, but there are large conversion costs involved at every energy transformation. First AC must be converted to DC. Rectifiers/ motor-generators are only 50% efficient. So you have just half the energy for electrolysis you began with. Electrolysis is 60% efficient, and 50% of that energy produces oxygen, not hydrogen. (Oh yes, there's a market for oxygen. But not for energy generation! And after you saturate the medical and construction industries the remaining oxygen will merely be vented—along with all the waste heat from rectification and electrolysis.) Then hydrogen is compressed/ liquefied, stored/ transported. Each step is another loss of 10% on average. This results in a net energy content of merely 12.15% reaching coastal markets. And if we use that hydrogen to produce electricity in fuel cells at 50% efficiency, we obtain usable electric power of 6.075% of what was produced by Midwest windmills. Even with a wind turbine at each corner of every grain field producing total local power four times the present power usage of the entire country, this will not serve to power the entire nation due to conversion and transport losses. Further, there is the need for local back-up power reserves.

Yes, you still need all the existing Midwest power plants! It's an unfortunate fact that maximum demand for electricity occurs at peak temperatures … which is also when there is the least wind! (Mother Nature can be such a witch.) This entails yet another loss because even a fuel cell plant is only 50% efficient. If you convert the existing steam turbine generating plants to hydrogen burning, your efficiency is down to around 30%. Yep—you gotta eat some real energy losses. The best estimate was seven to ten years to install sufficient wind turbines to produce enough electricity to make sufficient hydrogen to power all the existing Midwest conventional generation plants for local back-up.

Personally, I wish a rational wind/ hydrogen/ fuel cell energy system conversion had been started twenty years ago. Not only because it would have been an environmentally sound development of a renewable natural resource, but because I truly don't believe it can be done at all anymore. The American tax-free foundations and European banking houses that control most multinational corporations won't invest in this. They prefer to have such risky things built with taxpayer dollars and then pay off politicians to turn over the control (and profits) to them. The people who talk most about alternative energy won't invest because they insist it should be built and owned by "the state." (Besides, they've "invested" their funds in attending rallies, marches, conventions and purchasing Nader-approved Mercedes Benz—even though a Tracker or Samurai "SUV" gets better gas mileage with lower emissions.) Of course, one can hope for a "Great Plains Authority" similar to the TVA. But this isn't the 1930s. Ain't even 1980!

The TVA wouldn't have been able to build one dam under today's multi-layered compilation of laws and regulations—most of which do not have provisions for making rational trade-offs and compromises. Worse, these laws and regs are enforced by ever more layers of bureaucrats who have no power or authority to accomplish or do a single thing. Their sole permitted exercise and proof of authority is to prevent anything from being done. It'll require a billion dollar investment over many years to prepare the environmental impact statements and proposals for all the federal, state and local agencies who'll insist we must jump through their hoops. Hey, every pit stop and demi-desert speed trap of today has an Inland Wetland commissioner to insure each and every wind turbine pylon doesn't destroy a vital swamp—and, of course, to collect a fee.

After all the studies and paperwork are in, the real fan will begin. There will be the self-appointed experts to carp and nit-pick, "it'd be better if … " The NIMBY crowd always opposes anything new in their locale. The "electromagnetic fields cause cancer" twits will be out in force. The "consumer advocate" who has spent years using "alternate energy" as an introduction to corporation bashing will begin issuing weekly press releases warning of "that dangerous gas which blew up the Hindenberg! … and can you prove a turbine blade won't shatter and spear poor Farmer John as he tills his field?" (Across the country, trial lawyers will grin delightedly. They're always the primary beneficiaries of "Raider" actions and policies. And the sharks would love another "Superfund" to devour!) Then the "Mountain Society" will arrive. "Your turbines will kill migrating geese—a 'protected species'. It'll endanger migrating monarch butterflies—an 'at-risk species'. And our hired ecologist swears this local prairie dog colony has tails a half inch longer than 'normal' so it's a 'separate species' with only 152 breeding specimens. It's 'endangered'!"

The endangered species act has no cost-benefit provisions, no limits on what may be defined as a species, and all burden of proof contrary to filed claims will be yours. An observatory wasn't built because of a "long-tailed" red squirrel. The tail variance was within normal tolerance for purebred dogs, but it was declared a "species." There's much greater difference between a Chihuahua and a St. Bernard (or between me and a pygmy) than between most "species" (e.g. northern vs. southern spotted owls) cited in court under this act. And remember all the ecologists who swore up and down in court and the media that there was only one habitat for the snail darter? Wrong! But how many years and how much money can you spend trapping prairie dogs and measuring tails to "prove" this isn't the only habitat of an "endangered species"—especially when there's no provision to recover your costs or prevent the filing of a new case to protect the "short-tailed gray mouse"?

Of course, I could be wrong. I'd love to be proved a wrong-headed cynical old man. But I predict any response to this article will be simple bashing—bereft of any planning, practical proposals or trade-off study. I make this prediction based on many years of observation and early involvement. Maybe someday I'll write about my experience as an engineering student involved in the very first Earth Day. It was very enlightening …