Why Oil Really Fell Today—and Could Keep Falling

Hydrogen as fuel

Engineers and scientists who work on hydrogen-as-fuel programs are either ignorant of the laws of thermodynamics or are just venal. They make me ashamed to call myself an engineer.

How bad is hydrogen as a fuel? If hydrogen is made by hydrolysis of water using electricity from the US grid, compressed and used in the very highest efficiency fuel cells (the million dollar kind) the overall thermal efficiency is about 12% and results in about 2 ½ to 3 times more CO2 being emitted than if oil were burned in our present IC engines.

Don Hirschberg of AR @ Aug 05, 2008 23:32:38 PM

Irrelevant

Platinum has never been necessary for hydrogen generation by electrolysis. Many other electrode materials are viable, including graphite and stainless steal.

The limitation keeping us from developing a "hydrogen economy" is not the cost of platinum. It is the inherent inefficiency of electrolysis and the numerous difficulties of hydrogen storage. Hydrogen makes no sense as an everyday fuel source - the whole idea is a non-starter. It has only been pursued by automotive companies because of misguided government mandates.

Matt of CA @ Aug 05, 2008 23:03:43 PM

Hydrogen & water shortages

We have an inexhaustable source of water for hydrogen production - the oceans. The water molecule is split, and when the hydrogen is burned, the water molecule is reformed, and enters the water cycle as water vapor which eventually turns into rain and runs back into the oceans.

Of course, if we are going to generate all of the electricity to do this via solar, why not skip the hydrogen process and just utilize the electricity directly where possible (cars).

BP of CA @ Aug 05, 2008 16:22:08 PM

A Rather Narrow View

The intricacies of market activity generally, the oil market specifically, are such that the discovery of a pathway to alternative energy, even one as groundbreaking as this one might be, is lost among the realities. I do not think it had much of an effect on the price of oil. In point of fact, oil is slipping for very solid, real reasons. Demand is down, way down, not just here, but around the world. When U.S. drivers cut back over 40 billion miles of driving, that's what has an impact. When plants and factories cut back because demand for goods and services is down pretty much across the board (a result of high energy costs), that's also what drives the price lower.

The only way to beat this thing permanently is to a.) drill here and now while b.) never forgetting the end of oil is near, and c.) making a massive effort to find alternatives like Mr. Fusion from Back To The Future. Now that's energy indepenedence you can love.

Peter Fusco of NY @ Aug 05, 2008 14:41:06 PM

typo correction

Of course second equation is H2 + 1/2 O2 - H2O + energy. Sorry.

Don Hirschberg of AR @ Aug 05, 2008 13:47:28 PM

Heroic capitalism strikes again?

So, there was one donation of $10M, and you attribute these kinds of discoveries to CAPITALISM? Do you think $10M paid for all of the research up to this point? Are you under the impression that there was no taxpayer-paid research that led up to this point? Maybe MIT got the money and THEN started doing research - ALL of the research on this subject.

Science doesn't happen immediately. These kinds of discoveries take years of research that builds upon previous knowledge. Most likely the foundations for this discovery were based on research that you (or people with the same mentality as you) previously opposed. It was probably "theoretical" research that didn't have a practical use at the time.

I'm willing to bet that if you tally up all the money spent on research up to this point you will find out it totally eclipses the $10M spent by ONE donor.

Mike of FL @ Aug 05, 2008 13:31:54 PM

Pure hyperbolae

James:

Your article has several really big errors in it that need to be corrected. Your comment that Nocera’s discovery is a “cheap – by a factor of 1000” way to split water to generate hydrogen is totally incorrect. As a professional scientist working in this field, I can comment that this discovery relates to the generation of oxygen, not hydrogen, and that the improvement over previously known oxygen evolving catalysts (that also do not use platinum) is a modest amount. Nocera’s catalyst reduces the overvoltage of oxygen production by a small amount (a fraction of 1 volt) – which means that the splitting of water is now slightly more efficient than was known previously. Your factor of 1,000 reduction in cost is nonsense. But even if a scientist in the future discovers a perfect catalyst that works at zero overvoltage, the splitting of water to make hydrogen still requires the input of a lot of energy, whether generated by photovoltaics, wind turbines, coal, oil, or nuclear. Water splitting potentially STORES energy, it doesn’t generate it.

The second mistake relates to government vs. “heroic capitalism”. Nocera and his student were actually funded by governmental agencies. Read the Nocera paper just published in Science announcing this discovery – the authors acknowledge the source of the funding at the end: “Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Chemical Bonding Center (CHE-0802907). M.W.K. is supported by a Ruth L. Kirchenstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship provided by the NIH (F32GM07782903).” The NSF and the NIH are both government agencies funded by taxpayer dollars. Score one for the Feds.

Bottom line – this is a cool discovery, but if you think oil is dropping because of this scientific advancement, then that only proves that the oil market is being propped up by speculation and rumors, not reality.

Dr Jimby of TX @ Aug 05, 2008 13:23:13 PM

Hydrogen as energy source

Sorry folks, there are no end runs around thermodynamics.

H2O + energy = H2 + ½ O2 will always require more energy than you can get from H2 + ½ O2 = H2 + ½ O2 + energy.

There is no hydrogen on this planet. No matter how you make it, no matter how you use it, hydrogen is always an energy sink, not an energy source. Like a storage battery it can be used as a way to carry energy around.

Don Hirschberg of AR @ Aug 05, 2008 13:16:09 PM