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Extracting Hydrogen from the Water for Power?

Elektrix

Critical Thinker
E
Joined
Aug 13, 2001
Messages
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I came across a mention of this guy, Harry Braun, who is on the Democratic ballot for the DC primary today.

I decided to check out his website:

http://www.braunforpresident.us/

It seems like he has this plan for solving the world's energry problems with these "windships" that will apparently extract hydrogen from the water and I guess use them for energy (I am not sure but I guess the propellers on the ships are to power the extraction).

I am not too scientifically inclined, but this sounded sort of crackpot to me...... but I figured I'd post here and ask for more informed opinions.

Note that he says that this plan will require 1 million windships at a total project cost of $6 trillion.

I'm not as curious about the fiscal realities of this as to whether there is actually anything legitimate to the idea he is proposing.

-Elektrix
 
Storing wind energy is the form of hydrogen is technically feasable. But with the current low price of fossil fuels (oil, coal), it is not economically viable.
 
ceptimus said:
Storing wind energy is the form of hydrogen is technically feasable. But with the current low price of fossil fuels (oil, coal), it is not economically viable.
Click to expand...

Ahh, is that what he's talking about? When I read him speaking about it it seemed like he was talking about using these windships to extract hydrogen from the water.

It's a bit over my head.

-Elektrix
 
Elektrix said:


Ahh, is that what he's talking about? When I read him speaking about it it seemed like he was talking about using these windships to extract hydrogen from the water.

It's a bit over my head.

-Elektrix
Click to expand...
He's talking about using a sea-based wind farm to generate electricity which would then be used to separate hydrogen from oxygen in the seawater by electrolysis, I believe. Feasible, but it would certainly be far cheaper to put the wind farm on land and use the electricity directly, as many places do. There is actually a lot of interest by the Dept. of Energy in developing hydrogen technologies, but IMO we are nowhere near getting economical production and distribution, or adequate storage systems, by 2010.

He also talks about OTEC, which is actually in use for cooling and power generation in some (edited to add: well, a few) places. Here's a legitimate site by a company in that business: http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/otec.html
 
I suppose the argument is that there's plenty of wind at sea, and the generators won't have to take up valuable land or spoil the view.
 
ceptimus said:
Storing wind energy is the form of hydrogen is technically feasable. But with the current low price of fossil fuels (oil, coal), it is not economically viable.
Click to expand...

And it probably has a long way to go.

The problem with getting hydrogen from water is that it takes just as much energy to get the hydrogen out as you get back in the end. OK, so the idea is to use wind power to do the work, but that means that for every horsepower you want to get out, you have to put a horsepower in.

With fossil fuels, nature/pressure/time have already created the potential, so there is no cost that has to be put into it.
 
aren't there these handy big things called "windmills" that generate power, too?
 
Elektrix said:


Ahh, is that what he's talking about? When I read him speaking about it it seemed like he was talking about using these windships to extract hydrogen from the water.

It's a bit over my head.

-Elektrix
Click to expand...

Same difference. Hydrogen is called energy storage because there aren't any sources of raw hydrogen on Earth. You have to put energy in to break up the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get some of that energy back if you later burn the hydrogen. There's no need to store the oxygen, because there's plenty in the air.

It seems a bit looney, though. It's difficult to deal with sea water because of the salt. It's also not so easy to store hydrogen. It's definitely more wasteful than using the electricity from the wind generators directly.
 
excellent idea these fuel cells.

Enough of these nasty greenhouse forcing carbon gases, what we need is a technology that only emits greenhouse forcing water vapour. ;)
 
Drooper said:
excellent idea these fuel cells.

Enough of these nasty greenhouse forcing carbon gases, what we need is a technology that only emits greenhouse forcing water vapour. ;)
Click to expand...
You're only putting back the water used to make the hydrogen in the first place.

The big problems with hydrogen right now are that the storage technology isn't well enough developed yet (metal hydrides are getting better but we're not there yet) and production methods, even using free solar energy, can't compete economically with fossil fuels.
 
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