So now that you've watched the documentary entitled "Who Killed the Electric Car?" guess what happened today?
The President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative was re-announced today. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for up to $130 million over three years, subject to Congressional appropriations, to advance the development and use of fuel cells for automotive, stationary, and portable power applications.
I'll make this as short as possible and instead of giving you my rant on the topic; I present reports from apparently reliable sources. But regardless, as in the Iraq war, when heavy research and experience has been reported to some of our key leaders, the research/reports have been ignored, joked about and/or ridiculed at great expense, consequence and death.
| Title: | Environmental Impact of H2 from Hydrogen Fuel Cell on the Stratosphere | |
| Authors: | Tromp, T. K. | |
| Affiliation: | AA(California Institute of Technology, Mail Code 170-25, Pasadena, CA 91125 United States ; ttromp@dar.caltech.edu) | |
| Publication: | American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #A72C-0192 | |
| Publication Date: | 12/2002 | |
| Origin: | AGU | |
| AGU Keywords: | 0330 Geochemical cycles | |
| Abstract Copyright: | (c) 2002: American Geophysical Union | |
| Bibliographic Code: | 2002AGUFM.A72C0192T |
Abstract
Hydrogen fuel cell technology seems poised to replace the internal combustion engine in the upcoming decade. Environmentalists tout the technology as environmentally friendly and stress its low tailpipe emissions resulting in cleaner urban air. At face value the technology should have a negligible impact because the major byproduct is water. What has not been considered is that it will take billions of liters of H2 to power the future national (and international) fleet of fuel-cell vehicles and that the leading contenders to make that H2 are the very fossil fuels that cause smog and greenhouse gases. If that does happen, there will be two important consequences. First, the current fossil fuel pollutants will not disappear, rather they will be shifted from tailpipe sources to where the fossil fuels are extracted and the hydrogen is made. In addition, the fuel to make the cells work, H2, is an important trace constituent (~0.5 ppmv) of the atmosphere [Novelli et al., 1999] and participates in reactions involving pollutants and greenhouse gases [Crutzen, 1977]. Thus, anthropogenic H2 emissions could have significant indirect environmental consequences. The global annual H2 production from current sources, anthropogenic plus natural, could be doubled in coming decades with the development of a hydrogen fuel economy [Zittel, 1996]. Such an increase could significantly impact the hydrogen cycle and other cycles with which it interacts in both the atmosphere and biosphere. We have examined the potential environmental impact of additional H2 release for several emission scenarios. We calculated the ODP of H2. Given that the oxidation of H2 is an important source of water vapor in the stratosphere, which is otherwise isolated from direct sources of H2O by the `cold trap' at the tropopause. We calculated what kind of elevated concentrations of stratospheric water vapor could occur for the different emission scenarios. Not only will additional water vapor cool the stratosphere, but also it will allow heterogeneous chemical reactions to occur when it forms PSCs in polar regions. H2 also reacts with atmospheric OH radicals, the premier oxidant in the earth's atmosphere. We will calculate how increasing fluxes of H2 to the atmosphere will shift the balance of the earth's oxidation chemistry, potentially increasing the lifetimes of other more harmful gases.Until next time:
Nuff said!
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