"Think Beyond Petroleum"
By E. Ralph Hostetter (09/07/07)
"Think beyond petroleum" is a lofty thought. Sidewalk pundits endorse it. It smacks of high-tech. And that got my attention.
Think of fusion. That's the energy-producing concept which uses the hydrogen in heavy sea water. In other words, sea water becomes the fuel for the process. But fusion was not on the list "beyond petroleum." Windmills were high on the list, as they are with most people, except Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who suffers from the NIMBY syndrome. It seems strange to me that windmills were high on the list. My first reaction was that windmills were high-tech in Biblical times and that was before petroleum.
Solar energy was identified as a source to think about. Solar, like wind energy, is limited by location. The Southwest desert areas provide a greater opportunity for the use of solar power, which in these regions may be used to advantage.
However, like wind power, solar solves only a small portion of the energy equation. Biofuels also were identified. One of the commercials of the major oil company the name of which matches the first letters of the words "Beyond Petroleum" demonstrates a farmer's approval of the biofuel concept. The farmer explains the advantages of converting one year's food crop to biofuel to provide a portion of the energy for the next year's food crop. Hydrogen also was mentioned.
British Petroleum (BP) and General Electric (GE) reached a preliminary agreement in 2006 to form a global alliance to facilitate the development, demonstration and full integration of gasification and power-generation technology into at least five hydrogen power projects.
A hydrogen power project takes a fossil fuel such as coal or natural gas and converts it into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen-rich gas is used as fuel to generate electric power from turbines in a power plant. The carbon dioxide is captured, transported and stored safely and permanently in deep geological formations such as oil and gas fields. Ninety percent of the carbon dioxide is captured so that it does not enter the atmosphere.
BP already has announced it is developing two 500-megawatt hydrogen power plants, one in southern California at a cost of two billion dollars and another in western Australia, at a cost of $1.5 billion. Both plants will capture four million tons of carbon dioxide each. The southern California carbon dioxide would be stored in an offshore deep geological formation.
The costs for the capture of CO2 from the power projects were not given. An indication of the costs follows:
In March 2007, the world’s largest prototype carbon-capture coal plant opened in Esbjerg, Denmark, for the purpose of developing technology to capture and store CO2 from conventional power plants. The present cost for capturing CO2 is $68.00 per ton average. This should provide an indication of the capture cost GE and BP can expect. Add to this the cost of gasification of coal to create hydrogen for GE’s gas turbines for the production of electricity and the final cost of disposing of the captured CO2 would no doubt create a substantial increase in the price of electricity to the consumer. Government subsidies to close this gap doubtless are expected.
Although not mentioned in “Think Beyond Petroleum,” the use of hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles has gotten widespread attention recently in discussions regarding fuel economy.
The U.S. Department of Energy fuel economy bulletins explain that fuel cells are used in FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) and "like battery-electric vehicles, FCVs are propelled by electric motors." But while battery-electric vehicles use electricity from an external source and store it in a battery, FCVs create their own electricity. Fuel cells on board create electricity through a chemical process using hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air. FCVs fueled with pure hydrogen, stored on board in high pressure tanks, emit no pollutants, only water and heat.
A simple explanation is: the automobile must be an electric-powered vehicle complete with very efficient storage batteries. The fuel cell produces enough extra power to run a generator that keeps the batteries charged.
The same thing could be accomplished less expensively by placing a separate, cheap, gasoline-powered generator in your car, according to Joseph Romm, manager of energy efficiency programs at the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration.
General Motors has produced a fuel cell automobile, the Volt. It is powered for the first 40 miles by energy stored in a battery pack that can be recharged by plugging it in. The cheap gasoline or ethanol-powered, on-board generator mentioned above would keep the battery charged, allowing for an additional 600 miles of range without the necessity of an expensive fuel cell.
A simple summation of thinking beyond petroleum is that all avenues end at one point — the generation of electrical energy. For some strange reason, no mention was made of a 50-year-old technology that has proved to be the safest, cleanest, cheapest means of generating electrical energy to have come from the mind of man — atomic energy.
The electrical energy needed to power all land vehicular traffic will require billions and billions of additional kilowatt hours of electricity. Atomic plants would provide this energy and eliminate all CO2 as well. The good news would be that America would be no longer be dependent on foreign oil.
E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and publisher, also is an award-winning columnist and Vice Chairman of the Free Congress Foundation Board of Directors.
(Printer friendly version) 
Send Feedback
