WE do not need to discuss our concerns about the deterioration of the environment due to the unrestrained use of the resources nature is kindly providing us with. Also, we do not need to discuss our concerns about the scarcity of these resources, notably the running out of fossil fuels.
Instead we want to discuss sunshine.
The sun has been shining for billions of years, and it is going to shine for many billion years more. The light from the sun arriving on our Earth is driving life on it.
The sun provides warmth, so that the planet doesn't look like Antarctica everywhere, but allows water to be liquid rather than frozen for being drunk by the animals, including us humans, and absorbed by the plants.
Sunlight also helps the plants to grow using a process called photo-synthesis, and in turn, animals and human consume plants (and each other in some cases) for their sustenance. Fossil fuels, coal, petroleum or natural gas, merely are stored sunshine, because the derived from plants which grew millions of years ago.
The sun also is responsible for wind and waves, as both are created when air and water are heated by the sun. Of course, there is also a lot of interaction between the two.
We have learned to use the various forms of energy which are around us. Eating is the basic process which provides our body with energy. Already thousands of years ago fire, burning wood, coal, oil and other things, has given warmth to the people when the sunshine was scarce, e.g. in winter, and when it was absent, e.g. in the night.
We have learned to turn heat, mostly from burning fuels, into motion, a technology culminating in the fascinating engine of a BMW Formula 1 car or the powerful propulsion system that takes the Ariane 5 rocket into space. Fuels account for most of the energy consumed in transportation as they combine high energy density (energy per weight) with moderate need for storage space.
We have learned to turn motion into electricity, and have built a variety of machines that can do so.
Every car today has a generator on board to provide power for the multitude of electrical gadgets from automatic seat heating to windscreen wipers. Falling waters at a dam or the strong winds in an open plain drive generators producing electric power. However, most electricity today is produced in plants burning fossil fuels to drive turbines for power generation.
Sunshine is light. What would we do without it? In past gone times the night was dark and full of mysteries. First fire brought light into the night, or into caves, tents, huts and houses. Then the light bulb was invented.
Today, nobody can imagine a life without electricity.
Think about all the luxury you'd not have at hand anymore: no lights, no refrigerator, no home computer, no TV, no ... you look around and see what is wired or has a battery in it. Electricity is omnipresent.
The consequences of the use of energy, fuel or electricity, are by now well known. But why worry about carbon dioxide enhancing the green house effect in the atmosphere, if we mostly burn it for heating our houses during winter? The problem cures itself: global warming, warm winters, no heating, less CO2. Convincing logic - isn't it.
On top of it all is what ASPO thinks how its going, or Club of Rome or Thomas Malthus for that matter. More people and more development need more fuel and power. But natural resources do not grow like for example the number of inhabitants of Mexico City or the GDP of Indonesia. Those aforementioned are warning us that all may come to an end, and with it the great inferno. That the resources get scarce is generally accepted. For the inferno we have our parties and governments who try to avoid it, at least (first) for themselves if they can not for the others.
Amory Lovins – founder and chairman of the Rocky Mountains Institute – is a pioneer of energy efficiency and holistic design, decades before it became fashionable today. His principles, properly applied can mitigate our problems, but they are not a solution. We will always need fuel and power – in one way or the other. A fundamentally new approach is necessary.
This new approach comes with the exploitation of what is called renewable energy sources. In mind we have wind and water power, biofuels, but also photoelectric converters and solar thermal power plants. As long as such installations are small, everybody is happy. But as the Three Gorges Dam in China has demonstrated, large scale solutions will have considerable impact on society, environment and climate. It appears that decentralized production of power exploiting various sources according to the local circumstances are an acceptable solution. Germany has introduced its Energy Mix policy in this understanding.
Electricity demand may be covered eventually from those renewable sources. But what about replacing petroleum and natural gas, which last at current consumption levels for another 20 and 50 years?
World petroleum consumption was around 80 million barrels (10 million tons) every day during recent years. If such should be produced from plants, e.g. oil palms with a production of 4 tons per hectare and year, plantations would cover 9.1 million square kilometres which is almost as much land as China or Canada. A more practical comparison is this: Malaysia and Indonesia with each close to 16'000 tons annually account for more than 85 percent of global palm oil production. One would need 600 countries like Malaysia or Indonesia to satisfy the World's thirst of oil. Malaysia is effectively a food importing country.
However, burning oil is not a sustainable solution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representative for "us", has finally (2007) agreed that the climate is changing due to the impact of human activity. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is identified as the major culprit. A "solution" where biologically produced fuels are burned in the same way as ordinary diesel for example will not change anything. At best, the carbon balance is zero. This is better than doing nothing, but it will not inverse the global warming that we currently experience.
Hydrogen has been proposed as an alternative fuel without emissions or pollution in its use. Hydrogen has a high energy density, so it could make a good fuel for transport, but storing it requires considerable space. Hydrogen does not occur on earth in its molecular state H2. Hydrogen is always tied to other atomic species like carbon, which makes the hydrocarbons petroleum and natural gas, or oxygen, which makes water. When burning hydrocarbons, carbon as well as hydrogen reacts with oxygen from the air to form water and carbon dioxide, and a few other substances. In water, the hydrogen is already "burned", i.e. consumed. So hydrogen is a good idea, but how to get to it in a renewable and clean manner?
A large number of technologies for hydrogen production are at hand today. It can be made from hydrocarbons, natural gas or oil, even from coal and water, but these processes produce carbon dioxide on the one hand and are based on resources which are drying out, therefore not a lasting solution. Electrolysis is the other standard method to make hydrogen. This process consumes a lot of electricity. If all fuels should be replaced with hydrogen from electrolysis, the world would be plastered with nuclear, wind, hydro and solar power plants.
The idea to make hydrogen in thermal water splitting (thermolysis), i.e. to make it from water and heat only is a long standing idea. While water is abundant (not so everywhere) and heat can be supplied using concentrated sunshine, thermolysis failed to be realized so far, because it is difficult to separate the hydrogen from the water while it is hot.
Thermal water splitting has been studied for hydrogen production in the late Seventies and early Eighties in the wake of the 1974 oil crisis. However, as petroleum supply has become stable and crude oil prices remained at a low level, research for alternative fuels faded. The "Last Mohican" was the Weizmann Institute where at the end of the Nineties research in direct solar thermal water splitting came to an end. However, derivative technologies based on multi step processes are developed a various institutes, notably by DLR in Köln-Deutz and ETH Zürich. In the various attempts that have been made hydrogen has been produced, but large quantities as required to introduce hydrogen as an alternative fuel so far nobody could provide.
This may now be different.
If the sunlight is very concentrated, and the temperatures get very high it even happens that molecules get split. So is the case when water is heated. Liquid water first turns into steam at 100°C. Then for a long while not much happens. At above say 1700°C some, not so many, of the water molecules split. This statistical process is called thermal dissociation. The more intense sunlight, the higher the temperature and the more molecules split. For example at 2200°C about 5% of the molecules of hot steam are split into hydrogen and oxygen, the two constituents of water. If one could only get the hydrogen out and leave the heat inside!
In 2003 two physicists and an engineer submitted an application for a patent on a new method applying to thermal water splitting which
was followed by another application in 2004. They picked up the ideas developed before the turn of the millennium and applied modern concepts of energy efficiency in a holistic approach to hydrogen production from thermally dissociated water. The resulting device is stunningly simple and has the potential to change the world.
Today, H2 Power Systems Ltd (www.h2powersystems.com) is developing the Solar Water Cracker ("SWC"), a device based on the technology the three inventors dubbed H2P. The SWC is essentially a concentrating mirror system and a vessel filled with steam.Concentrated solar radiation enters the volume through a small window. Inside the vessel are two types of membrane filter tubes which allow extracting in parallel oxygen and hydrogen from the dissociated steam at about 2200°C and below 1000°C, respectively. This represents a truly renewable source of clean hydrogen because the only consumable, water, is not only abundant on our planet, but is is also the only "exhaust" when using the hydrogen in a fuel cell or in combustion with oxygen or air. With a 100 m² concentrator, the SWC will produce around 1 Kg of hydrogen per hour during the bright sunshine hours of the day, which is approximately 6 to 7 hours in Spain or California, and around 9 hours in Chile, South Africa, the Sahara or the Arabian Peninsula.
Says Nils Kongmark, one of the three inventors: "The Solar Water Cracker provides cheap and clean hydrogen which may serve as a fuel in transportation or to make electricity with fuel cells. It opens the door to a truly sustainable hydrogen economy. But we need a big brother helping us to get there."
A first reactor vessel is currently being built by H2 Power Systems in Gothenburg, Sweden. A SWC prototype is expected for 2010 and a full blown system for 2012. Given the necessary financing, it will be available right in time just before, or already at (?), the peak of petroleum production.
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