A question about Hydrogen power...?

Question

Just a few questions: Can one hydrogen energy plant support the needs of 100,000 people for up to 4 years? What does a hydrogen plant need to produce energy?

Answer 1

Currently, the production of hydrogen requires more engergy than we can extract from its use.
One hydrogen plant could possibly support a lot of people, but the cost in petroleum energy would outweigh the amount of energy recovered from the hydrogen.
That's currently. Things may change in the future.

Answer 2

As Uncle Al and others have said, hydrogen is NOT a primary energy source, since there are no hydrogen wells to drill. It has the advantage of burning clean, so cars burning hydrogen in a city reduce the levels of pollution in the city. Unfortunately, most hydrogen is produced by the steam reforming of natural gas, and these plants spit out lots of CO2, so no overall reduction in greenhouse emissions is seen.

If we don't crack the fusion nut, and it may not be doable, civilization is in store for a serious slow down as the days of cheap energy fade away.

Answer 3

The power output of a fusion plant will only depend on its size, when the technology becomes mature enough so that the fusion reactions can be sustained over very long periods, and the power bill becomes positive at last, in the future.
One thing remains certain : it has the very best power output vs fuel input ratio that you can imagine.
The fuel for a hydrogen power plant is, in general, heavy isotopes of hydrogen, which are deuterium and tritium. Deuterium can be extracted from water, and tritium can be produced with lithium.

Answer 4

The H*Y*D*R*O*G*E*N economy is crap. Hydrogen is not a primary energy resource. Hydrogen is not mined. Hydrogen is energy conversion - and the Second Law of Thermodynamics always has the last laugh. Powerplants have useful lives of 20 years minimum, 50 years expected.

Hydrogen is the ultimate leak - through physical apertures; by diffusion through elastomers, hoses, seals, gaskets; by chemical diffusion through metal. Hydrogen goes through glass. Add alloy hydrogen embrittlement.

Do you want a hydrogen storage technology fully double the wildest Officially extrapolated Department of Energy hallucinations? An open bucket of diesel has way more pairs of hydrogen atoms/volume than hydrogen gas at 50,000 psi or liquid hydrogen at 23K (and remember the remarkably exothermic spin isomer conversion of ortho-hydrogen to para-hydrogen at cryogenic temps). You get to burn the carbon, too. A housewife doing a 50,000 psi hydrogen fill up? KA-FIRETRUCKING - BOOM!

Have you ever worked with plumbed hydrogen? I have, for quartz blowing at 10 psi and for hydrogenation at 1000 psi. Have you ever seen 100 people grab bottles of diluted shampoo and start squirting down nearly a mile of sweated copper tubing looking for a 10 psi hydrogen leak? I have. It was the only safety drill I've ever seen with 100% *enthusiastic* participation that needed no training at all. They were scared for their lives - and well that they should be. BOOM.

Answer 5

It could use electricity, which would could come from coal, nuclear, solar, etc.
More likely, it would use "steam reforming"
to get hydrogen out of a fossil fuel, like
natural gas
or coal.

Answer 6

It needs NRG to produce NRG. Someone smarter than I will be able to give you better details.

Now, someone, a Purdue professor, has developed a procedure using an aluminum alloy to get H2 out of water in a more direct method, but you are going to have to research this on your own. Google makes it easy.