WHAT about windmills solar panels?
These can be economic in some local settings, but not in large scale commercial ones. There are a lot of disadvantages to them, number one being that they do not produce electricity at a more or less uniform rate. Number two is that they are much less energy-dense than fossil fuels. There are more problems with them. But this is a long separate topic which we can’t cram into this article.
(Note, however, that many geothermal and hydroelectric, and even nuclear plants produce electricity at a more or less uniform rate throughout the day and night.)
Caveat 3: Nuclear energy would be much more economical than fossil fuels.
Why?
The uranium and plutonium (and potentially thorium) fuel in nuclear plants are the densest energy containing fuel which we can commercially use, much, much more so than fossil fuels.
Fissioning 1 kg of Uranium-235 generates approximately 80 terajoules of energy, which is approximately roughly 2 to 3 million times greater than the energy density of coal. 1 kg of natural uranium used in a reactor provides as much energy as 14,000 kg of coal or 10,000 kg of oil.
In nuclear plants, nuclear energy is transformed into heated water, which turns turbines that produce electricity. In brief, all nuclear plants produce electricity.
Subsequently, charging electric vehicles with electricity from nuclear plants should pose little problem.
In conclusion, electric jeeps and other electric vehicles may not be such a good idea in certain situations.
What situations? If the source of the vehicles’ electricity are fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or natural gas. We just end up using, and wasting, more fossil fuels. (But see caveat 1 above.)
We can apply the same principle in order to evaluate a so-called hydrogen economy. Many so-called environmentalists like the idea of using hydrogen as energy source instead of hydrocarbons because combusting hydrogen produces only water, while combusting hydrocarbons and coal also produces carbon dioxide.
However, generally it’s not a good idea. The devil is in the type of hydrogen.
Hydrogen as an energy source can be classified as:
* Natural hydrogen (also known as white hydrogen or gold hydrogen), generated by natural process.
* Green hydrogen, made from renewable energy sources.
* Gray (also known as brown or black hydrogen), obtained from fossil fuels.
Suppose you have a hydrogen-powered car. Let us start with gray hydrogen. Most of today’s commercially produced hydrogen is made by a process called steam reforming, which is also the most economical way of producing commercial hydrogen in massive amounts.
CH4 (methane usually from natural gas) + H2O → CO (carbon monoxide) + 3 H2
Then you combust the H2 in your car, or turn it into electricity if your car has a hydrogen fuel cell (an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of the hydrogen fuel into electricity through redox reactions with oxygen as oxidizing agent). Only water is produced.
2 H2 + O2 → 2 H2O
Notice that the above process involves at least two arrows. Plus, you also have to obtain the methane from natural gas sources, transport it to factories that do the steam reforming, isolate and transport the hydrogen to your car. Wasteful. The process also can’t avoid producing carbon dioxide (into which carbon monoxide is eventually oxidized to in the atmosphere) in the steam reforming process.
However, you can just combust methane in a single process in your car.
CH4 + 2 O2 → 2 H2O + CO2
Therefore, using gray hydrogen as a fuel source is mostly a bad idea. You waste more energy, combust more fossil fuels, produce more carbon dioxide. (To be continued)/PN
