Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
You use energy going from CH4 to Hydrogen. Look at the syngas and water gas conversion process. and be mindful of the molar energy balance.
Hydrogen is a storage means. It is zero emission where it is used. But it has to be generated.
|
Not really, sure reforming is endothermic but if you do it on the cell like we did with SOFCs, it assists with cooling and thermal management of the fuel cell stack. In fact, we found (and I mentioned this in another thread weeks ago) that we were better off to run our anode exhaust through an eductor and a nickel bed (heat exchanger for our incoming fuel or air) and recycle part of the stream so we could get more cooling duty. This resulted in us running at a lower on cell fuel utilization but a higher overall system efficiency.
I think you are missing the conversion efficiencies related to putting that hydrogen into meaningful storage and taking it out and putting it to use. To make it meaningful storage, you need to compress it to several thousand PSI. This ain’t a free ride. The part that makes me shake my head is the notion that renewable energy from tidal, solar, wind, and hydroelectric can be wasted on inefficient processes because ‘free’... I think we’d be far better off using the off peak power from these ‘green’ energy conversion technologies wisely such as charging batteries and other useful things with better storage and power extraction efficiencies as opposed to making hydrogen out of water.