RE: Energy Policy

Gary Collins wrote:

I take it, then, that to source it from natural gas doesn't require
electricity. Is it a chemical process, using a catalyst or something
to extract the hydrogen from the hydrocarbons?
Or is there a proportion of hydrogen mixed in with the hydrocarbons,
that can simply be separated out?
(I probably knew this a couple of decades or so ago, but the details
have now become lost in the mists of time).

This information comes from the book, Tomorrow痴 Energy Hydrogen Fuel
Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet, by Peter Hoffmann.

The world produces about 40 million tons of hydrogen commercially per
year. It is used in many industries as a chemical raw material,
especially in the production of fertilizer, but also in making dyes,
drugs, and plastics. It is used in the treatment of oils and fats, as a
fuel for welding, to make gasoline from coal, and to produce methanol.
It can be stored as a high-pressure gas, as an integral component in
certain alloys known as hydrides, and in around and on microscopic
carbon fibers.

It is produced commercially in almost a dozen processes. Most of them
involve the extraction of hydrogen from hydrocarbons. The most widely
used, least costly, process is steam reforming in which natural gas is
made to react with steam, releasing hydrogen. Water electrolysis, in
which water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by running an
electrical current through it, is used where electricity is cheap or
where high purity is required.

Hydrogen is stripped out of hydrocarbon fuels, typically natural gas, in
a method in which natural gas reacts with steam at about 1500-1600
degrees F with the help of a nickel catalyst. The result is a mixture
of hydrogen, carbon monoxide,, carbon dioxide, steam, and unreacted
methane. This mixture is cooled down to about 750 F and reacted further
over a water gas shift catalyst producing more hydrogen and converting
the CO to CO2. The CO2 and other impurities are removed by a process
called pressure swing adsorption.

Another method has been developed by a Norwegian oil/gas firm where a
plasma torch originally used for incinerating hazardous wastes converts
natural gas into hydrogen and commercially saleable carbon black without
the CO2 side product.

Apparently even the optimists think that for the near future most
hydrogen will be produced from fossil fuels or municipal solid waste.
Received on Thu Dec 18 12:04:04 2003