Letters

June 9, 2003
Hydrogen should not be considered any threat to the oil and gas industry for one simple fact: the most abundant and lowest-cost source of hydrogen is from hydrocarbons!

Hydrogen and hydrocarbons

Hydrogen should not be considered any threat to the oil and gas industry for one simple fact: the most abundant and lowest-cost source of hydrogen is from hydrocarbons! There is no free lunch! It takes a large amount of energy to break the hydrogen-oxygen bond in water. Putting the hydrogen back together with oxygen in a fuel cell generates less energy than is required to break that bond, per the second law of thermodynamics.

So then the question becomes, "Where can hydrogen be found where it is abundant and not locked up by strong bonds?" Hydrocarbons of course, and if you want the best bang for your buck you'll go after the hydrogen in methane wherein there is the most hydrogen per carbon of all of the hydrocarbons.

Economics will determine whether it is better to use the methane directly to generate power of whether there is a benefit to break the bond, purify the hydrogen, and use the hydrogen to generate power. Either way, the carbon is the waste product and is produced as either carbon black (messy) or carbon dioxide.

Greg Hummel
Geologist
Newport Beach, Calif.

Error in letter

Osama bin Laden is not a royal, he has connections to the Royals. I apologize for the confusion (Letters column, May 19, 2003, p. 10).

Luis R. Celerier
Longview, Tex.