While some in the energy industry worry about how long the world's oil and gas reserves will last, one man has been looking much farther down the line. He sees hydrogen as the fuel of the future.
Christopher Flavin, vice president for research at Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C., says development of the internal combustion engine was the driving force behind growth of the oil industry.
Concern for the environment is the driving force behind the current natural gas boom, which Flavin says will see a tripling of worldwide consumption during the next decade.
But Flavin sees another role for natural gas: "It is the logical bridge to what many scientists believe will be our ultimate energy carrier, gaseous hydrogen produced from solar energy and other renewable resources.
Flavin sees hydrogen as methane without the carbon. Because hydrogen use would require infrastructure similar to that for natural gas, says Flavin, the transition could be a relatively smooth one.
TRANSITION
"Just as the world shifted early in this century from solid fuels to liquid ones, so might a shift from liquids to gases be under way today, thereby increasing the efficiency and cleanliness of the overall energy system."
The first stages of transition from natural gas to hydrogen might be made easier by the fact that hydrogen can be manufactured directly from natural gas as well as from a broad range of renewable energy sources.
"During the transition, hydrogen can be mixed with methane in concentrations of up to 15% without altering today's gas pipelines, furnaces, or burners," maintains Flavin.
"According to our estimates, the world will need to begin the transition by 2010 at the latest, before the use of natural gas peaks, and the shift will likely accelerate the next 2 decades."
HURDLES
Among the problems Flavin sees are lowering the cost of hydrogen production, development of hydrogen pipelines and storage systems, and commercialization of fuel cells and other technologies for using hydrogen efficiently.
"As natural gas resources are gradually depleted and prices rise in the middle part of the next century hydrogen can be eased into the mix. just as wind power is already quietly fed into today's electric grids, so could solar hydrogen gradually supplant natural gas. A few decades later, solar hydrogen could become the foundation of a new global energy economy."
Putting hydrogen in gas grids has a precedent. Mary McGough, hydrogen products manager at BOC Ltd., Guildford, U.K., said fuel gas made from coal, used in many countries before natural gas, had hydrogen added.
McGough said the problem with hydrogen is containment. Liquefying hydrogen requires either reducing its temperature near to absolute zero, which is expensive, or compressing it, which necessitates strong, heavy containers.
Copyright 1994 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
