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Hydrogen Fuel Station in Iceland 382

Posted by michael from the should-be-greenland-ha-ha-ha dept.
klang points to this blurb about Iceland opening a hydrogen refueling facility. While it isn't, as the blurb states, the world's first hydrogen station, it is notable because it produces the hydrogen onsite with electricity from geothermal energy and electrolysis, making it an almost perfectly clean energy source.
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Hydrogen Fuel Station in Iceland More

Hydrogen Fuel Station in Iceland

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  • All this talk... (Score:4, Funny)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:39PM (#5811391) Homepage Journal
    I don't understand why creating water instead of carbon-monoxide is better for the environment. If we suddenly replaced all fossil fuel engines with hydrogen engines, we'd have the same problem: excess waste.

    How many tons of waste do we humans send into the air every year? Do we think that equivalent amount of water is better? Instead of air pollution and all of the problems associated with it, we'd have to worry about the oceans being diluted, excess humidity, or some damn thing we can't think of.

    I actually am not of the opinion that it's as bad as people think it is anyway. So talking about changing from one form of waste to another is just an unnecessary expense.
    • Excess water will not a big problem... same with excess nitrogen. On the other hand excess CO2 *is* a problem.

      Water is a very easily manageable even if you consider it as waste.

      S

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cheeko ( 165493 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:42PM (#5811429) Homepage Journal
      Except that the hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis, which decreases the amount of water. Not to mention the earth as a whole could definately benefit from more fresh water in many places.

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Temsi ( 452609 )
      Except for one major difference.
      Water vapor is not bad for the environment.
      70% of the planet's surface is after all covered with water.
      You can then take that same water vapor, cool it, store it, and use it to make more hydrogen.
      Clean energy, clean waste, reusable. Kinda neat.

      • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by krow ( 129804 )
        Actually water vapor is a major green house gas.
      • Water vapor is not bad for the environment. 70% of the planet's surface is after all covered with water.
        ...and 50-75% [worldbank.org] of the human body itself is also water. So I'm going to go out on a limb here to state that "water A-OK."
        • Ahhh water:

          1: In its vaporous state, it can cause severe burns....

          2: It is found in high quantities in cancerous tumors.

          3: It is a major component of acid rain....

          How dare you say water is OK? ;)
        • Water vapor is not bad for the environment. 70% of the planet's surface is after all covered with water. ...and 50-75% [worldbank.org] of the human body itself is also water. So I'm going to go out on a limb here to state that "water A-OK."

          I am sure they will find a way to protest it. It destroys the natural desert. Eventually, we will all drown since all this water is being 'created'. It will cause more rain, which makes people gloomy, and lead to more suicides. Rich people are driving hydrogen SUVs

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris DOT travers AT gmail DOT com> on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:43PM (#5811442) Homepage Journal
      Usually you have a closed hydrogen cycle: water + electricity -> hydrogen + O2 -> water + heat. This is why I think of hydrogen as a storage rather than primary fuel source.

      The real wildcard though is the source of the electricity. In this case it is clean, geothermal energy, though it could be solar, wind, etc. If you used fossil fuels, you would have the same problem as we have today but worse because of poor efficiency of the hydrolysis process.

      • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Informative)

        by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender@gUUUm ... inus threevowels> on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:53PM (#5811547)
        The real wildcard though is the source of the electricity. In this case it is clean, geothermal energy, though it could be solar, wind, etc. If you used fossil fuels, you would have the same problem as we have today but worse because of poor efficiency of the hydrolysis process.
        Hear hear! A lot of people miss this, eg. some of the posters above calling it a "clean energy source". It's not an energy source, at least not if the Hydrogen is created using eletrolysis. In that case it's just a battery. I'm not sure whether using it without electrolysis is viable - that Hydrogen has to come from somewhere, after all.

        • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:06PM (#5811685) Homepage
          that Hydrogen has to come from somewhere, after all.

          IMHO, Algae is the most likely source of renewable hydrogen in the foreseable future.

          http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,5445 6,00.html

          • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Informative)

            by einhverfr ( 238914 )
            IMHO, Algae is the most likely source of renewable hydrogen in the foreseable future.

            So in this case you have 2H2O + sunlight -> 2H2 + 02 -> 2H20 + heat. Your limiting factor here is sunlight. So again this may work well where you have lots of sun, but not everywhere.

            I suspect there will be a wide variety of hydrogen sources, mostly involving an electrical source, generated by wind, hydropower, geothermal, etc. But the algea may be an important part too.

        • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Funny)

          by cygnus ( 17101 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:29PM (#5811844) Homepage
          I'm not sure whether using it without electrolysis is viable - that Hydrogen has to come from somewhere, after all.
          maybe we can get it from stray protons from nuclear fission reactions. :)
          • maybe we can get it from stray protons from nuclear fission reactions. :)

            Uhhh... Aren't those neutrons? (of course when the neutron strikes another atom, it usually becomes a proton and electron, but I am unaware of another way to make this happen ourside the strong nuclear force.)

        • Re:All this talk... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jordy ( 440 ) <jordanNO@SPAMsnocap.com> on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:49PM (#5811987) Homepage
          Hear hear! A lot of people miss this, eg. some of the posters above calling it a "clean energy source". It's not an energy source, at least not if the Hydrogen is created using eletrolysis. In that case it's just a battery.

          I've heard this far too much. Photons are little packets (batteries) holding energy. The earth's core is just a giant battery holding in thermal heat. The sun is just a giant hydrogen battery.

          There is no "source" of energy. Everything is energy. We just like to convert it into forms we can use easily.

          I mean by your logic, photovoltaic cells are an energy "source", not the photons. A nuclear power plant's turbine is an energy "source," but not the plutonium. Fire is an energy "source," but coal is not.

          Now if you said electricity source, maybe I'd agree with you, but otherwise you are just nitpicking.
      • If you used fossil fuels, you would have the same problem as we have today but worse because of poor efficiency of the hydrolysis process.

        There's a difference between generating energy from fossil fuels in cars v/s doing so in a large electric generation facility. It is lot more efficient and "clean" to do so in a large plant where you are not worried about weight of equipment, acceleration, necessity to function in a range of climate conditions, size of engine, etc.

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:44PM (#5811445)
      More tonnes of water evaporate off the oceans every day than man pumps CO into the air. A few million tonnes of water is nothing to the oceans. The water level wouldn't even measurably change.

      Jason
      ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • How about excess rain from the increased water vapor? Or perhaps global cooling from the increased cloud cover?

      In all honesty though, humans are beginning to run up against clean water problems in various areas of the world. The 'excess' water can probably be used elsehwere (not to mention probably being 'cleaner' than current water gathering methods)
    • You are kidding, no?

      Water, H2O... unlike carbon monoxide and whatever else current IC engines spew out is a very useful and re-usable substance.

      You could collect it and maybe clean it up and run your toilet with it. Or collect it and green the desert with it. Or whatever, all that is really besides the point.

      You cannot honestly label water as "waste". For as you and I are 90+% waste then ;)

      Cheers,
      Andre
      • You cannot honestly label water as "waste". For as you and I are 90+% waste then ;)

        Some would argue that to be a higher number. I personally find most people I interact with can be replaced by a small shell script, and thereby be a 100% waste (from my frame of reference).

        I'm more interested in technology to remove stupid people from driving on freeway systems. Smart drive systems can save more resources because there will be less traffic jams. They aren't mutually exclusive, and I'd like to see both being developed, but that's where my interests lie.

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Informative)

      by elwinc ( 663074 )
      It's because CO2 is a greenhouse gas -- it raises the overall temp of the planet, which may cause havoc. H20 is not a greenhouse gas. Also, compute the average time for a carbon atom to be captured by a plant, then returned to the atmosphere -- it's about 5000 years. Do the same for a water molecule to go from atmosphere to river and back to atmosphere -- it's a few months. Thus the atmosphere is better equipped to shed excess water than excess C02 (it's called rain!).

      • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cy Guy ( 56083 )
        H20 is not a greenhouse gas

        That, my friend, is wrong [sciencedaily.com].

        Water is the most siginificant and most abundant greenhouse gas. It is also one we have the least control over. We do have some control over CO2 and Methane, and so that has been the primary focus of greenhouse gas reduction planning - but were a mechanism found to control water vapor, we might not have to bother much with controlling carbon based greenhouse gases.
        • Hear-hear! It's high-time to invite those Tatooine vapour farmers to the discussion table.

        • Re:All this talk... (Score:3, Informative)

          by mfrank ( 649656 )
          High water vapor levels -> more clouds -> higher albedo -> more reflected sunlight -> lower temperatures -> more rain -> lower water vapor levels. There's a feedback loop.

          The feedback loop for CO2 involves freshly exposed rock becoming carbonate and getting transported to the ocean by the process of erosion, where it eventually gets subducted into the mantle. Higher levels of CO2 (theoretically) increase weather activity and the rate of erosion. This takes place over geological time, h

    • Re:All this talk... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by brokenwndw ( 471112 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:54PM (#5811551)
      I'm trying to decide whether the parent is simply confused or a clever troll. It has enough things wrong with it that I suspect the latter. But just in case, I'll "reply not moderate" (although I'd like to know who modded this up to 4):

      - Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide as the primary pollutant (on a global scale at least; locally smog etc. could be considered more important). This is carbon dioxide that was not previously in the atmosphere, since the carbon came from stores in the ground. In comparison, using renewable biomass for fuel, for example, adds no additional carbon to the atmosphere.

      - The system described here is closed cycle. Water goes in, hydrogen and oxygen come out; then when the hydrogen is burned it recombines with the oxygen to become water again. Diluting the oceans is impossible in this case (and rather ridiculous in the fossil fuel case; consider the volumes involved).

      - The biggest win is probably on the local scale I mentioned. I don't think working to eliminate smog is an "unnecessary expense". Unless you think changing from breathing smog to breathing water vapor is just from "one form of waste to another", in which case I'll take the water and you can have the smog.

      I'm personally open to debate about exactly how bad global climate change is. But it's dangerous and dishonest to hide behind bad science to resist progress.
    • I don't think you have to worry about "sudden" replacement. It would be a monumental achievement for the US to migrate 1% of its in-use fossil fuel engines to hydrogen within the next 10 years. And if you can't tell the difference between H2O and CO (along with other noxious baddies) coming out a tailpipe, methinks you're deprived of oxygen already...
    • In my opinion you are all wet!
    • Actually, the hazardous properties of water are well documented at http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html [dhmo.org]

  • NO SMOKING! (Score:4, Funny)

    by drenehtsral ( 29789 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:39PM (#5811397) Homepage
    I bet that's sure a non-smoking facility =:-)
  • Well, that's brilliant. Now they'll just be depleting their source of geothermal energy, turning Iceland into a cold and dreary place...oh, wait...
    • Oh, if you only knew.

      Geothermal energy is water heated by hot lava underground.
      Hydrogen produces water as waste. Water then seeps back into the soil, and will eventually be extracted again later, as.. you guessed it geothermal energy.
      Iceland has been using geothermal energy for decades. Almost every home in the country is heated by it.
      Oh, and by the way, it's not as cold as the name implies... New York in the winter gets much colder.
  • This is cool, but I can't say I am surprised. Iceland has more energy than they know what to do with (they even grow bananas!) so I had expected them to build a hydrogen infrastructure for motor vehicles as well as energy storage. But it si still cool to see this happen.

  • For a bit of background (Score:5, Informative)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:41PM (#5811415)
    Here is a PDF [newenergy.is] outlining Iceland's ultimate aim of becoming the first hydrogen economy.

  • I wonder (Score:4, Funny)

    by 7x7 ( 665946 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:42PM (#5811421)
    how long it will be before the Bush Administration declares that they are making hydrogen bombs.

    Gotta disarm them and hold the hydrogen in trust of the Icelandic people yaknow...

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "how long it will be before the Bush Administration declares that they are making hydrogen bombs.

      Gotta disarm them and hold the hydrogen in trust of the Icelandic people yaknow... "

      That might have been funny if it was funny.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Funny)

      by fobbman ( 131816 )
      As long as we keep all of this information on the Internet, we'll be fine. George hates walking around on Al's turf.

  • Hydrogen is not a source of energy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:45PM (#5811461) Homepage
    Hydrogen is a method for energy storage. If you're lucky like the icelanders you have cheap geothermal energy you can convert to hydrogen. But if the energy is coming from fossil fuels it only means that they will be burned at the power station instead of in your car engine.

    • Re:Hydrogen is not a source of energy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:57PM (#5811583) Homepage
      But if the energy is coming from fossil fuels it only means that they will be burned at the power station instead of in your car engine.


      True, but that's still an improvement because then all the pollution control machinery can be made very large and very efficient. Compare that to the current situation where all the pollution-control equipment has to be small enough to fit in a car, and cheap enough that it doesn't significantly increase the price of the car.


      And when the fossil fuels start to run out, we'll find it much easier to switch over to (solar/wind/fusion/whatever) if we only need to upgrade a few dozen large hydrogen-generation plants, instead of 50 million separate automobile engines.

  • I wonder how much they charge per tank? (Score:5, Funny)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:46PM (#5811470) Homepage
    And will they let you fill your balloon or are they going to insist on wasting it on a car?

  • unlimited energy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:48PM (#5811487)
    if only we could somehow harness the pent up sexual frustrations of all the slashdot readers and turn it into electricity....

  • Did anyone see the mini hydrogen thingie? (Score:5, Informative)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:49PM (#5811504) Homepage Journal


    Did anyone see the [gothydrogen.com]
    miniature hydrogen factory on the same page? Solar powered little gadget,
    looks like it would be a neat way to get clean water on a camping trip.



  • No Oil? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Malicious ( 567158 )
    They're not using a non Fossil fuel energy source?
    Don't tell Bush, he'll label them as terrorists and bomb the hell out of them.
  • Can I get a 64 oz soda for 49 cents there?

  • cheap, clean geothermal energy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by demonbug ( 309515 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:56PM (#5811574) Journal
    The abundance of geothermal energy in Iceland is probably a large part of making this shift to hydrogen energy possible. They have an abundant source of clean electrical generation capacity, something that pretty much no other nation in the world comes close to. For years ore has been shipped all the way from Australia to Iceland for smelting because of the incredibly cheap electricity rates there - it takes a lot of energy to smelt bauxite (to create aluminum), so it turns out to be cheaper to transport the bulk ore thousands of miles by ship rather than smelt in Australia. Thanks to the abundant, cheap energy available in Iceland, hydrogen production should be no problem.
    • They have an abundant source of clean electrical generation capacity, something that pretty much no other nation in the world comes close to.

      IIRC, there is enough potential in North Dakota alone that wind turbines there could provide enough electricity to service the lower 48 states.

      Don't make me find the article where I read that, though ...

  • Dihydrogen Monoxide (Score:4, Funny)

    by GjhH6vb8 ( 666440 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:08PM (#5811697)
    This process seems to use alot of Dihydrogen Monoxide [dhmo.org].
    You think more people would be concerned.

  • Hydrogen? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This means that USA in a few years time will declare war to Iceland?

  • According to some Wired blurb. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:15PM (#5811759) Journal
    Iceland has stated that it's going to go to all hydrogen, and sell polution credits under the Kyoto treaty. Between that and their incredibly profitable gene pool, they'll be per-capita, the wealthiest nation in the world soon enough.

    Too bad they seem to be turning into nationalists. So much for emmigration.

  • hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:16PM (#5811766)
    All these people saying hydrogen is just as bad as burning fossil fuels because after all the hydrogen has to be produced by burning fossil fuels are annoying.

    You would think all these people claiming to be programmers would grasp the idea of an abstraction layer.

    Once everyone is filling their car up with hydrogen up at the pump you can change where the hydrogen came from without changing the cars. This is the whole point.

    Got a windy plain? use wind power to make the hydrogen. Got geothermal energy? use that. Got huge rivers? use them. Got some new idea no one thought of yet? Try to use that! You can use whatever you want.

    That's the whole point.
    • I hope someone with mod points notices this post, because it is right on the money. Of course what few people are willing to admit yet is that nuclear power is almost certain to wind up being most (but not all) of the back end in the hydrogen fueled economy.
    • You know, that's brilliant. I agree. Somebody mod this guy up

  • What will it be used for here in Iceland? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HalliS ( 668627 ) <(si.ih) (ta) (sdlarah)> on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:23PM (#5811807) Homepage
    For now, there is only one vehicle in the country that runs on hydrogen fuel, they put 1 kg of hydrogen in it at the ceremony: http://skeljungur.is/uploads/images/Raðherra dælirC.jpg That car will be sent back to Mercedez soon I think. For the nearest future, 3 hydrogen fueled busses have been ordered and will arrive in august. The sole purpose of this hydrogen fuel station is to service these 3 busses (for now). Actually, this means that 4% of all the busses in the capitol will run on hydrogen :) The next step is to start powering our fishing ships with hydrogen, which make a big part of the CO2 that comes from Iceland. Hydrogen is for now mostly useable for big machinery such as busses and ships, the personal car will come hydrogen fueled later on (it's not very practical at this time).
  • I love it, great energy source and semi-permanent hair removal.

  • Clean except.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dolly_Llama ( 267016 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:40PM (#5811931) Homepage
    The geothermal process is clean if it is a closed system. Water is piped down to the heat source and back up again driving a turbine creating electricity. The problem is vent gases from the geothermal sources which can be malodorous at best and highly toxic at worst. So everything is ducky as long as they can contain the nastiness from the heat source.

  • Ice land (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @04:41PM (#5811936) Homepage
    Most places don't have access to the abundant geothermal energy that Iceland has access to, located on a spreading center as it is. Spreading centers (places where two plates are moving away from eachother, creating new crust) bring magma very close to the surface of the Earth, much closer than pretty much anywhere else (except volcanoes, but those are a little tricky to harness the thermal energy from). I can't think of a single place (dry place, that is) besides Iceland that sits right on top of an active spreading center, so they are in a pretty unique situation (sure, there are failed rifts in Africa, but those are not active. Also possibly failed rifting in the U.S., but again, not active)
    So unless you find a way to get energy from dozens to hundreds of kilometers underground, much deeper than we have ever even drilled, then we will have to be stuck with our few spots of high geothermal activity for producing energy in that way. Oh yeah, and depending on geothermal energy just delays the problem - the Earth is cooling, albeit very slowly.
  • why aren't we burning shit? more of that gets created daily than coal is mined.
  • I've got a great idea! Couldn't we use fossils to create hydrogen?

    Oh... Wait...
  • ...for unleashing Bjork on the world.

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