News How Can Waste Heat from Power Plants be Used to Produce Hydrogen?

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The discussion centers on the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car," which highlights GM's efforts to suppress the EV-1 electric vehicle, including crushing all remaining units. Viewers express a strong recommendation for the film, emphasizing its exploration of corporate and governmental politics surrounding electric vehicles. Participants debate the limitations of early electric cars, such as range and performance, and the convenience of gasoline vehicles. The conversation also touches on the environmental implications of electric cars, battery disposal issues, and the potential of hydrogen fuel cells as an alternative. Overall, the film serves as a catalyst for discussing the historical and ongoing challenges faced by electric vehicles.
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  • #52
PRDan4th said:
I don't know how they make H2 from waste heat from power plants! Waste heat is not "free" and it is of very low quality (only 10 to 15 deg. F above ambient). About 50 % of the heat input to coal/oil/gas power plants is condenser loss as waste heat. It would be nice to find a use for this energy source, but it is not easy or it would have been done.
I guess I'm not sure about the waste heat thing - it is something I've heard but not really read up much on. Are you sure about the 10-15F above ambient, though? My company recently did an HVAC design fora gas turbine plant and though we didn't get that temperature info from GE, we did have to supply enough air to the building so that the turbine enclosures could be cooled by ventilation alone. I can't imagine that the air being exhausted through the enclosure (much less the surface of the turbine itself) is only 15F above ambient. I do recognize, though, that once they do an aft-end boiler, there isn't much left to harness in another way. Perhaps, though, what I read about was just replacing the steam turbine with a steam reformer. Researching now, I found that the process takes place at pretty high temperature: 700-900C.

And another one I don't remember where I heard, nuclear plants are far less efficient thermodynamically than other power plants, and I thought there was more waste heat avalable to be captured there as well.

Nevertheless, an aft-end boiler is still a thermodynamic process with the inherrent limitations on efficiency. So even if you remove that to get the hydrogen, you likely still get more out of your BTU of input that way.
 
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