MY STORY OF HYDROGEN

                           From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732         1185        246       82

July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30      3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14       4142     15512        1151        189      712              

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194

April   6          906     11787         4211       631       37

May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59 

June   1         287    10637         2346      3205       95

 July   7          251      8440        1595        817       411

Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532      423 

Sept   1        1480    10470          703        505      235

          8        1700      9836          250        339     253

        14        1934      9001          709        281      300

        22       2228      9326          839        279      124

        29        2190      8859         643        309     108

Oct    5        1811       7495          686        285     103

          6        2102       8255         543        315       59

        12        1819        7544          201        249       37 

        19        2005      7528         401        160        80 

        26        1451       7535         409        584       53

        27        1594       8671         433        734        62 

Nov   3        1436       7830        186        458        23

          9        1207       7009        154        480        35

        10        1493      8366         264        362        48

Summary:  The World and USA seem to have plateaued in new deaths.  The countries with the most new cases yesterday were:

• USA  94,376
• Germany  45,416
• UK  39,058
• Russia  38,058

Today is Veterans Day, a Federal holiday always held on November 11.  First started at the end of World War I in 1918 as Armistice Day, Congress recognized it to become an official federal holiday.  In 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day.  The Uniform Holiday Act of 1968 moved this day to the fourth Monday in October.  In 1975, President Gerald Ford returned it November 11.  In Europe, this is still Armistice Day, the end of World War I, and is a national holiday.

If you're wondering why we also have Memorial Day, this one had roots going back to the Civil War.  In 1971, Congress made the last Monday in May Memorial Day.  Both honor those who have died in wars.  15 Craigside gave me a lei today for being a veteran.  I was actually in the 442 during the Vietnam War period.

My focus on the Hydrogen Clipper yesterday brought back a lot memories.  Here is My Story of Hydrogen.

First a bit of history:

• Name comes from Greek words hydro and genes, which together mean water forming.
• Robert Boyle of Ireland first produced hydrogen in 1671.
• Almost a century later, British scientist Henry Cavendish recognized it as a distinct element in 1766, and is the Father of Hydrogen.
• Edward Teller is known as the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, and I worked under him when he was director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Science of hydrogen:

• Is at the head of the chemical table of elements with atomic number 1.
• The lightest element.
• 75% of normal matter and 90% of all the molecules in the Universe is hydrogen.
• There were no elements immediately after the Big Bang, with hydrogen first coming into being about 370,000 years later.
• Is mostly produced today through a process called steam reforming of natural gas.
• 
  Hydrogen can also be generated through the electrolyis of water and a variety of other ways, including using a catalyst in water onto which sunlight is beamed and biological options.
• There are at least seven isotopes:  protium, deuterium, tritium and others synthesized in the lab.
• Protium is 99.98% of all hydrogen, with a half life of 10 to the 34th power years
• Deuterium has a neutron added to the proton, and is 0.015% of all hydrogen.  It is stable.
• Tritium is only one billionth of a billionth percentage of hydrogen, with a half-life of 12.32 years.

For the longest time I've been enamored of hydrogen:

• Being 75% of all known matter, this must be a clue that hydrogen must be the fuel of the future.
• When combusted in air, the only product, if designed properly, is water vapor.
• The infrastructure is largely in place.  Pipelines might need to be internally coated, but that expense is trivial compare to having to buy land, gain rights, satisfy permitting requirements and the like.
• 
  Is the best gas to be used in a fuel cell, which is two to four times more efficient than battery or fossil-powered vehicles.
• Mind you, I still think a biomethanol fuel cell is the transition to ultimately using hydrogen.  
• Hydrogen today is too expensive, and biomethanol can be produced from biomass though gasification and utilization of an efficient catalyst for methanol.  This catalyst is not good enough today.  
• Note that drag racers do best with methanol and space ships are launched using liquid hydrogen.
• About the danger of hydrogen and memory of the Hindenburg, NASA and the rest of the world have found a way to safely use liquid hydrogen, which should improve with experience.  Remember that there have been 210 serious aircraft incidents and we still use jet fuel.

• 
  Our Sun and all stars consume hydrogen to produce energy through a process called fusion.
• Uranium and plutonium for nuclear fission reactors are unsafe:  radioactive wastes with long half lives, potential to make dirty bombs and major catastrophes.  Fusion power using hydrogen, or Star Power, shows huge promise.
• However, ITER using magnetic confinement and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory laser fusion process seem today stymied, it will be a matter of time when the urgency will bring results and utility.
• 
  Regarding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence:
• There is a quiet band of the electromagnetic spectrum between 1420 and 1652 megahertz called the waterhole, which radio telescopes use to see out into space.  The reason is that the hydroxyl radical spectral line and atomic hydrogen molecules absorb radio noises, making this band the logical extraterrestrial communication station site.
• NASA Ames Research Center discovered this waterhole.

As a university professor, I am provided the freedom to do whatever I want during the summer months.  1974 was a particularly providential year, for I got involved with two projects at the University of Hawaii:

• The First Energy Crisis occurred in Fall of '73, so that I ended up gaining leadership over the academic wind power program.  Funds were found to send me to DC to seek funds the following year.  
• My interest in hydrogen spurred me to stop off first in Miami to attend the initial gather of Hydrogen Romantics, which led to the field journal and semi-annual World Hydrogen Energy Conference.  Nejat Veziroglu, who is now 97 years old, was the organizer.

• 
  In 1980, I found myself working in the U.S. Senate and recalled what I learned in Miami.  I was so inspired that I wrote the initial hydrogen legislation for the Senate, which led to the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act in 1989.
• In 1990 I chaired the World Hydrogen Energy Conference in Hawaii.

• 
  Soon thereafter I became chairman of the Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel, which prepared The Green Hydrogen Energy Report, which served as the guide for a decade of Congressional hydrogen funding.  This led to selection of the Hawaii Natural Energy at the University of Hawaii to become a National Hydrogen Center for Education and Research.

• 
  During the summer of 1974 I co-directed a NASA-sponsored program on Earth 2020, directed by the Ames Research Center.  I got to know the people there, so in 1976 was among 20 faculty members to work at Ames on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a subject that most interested me because I thought that beaming in from space could well be the Encyclopedia Galactica, provided by an advanced civilization to engender peace, generate fusion power and so on.  I like to think big.

In 1975, and again in 1979, I worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on laser fusion.  More than 40 years ago I felt that the laser to do the job was nowhere near discovery, so I left the field.  I still think Livermore's future in developing fusion makes more sense than the ITER effort ongoing in France.

To repeat, while I was at Livermore in 1979, the world was suffering from the Second Energy Crisis, with gasoline lines throughout the world.  I was asked to work for Senator Spark Matsunaga in DC, so off I went to craft that original hydrogen bill.  I also participated in drafting the initial legislation for ocean thermal energy conversion, which has led to the Blue Revolution.

Moving on throughout the 80's, I closely followed the development of the National Aerospace Plane, which was moved into a black program, so very little information was released.  The Hawaii Natural Energy Research got heavily involved in the national hydrogen program, where we had an annual assessment for universities and companies vying for funding.  Being chairman of the Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel helped in this competition.  That original hydrogen bill I drafted creating this Panel did something unique on purpose:  we reported to the Secretary, and also to Congress.  This dual pathway enabled us to increase the hydrogen budget so that in the early 2000's when George Bush the Younger was president, hydrogen actually got more funds than solar technology.

By then, I had come to a conclusion that hydrogen was not for now.  Perhaps 2050 was more realistic.  Thus, as shown in a series of Huffington Post articles I wrote, you can track this shift in attitude:

• What About Free Hydrogen (Part 1)
• What About Free Hydrogen (Part 2)
• The Free and Clean Hydrogen Age (Part 3)
• The Free Green Energy Age (Part 5)

I can't seem to find Part 4, but I'll later enter it above if it exists.

What of the Hydrogen Economy, and when?  The term was coined by a close colleague of mine, John Bockris, just around the time the Romantics first convened in Miami.  And true, most adherents are impossibly optimistic. 

The Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineers is dismissive.  But there is a reason.  Electricity and hydrogen represent two competing energy interfacing alternatives.  I've long felt that both will be necessary and best.  Hydrogen can be complementary and should be more practical than batteries.  For example:

...hydrogen fuel cell buses typically have a range of approximately 500 km, versus 200 km for electric buses. With this range, hydrogen has both the potential to decarbonize rural transport and to offer a solution for uninterrupted services.

  

Further:

The ETC’s Mission Possible report, Shell’s Sky Scenario, and  the International Energy Association’s below 2 degrees Celsius scenario all show well-developed pathways to decarbonizing the hard-to-abate sectors, and those pathways all require substantial global hydrogen growth.

Power magazine reports on the bullishness of Siemens.  Read this for a fair statement about Green Hydrogen.  What are my views?  

• In all the public hearings I chaired in the 1990's, most of the participants were too hopeful.
• A quarter century till today, it has not surprised me that there has not been much progress.
• A core of enthusiasts will always be around to provide a hopeful point of view.
• Global warming could well provide that catalyst to minimize the transition period for arrival of the Hydrogen Economy.
• If hydrogen airships and jetliners become prominent by 2050, the lowered cost of hydrogen should also favor fuel cell- over battery-powered vehicles.
• 2050 should also be around when fusion-power should begin to become available.
• Cold fusion?  Maybe never, but the concept is worthy of continued investigation.

Some learn best watching videos.  If you are among them, here are a few you can consider.

• The Truth About Hydrogen.
• Some History and Hydrogen Vehicles.
• Hydrogen and the Universe.
• National Aerospace Plane.

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