Enel inaugurates hydrogen-driven power station

July 12, 2010
Enel general director Fulvio Conti

Enlarge

CEO and General Manager of ENEL, Fulvio Conti is pictured during the 'Ambrosetti' economic and financial workshop at Lake Como in Italy in September 2009. Enel has inaugurated a hydrogen-driven power station that it said was the world's first such facility to produce energy in significant amounts.

Italian group Enel on Monday inaugurated a hydrogen-driven power station that it said was the world's first such facility to produce energy in significant amounts.

It described the plant, in Fusina near Venice, as "a first step" in the development of hydrogen as a non-polluting energy source.

The hydrogen used is a by-product captured from refining operations at a nearby petrochemical installation.

The 16-megawatt Fusina power station produces energy for around 20,000 homes but spares the environment the emission of more than 17,000 tonnes of greenhouse carbon dioxide gas per year, according to Enel.

The station, built with an investment of 50 million euros (63 million dollars), "is the first step on a path that will lead us to a significant development over the next few years," said Enel general director Fulvio Conti.

He added that it would likely be decades before hydrogen-powered electricity could be considered financially competitive. At the moment, electricity generated by is five to six times more expensive than that produced by conventional means.

(c) 2010 AFP

view popular send feedback to editors
3.8 /5 (6 votes)  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

Eikka
Jul 12, 2010

Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
The energy is still coming off of the petroleum. Without the petroleum products, no hydrogen. With petroleum products, CO2 is released.

The whole hydrogen deal is just greenwashing. Hydrogen is not an energy source, just like batteries aren't.
holoman
Jul 12, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
The technology used by Enel and others producing hydrogen is ancient technology, inefficient, and doesn't do anything for environment.
Sanescience
Jul 12, 2010

Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
A hydrogen economy would be a boon to giant corporations who want to build vastly expensive infrastructure funded by tax dollars.

Bio fuels, especially bio-diesel, will re-use our current infrastructure, maintain jobs and expertise of millions of auto mechanics and industrial workers, and allow regular people to work on their own cars themselves.

Bio fuels are within sight, using non-food crop competing hydroponic algae and cyanobacteria, urban waste reclamation via depolymerization, and cellulose conversion of vast crop waste products (like corn and wheat stalks) or purpose grown crops on marginal non-food competing land (like switch-grass).
Sanescience
Jul 12, 2010

Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
Oh, also, microbial electrosynthesis is showing promise:

"Researchers Developing Potentially 'Transformative' Method to Produce Clean, Green Biofuels"

http://www.physor...765.html

"requires no biomass feedstock or arable land, uses far less water and requires no elaborate post-production fermentation, for example. And, once established, the microbial cells and electrode food sources don’t get used up, so they are more than 90 percent efficient at turning electrons into fuel without further processing"

DaveMart
Jul 13, 2010

Rank: 2.5 / 5 (2)
Biofuels of all sorts use phosphates. These are a limited resource with only a few concentrated sources.
Since phosphates are essential to grow food I would rather walk to the shop to buy food than drive there to discover it did not have any.
DGBEACH
Jul 13, 2010

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
*Eikka* Petroleum use will not go away for a long time still, this is just one way to mitigate the nasty affects the refining has on the environment. Once we have completely moved on to synthetic plastics and electric-based propulsion systems only then will we see the earth start to heal itself...won't be during our lifetimes though, unfortunately.
MichaelExe
Jul 13, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Hydrogen is not an energy source, just like batteries aren't.


E=mc^2 and NUKULAR FEWGEON.
david_42
Jul 13, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
"The hydrogen used is a by-product captured from refining operations at a nearby petrochemical installation."

Which is most likely from the cracking of natural gas. This wastes 75% of the energy.
Sanescience
Jul 13, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
DaveMart: You didn't understand a work I wrote except "biofuel", did you? Your comment shows complete lack of critical thinking. You, sir, behave as an ill informed lemming.

MichaelExe: Yes, hydrogen may some day power fusion power plants, but not any time soon. The referenced Hydrogen Economy, has a specific meaning and it is not hydrogen used as fuel for fusion processes.
Shootist
Jul 17, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Hydrogen is not an energy source, just like batteries aren't.


E=mc^2 and NUKULAR FEWGEON.


Yeah.

H2 is not an energy source for chemical reactions. It costs more energy to produce H2, whether from water or ammonia than will ever be obtained from its combustion.
Rank 3.8 /5 (6 votes)
Tags

hydrogen, energy sources, power stations, energy
Related Stories
more news
Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Calling function with no input argument
    created9 hours ago
  • Force free body diagram problem on gym equipment
    created10 hours ago
  • Empirical data regarding shower heads and water
    created18 hours ago
  • feed hold button on CNC lathe
    createdFeb 09, 2012
  • RFAC in Fortran
    createdFeb 09, 2012
  • dynamics 2/32
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - General Engineering

More news stories

Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets

Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.

Technology / Internet

created 2 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

Technology / Internet

created 4 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 10

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Technology / Computer Sciences

created 12 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

New power source discovered

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created 11 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (19) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created 12 hours ago | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 20 | with audio podcast


Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Putting the squeeze on planets outside our solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using high-powered lasers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborators discovered that molten magnesium silicate undergoes a phase change in the liquid state, abruptly ...

NASA sees wide-eyed cyclone Jasmine

Cyclone Jasmine's eye has opened wider on NASA satellite imagery, as it moves through the Southern Pacific Ocean.

The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...

NASA sees Giovanna reach cyclone strength, threaten Madagascar

Tropical Storm 12S built up steam and became a cyclone on February 10, 2012 as NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead. Residents of east-central Madagascar should prepare for this cyclone to make landfall ...

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...