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06/26/2003

Water - High and Low

Water - there’s either too much or too little. Today, in contrast
with last year’s dry-as-a-bone conditions, I bring you greetings
from the rain forests of New Jersey. As I begin this column on
the first day of summer, it’s only in the mid 60s and pouring rain.
By day’s end we will break the century-old record for rainfall in
the month of June. At the same time, major wildfires are raging
in the drought-stricken Southwest. While owners there mourn
the loss of their homes at the hands of these fires, the unusually
gloomy spring weather here in the East has caused a mass state
of depression. Though the loss of a home certainly trumps bad
weather, those who suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective
Disorder) reportedly have been particularly hard hit by the lack
of sunshine. SAD is typically associated with lower levels of
sunshine in the winter but this spring has been unusually dark.

In spite of the scarcity of water in the Southwestern desert areas,
when I’ve visited the Palm Springs area in California, I’ve
marveled at the lush golf courses, the bubbling fountains and the
lakes that adorn the resort areas. Where does the water come
from? The same question can be asked about virtually all of
Southern California and other Southwestern desert locales.
Locals in the Palm Desert area might answer that the water
comes from drilling wells into the huge underground aquifer that
underlies the region. But there’s a catch; aquifers have to be
replenished.

How does the replenishment take place? Rain won’t do the job
in the desert. The answer is politics and the Colorado River.
The waters of this river have been dammed, massaged and
diverted over the years in an attempt to satisfy all the demands of
a growing population in seven different states. There’s been a
continual battle among farmers, developers, residents and resort
owners for their share of the Colorado. It’s a portion of that
water from the Colorado poured onto the land that trickles down
and helps to fill the aquifer. But now crunch time seems to have
arrived, according to an article by Seth Hettena in our newspaper
The Star-Ledger.

The population explosion in the Southwest has combined with
the drought to force the government to finally take drastic action,
cutting by 15 percent cut the Colorado River water allotted to the
state of California. Especially affected is the Coachella Valley
which, sports fans, harbors La Quinta and its new Trilogy Golf
Club, scheduled to be the site of the Skins Game this fall. If you
notice the greens and fairways are brown, it will mean that the
developer hasn’t been able to extract enough water from the
aquifer to irrigate the course. Also threatened in the Coachella
Valley are many other golf courses and even a lake built for
water skiing. (In the spirit of fair disclosure, my wife and I met
friends for dinner at La Quinta many years ago but never played
golf there, unfortunately. More unfortunately, we’ve also
lunched at Pebble Beach twice and no golf there either.)

But let’s not be parochial. It’s not just the Southwest but also the
world that needs more fresh water to satisfy a growing
population. It seems clear that the production of more fresh
water from the oceans is going to be required. But this requires
energy, be it wind, solar, electrical or whatever. As gasoline and
natural gas prices rise, we all know that energy is up there with
water as a top priority environmental issue. Of all the obstacles
to our energy future, the NIMBY (“Not in my backyard”)
syndrome is right up there near the top.

I’ve mentioned before that I once visited the engineer in charge
of maintaining the wind turbine field bordering Palm Springs.
To me, wind is the ultimate in alternate energy sources. Wind
turbines are nonpolluting and use the natural wind currents in
that desert region. Yet, the engineer said many residents
complained about them as being noisy and unsightly. Along
these lines, the New York Times magazine section of June 15
had an interesting article titled “A Mighty Wind” by Elinor
Burkett.

A Boston-based company proposes to build the United States’
first offshore wind farm, which would provide 75 percent of the
electricity for Cape Cod. You would expect that the residents of
Cape Cod, especially those with a liberal bias, would welcome
such a clean source of energy, wouldn’t you? Oh, I forgot to
mention that the wind farm of 130 turbines, each taller than the
Statue of Liberty, would be located less than 7 miles off the coast
of Hyannis in Nantucket Sound? Suddenly, NIMBY comes to
the fore. Wind energy is great but all those wind turbines are
going to spoil my view! Even Walter Cronkite, who has a
second home on Martha’s Vineyard, finds himself in the
uncomfortable position of opposing the project. Surely there is
some other location? The only problem is that you’ve got to
install wind turbines where the wind blows!

Nothing is simple when it comes to the environment. Let’s take
another possibly important use of wind power or other alternate
energy sources. President Bush has proposed a major monetary
commitment to advance the development of fuel cells to power
our cars and other vehicles. Fuel cells use hydrogen as the fuel.
Again, it takes energy to make hydrogen. The cleanest approach
would be to electrolyze water. When the hydrogen is used in the
fuel cells, the byproduct is water. If wind energy or solar energy
were used to electrolyze the water, wouldn’t that be the ultimate
in an environmentally friendly approach? Maybe not.

At least that’s the view of Tracey Tromp and coworkers at the
California Institute of Technology and at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. In an article in the June 13 issue of Science, Tromp
and his colleagues ask the question, “What if there are hydrogen
leaks?” The hydrogen has to be generated and then transported
to the station where you fill up your tank. Based on the
experience of the gas-handling industry, they expect that 10 to 20
percent of the hydrogen will be lost to the atmosphere due to
leakage. (The September 2002 Materials Research Bulletin
devotes the issue to hydrogen storage and transport.)

What happens to the leaked hydrogen? Tromp et al say that a lot
of it will end up in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is where all
that ozone is found. According to their model a lot of the
hydrogen will react to form water. At first blush, this sounds
great – nothing wrong with water, right? I would have thought
so, but this is water way up in the stratosphere. Tromp and
colleagues calculate that, if fuel cells were to replace all the
gasoline or oil powered engines, the additional water would
lower the temperature of the stratosphere and significantly widen
the hole in the ozone layer. They also note that hydrogen is a
nutrient for certain types of microbes and that unanticipated
disturbances in the microbial balances might occur. Also,
they’re concerned about other reactions of the hydrogen with
trace gases in the atmosphere.

Personally, I don’t expect fuel cell technology will be close to
replacing our gasoline-powered cars anytime soon. On the other
hand, in the June 16 issue of Chemical and Engineering News, an
article by Jeff Johnson describes plans by General Motors and
Dow Chemical to jointly set up the biggest installation of fuel
cells in the world at a Dow plant in Texas. The hope is that the
experience gained will lead to lower cost fuel cells. To be
competitive with today’s internal combustion engines, the cost of
fuel cells has to be about ten times lower than it is today.

As I finish this column, it’s another day; the sun is shining
brightly and the temperature is headed into the mid 90s. I don’t
think anyone will complain about the heat – at least until tomorrow.

Allen F. Bortrum



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-06/26/2003-      
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Dr. Bortrum

06/26/2003

Water - High and Low

Water - there’s either too much or too little. Today, in contrast
with last year’s dry-as-a-bone conditions, I bring you greetings
from the rain forests of New Jersey. As I begin this column on
the first day of summer, it’s only in the mid 60s and pouring rain.
By day’s end we will break the century-old record for rainfall in
the month of June. At the same time, major wildfires are raging
in the drought-stricken Southwest. While owners there mourn
the loss of their homes at the hands of these fires, the unusually
gloomy spring weather here in the East has caused a mass state
of depression. Though the loss of a home certainly trumps bad
weather, those who suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective
Disorder) reportedly have been particularly hard hit by the lack
of sunshine. SAD is typically associated with lower levels of
sunshine in the winter but this spring has been unusually dark.

In spite of the scarcity of water in the Southwestern desert areas,
when I’ve visited the Palm Springs area in California, I’ve
marveled at the lush golf courses, the bubbling fountains and the
lakes that adorn the resort areas. Where does the water come
from? The same question can be asked about virtually all of
Southern California and other Southwestern desert locales.
Locals in the Palm Desert area might answer that the water
comes from drilling wells into the huge underground aquifer that
underlies the region. But there’s a catch; aquifers have to be
replenished.

How does the replenishment take place? Rain won’t do the job
in the desert. The answer is politics and the Colorado River.
The waters of this river have been dammed, massaged and
diverted over the years in an attempt to satisfy all the demands of
a growing population in seven different states. There’s been a
continual battle among farmers, developers, residents and resort
owners for their share of the Colorado. It’s a portion of that
water from the Colorado poured onto the land that trickles down
and helps to fill the aquifer. But now crunch time seems to have
arrived, according to an article by Seth Hettena in our newspaper
The Star-Ledger.

The population explosion in the Southwest has combined with
the drought to force the government to finally take drastic action,
cutting by 15 percent cut the Colorado River water allotted to the
state of California. Especially affected is the Coachella Valley
which, sports fans, harbors La Quinta and its new Trilogy Golf
Club, scheduled to be the site of the Skins Game this fall. If you
notice the greens and fairways are brown, it will mean that the
developer hasn’t been able to extract enough water from the
aquifer to irrigate the course. Also threatened in the Coachella
Valley are many other golf courses and even a lake built for
water skiing. (In the spirit of fair disclosure, my wife and I met
friends for dinner at La Quinta many years ago but never played
golf there, unfortunately. More unfortunately, we’ve also
lunched at Pebble Beach twice and no golf there either.)

But let’s not be parochial. It’s not just the Southwest but also the
world that needs more fresh water to satisfy a growing
population. It seems clear that the production of more fresh
water from the oceans is going to be required. But this requires
energy, be it wind, solar, electrical or whatever. As gasoline and
natural gas prices rise, we all know that energy is up there with
water as a top priority environmental issue. Of all the obstacles
to our energy future, the NIMBY (“Not in my backyard”)
syndrome is right up there near the top.

I’ve mentioned before that I once visited the engineer in charge
of maintaining the wind turbine field bordering Palm Springs.
To me, wind is the ultimate in alternate energy sources. Wind
turbines are nonpolluting and use the natural wind currents in
that desert region. Yet, the engineer said many residents
complained about them as being noisy and unsightly. Along
these lines, the New York Times magazine section of June 15
had an interesting article titled “A Mighty Wind” by Elinor
Burkett.

A Boston-based company proposes to build the United States’
first offshore wind farm, which would provide 75 percent of the
electricity for Cape Cod. You would expect that the residents of
Cape Cod, especially those with a liberal bias, would welcome
such a clean source of energy, wouldn’t you? Oh, I forgot to
mention that the wind farm of 130 turbines, each taller than the
Statue of Liberty, would be located less than 7 miles off the coast
of Hyannis in Nantucket Sound? Suddenly, NIMBY comes to
the fore. Wind energy is great but all those wind turbines are
going to spoil my view! Even Walter Cronkite, who has a
second home on Martha’s Vineyard, finds himself in the
uncomfortable position of opposing the project. Surely there is
some other location? The only problem is that you’ve got to
install wind turbines where the wind blows!

Nothing is simple when it comes to the environment. Let’s take
another possibly important use of wind power or other alternate
energy sources. President Bush has proposed a major monetary
commitment to advance the development of fuel cells to power
our cars and other vehicles. Fuel cells use hydrogen as the fuel.
Again, it takes energy to make hydrogen. The cleanest approach
would be to electrolyze water. When the hydrogen is used in the
fuel cells, the byproduct is water. If wind energy or solar energy
were used to electrolyze the water, wouldn’t that be the ultimate
in an environmentally friendly approach? Maybe not.

At least that’s the view of Tracey Tromp and coworkers at the
California Institute of Technology and at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. In an article in the June 13 issue of Science, Tromp
and his colleagues ask the question, “What if there are hydrogen
leaks?” The hydrogen has to be generated and then transported
to the station where you fill up your tank. Based on the
experience of the gas-handling industry, they expect that 10 to 20
percent of the hydrogen will be lost to the atmosphere due to
leakage. (The September 2002 Materials Research Bulletin
devotes the issue to hydrogen storage and transport.)

What happens to the leaked hydrogen? Tromp et al say that a lot
of it will end up in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is where all
that ozone is found. According to their model a lot of the
hydrogen will react to form water. At first blush, this sounds
great – nothing wrong with water, right? I would have thought
so, but this is water way up in the stratosphere. Tromp and
colleagues calculate that, if fuel cells were to replace all the
gasoline or oil powered engines, the additional water would
lower the temperature of the stratosphere and significantly widen
the hole in the ozone layer. They also note that hydrogen is a
nutrient for certain types of microbes and that unanticipated
disturbances in the microbial balances might occur. Also,
they’re concerned about other reactions of the hydrogen with
trace gases in the atmosphere.

Personally, I don’t expect fuel cell technology will be close to
replacing our gasoline-powered cars anytime soon. On the other
hand, in the June 16 issue of Chemical and Engineering News, an
article by Jeff Johnson describes plans by General Motors and
Dow Chemical to jointly set up the biggest installation of fuel
cells in the world at a Dow plant in Texas. The hope is that the
experience gained will lead to lower cost fuel cells. To be
competitive with today’s internal combustion engines, the cost of
fuel cells has to be about ten times lower than it is today.

As I finish this column, it’s another day; the sun is shining
brightly and the temperature is headed into the mid 90s. I don’t
think anyone will complain about the heat – at least until tomorrow.

Allen F. Bortrum