Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hydrogen-based domestic energy storage.svg

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File:Hydrogen-based_domestic_energy_storage.svg

More inaccurate rubbish from this prolific author

He'll (quite fairly) want specifics so:

• Wrong-way flow arrows. Don't you do any checking of this stuff?
• Labelling that over-writes the image, making it basically unreadable.

Now the big stuff:

• Fuel cell powering a washing machine. No. Do the numbers. Not credible. You might as well draw a Really Big Hamster Wheel with lots of Really Big Hamsters and claim that's an "invention".
• Hydrogen storage. How? Yes, "electrolysis -> hydrogen + oxygen -> fuel cell -> repeat" works at the block diagram level in a theoretical text book, but you're presenting it here as if it's a done deal for workable engineering. This diagram shows it as deployable to a house where we still use washing machines (rather than space-clothing in tablet form and personal jet packs).

Spare us. Please. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Also see File:Hydrogen-based domestic energy storage (ICE).svg Andy Dingley (talk) 20:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

•  Keep: Both diagrams almost work. Fix the flow arrows on the fuel cell one, stick a generator on the ICE one, and remove the commentary from both, and you've got a pair of useful diagrams. --Carnildo (talk) 20:53, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

They almost work, except that they don't. "Almost" in terms of the science is pretty close, but in terms of the engineering it's still miles away. Let's suppose that given a millionaire's budget we can make the fuel cell work for this power rating. That still leaves the problem of hydrogen storage. How do you do this? Compress it and store as gas? Where's the compressor and power? Do you try to recover the energy used to compress it, through some sort of expansion engine? Is it stored as a metal hydride instead? That's interesting research technology, but it's still not a practical way to store the energy to run a washing machine. Or is this some steampunk contraption, and we just tether a blimp to the roof?

The problem with this scheme is that it doesn't exist. Even more so, for current technology, and an energy capacity to do useful work around the home, it can't possibly work for some decades yet to come. This diagram is misleading, as it presents this vision as a workable technology of today, and that's just plain wrong. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:44, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

•  Delete Both Files. Out of scope. Uploader's own flight of fancy (yet again). Globbet (talk) 00:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
•  Delete This is not a useful image to any Wikimedia project: Under which circumstances has this setup ever been used? Never. How seriously has it been proposed? In a National Geographic speculative article. Just a waste of effort and time to maintain stuff like this. --Slashme (talk) 17:55, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

•  Keep Indeed the schematic is still very ugly, and I'll be the first one to admit it. However, I did post a request for improvement at the graphics lab (the same day I uploaded images), which Globbet forgot to mention (see here). This was btw the reason I didn't fix the arrows for the first image. As for the other stuff:
• "Fuel cell powering a washing machine. No. Do the numbers. Not credible." --> Why wouldn't it ? If it's power-related, the attaching of a really large fuel cell would then solve the power output problem. BTW, I already proposed the switching of the washing machine anyway with eg a lamp.
• The energy storage: this is a problem that isn't taken on in the image, and for easy understanding, this problem shouldn't be taken on neither. The hydrogen storage problem btw seems solvable (read the wiki articles), and work is being done upon it, so this won't prove a problem anyway.
• Finally, regarding the "misleading presentation", please note that the image I based my work on was more or less exactly the same, thus also incorporating a house; since the source article was from Time-magazine, it's pretty credible as a source aswell. Also note that I don't intent to portray it as an energy source, it is simply a temporary energy store/buffer, so it doesn't need to be all that powerful (also, it can eg also function to only power less demanding devices).

In all, we best fix the issues quickly, but given my little experience with Inkscape (svg), it needs to be done by someone else then me. Globbet ? KVDP (talk) 09:21, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

"the attaching of a really large fuel cell would then solve the power output problem"

It's not credible to suggest a solution for domestic energy storage that costs more than the domestic house itself. Here's a cute toy. Check the power rating, check the pricetag. Scale up. We're just not there yet.

Hydrogen storage is tricky. You're not even allowed to do this, without explosion-proofing your lightswitches etc. Serious risk, serious precautions required. It's also a very light gas, so it can't be stored in useful quantities without doing something to compress it. Much as I'd like to, I don't have space for a domestic zeppelin. So a single box labelled "hydrogen store" is simply wrong. Is this a metal hydride store? Promising, but not there yet. Is it a compressed gas cylinder? Doable today, but only by adding more energy to compress the gas, thus losing energy as heat and also needing a further engine to recover some of the energy stored in compression.

It's possible that a "really expensive energy store" could be justified, and could see some narrow application (Don't Brangelina have a hydrogen car?). An "energy store" that uses more energy for its compression than it's capable of storing though, that's just not workable for anyone.

As with your windmill ship, it's not "wrong" to present a speculative notion of a possible future tech as such, provided it's clearly speculative. Presenting it as a done deal today is though - you're lying to your audience and that isn't educational.

This is not a credible technology that can be deployed in houses, on any forseeable timescale (ie a timescale of a few decades, for which we can do sensible planning around sensible predictions). Partly because of the fuel cell, mostly because of the hydrogen. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Alright some specifics first: I was mostly thinking about compressing the hydrogen, ie using the keratine method I added a while ago (see Hydrogen_storage#Keratine ) Note that one of my primary motivations to make the image was to simply show the process of storage, not really represent it as a "practically and economically viable way for domestic energy storage", rather the intent was looking into the processes (ie similar processes can be used for other fuels too, ie liquid nitrogen, oxyhydrogen, ...). I don't even think the process is best used used for domestic large scale use at all, but rather for large complexes, and only for supplying minimum power outputs (ie lamps, ...). There it is then usable as a emergency power supply system. Drawing it inside a house simply made it easier to comprehend. Personally, I'm not even such a great proponent of hydrogen at all, but its already more ecological than batteries (atleast to make it, still has huge power losses in storage), and the image of the process can then be used as a template to model out other emissionless fuel production processes.

So a compromise could be to change the entire image to simply show the process, the "domestic" part of the file name can be removed.

Finally, indeed I concur that I should have made the image description more clear, it represents it too much as "present-day technology" if this isn't clarified. I'll change this when the deletion proposal is removed. However, it isn't all that far off as you state the system to be, already commercial products have been made, aldough they aren't in wide use today. Examples are the Honda Home Energy Station, ITM Power's energy station, and the Daniel Nocera system (I think the company Nocera works with is Sun Catalytix). The method of hydrogen production may vary (only the last one is exactly how I draw the schematic), but the concept is definitly already in existance, aldough its still in its infancy. See http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Home_Generation:Hydrogen/oxyhydrogen_generator

KVDP (talk) 09:57, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

"Drawing it inside a house simply made it easier to comprehend. " ...and wrong.

"a compromise could be to change the entire image to simply show the process,"

You haven't drawn a process. You've drawn a magic box labelled "Hydrogen storage".

Your attitude to sources is also lax. You believe anything. You don't assess the credibility of any of them. You take a picture of a model boat and use it as a basis to change the whole meaning of a WP article, as if it a reliable source, and as if it were the same machine. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

A further clarification for the sake of others: en:Home Energy Station etc. are devices for generating hydrogen, first and foremost. There are reasons why they're an irrelevance here:

• They exist to make hydrogen. This hydrogen is needed by cars, as a portable high-energy-density fuel. They are not justified for energy use within the home, even if they might offer some CHP (combined heat and power) function as a secondary use. They only exist as part of a hydrogen car economy, not as part of a domestic energy efficiency scheme. If filling stations offered hydrogen, they wouldn't be needed either.
• Machines that reform natural gas to produce hydrogen (like the Honda HES) have been criticised for their inefficiency. This is a wasteful use of what is already a valuable fuel or chemical feedstock. They are not using the domestic windmill / domestic photovoltaic / magic electrolytic catalyst that ignorant tree-huggers like to portray.
• Domestic energy storage isn't usually necessary or useful. Why would I need it? I'm connected to a national supply grid. If I do want load levelling, this sort of need is far better handled at a larger scale as part of the grid, not as individual installations. en:Dinorwic is a good example of a pumped-storage power station, there are also battery bank and superconducting systems.
• Energy storage systems have to be highly efficient, otherwise it's easier and more efficient to just not use them, and to pull more power on demand. They don't make energy, they merely shift it in time from a point when it's less valuable to one when it's more so. If their efficiency is poorer than this small saving, then their justification eveporates. Your hydrogen / fuel cell system is on tenuous grounds for viability at best, placing it in a context of grid-supplied electricity and washing-machine loads is a vanishingly small niche. Current technology-based predictions don't have room for such an incomplete solution to such a narrow goal. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

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Deleted.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 11:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)