Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet (Hardcover)

~ Peter Hoffmann (Author), Tom Harkin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The word hydrogen conjures images of devastating bombs and burning zeppelins (the Hindenburg) for most of us, but it inspires visionaries like Peter Hoffmann to picture clear skies and safer roads. Hoffmann's book Tomorrow's Energy traces the history of the volatile gas and explores options for its use as fuel. Though the author can't avoid using some technical language, his writing should still appeal well beyond the community of automotive and power-plant engineers. His coverage, though fairly balanced, tends toward the positive efforts made by government, corporations, environmentalists, and scientists to promote hydrogen as a clean, relatively safe, and potentially cheap alternative to carbon-heavy fuels.

Party-line Greens may gasp at some of the suggested schemes, which include using limited nuclear power to generate hydrogen from water. But Hoffmann convincingly assures the reader that ultimately, the planet will be better off this way. Many will be surprised at how far hydrogen has advanced since serious research restarted during the 1970s fuel crisis: the range of cars, planes, and power networks using the gas for power storage is impressive and underreported.

Though he makes his case for hydrogen as a means of powering our lives, Hoffmann also shows off its uses in medicine, agriculture, metallurgy, and other fields. Using economic data, he shows that we can expect to live in a hydrogen economy sometime midcentury; if so, we can all breathe a collective, CO2-laden sigh of relief. --Rob Lightner

From Library Journal

Editor of The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter and author of The Forever Fuel: The Story of Hydrogen, Hoffmann chronicles the worldwide progression of hydrogen energy from a niche market to a viable commercial product. Arguing that fossil fuels will not be cheap to find in the future and that renewables are becoming less expensive, he advocates the use of hydrogen as a nonpolluting form of energy for fuel cells and as an energy storage medium. Hoffmann thoroughly details the history of hydrogen projects worldwide from experimental fuel cell vehicles produced by the major auto makers to research into the use of hydrogen as airplane fuel, the application of hydrogen in utilities in Germany and China, and a few experimental hydrogen-powered houses in the United States. Hoffmann frankly explains the pros and cons of the hydrogen debate, including safety issues, economics, and the difficulty in moving our national energy policy away from fossil fuels. Because there are so few books on this energy source, academic and public libraries that have a strong interest in alternative energy materials will want to purchase for informed readers. Eva Lautemann, Georgia Perimeter Coll., Clarkston
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262082950
• ISBN-13: 978-0262082952
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,432,887 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Introduction To Hydrogen, October 19, 2001

By	Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Peter Hoffmann is the editor and publisher of "The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter", and this book focuses on the myriad uses of fuel cells, in great detail. But other uses of hydrogen are covered to some extent also. Topics discussed are automotive, utility, food production, home heating, hydrogen production, and many others. Hoffman notes in this volume time and again that hydrogen is an energy carrier, like electricity, and not an energy source, so it must be produced via energy sources such as coal, wind, solar, and nuclear, among others. Hoffmann does a very good job in this area, and the generation of greenhouse gasses is a central theme of this book, basically how we can generate hydrogen with little or no carbon dioxide buildup. As you may know, the combustion of hydrogen with oxygen only produces water. Safety of hydrogen use is another area extensively covered. The book begins with Hoffmann giving a history of hydrogen use and research over the past 200 years or so, right up to the present time, politics having an effect on our energy future also, of course. Senator Tom Harkin gives readers a very good foreward to the book.

One area of great interest to me that was mentioned in this book is the possibility of using atomic hydrogen (this is hydrogen in it's disassociated state, not the molecular hydrogen) as rocket fuel, as Hoffmann says, a specific impulse of over 1000 seconds may be achieved, well above today's rocket engines, if it can be safely stabilized. I wish this topic was covered better than the brief sketch Hoffmann gave it.

The final chapter of the book attempts to extrapolate the future use of hydrogen. Various experts are quoted by Hoffmann as to what we may expect in the decades ahead with regards to hydrogen use. Hoffmann does himself say that the existing energy infrastructure may be difficult to replace due to the economic inertia of change, and many decades may be required, in the United States it's vast coal reserves may preclude widespread hydrogen use idefinitely. Overall, the volume is a good introduction to energy if sometimes a little short on the science. At the back of the book there are extensive notes with references to further reading for those desiring to do so.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half the story, May 6, 2003

By	A. A Slezak "Incredulous Reader" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book has a lot of useful information but the problem is not the material but the book could use an editor. The story continually jumps back and forth. When the book uses comparisons it goes from Joules to BTUs then Gallons to Liters so you never seem to compare apples to apples or the book should have had a conversion table. It's as if the author is afraid to tell the truth of how it might be a little expensive now to convert, but eventually it will be cost effective. The book also has no diagrams, or graphs that would explain fuel cells or cost effectiveness. ...

The author seems to shy away from nuclear power as a solution for creating hydrogen. I think it would be a great interim solution where you could put the nuclear reactor on sites off shore or in the Great Lakes so you would have a supply of water and pump all the hydrogen and electricity produced to the city. The hydrogen could be sent to fuel cell power plants and fuel stations for vehicles. Eventually from the money made from this move on to geothermal methods.

I don't want to seem down on this book because it gave me a lot of good information the best part was the different ways that they can create hydrogen. Hydropower, Wind, Solar, Photovoltaic, Biomass, Advanced Solar concepts, orbiting solar mirrors, converting thermal energy from oceans and Geothermal. The one that I left out that I thought was the coolest was the Giant Solar Chimneys. I found out that they are actually making one in Australia; I can only hope that it works. I liked the part with the solar mirrors and why they didn't work, that was kind of funny.

The book never explains why they are not doing some of these things. I guess because of the cost but it is not clear. The best and safest way would be to produce hydrogen is geothermal but the book never explains why we don't do it.

The chapter on the uses for hydrogen started out interesting but ends with a walk into the cosmos with the SETI stuff. It was parenthetical information that the author wanted us to be aware of that did not belong in this book.

This book seem like a confused mass of projects that never seemed to get off the ground and a couple that could be a solution for the future. I wish the book was organized so that the history came first and then focus in on various areas, production, types of fuel cells, different forms of hydrogen, infrastructure, present uses, future use and the road ahead and what are the possible type of plans for the future.

I wish the book could have recommended more books to read on the subject that could answer some of these questions.

I guess I was looking for more clear cut solutions.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somehow disappointing, April 27, 2003

By	Emmanuel Lambert (Deinze, Belgium) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet (Paperback)

This book contains lots of valuable information and is certainly worth reading. But at the same time, I had expected more of it. It describes too many factual details about the history of hydrogen's use in various applications and gives too few technical information about hydrogen as a fuel. The book does not give a very thorough analysis of how a hydrogen economy could be established, how those massive quantities of hydrogen will be produced in a way that is both environment friendly and realistic, why or why not to use nuclear power to do so, etc.
Rather, it leaves a lot of open questions and does not give answers to the issues that really matter (e.g. if hydrogen is produced through reforming of traditional carbon fuels, what to do with the carbon then at the production plant).
Nevertheless, the book is certainly worth reading... I think it's one of the only serious books on hydrogen at this time.