New alchemy for Badin: Aluminum to hydrogen?

By Stan Thompson

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 April 18, 2007 04:09 pm

— When Alcoa’s aluminum production works in Badin ceased general production, a bigger door may have opened than the one that shut. Plant closings are rending events for any community and Stanly County’s loss was no exception.
But the dawn of the world’s emerging hydrogen economy could prove to be the light at the end of Badin’s long tunnel.
The Badin works was sited to be near falling water. Badin Lake is a pleasant by-product of major national security asset. Aluminum from Badin went into the bombers and fighters that helped win World War II — a fact that was not lost on Adolf Hitler. It’s rumored that if Germany had beat the us to The Bomb, the aluminum works at Badin may have been on Germany’s short list of strategic targets.
But when a drought reduced the water flowing through the hydroelectric dams that made Badin hum, smelting stopped for good. Inevitably, layoffs followed.
Major aluminum production has left Badin but the powerhouses at its dams are alive and spinning. The power Badin sells to the grid is the kind we all prefer: carbon-free and renewable. It displaces some of the need for coal-fired power — environmentally, a very attractive proposition.
It’s not often that fate offers a choice between a good alternative and better one. But Alcoa’s network of dams and transmission facilities does just that.
The good case is that substantial coal consumption and the related CO2 release continue to be replaced by the Badin complex’s clean hydroelectric capacity.
But the best case could be that the same power could gradually be migrated toward electrolytic production of hydrogen. As a practical matter, hydrogen is canned electricity. The hydrogen economy lets you save electric power when you have it for times when you don’t. And since you can put it in a tank, it can let Alcoa’s dams power trains, trucks and — some day — the family car.
Those whose knowledge of hydrogen comes from evening news sound bites probably think hydrogen is “a fuel for cars that cost a million dollars each and won’t be available for decades.”
But when made from renewable electricity, hydrogen is not really a “fuel” for cars or for anything else; rather, it’s an energy transfer medium.
“Fuels” are extracted and eventually depleted. But hydrogen, an energy transfer medium, is more like an extension cord. It delivers electric energy when and where it’s needed but it’s not consumed in the process; just recycled.
Electric power separates hydrogen from the oxygen in water. When energy is produced, hydrogen recombines with oxygen in a fuel cell (or a piston engine) and more water is the exhaust product. That’s why the element’s called “hydrogen.”
Hydrogen’s role in powering cars is not decades away, although complete replacement of petroleum probably is. Honda bought a two-page spread in USA Today Jan. 9, 2007, to promote its new FCX hydrogen car which will “...have a top speed of 100 mph and a 270-mile maximum range ... the FCX precedes the production version to be available in 2008 on a limited basis.”
Ford is delivering piston-engined hydrogen shuttle buses right now and BMW has bi-fuel cars (hydrogen when you’ve got it, gasoline when you don’t) being road tested.
For Badin’s purposes, timing the market for hydrogen cars may not be critical. Hydrogen is already used in several industrial processes in the Carolinas. Now, however, hydrogen is made from natural gas — an extracted, depletable fuel with climate-affecting CO2 as a waste product. Today it’s diesel-trucked to N.C. from Canada, California, or the gulf states.
While continuing to sell electric power to the grid, the Badin hydroelectric complex could steadily add electrolyzers — hydrogen making equipment — according to de-mand as the market develops. In a relatively short time, industrial hydrogen in the Carolinas could be locally–sourced, re-newable, carbon-free, and delivered in hydrogen-powered trucks. Vehicle powering hydrogen could be added “on demand.”
Experts in the commercial gas business say the Badin economics won’t work at present hydrogen prices and costs. I believe them. If polluting practices cost more than non-polluting methods, we’d have no air quality problems. But they don’t and we do.
Back in the 1940s, the very first transistor must have cost millions. Vacuum tube TVs stayed on the market for years after the invention of the transistor was announced.
But one thing changed immediately the day the transistor was rolled out: it ceased to be economically possible to ever build another vacuum tube factory.
Similarly, profitable hydrogen production in Badin is probably not immediately feasible. But the hydrogen economy’s equivalent of the transistor roll-out happened years ago. The eventual demand for large amounts of CO2-free hydrogen is not in doubt and it will have to be sourced somewhere. Why not here in North Carolina?
Petroleum purchasing accounts for perhaps the largest trade balance penalty on North Carolina’s economy.
If a sizable chunk of our energy demand could be brought in-state and on-shore, Stanly County could make a major difference on the state’s balance sheet.
Taking a strategic view, public policy and funding might make it desirable and feasible to put Badin on the hydrogen path for economic development, as well as environmental reasons, even if the payback is deferred.
Frankly, I don’t know whether the bean counters will ever sing glad songs about a budding hydrogen complex in Stanly County. But if they do, the potential is very attractive.
As hydrogen cars, trucks, trains, streetcars and buses appear on the market — whether powered by fuel cells or hydrogen-burning internal combustion engines — North and South Carolina would have a locally-sourced, carbon and petroleum free, hydrogen supply to power them.
That’s energy independence writ large.
If neighboring Mooresville’s dream of hydrogen commuter rail service between Charlotte and Mount Mourne comes true, that too could be locally and cleanly powered. Eventually, even N.C. Department of Transportation’s Charlotte-to-Raleigh Carolinian passenger train might become a hydrail train.
Having an abundant local supply of clean-sourced hydrogen might tempt N.C.’s Freightliner and Thomas School Bus plants to team up and build hydrogen internal combustion–engined school bus fleets for Stanly and nearby counties, making them petroleum-independent and super-clean.
And there are stationary uses for hydrogen as well. Rather than invest in ex-tremely expensive upgrades of diesel standby generators or diesel-with-diesel replacements to meet new Federal requirements, businesses and governments might choose hydrogen fuel cell alternatives now on the market — much cleaner, and using energy sourced in Stanly.
Our neighbors in South Carolina are quick to tell us that the big hydrogen economy question is not “whether” but “how fast?”
The Alcoa Badin opportunity is complex. Years of aluminum production used substances with environmental implications for any new direction at Badin. But it’s not clear which way that might drive the economics. In some scenarios the environmental gains from hydrogen might offset any remediation needs, economically and even morally.
In any case, a hydrogen opportunity decision point is either here or near for Badin. The potential environmental, energy independence, and economic development benefits make a Kannapolis-like make-over from aluminum to hydrogen at least worth looking into closely.

Stan Thompson is a member of the Hydrogen Eco-nomy Advance-ment Team of Mooresville/South Iredell Economic Development Corporation.

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