Friday, May 26, 2023

Recalling the Past: my cherished memories of how/what/who made us to be who we became


                                                                                                                                             


Introduction



We are in May 2023. I am in my Twilight years. I have passed my 85th birthday. Memories are becoming more and more important. My life was enriched by the writings of my forebears. I am a happily married man, a happy father and grandfather. I think my descendants may be interested in my life experiences, just as I was appreciative of what I was given through my father's and grandfather's writings.


Looking back, I believe that I have been reasonably successful in my professional life. I worked in technology, both in research and development (R&D), and in the execution of the results of R&D. My inventions are well recorded in 47 issued US patents. I was invited  as a guest speaker in Budapest by the US ambassador to Hungary, to be honored as a Hungarian-American inventor at the signing of a US-Hungarian IP (intellectual property)  agreement in 2013. I wrote and presented many technical papers, built factories, managed engineering organizations globally, and my team's work at one point resulted in a product with multi-billion dollar sales that enjoyed such high demand that we had to put our customers on allocation because we could not meet all the demand.


Nevertheless, my proudest achievement in life is the American Gorog family. Judith and I have created a family that now enjoys three children, five grandchildren, and two children-in-laws.


For my descendants, the undoubtedly unique aspect of my life is my migration, of which the key elements were: where I came from, how I came to the US, and my assimilation into American life. These notes are part of that story. Without my migration my family would not have come into being.


About 5 years ago, in the summer of 2018, I prepared a brief set of notes titled “Our family, where I came from”. Gary, my son-in-law, prepared a small booklet from those notes, to which  he added photographs of me in my younger years and of our apartment building where I grew up in Budapest. About 10 years ago, in January 2013, I prepared a set of notes titled “1956 and Emmigration”, in which I described the roughly 9 months period of my life during which I was reborn: first from a class enemy in communist Hungary to a revolutionary against Hungarian communism,  then from a revolutionary against Hungarian communism to a refugee migrants student in America at the University of California Berkeley. Therein I summarized the reasons and the circumstances of my departure from Hungary. 


In the notes that follow here, I describe some aspects of my early life in California. The writing of these was triggered by a recently found  letter I wrote In the summer of 1958, about a year and a half after my arrival to the USA. This letter brought back old memories that I wanted to capture. Also, writing these notes gives me an opportunity to recognize some of the people who made my entry into the university in Berkeley possible and also some who helped me to integrate into American society and to assimilate some of the social customs in America that were distinctly different from those in Hungary. 




A glimpse into the past (via a long-ago letter to Erzsi)



After my sister Erzsébet's death, a part of her paper collection went to my sister Ágnes. In this collection was an old letter that I sent to Erzsi many years ago. I wrote this letter in the summer of 1958 and reading it now in May 2023, I unexpectedly got a glimpse into my life and my financial circumstances at that time.

  

That summer, I worked near the Nevada border in the White Mountains of California at a US federal government-run facility, managed by the University of California. Private industry was also welcomed to carry out research there at the High Altitude Research Station. I first spent several weeks around 3,800 meters and then a week at a level of more than 4,300 meters in a summit laboratory located in a small stone hut on the top of the mountain, completely alone. I had a radio connection from the summit to make my requests to the base station; they regularly brought up to me the needed food and, if necessary, other other items as well. On the way to the summit, even in August, the ice that covered the path had to be blown up with dynamite, and only the off-road vehicle could take me up to the summit laboratory then.


I worked there as a technician. A San Francisco company (Wesix Electric Heaters) sent  me there, together with the laboratory equipment necessary for my work. My task there was to measure the ion content of the clean high-mountain air for a few weeks. (The company was interested in this because they manufactured electric heaters for homes and they thought that maybe, if the ion content had an adequate effect on the improvement of urban air, then they would manufacture some kind of air ionization equipment that could be placed in homes together with the space heaters they were selling.)


At that time, I was still a relatively new American, I arrived in the USA on January 16, 1957, and then I started university in Berkeley, California at the beginning of February 1957. (I verified the exact date of my arrival in the USA on the Internet; I was transferred from Bremerhaven to New York on the Marine Carp US naval ship, and this ship only brought Hungarian refugees to the USA once and arrived in New York on January 16th. It took 11 days across the ocean.) 


For me, this long ago sent and recently found letter brought back some of my old memories and made me re-experience my emotions in a unique way.



                                        —----           -------           -------         --------



Below: The old letter, now in a translated and typed form; the original was handwritten in Hungarian, and also it is now hard to read.



                                                                       White Mountain Research Station

                                                                                       Mt. Bancroft  8 - 14 - 58


Dear Elizabeth! Dear family!


(Originally I wanted to write to the whole family, but your letter arrived in the meantime, I had a lot of fun with it. I liked it so much that I decided to write to you.)

But others can read it too. 


 It's a pleasant, calm evening (by the way, it's quiet all day up here on the top of the mountain). I was outside for a bit of air earlier, the clouds are creeping up from the valley, you can't see much in the light of the floodlights illuminating the area, you can only see the lazily wandering grayness, the experimental chickens and a reddish building that is especially owned by rats, guinea pigs and dogs. - After airing myself, I drank a hot tea (I can't say that it was good because the water here starts to boil very quickly, so the tea turned out to be quite pale). I don't know if I already wrote to you how tea is made here: a bunch of tea leafs enough for a cup of tea is wrapped in a small paper bag that hangs from a thread, at the end of the thread there is a little piece of paper tag that you can hold on to - well, you can also put some advertising on it. One pours the hot water into the cup, hangs the bag in the water, and when it is brown enough, then we pull the bag from the tea, holding on to the thread and/or to the advertising tag - after that we'll throw the bag with its thread and tag away. (We would put it on the saucer, in a cultured place.) - After drinking tea, I wrote a couple of greeting lines to a graduate student. A graduate student is a student who has already graduated from university and received his diploma, but is still doing further studies for a higher academic title. Usually, it is possible to obtain the "Master Degree" in 1-2 years and approx. in another two years, or in four years from graduation, you get your PhD ("Doctor of Philosophy"). He was here last semester and he went home to Helsinki a few weeks ago to get married. (He also lived in the International House, apart from that we had a common circle of friends.)


It was very kind of Tobias's wife to offer to recommend me to his relatives; it's okay if people are known from several sides. As you may not know, I know both Tobias professors well. However, neither one of them teaches in the College of Engineering. The biophysicist Cornelius T. (he gave us the polio vaccines that I sent you) is a very smart but overly scientific man. - Charles T.  is a physical chemist (I have never seen a more skilled and refined person than him). Both helped me a lot. (I got my job in San Francisco last summer through Cornelius T. and Charles T. helped me to get a $200 scholarship for the last school year from an elderly lady's club.)


It's slowly approaching 11:00 p.m., and I'm starting to get sleepy. I had a rather tiring day today: this morning when I went down to check my instruments, I saw that last night one of the amplifiers broke down. (It's a beautiful, expensive device, it costs more than 1000 dollars a piece.) I tried to fix it all day, but without much success, I'll try again tomorrow. (In the worst case, if I can't manage to get it into working order, I'll continue the work with three amplifiers instead of four.) - Well, good night (it's true that it's already mid-morning for you, I'll correct myself: good morning to you, and  good night for myself)!


August 15, 3:30 p.m. - there is a real winter landscape out here. There was a big hailstorm, the whole area is white, besides, there is such a dense fog that you can hardly see even a few steps. - Today we have a lot of visitors, four biologists came to visit, plus a journalist. (I spent an hour explaining to him what we were doing. I encouraged him to go to San Francisco as well. I hope he writes a good article that can be useful to me as well. His paper is one of the biggest in the San Francisco area. True that may not mean much, it's full of stories of murders and actresses.) – Anyway, I'm having a good day: I managed to get the device that I worked on all day yesterday into working order. It took a day and a half of thinking, but now it's finally done. – Your letter arrived today in which you report on the results (and lack of results) of the admission to the physical education college. So, you have two brothers, one of whom is studying at an engineering university. Hum, this is also something…!


Mama inquired about next year, whether there is a scholarship for me, etc... The details of the situation are as follows. Based on my academic results, I received $300 from the University, which I can withdraw in four installments. This will be good for quick help as may be needed during the year. The money I lent to my friends plus what I save in the summer adds up to approx. $5 to $600. Annually my tuition fee of approx. $560 is covered by this. As I predict it, during the fall semester I will be able to work 5 hours each on two afternoons a week, (I can't fit more because of my schedule), which is 10 hours a week, and at the current hourly wage of $2.30, it amounts to $23 per week. Deducting tax plus travel to work expenses, I can earn approx. $75-80 a month. If I don't live in the International House (which is about $95), I can make do with it. I will not go to the Opera for the time being, and I will only ride a horse once a month. - There is one thing I still don't know how to do; I want to buy a vehicle, probably a scooter or a motorcycle. Without a vehicle, a person here is like a lame person. (Even in a small university town like Berkeley.) - Well, I think it's smartest if I finish writing now, because either tonight or tomorrow morning the visitors will be going back to the city, so this letter will be in the mail soon .


Kisses from your brother, 

Istvan



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Postscript and additional explanatory notes to the letter                                     



The government-assisted arrival of Hungarian refugees to the USA was perhaps America's most successful emigration program. The re-elected incumbent President Eisenhower already started supporting Hungarian refugees in October 1957 (that is, before his re-election in November) and in December 1957 established  the “President's Committee for Hungarian Relief”, with the aim that this committee coordinates the relationship between governmental and voluntary private organizations that offered various assistance programs to us. As a result, partly with the help of the media, a very popular assistance program was developed, in which many individuals and organizations participated in some way. The central US government transported the 1956-Hungarian refugees from Europe to America, partly on airplanes and partly on military transport ships ("Liberty Ships") left over from the Second World War. Thus, more than 30,000 Hungarian refugees arrived in America in late 1956 and early 1957. Everyone first arrived at Camp Kilmer, a World War II military camp opened by the government and then closed. There, everyone first spent a few days in a closed camp, where security investigations were conducted. For these investigations the Hungarian identity cards that most of us had were very important; whenever someone didn't show an identity card, it was assumed that his/her identity card was hidden because it might contain information that the individual does not wish to share with the American authorities. After the closed camp, everyone went to an attached open part of the camp, and those who had relatives who were willing to sponsor them could continue out of the camp right away. Those of us who did not have such contact opportunities, we stayed in the open camp where various external opportunities could be sought. Thus, our arrival in the USA was arranged by the central government, and the further steps took place with the help of various organizations and individuals. I found out about the opportunity to go to Berkeley in the open part of Camp Kilmer, I accepted it there, and from there, after sleeping one night in New York, together with another Hungarian student from the camp (later my friend Gyuri Egry), I flew straight to San Francisco, where four students were waiting for us at the airport and who took us from there by car to Berkeley.


I can thank the Tóbiás brothers, mentioned above, and Edward Teller, mostly known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb", for my Berkeley entrance. They convinced the necessary authorities to admit us to the world-famous University of California (owned and operated by the State of California) without any study certificates in our possession, with the only condition that, if we successfully complete the first semester for which we chose the level and subjects, then we can continue our studies there. Financial support for the first semester was provided by getting accommodation in the International House and working at a job in the dish-washing line serving the dining room there. After the first semester, we had to provide for ourselves. In those years, this option to go to school while earning a living through part time work existed in California.


I studied English for several years, in fact probably close to 8 years prior to my leaving Hungary. I first started English in 4th or 5th grade, but by the time of my 6th grade, in all Hungarian schools  English  was replaced by Russian. After that I continued privately. As I recall it now, I had at least four different instructors. Back then learning English in Hungary was mostly book studies, none of our instructors were native English speakers and there were no opportunities to hear spoken English. I may have had some periods without studying English, but by and large I continued it and by the time I turned 17  one of my  instructors advised me to start reading English books. Very wisely he told me not to worry too much about looking words up in the dictionary. “Keep reading and do a look-up only when you finish a page and you have no idea what you read”. Thereby, by the time I left Hungary I was reasonably fluent in reading, but not much accustomed to  speaking. In any case, my English was good enough that I could start Berkeley in the spring semester of 1957. Fortunately, I was allowed to explore which classes to take and for a very important introductory physics course on Newtonian mechanics there were several  parallel sessions taught by different professors. I selected the one whose English I understood best. Luckily enough, this session was taught by Professor Owen Chamberlain who in 1959, two years after that semester received a Nobel Prize. When I started Berkeley I only understood people who directly spoke to me, or delivered a lecture to the class. I remember it well that after a couple of months, as I was walking in the corridor of a lecture hall (Dwinelle Hall), passing  a group of students who were engaged in an animated conversation, to my great surprise I understood what they were telling each other. That was a Eureka moment, an Epiphany that I never forgot.


Not long after my arrival there, I also helped the professors in their efforts to bring more Hungarian refugee students to Berkeley. As part of this effort, accompanying Professor Charles Tobias, I visited several organizations. Everywhere our request was that we are not looking for money, but for part-time jobs for refugee students. Furthermore, I was also invited to a university assembly in the spring of 1957, where my task was to second the big thank-you speech given by Edward Teller with a few minutes of my authentic personal thanks. This happened in front of more than 10,000 students and thousands of professors. In the fall of 1958, more than 40 of us 1956-Hungarian refugee students were studying in Berkeley. When I arrived there were four of us; so the professors' efforts worked out well, they were successful. Many thanks to them forever!




A note on social integration, and a thank you to Joe and Betty Connors



During my heroic early years In Berkeley my closest friends and support community were the other Hungarian refugees who were studying in Berkeley. Another group of people with whom I regularly socialized were foreign students, mostly from Scandinavia and Germany. I had practically no social contact with American students during that early period. I owe a large part of my integration and assimilation into American society to Joe and Betty Connors. They contacted me after they had contacted Charles Tobias, whom they asked how they could help some Hungarian refugee students? Professor Tobias put them in contact with me.


Joe Connors was an  Oakie. Oakies were poor Americans who migrated from the middle of the country, frequently from Oklahoma, to California during the Great Depression. Joe's family settled in Sacramento. He studied chemistry in Berkeley and became a water chemist working for the municipal organization that supplied water to the East Bay communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Betty Connors was born and raised in Montana.  She came to Berkeley to study music and eventually became  the head of the Arts and Lectures organization on the Berkeley campus. Her organization was responsible for bringing visiting lecturers and especially artists to the campus; she became quite well known and brought the Global top performers to present concerts on the University campus. Joe and Betty had no children, possibly because they were concerned about overpopulation. In any case, they showed great interest in putting their arms around me and teaching me some of the details of American life. They were not rich and made it clear to me when we first met that they are not offering to fund my education or my life, but they will be happy to invite me to their home and teach me some of the customs and social details that were not part of the University curriculum. Betty would provide me with concert tickets and on many occasions they invited me to fine restaurants in San Francisco. It is through these events that I was able to enjoy the San Francisco Symphony free of charge and I learned about American Cuisine.  Eventually we became quite close friends and many years later, after Joe died, Betty became a virtual grandmother to our Christopher. Betty invited Christopher to join her on several trips, including one to England. To this date Chris remembers very fondly the great times they had together. After Betty died, to our great surprise we found out that she named all of us Gorogs, Judith, me, and our three children as heirs to her estate. While her estate was not very large, it was still a nice gift, we all received meaningful sums of money, and I think the five of us inherited close to half of her estate.


Life in America in the 1950s was very different from what it is today in the 21st century. There are three examples that come to my mind that illustrate this difference. Public safety was unbelievable, unfortunately that is no longer so, but back then people could leave their wallets sitting on their car seats in unlocked cars without worrying about theft. Other examples from my memory were strangely restrictive. JC Beckett, my chief engineer at Wesix Electric Heater, where I worked full time in the Summers and part-time during the school year, was very fond of me and was my strong supporter. Nevertheless, when I was thinking of buying a motorcycle and mentioned that to him, he told me that I better make a choice: do I want to keep my job or do I want to ride a motorbike? The two are incompatible, he told me. Obviously I did not have much of a choice. I kept the job and never owned a motorbike. Another example comes from a conversation  with Joe Connors. This was early in the first year, when I did not understand the devastating effect that the violently anti-communist senator McCarthy had on American society. Having just recently escaped from communism, in a conversation I praised McCarthy to Joe, even though I knew that Joe was definitely a left of center Democrat. Joe's response to my comment was “if you were an American, I would kick you out of my house and would not allow you ever to enter again”; he did not kick me out, but I learned my lesson.


One more item that has significantly changed in the past half a century and one that had a significant impact on the evolution of my later life has to do with the continuously geographically evolving USA. Specifically, in the 1950s and also pretty much through the 1960s, the center of the USA was on the East.Coast. A few weeks after I arrived in the USA I headed out West and had the good fortune of getting my education at one of the best universities in the world, at UC Berkeley. When I was about to receive my PhD in 1964 and was looking for an appropriate job, I was only interested in the East. In my prior life I got to know  Hungary and Slovakia, where I went on a bicycle trip at the end of the summer of 1956. After coming West, I never crossed the Sierras. I got to know California and also some of Mexico, but I felt that I was a country bumpkin and I wanted to get to know the real USA: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Therefore I looked at jobs only at the three major R&D centers of the time, at Bell Labs, at GE Labs, and RCA Labs; they were all on the East. Silicon Valley, as it is known today, did not yet exist. Through some connection, partly because of the subject of my PhD dissertation, I was offered a job at Watkins and Johnson, an early pre Silicon Valley high-tech outfit on the Peninsula where later on Silicon Valley evolved, at a salary slightly higher than what I accepted at RCA Labs. Had I stayed in the San Francisco Bay Area,  probably I would have ended up financially much ahead of what I had actually achieved. Most likely I would have participated in the creation of the soon rapidly evolving Silicon Valley technology world and also would have benefited from the real estate boom that took place in the San Francisco area shortly after my moving to the East. I am not complaining, I followed my interest, but it is also interesting to recognize some possibilities that we did not utilize because they did not match our interest. Today the entire American Gorog Family lives in California. Because I pursued my interests, Judith and I, even though we met in Berkeley, got married in New York. We then lived for many years in Princeton, New Jersey and all three of our kids were born in New York and pretty much grew up in Princeton. Our youngest, Chris, finished high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to where we moved when he was finishing middle school. (In Berkeley I briefly met the Andy Grove of later Intel fame. He too was a Hungarian refugee in 1956, was 2 years older than I was. He got his bachelor's degree in New York and subsequently in 1963 his PhD at UC Berkeley in Chemical Engineering, where Charles Tobias was his thesis advisor. He clearly already had an East Coast experience prior to his  coming to California. From Berkeley he moved directly into the emerging electronics industry on the Peninsula that then became Silicon Valley and he was a key player in the evolution of what became the world-wonder Silicon Valley.)




Some concluding remarks that I added after I thought I had completed these notes.



Specifically, I felt that I needed to add here to these notes how much my university education and immigration were commingled. I come from a family where on my Y-chromosome line (father of father of father of father line), I am the fourth generation with a “Dr” (an entitlement based on having earned a doctorate at an institute of higher learning) in front of my name. Even though for four generations we all had to restart our lives due to a combination of causes: war (Napoleonic), personal conflict (poor young wife leaving much older well off husband), death (father dying before son finishes high school), and communism (reverse discrimination according to the pre-communism social class of parent), each one of us first succeeded before disasters hit. 


In my case, there was a strong external factor in selecting my profession. I had diverse interests, but I only saw science and technology as worthy to pursue. I was a teenager growing up in a Stalinist Communist dictatorship; I learned not to trust the government, and I saw well  educated lawyers and social scientists persecuted and not allowed to continue their professions. In the world around me I saw that only high achievers in science and technology were able to cross the boundaries of nations and social systems, and I was committed to secure for myself that path. Then later on, after I entered Berkeley I felt compelled to pursue studies as far as I was able to. I did not plan to enter academic life, I was always interested in industry, but I also felt that as long as there was still something ahead of me that the University offered, I wanted to take it. That is why I pursued engineering education till the end of my opportunities, through bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees. And in fact, a few years after I entered industry, I realized that there was still a postgraduate study available that I did not pursue earlier and I applied and received a one year postdoctoral National Academy of Sciences and National Science Foundation Fellowship. This one year I spent in 1968 at a European research laboratory (ESRIN) in Frascati, Italy. That also allowed me to travel around and get to know much of Western Europe. Thereby I, the earlier country bumpkin, got to know, and feel at home in, not only the USA but also Europe. Thus for me immigration and assimilation are almost synonymous with securing my education, a process that I feel I successfully completed by January 1969, 12 years after I entered the USA. After that, for approximately 40 years until my retirement, I lived in the USA, voted in every election (I became a US citizen in 1962), worked in industry, and served  in academia only as advisor and industrial donor. And of course, along the way, together with  Judith we raised our family that I consider the proudest achievement of my life. Also, I was fortunate enough to be the first father in five generations, spanning over more than two centuries of Y-chromosome line, whose ability to execute his commitment to raising his family was not interrupted and negated by disastrous external events.


Saturday, December 26, 2020

Hydrogen Energy

 Summary


Hydrogen economy, where Hydrogen as a clean fuel replaces gasoline as the primary energy source, especially for powering cars and trucks, is a frequently discussed topic in conversations addressing a zero-emission carbon-free future. In this note, I examine the likelihood of that, using basic physical principles and deriving approximate, easy to remember numbers for the key parameters. My conclusion is that EVs operating on batteries are the likely means to move us around in the clean economy, relegating Hydrogen in transportation to niche applications.

                                                      


Basic numbers


Avogadro number = 6.02E+23 molecules/gram-mole

Molar volume = 22.4 liters/mole of an ideal gas at 273.15 K temperature and 1 atm. Pressure


1 J = 6.24E+18 eV

1 kWh = 3.6E+6 J = 2.25E+25 eV


H2:  1 mole = 2 gr    1 kg = 500 moles = 3.01E+26 molecules/kg


H atom ionization energy = 13.6 eV

H-H bond energy 4.52 eV = Energy(H-H)

O=O bond energy 5.15 eV = Energy(O=O)

H2O bond energy 9.62 eV = Energy(H2O)

Energy(H2O) - Energy(H-H) -(½)Energy(O=O) = 2.5 eV

[H2O bonding:  one H-HO and one H-O bond, two Hydrogen bonds per water molecule, and each H bond has an average bonding energy of 464 kJ/mole 

= (2 * 464E+3(J/mole) * 6.24E+18(eV/J))/((6.02E+23(molecules/mole) = 9.62 eV/(molecule of H2O)]


To break a bond, energy needs to be supplied. Thus bond energy is negative energy. Combining an H2 molecule with one half of an O2 molecule produces water (H2O) and the H2O bond energy is lower than is the total bond energy of the combining molecules (see above) by 2.5 eV/molecule of H2O, and energy is released in the process (exothermic process). 


The energy needed for electrolysis of H2O to produce H2: theoretical ideal value 

                                                                                         = 32.9 kWh/(kg of H2)   = 2.1 eV/molecule of H2,

                                practical (approximate actual) value = ~55 kWh/(kg of H2)   = 4.1 eV/molecule of H2.

[The theoretical electricity values for electrolysis input and fuel cell output are equal, 2.1 eV/ molecule of H2 see: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html#:~:text=A%20fuel%20cell%20uses%20a,of%20hydrogen%20and%20oxygen%20gas.&text=Combining%20a%20mole%20of%20hydrogen,produces%20a%20mole%20of%20water]. In addition to breaking and forming molecular bonds in electrolysis and fuel cells, entropy exchange with the environment and the thermodynamics of the gases enters the energy equation.




Hydrogen cycle: water production, and electrolysis


Pure Hydrogen (H2) is most commonly produced by electrolysis of water (H2O), separating Hydrogen and Oxygen at the two electrodes, water and electricity are the inputs. Correspondingly, in the reverse process in a fuel cell, where hydrogen and oxygen combine, electricity and water are produced.  Thus, in H2O electrolysis energy is consumed, and in the H2 fuel cell energy is produced. A single water molecule contains less energy, it is in a lower energy state, than the hydrogen molecule (H-H) plus one-half of an oxygen molecule ½(O=O) energy state was before recombination.


Theoretically, the electricity input to electrolyze water and produce a kg of H2 is equal to the electricity output of H2 kWh/kg from the fuel cell where oxygen is combined with Hydrogen and water is produced. In practice, it takes about 55 kWh/kg = 4.5 eV/ molecule of H2 to produce H2 and in a fuel cell, about 20 kWh/kg  = 1.64 eV/molecule of H2 of electricity is recovered from H2.


Thus the Hydrogen cycle efficiency through a Hydrogen fuel cell is ~36%. Assuming a PV efficiency of 20%, the sunlight-to-electricity efficiency of the HFC (Hydrogen Fuel Cell) system is ~7.2%.



Transportation energy needs


The principal known sources of clean electricity in the 21st century are solar PV, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear electrical-power generators. A clean economy will be an electric economy, fueled by clean electricity, where all energy needs must be supported and fulfilled by clean electricity. For stationary loads, like homes and factories, fulfilling this requirement is conceptually not too difficult. This, however, will not be that easily accomplished in the transportation sector of the economy.


In the USA 28% of the total energy usage is devoted to transportation, most of it is for ground transport. A small fraction of the ground transport is along fixed routes, like trains, trams, and trolleys. Such fixed routes can be easily supported by wired electricity delivery. But most cars and trucks require on-board transportable energy sources for their functioning. 


Currently, most not-fixed-route transport is energized by oil-based products, gasoline, and other crude oil derivatives. In oil-based fuels, we have approximately 10 kilowatt-hours per kilogram or liter. (Actually, the energy content is 8.9 kWh/ litter and 12.5 kWh/kg, but 10 kWh is an easily remembered approximation in either case.) 


Fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars currently can deliver about 20 km per liter ( about 50 miles/gallon) of gasoline or about 0.5 kWh/km. Large trucks (having about 15,000 kg of gross weight) use about 4 kWh/km.


A Tesla Model3 electric car uses about 0.17 kWh/km.


The difference between the energy consumption of gasoline-powered cars and electrically driven Teslas is because the energy conversion efficiency from the chemical energy stored in the gasoline to mechanical energy moving the car is about three times lower than is the conversion from the electrical energy stored in the battery to the mechanical energy. 


Most cars and trucks are used for local, in city and vicinity, as well as intercity long-distance transportation. Therefore, they must be designed for a range capability of approximately 500 kilometers. (More would be highly desirable, significantly less would limit the available markets.)


Thus the on-board transportable “starting” energy requirement (energy required at the beginning of a trip) is: for cars 85 kWh. Rounded reference figure estimates for portable and on-route replenishable (refillable) electrical energy storage requirements (kWh electricity available for use by an electric motor) for a 500 km range are shown here below.


                                                    For trucks 800 kWh. For cars 100 kWh.


There are two known options for transportable electrical energy sources: Li batteries and Hydrogen fuel cells. Li batteries for EVs (Electric Vehicles) are well developed and widely available. The cost of Li batteries is about $150/kWh in 2020, is expected to decline to $100/kWh in 2024 and $60/kWh in 2030. Thus the battery cost of a car is about $15,000 in 2020 and is expected to decline to $6,000 by 2030. A cursory review of data available on the internet suggests that car engines and electric motors of the same horsepower rating cost about the same ($2-5 thousand). Thus the cost of the battery will be additive, leading to higher prices for EVs than that of comparable performance ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) driven vehicles. 


Operating costs of EVs are already lower than those of ICE vehicles. Anticipated carbon taxes are likely to further increase the operating costs of ICE engined cars and trucks, while the well-known learning curve phenomenon is likely to drive down the manufacturing cost of EVs. In any case, in a clean economy with currently known technologies, ICE vehicles are no longer an option. We need to switch to EVs, the question is how? Will batteries prevail, or is the Hydrogen fuel cell a viable option? The answer to this question will most likely depend, at least in part, on the cost and ease of the distribution and transport of Hydrogen. In principle, Hydrogen could be stored and distributed in liquid form at low temperature, or in some yet to be invented chemical storage form, or as a pressurized gas. Currently, the only known practical means for onboard storage of Hydrogen to power HFC EVs is pressurized gas.



Transporting Hydrogen


I am interested in making some quantitative estimates regarding the transportation of Hydrogen gas. Specifically, I am most interested in transporting Hydrogen to be used in fuel cells to drive passenger cars. As indicated above, for this purpose we wish to transport an amount of Hydrogen sufficient for producing 100 kWh of electrical energy. Furthermore, as estimated above, molecular Hydrogen (H2) can produce in fuel cells approximately 20 kWh/kg of H2, thus we need to transport in a car about  5 kg of H2 to have a reasonable range of 500 km.


As a useful and simple approximation, assume a spherical pressure tank for the transport of H2. The simple estimate shown below only considers tension stress in the axial direction of the spherical pressure tank. More elaborate calculations indicate the need to consider the multi-dimensional reality of the stresses, involving both tensile and shear stresses. Such more accurate calculations indicate that for thin-walled vessels, for which the radius is approximately 10 times larger than the thickness of the vessel wall,  the simple calculation outlined below provides reasonable estimates for the basic properties of spherical containers


Denote:  t = container wall thickness,  R = radius of spherical container, 

              F = force pulling apart two halves of the sphere at any equatorial plane,

              S = tensile stress in wall material,  

              Y = max allowed container wall stress for wall material used, 

                 = ~10^9 N/m^2 AHSS steel, 

              D = density of wall material = ~10^4 kg/m^3 for steel, 

              P = transported H2 gas pressure, 

Po = H2 pressure at STP ( 298 degK and 1 atm) = 1 atm,

              V = volume of spherical container, Vo = volume  at STP of H2 to be transported, 

              Vs = the skin volume of the spherical container (surface area times thickness)

              D = density of wall material used,   

              W = weight of the spherical container

              N = total number of H2 molecules in container, 

              T = transport temperature (same as in STP)

              kT = kT (energy) = 4.11E-21 J = 45.7E-3 eV at STP (298 degK and 1 atm)

            

Then:    F = PπR^2,   S = F/(2πRt) = PR/(2t), 

and using the max allowed tension the required wall thickness is t = RP/ (2Y).


At STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure), H2 is about 20 liters/(2 gr) = 10^4 liters/kg = 10 m^3/kg,  

Po = 1 atm = 1E+5 N/m^2, 

and then Po*Vo= 5E+6 Nm and the STP volume of the needed 5 kg of H2 is Vo = 50 m^3, 

 

Assuming a large container with 1 m radius, then V = (4π/3)*R^3 m^3 =  ~ 4 m^3,  

                         Vo/V = 50/4 =~10   and also   Vo/V = P/Po  at constant temperature T, 

P = Po*Vo/V = (1E+5)*10 = 1E+6 N/m^2;  t = 1*1E+6/(2E+9) = 0.5E-3 meter. 


The foregoing estimate indicates that it is possible to store enough H2 fuel in a spherical pressure tank of 1-meter radius to support a Hydrogen fuel-cell-powered car for a reasonable range. Larger spherical vessels would have thinner walls and lower pressures. As the following analysis shows it is not possible to reduce the weight of the spherical tank by increasing the radius and thus reducing the pressure.


The pressure in the pressurized container is  P = Po*Vo/V = PoVo/((4π/3)R^3).

The skin (or wall) volume Vs of the spherical container with radius R is  

                                                    Vs = t*4πR^2 = (RP/2Y)*4πR^2 = (R*(PoVo/((4π/3)*(R^3)*2Y)

                                                          = (3/2)*PoVo/Y 

Note that for ideal gases  PoVo = PV = NkT and then Vs = (3/2)* (NkT)/Y; thus for an ideal gas, the volume of the wall of a spherical container is equal to the translational kinetic energy of the molecules of the contained gas (Joules = Nm) divided by the allowable yield stress in the wall (N/m^2). Furthermore, note that if the container is divided into several smaller spherical parts, the total Vs is determined by the total amount of gas contained; thus making several smaller tanks does not change the total tank wall volume (or weight), if using the same material for the single large, or multiple smaller parts versions of the tank).


To store 5 kg of H2,  the container skin volume is

                                                     Vs = 3/2 * 5E+6 / (1E+9) = 7.5E-4 m^3 = ~1E-2 m^3 = 10 liters

And the weight of the skin of the spherical container is 

Ws = D*Vs = (1E+4 kg/ m^3) * 1E-2 = 100 kg container weight. 

We need a 100 kg steel container to store 5 kg of H2 at STP temperature.


With a 1 m radius sphere, the wall thickness calculated above was 0.5 mm.  If we reduced the radius fourfold to t = 0.25 m, the shell area is reduced 16 fold and the thickness will be 8 mm = ~1 cm.  


In the 1 m radius sphere, the pressure was 10 atm; in the 0.25  m radius sphere, it would be 160 atm. To gain a margin of safety, the wall thickness could be doubled, reducing the tension two-fold and increasing the container weight from 100 to 200 kg for cars. For trucks, our base number for the H2 container weight is 800 kg and the double wall-thickness safer solution weighs 1,600 kg. We conclude that sufficient H2 could be a portable energy source for powering HFC-EV cars and trucks for long-distance travel. The weight of a car is about 2,000 kg; thus the above estimated H2 container weights would represent 5-10 % of the total weight; likewise, a similar fraction of the total truck weight would be the H2 storage system.


But why should we want to use EVs with energy supplied from HFC instead of Li batteries? From an electricity source-to-delivery efficiency perspective batteries are the clean winners (over 90 % versus less than 40 %). Also, HFC provides no clear cost advantage over Li batteries to power EVs. The only obvious shortcoming of battery energized EVs is the on-route charging time. Tesla states that most Superchargers deliver 75 kW charging rates; thus to fill a nearly empty battery in a car would take over an hour and several hours in a truck. For intra-city and suburban use EVs this can be easily accomplished with night-time charging, but for inter-state long-distance travel this is a major inconvenience; people are used to filling up their tanks at gas stations in minutes. Tesla announced in 2019 that new V3 Superchargers capable of 250 kW charging rates will be soon available. While this is indeed much faster than are the current 75 kW superchargers, it still implies close to half-hour charging of nearly empty-battery cars.


In principle, HFC EVs could be “gas-charged” at rates similar to those of ICE vehicle “fuel-charging”. But how to get the H2 gas to the charging station? Maybe do local electrolysis at the station with electricity supplied by the grid or by local storage supported PV? TBD. The answer is not clear and not known.


Currently, and for the foreseeable future, EVs with battery-supplied electricity are the clear winners over HFC EVs. I expect HFC EVs will serve niche markets, while battery-equipped EVs will dominate both the main car and truck markets, replacing ICE-powered vehicles by the middle of the 21st century clean economies.



Note added in proof


The Toyota Mirai serves as an available reference to check the parameters obtained in the foregoing approximations. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai   accessed Dec. 23, 2020.) The 2016 model of that vehicle (First generation JPD 10; 2014), according to US EPA, has a range of 502 km on the full capacity of two tanks; each tank is “a three-layer structure made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic”; the total weight of the two tanks is 87.5 kg and their combined capacity is 5 kg of Hydrogen.


My approximation suggested 500 km on 5 kg of Hydrogen and a spherical high-tensile-strength steel tank of a weight of 100 kg. Also, my simple analysis of spherical tanks showed that for a selected container material and a given amount of gas to be stored, with properly optimized containers it does not matter whether all the gas is in one large or one small container, or in one large container or it is distributed into several smaller containers. The total weight of the required container(s) does not change. It is determined by the strength of the container and the amount of substance to be stored at a given temperature. Clearly, in a vehicle, multiple small containers are more easily accommodated than a single large one.


The Toyota Mirai is a hybrid: it derives its surge power of 113 kW (152 hp) from a 1.6 kWh battery pack rechargeable by the Hydrogen fuel cell, and the desired range is achieved by the fuel cell in combination with the on-board Hydrogen tank containing 5 kg H2. As discussed above, batteries are efficient (over 90 % of the electricity input to charge the battery is available at the output terminals of the charged battery), while HFCs are much less efficient (only 36 % of the electricity input to the water electrolysis that produces the H2 fuel is available for use at the output terminals of the HFC). The refueling of a Toyota Mirai takes 3 to 5 minutes, while a Tesla takes over an hour. If Hydrogen became widely available, and for some uses, the rate of charging would be of greater value than maximized efficiency, in an all-electric clean economy future hybrid HFC cars could be designed for the combined use of efficient urban and suburban use with night-rechargeable 100 km range (10 kWh) batteries, and also for less efficient intercity use with over 500 km range fuel cells, supported by rapid charging of 5 kg of stored H2.


Sunday, April 19, 2020

Assessment of COVID-19 Global status on the Way to Recovery


                                                                                                   IG, SF April 2020

Assessment of COVID-19 Global Status on the Way to Recovery
Summary: proceed with extreme caution; the more I study, the less I know.



Today is Sunday, April 18, 2020. We, in our extended family household of three generations in San Francisco, have been under shutdown due to COVID-19 since March 11. That is over a month and now it is time for me to assess where we are and how we are going to get back to normal.

This pandemic is global. Every country is infected. This infection can be slowed down, but thus far it has not been stopped. Yes, a region, a country, a state, or a town can be isolated, but thus far no one succeeded in keeping the virus out or locking it in.

This virus is very contagious. It moves from people to people unstoppably. The amount of pathogen needed to pass the illness on from an infected person to someone not yet infected is not known, but it is believed to be small. A distant sneeze does it.

It is possible that a small community could shut itself down and isolate itself from the outside totally. Combining such isolation with a very strongly enforced internal segregation of all suspected infections may stop the spread within the community. But such isolation would need to be enforced as long as the rest of the world still has infections.

In general, from a global perspective, lockdown, shutdown, or social distancing as it is commonly referred to, definitely works. It slows down the spread of the contagion but it does not stop it. Lockdown helps to relieve the surge load on healthcare facilities, but currently it is not known whether it does, or does not, reduce the total number of patients that will need to be treated over time. After some delay, Wuhan was shut down, but today the entire world is infected. Will Wuhan and China experience a second wave? As of now, we do not yet know.

Slowing down the spread (or flattening the curve) is extremely important to prevent unmanageable peaks in hospitalization and deaths. The need for and establishment of emergency hospital facilities to deal with the pandemic-caused overflow in China, the USA, and elsewhere have been well documented and publicized. Also, images of emergency temporary storage of the dead in refrigerated trucks in NY City have been widely published. To emphasize and quantitatively illustrate the overflow issue, as a quantitative global reference estimate for deaths due to normal causes (i.e. without of, prior to, COVID-19) I use 10 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The actual number varies from country to country and it depends primarily on the demographic age distribution and the available health care. My global reference translates to an estimate of 1,000 deaths per million people per 0.1 years (0.1 year is about the time that the local spread of the virus infection levels off with lockdown). NY City had the worst coronavirus spread in the USA and registered about 15 thousand deaths versus my reference estimate of 10 thousand “normal deaths”. In the entire USA, the virus deaths are 35 thousand, versus my reference estimate of 330 thousand due to other causes. We now believe that the spread is slowing down. Even if we assume that before the end of the year the total number of deaths will double, in the US we will have less than 100 thousand deaths due to COVID-19, versus my reference estimate of 3.3 million deaths due to other causes. Thus, it appears that the probability for most people of being killed by the pandemic is small in comparison to other causes, but the short term load can easily overwhelm all public caregiving facilities. 

There are two known ways to stop the spread of the virus and return to normal life. The best and surest way would be a preventive vaccination. Another is to achieve herd immunity.

Today there is no preventive vaccine available to the public, but several major efforts to develop one are underway. Developing, testing, and then manufacturing and distributing on a large scale such a vaccine is expected to take well over a year. Thus return to normal life based on protection through a vaccine is likely to be two years or more off into the future.

Herd immunity means that sufficient numbers of people developed immunity, i.e. have COVID-19 antibodies, for the spread of the virus to be no longer a public health concern. In the absence of a preventive vaccine, this is our best hope for a safe reopening of the general shutdown, though it will likely be partial reopening. But, if it can be safely done, living under a partially opened shutdown is much preferred over living under the current total one. There are two fundamental questions that need to be answered as prerequisites for a safe partial reopening: 1) do we have a widely available and reliable test system, both to rapidly diagnose new cases and to continuously verify/monitor the immunity of the segment of the population protected by antibodies; 2) do we have a sufficient degree of herd immunity to avoid reigniting widespread infection?

The answer to the first question is a definite no; we do not have a reliable test system available to the general population. And this is a disgrace! We can go to several websites and easily order a remarkably accurate analysis of our heritage encrypted in our genes. But, we have no broadly available easy access to reliable detection and analysis of  COVID-19 genes infecting our bodies and whose genes are encrypted into our bodies. Likewise, we have no general access to testing for our antibodies that indicate that we were infected and may be immune, at least temporarily. The required knowledge is in hand but the execution is missing.

Tests need to be performed for three reasons.
  1. Diagnosis of asymptomatic people. Do they have or not the virus that, if they have it,  they could pass on to others?
  2. Diagnosis of people with flu-like symptoms. Is it COVID-19, or only a seasonal/other flu?
  3. Antibody testing of everybody regularly to track and manage the protection of the public against the virus.

As of today (April 18, 2020), diagnostic tests as per 2. above are available for patients in the US in hospitals and upon primary-care physician recommendations at test facilities. The other two tests are not available to the general public.

We do not fully quantitatively understand the details of this pandemic. We do not even know what fraction of the population has been infected, thus our death rate numbers are pure estimates, more like guesses. We know that social distancing, and thus general lockdown works to slow down the spread. However, we don’t know whether the observed slow down is a sign of the pandemic ending or are we going to face a resurgence, especially if we relax the total shutdown.

As I tried to learn about the details of this pandemic I was shocked by our lack of knowledge, lack of preparedness, and lack of systematic response at the national and global levels. In fact, I felt that the more I studied, the less I learned, and the less I knew.

So, what does all this mean as we move towards relaxing the total shutdown? Clearly, it will have to be, it can only be, a very carefully managed partial shutdown.

Till we have a reliable and widely utilized vaccine, the threat of recontamination and the potential of restarting the pandemic are real possibilities. In fact, unless an effective, well organized, and locally fast-deployable “instant” full lockdown system is implemented, the recurrence of the pandemic is not only possible but probable. Social distancing under full lockdown is effective, especially if no one in the community violates it. As currently envisioned, as some businesses and other activities restart with some form of partial lockdown, social distancing will be too difficult to enforce fully. Unless the total community is protected by antibodies, i.e. the community achieved herd immunity, reinfection is highly likely. Furthermore, if the community is not isolated from other communities and herd immunity is not globally established, reinfection is even more likely.

Thus, as we move from the full to the partial shutdown, reinfection can be regularly expected. The only currently known response is the total shutdown and sealed-off isolation of the affected and isolatable community from other communities. The affected communities include all communities whose members may have been in contact with individuals who are infected, as well as those that can not be fully isolated from the affected one. Thus, the smaller any individual’s contact area is, and the smaller the isolatable community is, the easier it will be to contain a community’s loss of immunity and its recovery in case of reinfection.

For starters, in the partial lockdown, only very limited freedoms of movement and gathering can be anticipated. With no vaccine and no large scale testing for immunity, we can only hope for some degree of herd immunity; based on this hope, only a very cautious opening of the total shutdown should be put in place, such that upon any sign of the resurgence of the pandemic total shutdown can be promptly reintroduced. Also, to reduce the chances for such a recurrence, all person to person contacts will be limited by distancing and facemask requirements.

If and when broadly available antibody testing is put in place that allows continuous assessment of the status of herd immunity and also of changes in individual immunity will be possible. Then more opening-up, in general, can be anticipated, but still subject to rapid lockdown and isolation of communities where a resurgence of infection is measured.

Return to what was considered normal life in 2019, prior to the pandemic, is likely to occur only after a vaccine is broadly available. This probably will not occur before 2022. And even then it will be a new normal. The pandemic will have left behind major social, political, and economic changes. This is a global war against an invisible enemy. Freedom to travel and gather will return, but society around the world will be changed, much like it was changed after the brutal trauma after World War II. Will the USA resume leadership in that new world order, or will China take the lead? I don’t know, thus I can only hope for the best. 

In the USA, the pandemic is going to leave behind major economic damage: increased unemployment, increased national debt, and shrinking GDP. Many small businesses are likely to fail, but only a few, if any, of the majors are likely to go bankrupt. Capitalism is going to survive but with more socialistic elements integrated into it. General healthcare and national public health institutions will be strengthened. Globalization is likely to continue, but local supply chains will be strengthened to deal with pandemic-like disruptions of the global supply chain. Income taxes will increase. Income and wealth inequality will receive more scrutiny. Industrial automation, with a strong emphasis on the service industries, will increase significantly; the pandemic taught us that machines don’t get sick and continue to work well under a shutdown. There will be fewer jobs. Unlike in previous times when manufacturing offered employment to those who were no longer needed in agriculture and subsequently the service industry picked up those not needed in manufacturing, there is no new industry to employ all the people who are replaced by automation in the service industries. The new full employment figures will be based on a lower labor force participation rate and on a higher number of unemployed workers than the pre-pandemic 63.2% and 3.6% (BLS figures for 2019). A guaranteed minimum income for all Americans may be required to maintain societal stability.