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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Running on sun and water
By Zeinab Abul-GheitYou might not think there was energy in them lakes and seas, but there is. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. If the hydrogen could be extracted, it could be used to generate electricity. Of course, to split the atoms apart, another source of energy would be needed. But Egypt does not have a problem on that front -- it has sunlight in abundance.
"This technology can be successfully applied here, as Egypt is rich with water -- there is the High Dam Lake -- from which hydrogen could be produced," said Dr Ibrahim Abdel-Gelil, Head of the Environment Affairs Agency (EAA). "The solar energy needed to do this is renewable and will never deplete."
The idea of producing hydrogen from water by solar energy was put forward by Abdel-Gelil. He presented his project to the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), which agreed to provide a grant of $350,000 towards a feasibility study. The total cost of the project, if it goes ahead, is estimated at somewhere between $10 and 12 million.
According to Abdel-Gelil, the new technology for extracting fuel from water has already been used by Germany, Japan and the US space programme. It is still expensive, much more so than conventional electricity generating plants. A joint team of Egyptian and international experts is currently working to assess the cost of applying the technology in Egypt.
Dr Hani Barakat, researcher at the Solar Energy Department of the National Research Centre (NRC), is one of those involved in redesigning the exact technology needed and estimating the probable performance of the extraction process by running simulations. The theoretical work on the hydrogen-producing plant, to be sited at 6th of October City, is now finished, and the practical tests will begin in the autumn. According to Barakat, the studies have proved the possibility of producing the hydrogen at a price competitive with conventional sources of energy.
As Egypt has more renewable solar energy than it knows what to do with, the potential is there for huge projects, for instance in Upper Egypt at Toshka and Oweinat, which could produce hydrogen all year round. The hydrogen would then be transported by pipeline to power plants elsewhere in the country. Egypt's huge empty spaces of vacant desert land, together with infallible good weather, will mean production costs can be brought down much further than has been possible at experimental plants in the US, Spain and Turkey.
Barakat noted that at the Kyoto Conference held in Japan in 1997, agreement was reached that all states should make a commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emission, the most important of which is carbon dioxide. In this respect, hydrogen is a clean fuel, and one which can help Egypt contribute to staving off the possibly disastrous effects of global warming.
"The UN and UNIDO are implementing a programme on hydrogen production," said Barakat, "and we are trying to amalgamate the NRC project with the UNIDO programme."
According to EAA reports, hydrogen is an ideal energy carrier for the foreseeable future. It can be used for any application in which fossil fuels are being used today. It can fuel furnaces, turbines and jet engines even more efficiently than fossil fuel. Automobiles, buses, trains, ships, submarines, airplanes and rockets can run on hydrogen. It can be converted to electricity by fuel cells. Combustion of hydrogen with oxygen results in pure steam, which has many applications in industrial processes and space heating.
As such, it could help the country deal with its chronic atmospheric pollution problem. The main source of air pollution is the gasoline used in motor vehicles. According to a 1992 UNEP/WHO report, Cairo is one of the 16 megacities in which the highest level of greenhouse gases and air pollutants is emitted from the transport sector. Across the country, 21,568 million tons of carbon dioxide were emitted by the transport sector during the 1995/96 fiscal year. Total national carbon dioxide emission for the same year was 82,897 million tons.
There are other advantages to hydrogen, too. Mohamed Ghanem, production engineer at General Motors factories, points out that no noise will be emitted from the engines of vehicles running on "water fuel". "I wish that this project could be implemented as fast as possible," said Ghanem. "General Motors is ready to provide the utmost aid and to cooperate with all the concerned bodies to this end."
Nor is it just Egypt which has its eye on this new technology. Preparations are under way by Miami University, Florida, to set up an International Centre for Hydrogen Energy Technologies (ICHET) in Turkey. Officials connected with this centre have already paid a visit to the Solar Energy Department at the NRC and agreed with the Egyptian scientists on at least one joint project, according to the head of the department, Dr Mansour Mohamed. So now, it seems it won't be long until our cars are equipped with little solar panels, and when we go to the service station, we will fill up with water instead of gasoline.
