There are three essential prerequisites to validate a system that hopes to use solar energy to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater and subsequently burn the hydrogen to generate a surplus of electricity and create pure water. The first is to explain why it would not violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. The answer is that it does not. Instead, it proposes to insert gravity, an additional force, to do so. The second prerequisite is to identify ideal naturally-occurring electrolytic cells where the project would be built. For purposes of this expose, such cells are defined as very large tracts of real estate endowed with intense year-round sunlight and adjoining a long seashore. Examples would be the myriad of suitable islands throughout the world, the Dead Sea, the Qattara Depression, the Atacama Desert, the San Julián Depression in Argentina, both shores of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, the Namib Desert, and Death Valley. As an analysis of each and every one of these and other similar locations would be unbearably lengthy, in the interest of brevity this discussion is limited to Death Valley. The third prerequisite is to explain how electrolysis is superior to desalination. The answer is twofold. Firstly, the weight of water makes desalination impractical or impossible beyond a relatively short distance from a shore. Secondly, desalination consumes a vast amount of electricity; it does not generate a surplus of it. However, small supplemental desalination plants might be built in the immediate vicinity of the electrolysis plants to provide fresh water to clean the solar panels and other incidental uses. This may not be necessary since some of the hydrogen could be burned locally to create fresh water.
A Vast Electrolytic Cell
The Death Valley project envisions connecting it with the Pacific Ocean via a 425 km artificial sea-level fjord-sized canal at least 200 meters wide and 750 meters deep. These dimensions are meant to keep it perpetually full by gravity, to offset the high evaporation rate in the area, and to create two lanes of simultaneous traffic in either direction for supertankers and other large-capacity vessels. Incidentally, the aridity of the region means that the risk of landslides, while substantial, should be less than their scale and frequency in the Culebra Cut (also known as Gaillard Cut) of the Panama Canal, a tropical area with high precipitation. If built, the canal would transform the 13,650 square km (5,270 square miles) Death Valley into a giant electrolytic cell to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater powered by the intense and abundant solar radiation in the surrounding Mojave Desert and beyond. In addition, it would also relieve shipping congestion in Los Angeles by creating a storm-sheltered inland port in close proximity to Las Vegas and future high-speed rail infrastructure. The project would dwarf by orders of magnitude the $2 billion Tennessee-Tombigbee (Tenn-Tom) Waterway, a monumental geoengineering feat where 300 million cubic yards, or 229.3 million cubic meters, were excavated over 12 years and required 100-million dump truck loads.
Since the Death Valley canal does not exist, no one knows what exactly its average altitude might be. However, based on this topographic map showing Death Valley and the surrounding high desert and mountains, it is not unreasonable to estimate the average altitude at 2,500 feet, or 762 meters along its likely 425 km route. The total volume of earth that would need to be excavated to create a sea-level canal can be calculated by the formula Volume = length * width * depth, works out to 74,154,000,000 cubic meters, or 74.154 km3. To put this in perspective, it is equal to 2.6 trillion cubic feet, 10 times the volume of Mount Everest, and over 29,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. In addition, this assumes the canal would be perfectly rectangular. In practice, the actual excavated volume might vary depending on the slope of the sides and other factors.
Extrapolating from the Teen-Tom Waterway, which required 100-million dump truck loads to move 229.3 million cubic meters of excavated earth, the Death Valley fjord would require about 32.36 billion dump truck loads to move 74,154,000,000 cubic meters of earth in 12 years, and its cost over the same period of time would approach $647.2 billion, or $53.9 billion per year. However, this is a simplified calculation that doesn’t consider potential variations due to different geographical areas, different depths, soil types, and potential environmental, regulatory, legal, financial, legal, and political hurdles.
Benefits of the Canal
Before having a knee-jerk rejection at the project’s enormous cost, it should be remembered that this is not an expenditure analogous to run-of-the mill infrastructures such as bridges, railroads, and highways. A more accurate comparison might be Hoover Dam, which went online in 1937 and paid back its construction cost, with interest, by 1987.
In addition to generating a surplus of electricity, the Death Valley project would produce a steady flow of water where it does not presently exist in an otherwise arid and desolate area, and enough hydrogen to satisfy the state’s domestic demand and even for export. In sum, the project’s benefits would vastly outweigh its high initial cost to the extent that it would simultaneously address critical extant problems that have for the longest time been swept under the rug:
Possible Objections
Possible objections might include the fate of the Devil’s Hole Pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) , presence of seismic faults, ecological degradation, and others. In a nutshell, the response is that unlike previous extinction events that were caused by natural phenomena, the sixth mass extinction is driven by human activity which includes, but is not limited to, the unsustainable use of energy, water and land. Collectively, we’ve spawned climate change and converted 40% of all land to food production. Accordingly, we’ll have to make tough choices to halt, and hopefully reverse, our present course.
Technologies
Technologies exist today that make this concept economically feasible: Modern equipment to excavate the canal; 33.9% efficient Chinese solar cells; 100% efficient water splitters for producing hydrogen directly from seawater; materials for hydrogen storage and distribution; and at least one dual-use turbine capable of burning hydrogen without fuel cells. Other ancillary technologies, such as hydropower turbines of many sizes, have existed for decades.
