Bush's Fuel Cell initiative.

[Artanis]

Breach a hydrogen tank, and the stuff vents out as hydrogen gas.

Hence my comment about the Abrams-like H2 tanks.

I like it, but I don't see why the government has to fund it. Profitable technologies will fund themselves.

There's a huge infrastucture built up around getting oil into peoples' cars...gas stations, pipelings, refineries, tanker trucks, etc, and there's nothing of that sort for H2. Once it gets going, H2 will probably be more profitable than Oil, but even alcohol (fuel) has more widespread infrastructure than H2 atm.

[Dahak]

Daimler-Benz for instance, has a perfectly working prototype, the Necar. It's current version gets its hydrogen from Methanol IIRC. And BMW has a working fuell cell car, too.

[jegs2]

if hydrogen becomes a common fuel then the countries with the largest coastlines will be the major producers. Why? Duh, water is 66% hydrogen. More coast = more electrolysis refineries and available water.

It's not that simple. It takes energy to do the seperation. That energy has to come from some where, ie. nuclear, fossil fuel, hydro, solar, etc. Then, once the electrolysis is done, the H2 has to be shipped to the consumer, which requires pipes, pump stations, ships, etc.

Then perhaps we could do that through the use of nuclear power alone, forever severing the need for oil outside of plastics and lubrication...

[RedImperator]

Switching to hydrogen vehicles and a nuclear/renewable electrical infrastructure would leave the Arabs beyond fucked. Our domestic hydrocarbon reserves are more than enough to supply what oil we need for plastics, lubricants, etc. The Europeans and Japanese might still buy from them for non-fuel uses, but at nothing remotely approaching the volume they're buying now.

Of course, some Central Asian countries looking to oil as their ticket out of the third world are also fucked hard, but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Maybe they can develop a domestic plastics industry or something.

[Wicked Pilot]

Then perhaps we could do that through the use of nuclear power alone, forever severing the need for oil outside of plastics and lubrication...

We could save a shit load of oil and coal today if we use only nuclear and alternative energies for electricity production. We would still need oil for cars, airplanes, etc, but there would be less demand overall, and prices would drop. Saving oil would fuck the Saudis, and saving coal would go a long way toward helping the environment. But of course the environazis would never allow that, they hate nuclear with an almost religious passion.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

The way fuel cells will work is simple.
1. Gasoline, Diesel, or some other hydrocarbon will be split in a catlytic reformulator,(integrated into the car) and used on demand, with only a small reserve of dangerous flammable gas.
2. The hydrogen will be used as a fuel, and the H2O and CO2 byproducts vented into the air.
3. We will still get to use the same energy delivery infrastructure, but with a threefold increase in econmy, and drastic decrease in pollution.

I am working in the auto parts industry, and working prototypes are already being tested. The trade magazines are full of them. Daimler/Benz/Chrysler, GM, Honda, and Toyota, all have WORKING models. The big breakthrough will come when a minimum number of cars are to be built, and the economy of scale drops the price of fuels cells. Right now, EVERY single solitary fuel cell is a one of a kind, custom made job.
How expensive would YOUR car's motor be if it was custom made?

A pure hydrogen car is a dangerous pipe dream. Would you rather have 20 liters of gasoline within 5 feet of you the whole trip, or 60 liters of hydrogen?

[Korvan]

It isn't that dangerous is the hydrogen is stored as metal hydrids. You get a powder that can slowly release hydrogen as necessary by heating it. Even in the case of an accident, the rate of release wouldn't be too great and result in a much less energetic situation than a gas tank going boom.

[Sea Skimmer]

If you take oil and gas away from the Arab worlds combined GDP, Finland has them beat. However we'd still see some importing. Transshipment by tanker doesn't cost all that much, especially once the tanker is paid for.

There's also the problem of getting the nation to accept nuclear power again. We haven't built another plant since Three Mile Island. Heck they're a number of reactors, which had work, stopped more then half way through rusting out there.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Korvan, why bother storing free hydrogen at all, when you can store it, chemicaly bound up in a petrochemical? Gasoline is relativly safe, and Diesel VERY safe. The metal hydrids will be used as the short term storage, much like the float bowl in the now obsolete carburator.
More importantly, using the petrochemical as the storage for the hydrogen, rather than filling a tank (No matter HOW safe) you can use the preexsisting infrastructure! NO ONE (single private party, NOT government or buisness FLEETS) will buy a car that has 10 gas stations to service it in the world.
Convering cars can be done piecemeal. Building an infrastructure, by it's very nature must be a large and costly investment.
AFTER there are enough cars on the road to MAKE PROFITABLE such and investment, then the cars can be converted to run directly on hydrogen, without the reformulator.(In your metal hydrid tank)
I grant your point about the metalic "sponge" being safe. (safer than a propane tank, and those are on the road.)

[Darth Wong]

You still need gobs of electrical power generation, which is the 800 lb gorilla in the closet. The enviro-fascists hate nuclear, they hate coal, and they think we can run the whole fucking country off wind and solar, with giant batteries to handle irregularities in the supply of those natural resources (perhaps a shitload of really good D-cells ).

[Admiral Valdemar]

But Lord Wong, nuclear power is nasty and DANGEROUS and coal is outdated and dirty!

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Sorry Darth Wong but you are 100% WRONG!(not realy, but I just felt like saing it, I fell better now thank you.)
See my earlier posts.
You have said what I have been saying all along about free hydrogen, (in a fuel cell, or in a combustion machine, it doesn't matter) being a storage medium, (battery) because free hydrogen doesn't exsist in nature on planet Earth. It must be made, with a net energy loss.
Catalyticly cracking diesel or gasoline, requirse a small energy input, (heat)
but that can be gotten by burning a small fraction of the hyrogen liberated from the long chain hydrocarbon you are cracking. (or direct combustion of the gas?diesel.)The great majority of the fuel will go to the fuel cell. The source of energy is the gas/diesel, not the hydrogen.

Generating huge gobs of electricty is NOT the only way to get free hydrogen.
Catalyic conversion. This is where you are wrong.
You are also 100% right in thinking that pulling up to a "gas" station, and filling you tank with hyrogen will take a massive energy input SOMEWHERE upstream.
I also don't wan't nimrods that can't walk and chew gum at the same time at the self service pump, dealing with a flammable gas.

It is funny you called fuel cells glorified batteries, because that's what they were originaly made for, in the space program!

[Darth Wong]

Sorry Darth Wong but you are 100% WRONG!

How? The net cycle is still a loss, as long as hydrogen is the fuel. It doesn't matter what method you use to store it.

See my earlier posts.

You have said what I have been saying all along about free hydrogen, (in a fuel cell, or in a combustion machine, it doesn't matter) being a storage medium, (battery) because free hydrogen doesn't exsist in nature on planet Earth. It must be made, with a net energy loss.

It doesn't matter whether it's free hydrogen or not; if the full-cycle relies on hydrogen burning as the power source, regardless of what intermediaries are involved, it is still a net-loss system.

Catalyticly cracking diesel or gasoline, requirse a small energy input, (heat)
but that can be gotten by burning a small fraction of the hyrogen liberated from the long chain hydrocarbon you are cracking. (or direct combustion of the gas?diesel.)The great majority of the fuel will go to the fuel cell. The source of energy is the gas/diesel, not the hydrogen.

If your primary fuel is actually gas, then what's the point? I thought the whole point was to free ourselves from reliance on gasoline!

It is funny you called fuel cells glorified batteries, because that's what they were originaly made for, in the space program!

And that's what fuel cells are for. What's the problem here?

[Darth Wong]

PS. It sounds like you're saying we still use gas, but we just burn it in a different way, by extracting the hydrogen and burning it instead of burning the whole product. What is the point of this?

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

That is exactly what I have been saying, and what the president has been saying. Burn the petrolium, but in a fuel cell, not an internal combustion engine.!
Thank you for the clarity and economy of words!

[SirNitram]

That is exactly what I have been saying, and what the president has been saying. Burn the petrolium, but in a fuel cell, not an internal combustion engine.!
Thank you for the clarity and economy of words!

Gasoline in a fuel cell? What are you smoking, and will you share?

[kojikun]

I say the common man goes back to gas lamps and fresh food. All I need electricity for is TV and computer and that can be served by a solarcell.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

The advantages are, MUCH greater efficiency. Much less pollution. Eventual conversion of cars to electric power, and most important, this will make all cars "multifuel" engines. Alcohaul, gasoline, diesel, soybean oil, methanol, used frenchfry oil, solar, wind, nuclear, coal, Fusion, cold fusion, whatever, the car will be able to use them, once the fuel cell pushes the piston engine into the ashcan of history.
But not in MY lifetime.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Sir nitam, please read my posts, as that part about the catalytic reformulator, and WORKING PROTOTYPES, seemed to pass you by.
You know, the one near the top, with the numbers in it. Reread point 1, then 2.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Advantages to fuel cells:
Car size version provides 75 KW ->longer lasting than gas power.

But because this is getting developed by oil and car companies, that means that Bush makes his friends happy, while trying to boost his influence on the environmentalists.
I see that most have forgotten how the BA turned down funding to an energy commission that was close to finding and reporting useful ways to use solar power, and at the same time funding a pointless, long term study of how to make coal more efficient. At least that was honest selfishness.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Just burn the fucking gas, its cheap and relativly abundant. The capital saved by burning gas, instead of whatever expensive alternative is deveopled by the Bush beauracracy (or not developed), will allow the economy to grow, and allow more money to be invested into R&D by the private sector.

[Darth Wong]

Just burn the fucking gas, its cheap and relativly abundant. The capital saved by burning gas, instead of whatever expensive alternative is deveopled by the Bush beauracracy (or not developed), will allow the economy to grow, and allow more money to be invested into R&D by the private sector.

R&D for what, since you're trying to discourage "expensive alternatives?" That's a pretty regressive plan for someone who slaps R&D at the end.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Just burn the fucking gas, its cheap and relativly abundant. The capital saved by burning gas, instead of whatever expensive alternative is deveopled by the Bush beauracracy (or not developed), will allow the economy to grow, and allow more money to be invested into R&D by the private sector.

R&D for what, since you're trying to discourage "expensive alternatives?" That's a pretty regressive plan for someone who slaps R&D at the end.

I didn't say R&D for expensive alternatives, I mean R&D in general. Every dollar not wasted on "Expensive Alternatives" is a dollar that can be spent on reasearch in medicine, electronics, and physics. Even if the money was spent entirely on consumer goods mankind better off. Afterall, the production of consumer goods both raises the standard of living and the rate economic growth.

[Darth Wong]

I didn't say R&D for expensive alternatives, I mean R&D in general. Every dollar not wasted on "Expensive Alternatives" is a dollar that can be spent on reasearch in medicine, electronics, and physics.

You don't believe there are any benefits to investment in R&D toward these "expensive alternatives?" No technologies that will be gleaned from this process? No benefit to getting rid of the internal combustion engine?

Even if the money was spent entirely on consumer goods mankind better off. Afterall, the production of consumer goods both raises the standard of living and the rate economic growth.

And the development of a new technological infrastructure is an enormous undertaking which nevertheless has significant long-term benefits to society.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

You don't believe there are any benefits to investment in R&D toward these "expensive alternatives?" No technologies that will be gleaned from this process? No benefit to getting rid of the internal combustion engine?

Its not so much that I don't think that there are technological gains to be made from R&D into this area as I believe that the money will be more efficiently used by the private sector, gleaning many more useful and benefical products then would be developed by the government program.

As the internal combustion engine..... gasoline and oil are very cheap when you consider the utility we get out of them. Known reaserves of oil project us having at least another 100 years before we run out, excluding oil shale.

For those who would point out global warming at this point.... I'm going to point out that this particular theory is surrounded by fear mongering and cirmcumstancial evidence. Im not even wholly convinced that global warming would be the huge disaster that the media, environmentalists say it would be.

And the development of a new technological infrastructure is an enormous undertaking which nevertheless has significant long-term benefits to society.

The existing infrastructure servicing the IC engine works just fine. The (tens of) Billions not spent on developing this new infrastructure can be spent on other projects that will provide an even greater benefit to soceity then this "new technological infrastructure" would. Your arguement is basically a variation of the economic "broken-window" fallecy.