MOAB wrote:
Hydrogen happens to be the most abundant resource there is and seperating it from say, water, wouldn't be any more of a hardship to drilling oil.
Pretty pictures, and I know how cars and fuel cells work, thanks.
Hydrogen is the most abundant resource there is? Please point to a supply of free hydrogen.
Might as well say Aluminium is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust, just separate it from its oxide and you're done.
Same for Hydrogen and water.
An understanding of basic thermodynamics would help you.
The difference between oil and hydrogen is you get many times more energy out of oil when you burn it than you expend in the extraction process - so there is net free energy to do what you want with - run a car, heat your house, whatever.
Lets take a guess and say 50-100 times.
OTOH Burning hydrogen, or using it in a fuel cell, produces less energy than you put in in the first place.
So what was the point of converting electricity to hydrogen when you got back less then you put in?
When you add the energy required to compress and cool hydrogen so the energy density is useful you really are losing out.
Comparing a return on investment of 50-100 with 0.5-1.0 gives you the answer.
Hydrogen is not a fuel, its an energy transfer medium like electricity, only not so good.
As I said, do a calculation of how many nuclear plants would be required to be built to allow hydrogen to replace oil use in the USA and you'll get a nasty surprise.
Hydrogen MAY be usable in a passenger car, vehicles which actually do serious work are unlikely to ever usefully use hydrogen.
Turquoise wrote:
I suppose we view the potential of heavy funding differently.
To fund what exactly?
Until we have something to fund we're going nowhere.
Even when we do to:
Develop it
Change a nations infrastructure - say doubling or tripling the capacity of the electrical grid
Change the entire transport fleet
Will take colossal investment and time.
There is plenty of potential out there, we don't have anything approaching a solution yet.
Since oil is running out fast no doubt we will find something, but the days of cheap easy energy from oil will end and its not going to be fun.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2008-12-16 23:15:35)