OT Hydrogen economy, not?

waiting for an viable algae system to produce hydrogen,

independence.

reasons. They point out that there is no practical source

hydrogen. Many of the problems of hydrogen stem from the

facts.

This is all old news, but the media and politicians still haven't grasped reality or are riding the hype until it wears out.

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Mike

It was a good idea until Bush backed it.

Hydrogen is plentiful and easy to store and distribute, and a superb way to transport energy; just attach it to carbon.

John

There's a lot of unclear thinking on the whole energy thing, both on the 'drill, burn and be happy' side and the 'save the earth through XXX' side.

Hydrogen, even if you could store and distribute it, is just a way to carry energy around, and still needs to be produced. All the 'safe, clean' hoo-haw becomes crap when you realize that the only viable way we have now to _make_ hydrogen uses electricity that's been generated by conventional means. _If_ the various electricity generation schemes like wind and solar, that do well on average but are episodic, come on line then hydrogen may help out -- but as you said, you still have to figure out how to store and distribute it.

Brilliant. What shall we call this substance? "Hydro-carbon" or something like that? Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

That's far too expensive. Hydrogen is created industrially from natural gas.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

The big things with hydrogen are:

- The pollution is generated at the source (the power plant) instead of where it's used (the car). This makes the pollution generated easier to contain BEFORE it gets into the environment.

- Hydrogen is plentiful and found EVERYWHERE. No more group of countries controlling the fuel economy.

- Hydrogen is simple to produce. This means that you can have many more smaller hydrogen plants spread out to where the demand is, instead of one single gasoline plant. This saves on transportation costs, and helps with local economies.

At this point, cars based on fuel produced by electricity are the future. Whether the fuel is electricity in a battery; hydrogen in a tank to power combustion or power a fuel cell; or something completely different, it all means that the vehicles are no longer producing the pollution.

Unburning water, what a silly idea

martin

How about "carbohydrate", as some prefer? That one's popular too.

Cheers, James Arthur

to

Tastes good vs. less filling? Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I considered calling the short-chain variants "Larkin Gas", but that may not be ideal.

John

to

Er, you do realize there's a difference between "hydrocarbon" and "carbohydrate"? The latter as the name suggests, contains water hydrating the carbons. Like common table sugar, C12H22O11, there is always a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen. Hydrocarbons, like methane, CH4, don't need to contain osygen and certainly don't have a 2:1 ratio of H to O.

I have an idea. Perhaps I should rush to the patent office before someone beats me to it.

It turns out that most of Hydrogen's problems can be solved by bonding H atoms to carbon atoms in various forms. The resulting molecules can be produced in liquid form, thus simplifying the storage and transportation issue. It also turns out that there are vast quantities of raw materials buried underground that are easily converted to a suitable form for use in power plants, vehicles, etc. obviating the need to produce vast quantities of energy needed to produce these molecular forms from their atomic components.

There are a few problems left to be worked out, such as how to dispose of the 'carrier' carbon atoms properly. But these can be left for some future person or persons to solve.

en

to

of

As the report makes clear, if we wanted to use hydrogen to replace liquid hydrocarbons (petrol/gasoline) we couldn't easily adapt the cars, trucks and buses in which burn the fuel or the gas stations, pipe-lines and tankers that we use to distribute it. We'd have to think up a new system which would work with hydrogen - probably liquid hydrogen stored in much bigger (and better insulated) tanks than the report wants to think about.

This would dictate bigger vehicles - so we would get around in things that looked like trains and trams, but they will be computer- controlled and driverless, so there would be more frequent services on heavily used routes and more flexible services - probably adapted to the immediate individual demand - on less heavily travelled routes, than we get with the current generation of public transport vehicles.

The authors won't win any awards for innovative or imaginative.thinking.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

What's the energetics on that? I'm thinking that most of the energy we get from gasoline, and especially methane, is from the hydrogen. You lose a little energy breaking the c-h bonds, and lose a little more breaking some of the o-o bonds, then make energy by oxidizing the carbon and hydrogen.

Carbon is clearly a superior carrier for hydrogen.

John

Has anyone every thought about some of the more mundane implications? Such as insurance rates.

Larkin Patented Gas, LPG? I think I can already buy that... ;-)

Tim

Hydrogen isn't especially dangerous. But it takes something like 30% of the net energy content to compress it to a useful density, often more than 5000 psi, as I recall.

Liquid hydrogen has the obvious boiloff problems, and takes energy to liquify, too.

Pure hydrogen makes no sense, which is why so many environmentalists and politicians love it. Nuclear makes sense, which is why they hate it. See a pattern here?

John