Hydrogen Fuel May Not Be So 'Clean'

FoxNews ^ | 1/23/05 | Unknown

[Blood of Tyrants]

LOS ANGELES — Hydrogen-fueled cars have been hailed as the future of transportation — clean, safe and propelled by a power source whose only by-products are air and water.

[snip]

The problem, critics say, is that the technology that makes the fuel of the future generates just as much pollution as the gasoline-powered vehicles we drive right now.

[snip]

Extracting useful quantities of hydrogen from water requires a massive amount of energy — energy that typically comes from burning oil or coal.

[Flavius]

http://www.iuser.iwarp.com/main/tesla.htm

the back up on the info...

[Blood of Tyrants]

Newton's laws of thermodynamics.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Another pipe dream. Electricity needs a path to conduct. It needs a high potential and a low potential to flow to. If you plug one wire nto the ground to draw the electricity, where is the low potential that it will flow to, i.e. where will you plug the other wire?

[o_zarkman44]

Everyone here has mentioned every form of alternative electricity production except wind power. Small electricity producing windmills placed on floating platforms with hydrogen storage tanks A. uses no natural gas (a finite resource) B. no nuclear power (my choice for major power production) C. Needs no transmission lines or additional infrastructure. True, hydrogen production ALSO has environmental side effects, but can we afford to be choosey when we know oil and gas supply is finite and unstable?
A 30 year debate has gotten us nowhere to this point and frankly, we are pretty much on our own individually as to how we approach energy consumption.
There is no pie in the sky technology that is going to bail us out of crisis at the last moment. But for heavens sake, arguing about apples and oranges being fruit is not going to accomplish anything!! Pick the fruit while it's ripe or the opportunity will pass by when the tree is dead.
Environmentalists are the chain saw.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Yes but you're using a high-rank fuel to make a high rank fuel. If low rank fuels, say coal or biomass could be used to make hydrogen, then you'd have something of value.

[JohnCliftn]

Hydrogen embrittlement.

Hydrogen gas at combustion temperatures produces very caustic acids and bases depending on whatever else is there such as nitrogen, sodium, etc.

No container holds hydrogen perfectly; so there will tend to be a developing flammable hydrogen cloud around the storage container.

Safest way is combine the hydrogen with carbon, then burn that compound.

[wita]

Reminds me of the corn subsidy called ethanol. When corn production involves four passes through the field by internal compustion fuel driven vehicles, plus a visit to the energy using processing plant and government help in the growing and processing steps, it isn't a benefit to energy savings either. Not to mention it is not capable of producing the same amount of btu's per gallon as gasoline.

[seppel]

I don't understand the environmental stuff. Most of the einvironmental destruction is taking place in the Third World and countries like China and Russia. Here in the West hte landscape is clean and the emmisions low. What is all this hectoring about.
I never read about MSM "journalists" freaking out about power plants in China or India.

[JohnCliftn]

Wind power chops up eagles.

[o_zarkman44]

They who control the energy supply, control the consumer.
I remember my grandfather talking about resisting the Rural electric lines being run to his house because "they couldn't afford it". They were getting by just fine. But REC made him a deal, with a good sell to the neighbors, so everyone on his road could get hooked up.
Like a junkie with a needle in his arm, when does the need ever go away once hooked?

[seppel]

THis is the stuff you never really hear when the MSM trumpets "green" technologies:

"Currently, the cost of producing hydrogen fuel is greater than the value of the energy it delivers. Production entails either electrolysis in water or extraction of hydrogen from fossil fuels like natural gas."

It don't pay. What old folk have always known, because if it did pay, chance is it would have been around already. Capitalism is the best driver for new tech, not green politics.

[bert]

Also, hydrogen fueled vehicles are generators of the particle frion that is thought by many to be a carcinogen.

The frionic reaction in ordinary air produces small quantities of fritonic chips that were the main component of Petros, the gas producing meal first noted at the World's Fair in 1982.

[stboz]

use nuclear power plants to generate hydrogen. you will even be able to sell that to some green wackos.

Even if nuclear is used to make hydrogen, there is no infrastructure. I have grave doubts about the efficeincy of such a system.

I further have great disregard for the greenies and their politics. Do the opposite of what they say and you'll probably come out pretty well.

[o_zarkman44]

Every action has a reaction. With all the if's ands and buts I am surprised anything gets accomplished!! In the case of energy, all talk, all reaction, no action.
Thats why we have leadership.......but if leadership is weak, we get exactly what we deserve because we elected them.

[Flavius]

NO pipe dream... just greed, my opinion. electricity, and drains it into the ground. Because the ground is conductive, it doesn't stop. Rather, it spreads out like a radio wave, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. And it keeps going, because it's a powerful wave; it doesn't peter out after a few miles. It passes through the iron core of the earth with little trouble. After all, molten iron is very conductive. When the wave reaches the far side of the planet, it bounces back, like a wave in water bounces when it reaches an obstruction. Since it bounces, it makes a return trip; eventually, it returns to the point of origin. Now, this idea might seem wild. But it isn't science fiction. We bounced radar beams off the moon in the 1950's, and we mapped Venus by radar in the 1970's. Those planets are millions of miles away. The earth is a mere 3,000 miles in diameter; sending an electromagnetic wave through it is a piece of cake. We can sense earthquakes all the way across the planet by the vibrations they set up that travel all that distance. So, while at first thought it seems amazing, it's really pretty straight forward. But, as I said, it's a typical example of how Tesla thought. And then he had one of his typically Tesla ideas.

(my comment) One time I'm not sure if this article covers it, but he blew out they hydroelectric dam, and light up a city in long islad, where sparks would fly out of furniture ground etc..(my comment)

Nikola Tesla: Humanitarian Genius Excerpted from vol 6, no. 4, "Power and Resonance", the "Journal of the International Tesla Society". For further information on the topics discussed below: "The Tesla Book Co.", Box 1649, Greenville, Texas 75401

http://www.sumeria.net/tech/tesla.html

[Wonder Warthog]

"There are other problems with hydrogen gas such as leakage, reactivity, and transportation."

None of these is particularly problematic. It ain't rocket science to use hydrogen with minimal leakage--it has been done successfully for years. From a reactivity standpoint, hydrogen is less dangerous than gasoline (hydrogen has a wider explosive range and lower ignition temp, but because of its high permeation rate and low density, it is less likely to accumulate to within those explosive limits). Transportation over long distances can be done in existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

[DugwayDuke]

"The Earth could be pumped with electricity and anyone on its surface could remove it by simply placing a wire into the ground. This energy could be withdrawn in unlimited amounts for unlimited uses, free for all the world's people!"

And if one were to 'take a leak' on this electrically charged ball? No doubt that would be a 'stimulating expereince'.

[Flavius]

After construction of a generator building (still standing) and a 180 foot broadcasting tower (dynamited in world war I on the dubious pretext of being a potential navigation reference for German U-boats), financial support for the project was suddenly withdrawn by J. P. Morgan when it became apparent that such a worldwide power project couldn't be metered and charged for.

All i know there has to be a consumer, cant have free stuff,well maybe on a good day at walmart where we get 2 for 1 deal. But that just reinforces Chicoms Military Industrial complex so not sure how 2 for 1 is free...

[reg45]

Isn't natural gas a good source for extracting Hydrogen ?

Yes, natural gas (methane) is a good source for hydrogen. It will probably be the primary source until a more direct and inexpensive source is developed.