Posted on 09/23/2005 2:19:38 PM PDT by newgeezer
There are a lot of technical problems with using hydrogen as a fuel that will need to be overcome before it has a chance of being what the environitwits claim it can be. Some of them may not be solvable. But that hasn't stopped people from pushing hydrogen as the universal energy solution that it clearly isn't.
Now don't get me wrong; hydrogen does have a place in a post petroleum economy, but not by itself. The real post petroleum world will see a much wider variety of energy sources in use. Right now we depend almost entirely on the big three fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. If we do things right, we will see many different renewable fuels, each being used where it is most useful. That means hydrogen, but it also includes biodiesel, ethanol, wind, photovoltaic, nuclear, and other energy sources.
To claim hydrogen and nuclear power will be the sole energy solutions is naive. Promoting them as such, to the exclusion of all others, is foolish to the point of being economically suicidal.
I want a diesel Harley.
But the report specifically does not give any real data about the economic feasability of using catalyzed organosilanes as a hydrogen source. What is the source of the organosilane liquid? How cheap is it to produce?
The by-product of extracting the hydrogen is silanol, which is currently more valuable than the source organosilanes. However, if this process is implemented on the mass scale required to produce enough hydrogen to be a replacement for our current energy sources, I strongly suspect so much silanol byproduct would be produced that it will become just another waste product and will need to be disposed of in some way.
But it is an intruiging thought. Don't maglev trains have truly pure EM drive trains at speed?
We have smart people workin' on it. :D I'm not worried.
Once upon a time, this was true, but research has decreased the required amount of platinum sufficiently that it is no longer a serious problem. As to a "domestic source"---we'll just recycle all the platinum currently used in exhaust system catalytic converters.
I note that the need to use platinum for THAT application hasn't slowed down people buying cars.
This is only true if you consider "boule-grown, diamond sawed" type solar cells. Look up "Konarka" solar cells for CURRENT cutting-edge technology.
That leaves the unspeakable—nukes.
Nukes aren't just speakable, they're buildable. That new Arreva commercial makes them seem almost trendy.
If you build it (network of new nukes), they (hydro cars) will come.
Yep. Me too.
Somebody has to say it!
ping to 70. Have you heard of this? What's your opinion?
I burned up a set of tires and brakes in Louisiana.
Let's start speaking about it then.
Nuclear power plant technology can be engineered to a standard of safety exceeding that of coal-fired power plants. And we will son have a place to store the waste, at Yucca Flat.
Nuclear power can produce hydrogen efficiently and cheaply. Let's get on with it!
Hidden? Seemed apparent to me ; )
Exactly! Why the rush to abandon a well established fuel sourch that is still plentiful? The planet still contains a tremendous ammount of oil and the known reserves are growing every year.
Any dramatic changes in the fuel infrasture, intoductions of localized fuels or fuels that can not be readily manufactured will slow economies drastically. It's almost like there is a concerted movement to stop ecomnomic progess. The environmentalist movement in a nutshell.
Didn't see the price in $ per watt on their corporate homepage. Seems like yet another corporation just waiting to be bought out.
Your statement implies there is absolutely no reason to recycle. (If recycling cannot be justified -- even environmentally -- why bother?) Show me the numbers, deliniating inputs and outputs, to support such a claim.
Supposedly, the main objective of recycling is to reclaim assets from our waste products instead of simply burying them. In certain cases, such as aluminum, recycling costs much less than producing it from raw materials. If the the total energy and environmental costs associated with collecting, transporting and processing waste aluminum exceed those of mining bauxite, etc., I'd be surprised, to put it mildly.
Recycling only makes sense when there's a market for it, sans government subsidies. Aluminum is one of the few places where recycling makes sense. The market supports the recycling of aluminum regardless of government intervention and subsidies. In most cases, recycling is a misuse of resources and a hidden tax so liberals and environmentalists can "feel good."
Show me the numbers, deliniating inputs and outputs, to support such a claim.
Okay. This is easy to back up. Here's a couple of minutes worth of searching.
From The Myth and Cost of Recycling...
It will cost the City of St. Marys $18.00 per ton to dispose of refuse in 2004 but would cost $50.00 per ton to get a recycler to accept it - the transportation costs are about equal. (That you have to pay a person to take "recyclable" material, rather than being paid for it, tells you immediately the value of the effort.)
From Recycling Myths...
Quite often, more energy and resources are spent than saved in the process of recycling. Municipal governments, because of the inherent shortcomings of public sector accounting and budget information, routinely underestimate the full costs of their recycling programs.
and...
Environmentalists who put their faith in government, with hardly a scrap of evidence that suggests they should, seem oblivious to these realities. To them, mountains of refuse waiting to be recycled into things people don't want at a cost they would never freely pay is not a reason to abolish mandatory recycling schemes. Instead, it gives them a reason to pass new laws that would force-feed the economy with recycled products.
From the classic Eight Great Myths of Recycling, which is full of footnotes for the skeptic...
The method of comparison I use is based on cost studies by Franklin Associates (1997), a consulting firm that studies solid waste issues on behalf of the EPA and other clients. Three programs are the focus here: disposal into landfills (but including a voluntary drop-off/buy-back recycling program), a baseline curbside recycling program, and an extensive curbside recycling program. These three approaches represent the vast majority of municipal solid waste programs across the country. In each case, Franklin assumes a city size of 250,000 and supposes that all equipment and facilities are new at the outset. The firm also assumes that the community has a broad-based municipal solid waste (MSW) service capacity, provides both residential and commercial service, and offers onceper-week curbside pickup of MSW.3 Table 2 shows the costs per ton of handling rubbish through these three alternative methods.
It is apparent from this table that, on average, curbside recycling is substantially more costly—that is, it uses far more resources—than a program in which disposal is combined with a voluntary drop-off/buy-back option. The reason: Curbside recycling of household rubbish uses huge amounts of capital and labor per pound of material recycled. Overall, curbside recycling costs run between 35 percent and 55 percent higher than the disposal option.
As one expert in the field puts it, adding curbside recycling is “like moving from once-a-week garbage collection to twice a week” (Bailey 1995, A8).
In the table shown in the report, disposal costs $104 per ton in 2002 dollars, compared to $182 for baseline recycling and $151 for extended recycling.
Most recycling has a negative economic and environmental benefit. It occurs because it makes people "feel good."
Given that France is the last western nation to test nukes...not really surprising.
They are also the nation known to attempt to sink Greenpeace ships.
Could be--but still VERY interesting technology. Reasonably good efficiency, and the fabrication technology certainly "should" be less expensive than crystalline or amorphous silicon, and the non-silicon "thin-film" cells.
As I understand it, they are in the "production engineering" phase at this point.
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