President Bush was the first U.S. president to approve funding for hydrogen cell vehicles and announced it during his 2003 State of the Union address.
Just wanted to mention that since libs always seem to "forget" that when they bash Bush about the environment.
the team used sunlight to heat a metal ore, such as zinc oxide, to about 1,200° Celsius in the presence of charcoal.
What is the charcoal for? Is it a catalyst? Or is it broken down, thereby releasing carbon into the atmosphere?
If it is consumed to make the zinc, then that kind of defeats the main purpose of the clean carbon free "hydrogen economy".
If it's a step forward for humanity and the USA would benefit from it the "greenies" with the help of the ACLU will use all resources available to stifle it's promotion.
One small hole: the oxygen is released in form of...[drum roll, please] ... carbon monoxide [unpleasant poison, but could be used as a gas fuel or for synthesis] - their charcoal is going to end as carbon monoxide (which nobody is going to release on large scale) or dioxide, which is... [drum roll, please] ...a "greenhouse gas". The whole thing is an 120+ years old manufacturing process for zinc, but uses sunlight as a heat source instead of burning even more coal for the purpose.
Since zinc is [in theory] recyclable like a catalyst, they are virtually burning carbon (charcoal) in water vapor, generating hydrogen and CO or CO2.
I'm not sure which car maker in Europe, but I think it's Mercedes has a piston engine hydrogen car, and the refueling stations are driven by one wind turbine which produces the hydrogen on-site. It can also burn gas if hydrogen isn't available. Seemed simple enough.
ping
Land prices in the sahara desert should be helped now...
I've read most of the comments up to this point, and I'm certainly no expert, but it seems to me that despite the inefficiencies and emissions, this might be a useful process.
Firstly, it allows solar power to be stored chemically at a central source. This infers that the process to produce the zinc "fuel" need not occur close to the point of usage. No transmission losses, as compared to solar electric generation. There are plenty of desert areas that could be used for plants throughout the world. Seems like hauling zinc powder around is a lot easier and safer than trying to haul compressed hydrogen gas.
Secondly, when most petroleum products are burned, the problem isn't so much the CO2 and CO, its all those byproducts that are the products of incomplete combustion, like sulfer compounds, heavy metals etc - these are difficult to deal with, especially at the level of individual cars.
Additionally, the CO or CO2 emissions would occur centrally, where they would be much easier to deal with - hopefully they could be harnessed for some other industrial use.
Lastly, it appears that the zinc is a catalyst in the process, meaning that it can be recycled and reused.
As many have pointed out, there isn't enough info here to make a decent judgement, and I think the weight issue could be a deal-breaker. However, from a pollution control standpoint, this seems to have some merit. I'd rather have a heavy box of zinc in my car than the high-pressure tanks of hydrogen gas that are expected to be required for a hydrogen vehicle. Concentrating the emissions at large production plants and leaving vehicles to run cleanly has some merit, IMHO.
Again, I'm no expert and, as many have pointed out, it would be best to compare the overall emissions, transportation costs and energy usage against the same for our existing petroleum and/or coal infrastructures.
One last thing that occurs to me - it sounds like a zinc-powder infrastructure would be far easier to implement using existing transporation infrastructure than a hydrogren gas infrastructure would be.
It would also be deliciously ironic if the Israelis found a way to sever the world's need for the Arab's oil.
Just my initial thoughts...