Good points all. I see Hydrogen as the high end replacement for gasoline. It can be made from water, using electricity. One scenario would be self-contained wind-to-hydrogen convresion ‘farms’, where the Hydrogen is picked up by tank trucks.
This neatly addresses two of winds current problems: it tends to be producing electricity at times of low demand (night) and it tends to be located far from where the juice is needed, or often even where transmission is available.
It’s not a panacea, but it has potential to be the best alternative fuel in terms of performance and convenience. Historically these critera win out in the market.
Actually, there is no need to carry around tanks of gaseous hydrogen. It can be made from water on demand inside the vehicle.
Not from electricity in a battery, but from the electrical potential in metalic aluminum. Aluminum oxidation will free hyrdrogen gas from water. The oxidation normally stops as soon as a coating of aluminum oxide forms. Gallium in the water will attract the aluminum oxide and prevent it from forming a coating, allowing the metalic aluminum to oxidize completely, using the electricity that went into forming it to free hydrogen from the water.
So you start with a tank full of metallic aluminum, gallium and water end up with hydrogen gas, aluminum oxide and gallium. The gallium is just a catalyst and does not bond to the aluminum oxide. The aluminum oxide is sent back for your windmills to turn back into metallic aluminum, and new pure metalic aluminum granules are added to the tank.
Details at http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
That’s where you and I differ.
I’ve cranked the numbers all the way through the hydrogen “fuel” system, and it is a huge loss compared to just about any other alternative we’d care to discuss.
The central problem is that hydrogen is hard to contain. If we had such an idea as what you pointed to with aluminum, then that would work, but hydrogen is incredibly “fluffy” (ie, non-dense) as a energy storage medium, and very prone to transfer losses in liquid or gaseous phases.