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To: Physicist
How are you going to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in the first place? By burning fossil fuels.

My thermo professor used to paraphrase the Three Laws as:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. Things are going to get worse and not get better.

Hydrogen as a concept for energy trasnport is pretty good until one looks at the engineering issues. Fuel cells are okay except for the fuel transport and economic issues. Then of course Mother Nature comes along and insist we balance the books. What will be the ultimate energy source? Nuclear is pretty good if you're going the electrolysis route. I have tried many gedunken experiments centered around the idea of a sunlight pumped laser to thermally separate H and O, but developing a laser of sufficient power with a sunlight pump is problematic at best. Those who propose NG and other carbon-based fuels as feedstock for fuel cells somehow seem to be defeating the purpose of the fuel cell in the sense that you are still using a depletable resource in a system that seems kind of lossy for the applications a stationary fuel cell might be matched to, although you avoid the combustion step and thus the production of byproduct gases.

11 posted on 11/07/2001 4:27:52 AM PST by chimera
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To: chimera
My thermo professor used to paraphrase the Three Laws as:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. Things are going to get worse and not get better.

I've heard that one. My physics teacher in high school said almost the same thing, but added to #3 "and you aren't allowed to quit the game, either."
13 posted on 11/07/2001 5:23:19 AM PST by cc2k
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