Replies

Where, perchance, is the electricity for all of these wonder home machines to come from? Electricity, mostly produced by burning coal, therby putting more pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than burning gasoline does now. If the electrolizers are used to separate the hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuels from the carbon, you lose at least half of the energy in the feedstock. Further, the resulting carbon will need to be disposed of, possibly as carbon dioxide, thereby frustrating the greenies.

All of this hydrogen technology talk is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. Hydrogen must be extracted from either a hydrocarbon or water, and more energy is used extracting it than comes from actually using it. Further, if the feedstock is a hydrocarbon, then you lose the energy in the carbon and still have to disposse of the carbon. That leaves water as the feedstock, and the need to expend prodigious amounts of electricity, mostly produced by burning hydrocarbons, to obtain the hydrogen.

>That leaves water as the feedstock, and the need to >expend prodigious amounts of electricity, mostly produced >by burning hydrocarbons, to obtain the hydrogen.

Why can't we use Solar pv array "farms" to break down water into the gasses off grid? The farmed Hydrogen could then be transported for sale at stations like propane.

I know solar panels can charge deep cycle lead acid battery banks. These also provide inverted AC that I can use to power lights, computers and many modern small appliances.

If the idea is to be self sufficient, lets take it to the next level. While we're at it lets cut our dependancy upon the "grid" too.

Hydrogen must be extracted from either a hydrocarbon or water, and more energy is used extracting it than comes from actually using it.

This is really no different than with gasoline, more energy, in the form of crude oil, is used to produce it than you get out of it. But thought about another way, gasoline is just a convienient way to storee and use the energy available from crude oil, which itself cannot be used in any internal combustion engine you'd want in your car. Similary hyrdogen could be a convenient way of storing and using nuclear energy, solar power satellite energy or a number of other forms.

As far as having leftover carbon if hydrocarbon is used as the feed stock, is this not true of crude oil too? Only a small portion of the crude is made into gasoline, diesel or other light fuels, the rest must be disposed of, often by burning as "bunker fuel" in power plants. I'm sure some use could be found for all that carbon, and maybe not just burning it. Fuel cells have the additional advantage of being a non-thermodynamic process, and not subject to the same "rules", so the higher effeciencies are *theoretically* possible.