Posted on 07/18/2003 11:15:37 PM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou
Green-spirited individuals hoping to do their part to save the environment by buying hydrogen-fuelled cars next year are in for expensive and rude surprises, a study by a Canadian and a U.S. scientist says.Establishing an infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars, touted by their proponents as a wonder solution to global warming and smog, would cost $5,000 per vehicle, says the study by David Keith, a Canadian atmospheric physicist teaching at Carnegie Mellon University and Alex Farrell of the California Institute of Technology.
Although cars operating on hydrogen fuel cells emit only water vapor, switching to hydrogen would be about 100 times more expensive than simply making present cars less polluting, they say.
Although hydrogen cars would not emit the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, making power plants cleaner burning could achieve the same effect at 1/10 the cost, says the paper published today in the U.S. journal Science.
Many factors conspire to drive up the price of the hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, which the Ford Motor Co. will begin to sell in a limited way in Vancouver next year.
Transporting and storing the difficult-to-contain hydrogen gas is one.
But equally important is dealing with the byproducts formed by the creation of hydrogen, considered a "clean fuel." Hydrogen is currently made as an offshoot of oil and coal refining. But this process creates a huge amount of carbon dioxide.
No one is sure how to keep that carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere and heating up the planet.
"Hydrogen cars should be seen as one of several long-term options, but they make no sense anytime soon," the research paper says.
Prof. Keith was more scathing in an interview.
"My take-home message is that hydrogen cars are to some extent a technological solution in search of a problem. People are attracted to them because they appear to be a magic answer to a whole series of problems. But if you turn the question around and ask, 'What is my problem and what what are reasonably cost-effective solutions,' . . . A hydrogen fuel-cell car is not an early part of any cost-effective solution to any of your problems."
Given this uncertainty, he added that the Canadian support of hydrogen-fuel research, notably at the National Research Centre in Vancouver and through subsidies for hydrogen industries, such as Ballard Power Systems Inc., also in Vancouver, might prove to be the proverbial pig in a poke.
"One of the issues, right or wrong, is Canada betting on a hydrogen horse that is actually going to end up running anywhere? I think one should be very skeptical, despite all the hype."
Defenders of what is sometimes called the "hydrogen economy" said the paper's analysis misses several important points, one being the increase in the cost of gasoline.
"Today, fossil fuels are relatively cheap. When we use up half the supply of the world's oil, the price is going to shoot up. Will that be 2010 or 2020 or 2037? Nobody knows for sure," said Jeremy Rifkin, a Washington-D.C.-based economist and author of the recent book The Hydrogen Economy.
Ron Venter, a University of Toronto engineering professor and a vice-president of the Canadian Hydrogen Association, points out that North American car companies are experimenting with the clean and localized production of hydrogen by using electricity to break down water and thus circumvent the carbon dioxide-storage issue.
Ballard spokesman Mike Rosenberg said his company is aware that the present car and improvements to it are their chief competitors. "But we think we will overtake the internal-combustion engine eventually."
Most baby boomers have heard the radio announcer's wail: "Oh the humanity! The humanity!" Some have even seen the film footage of the Hindenburg's crash, which occurred in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. Those records of the catastrophe sealed the fate of these airships, even though the Hindenburg fire was an anomaly; hydrogen-lift ships rarely ignited.
Even so, Germany had long been cognizant of the gas' potential for combustion, and began negotiating with the US in the 1920s to import helium, which is 7 percent heavier than hydrogen but has the distinct advantage of not blowing up. (At the time, the US controlled the entire world supply of helium.) By 1937, political tensions in Europe prompted the US to hoard the gas, forcing the Germans to fill the Hindenburg with hydrogen.
Emphasis mine.
Yes, but where do you get the hydrogen for that fuel cell?
That's right...from LP (liquid petroleum) gas or natural gas. That's what GE's home fuel cell unit runs on.
Reliable, efficient, scalable, fuel flexable, available now, and tons cheaper.
In an effort to keep the Nazis from using the Hindenburg for military proposes the United States Congress passed the Helium Control Act. This Act made it impossible for the Zeppelin Company to obtain Helium because the United States has the only natural deposits of Helium. This upset Dr. Eckert who got along well the United States government and was openly critical of the Nazi government. There was nothing for him to do; therefore on March 4, 1936 the Hindenburg, inflated with the volatile gas, hydrogen, made its maiden voyage.
There was a kid somewhere who built a nuclear reactor in a metal shed in his back yard...
Here it is... just found it on Google:
The whole story of how he did it is really interesting.
Hydrogen is not, and never will be, a "fuel." "Fuel" is something that contains more energy than it costs to create, and until we discover deposits of molecular hydrogen in the ground, H2 will never meet that standard. Hydrogen is a battery, a way of storing up one form of energy for more convenient use later.
The only thing a "hydrogen economy" accomplishes is decoupling energy consumption from energy productionin other words, since any form of energy can be converted economically into hydrogen, and any form of work can, once a hydrogen distribution network is established, be performed economically with hydrogen, a hydrogen economy lets us pick the most efficient methods of both production and consumption.
The dirty secret, though, is that far and away the most efficient method of hydrogen production is nuclear power. Now I, for one, am 100% behind nuclear power, so when people say "hydrogen" I say "bring it on!" Your typical hydrogen enthusiast, however, hates nukes even more than he hates fossil fuels, so I'm really at a loss to explain hydrogen's popularity.
Nah, no point. Although the cancer-preventative effects of low-level radioactive exposuredemonstrated by medical studies on airline crews and Denver residentsare highly desirable, nuclear plants simply don't produce enough radioactivity. Your typical nuclear plant releases less radiation than granite buildings like the U.S. and Texas Capitols.
So there's no upside to living next to a nuke plant, and plenty of downsideyou'd routinely have to clean the detritus of leftist anti-nuke protesters out of your yard. Who wants that hassle?
The greenies say hydrogen is a fuel because without promising (falsely) the masses a replacement for gasoline to run their cars, the "watermelon" agenda would be dead on arrival. The government says hydrogen is a fuel because this country must invest more in nuclear power, and hydrogen is the "Trojan horse" that will slip nukes past the greenies. And corporations like Ballard Power say hydrogen is a fuel because it attracts big-bucks investment. Those entities' press releases notwithstanding, hydrogen will always be just a bookkeeping trick that shuffles energy from one column to another, losing a little along the way.
So there's no upside to living next to a nuke plant, and plenty of downsideyou'd routinely have to clean the detritus of leftist anti-nuke protesters out of your yard. Who wants that hassle ?
In TEXAS ? I'd LOVE to see a pack of protestors step on my front lawn ....
"I was in fear for my life and my property, judge .... had to shoot them all."
Besides ... being NEXT to the plant means that short of a nuclear attack the power will ALWAYS be on :)
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