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[at-l] Shane, Shane
It's not a matter of government funding changing chemistry. What this resource needs is government funding for the development of things like nanotechnology. Each day, and on very limited budgets, advancements are being made by researchers. Imagine what they could do if they were well funded. Bush has earmarked very little comparatively to fund research in hydrogen. A couple billion dollars is not enough. The amount should be in the vicinity of what was spent to get a man on the moon in 10 years. In todays dollars this would be about 100 billion as opposed to the less than 2 billion Bush has planned. Just imagine if we took the same approach to hydrogen fuel as we did to the space program. More importantly, imagine if we don't. The more we drill for oil, the more we use. Unless we find oil on the moon, or maybe some other planet and start staking out our claims to it, we won't even be producing oil soon. It will all come from overseas. What a horrible day that will be when we
are completely dependent on another country for our power.
Robert
Charles Copeland <charles@uswnet.com> wrote:
Not even government funding can change chemistry. Hydrogen atoms are smaller than anything that contains it so the hydrogen needs to be combined with something so it can be stored - like oxygen (water) - and then extracted easily. However, the chemical bonding between hydrogen and oxygen is very strong and requires a lot of energy to separate - or a catalyst - or a nanomachine - or something. If you put the hydrogen in something else, you can end up with acids that are too strong (water is a weak acid) or in a chain of hydrocarbons and then we're back to gasoline, methanol, alcohol, and all the other burnable hydrogen-based molecules.
I'm all for a hydrogen-powered vehicle, or bus, or even home. It would be great to tell OPEC to stuff themselves. However, we'd then have to go searching for even more coal (as it stands now). I have a friend that owns a fuel cell company and he believes we are only a few years away from being able to separate hydrogen w/o electrolysis. The beauty of the system would be on-demand hydrogen that is stored in water. If this system ever "makes it", we could build desalinization systems all over the east, west, and gulf coast to supply the water that would eventually be needed. We could pump the water using existing oil and/or gas pipelines that would eventually be freed up.
Imagine a nanotube pump that pushes water in and hydrogen out. http://www.postgazette.com/healthscience/19991011nanotubes1.asp
That would be cool.
Charles
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert
To: Charles Copeland ; at-l@backcountry.net
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: [at-l] Shane, Shane
For every hydrogen story I read in favor of hydrogen, usually right behind it is a story saying that hydrogen doesn't work for a number of reasons. The thing I notice most is that the reasons for not using hydrogen always revolve around existing processes for extraction, transport, etc. Each time I see this I wonder how much will change as more research is done. The Wright brothers were laughed at for suggesting that planes be used for military applications. At the time, many people felt that there would never be a useful purpose for some crazy flying machine. You have to wonder, if the government had been more behind the idea, would we have gotten to this level of flight 10x sooner? Look at the space race. When Kennedy decided to go ahead with the Apollo program it was considered by many to be out of our reach. I just finished reading an article in Wired that spoke to this issue and had some very interesting ideas about the possibility of a hydrogen economy. Who knows what will
happen for sure, but I'd rather we go in the direction of something that could potentially free us from our dependence on other countries for oil. And yes, nuclear power now is a different animal altogether from what it was just a decade ago. New plants won't melt down and getting energy from them is much more environmentally friendly than ever before. More importantly, even the most staunch environmentalist has to admit now that even nuclear power is better than gas/oil.
Charles Copeland wrote:
I like alcohol stoves. They are light, easy to make, and they burn anything
in them - including wood if necessary. However, I think they are
*extremely* dangerous because when they are burning alcohol, its hard to see
the flame and if the stove gets knocked over (say... by some Scout running
through your cooking area), there's a nice pretty flame coming from your
flashlight that you set down a foot away - thinking it was safe to do so...
:-)
On the subject of hydrogen:
Hydrogen-powered vehicles are a long way away. A gallon of gasoline
contains about 2600 times the energy of a gallon of hydrogen. It would take
a *lot* of hydrogen to get a vehicle 300 miles. There are also many
electrolysis/storage/distribution issues. If we build more nuclear power
plants that are solely used for electrolysis, we could create the hydrogen
w/o producing CO and CO2. However, we don't have a storage mechanism for
hydrogen that doesn't leak.
If you're interested in reading why we won't be driving hydrogen-powered
cars anytime soon:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/article/0,20967,927469,00.html
Charles
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: "Robert" ;
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [at-l] Shane, Shane
> The data is old, I will see if I can find the webpage. The only advantage
> that
> hydrogen has is that it produces water vapor. The energy density is very
> low as
> compared to any of th other fuels, it takes a lot of energy to liquify
> (better off using
> the compressed gas). I am personally in favor of fuel cells, there are a
> variety of
> fuels that can be used.
>
> Grey Owl
>
> ---- Original message ----
>>Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 11:04:49 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Robert
>>Subject: Re: [at-l] Shane, Shane
>>To: greyowl@rcn.com, at-l@backcountry.net
>>
>>I've never seen the btu ratio you quote used for explaining the expected
>>failure of
> a hydrogen economy. Assuming this is true, it is still a bit misleading as
> hydrogen
> already works twice as efficiently in a combustion engine as gas, and this
> is with
> barely any research, comparatively speaking of course, done in hydrogen
> fuel
> options. I would think that if a little more was spent on research in this
> field, we
> would most definitely see a great deal more output.
>>
>>greyowl@rcn.com wrote:Here I go to all of this effort to make a sound and
> reasonable argument against the
>>use of batteries and Shane comes along and shoots me down. Shane ole
>>buddy,
> am
>>I on Your a$$___e list? Were'e the love man?
>>
>>Shane is correct. Methanol (denatured alcohol) is made from methane, which
>>is
>>found in natural gas (something the world is running out of). Ironically
>>methane is
>>the cheapest source of hydrogen, unfortunately the byproduct is carbon
>>dioxide.
>>The only alternative is electrolysis of water, but one must use a lot of
>>energy to
>>generate hydrogen from water. I takes approximately 100 btu of energy to
>>generate 40 btu of energy in the form of hydrogen. This is the real reason
>>that a
>>hydrogen economy will not work.
>>
>>Have a happy day
>>
>>Grey Owl
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>>
>>
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