Re: Support OIl Driilling Off Florida!


"Joe" <joea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Ernie Jurick wrote:
"Joe" <joea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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The fuel cell and hydrogen car have pretty much lost their glamour.

Don't be so quick to give up on FCV.

Somebody finally figured out the cost of installing a national network
of refueling stations.

It may not be so hard to do with local generators. Heck, we might even
be able to come up with home based generators. Put a FC power plant in
an advance electric hybrid and we might not need so much infrastructure.
You would only fuel up for long distance drives.


Do you know how difficult it is to liquefy hydrogen?

It is generally stored as a compressed gas for FCV or generated onboard
from hydrocarbons.

Hydrogen is also difficult to store, because it permeates so many
materials.



Hydrogen has been stored and used in many common applications since
perhaps Henri Giffard.


In laboratories, not in pipelines, refueling stations and automobiles.
Hydrogen is called a fugitive gas because it can escape from anything.
Ask a NASA scientist how difficult it is to deal with it in the space
shuttle. Every time there's a delay involving valves or metering, you can
be sure that hydrogen is involved.

In laboratories, welding shops, hospitals, factories, etc.
1. You are laboring under the misconception that liquefied hydrogen is
needed, compressed hydrogen gas is treated pretty much like any other
compressed gas.

Anyone who treats compressed hydrogen like any other gas is going to be in
for an unpleasant surprise. :-)Liquid hydrogen is actually a lot easier to
store. Gaseous hydrogen tries to escape at every opportunity and can
permeate solid materials. http://record.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/6182.html

2. Since hydrogen can be found almost anywhere, localized generation
eliminates the need for pipelines like those used with gas and oil.

And the energy for the separation and storage comes from where?

3. A car is not a spacecraft. In a spacecraft the liquid H is also used
as a coolant and is piped all over the place. In a car, all it has to do
is sit in a tank and evaporate then the gaseous H is used in the FC.
Also, leaks due to diffusion through materials that are a problem for
delicate spacecraft wouldn't be a problem for a car.

Spacecraft spend an awful lot of time on planet Earth. NASA is always
complaining about the difficulties of dealing with the fuel tank on the
shuttle.

4. Progress in materials are making higher pressure and even liquid H
storage safer and more effective. Just like other alternatives,
technological advances may eliminate many of the current difficulties.

Plus the fact you'd have to find an awful lot of hydrogen awfully
quickly.


You're joking right?
"Hydrogen is the most abundant
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements> of the
chemical elements, constituting roughly 75% of the universe's elemental
mass." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen


Yes, the whole universe is mainly hydrogen, but every bit of it is locked
up in water on Earth.

Really? All those organic life forms living, dead, and mined as fossil
fuels will be surprised to hear that. :-)

Water = life. The hydrogen proton is what keeps our mitochondria chugging
away, but it's all locked up one way or another. There is no free hydrogen
on Earth. Just as there is no free lunch for the proposed hydrogen economy.
:-)

If it escapes it heads for outer space. In order to separate hydrogen
from oxygen you need exactly as much energy as you get from it, minus the
mechanical inefficiencies of producing it and the thermal losses of
burning it. For sake of argument let's say it costs $1.01 to produce
$1.00 of fuel. Is it worthwhile at that cost?

Whose using straw man now?

The Straw Man Fallacy is assigning to your opponent qualities, beliefs,
actions, etc., which he doesn't actually have, then attacking those
qualities, beliefs, actions, etc. The fact that it takes as much energy to
separate hydrogen, plus some losses both ways, is simple physics. One way or
another you have to break the hydrogen-oxygen bond, and it takes energy to
break it. There are quantum-level experiments using nanotubes which can
manage it, but in the macro world there is no free lunch.


And where will all that energy come from to supply a national fleet?
Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, fossil fuels (no burning required), etc.
Produced locally - no pipelines, tankers, trains, or semi trucks.

Why not use that power directly rather than using it to break apart water?

And couldn't that same energy be better used in electric vehicles,
eliminating the need to produce hydrogen at all?
-- Ernie
Not necessarily. So far batteries are heavy, expensive, made from
dangerous materials, don't store a lot of energy, and take a relatively
long time to recharge.

Batteries today are like that, but they would only be an intermediate step
to true electric freedom. Gasoline at one point was heavy to transport,
expensive, and a dangerous material in itself, as is hydrogen. Recharge time
is a hurdle. Even the Tesla takes at least 3.5 hours to charge fully, but
the average top-off recharge would be less than that. Again, I have faith in
human ingenuity. And greed. :-)
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-06-23_D91G09KO2&show_article=1&cat=breaking


Imagine a fuel cell plug-in hybrid with a reformer with even 100 mile
battery range. All the trips around town would be electric but if you
wanted to take a trip around the world you could fill up on gas, diesel,
biodiesel, methanol, natural gas - any hydrocarbon fuel and drive as far
as you like with very low CO2 emissions and no other pollutants.

Yes, but fuel cells are a lot further away from day-in-day-out adequacy than
batteries are. Plus you're stuck with the CO2 problem again. Things have
been pretty quiet on the automobile fuel cell lately. The last story I read
was about adapting them to run laptops.
-- Ernie


.

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