Re: Nothing like oil?

In article <1203357418@xxxxxxxxx>, Wayne Throop <throopw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
: jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx (James Nicoll)
: If you're making hydrocarbons as a fuel, it's probably best to
: think of them as a battery, allowing energy from some large central source
: to be converted and transported in a more convenient form.

Yes. And this reminds me of the huge disadvantage "real" batteries
have, compared to fuel. Imagine the mass penalty if your car had to have
an oxygen tank, and avoid using the outside air. Ignoring issues of
LOX or other storage techniques, just the mass, and comparing to using
hydrogen as fuel, and again considering just the mass, chemical
batteries are at a *tremendous* fundamental disadvantage.

LOX is (aside from what happens if you spill it in an inconvenient
location) relatively easy to handle and almost too cheap to meter. LH2
on the other hand is a big bundle of pain-in-the-ass wrapped in suckitude.
It's expensive, it's hard to store and the energy density per liter is
laughable. A lot of H2's shortcomings as a fuel can be fixed with the
simple addition of some carbon, generally along the lines of CnH(2n+2),
where n is a number between about five and twenty.



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