Re: Electrification: Bad Idea?

On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:27:18 -0700, allan tracy wrote:


Top Gear, earlier this year, featured an electric car running on fuel
cells, fuelled by hydrogen (by product water) and refills in the
conventional way, that seemed to be the way forward.

No real discernable differences from a conventional car, even
performance, though I accept there are issues concerning fuel cell and
hydrogen production but are these really so insurmountable?

The energy efficiency of the hydrogen fuel chain is abysmal.

Currently the Hydrogen is produced in commercial quantities by
'cracking' natural gas. This process produces copious quantities of CO2
as a waste product. (After all, you are taking a Hydrocarbon product and
throwing away the Carbon bit.)

The reason it's produced this way is that the electrolysis of water is
an EXTREMELY energy intensive process, thus too expensive.

A Hydrogen fuel economy only works if you have cheap and plentiful
electricity. And we don't have that.
And if you have cheap and plentiful electricity, other storage methods,
ie the chemistry of a battery, may prove to be the better storage method
over a tank of Hydrogen in the long term.

Using Hydrogen on a railway - where there are well established and
reliable methods of piping electricity right to vehicle, seems well, just
stupid.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Profitable Solar Power - A suggestion
    ... Not a passive way to harvest electricity. ... > It's easier to just price the solar cells, price the money needed to buy ... > domestic solar hot water installations averages 12 years. ... > conservation as it produces in generation. ...
    (misc.rural)
  • Re: Profitable Solar Power - A suggestion
    ... It's easier to just price the solar cells, price the money needed to buy ... domestic solar hot water installations averages 12 years. ... We use 1/3 the electricity we used 10 years ago, ... conservation as it produces in generation. ...
    (misc.rural)
  • Re: solar cells toxic
    ... a little uranium to make their electricity and such. ... The cells themselves ... copper wires together, are locked in the silicon and you will not get them ...
    (sci.energy)
  • Re: I need to acquire some solar cells
    ... able to get some that convert light to electricity from certain ... wavelength ranges. ... is what most cells are designed for. ... gain peak sensitivities at three different wavelengths? ...
    (sci.physics)
Loading