wally

As a friend said just the other day, I will be glad when we run out of the stuff and then I won't have to keep fixing the damn car.

The ZPG folks were/are right!
Wally

Wyz_sub10

FYI - Nuclear power provides about half of the Ontario power supply. Hydro about 30% (hydro is dominant in Quebec, the Maritimes and BC).

http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionB.htm#l

Autonemesis

Yes you have gained much. You have your dirty power generation facility at a central location where its emissions can better be controlled. The methods available for scrubbing the exhaust at a stationary plant are more effective than the methods that are practical to be used on a moving vehicle's exhaust.

theyeti

The kind that are dangerous are low-tech. Given how explosive hydrogen is, there will undoubtedly need to be high-tech methods for storage which don't allow the hydrogen to burn up all at once. I believe that the gas can currently be mixed in with a powdered metal mixture that prevents sudden explosion, but then you lose the high energy to mass ratio which makes hydrogen preferable in the first place.

Yes, theoretically we can use hydrogen to store excess electricity and then use the excess during peak hours or for powering cars. But the feasibility of this depends on how efficiently we can covert electricity to hydrogen, and the convert hydrogen back to electricity. This won't be doable for the forseeable future, which is why they're looking into direct extraction instead. Currently, the best way to store excess electricity is to pump water uphill. This is what most nuclear power plants do, since it's more efficient to run them 24/7 and store the excess for use during peak hours. The nuclear plant just needs a hydro plant in the vicinity, which is common because nuclear plants need cooling lakes.

I have yet to see a coal powered car. Hydrogen power will not do anything to clean up coal-fired plants, which are the worst air polluters in the country. What it will do is allow your car to be run with energy from coal, which is dirtier than oil and all the dirtier still since you lose a lot of energy when converting it to hydrogen.

theyeti

theyeti

FYI:

How the Hydrogen Economy Works.

From howstuffworks.com.

theyeti

Gooch's dad

I don't have much of a problem with central generation of power, since it can be done more cleanly than the current system of driving internal combustion engines around. Just because it can be done more cleanly doesn't mean it IS done more cleanly. I don't think there are any coal or oil-fired power plants that remove the C02 from the smokestack. So lots of greenhouse gases.

As theyeti pointed out, hydrogen isn't a new fuel source, it is basically a storage mechanism. So why, instead of working on cool new fuel cells, aren't we working on lightweight storage batteries? Burning of hydrogen in a fuel cell is, IIRC, about 50% efficient.

A hydrogen economy only makes the slightest bit of sense if you have a cheap way to produce lots and lots of electricity. So far, the only way to do that is with nukes, and the US public just doesn't like nukes.

The way that Bush is promoting hydrogen, it is based on cracking of fossil fuels to get at the H2. Sorry if this has been discussed already, but here are the equations for methane-hydrogen conversion:

2(CH4 ) + 3(H2 O) ------> CO + CO2 + 7(H2 ) Steam Reforming

CO + H2 O -----> H2 + CO2 Shift Reaction

2(H2) + O2 ------> 2(H20) Combustion

So you can see that the method used to turn methane into hydrogen generates plenty of CO2. Unless you're assuming all-electric production of hydrogen (which seems quite pie-in-the-sky so far) then hydrogen fuel cells produce CO2.

-Kelly

admice

The use of hydrogen fuel cells is really only practical in terms of emmissions reduction by use in vehicles, not power plants (except small applications). There are existing commercial fuel cells now. There is a company in Eugene Oregon selling them and one in Canada. One factor right now is the storage of the hydrogen safely in vehicles, which takes a stronger tank. But the main problem is there isn't an infrastructure right now to support it (hence one could bug one's government to put money into developing it). They vary in efficiency depending on the type, of which there are about 5.

If I remember the figure correctly, creating the liquid hydrogen takes only 26% of the amount of energy. I'll try to get more statistics.

admice

http://www.ballard.com/

here's the link for that Canadian one- Ballard

admice

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...81809EC588EF21

here's a link to a Scientific American article on them

theyeti

Bumping this up because of some recent news:

Study Finds Hybrid Cars Greener Than Hydrogen Cars.

theyeti