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More Progress On Hydrogen-Air Fuel Cells
blamario writes: "Check out this article from Ottawa Citizen. It describes one particular fuel cell design by Ballard Power Systems and includes several quotes from various other institutes and companies, all racing to produce the engine of the future (and then collect the royalties):."
selling hospital generators and portable generators in the next few years, having fuel cells in commercial vehicles by 2005? This is starting to look like it will actually happen! Wow!
Fuel cell improvements may also be critical for space development - particularly for a lunar base where the 14-day "night" means you need some kind of large-capacity energy storage system. Fuel cells using in-situ oxygen and in-situ or imported hydrogen could solve that problem very nicely!
Energy: time to change the picture.
This actually produces an 'out of sight - out of mind' problem. If people don't see the polution that their vehicle/energy use is causing, they consider it 'clean'. This might lead to them using more ('clean') energy and then we get bushwacked when the CO2 that's being (remotely) produced still messes up our environment and contributes to the global warning that we're trying to stop (beyond the localized city pollution).
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
This is an excellent article, however there is one point I have to make. It seems the media are heavily biased against coal power generation, believing it is heavily polluting. While burning coal generates more CO2 than most other forms of power generation, it does not necessarily release large amounts of other pollutants.
The quantities of SO2, NO2, metals and other pollutants depend heavily on the quality of coal used. Where I live (NSW, Australia) most electric power is generated from black coal, which has low amounts of pollutants. In addition, modern power stations equipped with filters capture most of the pollution which would enter the atmosphere. In fact much of the waste can be converted to fertiliser or inert filler. Carbon monoxide emissions are close to zero due to the efficient, high-temperature combustion.
While coal-fired power stations are a non-optimal solution, it makes no sense to simply rule them out without any investigation of the facts. For the media to do this is particularly bad, as the public will be against coal power in their ignorance, and another option to improve generation capacity will be lost.
Hydrogen doesn't occur free on earth in significant quantities. This raises the question of how it is to be produced, and the byproducts of the process. If the original energy source is a fuel containing carbon, there's the potential for releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. If the fuel carried by the vehicle is methanol (CH3OH) then it's all but certain that the carbon will be exhausted to the atmosphere. If the system uses stationary reformers and loads only hydrogen onto the vehicle, in principle the CO2 could be sequestered (pumped down old oil wells) and released over a very long period if ever.
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
In principle, the CO2 output of a stationary gas reforming plant could be combined with certain minerals or pumped into spent oil or gas wells; this CO2 would get to the atmosphere very slowly if at all. What do you think this would do to the planetary ecology, exactly?
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The fuel cell is Hydrogen-Catalyst. There is no combustion going on.
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Yes, the nick is flamebait