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The (Possible) Future of Alternative Energy
Sponge! writes: "The stuff that turns oil into margarine. The stuff that made the Hindenburg float. The stuff that combines with oxygen to make water and with carbon to make methane. The stuff that sends the space shuttle skyward and could someday power your car, office building, house, cell phone, even your hearing aid. That "Stuff" is hydrogen, and according to Amory Lovins, it is the future of energy. Here is an interesting article on Lovins and his view of hydrogen as the number one fuel."
Can we harness the hot air that Jon Katz spews once every week or so?
Anyone calling themselves a slashdot geek already gets the discover magazine in which case this story is...well...boring.
How about a new topic category called "Old Magazine News" that I could filter?
Here before all but 8486 of you.
Must ... lay ... off ... the ... beans!
Let's hope this gives a boost to zero-emission vehicles' development...
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
hmm, all the #distributed people can check in here then... cheers switched :)
Sponge!
is that you can get it anywhere there is water and sunlight. Never run out of gas and be stranded again! Cool, especially if you're on a budget.
We have been able to transfer a lot of our daily consumer power needs off the grid for years.
Unfotunately, any large scale production of alternative energy using consumables would require a massive capital investment by government and private enterprise that they have been postponing later and later.
We could have hydrogen powered cars and solar powered houses right now, if 40 years ago somebody had started a small factory making consumer goods that used these energy sources. By now, there would be lots of factories making the goods, and cheaper production methods would have resulted.
The short term planning orientation of energy companies and their associated enterprises is what keeps us dependent on fossil fuels today.
Only now are corps like BP investing in alternative energy. And BP isn't advancing the field much, it seems to be buying up small alternatives industry firms and keeping them in a technological and marketing holding pattern.
In my opinion, private enterprise and government won't invest the massive amounts required to scale alternatives production until the cost of fossil fuels is so prohibitive that they are (short-term) forced to do so.
By then, it will be too late.
I wish I knew what to do about this.
Goat sex free since 2001
Indeed Hydrogen does and will further boost the development of zero-emission vehicles.
If you're interested in reading about a few small companies that are researching this area check out:
Manhatten Scientifics (mhtx.com)
MillenniumCell (millenniumcell.com)
Fuel Cell Tech (?)
One even has a hydrogen powered bicycle, but I forget which.
wasnt ginger supposed to be a hydrogen fueled vehicle of some sort? havent heard any news about it in a LONG time??? sounds like vaporware to me
moo.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Institute, California Hydrogen Business Council.
Read "Hydrogen Futures: Toward A Sustainable Energy System", from WorldWatch Institute. Check out its Q & A section.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
I'd be interested to see a poll regarding public opinion on the safety of hydrogen as a power source. Although it is quite safe (except under certain extreme conditions), I imagine a large number of the general (uneducated) public would feel that it is far too risky to be using hydrogen in everyday devices like cell phone batteries.
My other sig is funny!
The main thing that gets glossed over in his argument is that unlike oil or solar you never get more energy from hydrogen than you put in. Sure there's a lot of hydrogen around, but to break H20 apart is always going to take slightly more energy than you get when you burn it or use a fuel cell to put it back together.
Hydrogen is better compared with gyroscopes or batteries than oil, solar or nuclear.
Perhaps slightly off topic, but in Australia, i Rembmer seeing on "Today Tonight" (think current affairs program for australia) and they where talking about alternative fuel made out of oil used to cook chips! A company was getting together to sell this oil at 69cents a litre in australia (very cheap for our fuel prices.)
Anyone else remember anything about this?
My question is: Why do none of these ideas ever get implemented?
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
Best thing, imho about hydrogren fuel is the ability to use it as a means of transmitting energy from potentially remote renewable generating facilities. Think of that game of SimCity where you put all the windmills in the hilly corner you'd never use. Same idea could work with wind or solar in the real world. Put wind facilities in prime (for wind generating) locations, generate hydrogen with the electricity, and truck the h2 to cities. No need for big ugly lines.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
There was more intro than meat in that submission. Seems to follow the hype that is in the article...
"...It's merely a matter of taming the most powerful gas on the planet..."
"...The future is nonpolluting, inexhaust-ible, nontoxic..."
Oh. Wait. I see some realism here:
"...There are immense practical barriers..."
Damn those realists! They're SO GOOD at what they do!
I love reading about alternatives to horribly invasive forms of energy we use today. This is a meta stop gap solution, a way of reducing peaking by bleeding compressed air to help the generators during peak usage. The crux of the issue remains, our power generation techniques are dirty and deprecated.
Most of quelling of useful technology is done by: the old boys club not wanting to give up on the profits, a lot of it is mis-information, and the remainder of the reason why we use horribly inefficient power sources is lack of attention (by our sheep like media).
I used to live near a nuclear power plant in Minnesota. I don't know why people are so afraid of good clean nuclear power. There used to be a lot of cancer there, and everyone jumped on the power plant, but it was shown that most of the cancers were not related to the power plant at all, there was solvents being dumped into the local water supplies that were causing intestinal cancer. People don't understand radiation cancers always occur in statistical rings, that certain percentage of the people a certain distance get some very specific cancers. Nevertheless, even after the nuclear power plant was vindicated - the media failed to report that the solvents killed the people, not the power plant.
Anyways, here we are burning coal and fossil fuels all day long. Fuel cells, gyroscope technology, ceramic engine and electric cars are getting the kibosh due to the retrofitting costs. And we burn, burn burn.
Today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2001, Coal and Utility companies are lobbying the ever-environment-hating White House to reduce the clean air rules on power plants. Cheney said the administration energy policy will focus on more output for oil and natural gas.
They can continue to sell us electricity at higher prices, cut the cost, pollute the air, and keep real technology from proliferating.
Some say time is the fire in which we burn. My time is running out
.
Is this a NEW concept or something? Hydrogen as fuel is pretty damn simple... I did experiments with various hydrogen energy sources in my AP Chem class in high school...
every time I'll fart, I'll make money... whohoo! girlfriend won't be pissed at me anymore.
A long time ago I read something about how every generation of fuel uses a higher hydrogen to carbon ratio. For instance, coal to oil and then oil to natural gas.
Every generation was less poluting and more efficient because of this larger ratio, and so it seems almost natural that eventually we'd get to pure hydrogen as a fuel source.
Please correct me if someone else has more info.
I cant wait for this to be used as a fuel, but i do worry about saftey issues
It's instructive to compare the generally favorable Discover article on Hydrogen with the negative article on missle defense in the same issue. This has been the pattern for the last year or so with Discover. Hippie scientists must be cheaper. Kumbiya.
Energy Density. Look it up. The whole point of using gasoline is that it stores so much energy per unit weight/volume. Hydrogen fuel cells could work, but just to store energy, there are many better alternatives as far as energy density is concerned.
As far as energy generation is concerned, I agree, the grand majority of energy we use ultimately comes from hydrogen in the form of the sun - which despite all the "liberal" aura it has, is ultimately the energy source we must rely on in the long term, in a more direct manner than earth-based solar panels.
So, for energy generation, hydrogen is great, but for energy storage, you can get a LOT more convenient.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
One thing I always notice people overlooking in their discussions of "it's hard to get alternative fuels" is the use of farm waste as a source of Methane and Ethane.
There are massive farms that produce millions of cows a year, these cows (or piggies) do most of the work for us in creating fuel-cellable methane. We'd just need to build special barns to capture it. (In fact I think I read somewheres about a farm that was powering itself)
Another source of non-fossil fuels would be to ferment corn or wheat stalks (useless fibre) to produce ethane. (Imagine the hooch you could make from all the wheat in Alberta?)
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
Interesting timing for this article as i've
just been looking into weather Fuel Cell Stacks,
such as Zetek Powers 2.5Kw Fuel Cell stacks, would make
a useful backup power source for our server shop,
fortunately it looks like Zetek's gone tits up.
I can thing of many places were a compate, safe
energy source would be ideal, but somehow this
Technology just doesn't ever seem to get
commericalized.
Go ahead and read your crappy Disney owned pop-science trash. I'll stick with a real mainstream science mag: Scientific American.
What about fusion reactors? Now that is a pretty damn good power supply... much much much better than fission (current nuclear power plants)
I can really see the oil cartels stepping aside for a clean renewable energy source ... not! They have *so* much to lose that they'll do anything to ensure that we keep using fuel for years to come.
The only way something like this will ever work is if its a) easy to do so that everyone can do it and b) in the public domain so there's no trade secrets.
There are *lots* of things other than cars that rely on petrol and associated byproducts...
There, I feel so much better
My other sig is a better one.
47 Meelion Dollars!?! I'm the cat!
Please Troll this down. I am sorry, I had to vote in NYC today and needed to take off the edge...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
so how will this affect Americans ?
they are allready the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases but if their president isnt going to take the lead in emissions and alternative energy sources and is not prepared to listen to men of science, why should they even bother with looking at hydrogen if greenhouse gases etc are not important ?
isnt this just about fuel cells? i thought the people have been discussing this as an alternative a long time ago... i remember being in highschool in the mid 90s and they were talking about this
my blog
The benefits are considerable:
Is such a system ever going to be feasible?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Exactly, I just don't see much of a situation where using hydrogen as a quasi-battery is better than just using a battery. The Toyota Prius uses an engine to charge batteries which then drive an electric motor, for example. Why mess with the hydrogen intermediate stage? The only reason I can see is that in general, storing electrical power is difficult. Using it to produce hydrogen which can then be burned to generate peak power for the grid (such as half-time during English soccer games, when half the country puts a kettle on for tea at the same time) which can't be done with most green power systems.
(I'd really like to see some way to plug the Prius in, so you don't have to burn fuel when you're just doing short commutes every day; maybe the next generation will have that.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Three Mile Island particularly showed that the people who were in charge of the plant should probably not be trusted with anything as dangerous as a motor vehicle - the contractors x-rayed the same weld joint dozens of times (and changed the id numbers) instead of inspecting the whole plant because they knew that no-one would check up on them.
Fission is clean power to public relations people and a government that wants a good source of radioactive material for weapons, but to engineers it is very dirty power that needs to be very carefully contained in case it gets out and kills everything near the powerplant.
The financial cost of construction and decomissioning nuclear power plants is enormous - that price may come down after a few more have been decommisioned, but for now it is an expensive form of power over the life cycle of the plant. All of those rare earths and hi-tech materials are not cheap - and everything used in the steam cycle is going to be radioactive enough to cause storage problems for more than a lifetime. The environmental costs have been enormous in the Ukrane, and may be high in other places in the future.
Now that patriotism and American indentity is surging it seems like a right time for a political leader to stand up and proclaim energy independence is a paramount issue.
Addiction to cheap fossils fuels has colored our foriegn policy and caused us to turn a blind eye to the principles we hold dear, such as fairness, justice, and the trust in democratic idealogy.
The US bolsters, sells arms to, and keeps autocratic governments in place, such as Saudi Arabia, only so the we can get access to cheap energy. Even though these governments routinely violate basic human rights, disallow freedom of speech and rule by fear.
The parallel between a drug addict who abandons moral principles in order to obtain their next fix is almost too much to ignore.
We need someone in polical power who has the vision and the foresight to achieve energy independance and instill a yankee-can-do attitude, no unlike JFK's "go to the moon" proclaimation.
The current war will cost between $150 and $200 Billion not counting the increase in inefficiencies of trying to protect ourselves and our lost freedoms. How far down the road would $200 billion spent on research and development of an energy economy built on solar, wind, commercial fusion, spaced based technologies, conservation, etc. get us? How would this positively effect the economy and allow us to compete in the world?
HMM. lets see to make hydrogen you need ahhh, could it be electricity? ___ You Burn the Coal to get the Electricty to get the Hydrogen to Put in the car. You do the Hokie-Pokie and turn yourself around. Oil baby the stuff just comes out of the ground like majic, you burn it and get CO2, and that feeds the rainforests. MMMMMMMM.. Oil GOOD!
Being a crotchity old man, I fear change and progress. This.. this so-called Hy-dro-gen you speak of has been nothing but a pain in my rump ever since my days as a gold prospector. This margerine business.. try as I might, I still don't beleive it's not butter. I was a hearty 45 when I witnessed the Hindenburg disaster. What guarentees can you give me that such an incident won't befall my hearing aid? I have had a fear of water since I was knee-high to a crawdad. The most respected talk-show host in the world, Phil Donahue, said that this methane gas is responsible for a hole in the O-Zone layer. I beleive that space travel is best left to the Russians. I am not allowed to operate a motor vehicle in my state because I'm legally blind, deaf, and my reflexes ain't what they used to be. These yuppies in their office buildings need to get out and get real jobs gold prospectin'. Why in a single day I panned up 6 bits! All while fendin' off coyotes. I ain't ever needed no power in the house that the Ol' wind mill can't provide. I dunno what cell phones are, but they sound like the work of the devil to me. Anyway.. The Price Is Right is about to start so I have to go.
For all it's good points, people often gloss over the one big dealbreaker - hydrogen is a gas. And a very, very small gas as well, which has a tendency to work it's way even through metal containers, making them brittle in the process. In a nutshell, it's difficult to store. Even if you overcome that with tanks on cars or buildings, what are you going to do for smaller devices like lawnmowers or whatnot? If you run out of gas on the road, you won't be able to just walk to the nearest station to fill up a tank.
The fact is, for practical purposes, gases are difficult fuels, even relatively easy ones like LPNG. We need a liquid alternative that we can make in a renewable fashion, even if it doesn't trigger as many buzzwords. Methanol would be ideal for most purposes. Alternatively, rather than using hydrogen and oxygen we could use the easier-to-store sytem of ammonium and nitrous oxide. That produces water and nitrogen as a byproduct.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I agree. Bin Laden wants us out of the middle east. I say we give him his wish. Let's pull out and take our money with us and invest it in a renewable energy source. Hell, even if we could buy oil from someone else, we at least won't have to deal with the fanaticism.
"Pound for pound, hydrogen packs more chemical energy than any other known fuel."
But litre for litre, it is lousy. I've seen pictures of designs for (liquid) hydrogen fueled jetliners - they are very significantly larger to contain the fuel.
This is one of the reasons people are so interested in 'reforming' methane or methanol to form the hydrogen on the spot - they are so much easier to store compactly. (This does, however, mean you now need much more *weight* for your energy.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The stuff that blows up and makes more fodder for rotten.com.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Hydrogen is a clean fuel, in that it can be burned without harmful emissions. Because water is plentiful, hydrogen is also a sort of a battery. Electrical current can be used to separate it from water molecules, and some of this energy can be recovered in fuel cells.
Hydrogen extracted from fossil fuels necessarily produces less energy than the raw fuels themselves. Hydrogen produced from water by electrolysis is an energy sink.
Hydrogen may be extracted from water by using solar energy. That is solar energy, not hydrogen energy.
Whether hydrogen is a suitable fuel for vehicles depends on whether the energy costs are worth the emissions benefits. If so, this will make energy more scarce, because of the inefficiencies of converting energy in some other form into the energy of electrolysis.
Whether electrolysis of water is the right method for storage of solar energy depends on the comparative costs, risks and benefits of alternative storage technologies.
In neither case is hydrogen competing with fossil fuels as an energy source. It is competing with fossil fuels and batteries and flywheels and passive heating media as an energu storage system in both cases.
There are no significant pools of free hydrogen on the planet that can be used as an energy source.
Hydrogen is an energy storage strategy and not an energy supply strategy. It may have its uses as the former. Proposing it as a replacement for fossil or nuclear energy is complete nonsense.
All the above should be fully understood by anyone trying to venture an opinion on this subject.
Sorry to be blunt, but anyone who misses this point is one of the following: 1) not seriously interested in the subject 2) incompetent or 3) dishonest.
mt
There's always the Max Max strategy for organic gas extraction. Or alternatively, we could just shove a hose up his A**. I doubt it would impact the quality of his writing (or at least the perception of his writing).
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
They're already using some hydrogen powered busses at the airport in Munich.
I saw one last summer when I was travelling, but unfortunately did not get to ride on one. Interesting stuff!
dramatic != mass use of 'the stuff' D=
What do you mean by "alternative fuel is the future", wasn't that what one presidential runner-up said back in october of last year, when asked about the underlaying power crisis ?
Oh, right, but then again you guys voted for the one saying "Heck no, we gotta'a plenty of Ol' black gold stuck in lotsa natural reserve, let's dig that up."
Murphy(c).
If im not mistaken, ballard power systems has been working on fuel cells based on this technology for quite a while. (and will infact be available for public purchase soon) there also working with automobile manufacturs to produce fuel cell based cars. tho those are still a ways off.... just where would i refuel my hydrogen powered car anyways?
"Nyquil - The stuffy, sneezy, why-the-hell-is-the-room-spinning medicine."
I was listening to npr and they had an article about using ranchers land to generate electricity to convert water to hydrogen. artcle here First time posting didn't research enough to get the link right.
superman runs linux
I love the way people talk about the "pure, clean" nature of hydrogen as a fuel.
:-)
Unfortunately the reality is that it has a long list of problems associated with it -- and a number of them are environmental.
As others have pointed out -- it's a fuel with a very low energy density (by volume), it's very difficult/expensive to store, and most of it is produced by "dirty" methods such as the cracking of hydrocarbons which come from -- you guessed it -- oil!
In short, hydrogen is a fuel for the academics amongst us -- those who find the easiest way to deal with reality is to ignore it.
You know -- these are the kind of people who write computer software that does no error-checking on its input data. When such a program crashes, the response tends to be "well don't enter bad data then."
Unfortunately, if we want to write software for the general public -- or in this case if we want to create a practical, clean fuel, then reality can't be dismissed.
We've got a long way to go before hydrogen becomes everything it's cracked up to be.
By the way, what ever happened to those breakthroughs in solar-cell technology that were going to bring us ultra-low cost energy from the sun?
Bah... humbug... I think I'll just go and burn a few more gallons of dinosaur-extract in my pulsejet
Sure, once we run the OPEC oil fields dry. After that, we cause a massive fission reaction in the Middle East and harness the energy from that.
Such a plant could generate enough electricity to pump seawater up and crack it into hydrogen and oxygen. It would be a whole hell of a lot cleaner than oil rigs on offshore platforms, and could in fact be set up on oil platforms in tropical regions (like the Gulf of Mexico) that no longer produce enough crude oil to be profitable, or that must be shut down over environmental concerns. OTEC plants are very clean, very safe, and fairly inexpensive to run. They could be a viable method for producing hydrogen almost for free.
And the brethren went away edified.
Why is everyone so affraid of Nuclear power? Pound for pound, Nuclear Energy is far cleaner and environmentally friendly then coal power plants, that's been proven already. The chances of a catastrophic reactor melt down are not very likely, as long as they are properly maintained and staffed. While I'm all for new forms of energy, we are currently not even using what is within our grasps. How can we expect power companies, who have a lot of money sunk into their current operations, to change their way of thinking? I doubt they see it as a viable thought to try these things out when they may flop. I have little faith that anything such as this article describes will be used, when we are not even using Nuclear Energy to what it could be. Look at the Navy, they have tons of nuclear reactors on their ships. Have there been any indicents with them? Not that we know of, and it'd be hard to hide something like that. Of course, those are smaller reactors, but none the less, it just proves the government knows what is going on. They are using the technology we already have, while the power companies are still stuck back a 100 years ago.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/s97398.htm
screw hydrogen.
...it was in the article.
Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
That said, the hydrogen not only made the Hindenburg float, it was a big factor in why it exploded!
Theories abound, but the simple fact is that with any great amount of this gas, there is still a safety factor to be considered.
However, the same article discusses the actual things that burned, suggesting that hydrogen was *not* the culprit, only an accomplice. You decide.
Even though our own farts (mentioned in other posts - not my idea) are explosive to a point (some more than others ;-), the containment of hydrogen gas is still a relatively unregulated concern. Easily argued, it is not as dangerous as some fossil fuels, it is still not easy to handle. What do we do? Embrace it - contain it - or wait and see what Big Bro sez to do?
db
Cig:
ôô
Hydrogen is also the most plentiful element there is, because it is the simplest one. It is also produced when some radioactive elements undergo decay to become more stable, they sometimes produce single protons (Hydrogen has 1 proton), which is essentialy an H+ ion. Should that come in contact with a free election or another element to take/give/share an electron, you have a new hydrogen atom.
It is also the most reactive element, due to the fact that it only has space for 2 electrons on the outer shell. It would either gain an electron (forming an H- ion), or lose the one it has (forming an H+ ion). This makes it react with virtually every element except the Noble gasses.
Consequently A) you have to be extremely careful with it, and B) need very little to catalyze a reaction, with hydrogen atoms, that releases more energy than it uses (exothermic reaction).
Just some thoughts from a HS chemistry student. Some of this information may be inaccurate, as I don't have perfect memory =)
It would be nice to think that people would wise up and convert before all of the fossil fuels are gone, but we know it won't happen until someone either takes out OPEC or manages to invent a hydrogen engine more efficient (and crucially, more profitable) than a petrol engine.
Money makes the world go round. Not common sense. :-(
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
When I was studying engineering, I never understood why people folk tried to experiment with alternative forms of fuel such as wind, solar and my personal favourite biomass :)
Take out the benefit of them being limitless, and you are not left with a lot, possibly their only other strength is that a lot of these systems can be installed in remote places.
Their problem is that the technology behind them is so underveloped and so implementing any systems is not only initially very expensive, but also costly to maintain. For what you put in, you normally get *very* little out.
What always got me was that the amount of heat billowing out of the chimney tops of convential electrical power stations is tremendous. I have yet to see any country implement a widescale plan to harnass some of that power. It would be no trouble to redirect that steam and heat up more steam for the turbines, or to heat up water for local community. And of coure the wasted heat energy begs the question of just how much they power stations are in the first place.
Regards,
Po
The primary problem with Hydrogen as a fuel source is not generation (which can be accomplished in large facilities dedicated to the task), but rather in safe, efficient delivery.
One of the most interesting systems I have seen recently is the Powerballs system. It does appear to be a well considered, functional, and (most importantly) *available* system. I don't think this is anything (scientifically) extraordinary, but it is available now.
Hopefully the site will take a slashdotting, they deserve a little publicity, and I'd like to see what others think of the basic idea...I'm not enough of a chemist to understand the efficiency or practicality of their method.
Hydrogen has been around an awfully long time. Doesn't at least one mega-corp have it patented?
Use this story link. less ads, less
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Americans running low on power?
Maybe you'll have to use that expensive Canadian softwood lumber as fuel?
Free Trade applies to power just as much as it applies to WOOD!
> you never get more energy from hydrogen than you put in
Well, unless you turn your hydrogen into helium,
but that's another matter©
Too bad controlled fusion power is still 20 years away
¥it's been 20 years away for the last 30 years©
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. How ever much energy goes into splitting H2O is exactly how much you will get back upon fusing them. Unless I am mistaken, there is no room for debate on this issue.
It is a matter of finding an intermediary energy source to create the electrolosis. I have thought for years that the best idea would be to create MASSIVE solar panel arrays in an area like the Baja. Pipeline in ocean water, split it and pipeline the gases out.
Just my humble opinion, for what is worth.
The Rocky Mountain Institute's (Lovins company)website is http://www.rmi.org
They're involved in a lot of other interesting energy efficent projects.
A quote from the article:
...
Imagine a world where
"OPEC is out of business because the price of oil has fallen to five dollars a barrel,"
Currently the vast majority of commodity chemicals are made from crude oil. That means most everything you own, the synthetic fibers in that cotton blend shirt, the plastic in your keyboard, the tires on your car, down to the aspirin that you take after staring at the computer screen all night; all of it is made from oil.
If oil prices dropped to $5 a barrel, the chemical companies would still crack the oil to get at the compounds that they are interested in, and we would be left with a lot of gasoline. What would we do with that? Burn it? Give it away?
This is why oil is such an integral part of our world. Finding a cheap alternative fuel source is only part of the solution.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
C'mon - who are you trying to snowball? The .gov can hide anything they want, and have been doing so forever. I have a first-born son in the Navy, and he (thankfully) is not on a nuke-ship. Even if he were, I don't have a death-watch kind of worry about him or the crew, but just the same, our .gov will never tell us what's really going on in the ranks, let alone in the broad overview of everything. They told us that from the gitgo in this *new* war, but nothing has really had to change for that. The only thing they need to *deny* is resultant of what Al-Jazeera is telling us, or whatever.
Get a clue.
db
Cig:
ôô
The stuff that turns oil into clogged arteries. The stuff that made the Hindenburg erupt into a fiery death. The stuff that reacts with oxygen to make a fireball and with carbon to make a horrendous fart. The stuff that killed my teacher in 1986 could someday power your car, office building, house, cell phone, even your hearing aid.
"Amory Lovins is selling snake oil," says Myron Ebell, director of international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "There are immense practical barriers."
o gy /nasda_solar_sats_011029.html
This coming from conservatives, the people that brought us the Gulf War, funded Osama Bin Laden and backed the Shah of Iran rather than face an unstable oil market.
I'd say an oil economy has some pretty damn "immense practical barriers" as well when viewed on any scale beyond the next quarter or next election.
Check out this related Japanese space-based H20 cracking solution.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technol
In any case, fuel cells are a great technology that will eventually kick batteries and petro-based fuels in the nuts. There will be several fuel-cell fuels (propane, methanol, even gasoline in the transitional stage), so there we don't need to rely on hydrogen alone. And there'll be electrolysis production of H2 from solar, wind, and other "alternative" sources. You can even use biomass to create hydrogen-rich fuels. I mean, why are we burning oil?... save it for plastics and other stuff, and stop sending up carbon for Pete's sake.
The main problem with H2 as a fuel is compressability: unless you have a cryogenic fuel tank you are going to run into problems with the amount of fuel you can carry. Unless they can solve this problem, methane/-ol might be a better option. H2 would be fine for applications where you could have big fuel tanks, or gas lines.
The main problem with fuel cells as a technology/industry is that while they will eventually be a big industry (a few trillion in cumulative investment by AD 2020, from what I've heard), there is a definite need for government at all levels to pony up with some investment. This stuff will benefit everybody, including the energy companies (though, they may not see it that way right now), so some demand from gov.'t would move things forward.
Measures like California's vehicle regulations, investment in "demonstration" fuel-cell city bus fleets, or pilot projects involving commuters are just the beginning of what needs to be done to get things moving: there needs to be a commitment to developing the unsexy infrastructure required to engineer, produce, and distribute this stuff.
Maybe government could do a deal for shares in the companies it partners with... so that the return on investment would be worth the risk.
Well, it'll happen. I'm sure of that. I just can't wait to get a fuel-cell motorcycle, and a van with a few kiloWatts of clean DC power, just aching to be driven out into the boonies for to power an all-night party.
GO BALLARD POWER! ;)
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Since the early 1900's inventors have been designing and building free energy (greater than 100% efficiency) generators for mechanical and electrical power generation, yet these alternative energy machines lay unused. This is one of the joys of living in a capatalist society. If the general population knew that they don't need oil or power companies for their power requirements the biggest sources of financial and political influence would cease to exist. If you want an example of this technology try http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/meg.htm This motionless electromagnetic generator relies on the 4d theories of space/time and currently operates at an efficiency of 500%. If you want more info try a google on free energy machines. Spread the word. Andrew.
Until energy consumers start demanding clean energy (both in the marketplace, and through the political process), we'll never make the transition to a sustainable energy system. One organization that is working to build both real markets and realistic policies for clean energy here in the Pacific Northwest is Climate Solutions. Worth checking out... these folks are trying to take the pie-in-the-sky that Lovins et al. discuss and make it real on the ground.
The piece really underplayed the role of wind generators. The cost of windpower has fallen dramatically in the last 20 years. In the early '80s it was nearly 40 cents per kilowatt hour, it is now between 3 and 6 cents. Worldwide wind power is starting to take off. It increased by 29% in the USA alone between 1998 and 1999. By using hydrogen generation as an energy storage and transportation medium, the benefits of windpower can be extended to all energy using sectors.
For more info, here is an article by Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute.
A pilot plant for extracting hydrogen by electrolysis, driven by solar cells was built in Riverside, California in the early 1990s. Overall efficiency was 4.7%, which isn't too good.
There are occasional lab reports of better schemes for separating hydrogen, but so far none of them work in production. The U.S. Department of Energy funds work in this area, but no breakthroughs yet.
This isn't a new idea. It's an old one with lousy performance.
I'm affraid I have a clue. I'm a DEPer and leave in Feb. You can take a guess as to what I'll be.
Couldn't agree more. It's been done. Read Natural Capitalism by (among others) Amory Lovins.
Or, to paraphrase The Natural Step, every business, regardless of industry, produces only two things: Product, and non-product. Selling product makes money. Non-product is, at best, worthless and is frequently a liability.
The ratio varies by industry of course, but when you trace through the entire supply chain, usually only 5-10% of the materials stream winds up in product. Improving this figure is a huge opportunity to add money to the bottom line, and generally speaking, there is alot of room for improvement!
As far as the political process goes, the main thing the government needs to do is to:
1) Stop subsidizing waste.
2) Correct the legal structures that currently allow industries to externalze costs. Just to give a timely example, a gallon of gas would cost alot more than $1.50 if the oil companies had to foot, say, 25% of the nation's defense budget every year to preserve access to the oil (the ethical considerations notwithstanding, of course.) As it is, the taxpayers pick up the tab instead. A whole lot of "fringe" and "green" technologies would be much more in demand if the users of current technology had to pay the true costs of that technology.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
So I saw a bit in the article about using the photovoltaic panels to crack hydrogen from water. Now, please someone correct me if I'm wrong on this. BUT... It's been awhile since I've been in chemistry class, and I'm a CS graduate. But cracking water in order to "harvest" hydrogen will release O2. Good deal. This would work in moderate quantities. However, if this *were* to become the "next generation of power," you would need quite a bit of hydrogen to replace everything that nuclear, fossil fuel, and organic fuel provides now. That would be a huge amount of water being "cracked." Given the situation in recent years that we have been in sort of a "global drought," (the major aquifer in the midwest US is set to be dry in 30 years at the current rate of depletion/replenish), would this by itself be something that puts a fopah in the plan? Please understand, if there is a way to screw OPEC and let me pay MUCH more less at the damn pump, I'd be all for it. But if I can't drink water because there *isn't* any, did we win?
It's simple. Just burn the cash we're sinking into Hydrogen research. There's enough cash to power the Earth for generations.
I have read a number of plaudits for the hydrogen economy, but I have never seen inclusion of how you handle the stuff. In compressed form, you get a lot of container weight and the net energy density is not particularly good.
In liquid (cryogenic) form, the net energy density is quite good, but cryogenic refrigeration and insulation is difficult, although not impossible, in industrial and commercial environments.
In large quantities, liquid cryogenic fluids are very dangerous. A spill tends to be disastrous. The escaped liquid must extract energy from the environment to evaporate and this can take an appreciable length of time.
A LNPG spill occurred in Cleveland OH in about 1903. The embrittlement of standard steels at crygenic temperatures had not yet been recognized. Everybody knew that cryogenic fluids evaporated immediately. Therefore, it was not considered necessary to have retaining embankments around the LPNG tanks. Consequently, when one of the tanks ruptured spontaneously, the LPNG ran down the streets and into the storm sewers. After a bit, enough of the liquid had vaporized and found a source of ignition. There was a huge widespread explosion that, IIRC, killed over 600 people, both workers and residential civilians.
Do you really want to live in a hydrogen economy? I'm not convinced, yet, that I want to. I'd really like to see an advocacy that really considered all aspects of the required support technology, including how we store and how we transport the stuff, especially in mobile vehicles.
The central thesis of the book is that while getting incremental improvements in resource/energy efficiency may be expensive, radical improvement that comes from leveraging synergies within a system can often be more cost-effective than the status quo. Companies and individuals who realize this will profit significantly in the 21st century.
Read the book. Even if you disagree with it, you'll learn a lot about systems thinking and optimization. And maybe even wind up saving a few bucks (and a few barrels) down the line.
-- Chris
There are competing theories about where hydrocarbon reserves originated, but noone in the field believes they came from dinosaurs.
I read about a dozen paragraphs into the article without finding out how the frickin' hydrogen will be produced. Listen fellas, you need to consume energy to produce hydrogen. That's where ultra-clean nuclear power comes into play. But I don't have time to educate you empty-headed morons on nuclear power.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
On saturday night live many years ago, they had a "commercial" for airbags that inflated with popcorn. These would actually be quite useful if your hydrogen powered car slams into an oil truck.
...is an answer to virtually all energy problems. I'm potentially starting a completely off-topic and/or flame-inducing thread here, but man, this is something that should be discussed.
/. readers, and hopefully spurring them to check out some websites that I'll list below and spread the word.
:) But I don't want to drone on or piss anyone off.
It would probably make most people downright mad to know the potential uses of industrial hemp and why it's illegal. Obviously the main reason (and the one you'll hear from any government source) is that it's marijuana, and we all know how "bad" pot is for our health. I'm going to try really hard though to stay away from the legalization of marijuana, because it is a separate issue from industrial hemp.
For starters, most people are unaware of that last statement, so I'll repeat it: INDUSTRIAL HEMP IS NOT MARIJUANA. It contains very low levels of THC, so low that you may as well smoke paper (except plain white paper is potentially toxic... we'll get to that later). Now, they are from the same family of plants, cannabis, but they are indeed different plants. Therefore, it is entirely possible to grow industrial hemp without producing marijuana. Most people (and senators/representatives) don't seem to realize that, or are concerned that THC-producing hemp could be grown in or around industrial hemp. The validity of that argument is up for grabs.
But let's get to the point here, which is energy. What can hemp do? Here's a quick synopsis:
ANYTHING MADE FROM WOOD OR OIL CAN BE MADE FROM HEMP
Hemp biomass can be converted into gasoline more efficiently than fossil fuels (coal, oil) and without sulfur or acid rain as byproducts. Hemp fiberboard is stronger than wood, hemp houses are as strong as cement houses and better insulated. Plastic, rayon, and cellophane made from hemp are biodegradeable. Paper uses nearly half the world's timber. Hemp produces FOUR TIMES the amount of paper per acre as trees, and grows in all climates of the US. Hemp paper lasts about 1500 years. Cotton requires more pesticides than any other agricultural product. Hemp grows without pesticides and herbicides, and is much stronger than cotton cloth.
We're only touching the tip of the iceberg here. The point is that people simply don't realize what hemp can do, because the government's blackballing job has been so effective. I'm hoping to at least enlighten a few
Here's the short version of why hemp is illegal:
-Major corporations such as DuPont, Monsanto, Dow, ExxonMobil, Lilly, etc. stand to lose MILLIONS, if not billions, of dollars if hemp were allowed to be used to its potential.
-It is simply TOO EASY TO GROW. Sounds absurd, right? It is. Hemp grows in virtually any environment with virtually no need for chemicals. In short, any Tom, Dick or Harry could become a hemp farmer. The government does not like not having absolute control over what is grown. Tobacco seeds, for instance, are carefully controlled AND TAXED by the US government. They would have a very, very tough time trying to control and tax hemp growers.
I'm really tempted to dive into the THC-friendly portion of this debate.
Whether or not you support legal use of marijuana should have no effect on your support of legal hemp cultivation. Please keep that in mind. They are completely separate issues.
Please continue your learning at this most excellent website:
http://www.jackherer.com/
It has a definite slant towards pro-marijuna and hemp. But even if you think the website is biased, you can't deny the pure volume of bullshit that we're fed about the marijuana/hemp issue.
Hemp SHOULD BE one of the main alternative energies of the future.
Hydrogen is not really a fuel as such, in the way that Oil, Gas or Wood are fuels - because you have to use some other fuel to produce it.
Hydrogen is best thought of as a way to transport energy to places where you can't make it on the spot efficiently, or in sufficient quantities.
For example, the average suburban house has enough sunlight and wind to cater for all its energy needs. If we make solar and wind capture more efficient, every garage could have a small 'charger' cracking Hydrogen and storing it for the car.
A similar idea is being researched for Mars projects (using CO and O2, but the same principle). This allows an ongoing process (powered by the sun for the martian experiment) to generate useful amounts of transportable 'fuel'.
By turning the energy model on its head, away from the current 'few big power stations' model to 'millions of tiny power stations' model we not only get better efficiency but less polluting powerstations because they are in EVERYONES back yard.
Hydrogen has a role to play, so might CO. But this is no fuel of the future - the fuel of the future is the sun and the wind.
I suppose storing the water would be pretty easy. Water is *way* more dense then Hydrogen. Burning a galon of h2 and o2 would only create a few drops of water.
Anyway, you probably wouldn't create much more water vapor then evaporation off lakes, and such.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Um, you realize that putting solar cells on cars to crack hydrogen would produce the exact same result as putting solar cells on cars to charge batteries?
As in, you wouldn't get nearly enough energy to do anything unless your car was like 20 pounds.
Also, adding hydrogen cracking and recomposition would only make the system less efficient then using a normal battery.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But then you're still going to be producing the same carbon that you'd get from burning gasoline (but not in CO2, necessarily). And you won't be Breaking OPEC, because a lot of the same countries with Oil are the ones with natural gas reserves.
:P
Ultimately, under that situation, you're really not switching from Oil to Hydrogen, but switching from Oil to Natural Gas/Methane. You're just spreading out the processing stage.
Another problem with using hydrogen instead of batteries is the volume it takes up. And ultra-high-pressure hydrogen is not something want to have near you
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There's a big diffrence betwen the liquid and gas forms of h2. I don't think people are going to be putting fluid h2 in their cars for a while...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The Schatz Energy Research Center has a lot of information online about current fuel cell research. Most notable is their full time automated solar hydrogen installation.
because they cant do the presure of the SUN in the chamber, you have to up the C to make the thing work.
You think they can do 10M PSI? Thats a reverse black hole.
Hydrogen combusts with a fuel/air ratio between 5 and 95%, the widest of any hydrocarbon. Methane, if I remember my combustion engineering, was about 8 to 13%. Hydrogen is a wonderful fuel until your first rear-ender, in which you are practically guaranteed to be incinerated if your fuel tank ruptures. Metal tanks that can take an impact are too heavy to truck around, and tanks from carbon-fibre or such stuff are light, but (as the X-33 project found out) relatively brittle.
Scrrreeecchh, whunk ... kaboom! Guaranteed every time.
Could cut down on injury insurance claims though... :-)
Maybe we could used gelled hydrogen.
The Hindenburg BTW was actually supposed to be filled with Helium, but the U.S. wouldn't sell the gas to Germany at the time (for obvious reasons)...
An article on Icelands Hydrogen plans can be found here: [smh.com.au] Actually very interesting, I have to say its refreshing at least to see some countries making serious efforts to resolve these energy problems we all face!
The moon spins around the earth, just use its magic power of moving oceans, ie the moon is the perpetual pendulum, to make it sound extremely simple, metophoricly, just attach a large string on it and suck of power from its movement.
NEWS FLASH! People Who Sell Hydrogen Think Fuel Cells Are A Good Idea!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Two quick points.
1.) 15 years ago we were laughed at.
2.) Today, this can not happen, because it will cause total economic breakdown.
note: they also have "FREE ELECTRICITY" check it out do a search on google for "free electricity" and go to that site with the generator. When it run's it puts out more energy than is going in. But sadly this too can not happen because it will cause total economic breakdown. Although with all the crap going on these days, were really not far from total economic breakdown anyway.
Can you piss in the tank ? :)
dbCooper0 wrote:
I have a first-born son in the Navy, and he (thankfully) is not on a nuke-ship.
Why are you thankful he's not on an environmentally friendly ship?
-nukebuddy
Ahh, but it is clean at the end user.
All the pollution is happening far far away, who cares.
Even solar or wind power takes fields of "Unsightly" collectors.
You do realise that OPEC keeps oil prices artificially high - its all to do with supply and demand you see. If the price drops too much, OPEC countries don't make thier money so they restrict the production of oil.
But they ain't stupid, they know if prices go too high people will look at alternate fuels and fuel sources.
They also know that if prices are too high it can effect the economies of thier buyers, reducing demand and therefore pushing the prices down.
If you came up with an alternative to oil that was cheap, efficent and clean who do you think would buy your politicians, buy your backers and make life difficult as possible for you?
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Sorry but hydrogen is not the most reactive element by any standard. ALL the other group 1-a elements are more electropositive than hydrogen.
The others are: lithium, sodium, potassium, cesium, rubidium, and francium IIRC.
Or if you mean in the other direction, hydrogen ~can~ be forced to a -1 state (in a metal hydride) but those tend to have a low heat of formation (i.e. it doesn't take much energy to break them down.)
As has been noted elsewhere, hydrogen can be used to store and transport energy. All processes to generate it take more energy than the hydrogen will yield. (Thank you thermodynamics!) It is not an energy source in and of itself unless you can make a fusion reactor practical.
Personally I favor fission.
Oh, as re the emission of protons, you'll get pretty old waiting for that to produce enough to matter. BTW, this is just another version of (cue evil music) nuclear power.
Well we do know quite a bit about steel at low temperatures.
First off the outer layers of the storage vessel would be at relatively normal temperatures, to protect the internal vessel.
On storage, I don't really know that all the natural gas and propane vehicles are terrible safety hazards, don't forget gas is a terribly flammable fluid too.
Hydrogen is much lighter then air, and would very quickly rise up and out of the way.
Ever let go of a full helium balloon (not a partially air partially helium balloon)
Hydrogen is even lighter then helium, and there is no balloon to slow it down.
This is, indeed, a vile lie. Hydroelectricity, which involves building huge dams to collect water in reservoirs, has a huge detrimental impact on the environment. Thousands of river based eco-systems have been devastated because of hydroelectricity plants.
Everytime time a huge dam is built, millions of local people are displaced. Unfortunately, many of the so-called developing nations have embraced hydroelectricity, and often in these countries, these displaced people are left destitute. While the rich folk in rural areas get all the energy they need, the poorer displaced people lose their lively hoods.
I totally agree that it is high time that we moved away from burning fossil fuels to harness energy, but there is no point in finding alternatives that are equally, or as in this case even more, environmentally hazardous.
I think you are ignoring the fact that we have a very aggressive free press here, especially concerning words like, "nuclear accident", "coverup", or "radiation release". You can be sure if something happened, our leftist anti-nuclear media would be all over it.
Electrolysis. But wait, you still need to provide electric power. Ok, how about PV? Check out the "Water Battery".
324006
Unlike healing hands and crystal power, alternative energy is not about private rewrites of the laws of nature. Alternative energy is actually about alternative energy sources, which in turn is not about alternate truth but about a marketplace with choices.
Hydrogen can be used to produce energy, that's a proven fact. The heat that comes out of it is just like any other heat, nothing alternative about that. Hydrogen as an energy source could provide an alternative to the established energy-carriers, such as fossile fuels and (hydro-)electricity, if some technology development were encouraged and establishing an infrastructure was encouraged.
Maybe part of the reason for the slow progress in this area is the name?
USNEWS has a good article here:c h/ 12energy.htm on this subject.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/011112/bizte
One of the things the article says is that Wind power is becoming more efficient, the only problem is storing the power created at night when power demand is low. It goes on to say that at night the windmills could go into hydrogen creating mode.
They think fuel cells are about a decade away from being cheap enough to replace internal combustion and Shell is already looking into establishing an infrastructure for hydrogen.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
As I recall, Iceland have a scheme some time back by which they chose to power 1/3 of their fishing fleet by hydrogen produced through electolysis at Geothermal power plants. Does anyone know how this turned out?
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
It drives me crazy when my kids come home from school and have home work on energy sources: they NEVER discuss hydrogen.
Somebody did a report a few years ago about how many acres of solar cells would be required to generate enough hydrogen for the U.S.'s energy needs, based on current technology. It was about the size of Arizona. But so what?
This would certainly help us cut the cord with the middle-east. They're only using us for the money, anyway...........
I didn't do it, and if I did, you can't prove it. Bart Simpson
if the industrious Germans couldn't get the stuff to work what makes you think the lazy American can?
Some axioms:
- There are no energy sources, just temporary energy storage forms. The only true energy source on earth is sunlight.
- Every use of energy creates some form of "pollution" (1st law of thermodynamics). What differs is how much, how unpleasant it is for humans, at where it is created. (eg, electric cars still create air pollution, but it is moved back to the generating station, instead of the car tailpipe)
- Every conversion of energy from one form to another is lossy (3rd law of thermo). And constitutes a "use" of energy, which creates "pollution".
So, the real questions about comparing energy sources amount to these criteria:
- What does it cost us to find and access the stored energy?
- How easy/cheap is it to convert the stored energy into a useful form (eg, rotational kinetic energy of a car driveshaft)?
- How efficient is that conversion? How much of the sourced energy is lost as general thermal radiation (ie, friciton losses, i^2r transmission line losses, etc)
- Doing so creates what form of pollution, in what amounts, and at what locations?
- How politically acceptable is that particular pollution arrangement? Who benefits, who suffers?
A great deal of debate goes into risks from various energy production and distribution technologies. For some reason, beyond me, nuclear power seems to take the most flak.
Now, ALL energy technologies kill people. Windmills break blades and cause injury, hydroelectric dams burst, people fall from roofs cleaning snow from solar cells or they die from the pollution from fossil fuel or nuclear power generation.
Technologies we perceive as safe, like solar cells, also produce very little energy -- particularly when we account for the energy required to manufacture and deploy them. Therefore, we need a safety figure-of-merit that normalizes the risk with the energy produced.
Let me propose using the following:
Joules/Corpse
I expect, on this basis, the wood stove would come out about the worst and nuclear energy the best. It would also be fun watching spin groups around the world working to skew the figures.
The stuff that turns oil into a butter-like substance that is far, far worse for your arteries than butter.
The stuff that made the Hindenburg burst into flames.
The stuff that combines with carbon to make greenhouse gases that will supposedly plunge us all into Venus-like hell.
The stuff that sent the space shuttle Challenger to a watery grave.
People are scared of Hydrogen. We need better examples, the ones you used are linked in people's minds with bad events.
Best place to store hydrogen, is where it has always been stored that is in water. Then the problem becomes how do we get the hydrogen out of the water. This may sound silly until you realize that is just what photosynthesis achieves. Photosynthesis is not properly understood yet as for as I know. Once it is understood then we might be able to reproduce the effect with nanotechnology. What wattage per square metre could be achieved then as opposed to a photoelectric cell. It should be the holy grail of physics and chemistry to unravel this miracle and before you scoff it remains a miracle until it is unravelled. Should be worth a Nobel prize at least. So come on all you physics and chemistry graduates, how exactly does photosynthesis use sunlight to break the weak nuclear force binding oxygen to hydrogen.
I would guess at some kind of lensing effect.
Peter.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
There are many side effect though, of putting Hydrogen in our cars. For instance, everyone knows that our cars will travel much lighter, reducing the all important traction our ABS systems rely on to "Break for Animals".
You see, now PETA will now be in bed with the fossil fuel corps...
PETA: More Octane, Less Road-kill
GREENS: More hydrogen, free food on our highways. Solve world hunger..
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Actually, no it isn't. Hydrogen may have been the fuel that sustained the burning once it was started, but it was started by an electrical discharge across a rusty steel framework with an aluminium powder-coating; the aluminium (more reactive element than iron) became heated and stole the oxygen from the rust, releasing (a lot of) energy.
The hindenberg would have burned if it had been stuffed full of paper.
Long chain hydrocarbons, when burned, produce 1 water molecule for each carbon dioxide molecule. Methane combustion emits 2 waters for each CO2. The additional water from an H2 motor is not going to be worse than the other stuff you're getting from hydrocarbon combustion.
He had the flywheels, motors, engineering drawings for the complete car but nobody's taken him up on it.
There are MANY researchers developing alternative energy sources that will produce energy without any material input, or waste.
Here's just ONE.
I agree, we really need to develop better solar system technology. Mars, Earth, Venus, and Jupiter have been obsolete for years now.
Hydrogen does indeed pack a lot of punch. The Challenger disaster occurred when a large tank of liquid hydrogen was ruptured and exploded. Likewise, the Hindenburg disaster was due to the rupturing and spontaneous explosion of a large quantity of hydrogen.
The stuff packs a lot of punch, but it's hellishly difficult to handle. Methane and even gasoline are much tamer, and have the advantage of holding a lot more energy per cubic volume. The last thing a car-buyer wants is having his car explode when it's rear-ended. So, don't expect to see hydrogen-powered cars any time soon.
I've been wondering lately whether it would be possible to genetically engineer huge mats of seaweed to produce ethanol from photosynthesis that could be used in cars instead of gasoline.
U.S. News and World Report has an interesting article about wind power in its current issue.
--
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
On Wed, Oct 17 the Diane Rehm show had a wonderful talk on this very subject. If you listen to the show, make sure to pledge as hosting real audio archives cost a good deal of cash. Details about the show...
Wednesday, October 17, 2001 10:00 - War on Terrorism and U.S. Energy Policy
A panel talks about how the war against terrorism could affect U.S. imports of oil from OPEC nations - which account for almost half of our imported oil - and how domestic energy policy and the economy might be affected.
Phil Verleger, California-based energy economist
Peter VanDoren, editor of Regulation magazine for the CATO Institute
Charli Coon, Heritage Foundation
For more information about ANWR, check out the U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-0040-98: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment, 1998
It has been pointed out that electrolysis isn't the most efficient way of producing hydrogen. In the article it states "The endgame, in Lovins's view, will be using solar cells or wind farms to electrolyze water.". I disagree... it's the start game. A self-contained solar-electrolyser is totally independant from any infrastructure hence infinately scalable. It could be the catalyst to kick-start the hydrogen revolution. Eventually we may see hydrogen pipes to our house, much like natural gas, going through a standard meter to supply our household fuel cell. This will take quite a few years though.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Of course, the law is still on the books; it's now set to expire next August. Cheney has been quoted as saying that if the law is not renewed, nobody would invest in nuclear power plants. In the meantime, if there's a catastrophic nuclear accident that causes more than $9 billion in damages, the victims will have to ask Congress for aid -- and if Congress did provide it, how much do you want to bet that people other than nuclear-plant operators would be taxed to pay for it?
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Not much time to write or read, but I know that likely amongst others, BMW is very into the whole H2 idea. They've appearantly been developing the technology for some time now. There's an article in I believe total bmw [european mag] that has a pretty good take on it, and shows a number of generations of models they've tested. It appeared as if they'd dated back some time. The current one, a 7 series I think it was seemed to do quite well. It was a combination gas and H2 (switchable I think), but it didn't sound like H2 took performance down too greatly. I'm sure a good search would yield plenty of info if anyone's curious.
Irrespective of its competitive merits as an energy storage medium or its ease of extraction, hydrogen won't be a practical fuel until it has a cheap, efficient, and safe storage/transport mechanism. At present you can pick any 2 of the 3, as the safe, efficient modes involve complexing H into an expensive crystal matrix (eg palladium); the cheap, safe modes use large pressure vessels and low pressures; and the high-pressure vessels are patently unsafe. It doesn't matter how you get it if you can't take it anywhere.
- - - Patent applied for and deliver us from evil
I think hyrdrogen has potential as a storage and transport medium for renewable energy sources. Many of these resources have short term variations in their availability:
Solar: doesn't work at night;
Tidal: only works on the outgoing tide;
Wind: doesn't work when the wind is slack.
Conversion of the energy to hydrogen and transporting it by pipeline would buffer the variations in powerflow, the way a capacitor does in a power supply.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Alternative biofuels very often are extremely inefficient. A Cornell University study recently claimed that ethanol, for example, actually takes more energy to produce that it outputs. Not only is that inefficient, but biofuels are tremendously space inefficient as well. Honestly, oil drilling only obscures a small part of the surface for how much energy you get-- biofuels would mean more land set aside for intensive cultivation and farming, which is also an ecological problem. (That's one reason as well why organic farming causes as many ecological problems as it solves-- the additional land needed due to lower yields offsets any gains in fewer pesticides used.
This is important because rooftop solar panels in the southwest could probably supply the USA's non-mobile energy needs.
Have you seen the size of the solar fields we have in the Southwest? Yes, solar panels in the Southwest could supply the energy needs, but the last estimate I saw said we would have to cover about all of Arizona or New Mexico with solar panels. That's mightly wasteful of open space, no to mention requires a lot of paving and environmental problems. (Considering that actual occupied homes are currently only a tiny portion of the space there currently, rooftops alone wouldn't cut it-- unless you want a lot more buildings.)
There is an article on The Guardian about how a company in Iceland is working on (and getting close to) using Hydrogen for energy.
That aside... I think people are afraid of Nuclear in America because we have some bad habits. We like to do things like considering fuel spent very quickly so that we won't have weapons-grade materials. (This dramatically increases the amount of waste we actually have to hide somewhere for a long time.)
And THAT is just a matter of policy.
Our current nuke plants have seriously low safety records - the oversight of them is a joke (the feds are apparently not worried about terrorists trying to blow one of these babies!) and we tend to watch the number of people who are involved in security or operations get slashed to make room for more money.
I guess what I'm saying is that the friendly useful nuclear power that's used in socialist countries like Japan and France turns into evil nuclear death cult power here in capitalist USA. It's always cheaper to pay somebody off and make the taxpayers foot the bills for any cleanup than it is to keep the necessary trained and alert staff on salary.
By the way, while I am not too coherent (in general, but this post especially) I have references for a lot of the vague statements I make. I'm just too lazy to add them. Do some searches on google. ;)
As a (GPA=2.5) biology major, I can tell you that a lipid (saturated fats especially), contain hydrogen at much higher densities than water. This being said, we could easily find large quantities of fat (couch potatos sitting in front of their computers all day, government agencies and other wasteful spenders, spam, ....) to supply the quantities of hydrogen we need. Fat is also much less dangerous than many other substances and saturated fat is a solidm meaning that you can get a chunk of purified fat and send it through your fuel cell (methinks).
That said, I'm waiting for the axe to fall on this whole terrorist thing. I think our general 'bomb-em-all-we-can' attitude is making a lot more people hate and fear us than did before. We haven't really shown signs of stopping, and I don't think the entire world is just going to roll over for us. Ironically, while nation-states are desperately clawing their way over each other (in some cases) to say, "Go ahead, bomb Afghanistan!" the masses (you know, those people who do things like join up with Al Qa'eda? ;) are just getting more and more pissed off at us. I am willing to believe that the longer this 'war' (when did the President get the right to go to war without congress' permission, anyway?) goes on, the more terrorists there will be out to get us.. and the more of these scenarios you give us will come true. *sigh*
I don't like us trying to kill people, and I especially don't like people trying to kill me. *sigh*
Okay, back to topic. I had a response (not yours) to my previous comment that expressed some disbelief at the monetary potential of this sort of thing. Part of my point was trying to make it monetarily viable. Start small. Get your PEM fuel cell when they're finally being mass produced. It's reversible! This means that H2O + electricity -> 2H2 + O2 (+ heat? ;) AFAIK it's more efficient than direct electrolysis of water. Dump your solar cells on top of your truck (I know, producing solar cells is hard, but they're almost cost-effective in general right now, let alone for specialized uses like this. We'll figure out how to make 'em better with time!), run the energy to the fuel cell, explode the resulting H2 + O2, be sure to cool the exhaust so that it condenses, and repeat! The objective of all that was to have an exhaustless internal-combustion engine.
Forget having to walk to the service station for some H2 - just wait. The sun also rises. ;)
Also, there's plenty of room for improvements in general efficiency in all of the technologies used. That means that we are not operating optimally at this time and I've still got data that says that this is feasible.
Plus, if you start in places where there isn't much infrastructure anyway, you're not trashing anybody's economy. You're (almost assuredly) helping, actually.
Anyone who speaks out against Hydrogen power is a liar, theif or an idiot.
How many cars could have been converted with the money we have wasted on bombing afghanistan so far. How many gas stations could have been converted?
BMW has a car RIGHT NOW that runs on liquid hydrogen (and also runs on the same old evil gasoline as spare fuel) They claim these will be in mass production in TEN years. Why not today? Because we have this entire PURE-EVIL oil economy in place.
The military would be a good place to start. Since they enjoy wasting so much money. The intelligent thing forthe military to do is to NOT BE DEPENDANT on a fuel that must be transported, manufactured, and transported again. We depend on foreign oil and we fight wars over that very thing constantly.
EVERY home should be a self-sufficient one (for hundreds of reasons) EVERY apartment complex should be self sufficient for even more reasons.
Keep on buying your gasoline cars. Keep on buying your 10 percent efficient incadescent bulbs, keep on wasting everything we DONT have.
You should be ashamed to drive a car. You should be SHOT for driving a SUV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Gas powered cars are quite easy to modify and make them use both gasoline and hydrogen.
BMW already released a hybrid gas/H 750 (4.4 litre V8 engine / range of 300 kilometres while the gasoline tank gives it a range of 650 kilometres for a total of 950 kilometres )series car (add 7000$ to the stantart version) and are going to do the same with the new MINI .
Most german cities have hydrogen-stations.
It just so happens that the Carnot efficiency for the best current fuel cells is about double (50-60%) that of an internal combustion engine -- which is typically 25%-30%, not 30%-40% when you consider all losses. About the same as the best combined cycle (gas turbine + steam turbine) plants with a huge difference: fuel cells are small, where the best CC plants have always been in the 250 MW range or higher.
My source for info? a good introductory thermodynamics class.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Right, fuel cells are free from the limitations of Carnot's law, but fuel cell efficiency depends on the definition of efficiency and the choice of fuel and oxidant.
Quite often fuel cell efficiency is defined as follows:
where deltaG is the change of Gibbs free energy for the reaction and deltaH0 is the enthalpy change for the reaction in standard state.For H2/O2-fuel cell the efficiency is about 83%. There are other possible fuel cell reactions that give an efficiency over 100%. The catch is that those reactions are endothermic; they take heat from the surroundings and convert it into electricity.
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
-Bertolt Brecht
So much for your argument...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
MAC | A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
With all this talk about technologically risky fuel sources, nobody seems to pay attention to a replenishable, efficient and very low polluting fuel that doesn't require an entirely new infrastructure.
Biodiesel
Yes, you can run a diesel engine on basically same the oil that MacDonalds uses to make french fries. The diesel engine was originally designed to work with vegetable oil, but the oil companies scuttled that.
Modern diesel engines have less carbon monoxide than gas engines, but more particulate matter (soot). Put biodiesel in the diesel engine and the carbon monoxide goes down even more, and the particulate matter virtually goes away. And it is not 5, 10, 20 years away. It works today, on current technology. And you can get 50 miles to the gallon on a diesel engine, while blowing off OPEC.
How cool is that?!
Diesel engines are already all over the place, so we don't need to create a new infrastructure, and biodiesel is actually easier and safer to store than petrodiesel. Check it out!
VeggieVan
BioDiesel.Org
Biodiesel Mike
Pacific Biodiesel
Dont you guys remember chemistry class? Hydrogen is an incredible fuel source, but is out of our reach for a couple of reasons. #1, its extremely explosive. It combines with just about anything violently. Gasoline atleast doesn't burn as a liquid, it only burns as a gas. Hydrogen will go boom if it hits anything reactive. It also has the negative that the majority of hydrogen byproducts are dangerous. I know water isn't dangerous, but if you use impure(tap) water, then you have all kinds of ions in the mix. You can end up with such fun things as hydroflouric acid, hydrocloric acid, etc. It also can combine to form bases as well as acids. Added with the simple fun that pure hydrogen can combine with lithium to form lithium deuteride (which is radioactive as I recall) it makes me wonder if this just aint some pipe dream.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but fuel cells do have the same limitations -- known as Carnot efficiency, btw.
No they don't - see here
You are talking drivel about the engine efficienies also - see here
My source for info? a good introductory thermodynamics class.
Introductory? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I live in Alberta Canada and we're in the process of dropping about a billion bux a year into tar sands development. Now along comes Lovins telling us we don't know what we're doing.
If you read the website you may note about 1/2 way through that Lovins is suggesting that methane be used via a reformer as the hydrogen source.
Here in Alberta it turns out that we also supply huge quantities of methane.
For those who are interested, visit the HubbertPeak website where you can read up on how North America will reach maximum methane "Production" maybe this year or next. Then please realise that the word "production" really means "depleation".
Gas well declining production rates for wells drilled today are between 30% and 50% per year. 10 years ago the decline rates were under 20% per year because bigger gas pockets were drilled.
There are many many pockets yet to find and drill, but the combined output of all of these increasingly small pockets will not make up for the declines from the large pockets found in the past. However we look at it - we are going over the top and in very short order.
When this happens there will be a rude awakening. The population is presently quite ignorant of the amount of methane that can be supplied. Within 2 years I expect that the economists will be telling the exploration geologists and engineers that they better get busy "producting" more fuel at which point I expect the response will be "and from where would you guys like us to get it?" The warnings are being ignored.
For those who are interested, please review this artical on the declining production rates from the North Sea.
Pages 6 and 7 contain the shortest summary of why. On page 6 you can see the cumulative production rates of the various fields plotted by year. What these plots show is that the first 13 feilds collectively produced more oil that all of the remaining 100's of fields combined. On page 7 you can see the cummulation of all fields in one graph.
If one looks only at the top of the curve - the combined production rate - then one would probably conclude there is no problem. Production generally has been increasing from the North Sea for the last 25 years.
However if one looks at the individual field production rates the picture looks a LOT DIFFERENT. North Sea prodution has peaked and the production will drop by probably over 7% per year henseforth. This represents about 1/2 of European oil production.
The giant Ghwar field in Saudi Arabia will peak very shortly and when it does the Middle east will not be able to sustain its production rates either.
North American Natural gas production is probably already at peak. There is a minor decline in demand presently which explains the lowered prices.
Please understand that gas wells depleat faster than oil wells. Its like the air in the tires of your car.
A tire will "whosh" for a while if you take out the valve stem - then suddenly it stops "whosing" and the tire is flat. Same with a gas well. If you have a really big tire and a relatively small hole in it, then the tire may "whosh" for a long while. But it eventually will go flat. When a gas well goes flat there is nothing to fill it up again.
IMHO the only alternative is Nuclear. However I'll be very happy to see all usable alternative energy sources tapped first.
Of courese, nuclear is not politically correct. Natural gas is. This is why companies like Calpine (CPN - NYSE) are planning on building so many natural gas fired power stations that they alone will burn up all the natural gas that can be "produced" in North America by the time their plants are built.
Free enterprise is a wonderful economic system and I suppose it has pursued its insanities in the past.
A few years from now I wonder who will be questioning the wisdom of building all those gas fired power plants?
I did a rough estimate of the number of drilling rigs that would need to be active in 3-4 years in order to grow the gas production. Some stats can be found from the Baker Hughes (BHI - NYSE) rig counts. In order to increase the prodcution rates and supply the increased gas that Calpine alone wants - the Gas and Oil drilling industry will need to probably more than double in size.
Most likely this will not be possible.
I didn't do the original post, but while Carnot efficiencies are not applicable, you do lose a goodly portion of your energy to whatever medium you use to transport said energy. IE, that's why we call wires and what not semiconductors. Unless you have a superconducting transport medium for the energy(which is really electricity at this point), you will lose a significant portion of your electricity to the wire. Most electrical engines also have low energy efficiencies due to materials used. If you had some sort of superconducting wire, as well as some kind of material that can handle large amounts of electrical and mechanical energy without breaking, that would do you, otherwise, IMHO you're better off burning oil.
"...you never get more energy from hydrogen than you put in."
That's not the issue. The issue is transport: having energy where you need it, when you need it. Although it may be wasteful, as a purely pragmatic measure, most people don't care if it takes 10x the energy to create the fuel as they get from it, as long as the fuel is available in adequate supply to move their vehicle (or warm their coffee, or whatever). If you could produce SuperFuel that would let cars run for 1500 miles (2500 km for non-USians) between fills and was as easy and inexpensive to use as gasoline, they'd be all over it, even if producing and distributing it required 100J of energy input for every J utilized by the car (SUV, excuse me). They'd happily drive their SuperFuel cars until global warming melted the polar ice caps and forced them to buy SuperFuel boats.
Cuz normally you can just open the frame in a new window to really read stuff.
I'd dug this out myself, glad to see someone else posted it.
The main page is nice too:
http://www.discover.com/nov_01/main.html
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
"The total number of American deaths from nuclear power is incredibly small compared to that of coal/oil/natural gas and their related activities (such as coal mining)."
Totally revolting. American deaths are all that matter? If you had really just wanted to rule out deaths in cases like Chernobyl, you could have said "American nuclear power" rather than "American deaths".
It is fair to rule out Chernobyl, where a propaganda-centered media* let decision-makers buy their own lies about safety far more than they would have in the US. But the very phrase "fewer american deaths" is repulsive.
*a media that was marketing its consumers minds to a monolithic government, rather than to a varied set of advertisers like most US media.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
Thank god you didn't get modded up,
because you,
quite simply,
are an idiot.
(and ignorant of this subject to boot).
Conversion of the energy to hydrogen and transporting it by pipeline would buffer the variations in powerflow
Hydrogen is fairly corrosive, so hydrogen pipelines may not be a great idea. However, you could simply transmit the electricity to a base station, have said base station create hydrogen with any oversupply, and use that to survive lean periods.
However, in this system hydrogen isn't particularly unique. You could probably create other fuels that might be easier to handle, or use flywheels, or other storage systems.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You also fail to mention that Chernobyl will not happen unless incredible stupidity is present. The Russian engineers in charge of Chernobyl essentially shut down all of the safeguards in place to prevent a nuclear disaster (and there are dozens of these safeguards) in order to test the plant's backup generators, IIRC.
Yes, I mentioned this a few weeks ago. Updating the info for those that are tracking my incredible Jeep project.
OKAY, my 1996 Jeep Cherokee Sport has transported me over 242,000 miles using nothing but hydrogen based fuel! The stuff is a special hydrogen and carbon molicule and that is blended with a few other chemicals too. This special blend packs a whopping 87 Octaine ((r*m)/2 method)!!
Now I have to go to special distribution centers to get my fuel, as opposed to , these other hydrogen fuels that can apparently be found under the closest rock or spigot, based on the frequent stories. They are kinda rare, and if you don't know what they are you would think they are little grocery stores with funny looking "scrubbing machines" housed next to the store.
Actually, these places called "Exxon", "Chevron", "Mobil", "Shell" and "BP", to name a few, are the places where you get this super secret special hydorgen fuel! They are so numerous that if you don't have enough fuel to get to the next one then you are either broke or had a "blonde moment" and forgot that you needed more hydrogen-carbon liquid.
My good old Jeep holds enough of the stuff to travel around 400 miles at (get this!) 75 - 80 MPH! I have never been anyplace in the USA where I had to trravel farther than 400 miles to find another hydro-carbon distribution center.
This hydrocarbon stuff must be flowing like it is nobody's business too, since the price keeps dropping and dropping (hint: use adjusted dollars). Get this, today the MOST I pay for it in Northern VA is about $1.30 per gallon and I can go about 20 something miles on JUST ONE GALLON. Lots of that price is taxes, since it seems the government does not want anybody to have any hydrocarbon and the producers just keep dropping the price anyway. I keep hearing that it is being "depleated", but you sure can't tell by the way that market has gone.
The "scrubbing machines" at the "secret" hydrocarbon dispensing stations use that water fuel you guys keep talking about. I use the stuff to clean off my Jeep and dispose of other wastes. Maybe the scrubbing machines use it for power too?
BTW, if you see any big buildings that say "Jeep" on a real tall sign out front, that is where you can get one of these miricle machines. There are tons of other brands. Very feminine girls, and guys that wish they were girls, buy things called "cars", like the Miata. Kewell chicks and regular guys buy trucks and SUVs. My Jeep is called a "Sports Utility Vehicle" (SUV) and is similar to a "truck". If you are not familiar with them try a google search. Nowadays, the financing is very reasonable too. Almost 0% interest loans available on many different brands!
Not sure where your water cars are sold, is there a brand? I never see them anyplace! However, they may be as invisible to me as the hydrocarbon vehicles and stations are to the guys that put these articles up every other day.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
As in I didn't say that my knowledge of thermodynamics was limited to one class. Which it isn't, by a factor of several years]. I only mentioned the first class because the knowledge is that elementary.
Out of curiousity, I looked at the VisionEngineer page, but it neglects to put the Gibbs energy, etc. into the overall exergy system -- which forces even a fuel cell to conform to known mathematical formulas and systems, none of which I want to type out and explain here.
You also accused my figures about IC engines to be drivel, because your source page shows that the state of the art for IC engines is somewhere above 52%.which is only true for extremely large diesel engines. If you take diesel engines out of the mix, the efficiency drops rather dramatically, and as far as I know there are no production automobile engines getting much more than 30%. The best non-turbine aero engines peak at around 37-38%. (By the way, I am humble enough to be willing to accept correction and update my knowledge base, if someone out there has figures showing something better)
Rather than resorting to the math, let me point out that one of the main by-products of a fuel cell is heat -- and in the case of the more highly efficient fuel cells, alot of it. In fact, so much heat that you can use the heat in a combined Air bottoming or Rankine Cycle engine system. That particular combination can theoretically get to about 75% thermal efficiency, but I haven't seen much that convinces me conclusively that it will go much higher.
So no matter what may be claimed, Fuel Cells are not 100% efficient and never will be. But we do agree that they have great potential to be a damn sight better than our current energy wasting IC engines.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I wouldn't take Amory Lovins too seriously. His activism and "leadership" and the strange fact that people take him seriously is the most significant cause of the California energy crisis.
dang fingers. Accidentally hit the enter key with the focus on the submit button instead of the double quote before I got the HTML fixed. Sorry folks. :-(
The only phrase that was supposed to be bold was "which is only true for extremely large diesel engines." The rest was supposed to be just plain text.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Can Lovins usher in the hydrogen age? Should he? Who cares? Thousands of researchers are looking to alternative energies. From garages to universities. The article sounded more like an attempt to become the poster child for hydrogen research than anything new. Articles with the spin like this one has turns me off quickly.
I'm reading the book at jackherer.com
Interestingly I've heard snips of this before from a number of sources. I am now certainly convinced of the insanity of the US and Canadian governments in attacking this very useful plant.
These governments to other insane things too - like adding methyl alcohol to ethyl alcohol with the result that 100's of people have been blinded.
I can't even buy safe ethyl alcohol for instance. Why we should be forced to use a lethal product in place of a safe one is beyond me. There are legitimate uses for pure ethyl alcohol too - such as non-grain raising solvents for wood stains. So when I practice my wood working hobby I have to use vile solvents and I for one am sure that a certain amount of the methyl alcohol I have to use ends up absorbed through my skin or absorbed from the air I breath.
I realise that alcohol chemistry is off topic - but it does further illustrate that the US would rather anger terrorists than implement policies that make sense. I am firmly convinced they do this because they make a lot of money from it.
I am testing test.
----------------
Oh yeah, fuck you too.
I was trying to make the point above that regarding Big Oil and others that will squelch alternate forms of energy, as well as how with any technology, we have to take precautions.
thanks for your comment.
db
Cig:
ôô
Now, from a terrorist point of view attacking a company like MS is not a prime target. How many people are "proud" about Microsoft? Sure, there must be some that take it as the "greatest software company of all". No, as a terrorist you want to stab the soul of the country, something that *everyone* can identify with.
Your *only* argument is that it would impact the economy *hard*. Unfortunately for you, the capitalist dogma says that a void in a market will fill in no time. So MS gone means opportunities for other companies. Those will create jobs, the stocks of those companies will soar, clever investors will make tons of money. Since I presume that "retirement funds" are managed by clever investors, the only ones that will get hit are the people retiring within the next 5 years of the catastrophy. It's a toll to pay.
For your argument that "companies in a tight partnership with MS" will go down, well, some will..again, making opportunities for others...others will stay, simply because they will put the workforce behind it to save the company and thus creating jobs. Besides, if Microsoft explodes suddenly, would your Windows 2000, Office 2000 CD's, IIS CD's go stale from one day to the other? I doubt so.
Biological attack: yes of course, anyone would get scared, but *that* is the point of terrorism. The only thing that counts is "bussinness as usual": Do you see pilots sh*t in their pants because some terrorists could hijack the plane and crash it somewhere? Nope, most say they will go on as usual.
Any smallpox attack on a larger company would result in stronger screening of employeess, tighter security in the buildings, etc... Vaccination would reassure employees at least a bit. Let the cowardly go, if they want, not a good choice in the current economy, isn't it? Facing death each time you go to work? The "facing death" part is ridiculous: I face death each morning because I go to work, I might slip over the soap while showering and break my neck, I might skid on the slippery roads on my way to work and crash into a tree, I might fall in an elevator shaft because the elevator malfunctions... Living is facing death, in small probabilities, every day. Now, in your eyes those probabilities have risen for MS employees, in my eyes those probabilities have risen for everyone.
H&M....I don't know if it's true that people stopped eating beef during the crisis. I just think they wanted to show the consumer "look we are doing something", that this implied killing millions of innocent healthy animals is outrageous. Well, I and my whole family didn't stop eating our nice steaks during the H&M crisis. Neither KJD had an impact on our eating habits. Why would it? The problem was identified, and (too extreme) measures taken by authorities...everything is okay. The public always panics easily, but it is so easily soothed. Look it only took a couple of millions of cows to sacrifice. Besides, it is just what your president is doing: soothing the public by attacking Afghanistan, sorry, I mean "the terrorist camps in Afghanistan", because "We are not the enemy of the Afganistani People".
Your only premisse is that the "public" is dumb and uninformed. Probably true, but if it is, just give it another point of attention and you are done. Manipulating people is easy, you know.
Even if ranching is so important to the US economy, do you really think those ranchers are going to sit there and weep. No, they will sit down, weep, wash their tears away and get going like real enterpreneurs.
Look, you don't need terrorists to destabilise a country according to your statements. Yesterday, in Belgium, the national airline went bankrupt. You can imagine that it will make a *lot* unemployed people and that a lot of other industries (travel agencies, cleaning companies, catering services,...) are heavily impacted by the bankrupcy. So it will impact on Belgian economy, sure... This "destabilisation" is caused by incompetent management and it cost about 0$ to cause....only incompetence.
This all, just to prove you that terrorists are just only one new factor that can cause harm to a country.
Now for people hating the US. They probably have a reason, don't you think? Even if the reason is valid (in their eyes), how many will become terrorists? Not many. Probabilities are slim, and that is the whole point. People will die, but that doesn't matter at all...people die every day, that's just because their time had come.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Which do you think realeases more radiation: Coal or nuclear power?Its coal. Nuclear power realeases almost no radiation, while coal power puts 2,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere, as well as a lot of other toxic stuff. Coal kills thousands a year. The Coal power death toll for the 20th century is around 5 million. Nuke power only killed about a thousand at Chernobl. Nuclear waste is SOLID. If it is glassified, it is easily stored in lead containers in remote areas. Nuke power is the cheapest form of energy we have. Coal leave behind millions of tons of toxic mercury laden waste that seeps into the groundwater
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Also, the most radioactive isotopes decay quickly. In 10 years, the radioactivity of high level waste has dropped by half. In 500 years, it drops to the level of Uranium ore. All this time it is in foolproof lead containers. The amount of nuclear waste is small. All the nuclear waste ever created would fit into a high school gym. Each plant produces only a few hundred pounds a year. The reason Chernobyl melted down is that it was a faulty RBMK reactor. When an RBMK reactor heats up, the nuclear reaction gets faster. Heating up a Pressurized Water Reactor causes it to slow down, making it very hard to melt down. Also,Chernobyl had no thick concrete control dome over it. When it melted down, the radioactiviy went everywhere. The domes on U.S. PWR reactors would contain all radiation in a meltdown. If you lived right next to a power plant, you would get less radiation in one year than you get from sitting in front of your computer monitor.The real culprit is coal power. Right now, huge piles of coal ash that NEVER decay, not in a billion years, are sitting on the ground. Rainwater is seeping throught them, poisoning our water. Black, carcinogenic clouds of smoke are giving us cancer. That is why we need to get rid of coal.For the past 40 years, nuclear power has silently and cleanly been supplying 30% of our power. We need to quit being raped by OPEC and the natural gas companies and switch to nuclear.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Reference for this assertion please, cause basic math says you're wrong.
m l)
I was running some math a while ago, letting 100 sq miles be ~250 sq km, while there is a bit under 1000W/sq meter, coming out to 250*10^9W. The US consumes 3.6 trillion kWh/year, or about 410*10^9 W continiously.
IE, assuming perfect summer-noon brightness, no cloudy days, and 100% effeciency, 100sq miles is barely 60% of what would be necessary. Now, lets throw in ineffeciency, say, 200x (10x because solar cells are usually under 10% effecient, 5x because the sun is only really bright 1/3 of the day and clouds exist and winter doesn't have much sunlight. And another 4x from ineffeciencies in storage&transport during nighttime and cloudy weeks.
Yes, the above are guestimates, so, lets say its only 25x, to be kind to you. In that case, you'd need about 75x75 kilometers, not the 15x15 you were claiming. Being two orders of magnitude off isn't too fun.
Now, if I'm in error, our you have an actual reference for those numbers, please correct me.
(electricity numbers taken from www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.ht
--
And, I'd love to see your numbers on how we can magically reduce our electricity usage by 70-90%, without switching to a poorer and more destitute lifestyle. Much of the low-hanging fruit has already been grabbed.
Your friendly skeptic
Sure, you can tell what europeans think of nuclear power; many of them use a far higher percentage of it than the US does. Look at the numbers, my friend. Nuclear power is the one area where Europe does have more sense than the US.
e xgeo.html
(Percent electricity production from nuclear sources)
Sweeden: 49%
France: 75%
Germany: 29%
Spain: 31%
US: 18%
Russia: 12%
Ukraine: 42%
Numbers all taken from: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ind
And, I challenge you, my friend, to see how many european countries with nuclear energy that use less of it than the US.
One, the Arab oil countries will start supporting the Taliban if people start using alternate energy (I'm talking a widespread usage, not 3% of the populous) -- nearly all the money they get is from oil.
Two, in a word, "boom". Unless they've made some really good advancement in the containment of the fusion reactions, I don't want one of those puppies within 10 miles of my house.
[insert witty comment here]
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....and a lot of knowledge will get you a career
I know - I have two degrees in physics. I have worked (as a Researcher) on engine measurement (including the temperature and pressure inside a functioning engine) and on fuel cells (catalyst poisoning). So I have lots of knowledge.
And I will say this again - your statement
but fuel cells do have the same limitations -- known as Carnot efficiency, btw.
is flat out, completely, one hundered precent, unequivocally, and without doubt, absolutely wrong.
Fuel Cells are not 100% efficient and never will be.
Depends what you mean by efficiency - they can have efficiencies of 124% (if you pick your reactants correctly).
And before I go I should point out that fuel cells are hot not because they produce waste heat (although this may be a factor), but because they are heated. They work at the temperature that the catalyst operates most effectively.