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Hydrogen Fuel Station in Iceland
klang points to this blurb about Iceland opening a hydrogen refueling facility. While it isn't, as the blurb states, the world's first hydrogen station, it is notable because it produces the hydrogen onsite with electricity from geothermal energy and electrolysis, making it an almost perfectly clean energy source.
I don't understand why creating water instead of carbon-monoxide is better for the environment. If we suddenly replaced all fossil fuel engines with hydrogen engines, we'd have the same problem: excess waste.
How many tons of waste do we humans send into the air every year? Do we think that equivalent amount of water is better? Instead of air pollution and all of the problems associated with it, we'd have to worry about the oceans being diluted, excess humidity, or some damn thing we can't think of.
I actually am not of the opinion that it's as bad as people think it is anyway. So talking about changing from one form of waste to another is just an unnecessary expense.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Hydrogen is a method for energy storage. If you're lucky like the icelanders you have cheap geothermal energy you can convert to hydrogen. But if the energy is coming from fossil fuels it only means that they will be burned at the power station instead of in your car engine.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
You are kidding, no?
;)
Water, H2O... unlike carbon monoxide and whatever else current IC engines spew out is a very useful and re-usable substance.
You could collect it and maybe clean it up and run your toilet with it. Or collect it and green the desert with it. Or whatever, all that is really besides the point.
You cannot honestly label water as "waste". For as you and I are 90+% waste then
Cheers,
Andre
And will they let you fill your balloon or are they going to insist on wasting it on a car?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I need a refill, but how do I drive there? Mapquest is less help than ever.
All hydrogen is good for is a more efficient battery. This is nothing but a way to transport the geothermal energy more efficiently than current batterys will allow. Woop!
if only we could somehow harness the pent up sexual frustrations of all the slashdot readers and turn it into electricity....
It's been on my mind for quiete some time, but I was wondering...
Would it not be simpler to store energy as liquid nitrogen (liquid air) instead of hydrogen?
And as far as I know, we wont run out of Nitrogen any time soon either.
And liquid Nitrogen when "consumed" does not involve any other chemical reaction then changing state liquid --> gas.
We would take nitrogen from the air, compress it and release it as is when used. Why isn't it a more explored area?
And producing it is quite simple to no?
I'd rather be sailing...
You dont quite understand the difference between a nuclear bomb and a tank of compressed gas.
A) it would need oxegen to burn and B) hydrogen burns extremely quickly imagine filling a baloon with hydrogen there would be a (VERY) quick flash of flame and then that would be that . . . I think you would need an awfull large amount of hydrogen to create a catastrophic explosion
Actually Petrol/Gasoline is much more explosive then Hydrogen. Maybe we should be more concerned with the Huge Petrol/Gasoline bombs strapped to our autos! Can you say Molotov Cocktail???
Why yes I am a Troll....How did you know I was from Norway and why are you concerned about my ethnic backround anyway??
YHBT HTH HAND
The abundance of geothermal energy in Iceland is probably a large part of making this shift to hydrogen energy possible. They have an abundant source of clean electrical generation capacity, something that pretty much no other nation in the world comes close to. For years ore has been shipped all the way from Australia to Iceland for smelting because of the incredibly cheap electricity rates there - it takes a lot of energy to smelt bauxite (to create aluminum), so it turns out to be cheaper to transport the bulk ore thousands of miles by ship rather than smelt in Australia. Thanks to the abundant, cheap energy available in Iceland, hydrogen production should be no problem.
Ambition or stupidity. Take your pick.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
YHBT HTH HAND
or maybe troll? Or, if hes serious, stupid?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Sorry for being offtopic, but: so part A and part B work together how?
You cannot honestly label water as "waste". For as you and I are 90+% waste then ;)
Some would argue that to be a higher number. I personally find most people I interact with can be replaced by a small shell script, and thereby be a 100% waste (from my frame of reference).
I'm more interested in technology to remove stupid people from driving on freeway systems. Smart drive systems can save more resources because there will be less traffic jams. They aren't mutually exclusive, and I'd like to see both being developed, but that's where my interests lie.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
yeah, just ask Captain Ernst Lehmann.
SCO to Hell
YHBT! HTH! HAND!!
Burning hydrogen creates about an electron volt of energy per molecule or so. FUSING hydrogen into helium, what a hydrogen bomb does, generates several MILLION electron volts of energy per atom. So unless you have a hydrogen tank for your car that is at EXTREMELY high pressure, you don't have a hydrogen bomb. There are dozens of chemicals that generate far more explosion energy for a chemical bomb, such as, say, GASOLINE!
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Unlike the Hindenburg, cars will have small, reenforced, crash protected tanks (about halfway down the page). Not Huge volumes of H2. If you drove you H2 car in to a skyscrapers, you would need ALOT more fuel then what you will have in this tank. If the tank is protected for car crashes, driving it in to a building will do no more then driving you gas powered car that you have now.
Iceland fuckin' roolez!!!
There you go you:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/air-car2.htm
And there was not even a lot of research involved at that time...
I'd rather be sailing...
Too much vapor, you get rain. It falls from the sky, collects in puddles, rivers, and basements.
The more you put up, the more will come down.
Seriously, YHBT HTH HAND
(from your link...)
Vehicles containing hydrocarbon fuels, on the other hand are extremely hazardous in collisions and make deadly terrorist weapons. Also, fabric coated in explosives is bad, whether you make a tent out of it or a blimp.
once you think about it theres a certain irony in generating electricity with hydrogen. that is assuming the best way to get hydrogen is from water. you use electricty to create H2 and Oxegen and you use Hydrogen and oxegen to create electricity. every time you do that you lose energy in the form of heat.
What about a 747 full?
Every last one of you
Hope that helps.
Have a nice day.
This process seems to use alot of Dihydrogen Monoxide.
You think more people would be concerned.
This means that USA in a few years time will declare war to Iceland?
Iceland has stated that it's going to go to all hydrogen, and sell polution credits under the Kyoto treaty. Between that and their incredibly profitable gene pool, they'll be per-capita, the wealthiest nation in the world soon enough.
Too bad they seem to be turning into nationalists. So much for emmigration.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
All these people saying hydrogen is just as bad as burning fossil fuels because after all the hydrogen has to be produced by burning fossil fuels are annoying.
You would think all these people claiming to be programmers would grasp the idea of an abstraction layer.
Once everyone is filling their car up with hydrogen up at the pump you can change where the hydrogen came from without changing the cars. This is the whole point.
Got a windy plain? use wind power to make the hydrogen. Got geothermal energy? use that. Got huge rivers? use them. Got some new idea no one thought of yet? Try to use that! You can use whatever you want.
That's the whole point.
Internal combustion engines (IC) also spew out water - it's one of the products of combustion too.
For now, there is only one vehicle in the country that runs on hydrogen fuel, they put 1 kg of hydrogen in it at the ceremony: http://skeljungur.is/uploads/images/Raðherra dælirC.jpg That car will be sent back to Mercedez soon I think. For the nearest future, 3 hydrogen fueled busses have been ordered and will arrive in august. The sole purpose of this hydrogen fuel station is to service these 3 busses (for now). Actually, this means that 4% of all the busses in the capitol will run on hydrogen :)
The next step is to start powering our fishing ships with hydrogen, which make a big part of the CO2 that comes from Iceland.
Hydrogen is for now mostly useable for big machinery such as busses and ships, the personal car will come hydrogen fueled later on (it's not very practical at this time).
My other UID is 1337
I love it, great energy source and semi-permanent hair removal.
Is there an Ipod that runs on hydrogen yet?
If there was an Ipod with a built in fuel cell and water to hydrogen solar powered interface I might consider buying one. Just Imagine unlimited solar powered tunes, millions of grooving bicycle riding freaks oblivious to the world, riding around listening to techno bop, midi and canned rythyms. Makes a musician or scientists heart proud to see how far technology has come. Why not a methane powered Ipod or dual fueled Ipod, the methane for vegetarian Ipod users.
I sense an overall all American jealousy to the Icelanders, we have an energy technology gap going on here. America get with it! you have won the first round of nuke technology, why leave it to the international petro-chemical industry to dictate your future!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
No, probably because he gets 5-11% on Amazon.
The middle east desalination plants are a bigger problem.
Plus how does removing the solvent (water) from the solution (ocean) dilute it? If anything it is making it more concentrated!
The geothermal process is clean if it is a closed system. Water is piped down to the heat source and back up again driving a turbine creating electricity. The problem is vent gases from the geothermal sources which can be malodorous at best and highly toxic at worst. So everything is ducky as long as they can contain the nastiness from the heat source.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Most places don't have access to the abundant geothermal energy that Iceland has access to, located on a spreading center as it is. Spreading centers (places where two plates are moving away from eachother, creating new crust) bring magma very close to the surface of the Earth, much closer than pretty much anywhere else (except volcanoes, but those are a little tricky to harness the thermal energy from). I can't think of a single place (dry place, that is) besides Iceland that sits right on top of an active spreading center, so they are in a pretty unique situation (sure, there are failed rifts in Africa, but those are not active. Also possibly failed rifting in the U.S., but again, not active)
So unless you find a way to get energy from dozens to hundreds of kilometers underground, much deeper than we have ever even drilled, then we will have to be stuck with our few spots of high geothermal activity for producing energy in that way. Oh yeah, and depending on geothermal energy just delays the problem - the Earth is cooling, albeit very slowly.
I suggest you read Slashdot
why aren't we burning shit? more of that gets created daily than coal is mined.
I won't go into specific numbers (you can plug them into the equation if you want), but it should be clear that the stored energy is a logarithmic function of the pressure. In other words, storing energy in the form of pressurized gas is extremely inefficient, and in fact becomes exponentially more inefficient as the pressure increases.
I've got a great idea! Couldn't we use fossils to create hydrogen?
Oh... Wait...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Actually, it would not necessarily be worse if the source of the energy was fossil fuels. The reason is that these fossil fuels are being burned in a power plant, which more efficient than burning fuel in an internal combustion engine. So you could still have a net efficiency gain if the process of PowerPlantFossilFuel->breakUpHydrogen->useHydogenI nCar is more effecient than UseFossilFuelInCar.
Well, sure, sunlight is limited someplaces. So let's compare it to petroleum, crude oil.
Hmmm, checking atlas, oil reserves... hmmm
Nope! Sunlight wins, hands down, there's more sunlight than oil! A heap-o lotsa hella more. Just needs a variety of ways to use the stuff, that's all.
Posting via electricity produced by unisolar PV panels, BTW. I done "modded" my juice supply. Seems to work OK.
We'll never "do it" as humans and break free from petroleum until we "do it". We can not wait for the energy cartel monopolists to "do it" for us. It's like the early days of PCs, I am so thankful enough people thought it was worth the thousands of dollars to buy and use those early primitive PCs and start to develop the enthusiasm for the "alternative" to the mechanical typewriter and slide rule, instead of arguing about it and saying "more research is needed, and it's not practical" and whatnot. So, I'm doing my part now, it's partly a payback way of saying "thanks" to fellow geeks back then, then showing them "hey, look here, solar is not only practical for me right now, I can show by example, that yes, the sun actually DO shine in enough places to make all sorts of alternatives with it useful and practical. That's why I try to evangelize now, like on slashdot I would recommend "hold off one year on that new gaming box, put the loot into some energy alternatives this year". Just to help. If we could get one million more people to actually BUY and install some of the stuff that is available now, it would really help. No, one game machine' costs worth of solar or wind devices won't power your entire existence, but it's certainly enough to power a lot of your day to day normal stuff, and I can guarantee you'll get hooked. I say the same thing to non geeks when they see the rig, "go ahead, skip something else this year, get started on it, pick pizzas or something". This "they" guy never does squat, "energy" will be changed by millions of people just "doing it" and not talking about it.
And that algae--> hydrogen gas is just too dang slick of a find and idea. I would say that is the closest thing to a direct credible threat to the energy monopolist cartels I have seen, because it can be done millions of places, on most any scale. That and methane harvesting using most any biomass.
So iceland got two really cool things now, really slick alternative energy, and some outstanding babes!
...for unleashing Bjork on the world.
Vehicles containing hydrocarbon fuels
What? You mean like the ones people drive every day?
yer rilly neet
kin i tuch yoo?
If you approach the problem like the Nathaniel Energy company, burning fossil fuels can become a pretty good idea. Heck, burning tires even becomes a good idea with their technology.
www.nathanielenergy.com
Here here! The older I get the more in favor I am of a completely automated, computer-controlled driving system. Given the complete lack of ability most folks demonstrate when behind the wheel, a computer can't really do much worse - even if that computer is run by Windows.
Manual driving isn't guarranteed by the Constitution, after all. And seeing just how much worse those SUV Boomers and minivan mommas get each year, anything to take the control of driving out of their hands is a *good* thing.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You saved me from a terrible mistake! I was about to donate my millions to the EFF, but now I see this money MUST go the Coalition to Ban DHMO for sake of my children's futures. Please join me and send whatever you can spare to The Coalition.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
This may be the way of the future. There is quite a bit of research in to dry rock geothermal reservoir engineering. Basicly a hole is drilled down to naturally hot rocks. Water is pumped down at high pressure to fill open joints in the hot rock. A second hole is drilled and the heated water returns for use.
you did not just post that! please tell me that was some very mysterious trolling and that you weren't serious...
Norsk Hydro is the same company who supplied Timothy McVeigh with fertiziler for the Oklahoma city bombing.
Now, they are making hydrogen fuel stations, undermining the oil based economy. I'm not a sucker for conspiracy theory, but it makes you wonder.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
you're the dork, dork!
... they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!
Mod parent down or don't mod at all (why mod up something that is wrong??????)
Chatting sh1t is not informative, it is flamebait/trolling.
> Carbon monoide is not poisonous
Uh, no.
> Carbon monoxide is not a problem... we have the technology
You have the technology? We have the technology to make diamonds from dust... how about using it instead of creating more CO???
> Carbon dioxide... the normal result of combustion. (That means it's unavoidable)
Yes, it is not the same or as disasterous as CO, but CO2 is still a problem. And it is avoidable - use energy sources which do not combust where alternatives exist. There is a big difference between normal bodily functions (breathing) and burning millions of tons of oil and coal every day. Do you understand that?
> Your problem is that you are not only ignorant
So, are you not ignorant and talking rubbish, or you are ignorant?
Its a pity you clouded some reasonable points such a lens effect and conflicts of different global warning theories (indeed, whether they really exist) with such ridiclous cr4p.
4: Water has been linked to Al Qaeda!
Almost everyone is missing the point: yes, hydrogen fuel cells are simply an energy storage medium, so indeed they are not a source of energy-- however, the greater problem is the conversion process which is, by the Second Law of thermodynamics, wasteful (_Fundamentals of Engineering Thermodynamics 4th Edition_ Moran and Shapiro, Wiley & Sons, 2000).
Every time you convert energy from one medium to another (e.g, from oil to electricity, or electricity to mechanical energy) there is a loss of energy due to heat, mechanical vibrations, etc. (rarely is any conversion process better than 60% efficient).
So, instead of using valuable electrical energy that comes from solar or geothermal sources to power hydrogen conversion process, use that energy to light up light bulbs and run computers-- we always need electrical energy. Don't convert from geothermal to electricity, electricity to pure hydrogen, hydrogen to electricity, and then electricity to mechanical (to make the car move)-- that's three extra converion processes!!
Wake up people!
S.P.M.D.
Driving is actually quite fun and i figure that IC cars arnt going to be around for my entire lifetime - they are far too inefficient... incidently when are the oil supplies going to run out? as a child I read something like 2020
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
The power plant operators could bring in some extra cash by renting out a room to one of those "Unsightly Hair Removal" salons - after all, they would benefit from the electrolysis too. Imagine that... "We use only earth-friendly geothermal energy to remove your unsightly hair via electrolysis."
It's a joke, it's funny!
Slashdot editors make sure they don't rock the boat too much. They refused to post information on BingoFuel, a vastly superior fuel compared to hydrogen. Check it out for yourself, and submit it to /. editors to be posted as an article:
http://jlnlabs.online.fr/bingofuel/index.htm
This explains problems with hydrogen:
http://www.i-b-r.org/docs/magneh.pdf
Hydrogen is emerging as one of the primary alternative fuels for the large scale replacement
of gasoline and other fossil fuels, including its use for internal combustion engines, fuel
cells, rocket propulsion and other applications. However, hydrogen is a fuel with the
lowest specic weight among all available fuels. In fact, hydrogen has a specic weight
of 2.016 atomic mass units (a.m.u.). By comparison, gaseous hydrocarbons can have
specic weight which are a multiple of these values, as in the case of natural gas, methane,
acetylene and other gaseous fuels.
This low value of specic weight and the current high cost for its production, have
caused serious technological, logistic and nancial problems which have prevented hydro-
gen from achieving a large scale replacements of fossil fuels until now. Among the existing
problems, we mention the following ones:
1) The low specic density of hydrogen prevents its automotive use in a compressed
form because of the need for excessively large storage requirements, as well as seepage
through containers walls. For instance, gasoline contains about 115,000 British Thermal
Units (BTU) per American gallon (g) while hydrogen has an energy content of about 300
BTU per standard cubic foot (scf). As a result, the gasoline gallon equivalent of hydrogen
is given by 115,000 BTU/300 BTU = 383 scf. Therefore, the equivalent of a 20 g gasoline
tank would require 7,660 scf of hydrogen which is a prohibitive volume for storage in an
ordinary car.
2) As proved by hydrogen fueled automobiles built by the German automakers BMW,
the American automaker GM, and other car manufacturers, the achievement of a su±cient
range for ordinary automotive use requires the liquefaction of hydrogen. By recalling that
hydrogen liquies at a temperature of 252:8oC close to absolute zero degree, it is evident
that the liquefaction of hydrogen, its transportation in a liquied form and the permanent
storage of such a liquid state in a car implies dramatic expenditures. It then follows that
the current automotive use of hydrogen is excessively more expensive than gasoline.
3) The automotive use of hydrogen implies a loss of about 35% of the power of the
same engine when operated with gasoline, as established by available hydrogen powered
cars. This is evidently due to the low energy content of hydrogen, with consequential
combustion of more moles to reach the same performance as that with gasoline.
4) In view of the above, the automotive use of hydrogen produced from regenerating
methods implies an oxygen depletion greater than that caused by the combustion of fossil
fuels for the same power and performance, where "oxygen depletion" has been introduced
by this author to characterize the permanent removal of breathable oxygen from our at-
mosphere [1]. This oxygen depletion persists when hydrogen is produced via electrolytic
separation of water and the use of electricity from fossil fuel powered plants. Said oxygen
depletion is absent only when hydrogen is produced via the electrolytic separation of wa-
ter and the use of electricity produced via solar, hydro and other methods not requiring
atmospheric oxygen.
5) The automotive use of liquid hydrogen is dangerous because of the possible transi-
tion of state from liquid to gas in the event of a malfunction of the cryogenic equipment
or other reasons.
The use of hydrogen in fuel cells is aicted by similar problems which are inherent in
the low specic weight of conventional hydrogen.
Between that and their incredibly profitable gene pool, they'll be per-capita, the wealthiest nation in the world soon enough.
Well, we cannot have them with a great gene pool. Why, that is unfair to the rest of the world. Gene pools are for the People, says I. Genes are not for profit. Genes are to be shared.
That is why, I, alone, should be sent to their country IMMEDIATELY to stop this profitable gene pool from propagating further in this direction, and the sweeping greed that consumes them. They need to have less profitable genes, say, like mine. I can see this as only benefitting humanity.
I am simply a servant of my fellow man.
Power to the people!
I truly am...
is a property that is conserved. That's all.
So you could say the amount of energy in the universe is constant, and therefore, energy is neither created nor destroyed.. therefore there is no such thing as an energy source.
This is true if you consider mass to be energy, which is a completely valid view. Einstein told us mass & energy are the same thing.
For our purposes though, anything we seem to get more energy out of than WE have to put in in the first place, is an energy source. Burning fossil fuels and nuclear fission being our chief examples.
What he means, though, is this:
Running a hydrogen combustion engine using hydrogen obtained through electrolysis, you end up with less energy than you actively put into it (in the immediate sense). You aren't "Unlocking" any previously stored energy we couldn't get at.
Wheras with fossil fuels, we are dealing with energy stored over a long period of time.. all we have to do is extract the fun black stuff and burn it. In principle it's the same thing, but from our point of view, we get more energy out of it than we put in. Of course, it runs out.
In the case of hydrogen fusion, like a bomb, we get more energy out than we put in: the universe stored a bunch of energy in those atoms when it popped into existence and cooled a bit. If we could come up wtih a controlled fusion process that produced more energy than it took to contain, we'd look at it as "creating" energy, when really we are just unlocking energy we already had.
Fossil Fuels took millions of years to form.
What is the efficiency of Stuart Energy's systems? http://www.stuartenergy.com/main_tech.html
The efficiency of Stuart Energy's cell stack is up to 90%, based on Higher Heating Values. Including hydrogen compression and other external losses, the system can achieve up to 85% efficiency on a Higher Heating Value basis.
The advantage of converting to hydrogen is the energy can be STORED for when you need it. Put 3.3 times as many windmills up and 2.1 times the solar cells a convert the electricity to hydrogen.
Run your combined cycle plants AT NIGHT! When fuel cells get mass produced and economical, run them with hydrogen and used the waste heat to run a simple cycle plant for 75-80% efficiency.
But probably the BIGGEST advantage to hydrogen is you are not subject to the costs of the California ISO which makes any electricity uneconomic!
Or, if the status quo is any indication of what things would be like in the future, there simply won't be pollution control...because, according to the companies owning the plants- gosh darn it, it's expensive, and it'll only raise prices for consumers and hurt the economy!
The one thing hydrogen does is get the "nasty stuff" out of sight of the end-user, and as we all know, out of sight- out of mind.
The major problem with hydrogen is just as the original poster said- it's -very- energy intensive to produce. Cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen requires enormous amounts of power. To make the problem worse, alternative energy sources like solar power are incredibly inefficient themselves(solar panels top out at I think 20% efficiency, tops?)
There's also the almost-completely-unfounded public fear of hydrogen, despite it being safer(it is lighter than air and disperses almost instantly unlike gasoline, which sinks/pools...requires higher concentrations than gasoline to ignite...is completely non-toxic whereas gasoline is carcinogenic...)
Please help metamoderate.
..., he did mention that it was osmosis. Unfortunately that word is used wrong wayyy too many times. Osmosis is diffusion of water in an environment. Osmosis is not interchangeble with diffusion unless your talking about water.
Probably one of the most incorrectly used science term used by our society.
Hmmm... Pie...
I would like to remove stupid people from traffic jams just like you but that would really piss me off. Then I couldn't have fun driving my ultra-fast Eagle Talon TSi AWD. Systems that take control from the people are almost bad when considered from a rights standpoint. Just look at Congress lately. Why would you want more control taken from you?
So THIS is the gas that Björk's head is filled with!
But they're cooling the Earth!
Aieeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Tectonic plates will grind to a halt! The Earth's magnetic field will vanish! The aurora will be lost! Tourists will stop going to Mauna Loa! Old Faithful won't be! The USA will be stuck with California forever!
I've seen a car set alight. The fire was started in the engine compartment where most road-side fires begin. It burned slowly and took about 15 minutes to reach the fuel tank. When the tank was punctured the flames burned brighter for a second but no actual explosion took place.
Petrol-based fuel tanks don't explode, they just burn.
On the other hand, I understand that compressed inflammable gasses such as Hydrogen burn much more explosively. They're both more volitile and in more confined spaces. The reason that they're building the special crash-proof containers is that compressed gasses are much more dangerous in an accident than liquid hydrocarbons are.
On the other hand I suspect that the Hydrogen tanks are in the same order of magnitude when it comes to danger as LPG.
Benjamin.
I wonder what kind of odorant/bad smell they're gonna have to give to hydrogen to mark it? I mean hydrogen is odorless right? How you gonna know there's a leak?
Hydrogen is a fuel, and as such, is potential energy that can be converted to kinetic energy, and as such, is a source of (kinetic) energy.
/. blurb says the station is a clean source of energy, and I think that's a perfectly valid statement.
It all depends on where you draw your boxes. For a hydrogen car owner, hydrogen is teh source of energy. For the hydrogen plant that uses tidal forces, the oceans are the source of energy. to the oceans, the gravitation of the sun and moon are sources of energy, and it goes on and on.
The
Kevin Fox
You were clearly not in a movie at the time. Nor was your fuel tank significantly damaged by impact, which would cause the gasoline to be mixed with air and much more explosive.
Compressed gasses have to be kept compressed to be dangerous, which means that it's a lot easier to fail safely. On the other hand, hydrocarbons are dangerous when combined with air. There's a trade-off: hydrogen is dangerous as stored, but not when released, while hydrocarbons are not dangerous as stored, but dangerous when released.
Realistically, nobody's going to build a vehicle which contains enough fuel to cause a significant amount of damage, unless the vehicle is designed to go cross-country without refueling or is for transporting fuel.
hilarious
I would like to remove stupid people from traffic jams just like you but that would really piss me off. Then I couldn't have fun driving my ultra-fast Eagle Talon TSi AWD. Systems that take control from the people are almost bad when considered from a rights standpoint. Just look at Congress lately. Why would you want more control taken from you?
Outside of metro areas, have roads that don't have automated drive systems and problem solved.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Like say, directly from the sun for instance, well known for being a damp, cold place Australia is.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
yet again another learned either/or argument. I have never recommended nor advised people to just completely switch over night, once they are fully ac grid connected, with all the normal types of appliances. we need a transition stage obviously in both the maco and the personal micro areas. One does not have to be either grid or non grid or off grid. Surprise, you can have BOTH. You can also very easily have two sets of the exact same type of circuits in your home, it's as easy as installing a sub panel box and dragging some circuits over. Done, no grid "tying" involved, no "phase lock gravitational sine wave stepping transducers" or whatever else big boogey man problem involved then. No "danger". Any competent average electrician can do a sub panel box and a few dedicated household already installed circuits in a couple of hours, tops. It just ain't all that exotic or difficult. Maybe it used to be, not seeing it now though.
"Industries" can adapt, should demand be there. We have a lot of commercial, making money industrial wind generators out there now, and it's a pretty impressive growth industry. Cost is good, it's just now hitting pretty darn close to average costs with conventionals. I am a proponent of increasing this demand, as in the above "if one million more people would get some", an example like that. Increasing the demand will mean increasing interest in practical R&D.
And this "average person", even given the level of tech that is off the shelf retail now, has little new knowledge or "work" that is required to use "alternative energy", it is, well, I'll use my case as an example, mashing a few buttons and once a month topping off some batteries with distilled water. I do a lot more than most people (over 60 total I maintain), but it's really not all that hard to do. It just ain't, and it's no more dangerous than dumping gas in your lawnmower. There's also some good work being done now that would eliminate batteries as a storage medium and use industrial capacitors instead, but I'll admit I haven't noted the advances there in over a year or so now so I don't know the actual levels they are at yet. And if a person wants to use sealed glass mat gel cells, they can, or NiMh or whatever, they just cost more than cheaper lead-acid. There's other storage mediums as well, something as simple as gravity and stored water works, many large hydro power operations do that already in off peak times. Even that household level maintenance operational stuff can be automated further into completely "hands off" for some more cash, you can buy it now. the rig here is even remote controlled over a modem if ya want to. And if it got to a more universal and widespread acceptance level,perhaps a lot of new jobs, perhaps the friendly local once a month guy would come by and for a small fee do that for people uncomfortable with doing it themselves, no different from having your oil changed when you could do it yourself, or getting your lawn mowed when you could do it yourself. Service industries are not that unique of a concept, it's quite a normal business model.
Like I said, you work both ways towards the middle, you strive to eliminate wattage demand, on a national scale down to a personal, via efficiwency and choices, whether personal or industrial, by using more efficient processes and machines. Look at the advances of permanent magnet motors for a good example in your field. Superinsulation in homes and commercial buildings, just adopting some more-sane standards beyond "r-18" there would eliminate the "need" for a huge amount of todays established capacity. What would national demand drop to with say doubling insulation all over, a one time cost? I gots no idea but bet a nickle it would fall into the multi multi megawatt range, or in terms of oil it would be "lakes" of it. Advances in just car engines over the past 30 years has done a tremendous job of saving oil, but it never would have happened unless those morinbund domestic industries hadn't gotten kicked in the nads, twice, once by OPEC and
"the great cull" is the popular term for what you are suggesting, and YES, I think there exist some high level globalist factions working towards those goals, unfortunately. Stealth slow plagues, more wars, hiding destructive viruses inside of "vaccinations" in third world areas, gaining complete control over global food production with GM modified seeds,etc,etc,etc,etc. I don't LIKE it but I can see enough evidence to make a case that it is being attempted right now.
I think, for an exact example, that is one of the reasons that on the continent of africa you see so little actual international intervention beyond play acting at it, the extreme high level globalists basically want all the folks there to rot, they just want it easier to get in there and use the raw resources and land. Hmm, sort of like what happened in the americas with all them pesky injuns in the way during the europaen expansionist phase into the "new world". Pacify or eliminate, usually both.
I think it's possible to both maintain the worlds populations and also to pollute less and have "energy", but it will require some pretty severe out of the box thinking and doing to accomplish. The same old ways we have now, no, I'd agree, going to be a disaster, within 20 or so years tops. That's the main reason I am a proponent of "alternatives" in various forms, based on massive decentralisation as a start. I can't decentralise everything, so I started with meselfs.
I don't think it will happen though, your other scenario is much more likely over-all, so that's why I switched to a personal plan B some time ago, I live very rural and am getting as independent in all human carbon based life form critical areas as possible, ie, food, water, energy, etc. It's about the best I can come up with right now. Not trusting "them" to have my best interests at heart.
And this YHBT! Anonymous Coward troll is just pathetic.
You lose. Please report to the nearest glory hole and open wide. Troll.