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Cheaper, Cleaner Hydrogen Without Platinum
keithww writes "Looks like the hydrogen economy may have gotten a whole lot cheaper. Wisconsin team engineers gas from biomass
using common metals of tin, nickel, and aluminum instead of platinum. This looks like a good way to get rid of biowaste also." Of course, there's still a long way to go before the automotive industry is using it, but it is good news nonetheless.
Because remember a cheaper production process = increased profits. They would be stupid to ignore it.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Ok, so you can make Hydrogen from biomass. I really wish they would give an example instead of just saying that it can be scaled from small output for batteries and such. Does the entire earths surface have to be covered with biomass before we have enough for our energy needs, or can we just use somehwere the size of Iowa?
Even if the auto industry/petrochem industry did prevent the widespread adoption from being used in the US, there are other countries like Japan which have the capability to engineer complex systems, the discipline to deploy them, and who would welcome reducing their depndence on foreign oil.
yeah, and the buggy-whip manufacturers got screwed back in the day. As did the coach-builders, blacksmiths, stables, etc. So, they adapted (coach-builders built auto coaches, blacksmiths became mechanics, stables became hotels) or died.
That's capitalism for you.
It's cos you actually get the performance you would expect from a 348mpg carburator and oddly enough, nobody will buy a car which goes from 0-60 in four and a half hours.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Isn't it, perhaps, the whole idea of an automobile, which is inherently inefficient, which needs re-thinking? It seems that support for rail over long distances, and metro-like systems for shorter distances might be more beneficial to all. Trains do not require huge streets, they do not require huge areas for parking, they do not lead to massive congestion, they do not cause deaths on a huge scale. (More Americans are killed every year from road fatalities than were killed in the war in Vietnam).
It may be that the car is too ingrained in the American psyche to dispense with it... but that's no reason to keep it either
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
I'm as green as the next frog, but hydrogen's a LONG way from fueling transportation on this planet. Didn't MIT post a study showing diesel-powered hybrids as the shortest, fastest way to environmental remediation for our roads?
That's not to stop the U of W's process from fueling a large number of fixed polluters. For example, the giant cooling plant (part of a co-gen facility) for the building I work in could benefit from some H2. Bring it on, just don't waste time trying to get it into cars & trucks.
I'll go back under my rock now...
Right! Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are going to mandate every American buy 10 gallons of gas every week to keep the oil industry afloat as the price of oil goes to $30, $40, $50, $60, $70 a barrel and the US has to increase its share of world oil production from 25% to 40% to 50% to 75%.
The reality is that world oil production will peak this decade if it hasn't already.
That doesn't mean that oil will run out, only that there will be no increase in daily supply no matter what the demand. There have been no major oil fields discovered in the past decade, and the important oil fields were discovered more than 40 years ago.
Technology won't magically cause oil to require less energy to extract. The people extracting oil aren't complete morons, they have always extracted the oil that is easiest and cheapest to extract before moving on to the harder and more expensive to extract oil. Millions of people have been extracting oil over the past century and if there was a way to extract hard to extract oil cheaper than today, they would have found it by now because cheaper would mean more profit.
So the only way the oil industry can prevent higher prices motivating consumers to switch to some other, any other, form of energy is to get a mandate passed that requires Americans to buy 10 gallons of gas every week no matter what the price.
Failing that, there is nothing that the oil industry can do to prevent the decline of oil as an energy source.
What we as consumers have to hope for is a million small steps to cheaper hydrogen production. The likelihood of someone coming up with real cold fusion are real slim. Hydrogen as a fuel in 20 years is going to be more expensive than oil as a fuel is today, but the price of oil in 20 years will make hydrogen look cheap.