Slashdot Mirror
Getting Serious About Fuel Cells
electroniceric writes "For those of us who moonlight as politics wonks as well as tech nerds, you may have noticed posts (1,2) in the Washington Monthly's blog pointing to interesting articles about the business community's new take on climate change, world oil supply predictions as well as a fascinating article about lower-cost ethanol together with a new fuel cell technology that can use impure hydrogen. Are we really about to turn a corner in global climate change response? Is this all vapor and breathless journalism about a world-saving new technology, or is it perhaps a brilliant investment strategy? Nobody knows (or claims to know) better than Slashdot..."
I have heard that Washington University in Saint Louis is getting quite close to making a useable ethanol fuel cell that could potentially power a laptop for a month. I really just think that alcohol based fuel cells make more sense; ethanol can be easily made from corn, and we make enough of that to have our government pay farmers to not grow it for economic reasons. I say that ethanol fuel cells will change the world more dramatically than the internet, and that is a pretty powerful statement to make.
don't understand why everyone is so down about fuel cells.
yes, pure hydrogen is hard/expensive to produce. but the next generation of fuel cells can use methane (or ethanol) for a source of fuel. ie, plug the fuel cell into the back end of a cow- suddenly wisconsin will be known for more than it's cheese.
for some reason, some are thinking fuel cells are going to replace gasoline engines in vechicles. well, ok. but what you really want to do is replace all the coal and oil burning power plants w/ fuel cells. so instead of acid rain and tons of greenhouse gases, you get H2O out, which you could use to water crops or drink. given that China seems to be building coal burning power plants as fast as they can, doesn't that sound like a good idea?
ok, fine, i might be biased. i am working on the next design of fuel cells (in particular solid oxide fuel cells- SOFC). but, still, the sooner we get to a place where producing energy is less harmful to the planet, i think we should. hell, we must.
I was also going to recommend biodiesel for the cars. As for the trolly's, that is easy. Where I come from, 87% of electricity comes from hydroelectric. Sure, it isn't feasible across the whole country, but that is why we have nuclear :)
Andrew