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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.
Although people's moves into suburbia is undoubtedly part of the problem, you have to think about the COST of living in cities. Sometimes it is simply too expensive to have an apartment, and to get an apartment at a value to rival that of a suburbian house, well, it's just not possible.
So long as more high-rises are built, hopefully city living costs will go down... but we can't pack as you suggest, we can't be a bunch of little Tokyo's.
It's a way to store and transport energy. Hydrogen has to come from someplace. It takes energy to produce hydrogen. Currently more energy goes into making hydrogen than is produced. But the previous poster brought up Biodiesel which is far more mature and cost effective for the state of the world economy. Use biodiesel as the tippy cup which well get us off the tit of fossil fuels and then we can move onward.
What could possibly go wrong?
Then you don't have to live in the downtown area. Right now, many people are moving back to the city for a few reasons, one of which is a lowered cost of living. Although it may be hard to believe, many cities have suffered greatly due to suburbanization, but at the same time real estate costs have just completely dropped. With property values so low and housing being dirt cheap, people have found that it's a lot cheaper to buy a house. Even though real estate values are now rising because of this realization, it's still considerable cheaper to live in the city. Sure, things like car insurance and taxes may be high, but even this hasn't stopped people.
Also, most of the people moving back have found that new construction is bad. The term "cardboard houses in cornfields" best describes the production line trait of new housing. Before homes used to be build out of stone, bricks, mortar, and plaster walling. The craftsmanship that used to go into a house was at one time immense. The new city dewellers realize this and love living in older homes that have much more character.
Don't forget about public transportation. You almost don't need a car in the city because of buses and trains. Newer cities lack good public transportation systems, but just come to the Northeast and look at the infrastructure that used to maintain the factories.
Living in the city once defined the American way of life. Sadly, we've lost this way of life and sense of community with the old cities' distinct neighborhoods. It seems to be returning with reurbanization, however more people need to realize the benefits and not just think that city life is only about high rise apartments.
If you're interested in this topic, I recommend you read Ray Suarez's book The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999. City life isn't as bad as most people make it out to be and I happen to think that it is superior to the disconnected feel of suburban living.
I used to live in Muenster, Germany, a city of 300k, and had no problem getting from day to day just by bike. There was also viable public transport, of course. And it's nice city too. I enjoyed living there a lot.
Now I live in Durham, NC, USA, a city of 200k, and you can't get anywhere by bike (no bike lanes), the public transport is not really an option, and I have to drive around by car. No choice.
Suburbia and the dependence on cars in urban area are a choice a society makes. It's not a law of nature.
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.
Hate to be dullsville but,
It is the dull stuff that is easiest implemented. And reduction is the best way of adding more energy to the pie.
Fluorescent incandescents.
Wind power will not save us, and some birds will die, but from Oklahoma to Saskatchewan, quite cost effective means of supplementing. Yeah, the wind doesn't always blow, but then so Manitoba lost $436 million last year due to low water levels (hydro), the rains do returns as does the wind.
As far as solar, one of the easiest and most effective routes is for heating water. This should have happened in Arizona, southern California, etc. years ago. No, you don't have to do it all by solar, but you require a much smaller water heater that is used less often.
My friends off the grid via photovoltaics (over 10 years now) designed their houses - cabins to need as little electricity as possible. However photovolatiacs is tailor made to topping off banks of 12 volt batteries in third world countries for cell phones, computers, refrigerator (dc refrigerator). That is more where technology adding in a tiny bit more efficiency and lowering cost to manufacture could really have a big input.
You still have to store the hydrogen for fuel cells.
And you still have to figure out what you are going to run your tractors on and the energy sources for the fertilizer (lots of electricity to take N out of the air), farming chemicals, etc.
It isn't the flashy things that are going to do it. It is a lot of people doing dull things.
shalom,
mark
This is how you produce hydrogen. Notice the part about "electricity." That's right, in order to produce hydrogen you need the very same energy that we were trying to save in the first place. Your hydrogen-powered Prius may run as pure and clean as fresh snow, but if a coal-fired generator is supplying the electricity needed to electrolyze water and make hydrogen, then it's all for naught.
So let's stop beating around the bush: the only technology we have today that does not produce carbon and comes anywhere close to supplying Terra's present-day energy needs is good old nuclear. Or, nucular in the parlance of our current administration. Wind, water and/or solar simply don't. I think we need to bite the bullet, recognize this fact, and start building. The nuclear stigma is very unfortunate given the stakes of the global warming game we're playing. The fact is it can be done cheaply and safely, and few bad eggs seem to have spoiled the bunch... unless you have complete idiots at the helm, living in the proximity of a modern, well-managed nuclear power plant is probably a lot, lot safer than strapping into a rickety box of sheet metal and hurtling yourself down the freeway to work every morning in the presence of countless other drivers about whose skills and preoccupations you know nothing.
The depressing sticking point is that with a $100 billion, Manhattan-style research project we could probably get something like fusion power off the ground, thus solving our energy and pollution woes for basically forever.
By the way, that's about the same amount of money as we will be spending in Iraq in the coming years to ensure our oil supply and with it our ability to pump astronomical quantities of carbon into the air for the foreseeable future. Gallingly ironic.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.