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"H-Prize" Announced
An anonymous reader writes " The House passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel creating the "H-Prize",allowing scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes. The Department of Energy would put together a private foundation to set up guidelines and requirements for the prizes. Anyone can participate, as long as the research is performed in the United States and the person, if employed by the government or a national lab, does the research on his own time.
Best political Quote: "If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create." said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C."
Its not everyday the government asks us to do dangerous things outside our work time especially doing things with hydrogen. I wonder if the other departments have been notified of this homework assignment?
Splitting the atom at work is fun, getting to take work home is just a bonus.
Now, where's my chisel?
liqbase
That's good news - hopefully, it will spur private enterprises in a similar manner to the X-prize.
However, I really don't think this admistration seems too interested in ending dependance on foreign oil, when they electric and natural gas cars to the tune of $500+/year.
Hydrogen would be great & all, but what really needs to be done is to improve America's public transport infrastructure & encourage people to start using it. A gradual raising of gas taxes until pump prices are around $7/gallon, with the money raised being pumped into (free) public transport would achieve precisely that.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Most current hydrogen comes from burning natural gas, so how is using hydrogen going to curb fossil fuel consumption or global warming?
BMW has been doing research on hydrogen powersince the 1970s, and they even have a nice 7-series sedan ready to drive.
Does BMW win anything for its ingenuity?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create."
oh and uh, it might help the environment or something too.
-- lol pwned
Do people not realize that Hydrogen is like electricity, it's only an energy delivery mechanism? There are NO free sources of hydrogen around to tap, to the best of my knowledge. You have to generate the hydrogen somehow...from oil, coal, or some other energy source In the amount of time that this idea has been bantered about, I have come to the conclusion that no one understands this point, including the President and the Secretary of Energy.
The reason that things like solar, wind power, or geothermal and the like have ben discussed as energy SOURCES is that they are just that; ways of extracting energy from processes on the earth. Hydrogen is an energy TRANSFER MECHANISM, not a source.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Everyone is focused on everything except one. WHY is the government not looking at NON centralized NON corporatist methods of achieving alternative energy sources?
Hydrogen would require plants, specialized chargers, etc. Keeping control for ourselves are we?
Some "we the people" eh?
I wish some more of us would wake the hell up. The Matrix has you, boys and girls, and you're loving every moment of vying for a few scraps from its table.
Enjoy yourselves, oh mindless slaves, and keep vying for what they tell you to vie for. After all, you're free to decide for yourselves, not free to think for yourselves.
~DaedalusHKX
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
So initially we used coal to power steam engines. Why? Because there were literally tons of it laying underground. So we strip mined America for a couple centuries.
...
It's long been known that oil (petroleum or organic) would fuel fire. And it was discovered that refining it lowered it stability and made it explosive. But where was an abundance of oil? Why, also underneath the ground.
The fact of the matter is that our energy concerns can't be solved by anything that requires more energy to make (insert corn ethanol reference here) than it produces.
So now we need to figure out how to use hydrogen and many car companies have done that but the form that hydrogen abounds in is gas--not liquid. And most hydrogen powered cars require refilling a compressed hydrogen tank. But to make this hydrogen requires electricity and this electricity requires some fuel or energy to make in the beginning
I think the real challenge here should be "just hydrogen" as an alternative fuel but instead "anything we got a lot of lying around in a ready form."
My work here is dung.
Hentai?
I think this is a good idea, but in the end the H2 has to come from some where and Nuclear power is the only real answer. I just love to hear about the genuis's that build a town around driving around in Electric Golf cart so they don't have to have cars, but the forget that the whole town gets their power from the Coal plant down the road. If we did not have the 70s/80s scare tactics about Nuclear power, the power grid would be better and we could make a conversion to Hydrogen easier. I really have no true love for Nuclear power but it is the better option to get away from foreign oil. Personally I think getting away from foreign oil, whether it be with ANWAR or alternative energy, is the best for this country. OPEC could destroy this country in one move and that has nothing to do with Oil companies gouging us.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
...federal hydrogen programs, including the $1.7 billion hydrogen research program ... ...to $1 million every other year for technological advances in hydrogen production ...
Goverment is securing $1.7 billion for their research (and you can bet it will produce big nothing) and they are willing to award private interests with only $1 million every other year ? Thx big bro.
Now that we have loads of federal money, we can finally create thousands of jobs, we can create new technology that wouldn't be possible without the wisdom of central government, we can be more environment-friendly, and of course we have already chosen the One Good new fuel that deserves to be funded. This is our new three-year-plan.
For just $10M we get a guaranteed great technology, and if it doesn't work out as well, we can do as with public schools and other government programs: just increase funding incredibly, so the darn thing will get done!
That would be a direct violation of the DMCA's provisions on reverse engineering.
So instead of building something like a $1.000.000.000 LHC an $10.000.000 award is offered?
That sounds like an excellent idea, to save budget atleast.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
Did anyone else instantly think this was some sort of prize for creating outstanding Hentai? =/
n/t
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Hydrogen is not a solution unto itself, as it is an energy storage medium, much as a battery is an energy storage medium. Hydrogen still has to be procured from: 1. Natural gas 2. Bio-mass 3. Electrolysis of water 4. Ethanol, etc. Hydrogen then has to be stored or transported & then stored: 1. At high pressure inside of highly stressed tanks (many thousands of psi) or 2. In tanks with metal hydride structures or similar at lower pressures Hydrogen then has to be transported in a system we don't currently have in place: 1. In underground moderate pressure pipes 2. In higher pressure tank trucks in some areas The cost and time necessary to implement the whole building project to store and deliver the Hydrogen system above is immense, as none of it is in place NOW. The cost of delivering equivalent amounts of energy to EVERY CITY in the U.S. right now is already in place. It is called the electric grid. Power Plants (regardless of the type of basic fuel or energy source, coal, hydro, nuclear) are not only large but thermally VERY efficient (about 3 times as efficent at "burning" fuel as an internal combustion engine). Thus in the end there are lots of tradeoffs, and these have been endlessly analyzed in the private & public and university sectors. Hydrogen does not seem like a cost effective method when the infrastructure costs and times are looked at realistically, otherwise a company would have started doing it to make money already. Politically it looks interesting for votes. Super efficient, cost effective batteries may be the only reasonable way to tap into the power of the national electric grid and provide effectively delivered "power" to automobiles of the future. That may be why there are so many dozens of labs in the U.S. alone attempting to perfect more efficient more cost effective batteries. Politics rarely leads the pack in inventive matters.
Why?
Well first, the resource may be impractical to transport to B. Simple example, coal gassing plant generates hydrogen for cars. This would be far far far cleaner then running cars on coal, less hassle and you can do the coal burning on a huge scale with highly tuned filtration. Oh and you won't be burning the coals in busy city centers.
Then there are natural resources. Hydrogen can be easily used as a battery. Just hook an installation up to some remote windmill farm or hydro dam or whatever and collect your tanker full of energy when it is full. Kinda hard to do that with other tech.
This would work great with countries like greenland that have an abundance of clean energy but wich you can't easily put on the grid of other nations.
So the basic answer that has been given time and time again and that every person with a brain by now understands. You can use more efficient and alternative sources of energy production by transforming energy into hydrogen and then using the hydrogen.
It is not just that you apparently haven't yet caught onto this, that can be excused, stupid people have a right to live too. What is really bad is that with your lack of intelligence you still dare to question people who are smarter then you (everyone else in case you are wondering).
Oh and mods, Bite me.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...but only $10 million? They spend way more than that on saving owls and stuff.
A lot of people are complaining that most current hydrogen is sourced from hydrocarbons, etc. This is true, but it doesn't always have to be that way. Wind, tide and hydro-dam power is all harnessed (albeit on a small scale at the moment, but this may change) to produce electricity, and hydrogen can be obtained using electrolysis of water. Water will always be readily available, as using the hydrogen will combine with the oxygen in the atmosphere back into water, there is the infrastructure available to transport the hydrogen (at the moment transporting natural gas, but again probably convertible), and there is never a shortage of weather! My two pennies.
I seem to recall the hydrogen burning engine has already been proven. The real prize should go to the that can get refueling stations put in every city of your country without the oil mafia breaking everyone's legs.
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Oh, I think they understand it just fine. The Whitehouse administration has been in bed with the oil industry from the beginning. The whole 'hydrogen economy' promotion is just an attempt to make it look like they are taking action towards energy independance and alternative energy source development, as to divert interest/funds for alternative energy research towards their fossil-fuel industry cronies.
The most tragic thing about this whole scenario is that it diverts resources away from alternative energy source developments which could have an impact in the immediate to short term future (like wind, solar and hydro-electric power, gas electric hybrid cars, and energy conservation) in favour of a pipe-dream that even the proponents admit is decades away.
The administration is shameless
>Everyone is focused on everything except one. WHY is the government not looking
>at NON centralized NON corporatist methods of achieving alternative energy sources?
I think you hit the nail on the head, and I have long suspected that the fear of losing their deathgrip on the control of scarce energy resources has been driving huge government and business interests to make sure other, less centralized options are kept off the table.
Energy is a multi-billion dollar industry. What would happen to that industry if anyone could make their own fuel?
What if anyone could buy a bottle of Iogen's ( http://www.iogen.ca/ ) new cellulase enzymes at the grocery store, just like we buy Rid-X enzymes for our septic tanks, throw it in a trashcan in the backyard full of water and lawnmower clippings, and make their own ethanol?
What if anyone really could easily and rapidly convert water into hydrogen? (spare me the jabs on how easy electrolysis already is, please)
I'm no tinfoil-hat guy, but there are huge, huge interests that would be massively hurt by such innovations.
Lately I've been doing a lot of googling on biodiesel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel ), ethanol ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol ), and even wood gas generators (pyrolysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis )
From what I've seen, most of these processes are fairly simple to do, even at home. I don't think these processes would take much more technical innovation to make simple, practical, cheap decentralized fuel production a reality.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Well Republican Bob, you seem to know that the patent system is so corrupted that it will no longer drive innovative research, elsewise why the prize? How about fixing that little problem for us instead of hamming it up for the press with stupid quotes about job creation (which by the way has been the slowest under this administration than anytime in the last 70 years.)
"allowing scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes."
Considering this is Congress, does anybody believe they'll actually be able to give this "prize" money to somebody that isn't Ford or GM? I wouldn't be surprised if the rules were tailor made for Detroit.
I think the answer to our energy issues is to have as many distributed forms of energy production as we can. Right now we are very depedent on one. If we have supply problems it causes issues. As well it causes a type of monopoly. There are many oil companies, but they all kind of work in concert given that they sell the exact same thing.
We need electrical cars, fuel cell cars, hyrodgen cars, ethanol cars, and a whole slew of others so that the open market can thrive. Cars themselves should run off different sources as well. Charge themselves with solar when available. If they sit outside have some small wind turbines. I'm sure there is a way to convert the energy of falling rain drops if we think about it hard enough.
The first argument is always that we have to retro fit all our gas stations. I don't understand why this is such a big deal. I think we have gotten so used to the centralized controlled gas industry that we have lost touch. If a new stick of gum comes out the stores put it on the shelf. I'm hoping alternate energies will start up a grass root movement of new gas stations that off all sorts of fuel alternatives. A little push from the goverment wouldn't help either.
What we end up with is like the coke\pepsi model. Coke produces the recipe, and then individual bottlers make it throughout the country. When you buy a coke it was probably made pretty close to you.
Lastly we need to think about ways to generate things like ethanol by using renweable sources like solar panels. They can collect solor energy slowing, but then use it to produce more explosive energy sources. Fuel cells can run off natural gas which is plentiful and then use that electricity to create the ethenol. For instance there are self running sewage plants that extract the methane gas and run it through fuel cells to power the plant.
Products just lying around are really easy to work with sure, but they are rarely clean and renewable.
If we team up different energy sources and create a more diverse "energy ecosystem" then we'll be better off.
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create."
Imagine what it'd do for the economy if they reinvented the wheel!
Right now we have several efficient green energy sources for massproduction - wind power, solar power, nuclear power. None of these emit harmful greenhouse gas emissions. But we have *no* efficient green energy delivery mechanisms.
You use wind or nuclear power to generate the hydrogen, simple as that.
And before anyone starts going off about nuclear waste - who gives a crap. We can bury enough of it to power a generation in any of the current storage facilities. And I am willing to be by that time ion propulsion and other technologies will have made launches so cheap and efficient we can just hurdle it all into the sun at that point.
I understand the push to use Hydrogen, but we do realize that one of the most tyrannical and corrupt empires to employ Hydrogen was, yes you guessed it, Nazi Germany in their ill fated Zeppelin program. Why would ever want to follow in the footsteps of Nazi Germany?
(with apologies to Stephen Colbert)
First and foremost is that the United States still enjoys large open areas with low population densities. No "public transportation" can be created that would be an effective use of resources. You would benefit only city populations at the expense of the rest of the country.
Besides, how can anyone actually suggest jacking taxes when politicians and other whiners bitch and moan about $3 gas prices? Get real, the government already puts more taxes on a gallon of gasoline than gas companies make in profit yet everyone focuses on the gas companies.
We have a great infrastructure, but too many people try to compare the United States to Europe and that is just wrong. It sounds good but falls apart once the numbers are played.
The best way to reduce our dependance on foreign oil is to permit the use of our own resources. Yet at every attempt someone blocks it. From building gas drilling rigs 15+ miles off the Florida coast to putting wind generators off of the Cape someone comes up with a doom and gloom scenario which forever keeps us dependant.
Either we use our backyard or pay for someone elses.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
According to these guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Quantum_Mec hanics, it's in the bag. All they require is a couple more years and just a bit more money, then you will all have hydrino generating plants in your basement. Electricity too cheap to meter; Doc Brown cars for everyone. Got your checkbook on you?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Scare tactics like 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl?
Just how many deaths, long term illnesses, birth defects, and acres of land contaminated for thousands of years does it take to cross over from "scare tactic" to reality?
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create." said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C. This sounded like an attrocity at first, since the idea of reworking problems to create jobs is a total economic fallacy. If you think about it though, if America could create a new kind of car that ran on hydrogen fuel and had massive economic and environmental benefits, this would in fact revitalize the car industry in America and provide lots more jobs to Americans to provide his new service, especially considering how these cars could be sold across the world, this would have a similar effect as the car industry had back in the first days of Ford. The quote sounded pretty thick headed, but I think he was going for something that actually makes sense.
I find the H prize a great idea to create the drive to invent and solve the alternative fuel problem. Since hydrogen must be produced from other sources of energy we must first increase the use of nuclear power for the production of cheap electricity. Once we have cheap electricity then we can have a cheap supply of hydrogen.
be awarded with such prize??
/Z
Isn't it based on Hydrogen isotope (Deuterium)??
Lenr-Canr
Cold Fusion wiki
Um, at the risk of sounding defeatest, does anyone remember the Hindenburg? Big air ship, early 1900s, cover of a Led Zepplin album, going up IN FLAMES? Now, imagine you are on a busy road and you rear end the hydrogen car ahead of you...might just as well close the road for the year while they identify the body parts three counties away, fill in the hole and repave. Or, even better, the tanker, carrying the hydrogen to the station has an accident. You thought the collapse of the Twin Towers created a mess? Hydrogen is NOT the answer. Perhaps we can find someway to harness the atom, but if I were you, I would start working on my aerobic capacity. Bicycles will be making a comeback.
I'm not that old, but i just don't understand when morality became part of the equation when it comes to using energy? Is someone in Botswana that lives in a hut a better person than a bloke in Surrey who mows a lawn with an electric lawn mower? If so, i don't seem to understand it.
And honestly, I don't understand - well maybe i do - why it is that people get all flummoxed at the idea of removing human transport devices from the global warming equation. Yes, yes, for now, it is just pushing the problem up the chain, but is that the job of the car makers?
If a car is fairly efficient, and it is no longer spewing out global warming gasses - what the hell else do you expect car makers to do? Not everyone - some could - but not everyone could survive driving a euro golf cart around because it wouldn't hold kids or baggage, etc.
If the car manufacturers are going to make devices that can run 100% clean and are saleable to the public meeting demand, then if you ask me, its high time we start coming up with energy solutions that are not dependent upon unstable thocracies and kingdoms in the middle east, hockey playing blue-nosers in north america, or corrupt countires like Mexico and the rest of central America. The car makers hold up their end, its someone else's responsibility to hold up the other end.
And honestly, we see that China is - amazingly enough - going to lead the way with pebble-bed reactors... 1 for each city or more. It is utterly remarkable to me that a communist county has the stones to get this problem figured out while a country like the US is handcuffed by granola munching tree huggers... except for the founder of the Sierra Club... he gets it.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
In honour of Ian Dury.
Taken from "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards"
Einstein can't be classed as witless.
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of splitting-em-ness
Frighten everybody shitless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-star
http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R130-8CM-P
Note the first wheel and the third wheel are not the same despite looking similar. I get what you are trying to say though. The ICE is capable of running off hydrogen gas if designed correctly. Even the mythbusters managed to get a car running by only using hydrogen gas. Why we need fuel cells a bit confusing.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
First of all, the SOVIETS took MANY shortcuts in making that reactor using 50's technology.
Two, Look into Pebbel Bed Reactors. This newer technology is much, much safer.
Three, compared to the radioactive, carcinegenic, poisonous shit spewed by coal, oil, and Natrual Gas plants, I'll take nuclear anyday!
And four, I'm also for Solar, Wind, and other sources of non-poluting energy energy that's out there. I think we're going to need a mix. Folks in Seattle would laugh at the thought of a solar farm as folks in the Midwest wouldn't be able to use energy from tidal movements.
The only problem with Nuclear is the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard). They don't want the waste in their neighbor...and with pebbelbed, that's going to be a much smaller issue.
Look at Iceland. They are running on hydrogen. But they are using their geothermal to generate all of their hydrogen. Our only solution is to build nuclear plants that will provide us with low cost energy to generate hydrogen products. It is the future and someone needs to make it happen!
fark.com listed these guys a few days ago.
http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/
http://www.unitednuclear.com/legalaction.htm
Seems that some of the feds are worried that someone could make a bomb with the same fine metal particles that are needed to store hydrogen with any practicality.
Compressed hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, and hydrogen slush are just not going to cut it for a practical street vehicle.
You can't grow hydrogen trees or dig the ground looking for it. Just about all the hydrogen around us (and yes, there is a lot of it) is combined to Oxygen or Carbon. In order to burn it (a fuel-cell is sort of like burning, without flames) we must first apply energy to get it loose (and, probably, release some carbon to the atmosphere in the process).
Very true. Hydrogen used by NASA for rocket propellant is derived from natural gas! The process does not result in the release of hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons that result from the process (butane, acetylene) are useful themselves. I have always thought a smart application of nuclear power would be the production of hydrogen through electolysis of water - unlimited hydrogen. Cheap? I have no idea.
an ill wind that blows no good
...well, being human of course they are to some extent. But research is a game in which slow and steady wins the race. The big breakthroughs are made by people just sort of worrying at some research area over a long time, like a big tangled ball of string, pulling at it a bit here and a bit there.
And like everyone else they need food, clothing, shelter, and, of course, health insurance.
A scientist can't go to a bank and say "I have a good chance of winning a ten million dollar prize ten years from now. Could you lend me $75,000 a year for the next ten years... and a million for lab space and equipment... and something to pay a few assistants while I do that?"
If the government wants hydrogen fuel to become a reality, they shouldn't dick around with the equivalent of sweepstakes. Scientists can do the math and aren't impressed with the product of a large payoff with a small probability of getting it.
What motivates them primarily is not money--that's a "hygiene" issue, in management-theory terms. It's the respect of their peers.
What's needed is good, steady, long-term, predictable, even funding of basic research. Keep the universities healthy, quit cutting funding for alternative-energy research (the way the current administration has been doing), and keep in mind that only a few research projects will pay off--but there's no way to know in advance which.
Scientists don't dream of striking it rich. They dream of getting grants for a few more postdocs. They dream of the department head saying they can have some more lab space. And above all, they dream of writing papers that will be cited by thousands of other scientists.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
WAY TOO SMALL. A JOKE.
This just goes to show how Congress is out of touch. Just what do they think a company is going to be able to do with 10 Million? No way that would cover the development costs. This is a joke, too bad the members probably don't know how rediculously low this is for the kind of manpower that is needed. A 500 Million prize might have a shot. 1 Billion and I could bring on the right people for long enough, and equip them - and I'm not talking thousands of staff. Hundreds, yes.
Just for perspective, the avg daily PROFIT, for Exxon Mobil, the 4th quarter, ended Dec 31, was $199.6 million, EACH DAY. Revenues were $1.09 Billion, per day. Each Day. Don't forget, there are two other oil companies almost as large as ExxonMobil - Royal Dutch Shell and BP (British Petroleum)
Exxon Mobil numbers for 1st Quarter: Profit: 173.6 per day, Revenue: 997.8 per day
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
I might be inclined to belive that if the government wasn't actively trying to block the research and developement of Hydrogen based cars as witnessed here.
This is complete and udder fud.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
I'm no scientist, but I seem to recall that the whole "cool" thing about Hydrogen fuel was that the by-product is water. So, how exactly is our environment going to benefit by having rivers of condensation running down the sides of every interstate, highway and sidestreet in the country, collecting all of the other vehicle drippings, roadkill, trash, etc to trickle off into newly formed standing pools of water festering with bacteria, mosquitos, diseases, etc?
Not so sure if this has been thought through completely, even aside from all the "so where do you get the hydrogen" questions.
When I heard that my university academic advisor had been arrested for protesting at a nuclear power plant, I just had to ask him why? He was, IMHO, a very savvy fellow and I was frankly surprised he would be against nuclear power. When asked, however, he replied: "I have nothing against nuclear power at all ... I have something against the idiots at TVA running a nuclear power plant."
This was <cough> some years ago. Chernobyl and Three-mile Island have since demonstrated his point.
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create in China."
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create." said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C."
Who's this "we" he's talking about? Politicians never actually do anything except take credit for others' work while taxing and inflating them to the poorhouse in the process.
(But, hey, at least after being taxed/inflated into the poorhouse you'll have a whole plethora of welfare programs to choose from.)
[ home ]
10 mil.. bleh.. any bets on who's going to "win" this ? Like everything in today's world, it's not so much a contest as it is a thinly-veiled grant wrapped in gobs of PR. 10 million is peanuts for anything energy-related. The point of this exercise is to single out some Bush-favored company and give them tons of government-mandated press. The money doesn't matter to any of the major players, but all the peons still thing 10 mil is significant in today's world, so they tune in to the 6 o'clock news and let the product placements begin!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create." said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C." I believe he meant, "If we can reinvent the car, imagine the low income, blue collar jobs we can destroy. White collar and upper middle class will rule the world!" said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C.
With all the hot air that congress puts out why don't we just collect the hydrogen out of the capitol building?
Because no government-funded device labelled with an "H-" prefix could ever turn out badly.. oh, wait.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
for solar energy solutions. One approach could be in efficiency improvements like this: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/ 25/2050253&from=rss, but only if they are commercially viable.
An other approach could complement the H-Prize, which is to use solar to directly create hydrogen. A solution would be a complete package: hydrogen from solar for energy storage and a complementary fuel cell.
One: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The people in politics run with the corporate jet set. Powerful people tend to congregate together - there's noting inherently insideous about that. Those who spend most of their time trying to figure out how to make money (corporate money, that is), look for corporate solutions. You don't expect a carpenter to figure out how to use steel to build a house cheaper, you expect him to figure it out with wood.
Two: Decentralized generation of fuel sounds like a really good idea, until you realize that most people are too stupid to do this stuff themselves in a safe manner. Half the people who aren't too stupid don't have the spare time. You have, in fact, a relatively small fraction of the population (I'm going to guess less than 2%) that have the time, space, and resources to generate and store reasonable quantites of fuel safely.
I mean, sure, I can create my own fuel at home, and given advances in technology, it might even be somewhat safe. But now you're looking at doubling or tripling the volume of flammable materials in a typical residential setting, and you're adding a large amount of fuel, pre-fuel, and potentially dangerous fuel byproducts that are being transferred on a regular basis. Think about how much gas an American family will go through in a week. With three drivers (two adults plus a teen or elderly live-in), it can easily top 20-30 gallons. Now, switch to ethanol - you're up to 32-40 gallons. You'll probably not want to generate every week, so lets say you run your still twice a month, and you'll never want to drop below 20 gallons or so, or you might run out. Now you've got 100 gallons of ethanol sitting in your garage, in addition to that in your autmotive tank. In a medium-to-high density area, I would consider that an apparent danger that most municipalities would tend to discourage.
While it may become viable for those with space, it remains wholly impractical for everyone else.
Third (Okay, I'm one issue over...sue me): you won't be able to produce it as cheaply, on a continuing basis, in your back yard. Sure, you can make a bit from your brush clippings, or buy the materials in bulk, but to really be efficient will require the leverage of a large operation. We can all make our own clothes, but we don't. We could all grow our own food, but we don't. It just isn't cost effective. In the end, making fuel at home won't be either.
Sorry to be a bummer about this, but while the idea works well on an individual scale, it just doesn't scale to the society level.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Time and again the economies of scale are pointed out to individuals and they all come back with, "Evil plot to keep the man down!! Long live at home process!"
The other thing that they all forget with their, "Let's all use the left over oil from McDonalds!" is the rule of supply and demand! If everybody starts using biodiesel will there be enough oils around for everybody to get their 'free oil' from the local restaraunt. I seriously doubt it. So we are back to problem number 1.. No OIL!
Parent is quite frankly one of the best posts on slashdot I've seen in a while.
OPEC could destroy this country in one move and that has nothing to do with Oil companies gouging us.
Do you know how much oil we get from OPEC? If you said 24%, you'd be right. That also includes non-Middle Eastern countries in OPEC like Venezuela, who, spat with GWB not included, do not have the hate for tUSA that many Middle Easterners do.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) holds 60 days worth of oil. So, even if all of OPEC shut us off and nobody tried to cheat, we'd still have 240 days until we felt a pinch. Congress could extend that by just shy of another month by immediately dropping the highway speed limits back to 55.
All of that assumes that OPEC is just swallowing the oil, not selling it to anyone. That's not likely the case -- they'd sell it elsewhere. Now, instead of China buying oil from Russia, they'd buy it from the Saudis, and we'd get our oil from Russia. Even if they did just not sell the oil to anyone, tUSA's purchases wouldn't go down 24%, since the rest of the oil is being sold on an open market. tUSA's oil purchases would go down something less than 24%, as would China's, India's, most of Europe's, etc.
So, OPEC can play games to cause the market to defensively raise the price of a barrel. But, they can't stop tUSA from buying oil elsewhere, from other nations buying/selling/trading oil, from tUSA tapping its SOR, from tUSA eliminating its tax on Brazilian ethanol, from tUSA lowering speed limits to conserve fuel, etc.
And as for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), it'd be 10 years before that oil starts flowing, and it just isn't very much oil. Personally, I think its worth much more to this country if used as a long term SOR -- it's there, just in case technology and rollouts don't keep up with the decline of oil. Why blow through it now when we can consume someone else's oil and save ours for an emergency later?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Something it seems no one has mentioned is that the President's focus on hydrogen is a bit strong. Why should that be? Well, to package the fuel cells, you need use energy. The energy can come from anywhere. Solar, wind, water, or .. gas/oil. In all likelihood, at least in the short run, what will happen is that big oil companies would produce hydrogen fuel cells 'magically' charging more than they did previously for gas. It's new technology, and besides you have a choice -- you could always just have a gas-fueled car.
So what about non-gas companies? Well, it's true you can use solar, wind, water, etc., but I imagine it's much faster to create a large number of fuel cells from gas. Any company that tries to compete with the gas companies will fail.
The really big question (besides why not give way more money) is why not fund *any* non-gas based car? Why the specifics on hydrogen? Especially when scientists are starting to think the reaction for hydrogen fuel cells may not be so great for the ozone layer either.
Steve, you might enjoy these two links as well.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiturbine
"In a nutshell there are two ways to get hydrogen commercially. The first is striping hydrocarbons. They're called hydrocarbons because it diverts your attention from the very obvious problem with this approach. Hydrocarbons are foriegn oil (more accurately natural gas, but it is the same problem.) Remind me again what the problem is that prompted us to look at alternative fuels."
e ss
o alres&xsl=en_res
Or, you could use the Fischer-Tropsch process to make artificial gasoline and hydrogen AT THE SAME TIME.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_proc
"The mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is called synthesis gas or syngas. The resulting hydrocarbon products are refined to produce the desired synthetic fuel.
The carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide is generated by partial oxidation of coal and wood-based fuels. The utility of the process is primarily in its role in producing fluid hydrocarbons or hydrogen from a solid feedstock, such as coal or solid carbon-containing wastes of various types. Non-oxidative pyrolysis of the solid material produces syngas which can be used directly as a fuel without being taken through Fischer-Tropsch transformations. If liquid petroleum-like fuel, lubricant, or wax is required, the Fischer-Tropsch process can be applied. Finally, if hydrogen production is to be maximized, the water gas shift reaction can be performed, generating only carbon dioxide and hydrogen and leaving no hydrocarbons in the product stream. Fortunately shifts from liquid to gaseous fuels are relatively easy to make."
But we'd still have to use hydrocarbons to make it right? Yes, coal actually, which the US has a larger reserve of than any other country in the world
http://www.geohive.com/charts/charts.php?xml=en_c
Upsides are continued petroleum production, and a consistent source of hydrogen during the transition away from fossil fuels. No dependence on foreign oil anyore either.
Downside is greatly increased CO2 production.
You haven't looked at all the alternatives.
is when people accept unquestioned the unspoken proposition that 'interfering with the market' is somehow inherently bad.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
They also demonstrated that an unmodified diesel engine will run quite nicely on filtered used French fry oil.
The problem is that although this is feasible right now, it's not really possible for widespread use and hydrogen will probably cost more and get less mileage than a gallon of gas right now. Unless we nuke Iran and gas shoots up to $8 a gallon, anyway. The french fry oil does have potential and we're pretty close to the right price point for various nifty diesel fuels to be competitive with gasoline.
They're talking about repealing the tax on gasoline, but I'd suggest taxing the bejesus out of gasoline and dumping the proceeds into alternate energy research. Especially solar and fusion.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... or is anyone else worried that a guy who can't even spell "course" is potentially working with alternative energy sources?
We are willing to spend Billions to keep the worlds oil supply "free", but we are willing to devote a mere 10 Million for this?
Kudos to the people who dug up the 10 million, it was likely hard work! But it does show that the priorities of the Government as a whole are off base.
If only the government had spent all the cash that it cost to for the gulf war, but used it on rebates for ultra energy efficent vehicles, and rebates on insulating homes. It would have kept the money at home, working in the economy instead of being exported to Oil rich nations, and certainly reduce the "shortage" of oil.
Move Earth closer to Jupiter.
"Prizes can draw out new ideas from scientists and engineers who may not be willing or able to participate in traditional government research and development programs, while encouraging them, rather than the taxpayer, to assume the risk
Being that the government is funding this, in the end isn't the *taxpayer* paying for it thus assuming the risk?
big oil has already bought most of the innovative patents for alternative energy just to kill them.
why don't we dig through their patent collection?
then we can save the world that they are trying to destroy
They're using their grammar skills there.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
When the idea is always - how do I fill my next alternate-fuel powered SUV, the US will never have proper solutions. Compact Electric cars are a viable alternative. If we can keep those Damn SUVs and light trucks off some of the inner roads for even a period of time, people would feel safe to drive around in these cars. But that idea would quickly get political and shot down. The reason for the high price is $ valuation.
A fuller version of the story here.
The scientists involved are apparently well aware of the implications for very easy fusion. Listen to an interview with a French physicist discussing this. ("Unlimited Energy and Doomsday Scenarios").
I wonder how the media are going to pull a 'Cold Fusion' on this. --Though, it seems to me that they're not going to need to. Nobody seems to know or care much about this kind of advancement.
-FL
...if the same two things were reversed. People were selfless enough, mostly.
The world runs on immutable rules, the most intractable being human greed. Apathy, too. When you learn to accept these, you become effective, and also stop looking/sounding like an idiot to people like me.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Researching better ways to tap renewable energy sources is good place to start. The government should provide more incentives to invest in solar, wind and geothermal production. Everywhere that has a viable amount of wind we should build windmills. We should use solar when it is the more viable option. We should tap into every geomthermal site avaible.
We also need to research the safe use of nuclear energy. Nobody wants another Chernobyl but we need desperately need the energy nuclear technology can provide.
We also need to do more to save energy through energy efficiency. This is just using common sense. If people didn't drive gas guzzling SUVs to the office everyday or live hundreds of miles from work, then they would waste a lot less fuel. If everyone made their homes and businesses more energy efficient we would save a lot more. There is much to be done in this area.
What's really needed with cars is to run on a totally clean fuel source. Electricity is probably the best way to go. The key is finding a good storage medium.
As many others have noted, hydrogen is not a source of energy, but a carrier.
And wouldn't you know it, while pursuing my MBA, I co-wrote a paper about this very problem.
Pardon me as a burn some karma for some shamless self-promotion. Feel free to poke around at The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School while you're at it.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
The London tube network could use some work, but it's generally OK. The London bus network works decently, at least for the parts of the city that I travelled between. However, the rail networks above ground is in terrible shape. There are frequent delays and worse, fatal accidents aren't that rare. Privatisation has been a disaster. No one wants to spend money on maintenance and infrastructure improvements.
The American rail network suffers from much the same problem. The track is ancient and no one wants to invest in maintenance -- not when truck transport is subsidised to the level that it is with all that investment in maintaining and developing the road system. The decrepit track and railbed limits the speed trains can travel. That's not so critical for freight, perhaps, but it makes passenger travel betweeen many places unattractive. For example, it takes 9hrs to get from Montreal to New York via Amtrak. It takes 7hrs by bus despite the border crossing being much more crowded, and probably 6hrs by private car. This is a distance that would take a couple hours at TGV or Shinkansen speeds. (The Paris-Lyon TGV run, only about 60km shorter, takes 1hr 50min!)
It's possible to have an efficient rail network: look at Japan. You can set your watch by the train departures, and the trains generally go where and when you need to go. True, the privatised Japan National Railways offshoots are massively in debt, but the system is running fairly well and is well-maintained. Thanks to a separate high-speed rail network, train travel is a strong competitor in long-distance travel.
Comparisons to the X-prize in TFA are misleading. The rules appear to be entirely subjective:
<quote>
The measure would award four prizes of up to $1 million every other year for technological advances in hydrogen production, storage, distribution and utilization. One prize of up to $4 million would be awarded every second year for the creation of a working hydrogen vehicle prototype.
The grand prize, to be awarded within the next 10 years, would go for breakthrough technology.
</quote>
Who decides?
I will lease a mazda and enter it in the contest.
d /35142/story.htm
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsi
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Your 'Copper-Top' doesn't require cryogenic storage, and it won't diffuse through whatever you happen to be storing it in [e.g. steel pressure vessle, &c.], over night.
Don't eliminate, or even reduce taxes on gasoline. Its going away as we know it, its just a matter of time. If they reduce the taxes on it just prolongs the problem. Better to find an alternative now then when gas is $8/gallon and the problem is 10x worse.
Instead, significantly reduce or eliminate the taxes on any alternative fuel, alternative fuel vehicles, alternative fuel research & development and everything else in the chain of getting alternative fuel to the people. Heck, include income tax in this too... If the company you work for qualifies as an "alternative fuel" company, its employees are exempt from income tax.
Once a solution is found, its easy to start taxing these areas again.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
Laugh now, because once you start seeing many different species dying off, ending of course with large mammals, you will start to shit your pants... because you will be next. I have seen it happen before. Marvin
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
we have huge quantities of fuel off the west coast of florida and off of lousisana in the gulf, but those two particular areas have been made off limits for exploitation. Not the whole gulf, obviously they work there in a lot of areas, but there are two precise areas that have so much they made it illegal to drill there ( I am too lazy to go find the links now, sorry). It would bork the petroleum economics to have too much supply (according to their docs and economic reality). They need prices consistently high for profits and for expansion. And they are in no huge rush, they make more money for a longer time period with less effort by keeping refinery numbers down and by keeping production down. It's the artificial scarcity model of doing business, and has worked for them for a long time so I don't see that changing anytime soon.
We also have between 2 and 4 trillion barrels locked up in the rocky mountains in oil shale. At 20$ a barrel it is not affordable, at 60$ and above it gets to be worthwhile.
There is also a still unconfirmed (which means it can't be proven without rifling the big oil companies secret files, etc, but has been reported anecdotally by folks there during the discovery) amount locked up in the arctic that is so huge that they immediately "forgot" about it, they corked that sucker up and made it above top secret basically.
In short, we have a lot of energy supply, what we also have is a well entrenched industry that does not want to work harder for less money.
It's interesting, isn't it, GuloGulo? Any conversation you involve yourself in rapidly deteriorates into a pointless flamefest.
So, is it every other Slashdot user who is to blame, or does the blame rest with you?
Occam's Razor, buddy.
AndersOSU's previous post was entirely accurate, and raised valid counterarguments to your Fischer-Tropsch process argument. Faced with an opponent who was actually prepared to discuss the issue, you resorted to your usual trollery to escape.
It's clear that you are a reasonably intelligent and knowledgeable individual, so to explain your bizzare behavior one must either assume you are a precocious eight-year old, or an adult who never had the chance to develop the normal coping mechanisms associated with emotional maturity. Which is it?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"I won't waste my time being trolled by you again."
How hard is it to read that? You'll notice at no time in this thread has any trolling been done by anyone but you.
So save your self righteous observations for the mods. I stopped listening to anything you said a long time ago.
"Faced with an opponent who was actually prepared to discuss the issue"
He openly admitted to arguing using logical fallacies. I love how you left that out, in your very sad attempt to troll me. Why? Didn't think that his "debate" style mattered during a debate?
"so to explain your bizzare behavior one must either assume you are a precocious eight-year old, or an adult who never had the chance to develop the normal coping mechanisms associated with emotional maturity."
Who's the one trolling again? That wouldn't be me, so that leaves...
Cars reinvent you!
"Now I'm a tad surprised that you're not jumping all over me for straw-manning the crap out of the benefits. "
Right there. He said it. I wasn't kidding with the reading section.
Haven't we been here before? Hydrogen is expensive to make, difficult to store, difficult to transport, and would require a complete revamping of our transportation and industrial infrastructure. There have got to be better solutions - ethanol, for instance. Or processes that under development that could turn CO2 and H2O into alkanes and oxygen - then we could take the energy (nuclear, most likely) that we would have used to make hydrogen, and instead use that energy to make a fuel that we can already use with our existing equipment, while remaining carbon-neutral. But hydrogen by itself is not a workable long-term solution.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Nice try, GuloGulo, but no. He didn't admit to the Straw Man fallacy, he expresed his surprise that you didn't groundlessly accuse him of engaging in it. Apparently, I'm not the only one who's familiar with your tactics.
If you can find where he actually engaged in the Straw Man fallacy, please quote the relevant passage, rather a passage about his surprise that you didn't accuse him of the Straw Man fallacy that you took out of context. Otherwise, man up and admit your distortion.
If you had read on you would have seen that he in fact acknowledges the value of the benefits, but then raises a valid objection: Funny how you left that part out.
Actually, no, it's not funny. It's par for the course.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"He didn't admit to the Straw Man fallacy, he expresed his surprise that you didn't groundlessly accuse him of engaging in it.
I had no idea you were psychic.
Let's use one of your tricks, smart guy. Occam's razor. Is it more likely he was "straw-manning" the benefits or that he knew me personally, knew "my tactics" as you call them, and was responding to an argument that he expected to be made?
Right.
As I've said before, you'll twist anything I say into something else, presumably because you have such excessive free time that you have nothing better to do than follow me around and attack me personally.
I genuinely think you're mentally ill. I feel very sorry for you, and I hope you seek treatment for it. Seriously, no flaming, but you need to see a professional. Your behavior is, frankly, irrational and inexplicable.
I had no idea you were psychic.
Not psychic...just capable of extracting information from the printed word.
Let's look at that quote again, shall we?Again, the sentence is expressing surprise that you're not accusing him of employing the Straw Man fallacy in regards to the benefits. That's all.
This dispute is easily enough resolved...if he was referencing an actual instance where he used the Straw man argument during his debate with you, then we should be able to locate it somewhere in the thread. In fact, in my previous post, I challenged you to do just that: quote the relevant statement or admit your distortion. Here's how you rose to that challenge:No mention of the Straw Man argument you're accusing your original opponent of making...only lies and pointless ad homenims.
My challenge still stands, GuloGulo. Find the Straw Man argument that AndersOSU allegedly perpetrated against you or admit it's not there.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Car makers in Europe and Japan have manufacturerd and tested Hydrogen cars already. They are ready for the market as soon as the Hydrogen manufacturing and distributuion network is in place. Why waste tax dollars reinventing the wheel?
. html
Alternative fuels are coming along fast. Look at today's post from New Zealand on a sewage effluent to biodiesel via algae system that is claimed will be in production this time next year
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3665147a11,00
If I can't discuss my work with the tea lady, I probably don't know what I am doing....
Which is why, along with the gas tax, there should be Gas Stamps. These would work like food stamps: you could use the gas stamps to pay for gas. Gas stamps would be given out to the same people who receive food stamps, so the added government bureaucracy would be minimal. With gas taxed to $7 a gallon, the government would have plenty of funds for the gas stamps.
Public transport is *useless* for around 85%-90% of the population. The conventional kind which tries to move groups of people around anyway.
Why? Well, because it doesn't go where you want to go, when you want to go as fast as you want to go. It does this because it has to follow a route, a schedule and stop to drop people off at stations. It has to follow a route because it's transporting a group of people. It has to follow a schedule because it's transporting a group of people and it's too slow because it has to stop to drop people off at stations because it's transporting a group of people...
Because public transport attempts to transport groups of people around, it'll never ever ever replace the automobile, which transports individuals around...
Deleted
For the vast majority of the population anyway.
It's simple physics.
People have to walk or otherwise travel to a station, that takes time. They have to wait for a vehicle, that takes time. the vehicle has to slow down and stop at every station, that takes time. They have to travel from the station to their destination, that takes time.
The closer the stations are together the more often the vehicle has to stop. This reduces performance. The further apart they are the faster the vehicle can go but the longer it takes to travel to and from the station.
In short, group based public transport systems are severely limited in terms of performance for all but the small percentage of the population (10-15%) who live in close proximity to the station and who work in close proximity to a destination station and therefore don't have to change routes or travel far to a station.
This is true until someone comes up with a public transport system which transports individuals rather than groups of people.
Deleted
Alas, it seems that fusion will still be 30-50 years away.
5 bucks says the winner has a mysterious 'accident' within three months, and his research will burn to dust in the passenger seat next to him... uh... I mean gets lost afterwards.
An automated vehicle which will take an individual directly to his destination.
Deleted
Let's just stick Joe Cells in everyones car and be done with it.
I worked for Billings Energy / Billings Computer during the mid to late 70s. At that time we modified Dodge Omni vehicles to run on both gasoline and hydrogen. The company developed special fuel tanks that were safer than normal gasoline tanks (tested by the DOT). The vehicles had every bit as much power as the gas only powered ones. They ran cleaner, etc. The problems (as I see it) were caused by mans greed. As there were virtually no hydrocarbons to ruin the engines they would last a very long time. Detroit, in my opinion, did not want this. Also, what would the oi companies do if they only had to supply oil to be used as a lubricant or for the production of other petro-chemical products. I imagine they would not be as profitable as they are now.
Another problem wsa that Roger Billings held all the patents surrounding this technology. Now that over twenty-five years have passed others can utilize the technology without paying royalties.
I believe we could have the clean alternatives we need for our environment and also break the dependencies we have on the oil producing nations if we would again use the technology that has already been proved. It would be nice to (as we did back then) fill a tank in your garage with plain water, plug it into an electical source, and refuel your vehicle overnight. It would be even better if we had hyrdogen fueling stations, as they do in some countries in Europe, instead of gas stations. Even better would be if we could do more research on hyrdogen fusion. I believe back in the 70s we had taked about producing hydrogen for around two to three cents per gallon of gas equivalent if this technology were perfected.
In the end the whole world would benefit, not just the few who were too greedy to allow the technology to move ahead. If government truely would get behind this and not just give it lip service I believe we could see things come together within a couple of years.
Sorry for the rant; I just think of where we were with this and wish things could have been different.
I'm not sure if anyone has commented on this yet, but Seattle has a great bus system. I used it while I live there and my brother doesn't even bother to use his car anymore. There are quite a lot of people who do what he does.
I spent part of the 80s and a good half of the 90s doing this argument, and i'm done with it. You're wrong, but I couldn't care less whether you come out of this thinking differently, as I find that only experience teaches in this case.]
People suck, and only getting used to the idea can save you from being a fool.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Hey, that's pretty spiff stuff. My dad was heavily involved with the Wankel engine for racing. Can't wait to show this to him.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Geothermal is not gravity in disguise. The internal thermal energy of the earth is due to the radioactive decay of uranium and its radioactive daughters. That's only gravity in disguise if you are thinking of the collapse of the gas to form stars, which in turn supplied the uranium when they eventually went supernova. Without radioactive decay, the gravity-accumulated earth would have cooled (all the way through) long ago.
This has looked promising for awhile now, hydrogen directly emitted by algae, that can be farmed in ponds and collected. A direct solar to hydrogen process.
, 00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456
I would like that for home heating, have a pond/pool in the backyard, with a cover, hydrogen from the algae collected and burnt in the furnace/heater or used as the energy source to run a ground effect heat pump? good for heating and cooling then.. Something like that anyway... If there's enough, run it through a fuel cell for electricity, or burn it in a gas engine generator that has been converted to run on it.
With that said, I am still more in favor-for now-with using liquid biofuels for transportation purposes, at least as an adjunct to gasoline or diesel. Some blends require zero conversion on already exisiting vehicles, and the nation's infrastructure for fuel delivery is completely built to take advantage of them.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it is a bear to store in a tank properly. I have read about some research into sequestering it inside of an additional chemical lattice such as metal hydrides, or turning it into other compounds that are either heat or additional chemical catalyst activated for hydrogen release. So far no big winners though. A static algae hydrogen generator wouldn't really need a lot of storage, just enough to act as a buffer for your normal demand. I imagine you could adjust output merely by altering the temperature inside the pond/pool, and that part could be automated with normal greenhouse and pond equipment that is available now. Now keeping the algae strains *pure* and keeping out other forms of algae might be a real problem.
Interesting stuff, I just love alternative energy ideas for some reason.
I was surprised by the Mythbusters TV show today when they revved-up an older-model sedan by pumping tanked hydrogen into the top of the engine. Residual gas in the fuel line was already depleted by the previous experiment. After starting the car a couple times, they had a backflash and stopped, not surprising as they were pumping the uncontrolled hydrogen by hand.
Does hydrogen involve new cars or just new storage?
What will be the source for our Hydrogen needs in the future? Under Bush's watch it will surely be Oil. This will lead to more calls for opening Anwar and the West Coast to drilling.
-Eric
Maybe someone will invent a Bio-panel...
m l?tw=wn_index_19
An Algae solar panel that produces hydrogen by depriving it of oxygen
like Mr. Melis's research indicates .
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70273-0.ht
http://www.green-trust.org/2000/algaehydrogen.htm
Be pretty wild to see huge areas covered in some green translucent liquid paneling, lol .
I had same idea for Bio-diesel from Algae paneling .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Yeah Hydropower is hard to beat .
8 3/CycoGrandCouleeDamTurbine.jpg
The dam on the columbia is a monster : Grand Coulee Dam :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulee_dam
Largest hydroelectricity generator in the United States, third largest in the world.
http://www.emediawire.com/prfiles/2005/02/22/2115
Those are ppl walking on ONE of the turbines .
Pretty awesome when u consider the scale .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Perhaps instead of staying away, you should question why they are trying hard to keep things centralized, thus retaining control of an already questioning populace... forget Jefferson and the Founding Fathers were Mason Deists, while all the Christians clamor this was a country founded by Christians. The Masons were NOT Christians! Deists, yes, Jefferson was an avowed Mason and Deist, but not a Christian.
So why are we constantly buying the rhetoric? Because we're stupid, or because we've forgotten that only 5% of the colonials actually FOUGHT in the revolution?? Its no different today. Most "americans" are idiotic bible thumping sheep. The real Americans, as per the Founding Fathers, are a scant few 5% to "maybe" 15% of we're lucky.
How many of our brethren read the Constitution? Yeah, if we're lucky maybe some NRA members do. At least they know the 2nd ammendment. Some Civil rights folks know the 4th. Most americans know the "American Idol Ammendment". Oh wait... there isnt one? Exactly.
Start questioning folks. It isn't TOO late, but it is LATE.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Our ancestors were hunters and self sufficient agriculturists. Those that lived deep in the mountains or other inaccessible areas were rarely touched by those that were too stupid to live a peaceful life and had to go take by force. You see, living away from the idiots had kept the monastic life a peaceful one. You will note that violence increased the closer you got to flatlands, where mobility was easy and required little skill other than swinging a sword or stabbing a peaceful farmer in the gut to steal his food. Most of these morons didn't even think that "hey you need the farmer next year too jackass".
Those morons have now graduated. Of course their lack of real forward thinking or their lack of any basic human DECENCY (forget humanity, Bush, Blair and their ilk lack ANY humanity whatseover). So overall you've got tyrants of yesteryear becoming tyrants of today. Instead of leading marauding armies, they now lead marauding corporations with militaries and paramilitaries at their disposal.
As money worship becomes a greater source of power than before (hey, lets all agree for a change, Christianity itself was founded as a way to re-unify the roman empire under Constantine's banner (wasn't it Konstantinos?)) As things go, Mammonism/Western Christianity has become the new rage, we have "preachers" (who are so "self-sacrificing" that they wear Armani and Prada, while those children in the third world starve waiting for US working folk to give them our $10.00 a month) preaching from pulpits about the goodness of faith in Christ, but lost are the teachings about peace on earth, goodwill ot the brotherhood of man, etc... its "kill anyone that disagrees".
I digressed:
Here goes:
Jobs are simply a way to continously increase the slave labor market while making people think they are free. SELF SUSTENANCE is the only way. Small groups sustaining themselves, and forming a web of larger groups.
We need to let nature reclaim much of what it has lost, and we need to reclaim our OWN nature. That which the religious priest-kings have taken away from us since ancient Egypt to this day. We are slaves to the grid/grind, and we have yet to break free.
One more thing, for those stating that this is a "christian" country, do your research. "In God We Trust." was added to the fiat currency printed in 1913 only in the 50's to garner the support of the "faithful". The pledge of allegiance was, likewise altered in the mid 1900s but I don't recall the exact date. And the last kicker?? ***** The Founding Fathers were MASONS/FREEMASONS, NOT CHRISTIANS. THEY WERE DEISTS, BELIEVING IN A GREATER GOD, BUT NOT CHRIST. GET OVER IT!!! *****
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
There had been fields run on human feces (yepperoo) that had been productive and hadn't yet failed in 4000+ years of usage.
They switch to the monoculture monocrop farming of the west, and in less than 50 years their farmland is failing. Perhaps we should research why over commercialization instead of self sufficiency (and selling of natural surplus, as the original farmers had done) has become the norm.
But who am I kidding, we'd all rather work the line at burger king and paying taxes rather than having our little farm produce what we need (and for the record, my great grandparents produced enough off of a non gasoline farm, with biological fertilizers to feed a whole town). But that wouldn't be good news, because it implies actually WORKING to produce food instead of just microwaving your mc.meal.
I can attest that I was healthier, thinner and in FAR better shape when I only ate what they produced for us. Now I live in a big town on the east coast of the USA and eat fine store bought foods... whenever my job allows me to stay home to even nuke the damn things. Forget cooking.
Yep, modernization helps eh? Gives us more time to watch American Idol and be couch potatoes.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Dude!
I was able to destroy his karma in a single encounter (which you so kindly linked to) - surely you should be able to do the same?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I think I did more than that...I think I scared him off Slashdot entirely.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I think I did more than that...I think I scared him off Slashdot entirely.
But he posted barely a half hour before you made that comment!
Keep trying tho'
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.