Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have a bright idea — at least at first sight. They want to create a sustainable transportation system by using hydrogen-powered cars. They would like to create an infrastructure where people could use a liquid fuel for driving while the carbon emission in their vehicles is trapped for later processing at a fueling station. 'The carbon would then be shuttled back to a processing plant where it could be transformed into liquid fuel.' Where will all this liquid carbon be stored? The researchers don't know. They suggest that it could be stored in geological formations or under the oceans."

Comments

Can we make this any more inefficient?

[Radon360]

1. Fill up with regular gasoline
2. Instead of burning it outright, let's strip the hydrogen off the hydrocarbons and just burn that.
3. Somehow sequester the leftover carbon from the breakdown (this is the ???? step)
4. Return the carbon (somehow stored in liquid form) for recycling >>> Profit!

First, let's ignore how much energy we're throwing away in step 2 by not utilizing the full energy potential stored in the hydrocarbon molecules. Second, somehow we'll expend more energy to liberate the hydrogen and capture the carbon, both without oxidizing them. Third, we're going to tote around another 75 - 100 pounds of weight with the stored (and somehow liquefied) carbon that will be returned. Less energy potential that ever reaches the engine/fuel cell, and even more expended to refine something fairly energy dense into something that's a fair amount less energy dense.

The problem with this idea is there's too much fixation on sequestering every last bit of carbon, rather than focusing on a bigger, more important concept called energy efficiency. Work on improving that and the carbon emission reductions usually follow.