Oh, and re your other point, it always takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get back by using the hydrogen. 2nd law of Thermodynamics comes into play here. If you were to knock it off complex hydrocarbons, irrespective of the massive CO and CO2 implications, you are using energy to do the reformation and the hydrocarbon itself is also energy being wasted.
Sum the two together and you are way better off using the hydrocarbon directly so long as they still exist. After that, we're screwed either way.
Steam reformaton (Knocking H2 off CH4) leaves you with a CO2 stream.
And it's also less efficient than just burning the gas since Hydrogen can't be effectively contained in any existing design of container (it's too small so it leaks then does some atmospheric damage as it's reaching escape velocity) whereas just putting the CH4 into an IC engine bypasses the whole ozone layer damage thing as a %age of the Hydrogen bonds on its inevitable way up, and it also limits the amount of finite hydrogen leaving our planet forever.
Plus the Natural Gas supply is extremely fickle in places like North America and New Zealand, and Natural Gas is insanely hard to ship between continents in any serious volume. Even the 170 or so LNG tankers afloat today would barely keep the lights on in the USA for a few days, never mind they are already on long term contracts serving the countries that ordered them with a bit of foresight, and that all the shipyards that are capable of building LNG tankers are already doing so and are booked out for almost a decade in advance.
Exactly. Hydrogen is a battery, you still need to charge it. And it's not the battery that I would pick for just about ANY application that hydrogen hype surrounds.
Methinks all the venture capital that isn't being invested in IT now needs a new vapourware application. Hydrogen it is!
Pity it will NEVER work (if the goal is to maintain our present way of life after oil supplies peak in the next decade or two).
While it is possible over a 20 year period, you have to actually start mandating fuel efficiency standards to the point where people are buying efficient cars before the process even begins.
In Australia, it was made a requirement about two decades ago that all new cars run on Unleaded petrol (well, actually, Unleaded, LPG (Propane/Butane), Diesel, just about anything but Leaded). It took 17 years from the time they brought in the requirement before petrol stations stopped selling Super/Leaded.
Now, the US has had its CAFE standards for how long now? A quarter of a century or so?. And what, about a quarter to a third of the vehicles on the road are SUVs, right? And most of the rest are otherwise inefficient. Sounds pretty weak.
So basically, even if mass enlightenment occurred and every new car sold was a Prius, or even 1 in 2 cars, you're still looking at over a decade, perhaps two, before they outnumber other cars on teh road. And what are Prius sales now? A few percent of new car sales?
Also, what is the maximum output capacity of the factories that make Priuses? About what they are producing just now? I seem to recall there being a 9 month waiting list. Would it even be possible to ramp it up from that few percent to say 50% if mass enlightenment occurred?
Hmmz. My home to work trip is 8km if I drive through the middle of Melbourne's CBD down King or William Street, or 12km if I go via the Tullamarine Freeway. Either way, it's about 12-15 minutes. The motorbike (Yamaha Diversion 900) gets about 6½L per 100km.
Or on a pushbike it's 7km down Swanston Street (trams, taxis and bicycles only, otherwise every intersection is left in left out) and about 25 minutes.
Unskilled (tech support) work is easily found, and the pay is acceptable. I was made redundant two months ago and spent a grand total of six working days out of a job. Bleh.
15,000 miles?!?!?!?! What, do you drive 41 miles a day every day of the year?
How much energy would be saved by keeping the SUV, moving to within 3-5 miles of where you work (or getting a job within walking or cycling distance of home) and riding a pushbike most days?
Oh, and your calculation may have failed to include the energy cost of delivering the new car from the plant to the dealership, as well as the energy cost of moving around all that scrap from the old car, and of melting it down.
It would be physically impossible to manufacture enough Priuses to replace the entire fleet of existing cars, thus mitigating the need for oil imports. They don't even make a dent, since the number of cars on the road is increasing at a greater rate than the number of priuses on the road, so oil consumption is actually increasing!
Indeed, when you think the process through, the manufacture of Priuses including mining, refining, haulage and dealer delivery all uses a LOT of oil. How much do the trucks use just in that last stage alone delivering the new cars to dealerships across the country?
And where would the money come from? The people who drive crappy cars tend to be the ones that have no money to spend on good cars. That's not going to change even if they do become enlightened. Further, even if someone buys a prius, they are not going to consign their old car to scrap, they are going to sell it. Probably to someone poorer. So the old car will still be on the road polluting happily while the rich person now also has a new car also polluting, but slightly less.
And if people did decide to all scrap their old cars (in the cornucopian scenario), how many new rubbush dumps and so on would be required to dispose of so many old cars? And how much diesel will be required to haul around all that scrap if a scrap buyer decides to recycle part or all of the old car?
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Oh, and re your other point, it always takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get back by using the hydrogen. 2nd law of Thermodynamics comes into play here. If you were to knock it off complex hydrocarbons, irrespective of the massive CO and CO2 implications, you are using energy to do the reformation and the hydrocarbon itself is also energy being wasted.
Sum the two together and you are way better off using the hydrocarbon directly so long as they still exist. After that, we're screwed either way.
Steam reformaton (Knocking H2 off CH4) leaves you with a CO2 stream.
l
And it's also less efficient than just burning the gas since Hydrogen can't be effectively contained in any existing design of container (it's too small so it leaks then does some atmospheric damage as it's reaching escape velocity) whereas just putting the CH4 into an IC engine bypasses the whole ozone layer damage thing as a %age of the Hydrogen bonds on its inevitable way up, and it also limits the amount of finite hydrogen leaving our planet forever.
Plus the Natural Gas supply is extremely fickle in places like North America and New Zealand, and Natural Gas is insanely hard to ship between continents in any serious volume. Even the 170 or so LNG tankers afloat today would barely keep the lights on in the USA for a few days, never mind they are already on long term contracts serving the countries that ordered them with a bit of foresight, and that all the shipyards that are capable of building LNG tankers are already doing so and are booked out for almost a decade in advance.
http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnads/198356061.shtm
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1190.html
Exactly. Hydrogen is a battery, you still need to charge it. And it's not the battery that I would pick for just about ANY application that hydrogen hype surrounds.
Methinks all the venture capital that isn't being invested in IT now needs a new vapourware application. Hydrogen it is!
Pity it will NEVER work (if the goal is to maintain our present way of life after oil supplies peak in the next decade or two).
While it is possible over a 20 year period, you have to actually start mandating fuel efficiency standards to the point where people are buying efficient cars before the process even begins.
In Australia, it was made a requirement about two decades ago that all new cars run on Unleaded petrol (well, actually, Unleaded, LPG (Propane/Butane), Diesel, just about anything but Leaded). It took 17 years from the time they brought in the requirement before petrol stations stopped selling Super/Leaded.
Now, the US has had its CAFE standards for how long now? A quarter of a century or so?. And what, about a quarter to a third of the vehicles on the road are SUVs, right? And most of the rest are otherwise inefficient. Sounds pretty weak.
So basically, even if mass enlightenment occurred and every new car sold was a Prius, or even 1 in 2 cars, you're still looking at over a decade, perhaps two, before they outnumber other cars on teh road. And what are Prius sales now? A few percent of new car sales?
Also, what is the maximum output capacity of the factories that make Priuses? About what they are producing just now? I seem to recall there being a 9 month waiting list. Would it even be possible to ramp it up from that few percent to say 50% if mass enlightenment occurred?
Hmmz. My home to work trip is 8km if I drive through the middle of Melbourne's CBD down King or William Street, or 12km if I go via the Tullamarine Freeway. Either way, it's about 12-15 minutes. The motorbike (Yamaha Diversion 900) gets about 6½L per 100km.
Or on a pushbike it's 7km down Swanston Street (trams, taxis and bicycles only, otherwise every intersection is left in left out) and about 25 minutes.
Unskilled (tech support) work is easily found, and the pay is acceptable. I was made redundant two months ago and spent a grand total of six working days out of a job. Bleh.
15,000 miles?!?!?!?! What, do you drive 41 miles a day every day of the year? How much energy would be saved by keeping the SUV, moving to within 3-5 miles of where you work (or getting a job within walking or cycling distance of home) and riding a pushbike most days? Oh, and your calculation may have failed to include the energy cost of delivering the new car from the plant to the dealership, as well as the energy cost of moving around all that scrap from the old car, and of melting it down.
It would be physically impossible to manufacture enough Priuses to replace the entire fleet of existing cars, thus mitigating the need for oil imports. They don't even make a dent, since the number of cars on the road is increasing at a greater rate than the number of priuses on the road, so oil consumption is actually increasing!
Indeed, when you think the process through, the manufacture of Priuses including mining, refining, haulage and dealer delivery all uses a LOT of oil. How much do the trucks use just in that last stage alone delivering the new cars to dealerships across the country?
And where would the money come from? The people who drive crappy cars tend to be the ones that have no money to spend on good cars. That's not going to change even if they do become enlightened. Further, even if someone buys a prius, they are not going to consign their old car to scrap, they are going to sell it. Probably to someone poorer. So the old car will still be on the road polluting happily while the rich person now also has a new car also polluting, but slightly less.
And if people did decide to all scrap their old cars (in the cornucopian scenario), how many new rubbush dumps and so on would be required to dispose of so many old cars? And how much diesel will be required to haul around all that scrap if a scrap buyer decides to recycle part or all of the old car?