Keven Drumgole: I agree with Yendis once the recession is over people are going back to their old ways - so much for frugality.
Sammy Tabatt: check with a mechanic asap
Randa Hessell: of course its worth it. but after this recession people are going to want to buy big gas cars again, why? people want to have power [in an engine sense and a mental sense], and that honda is going to be nothing compared to the cadillac.
Ofelia Kieck: It depends on what you're going to use it for. If it's for a car, then hydrogen on demand is better. Hydrogen in concentrated quanties are like driving with a bomb. One bad accident and you are gone.
Nadia Crauswell: the hope is that the required electricity would come from renewable sources like solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity etc. but since those sources make up a tiny fraction of where our power comes from, at least for now, it's pretty pointless and doesn't really conserve anything
Shena Etulain: We! ll, at best, a hydrogen economy would be a carbon neutral economy. Actually it would still be carbon positive as there would still be the carbon footprint of manufacturing the vehicles and of constructing the infrastructure. The H2O emissions isn't really a problem despite H2O being a strong greenhouse gas because the concept of a hydrogen economy is to use "clean energy sources such as solar, hydro, wind and nuclear and use that energy to produce hydrogen from H2O so the emission of H2O would only be replacing the H2O used in the process. The real problem is that changing to a hydrogen economy presents a rather large immediate impact to the environment as new vehicles and new infrastructure are required and only promises to slow down the process of adding CO2 to the atmosphere to almost but never quite a full stop.There are carbon negative technologies such as biomass to liquid with biochar soil amendment. This is where storm debris, trash, old tires and dried sewa! ge are converted to carbon monoxide and hydrogen via a 19th ce! ntury process called gasification. Carbon monoxide and hydrogen reacts with each other in the presence of iron or cobalt oxide catalysts at high temperatures and pressures to produce whatever length linear hydrocarbon you want including gasoline and diesel. The side product of gasification is charcoal that can be used as biochar thereby sequestering the carbon as a stable bio-unavailable form. Hence the synthetic gasoline and diesel from this process is effectively carbon negative and will actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere and does not require new infrastructure nor new vehicles thereby avoiding the carbon footprint of construction and manufacturing.What's really telling is that when researchers at Sandia Labs set out to find ways of producing hydrogen from water that would be more efficient then electrolysis (a horribly inefficient process), their conclusion was that you might as well just synthesize liquid hydrocarbons like methanol, gasoline and diesel from C! O2 and H2O thereby getting the same carbon neutral effect of a hydrogen economy without needing a new infrastructure or new vehicles.Biomass to liquid will never be able to completely provide for our energy needs so there still is a place for some hydrogen fuel cells and electric vehicles but don't be in a hurry to throw out all the gas and diesel vehicles, they're our best bet at removing some of the CO2 that they've contributed to the atmosphere and besides you can achieve all the same advantages of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with these gas guzzlers just by changing how the gasoline and diesel is made....Show more
Karl Samiec: H2O is a greenhouse gas, but the atmosphere can only hold so much. There's no limit to how much CO2 or CH4 the atmosphere can hold.Well obviously the fuel cell needs fuel. But the with fuel cell it's theoretically more efficient because electricity is being generated directly, instead of making heat and being converted to electricity.Who s! ays H2 production for natural gas is messy? Just run the natural gas t! hrough really hot water and it's pretty much automatic. Who says the H2 distribution has to have tremendous costs? Why not just use natural gas, like you already said? Who says these costs have to be paid for by the federal government? It should be up to the utility companies to run their businesses. Actually, the coolest proposal I ever saw was to generate the hydrogen at powerplants at night (when electricity demand is lower) and send it through vacuum insulated pipes as a cryogenic liquid. Inside this liquid our power grid could be superconducting cables. So we'd move to a hydrogen economy and we'd greatly improve the efficiency of the power grid. I'd love for a power utility to try that somewhere and see if it really is worth the trouble or not....Show more
Curtis Josef: even the US DOE has declared H2 DOA.
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