A hydorgen fuel station opened this friday in california to further test the potential of the fuel. http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBIUBCTC5E.html The Chino station will fuel three or more Hyundai Sport Utility Vehicles, designed specially for this test. The research project is part of a five-year Department of Energy cost-sharing program, designed to demonstrate safe, practical hydrogen technologies.
Well its obviously idiotic to continue to use oil or coal as our base for generating energy, on several levels, whether in cars or for electricity, and it has been for 20-30 years. Eventually, maybe 100 years from now, people will look back at us as barbarians. Where is wind power on this planet, apart from a short stretch of Hwy 10? What about Solar? Ah but there is the rub ... the corporate planet has too much invested in burning up oil and coal for us to get a break. Today oil broke $51 a barrel. A year from now that will look cheap. But there is a considerable strength of massive international interests that will keep us all oil-zombies for the near future, 10 years or so.
You shouldn't blame corparations for it as long as your driving and heating a home and using platic too. We're all apart of this. We'll never run out of oil, its feasible to turn organic, and industrial waste into oil, and as it stands right now, theres a plant producing oil from organic sources such as turkey byproducts into oil. The final product is being produced for $80 a barrel, http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/articles/0,15114,1018747,00.html While the price may be a little high, this technology is still in its infancy, A pilot plant in Philadelphia has successfully used the process to safley break down water and oil from sewage, medical waste, electronics, even leftovers from petrolium refining. Apparently the only byproduct is sterile water. http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Into-Oil1may03.htm So the problems with oil aren't it's amount, we can have oil forever... in fact this technology will probably eventually make oil much cheaper then oil mined is today. However, there are still many reasons to get off of oil as soon as possible,, the byproducts of oil use or toxic, and probably contributes to global warming. I see the ten year time frame a little unrealistic, I see oil being the major source of fuel for the next 20-30 years, with a gradual shift to a hydrogen and fusion economy.
*BTW, Fusion is very different from traditional nuclear fuel, It doesn't need any dangerous radioactive elements like uranium, only an isotope of hydrogen called Deuterium, and thus requires no weapons grade matireals, so theres no chance for sabatoge, and most importantly, there is absolutely no possibility of nuclear runaway, resulting in an incident like Chernoyl. This fuel cycle is tremendoudly effecient, and can produce energy to sustain the entire planet, and although it may be hard to believe, may be the most enviormentally friendly way to produce energy* This can be controlled in a magnetic chamber, the only problem is it requires a very large amount of energy to sustain the very powerful magnetic field needed to contain the reaction... But recently more success has been had on the problem of geting more energy per the magnetic field. A multi-national team constructing the IETR, (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) Physicists have already built reactors that can achieve fusion, but none has yet produced more energy than it consumes. If all goes as planned, ITER will change that. By building a bigger, more powerful reactor, scientists hope to produce 500 megawatts of power from just 50 megawatts input. Fuel in the form of the hydrogen isotope deuterium is extracted from water, and the small amount of radioactive waste it yields decays to a safe level in decades. In contrast, today’s nuclear fission reactors generate waste that can stay hot for thousands of years. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1573450.stm http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,20967,1021090,00.html
Hydrogen fuel appears to be pretty feasible, but we'll still need some oil around as long as were using plastics, thats where the organic oil comes in handy, but a break from using oil as a fuel is important. Another interesting option is a variant of hydrogen fuel called Browns Gas... essentially, this is a way to turn water into fuel and leave Oxygen as a byproduct. This is very benificial, especially when the fact that O2 levels are lower in major Cities such as Tokyo, (12% vs a normal of 17%) http://www.energyoptions.com/tech/browns.html
Thats simply not true anymore, hydrogen fuel cells can be made in many ways, and the reason natural gas production of hydrogen cells is so desirable is because its made with already existing infrastructure, and its so efficient. In the future, this process can be completed with a renewable resource, such as nuclear energy (fusion) but for right now, You can make a lot of hydrogen cells with a little fuel, with dramatically reduced CO2 emmisions with carbon capture and seperation processes. http://www.climatetechnology.gov/library/2003/tech-options/tech-options-2-2-2.pdf
I understand your point, but fossil fuels aren't the only way to produce H2, in the future it can be done using fusion power... As those other articles I posted earlier pointed out, there are plants making oil out of organic waste... The goal isn't to stop emiting CO2 overnight... thats simply unrealistic, what we want is to shift over to a more economical and renewable environmentally sound energy source in the next 50 years. There will still be CO2 emissions from the process, but this is much less then burning fosil fuels because of CO2 seperation processes implemented in the process of seperating hydrogen. Of course this technology requires more research, before it can be implemented on a large scale but that certainly doesn't mean it isn't viable. We're going to be using oil for at least 30 years, so this is the perfect time for fine tuning the process. I can't see anything at all disapointing there, of course it does reflect the price of the process to convert water into H2, but as it says, its showing significant progress to a cost effective clean system. And again in the future we can use fusion to power the process of separation, instead of fosil fuels, and thus emiting no CO2. This is looking into the future of course, which is exactly what we should be doing... I'm not an expert on the subject, but I do think thrity more years of a petro economy is expected, with a gradual shift to a petro and hydro economy. This will dramatically lower CO2 emissions and have a more sustaining appeal. then in maybe 60-70 years in the future, fusion will be implemented in large scale plants. By maybe 2080 to 2090, the ideal economy, fusion-hydrogen will be possible, fusion will be able to be sustained, and be used for large scale refining process such as the spliting of water into H2 and O2, and perhaps electricity generation, while the hydrogen fuel cells can be used for smaller tasks such as automobiles. No CO2 emmisions, and a almost limitless amount of energy could be available to us by 2100. Its still in research phases now, but its very promising.
Hah, Yeah thats the way with all new tech though... its either promoted that it'll save humanity or it'll mutate our children... there doesn't seem to be much middle ground where it comes to perceptions of things. I agree with you on the trickiness of designing of a very effective power generation system... we'll probably never get to the point where we can generate a clean, 100% effecient fuel cycle, but the goal should be to maixmize effeciency and minimize waste. My Friends dad is a chemical engineer who owns a petro company called Holloman, has a patent going through congress on some more effecient way to burn hydro-carbons. If this were implemented effectively it could further reduce emissions in the process of converting water to hydrogen cells.
