Hyrogen as fuel

bekdik said:
How much would it cost to produce the hydrogen and where would you get it from?
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You can get a home converter for natural gas, if it is pumped to your house. Then its a hydrogen powered hydrogen converter from natural gas. Woop!
 
Johnsilver said:
But so is coal? (I'm a layman:o) Give or take a few million years of free storage.
Still a greenhouse gas.
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Carbon trapped in fossil fuel is better off to be left there. During periods of high CO2 content in the atmosphere plants were also abundant, and ideal conditions to form fossil fuels were present. If you release all that CO2 in the air now global warming will be the result.
So yes it is the same components but the billions of tons of the stuff locked up is a potential time bomb.
Looking at it a different way, fossil fuels are in a very long cycle time, maybe a few million years. If we unlock all of the Carbon trapped in a few decades the results could be quite interesting.
 
timgaul said:
You can get a home converter for natural gas, if it is pumped to your house. Then its a hydrogen powered hydrogen converter from natural gas. Woop!
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It is still fossil fuels though ;) Natural gas, mostly methane, will release some hydrogen, but also a lot of CO2. So weather you do the conversion or the fossil fuel power plant, there is no real difference.
 
nuclear. it's the way to go, sorry to say.
/ ducks the green fringe artillery
 
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murraybiscuit said:
nuclear. it's the way to go, sorry to say.
/ ducks the green fringe artillery
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Hmmm, it can be the way to go... but if there's a melt down, damn...


Does anyone under stand how a Hydrogen car works? it's basically like a big, complex battery :erm:.

And just a question. Say we have hydrogen in our cars in 20 years... now will any of your feel safe knowing you have a highly compressed, hydrogen tank under they back seats? All you need is for someone you drive into you, the tank ruptures and you have a spark... Massive explosion (the Hindenburg anyone!?)

I think what we need are biofuels like Alcohol and Oil... the only problem with those is that all the farmers will rather produce biofuels then food...

However, I really think that it would be possible to use mixtures of Methane, Methanol/Ethanol and maybe fossil fuels (to lower cost). So Methane comes from sewage (which we have crap loads of), the Alcohols from plants(we just need to perfect the process) and the fossil fuels from us (Sasol makes like 40% of our fuel anyway)



This won't stop the release of CO2, but it will slow it down since 2 of the 3 are biofuels (carbon neutral), and if deforestation begins to decline, then the we could make the process carbon neutral :).
 
First you need to decide WHY you don't want to use fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is an awesome energy storage, since you can get much higher densities than with current battery tech. You'll still most likely be burning the fossil fuels to generate the hydrogen.

Biofuels often take more energy to create than they'd yield when used. They looked quite promising from afar because of the heavily subsidised nature of food in the US. So even if they can fuel the farmers, it will also mean less food available to the public. That'll increase the price of food.

Nuclear power is our future for generating power. At least for the time being. For getting it portable? Battery tech is advancing, which is good for electrics, but a hybrid is a good middle groud. You can use the high density fossil fuel to generate electricity, and use stored power to make up the shortfall.
 
Pyro said:
First you need to decide WHY you don't want to use fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is an awesome energy storage, since you can get much higher densities than with current battery tech. You'll still most likely be burning the fossil fuels to generate the hydrogen.
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Regardless, it can reduce your carbon footprint as the amount of carbon dioxide produced when extracting hydrogen is relatively negligible compared to burning crude oil products.

With the advent of hydrogen from manure this becomes negligible and the process actually reverses global warming by removing harmful methane from the atmosphere, merely releasing a much less potent green house gas of carbon dioxide (a GWP 72 times lower than methane).

Biofuels often take more energy to create than they'd yield when used. They looked quite promising from afar because of the heavily subsidised nature of food in the US. So even if they can fuel the farmers, it will also mean less food available to the public. That'll increase the price of food.
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The actual fuel produced is greenhouse neutral. With improved methods, such as using algae ends up in a low overall greenhouse gas emission process.

Nuclear power is our future for generating power. At least for the time being.
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As frightening as nuclear power is, and the dangers of the waste, I see no alternative, in the short term (4 or 5 decades) if global warming is of a higher priority than nuclear waste.

With the nuclear fusion plant under development, if all works according to plan, may begin producing commercial electricity within 4 decades and would ultimately end dependence on fission plants and be the solution we are seeking for electricity producing needs.

If we had a clean, almost inexhaustible source of electricity, namely fusion, then the production of biofuels will become 100% greenhouse neutral regardless of how much energy is expended!

For getting it portable? Battery tech is advancing, which is good for electrics, but a hybrid is a good middle groud. You can use the high density fossil fuel to generate electricity, and use stored power to make up the shortfall.
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The best solution for the near future is, in all likelihood, a biodiesel-hybrid or hydrogen-hybrid engine.
 
scotty777 said:
Hmmm, it can be the way to go... but if there's a melt down, damn...


Does anyone under stand how a Hydrogen car works? it's basically like a big, complex battery :erm:.

And just a question. Say we have hydrogen in our cars in 20 years... now will any of your feel safe knowing you have a highly compressed, hydrogen tank under they back seats? All you need is for someone you drive into you, the tank ruptures and you have a spark... Massive explosion (the Hindenburg anyone!?)

I think what we need are biofuels like Alcohol and Oil... the only problem with those is that all the farmers will rather produce biofuels then food...
Click to expand...

Algae fields for producing biofuels (without killing the algae!) is looking more and more like the possible future of fuel production!

However, I really think that it would be possible to use mixtures of Methane, Methanol/Ethanol and maybe fossil fuels (to lower cost). So Methane comes from sewage (which we have crap loads of), the Alcohols from plants(we just need to perfect the process) and the fossil fuels from us (Sasol makes like 40% of our fuel anyway)

This won't stop the release of CO2, but it will slow it down since 2 of the 3 are biofuels (carbon neutral), and if deforestation begins to decline, then the we could make the process carbon neutral :).
Click to expand...

Methane, Methanol/Ethanol when combined in a hybrid vehicle should see massive declines in carbon dioxide, and even further declines in methane which much more dangerous than CO2.
 
timgaul said:
Algae fields for producing biofuels (without killing the algae!) is looking more and more like the possible future of fuel production!



Methane, Methanol/Ethanol when combined in a hybrid vehicle should see massive declines in carbon dioxide, and even further declines in methane which much more dangerous than CO2.
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Well, for Algae to be effective, what you need is a serious amount of sunlight (which most Arid countries have, the middle-east and even us).

Also, I think we must start to genetically modify those algae in order for them to be more effective (make more oils). So perhaps in the near future our cars won't need crude oil, just a blend of Alcohols and oils (such as octane).

However, I see a problem... Space. The fact is that we will need immense tracks of land for biofuels (from algae to sugarcane), but the only way we will be able to leave the food farmers out of this would be to use algae.

If I was a biofuel company, I'd buy massive tracks of land in the Kalahari, along/near the orange river for obvious reasons :p.


My guess is that when the poo hit the proverbial fan, and petrol hits R10/L+, that's when biofuels will be viable, and worth while to start using, but until then we will be stuck in this hole, this vacuum that is crude oil.
 
Fromw what I understand you also need CO2 to kick the algae production up a notch as well as nutrients to feed it.

So, you could build it somewhere near a coal station and grab some sewage to process for nutrition.

We've got plenty of space in SA.
 
Pyro said:
Fromw what I understand you also need CO2 to kick the algae production up a notch as well as nutrients to feed it.

So, you could build it somewhere near a coal station and grab some sewage to process for nutrition.

We've got plenty of space in SA.
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well, use just pass air through the tanks, and the algae extract the CO2... and you are right, you need nutrients, but not tons and tons of the stuff...

I guess you could process sewage into methane, and then process it again, extracting Nitrogen (ammonia), Potassium, Phosphates, etc...

And after all this, you just treat the water, and make it usable again, and pipe it back into the water works to be used (solving the water problems).
 
Thought experiment:
If I could come up with a cheap (non fossil fuel) way to produce and store H2 and a way to use it in current cars and power stations. What would my life expectancy be and how would the world economy cope?
Can the world afford it?
 
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