Posted on 12/01/2005 11:21:37 PM PST by Baby Driver
Americans who want to be free from their oil dependency may be closer to having affordable alternative fuel choices thanks to some University researchers.
Though the technology for cleaner fuels exists, the high cost of materials and production prevents their widespread and affordable commercial availability.
A group of scientists at the University may have solved the problem by using cheaper metals as catalysts in converting chemical energy into electric energy of a fuel cell.
The current cost of fuel cell technology is prohibitive to commercial application, said Arumugam Manthiram, a mechanical engineering professor who is heading the experiment along with Allen Bard, a chemistry and biochemistry professor.
Manthiram and his team have experimentally tested the use of a metal alloy of palladium, cobalt and molybdenum to replace the more expensive platinum that is now used in fuel cells for the conversion of chemical energy. This alloy would cost roughly one-fifth as much as platinum. Manthiram said that more long-term tests with industrial partners are needed to verify its durability and stability.
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelcellsworks.com ...
1/5th of the price, not 1/2. If it pans out, they might even get it cheaper.
I would like a car that uses Democrats for fuel. How can we make that a reality?
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Didn't some guy in South Africa make a small vehicle that ran on compressed air? I wouldn't suggest just WHERE to stick the collection pipe on Ted Kennedy, but he surely would be an ample source of gas.
I bet you could probably run a car for a year using the U.S. tax code... ;-)
He's right; it is 1/5, which gives down from 10 times as much to only 5 times as much.
You forgot to add the retail mark-up and the in-lieu-of-gas-tax taxes back in.
Rep. Lamar Smith, and the reporter on this story, are imbeciles. Fuel cells generally convert natural gas directly to electricity catalytically, without combustion. Someone explain how this is going to have a big effect on "producing energy without fossil fuels" and "the United States being less dependent on foreign fuel producers."
*BeeeeCauuuuuse...Burning fossil fuels is not
the only way that hydrgen can be produced. And
it cetainly is not the only place that it can
be gotten from..even fromn foriegn sources...I
*think* it's Iceland, that has huge natural
gas resiviors, and is allready preparing to
become a major international supplier of LNG.
Not even bringing up the new standardized
Nuclear plant designs that can produce endless
quantities of hydrogen, right here in the US
and all that money, heck even a quarter of
the money we spend on foriegn oil, will end up getting plowed back into the *american economy, creating
a huge US GNP boost, instead of in antagonistic and
unstable nation states.
All there hot air could be used.
So you don't really know, either.
I'm not sure i understand your question, unless
you can't see that the sooner and more we switch
the fuel we use to power our systems and
infrastructure, the less foriegn fossil fuel we
will need to inport.
There are allreadt telecom companies, hotels,
unversities, major retailers, banks, financial
compnanies, that are allready buying or have bought
350 MW generating fuel cell units for emegency backup
power, and many other much smaller units that can power
relay towwers/switching for days at a time without
being refueled. Power companies are are loosely basing
a new peak hour/outage, "Distributed Power Generators"
to prived power to areas, that would otherwise balack or brown out, in differing emergeny/failure situations.
It's happening, but it needs to happen much faster.
Distribution problems are being work on and solved
as we speak...but it comes down to will, and sweat
to make it happen, to get ourselves protected from
foriegn oil dependance.
The example you give is replacing current central station electrical generation with a more distributed model. That's a great idea, but doesn't do much to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Not all that much oil gets used for power generation, in any case; the vast bulk is used for transportation.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
"I would like a car that uses Democrats for fuel. How can we make that a reality?"
What about the toxic emmissions produced? You could have long lasting damage to the environment from the resulting "Demoparticles"
Well, every advance in stationary and portable
Fuel cells, is more data that can be used to
develop Fuel cells that can power vehicles
faster stonger, & longer. The range of fuel
cell "engines" is increasing, (around 200 miles
now i think), and the size fand the cost of making
them is dropping steeply in the last five years,
whereas power output has been going up. It's getting
to the point where the biggest problem, is not in
having a fuel celll powered alternative to just
about any type of vehicle, is more the building
of a distribution network for the reformulated,
or even unreformulated "fuel" fotr the vehicles.
And that's just a matter of a starting point, one city
here, one city there, andf then stations in between.
Sooner or later there will have to be a push by
government to set up chains of stations, one that goes all the way up and down the east coast, another that goes up and down the Pacific coast highway, and then one across
the nation, east and west, that connect the two.
Once that is built, Spurs will be offshooted, up to detriot, down to Lousiana, Texas, GulfPort, Another spur that goes from NY to Phlildelphia, over to cleveland, Chicago, tying into the Detroit spur...and so on and so on..
Obviously not a replacement for all fossil fuels, but with a bit of cleverness they might be a reasonably significant supplement.
Lots of small supplements are a better strategy than a few big replacements for petroleum. This country's survival should never be hostage to a few sources of energy.
Agreed. The tendency is to look for direct replacements, one for one, which is easy to imagine, but also easily rejected since it "can't replace oil completely," or whatever.
Although to have any significant impact, there'd have to be a pretty large industry (loosely defined) built around alternative sources.
In reality, though, there are lots of "non energy" things that can serve as "sources" of energy, in the sense that they can serve as substitutes for activities that used to require the expenditure of energy.
I had an econ prof once who pointed out that a book could be a great replacement for a gallong gasoline, if one decided to stay home and read, rather than drive someplace to watch a movie.
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