Posted on 07/18/2003 11:15:37 PM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou
Green-spirited individuals hoping to do their part to save the environment by buying hydrogen-fuelled cars next year are in for expensive and rude surprises, a study by a Canadian and a U.S. scientist says.Establishing an infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars, touted by their proponents as a wonder solution to global warming and smog, would cost $5,000 per vehicle, says the study by David Keith, a Canadian atmospheric physicist teaching at Carnegie Mellon University and Alex Farrell of the California Institute of Technology.
Although cars operating on hydrogen fuel cells emit only water vapor, switching to hydrogen would be about 100 times more expensive than simply making present cars less polluting, they say.
Although hydrogen cars would not emit the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, making power plants cleaner burning could achieve the same effect at 1/10 the cost, says the paper published today in the U.S. journal Science.
Many factors conspire to drive up the price of the hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, which the Ford Motor Co. will begin to sell in a limited way in Vancouver next year.
Transporting and storing the difficult-to-contain hydrogen gas is one.
But equally important is dealing with the byproducts formed by the creation of hydrogen, considered a "clean fuel." Hydrogen is currently made as an offshoot of oil and coal refining. But this process creates a huge amount of carbon dioxide.
No one is sure how to keep that carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere and heating up the planet.
"Hydrogen cars should be seen as one of several long-term options, but they make no sense anytime soon," the research paper says.
Prof. Keith was more scathing in an interview.
"My take-home message is that hydrogen cars are to some extent a technological solution in search of a problem. People are attracted to them because they appear to be a magic answer to a whole series of problems. But if you turn the question around and ask, 'What is my problem and what what are reasonably cost-effective solutions,' . . . A hydrogen fuel-cell car is not an early part of any cost-effective solution to any of your problems."
Given this uncertainty, he added that the Canadian support of hydrogen-fuel research, notably at the National Research Centre in Vancouver and through subsidies for hydrogen industries, such as Ballard Power Systems Inc., also in Vancouver, might prove to be the proverbial pig in a poke.
"One of the issues, right or wrong, is Canada betting on a hydrogen horse that is actually going to end up running anywhere? I think one should be very skeptical, despite all the hype."
Defenders of what is sometimes called the "hydrogen economy" said the paper's analysis misses several important points, one being the increase in the cost of gasoline.
"Today, fossil fuels are relatively cheap. When we use up half the supply of the world's oil, the price is going to shoot up. Will that be 2010 or 2020 or 2037? Nobody knows for sure," said Jeremy Rifkin, a Washington-D.C.-based economist and author of the recent book The Hydrogen Economy.
Ron Venter, a University of Toronto engineering professor and a vice-president of the Canadian Hydrogen Association, points out that North American car companies are experimenting with the clean and localized production of hydrogen by using electricity to break down water and thus circumvent the carbon dioxide-storage issue.
Ballard spokesman Mike Rosenberg said his company is aware that the present car and improvements to it are their chief competitors. "But we think we will overtake the internal-combustion engine eventually."
PBWY, They need a new "spokesman". The hydrogen cars use internal combustion too. Peace and love, George.
Oooops.
Sorry... I read that wrong.
Never mind.
Pure hogwash, in his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press), author Bjorn Lomberg points out that $40 per barrel oil will immediately increase world reserves from a 40 years supply to 250 years because vast known oil shale deposits will become economically viable.
And it's domestically produced. Place a $40/BBL tariff on imported oil and put Saudi Arabia out of bussiness forever. Use the resulting $90 Billion/yr to reduce income taxes. I tend to be a free trader and libertarian, but the current situation puts us at the mercy of savages.
He couldn't be driving too much. The energy density in this mixture is much poorer than gasoline - maybe got 10 miles per gallon. And of course there are vast reserves of hydrocloric acid and hydrogen peroxide sitting untapped in Rocky Mountains. Don't ask about the by products.
Could conceivably power, maybe, a rather small amatuer liquid fueled rocket. There is only so much energy in any chemical fuel, and that energy is calculable. The amount of energy nescessary to move a given weight of machinery a given distance is also calculable. Even two pints of a very high energy fuel such as nitroglycerine would not power a car for three months. All of these "super carburetor" and magic fuel sclaims are so much BS.
Senator Barbara Boxer said today that the EPA has just advised her that humans also emit the potent carbon dioxide when breathing --- so she will ask for studies by the EPA into ways to reduce this potent emission by humans.
I believe the 02 would be consumed when the hydrogen is recombined with oxygen (back into water) to produce the energy.
Not true. The Hindenberg used hydrogen which was initially blamed for the disaster. Subsequent investigations have advanced the possibility that the treatment applied to the skin of the dirigible was the true cause.
People aren't dissing the hydrogen fuel itself so much as the pie-in-the-sky claims that it will solve every energy problem known to man.
A small hydrogen fuel cell may eventually power homes and get us off the grid.
Yes, one of them may eventually do just that but it's going to take a major technological breakthrough or two to make that possible.
It's long been a dream of mine to see the Arab countries lose their oil riches and go back to fighting each other over sand and camel routes. Sorry, I know that doesn't sound very Christian of me, but Arab/Muslim fanaticism has been a pox on the planet for decades, all because they started getting weapons and oil revenue.
I love all those "smoking pot funds terror" commercials. It's much closer to the truth to say that driving our cars funds terror.
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