Have you seen this!?! Burning saltwater

Joe Fish reverend.joe at gmail.com
Wed Sep 12 13:31:36 CDT 2007


Not saying it's impossible, BUT, as a friend of mine on this list often used
to say to me,  I'm from Missouri.

Ya gotta show me.

I do *hope* this is a viable solution, though the reality is
(notwithstanding claims from people trying to sell you on the idea of
something they want to sell you someday) hydrogen in gaseous form is KNOWN
to leak from WHATEVER container it's put in at a somewhat-alarming rate --
and this site doesn't even MENTION anything about leakage, at least not that
I found in a quick perusal.  Car companies think plugging your car in is too
much hassle for Americans?  How do they think we'll react, then to letting
it sit for 3 days and coming back to find a full tank half-emtpy?

I think if there's a solution to be had, its in storing hydrogen in the
vehicle in some chemical form in which its far easier to separate out than
it is in water.  There's been some progress in research on this front,
storing the hydrogen in some sort of solid (?!?) pellets (maybe combined
with magnesium somehow? I forget, but you can Google and find it, I'm
sure.).

But its still just that ... RESEARCH.

The other problem is that the site doesn't go into how much detail about
just how many solar panels you're gonna need to create enough electrical
power to electrolyze enough hydrogen to power a SINGLE one-family car, much
less to think of doing for hydrogen as some sort of large-scale
infrastructural solution.   The fact that they're NOT talking about this
HUGE stumbling block to their "near-zero-cost" transportation energy
solution makes me a bit skeptical of their other claims ... to say the
least.

I forget the number, but you can look up the square footage for the Honda
FCX one-family pilot project in California -- I think its something like
1700 square feet (!) of solar panels to create enough hydrogen to power that
one family's car (they fill up about once a week).  This isn't a function of
how you store it or any of that crap, its simply that it takes a HUGE amount
of electrical power to electrolyze a quantity of hydrogen sufficient for
pushing a 2000-pound car around for a week using fuel cells -- power that
could be put on the grid and stored in batteries much more efficiently, at
least with technology available TODAY.  If the tech from the OP greatly
reduces the amount of energy required for this process, then maybe we're
onto something, though we STILL have the problems of infrastructure
(platinum for fuel cells is a biggie) and storage.

The point is, like the saying goes, this stuff has all been 30 years away
from being viable for the last 30 years, kinda like computer AI ... except a
longer time period.

My opinion is that, in the short-to-near term, our only viable
big-ticket-item solution that stands ANY chance of getting us through this
go-around of the energy crunch is CONSERVATION, much as we Americans (and
our over-inflated senses of entitlement) might not like to think about what
that entails.






JOE


On 9/12/07, Geoffrion, Ron P [IT] <Ron.Geoffrion at sprint.com> wrote:
>
> >> And don't even get me STARTED on how impractical hydrogen-as-a-fuel is
> in terms of STORAGE losses ...
>
> Umm...from http://unitednuclear.com/ Research and Devlopment site.
>
> http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2.htm
>
> Quoting the site:
> May 22nd, 2007:
>
>
>    Our Hydrogen Fuel System is not yet available for sale. There are legal
> problems with several components of the unit which is preventing its sale.
>    Until the legal proceedings are complete, we won't be moving forward
> the system.
>    Thank you all for your emails & support. The legal action is due to the
> actions of the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) attempting to
> remove the necessary chemicals used in this system from public use.
>
>
>
>
>   "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve
> neither security nor liberty."
>
>          -Benjamin Franklin
>
> Unquote.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron Geoffrion
> 913.488.7664
>
>
>
>
>
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