RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Frankie is Deca-Horny

Remember the Hindenburg? That is your future with hydrogen. How would you like to have all those mini-Hindenburgs careening down the freeway? On a serious note, it takes much more energy to obtain the hydrogen than you gain from it. Perhaps if we had the matter-antimatter engines on Star Trek, we could use that energy to extract the hydrogen. Wait a minute, if we had those engines, why would we need hydrogen? UPDATE: I need to respond to comments below. You can take all the wind power, solar power, etc. on earth and you can't produce enough to make hydrogen work. Why? Because the collectors are too large and take too much space. The vast amount of space needed to amass solar power is prohibitive. Where would you grow the crops, put the roads or put houses? With rapidly explanding population, space is more at a premium. The NIMBY crowd (Not In My Back Yard) will stop large scale use of solar and wind. (Ironically the environmentalists are ususally the loudest in the NIMBY chorus.) Wind power is even more problematic. I am familiar to the sub-polar areas of northern Canada, for instance, and it does not have the wind resources that further south has. The amount of energy needed to convert hydrogen to a usuable fuel is prohibitive. That is pure and simple physics! Energy is energy--matter is matter in ordinary applicatons. It takes so much energy to make a compound, i.e. water, and it takes at least an equal amount of energy to break that compound into its component parts--no short-cuts or magic exists. The solution under present technology, of course, is E=MC2. The atom has unbelievable energy, as we all know, and we must get on with it and junk all this solar, wind, biomass etc. That shall not solve our needs. (I suppose we could keep a few demonstration projects to salve the feelings of the tree-huggers.) If we can contain fusion reactions that is something else. The problem is the prohibitive amount of energy needed to commence the reaction. Also how do you control something as hot as the sun? There are no free lunches.

[recalls Bush's rants about hahdrujin fyool cells 'n cars that run on 'em during one of his State of the Union addresses...] Dunno...if Bush is touting the potential of hydrogen, I automatically ask "what's in it for his Yale alum buds and his compadres in the US oil cartels?" See what happens when you lie all the time? You get jaded Schadenfreudians.

At this point, I'd say that hydrogen fuel cells are the clean energy source of the future. While there are still plenty of problems to be worked out, you have to admit that the potential of a fuel source where the only emission is good old water is pretty high.

From what I can tell, Hydrogen is like a battery to us. We can use it to make Nuclear, Solar, Coal(is there clean Coal?, etc; into a portable volitile like gasoline. We can't mine it. We have to spend energy to process it. The source of energy is the key.

While I'm tempted to chastise the short-sightedness of previous postings to this list (did you REALLY think science would "stand pat" in the face of current limitations?), I'd rather focus on current and future ingenuity regarding alternative fuels, and hydrogen will be a monster in this field. Almost every renewable form of energy on this list can be harnessed for the efficient production of this item. The latest breakthrough comes courtesy of Israeli scientists, who have figured out a way of channeling solar-derived hydrogen into zinc oxide for simpler extraction. Canadian engineers are using solar hydrogen in combination with coal (one of the old-guard resources the planet is lousy with) to produce solar methanol, which emits less carbon dioxide than conventional methods. Australians are getting better with titania-ceramic photoelectrodes for large-scale commercial applications. The United States (three cheers for the home team) is having great success with direct solar-thermal hydrogen from dissociation of water vapor. ALL of these methods of hydrogen extraction are cheap and environmentally friendly (no burning of fossil fuels is required). Solid-state transfer through metal hydride alloys will prove to be the best option for mass transit (low-pressure safety that can eventually be distributed like canned tennis balls). Link all of these options together with equatorial solar platforms (picture a giant floating wristwatch band), tidal generators, polar wind farms, and the amazing expandability of oscillating water columns, and oil will become a laughably-distant memory. It's all just a matter of when world governments are willing to sever their monetary ties with entrenched interests and start hammering serious funding into these projects. The next thirty years are make-or-break crucial. UPDATE: The DOE estimates the amount of space needed to power the entire United States through solar energy to be one thousand (1000) square miles; admittedly, that's one helluva chunk of land, but in practical terms, that'd be the equivalent of one-fifth of the state of Nevada. Space concerns for these projects will be moot, as they'll be predominantly situated at sea (where very few people will bother complaining about them), and hooked into shared grid systems to take advantage of differing methods at differing times. No one argues that hydrogen is anything more than a "bridge" option (something to segue out of our 100 to 120-year supply of petroleum and into more-plentiful forms of renewable energy). A prior poster (hiya, Genghis) reminded me of another fabulous form of renewable energy I'd plum forgot about: atomic. If we got serious about that (and would commit to a safe way of ditching the waste product--like preprogrammed elevator platform launches of waste into the sun), we'd have the whole thing licked. It may all seem like science-fiction now, but keep in mind: there was no shortage of naysayers a hundred years ago, either.

A promising source of energy, but the technology needed to make this happen is at least 3 decades off. First you need to find a way to extract and transport the hydrogen in bulk, and then you have to build the fuel cells. Government policy is completely reversed on this one; they want to develop the fuel cells before they even figure out how to harness hydrogen as a fuel source. Essentially you want to know how hydrogen works before you develop the actual product. Remember the Hindenburg? Hydrogen is a very combustible and unstable element that may not be a logical source of fuel in the final analysis. One way or another, it's quite a difficult challenge to develop hydrogen as an alternate fuel, that's why the government chose to take on the relatively easy part of developing fuel cells first. But this is a corner that can't be cut if we want to make hydrogen fuels a reality. We simply don't quite know yet whether or not hydrogen will be able to compete with other alternate fuels in terms of feasibility and cost, like biomass and ethanol.

DennyO is right. Hydrogen power probably isn't going to happen in the near future. Even if kept at a rediculously high 10,000 psi, hydrogen would still take up four times the space gasoline does. Imagine cars driving around with a giant 60 gallon super high pressure Hindenburg strapped to it. That's a good idea.

remember the hindenburg?? that's your argument? idiot....

I'm still out to town on this one. The main problem is the high level of energy required from conventional sources required to obtain the H2.

The idea of a hydrogen economy is bogus. Its being prompted by people to get big grants or to hoodwink stick buyers. Hydrogen does not exist in free form, it must be either extracted from natural gas, in which case the carbon content is just shifted into heavier fuels, like diesel or bunker oil, or else, hydrogen must be produced by using vast amounts of elecricity to electrolyze water (remember high school chemistry?) So, really, hydrogen is just a way of transferring energy. If you have spare natural gas, just pipe it and convert vehicles to use it, much easier and more dense in energy terms than hydrogen. Rgualr poistoin engines can be converted to run on natural gas. Or, if you had great gobs of electical generation and trasmision capacity (we do not), transmit the power over wires and charge batteries on board cars. I cannot foresee a very safe situation with cars and trucks having highly compressed hydcrogen. And, you would not get much range anyway, its just too hard to pack much hydrogen into any practical size and practical strength tank.

Hydrogen is dangerous and not good in cars. The interchangable bodies that ClassicTVFan47 is talking about is being manufactured by GM only. It has nothing to do with hydrogen at all. Hydrogen engines would be extremely slow is vehicles. The chassi on the cars would need to be replaced every 20 years. You could buy a truck, minivan, sedan, whatever you neede and fit it right on the platform. The engine on these "thingies" is at the bottom of the vehicle, but GM is putting in gas engines. This futuristic vehicle will be available sometime in the next 10 years. Trucks and SUV's wouldn't have the power that they need. Like anmalone stated, Remember the Hindenburg!!

Awesome! When I heard George W. Bush allocated tons of money for hydrogen cars, I applauded! It's an envrionmentally-friendly and futuristic style of transporation! The "engine" would fit on the bottom of the car, so, you could have interchangable bodies--want to take a passenger car, van, SUV? Take your pick!

Remember the Hindenberg. Hydrogen is a nightmare for transportation, storage and distribution. It is entirely too volatile for general use.