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[Suikoguy]

If what i've read is right, it takes a lot of energy to make pure hydrogen. So why are we pushing a technology that wastes energy?

Shouldn't we be pushing research in

1.) Battery Technology
2.) Harnessing Lightning
3.) Solar Cell Technology

It would make more sense to me, that or fission technology so we can create pure hydrogen without polluting just as much.

One way or another we need to quit using Oil to get from Point A to point B

 

[Gruco]

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy/index.cfm

I think it gets attention because of the potential it represents, even though we're several breakthroughs (obtaining the hydrogen, transporting it, and the fuel cells themselves) away from it being really practical.

Anyways, wind and biomass seem pretty cool.

 

[LusDekkar]

I think with fuel cells you can use either methane or hydrogen.

1.) Battery Technology

You've still got to put energy into the battery, that just means generating the electricity else where and then charging your car, or some sort of hybrid-like system, where you car generates some energy to move (with oil or fuel cells) and then charges the battery.

2.) Harnessing Lightning

What do they say about lighting striking?

3.) Solar Cell Technology

Currently solar technology is inefficient, but like most things, it'll improve with time. Also if you think of the amount of time you see sunlight in winter, most days your'e not giong to get enough power to run your car.

 

[SKluck]

Solar power sucks.

Harness lightning? What kind of crack are you on? We don't live in a perpetual storm world.

 

[Suikoguy]

Solar power sucks.

Harness lightning? What kind of crack are you on? We don't live in a perpetual storm world.

Obviously, however if we had a way to store it...
Solar power sucks beacuse solar cells suck

 

[seanoff]

bugger all pollution (none) , costs coming down to gasoline engine levels qiuckly, able to use renewable fuels, QUIET, etc

Mercedes have a huge program to do with this. They are running busses in Europe and fleets of cars in various countries

http://www.mercedes-benz.com/com/e/home/innovation/laboratory/fuelcell/index.html


Toyota have a very large program also and they are aiming at commercial production
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/tech/environment/fchv/index.html

All the other car companies have large programs and it coming.

read these and understand why the car companies are aiming at a new form of power. And as GAS gets more expensive, this will become even more attractive.


Also if u have another idea people would be happy to listen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

BMW sells 7 series cars that are hydrogen powered near Munich, Germany.

 

[Hitokage]

It would make more sense to me, that or fission technology so we can create pure hydrogen without polluting just as much.

...

Yeah, I'm not going to bother.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

The all powerful hydrogen lobby is pushing for it!

 

[maharg]

We have plenty of ways of storing electricity. Lightning is not special in this regard.

 

[Fjord]

Why would you even ask this question? I mean its obvious what the potential is, its also more commercialy viable then any of your other recommendations.

 

[G4life98]

im still surprised by the lack of resolve by the western economies to to ween ourselves off of opec oil...as it get more expensive every year.

i remember watching pbs one night and it was all about hydrogen fuel cell tech and how it is the fuel of the future.

 

[retardboy]

Whatever.... Anything to stop giving OPEC money.

 

[Phoenix]

im still surprised by the lack of resolve by the western economies to to ween ourselves off of opec oil...as it get more expensive every year.

i remember watching pbs one night and it was all about hydrogen fuel cell tech and how it is the fuel of the future.

As expensive as OPEC is, it pales in comparison to rebuilding the entire planets oil based economy. I'm surprised by how many people don't get this - hell just replacing the gas stations is staggering in price, then there is the retooling of internal combustion engines to run on other energy sources and deploying that around the world, then there is building an infrastructure to produce fuel cells and solar array farms.

If there was money in building an alternative (i.e. it made sense to switch), it would have been done by now or at least be underway.

 

[Hitokage]

As expensive as OPEC is, it pales in comparison to rebuilding the entire planets oil based economy. I'm surprised by how many people don't get this - hell just replacing the gas stations is staggering in price, then there is the retooling of internal combustion engines to run on other energy sources and deploying that around the world, then there is building an infrastructure to produce fuel cells and solar array farms.

If there was money in building an alternative (i.e. it made sense to switch), it would have been done by now or at least be underway.

And that pales in comparison to the fallout of an oil driven economy faced with a rapidly diminishing supply. It's far better that we start transitioning now rather than have to scramble later.

 

[Phoenix]

And that pales in comparison to the fallout of an oil driven economy faced with a rapidly diminishing supply. It's far better that we start transitioning now rather than have to scramble later.

We already have started transitioning - that's why both hybrids, fuel cell concepts, and solar power concepts exist.

 

[Suikoguy]

We already have started transitioning - that's why both hybrids, fuel cell concepts, and solar power concepts exist.

Which is good, but more obviously needs to be done.
Oil is not infinite, and its used in things other then Gas

 

[retardboy]

It's not like you're going to be doing everything at once. Once you invent a technology that can do it cheaply, consumers will buy it automatically. It's not like you have to retool all the existing engines... It's just you build this new technology and when it can be produced and sold at a resonable price, people will buy it. You can still keep the existing gas engines if you already have them, but when they find that the cost outweighs the benefits, they will switch and eventually, everything will be switched. You don't need to deploy them around the world to everyone. It'll eventually get there in time when they need to replace their old combustion engines and nobody is selling them anymore. It's not like everyone needs to switch at the same instant.

 

[ManaByte]

Harness lightning? What kind of crack are you on? We don't live in a perpetual storm world.

1.21 gigawatts?

 

[Suikoguy]

1.21 gigawatts?

All I remember is reading that one bolt of lightning is a ton of power, the problem is we have no way of capturing it all of it.

 

[Phoenix]

It's not like you're going to be doing everything at once. Once you invent a technology that can do it cheaply, consumers will buy it automatically. It's not like you have to retool all the existing engines...
It's just you build this new technology and when it can be produced and sold at a resonable price, people will buy it.

Not so. If that were the case, most cars would be using diesel engines. Fuel is cheaper and the potential for biodiesel makes it very attractive.

You can still keep the existing gas engines if you already have them, but when they find that the cost outweighs the benefits, they will switch and eventually, everything will be switched. You don't need to deploy them around the world to everyone. It'll eventually get there in time when they need to replace their old combustion engines and nobody is selling them anymore. It's not like everyone needs to switch at the same instant.

Noone is talking about that happening at the same instant. But if you're going to talk about the 'cheapness' of alternative fuels - you have to consider the hidden costs of those alternatives and right now those costs make them more expensive than just using unleaded.

 

[aoi tsuki]

Advances in solar cell technology like sprayable (like paint) solar cells will prove fruitful in the future. The problem with solar cells is that they're not efficient enough to convert photonic energy into electrical energy for the purposes of powering a car, which makes them very dependant on continually strong sunlight. And besides, on a bright, hot sunny day, would you want to park your car in the middle of a parking lot, or under a shady tree?

i'm looking into solar cells for personal use though. Things like powering LED arrays to replace lightbulbs in a room, or at the very least, charging the multitude of electronic devices i have. Of course the offset for something like the first example would be that it's simply easier and initially cheaper to get one of the newer flourescent bulbs that screws into a lightbulb socket, but it's still an interesting technology to research, especially considering that after the initial investment of equipment, it costs nothing to run and i wouldn't have to worry about it breaking down

 

[tenchir]

Just think what will happen if we find a way to harness hydrogen efficiently from water.... WATER. You know, the wet stuff we have a lot of. What's the waste can you get from burning hydrogen? WATER!!! If someone find a way to get hydrogen from water easily, he would be billionaire and at the same time we practically solve our energy crisis.

 

[Mau_Mau]

I think people are pushing this form of power because it's an alternative to anything that requires our reliance on the Middle East. Much like people are going to vote for John Kerry because he's anyone but George W Bush.

ZING!!!!!

Oh wait. Thats true too.

 

[sc0la]

...

Yeah, I'm not going to bother.

LOL

Hey guess what; a fuel cell doesn't need hydrogen to run. It just needs a power source. You can make a gasoline fuel-cell, an ethenol fuel cell, or even a solar fuel cell (good luck getting it working with todays technology). Fuel cells just merit investigation as the "batteries" of the future.

And true any "alternative" energy that simply reroutes the energy from non-renewable sources isn't the answer (electric cars), but that doesn't mean we should not be vigorously exploring as many technologies as possible to advance our selves out of the stone age (well atomic age ) of power production.

Solar is actually a really nice way of offsetting our consumption partially, we just have not been thinking about it in truly innovative ways yet. Solar will also not be effective if we continue to use methods of delivery we invented for coal, oil and gas. A distributed grid and energy sharing schemes are much more conducive to generating power via solar energy.

The most inventive placement of solar cells I have seen yet was on large steal posts in a giant parking lot. The cells collected energy all day to power the lots lights at night, while simultaneously providing much need shade to the cars during the wretched sacramento summers. *thumbs up*

EDIT:

Just think what will happen if we find a way to harness hydrogen efficiently from water.... WATER. You know, the wet stuff we have a lot of. What's the waste can you get from burning hydrogen? WATER!!! If someone find a way to get hydrogen from water easily, he would be billionaire and at the same time we practically solve our energy crisis.

See this is a misconception people have. We keep dreaming up these perpetual motion machines... and it will never work. If hydrogen gives off a certain amount of energy and a waste of water when burned, it will take more energy (to accountfor innefficiencies) to create the hydrogen from water. If it takes more energy to make it than it yields (it always will) then it will never be truly cheap. That is why we like fossil fuels, we did not invest any money in embodying the energy, we simply harvest mother natures hard work and that is why we profit from it.

We need to look for benefits of distribution, cleanliness, efficiency among other things with alternative fuels. Not an Elixer for world energy needs.

 

[Hitokage]

The thing about combustable hydrogen is that it's a method to store energy, not produce it. Despite the abundance of the stuff, it's extremely hard to come by in its elemental form naturally. Energy released from burning it doesn't make up for the energy expended in obtaining and transporting it.

Fusion, on the other hand, will produce enough energy to make it more than worthwhile... in about 40 years.

 

[Warm Machine]

Off the coast of Puerto Vallarta in the evenings during the summer months they have incredible lightning storms. I've witness them myself. A bolt of lighting every second for hours on end. To harness that would be something!

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

OK, Idea for a new power generator.


Find a inactive Volcano Crater, a Deep one. Drill it out and install nice big turbinefan. One that builds a charge when the blades are spinning. Then, embedded FIRMLY into the crater in a upwards spiral, more fans. Use a few of them to power the generator/battery on the Fan incase the wind dies down and stops charging. Also, make the fans lightning rods and superconductors. Create a complete typhoon, and harness all that raw power to both keep it going, and power other things.

I suck at drawing diagrams, but this is what I mean.

Not sure how it might affect the atmosphere though. A permanent tornado. Maybe it would act like a giant Air vacume. We could put a big hepa-filter under the bottom fan and cleanse the air. Two for one!

<--- Nobel Peace Prize Winnar.

 

[kevm3]

I know very little about the subject of energy and this might sound like an ignorant question, but I might as well ask it... If we use solar power to some really great extent, would all the absorption of sunlight eventually cause the temperature to lower?

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

I know very little about the subject of energy and this might sound like an ignorant question, but I might as well ask it... If we use solar power to some really great extent, would all the absorption of sunlight eventually cause the temperature to lower?

.............

 

[kevm3]

I told you I don't know shit about the subject... So no use in trying to make me look ignorant, which I already am off the subject. If you're not going to give me a proper answer then don't reply.

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

I told you I don't know shit about the subject... So no use in trying to make me look ignorant, which I already am off the subject. If you're not going to give me a proper answer then don't reply.

............ calm down, Some people are so testy.

 

[SKluck]

I read somewhere that to make up the price difference between one of those hybrid cars and a normal gasoline powered version of the same car (example: civic) on what you save in gas mileage, it would take something like 10 years.

Edit: Maybe it was 6... either way it was over 5 years.

 

[MetatronM]

Actually they seem to be pushing solar power very hard over in Japan. Apparently they generate a pretty fair amount of electricity from it, and I visited Sharp's HQ while I was there (don't ask) and they were flat out crazy about solar power.

 

[Desperado]

I know very little about the subject of energy and this might sound like an ignorant question, but I might as well ask it... If we use solar power to some really great extent, would all the absorption of sunlight eventually cause the temperature to lower?

...




In short, no.

 

[kevm3]

My bad... It's a reaction. I've noticed that the forum is teeming with smartasses at times and I'm just trying to learn, not become the subject of b-level humor.

I'm not saying that the temperature drop will be dramatic, plunging the world into antartic-esque conditions, but if tons of sunlight is being absorbed instead of being left to bounce around, won't that have some sort of effect on the temperatures of local areas? For example, if we have a huge city scape with solar cells on top of all the tall buildings, and these cells absorb immense amounts of the sun's rays, won't the temperature drop at the ground level of the city since so much of these rays are being absorbed at the top? Not a significant drop, but maybe a half a degree or a 1 degree drop.

 

[Hitokage]

Even though solar cells convert sunlight to electricity, there's still a TON of waste heat. When they say a certain solar cell is 15% efficient(run-of-the-mill cells usually are), it basically means only 15% of the absorbed energy actually ends up being electricity... the rest is pretty much heat. Actually, only a minority share of solar radiation that reaches Earth is retained by the atmosphere or the surface, the majority of that energy ends up being radiated back out into space... which is why the Earth looks so bright from places like the moon. Of course, there are issues about too little or too much energy being kept here, hence global warming, but that's not a concern here. Of course, the Earth's internal heat won't be affected at all either.

I probably did a terrible job of answering your question, but all you really need to know is that the only way energy on Earth can be "lost" is for it to go back out into space. Otherwise, it's going to end up as heat somehow.

 

[kevm3]

Ah thanks for the answer Hitokage.

Looking at this from a small scale, from the amounts of sunlight converted to electricity, is the amount of heat given off by waste (even if the results are extremely tiny) more, less or about the same than the heat that would be around if the sunlight was left to roam on its own? I now understand that there may be way too much heat around for solar cells to make any noticeable difference in terms of overall temperature, but would anything happen on a tiny scale, say in an experimental environment? Would the absorption of sunlight cause even very tiny drops in temperature?

 

[Hitokage]

Few places on Earth are in complete isolation. Besides, it wouldn't just "float around" anyway. It'd get absorbed by the ground or road, or by plants which then use part of that energy to photosynthesize food... or simply reflected back out by water.

 

[kevm3]

Oh I see now. Thanks.

 

[Cauliflower of Love]

I know very little about the subject of energy and this might sound like an ignorant question, but I might as well ask it... If we use solar power to some really great extent, would all the absorption of sunlight eventually cause the temperature to lower?

Unless your absortion is through a black hole, no.