|
|||||||
| Coffee Lounge Talk amongst other community members. |
 |
|
|
LinkBack | Topic Tools | Rate Topic |
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
plus we'd be driving around mini hydrogen bombs.
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Thats what I was trying to say earlier, the technology isn't here. Cost of goods alone make fuel cell technology a no go for quite some time. :)
There are still major technological issues to deal with and its going to take time, and I don't mean a year or two. Quote:
Last edited by Leviathan; Dec 15, 04 at 12:37 PM.
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
They shoot 5000 psi hydrogen storage tanks with a rifle without any incident. Hydrogen contrary to popular belief is quite safe compared to gasoline or other gases like propane. It goes straight up!
Quote:
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
but if there was a car accident and it caused a leak to the storage tank, wouldn't that trigger the massive explosion? especially if the tank is that pressurized (5000 psi)? im not sure what current technologies are.. just asking out of curiosity :)
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
not sure if somebody has said this, but there is going to be a new way of getting oil out of wheat (i think) reserves. apparently canada is the only country that has the technology to extract the oil. i'm gunna have to research this more.
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
^ yeah that's ethanol. gas stations are already supplying mixtures of normal gasoline with ethanol and it burns much cleaner (although older cars can't handle it).
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Ethanol and hydrogen take more energy to make than they put out and
are thus create a net loss of energy. The hydrogen economy could fill in a very small and I mean maybe 1% of the fossil fuel economy. The thing with peak oil that was already pointed out is that it means that we are half way, not that it's run out. This doesn't mean there is no reason to be worried though. Anyone familiar with oil production can tell you that when you first tap an oil well it's basically under pressure and comes out with no real work. After that is gone it's a lot more expensive and harder to pump out. So in other words the reason that peak oil is so alarming to the experts is that it means that once we reach it the cost of oil will never go down. The effects of this to our economy and beyond will be devastating. For any of you familiar with OPEC you'll know that the amount of oil you are allowed to produce is directly related to known reserves. In an effort to produce more oil, and make more money, almost every OPEC country falsely inflated their stated reserves through the 80's. So even as it stands it's likely that there is less oil than we are being told. Saudi Arabia has the largest oil reserves of any OPEC nation and if they have passed peak oil than by default the whole world has. As for the Canadian tar sands. For starters there is a huge amount of oil there, as much or more than Saudi Arabia has. The catch is that the cost of extracting it is very high and will increase as cheap oil increases in price. In other words the availability of cheap oil right now is making it much less expensive to extract the tar sands oil. At the end of the day the earth has one input of energy, the sun. The fossil fuels that we have become so dependant on are in essence a battery that has been charged by the sun. Unfortunately they took millions of years to charge, thus being "fossil" fuels, and have been rapidly depleted in less than 75 years. So the question is what next? Well there's a lot of different possibilities as far as how it's going to go down. An obvious prediction is that it's going to lead to war's, after all we've been fighting over oil for the last 50 years and there was more than enough of it to go around. Beyond playing that guessing game the main options that we have for generating power are as follows. Nuclear: in short this is an expensive way of producing electricity and has bad environmental problems yet to be addressed, namely what to do with the waste products. Also with new technologies it's not as likely but lets not forget Chernobyl. Coal: still a very inexpensive form of generating energy which massive reserves still available. The main draw back in that it's a very dirty source of energy that creates massive amounts of greenhouse gasses. Also the particulate that it puts into the air in mass quantity is known to cause cancer. Hydro Electric: while it's one of the least expensive and best ways to generate power it only accounts for some 10% of the electricity used. The other 90% is generated through coal or natural gas. As mentioned coal is very undesirable because it's so polluting and natural gas is going to run out. Wind and Solar: these two are the cleanest sources and obviously renewable. Due to obvious limitations though they are not going to be able to replace the fossil fuel economy. What this leaves us with is that there will be changes in the way that we live. Outsourcing of manufacturing jobs will eventually start to slow down as transportation costs rise. "Made in China" will be a lot less common. Food costs will increase as the world food supply is currently dependant on oil for everything from fertilizers, transportation, pesticides, and of course the tractors that work the fields. With that we'll also need to localize food production and it will once again become labour intensive. The 2000 mile salad that was delivered by semi trailers to Toronto in the middle of the winter will be a thing of the past. If you want to read up on this just keep current with as many different sources as possible. This isn't a conspiracy theory and the best article I read on it recently was in the Economist, by any means a reliable source for information. The main reason I see for a lack of awareness on this issue is that really, who wants to think about this? There's, no pun interned, just no bright side to this issue.
|
|
Dec 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
I'm not sure how this relates to it only taking a 1% chunk out of the fossil fuel market? You have to look at the well to wheel efficiency of the whole system. A fuel cell is much more efficient than an internal combustion engine for instance. J Where did you come up with the 1% number? There are some big oil companies including cheveron texaco and shell that have invested quite a bit into the "hydrogen economy" I'm fairly certain it will happen, just not in the near future.
Quote:
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
That is a much to simplistic view. As I have said before you need to look at the "Well to Wheel" efficiency, what you lose in the hydrogen generation you gain in the application of the hydrogen. If your argument were a sound one, then nobody would be looking into using hydrogen, you should do some research on iceland, they want to be the first country to have a hydrogen economy. Remember the reason we are looking into hydrogen is not because of efficiency but because of need. Nothing is 100% efficient. You do realize that there is energy lost in all energy conversion, mostly as heat. A hydro electric plant will lose significant energy in turning turbines etc, A nuclear plant loses a lot of energy in the way of heat.
Quote:
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly, I understand that hydrogen is not something that can be farmed, it has to be extracted and that takes energy. That energy can come from pretty much anywhere, it could be a hydroelectric plant, chemical reaction or pretty much anything, but this does not mean that its not going to replace gasoline, natural gas and other energy sources.
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
won't work at all. What I'm saying is that it's not going to be able to replace fossil fuels. Quote:
Economy If you read my previous post you'd notice that in N.A. we only generate enough hydro electric to account for 10% of the electricity we use. The rest is generated through natural gas (the large majority), coal fired, and nuclear power plants. Never mind the massive amount of energy we use in our cars. So as it stands with out fossil fuels we need to increase our production of electricity through renewable sources a 1000% just to meet current consumption. Now if you want to look at generating enough electricity to make enough hydrogen where will we get the electricity? A country like Iceland with a population of less than 300,000, and abundant clean electricity could probably as this article suggests convert to hydrogen. Compare that to a country like the US with 300,000,000 people that use personal vehicles for 90% of their transportation. What about China a country of over 1,200,000,000 billion people that relies on coal for just over 2/3 of it's energy needs? The reality is that no amount of solar, wind, or hydro electric is going to be enough to replace fossil fuels. What needs to change is the way we live. We need to live close to where we work and preferably be able to walk. We need to upgrade our passenger and freight rail systems. We need to start working on improving solar and wind powered technologies. We also need to start using less fossil fuels and stretching them out for as long as we can to ease the transition to alternatives. Last edited by Senior; Dec 16, 04 at 01:07 PM. Reason: edit for clarity
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
fossil fuels are extremely portable and this is why they are so widely used.. it's hard to fit a hydroelectric dam or nuclear power plant into your car. Hydrogen and batteries provide an alternate source of portable power... yes the hydrogen needs to be produced, but the idea is that it's produced from cleaner energy sources such as thermal, wind, wave, solar or hydro. The first four are 100% clean energy sources because we are simply using energy that would get disappated into random heat energy anyway and we're just using it for a specific purpose before that eventually happens, and we just end up with water as an endproduct (which we started with anyway). If however, fossil fuels are used to produce hydrogen, then it is basically less effecient than what we have going right now, and of course this would be stupid, although I can see it happening in the States. If batteries are charged using clean energy, then they are also very environmentally friendly, and they have the added bonus of having absolutely no exhaust emmisions - however the batteries themselves do have somewhat toxic chemicals in them.
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Even if you are able to find alternatives, you still have to consider something called the PETRO-DOLLAR which is pegged to fuel production. Solar panels and wind mills can only do a fraction of what oil can do, and the American economy is predicated on more GROWTH with every year. Fuel production has to increase just to keep the economy afloat. Here's the interview again:
http://www.innersites.com/feet2fire/...f-09-26-04.ram Skip the first ten minutes.
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
I'll post some links later, but just to let you know, you can produce hydrogen without either electricity or water. Electrolysis is only one way of producing hydrogen, I've personally worked with methanol reformers that only needed a spark to ignite the flame, there is also other chemical methods being worked on as well, I'll post links to some companies later. Also remember that the devices running on hydrogen will be much more efficient than there current day counter parts. For example using a solid oxide fuel cell to power and heat your home.
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Global daily oil consumption is averaging more than 82 million barrels a day. Consumption is expected to swell to 140 million barrels a day by 2025, with most of the increase coming from China and India. So the riddle is how are we going to replace this?
|
|
Dec 16, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
If the world runs out of power, they should set up buildings full of those power-generating fitness bikes and have people employed to riding those bikes 24/7 to power cities =) Or a big wheel in the middle of the town that people can gather around and push. It'll turn a giant gear that'll power everything. It'll be great. don't worry about it!
|
|
Dec 17, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
