Re: My take on the State of the Union

Daniel Cassidy wrote:
> Steve Hutton wrote:
> 
>> And where are those hydrogen cars he promised last year?
>>  
>>
> Daft idea anyway:
> 
> This car runs on hydrogen, it's clean and eco-friendly!
> Uh-huh? And how do you produce the hydrogen?
> Why, with electricity of course!
> Oh I see, and so how do you produce the electricity? By burning 
> eco-friendly fossil fuels, I presume.

Not exactly.  The current method of producing Hydrogen is to make if from Natural Gas. 
This doesn't use electricity as the energy source, but the CO2 is released into the 
environment just the same as if the Natural Gas was burned.  Very slight advantage is that 
  it produces no actual pollutants as it would if the Natural Gas was burned in an 
internal combustion engine.  But this method is not practical since we don't have enough 
Natural Gas unless one of the bizarre theories such as getting it from deep underground or 
from the deep ocean works.  The only two practical way are with Atomic power or direct 
solar production.  In which case, the fuel cell just becomes a better battery.

There are other possibilities such as running the fuel cells on Natural Gas or Methanol. 
Methanol is made from Coal -- well actually, it is made from Coke which is Coal with 
everything but the Carbon boiled off.  Making Coke is a very high pollution process.  The 
"water gas" process of making the Methanol gets the Hydrogen form water but releases half 
of the Carbon as CO2.

These alternatives do have the advantage of lower pollution from the vehicle.  No Carbon 
Monoxide, no unburned hydrocarbons, and no NOx.  But, this is still going to be fossil 
fuel unless we use atomic powered hydrolysis of water to get the Hydrogen -- I don't see 
direct solar conversion working in the near future.

--
JRT


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