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 Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:22 am
Recently, hell the recent State of the Union, Bush said he would focus on fuel cells and car efficiency, and that we are hooked on oil. From all his many many statements about fuel cells and what not, the only true fact he ever said was that we were hooked on oil. The rest... garbage.
Ever wonder why the oil companies (and Bush, the puppet) support fuel cells? Because it won't happen anytime soon at all, and two because they seem to be putting on a good image of "We want to save the world"... though they omit "By which we mean have all the oil run out before we do much of anything about it."
The fuel cell works on hydrogen, which we can really only get from natural gas and hydrolisis of water. Yes natural gas is abundant and so is water but... hydrolisis of water is far to energy demanding to be even considered logical. So all thats left is natural gas.
Now we have a fuel... that needas heavy refinement to leave only hydrogen but lets omit that... We have a fuel, yipee, now do we have any such stations or fueling areas? Maybe two or three in a state, remember that oil companies try to keep up a good image so they will put some here and there. In order for fuel cells to be at all plausible there need to be a mass overhaul of the US fueling system... which of course the oil companies have been supressing.
As we look at all the facts... or atleast my opinions sweatdrop . We can see the through the pregnated statements of Bush and the Oil Companies. Sure fuel cells are a good idea... but there are many ideas that seem good though never reached...
Oh and I did do research on most of this, though some I just judge on my knowledge of chemistry. Hydrolisis of water would require a secondary major energy source, probably oil or fusion reactors. Yes I relaise that the Tokamak has been built but it is currently inefficient, and the oil... well that just helps the big oil companies now doesn't it? As for natural gas, it needs heavy refinement to be made into pure hydrogen, so... ya.
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Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:04 pm
The way I see it, if it is good enough for the military than it is good enough for me. The military has been using fuel cells for about 20yrs now and they work just fine. If they didn't work they wouldn't use it.
Yes, I'm somewhat military minded as eveniced by my nickname which is what I named my avatar. The military must use the best tech at the time if they want to stay in power and protect the homeland. So, if they use it then its the best thing we've got. But I hear talk if new power sorces that the people don't know about. Throught my links with the military and the info on new scienes I have I still can't say if they are true or not. So, we'll wait and see.
I hate people who put money over lives and the wellbeing of the Earth. But for now these are the people in power, so all I can do for now is watch and wait.
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Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:00 pm
ArchWarrior The way I see it, if it is good enough for the military than it is good enough for me. The military has been using fuel cells for about 20yrs now and they work just fine. If they didn't work they wouldn't use it.
Yes, I'm somewhat military minded as eveniced by my nickname which is what I named my avatar. The military must use the best tech at the time if they want to stay in power and protect the homeland. So, if they use it then its the best thing we've got. But I hear talk if new power sorces that the people don't know about. Throught my links with the military and the info on new scienes I have I still can't say if they are true or not. So, we'll wait and see.
I hate people who put money over lives and the wellbeing of the Earth. But for now these are the people in power, so all I can do for now is watch and wait. I agree with you for the most part, however the "best" tech from a military standpoint is NOT the most advanced, but something predictable, stable, and well-understood. About 13 years ago I was doing some programming for a contractor that did maintenance on military complexes (essentially well-paid janitors and handy-people). The story is actually pretty long and complicated, but I'll skip to the relevant part: I created an Excel spreadsheet (with a few nifty macros) as a short-term solution to a particular problem we had to solve (we had something much cooler and more ambitious that we'd also developed-- but that's part of the long version). The Excel spreadsheet excited people in Washington and was evaluated for use at other bases.... this was a spreadsheet I threw together in a few hours, for all I know it's still in use. THAT was when I began to learn about military tech-level. This holds true of weaponry and other things as well (they still require the programming language ADA for many of their projects). I'm not saying it's a bad idea... it's a very GOOD idea. You MUST have dependable tech. But that's the point-- it takes time to properly evaluate, test, and double-check all the details.
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:11 pm
I've also done some research into the hydrogen red herring, (read some articles in mother jones, popular science, etc.) And have come to the conclusion that it's something to keep the populace happy and unconcerned about their possible doom. To pull away from middle east Oil (and let China become the sole buying economy) will allow America to fight multiple theater wars in the middle east, without being hobbled by our need for oil ifrom that region. It's no small coincindence that the day after the state of the union, two Florida Senators wagered that we open our gulf up to drilling for oil. The energy sector has decided to gouge the sh#t out of America in the meanwhile. The big problem is the oil gives us a 300% return on the amount of energy expended to get it. Nuclear (fission) is about 35%. The refining of things like Uranium and Creating Ethanol, require substantial amouts of oil to complete the process. Ethanol, made with corn, needs to be grown using lots of pesticides and fertilizer (derived from natural gas). What we should be doing is trying like mad to get fusion working. Our infrastructure is going to be in trouble once the oil gets to0 expensive, and we will have little time to fix it if we are going around starting up wars. Oil is the energy that fuels the Empire.
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 11:18 pm
Zello-kun I've also done some research into the hydrogen red herring, (read some articles in mother jones, popular science, etc.) And have come to the conclusion that it's something to keep the populace happy and unconcerned about their possible doom. To pull away from middle east Oil (and let China become the sole buying economy) will allow America to fight multiple theater wars in the middle east, without being hobbled by our need for oil ifrom that region. It's no small coincindence that the day after the state of the union, two Florida Senators wagered that we open our gulf up to drilling for oil. The energy sector has decided to gouge the sh#t out of America in the meanwhile. The big problem is the oil gives us a 300% return on the amount of energy expended to get it. Nuclear (fission) is about 35%. The refining of things like Uranium and Creating Ethanol, require substantial amouts of oil to complete the process. Ethanol, made with corn, needs to be grown using lots of pesticides and fertilizer (derived from natural gas). What we should be doing is trying like mad to get fusion working. Our infrastructure is going to be in trouble once the oil gets to0 expensive, and we will have little time to fix it if we are going around starting up wars. Oil is the energy that fuels the Empire. I too have read that it takes less petroleum to drive a car, than it does to create bio-diesel/ethanol to power a car; however those estimates were assuming current agricultural practices and (as you pointed out) that the ethanol was being produced from corn. There is a procedure for generating bio-diesel from algae which is substantially more efficient. Wiki mentions it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel but it's easy to overlook... even more obscure is the link to the algae that is grown from smoke-stack emission: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/algae.html mentions it, but I saw a more recent link somewhere ... ah http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-10-algae-powerplants_x.htm that's it. Don't get me wrong-- I'm NOT saying anything about politics I suspect we both agree that there is a *huge* amount of dirty dealing that takes place-- sometimes even in plain sight... but I think that even if bio-diesel is being brought into the public attention by The Powers That Be as a distraction-- it can still actually work.
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:38 am
A friend of mine asked that sence fule cells can work by splitting water or by making water, than why not put two cells running into eachother? So, the one that makes water will feed into the one that splits water, which will then feeds back into the one that makes water.
I had to leave without thinking about it. But now I'm thinking about why not a short term answer to global warming be source of power that runs off the waste we make? Like having something that can brake down the carbonminoxicen and other things from the cars to get energy or atlest some helpful waste.
The newer military trucks use the waste of the engine to make drinking water. Why can't the normal cars and trucks do the same? Hmm... I wounder if you can use that water to power a fule cell?
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:03 pm
ArchWarrior A friend of mine asked that sence fule cells can work by splitting water or by making water, than why not put two cells running into eachother? So, the one that makes water will feed into the one that splits water, which will then feeds back into the one that makes water. ... If they were to feed into each other and do the same thing but opposite you would get no net energy gain and therefore would run nothing. The energy made from splitting water would be taken up right away by the engine putting the water back together. So... you'd have a pretty useless pile of crap that does nothing. ArchWarrior I had to leave without thinking about it. But now I'm thinking about why not a short term answer to global warming be source of power that runs off the waste we make? Like having something that can brake down the carbonminoxicen and other things from the cars to get energy or atlest some helpful waste. Carbon is not an energy source that's mainly why. Carbon is the end product of exothermic reactions and most carbon based reactions, beyond the combustion of hydrocarbons, are endothermic. ArchWarrior The newer military trucks use the waste of the engine to make drinking water. Why can't the normal cars and trucks do the same? Hmm... I wounder if you can use that water to power a fule cell? You can make water out of any exhaust pipe just put in a decent filter.
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Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 2:08 pm
I experimented with hydrogen fuel in my room when I was in high school. I got a 1971 mustang using an internal combustion engine (302 ci) to use the hydrogen created by an electrolyser in place of gasoline. The problem was the electrolyser was too small to create enough hydrogen for the hungry engine. All it did was start and idle for about 5 seconds each time. I only brought this up because hydrogen technology to run vehicles on hydrogen is already there, just nobody cares enough to advance it. Long-term consequences of my engine running of hydrogen are: rusting heads (preventable by the use of stailess valves and aluminum heads with bronze sleeves), battery constantly dying after so many miles as thats where the needed energy comes from (I'm experimenting with cold fusion to see if that is the answer to this problem, but that has problems of it's own because it eats up the tungsten rods like candy). And the gasoline carburetor has too many vents and holes in it to hold the gas and send it down the barrels (I just shoved the hoses down the choke...worked fine)
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