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Pastimes : CLOWN FILLED ZONE........sorry, no bears allowed

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To: At_The_Ask who wrote (76)	6/18/2003 11:17:26 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) of 121

simply no economic except for a small niche ... Fuel cells are simply batteries with a continuous supply of electrolyte -- all they do is convert energy -- hydrogen source is fossil fuels. The only hydrogen economy you are going to see is the one ur living in today -- i.e. one with natural gas being used the way it is today. To be clear, fuel cells are not an alternative SOURCE to fossil fuels -- rather fuel cells are an alternative METHOD for converting the energy of fossil fuels into useful work. There are two reasons fuel cells are touted -- neither of which make them economic: 1) High efficiency of the chemical to electric conversion 2) Low environmental impact Regarding 1: This high thermal efficiency for the reaction which produces electricity does not make them more economic than centralized lower efficiency energy production -- capital costs have to be included and the capital costs for fuel cells are very high -- sorry, but this problem won't be solved by mass manufacture -- Regarding 2: This is probably most attractive when you consider cars. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were an economic replacement for the ICE which didn't pollute? Both the stationary application to residential use or the FC powered auto suffer from an "infrastructure" problem and a fuel allocation problem. Consider the residential application. You put a fuel cell in your back yard and disconnect from the grid. Now you have increased the amount of natural gas that you would need to draw and added a peak in the summer. If large numbers of folks did this -- nat gas LDC would have to be augmented -- not an inexpensive option -- and then there would be the stranded investment in the electric transmission and distribution. At the same time, you would be throwing away fuel diversity -- all your electrical energy coming from one source -- natural gas -- relatively speaking that is a high cost source in the states. These are all very non-trivial cost impediments before you even talk about the capital cost of a new centrally located power station vs. the cost of an equivalent number of customers having these units in their yard. You see, here that the costs involve a lot more than the thermal efficiency of the process ... Now with respect to cars there is also similarly a very large embedded cost associated with gasoline stations. Could stations be set up to dispense natural gas -- sure, but the costs would be huge -- now there might be hope if they could come up with a really reliable reformer that would convert gasoline so it could be used as a hydrogen source for the fuel cell -- but the capital costs -- who is going to pay thousands of dollars more for something that is environmentally friendly -- probably about the number of folks that have hybrid cars right now would be my guess. Bottom line is this is NO HOPE AT ALL in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Only a way of converting the energy without as much pollution into the air -- but there are also environmental impacts related to the mfr of the fuel cells vs the ICEs -- very few who study it take the overall look at this. Now you've probably heard some talk about electrolysis of water to free hydrogen -- but that is a total loser -- more energy in than out. It's not any different than using power from the grid to charge batteries and telling yourself that your using green or clean energy when you run off the batteries. It's silly.

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