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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (103612)	7/1/2003 6:55:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Long article in "Tech Central Station" about Hydrogen today. Here are a couple of paragraphs. At least one small benefit of the current interest in FCs is that even many scientifically illiterate enthusiasts now realize that hydrogen is not an energy source, merely an energy carrier. Unless we get some environmentally benign means of producing it by the electrolysis of water (that would require either exceedingly cheap photovoltaics or an entirely new generation of nuclear reactors) we would get it by using today's most practical method: steam reforming of natural gas. If you wonder how that would not lead to higher natural gas prices (and hence to higher oil prices as the two fuels are substitutable to a large degree) and how that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, you have to ask true hydrogen believers for an explanation. Moreover, hydrogen is an inherently poor choice for a transportation fuel because its uniquely high energy density depends on its liquefaction, i.e. storage under high pressure, or at least on its incorporation into metal hydrides to avoid bulky fuel storage in vehicles. And here's a curiously underappreciated fact given the litigiousness of this society: what would be the liability repercussions of distributing a fuel that now can be handled only by select personnel to hundreds of thousand commercial outlets? For these, and other, reasons -- all of which have been detailed in some excellent technical reports that have called recently for rethinking hydrogen cars -- we are not on the threshold of a new era dominated by FCs and hydrogen. techcentralstation.com