re: nuclear to fuel hydrogen economy idiotic ! We all agree we...

re: nuclear to fuel hydrogen economy idiotic ! We all agree we are facing an energy crisis as time goes on ?

Now it is a matter of efficiency. Some argue it is a clean green fuel. It is in the case of say Iceland usuing hydrothermal to produce Hydrogen, but in most cases this will not be the case, conventional means will be used. So if you use caol to produce the power to make Hydrogen and the energy return as someone has pointed out they now have at 38% return in a labratory ... not taking into account the energy needed to pressure the Hydrogen to 5,000 PSI to make it liquid we are talking around the 300% mark loss. So from the green side it is a waste of time.

From the energy side even with a quatntum leap to 50% efficiency ... ignoring the storage problems well its still 200% negative.

Now here is some of the research I have done on this topic. The boil off rate .... is 4% a day.
As to the tank .... well ....
Then the question about platinum ... frankly there is not enough on the whole planet to power even the cars in the US with Hydrogen fuel cells let alone everyone else.
Firstly and most importantly is the scientific law that covers this reation ......

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Second Law of Thermodynamics ....
which basically states you cannot get more more energy out of a chemical process than you put into it.
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One interesting point made, which would apply even if hydrogen were abundantly available, and if fuel cells were cheap and reliable, is that the fuel handling challenges with hydrogen are huge.

Looking at high pressure gaseous storage, for instance, a tank pressurized at 5,000 psi would have to be ten times the volume of a gasoline tank to provide the same range for a tank fill as gasoline today. Imagine the strength of material it would take to safely do that. Such pressure tanks always have to be cylindrical, so now we have a major design challenge for a car, maybe even a practical impossibility. And, the cost is monster too, Romm speculates that the tank alone would cost $2,400. (That figure is approximately the manufacturers cost of the engine and transmission sub-assembly in a typical car today, net of fixed investment!)

If we go above this pressure level to say 10,000 psi, the volume of the tank goes down, so the tank would 'only' be five times the size but the material strength needs go way up. But, even worse, the energy consumed just in compressing the hydrogen would be immense. At current rates of CO2 released by the electrical utilities, the result would be that just the hydrogen compression demand would produce one-third the CO2 released that burning gasoline in the same car does today.

Then there is liquification. But, that has no net benefit in CO2 release, the massive multi-stage compression effort to liquify the hydrogen would equal its energy value. And, as NASA finds with rockets, liquid hydrogen has a "boil-off" rate of 4% per day. If you fill up the tank and park the car, you'd find that in say a week, you'd only have three-quarters of tank left. So, there would be a large amount of wastage.

One thing I have always been puzzled by the hydrogen "vision" is just what it offers that electrical battery vehciles would not acheive in a simpler manner. In essence, hydrogen just seems to end up being an energy transfer medium, so why not just put our efforts into battery powered cars. Hydrogen power does not seem to offer anything better in terms of range, relative to batteries, due to the low energy density. And, the whole balance of the electrical components for vehicle use are well understood, as is the electrical distribution investment.

From my point of view, the inventive effort going into fuel cells today is out of step. It would be like Thomas Edison working night and day in 1650 to develop a bulb, but with no steam engine as prime mover or even the electromagnetic generator to go with that. It would have only been good for flashlights
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I should not not even bother with the other big hurdle.
What are the fuel cells made of ?
Platinum ....
so when one looks at the total known reserves of Platinum on the palnet and then sees how much is used in the current hydrogen fuel cells. If you cut the number used at present in half and multiplied it by the number of cars just in the USA .... is the total 125% of all know platinum on the planet ?


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I am sure this will not convince anyone.

We all agree I hope their is an energy crisis looming.
Hydrogen is very very inefficient as a carrier of energy and one cannot get around the scienticifc laws let alone the rest.

Hydrogen I believe is a dead end in energy efficiency.
It can be no other way. You cannot get more energy back out the other end than you put in the front end in the first place. In fact if they get to 50% efficiency they will be lucky. So thats 200 units of energy to produce 100 at the other end. Then add the cost to pressurize it and the leakage at 4% a day ! ......
Will be lucky to come up with a real number of 300 units in to produce 100 units.

What is the point ?