[SEL] OT, completely: Hydrogen as a fuel personal autos

fero_ah at city-net.com fero_ah at city-net.com
Sun Jan 13 13:38:13 PST 2008


Hi Orrin,

In your research, did you dig much into the use of metal hydrides as a storage
medium for the hydrogen to be used in a hydrogen fuel cell?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
If I had to wager, I'll bet that's the direction that things go.

I agree with the issues you raise about the difficulties and dangers of either
compressed or liquified hydrogen.  We used liquid hydrogen as a coolent,
moderator, and propellent in the NERVA nuclear rocket engine.  NASTY, tricky
stuff!!

In the energy debate, many folks miss the point that many of the discussions are
about energy transfer and fuel displacement rather than "using less energy." 
Consider a nuclear power plant that "burns" uranium as fuel, typically
producing electricty as the end product.  There really isn't any other use for
that uranium.  To transfer that energy from the uranium to automobiles, for
example, one can use the electricity to recharge batteries, or make hydrogen
which can be moved to where the use is.

An example of fuel displacement would be all the jet fuel used by airplanes. 
One can "displace" that oil usage by using the nuke-generated electricty to
power high-speed bullet trains that offer comparable transit time city-center
to city-center.  Granted, here in the USA, there's a considerable investment
required to build up infrastructure that we don't have, but we only have to
look to major nuclear power using countries (France, Japan, Korea) that also
have many bullet trains in routine service to see that the strategy can be
highly successful.

Thanks for a good, thought-provoking article.

See ya,  Arnie

Arnie Fero
Pittsburgh, PA
fero_ah at city-net.com

Quoting Orrin Iseminger <oiseming at moscow.com>:
http://users.moscow.com/oiseming/H2Hype/AnH2Muse.htm





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