"Mark Wonsil" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message
news:acedff01mg4@enews3.newsguy.com...
> > To small degree, that's correct, at least in the broader
> > implication. But if
> > I were to say just one whispered bit of advice, as that given in the
> > "Graduate", it's "fuel cells."
>
> I am *very* excited about fuel cells.  There are a few logistical issues
to
> address and Wirt alluded to one: for travel you will have to carry a lot
of
> hydrogen.  That is not easily done - yet.  I have a friend from high
school
> who was working on a H-tank that stored the hydrogen in a kind of
"sponge".
> The hydrogen would release when the "sponge" was heated.  I don't know how
> it is going but I guess the recharge rate was fairly quick, ten minutes or
> so.  Second, while H is plentiful, getting pure H in large quantities is
not
> easy.  You can get it from water using electrolysis, but that takes
> electricity and you could use more energy just trying to get the H.  You
can
> get H from gasoline but that kind of defeats the purpose, although the
> infrastructure is already there.  You can also get H from natural gas (or
> methane) which will probably be good for home electricity generated by
fuel
> cells.  The process of extracting H from carbon liquids is called
reforming
> IIRC, but there is some carbon residue to handle.  I think we'll overcome
> these issues or at least decide that they're preferable to the current
> madness.

You can also blast superheated steam onto Coal. The Coal wrenches the oxygen
away from the water and you get CO2 + H2. We have somthing like 20 times
more Coal than the rest of the world has Oil.

The thing I like about Fuel Cells is the conversion efficiency. The best
combustion engines can only reac about 38% but that's in powerplant-sized
turbines. Fuel Cells operate in the 50-95% range. The 50% is at max power
output (where internal resistance equals external load) and is higher
efficiency at less power.

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