Tomorrows news today
Jan. 5th, 2008 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pluralAn alternative source for biofuel
This has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. To date, while perhaps well intentioned Biofuels have not been a realistic option, they require too much land and too many resources to produce too little fuel, not to mention the overall question of burning food in our cars.
This has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. To date, while perhaps well intentioned Biofuels have not been a realistic option, they require too much land and too many resources to produce too little fuel, not to mention the overall question of burning food in our cars.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 05:14 am (UTC)it is hydrogen fueling stations.
if one goes boom, it is very bad
so you want them away from populated areas
but if you do that it is too inconvenient
for people to gas up
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 10:48 am (UTC)An excellent wikipedia article on the overarching topic:
Hydrogen Economy
From my previous link on PBNRs (I actually hadn't read it in couple of years), I noticed that China has scheduled to come out with one working reactor this year and another 30 (?! welcome to the new chinese world) within the decade. They are in the process of using a process by which the extreme heat will actually generate hydrogen, and skip the process of electricty altogether... the point it to leap directly to a hydrogen economy.
!@#$ Brazil, brother, brush up on your mandarin.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 10:57 am (UTC)I first heard of them back in the eighties by a grandfather as well. Apparently, the issue is with the fuel cell technology not being quite ready for prime time, and hence VERY expensive.
Remarkably, the Mythbusters a year or so ago had an episode where they were dicking around with using Hydrogen to run an old Olds Cutlas with no modifications what so ever. They were shocked, and giggling like school girls, until they had a carb backfire that nearly took Jamies eyebrows...
There are problems with hydrogen as a fuel source:
1) The molecuels are so tiny, they are very hard to contain.
2) Metal in the presence of Hydrogen causes it to become brittle (for reasons I'm not too clear on).
Check out this wikipedia article on the hydrogen economy