Re: Turning wind power into hydrogen

On Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:00:17 -0800, "Don W" <dontcallme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:b4v8p291e265cljj2ghasjn59umc1j8dns@xxxxxxxxxx
"Don W" <dontcallme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote
natural gas has volumetric problems,

lol... hydrogen is the solution???

Yes, because natural gas can't be burned in a PEM fuel cell.

...and what is it you love about PEM fuel cells? They're ridiculously
expensive both to own and to operate, environmentally unfriendly due to
pitifully inefficient use of energy resources, and you can't burn natural
gas in them.

Tell me something: did you make similar claims about LCD displays a
few years back when they were available only in prototypes that cost
millions to produce?

I'm an engineer, an occupation which one can't inhabit without
acquiring a sense of the rate at which technology progresses and the
relationship between that development, mass production, and cost. And
I can point to any number of items that cost a small fortune a few
years back, and are now in every kid's backpack.

How much do you think a cellular phone would have cost in 1950, not
including the light truck you would have needed to carry it around?

Have you ever seen a 2" quadruplex video recorder? Quad was the
original practical videotaping format, still in use when I started
working in the late 70's. A quad cost something like $100,000. It was
the size of a refrigerator, used 2" open-reel tape, and required an
army of technicians to function.

Some 15 years after the quadruplex VTR was introduced, Sony introduced
the Betamax.

Or how about early computers? Here's a description of ENIAC from
Wikipedia:

"It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays,
70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered
joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 feet (2.4 m) by
3 feet (0.9 m) by 100 feet (30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m²),
and consumed 150 kW of power."

Would you predict on that basis that computers would always be
expensive? Because some twenty years later, you could buy a PDP-8 that
occupied only a few units of an equipment rack, and maybe five years
later, a personal computer.

So it's meaningless to claim that a new technology is expensive on the
basis of laboratory prototypes or early versions. Meaningless. What
counts here is the cost of optimized designs in mass production -- and
I think General Motors, for all its flaws, knows something about that.

stored grid power requires batteries that haven't been developed
yet,

I wouldn't agree with you there. Hydrogen has a lot further to go than
batteries. I leased a battery operated vehicle for three years beginning
in
2000 for $200 a month. Know where you can lease a hydrogen vehicle for
$200
a month in 2007?

The difference is that there's little prospect of economically
practical full-range, full-sized, quick recharging battery powered
vehicles becoming available in the next few years, whereas fuel cell
vehicles that meet all requirements but cost are already on the road
and will apparently be economically competitive once in mass
production. So in that regard fuel cell technology has leapt ahead of
battery technology, which has been improving gradually as long as I
can remember.

Don't be so gullible. It hasn't happened yet, there's no solid evidence
that fuel cell vehicles will ever be cost competitive with ICEs and there
are plenty of reasons to believe they never will be. How can you say "...in
that regard fuel cell technology has leapt ahead of battery technology" when
fuel cell cost is astronomical and batteries are reasonable enough that
actual consumer driven battery operated vehicles have been on the roads for
years, but we have yet to see a consumer driven fuel cell vehicle?

Stripped of the rhetoric, a somewhat interesting question.

Quite simply, while fuel cells have been known for over a century,
they weren't much developed: R&D went into battery development until
NASA found a use for fuel cells in the space program -- and even then,
NASA's requirements were different from those of the auto industry.

There simply hadn't been a reason to develop and commercialize fuel
cell technology for vehicular use -- gasoline was cheap, plentiful,
and domestically produced, we knew nothing about global warming, and
the relationship between cars and air pollution was only gradually
becoming understood, at which point it was most practically addressed
with stopgap measures like the catalytic converter.

The same was true of electric cars, of course, until the energy crisis
hit -- there was little research development. But batteries themselves
were useful in many applications, and so even after the first electric
cars yielded to internal combustion soon after the turn of the
century, battery development continued.

After the energy crisis of the 70's, Detroit embarked on a program to
design and build battery-powered vehicles. Why batteries rather than
fuel cells? Because, I think, batteries were at that point far more
highly developed and practical, in that off-the-shelf batteries and
battery technology could /almost/ do the job. Unfortunately, because
battery technology had been worked on for many years, there wasn't
much room for rapid progress. Improvements were painfully incremental,
and after years of research efforts, batteries could still /almost/ do
the job, which is where they stand today. Barring a technical miracle,
all we can hope for in the short term from batteries is that they'll
be usable in plug-in hybrids.

When Detroit's battery initiative failed, attention turned to fuel
cells. And unlike with batteries, engineers /were/ able to design and
build a full-range, full-size PEM fuel cell vehicle.

And that's the bottom line: we know how to make economical,
full-sized, full-range FCV's, but we don't yet know how to make
economical, full-sized, full-range EV's. The battery technology just
isn't there, and technologies are like horses -- some are two-year-old
race horses and some are 20-year-old nags, and however skilled and
energetic the jockey, the nag won't win the race. Fuel cell technology
is developing much more rapidly than battery technology simply
because, after years of relative neglect, it's at the stage where it
can. Batteries, I suspect, /will/ someday prove practical, but as for
getting to market, the race is already lost.

--
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: preop/ ans calculations/ fuel cell battery buffer or cap?
    ... This gives 2.4 amps average consumption. ... So now we are at under 500 dollars for an emergency power for any ham ... I just don't see why you want to use the fuel cell, ... 5480 watt-hours of battery is more $$ and large than i have practical ...
    (rec.radio.amateur.antenna)
  • Re: preop/ ans calculations/ fuel cell battery buffer or cap?
    ... This gives 2.4 amps average consumption. ... So now we are at under 500 dollars for an emergency power for any ham ... I just don't see why you want to use the fuel cell, ... 5480 watt-hours of battery is more $$ and large than i have practical ...
    (rec.radio.amateur.antenna)
  • Re: Turning wind power into hydrogen
    ... because natural gas can't be burned in a PEM fuel cell. ... I leased a battery operated vehicle for three years beginning ... vehicles becoming available in the next few years, ... So in that regard fuel cell technology has leapt ahead of ...
    (sci.energy.hydrogen)
  • preop/ ans calculations/ fuel cell battery buffer or cap?
    ... So now we are at under 500 dollars for an emergency power for any ham ... I just don't see why you want to use the fuel cell, ... 5480 watt-hours of battery is more $$ and large than i have practical ... tx and then see if the 12v 7amps comming out of the jado would recharge ...
    (rec.radio.amateur.antenna)
  • Re: fuel cell battery buffer or cap?
    ... wanted to power a 2m rig at low power 5w out it falls w/in the spec's of the jado but i wanted a buffer ... at first i thought of a battery using the full cell to charge the battery during receive since tx is brief but how do i calculate how big a battery i need? ... Or you could just burn gasoline in a 2000W Honda which costs about $1000, makes almost no noise, is quite light, and will generate less CO2 than the fuel cell system will when you get down to reality since the fuel cell system is actually powered by the fairly inefficient electrical grid. ...
    (rec.radio.amateur.antenna)
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