Re: Fuel Cells in a Hydrocarbon Economy

Bob Eld wrote:
....
Secondly from the time of Hero to
Newcommen in the 17th century, there was NO development of engines of any
kind so it is nonsense to suggest that the steam engine was in development

Denis Papin. Thomas Savery.

for 1600 years. It was not. Thirdly, I did not even mention reciprocating

Perhaps not uninterruptedly for 1600 years. The Roman Empire did
collapse.
Greek fire was the stuff of legends. As was Roman... err... Portland
cement concrete.
Not to mention later inventions such as Damascus steel.

Some inventions progress faster than others, not all problems are as
easily solved.
Granted, this means fuel cells are pointless right now. Does not mean
they will
always be pointless however.

steam engines in my above post. I was commenting turbine development from
the time of Parsons in the late 19th century, about 120 years. All of the
blather about hydrogen that you mention is just that, blather. There is no
commercial hardware that you can go by at anything close to a reasonable
price. They have been touting this for many years and still no reality, it's

I never said there was any at a reasonable price. Heck, not even the
Honda people
marketing that car claim that. I did mention I believe batteries will
win out long term anyway.
Existing markets for mobile electronics provide the funding for those
to move forward.

all talk. In the mean time other competition is racing ahead. Yes you can
actually go by hybrid vehicles with batteries as that technology outpaces
fuel cells and hydrogen. Flex fuel engines burning ethanol or E85 are
becomming a reality and any diesel engine will burn bio-diesel oil. Hydrogen
is nothing but a destroyer of other forms of energy such as natural gas or
electricity, and therfore, will always suck hind tit.

If hydrogen is hard to store, ethanol is hard to produce. Sugar cane is
the only
economically viable means to produce it I know of. It does not grow
everywhere.
It uses too much land area. Brazil has all that land area for sugar
cane and still
they use ethanol for like 10% of their oil needs:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Brazil/Oil.html

Cellulosic ethanol is still a pipe dream.

Biodiesel would be interesting if it wasn't for the fact you need too
much land area
to grow it as well. Even if you use palm trees. Maybe it can be used
for critical users,
like the military or aviation since it is so high-density, but still,
not cheap for a mass
market. Algae are still a pipe dream.

I am sick and tired of the energy destroyer fallacy. The second law of
thermodynamics states you cannot do energy conversion without
increasing entropy.
and losing energy. It does not matter if you lose some energy producing
hydrogen.
We lose some energy producing electricity and yet we do it. Why?

Because electricity is convenient. It can be easily converted into
motion by an electric
engine, or into light by bulbs, powers refrigerators, etc. Can be
transmitted over wires.

Just one problem: it is not easy to store for mobile applications like
cars.

What does matter: is hydrogen the cheapest way to create usable energy
for
mobile applications or not? If it is, energy loss be damned!

My bets? Oil will last longer than some people give it credit for. Then
we will use
Fischer-Tropsch from coal, bitumen, tar sands, heavy oil, natural gas,
you name it.
Expensive oil means more hybrid vehicles. Which means more batteries
used, which
pushes up battery R&D funds, which ramps up new battery technology.
Batteries in
hybrids progressively get more capacity until the internal combustion
engine is
expensive dead weight. Result: electric vehicles.

Electricity will come from coal, wind, nuclear, solar, hydro. In no
particular order.
It will depend on local conditions.

Oh, right... The lottery numbers for next week are:
<EOT>

.

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