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The Hydrogen Hoax and Take the Branson Challenge
Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 @ 12:20:14 UTC by vlad
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William Alek writes: Hello all, I would tend to agree with Zubrin's article: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/zubrin.htm
"... So if we put aside the spectacularly improbable prospect of fueling our planet with extraterrestrial hydrogen imports, the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.
The spokesmen for the hydrogen hoax claim that hydrogen will be manufactured from water via electrolysis. It is certainly possible to make hydrogen this way, but it is very expensive-so much so, that only four percent of all hydrogen currently produced in the United States is produced in this manner. The rest is made by breaking down hydrocarbons, through processes like pyrolysis of natural gas or steam reforming of coal.
Neither type of hydrogen is even remotely economical as fuel. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen (made the cheap way, from hydrocarbons) shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram. High purity hydrogen made from electrolysis for scientific applications costs considerably more. Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that even if hydrogen cars were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one with the power to choose otherwise would ever buy such vehicles. This fact alone makes the hydrogen economy a non-starter in a free society. ..."
Now, there could be a method of improving the efficiency or applying an "overunity" process of electrolysis using carbon arc, but why use it to make hydrogen and oxygen as a sidestepping or indirect process? Forget about electrolysis and utilize the electric energy directly.
"... And even if you are among those willing to sacrifice freedom and economic rationality for the sake of the environment, and therefore prefer hydrogen for its advertised benefit of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, think again. Because hydrogen is actually made by reforming hydrocarbons, its use as fuel would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all. In fact, it would greatly increase them. ..."
Ok, so the so-called Hydrogen Economy is pretty much of a boondoggle. Now what?
On the other hand we see the Branson Challenge. What is this brew-haha all about: Branson Challenge
"... Airline tycoon Richard Branson announced on Friday a $25 million prize for the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the battle to beat global warming.
Flanked by climate campaigners former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell, Branson said he hoped the prize would spur innovative and creative thought to save mankind from self-destruction.
"Man created the problem and therefore man should solve the problem," he told a news conference to reveal the Virgin Earth Challenge. ..."
Hmmmm, scrubbing green house gases out of the atmosphere? Could carbon arc technology be applied to remediate this "problem"??? That is a really good question. And, of course, NOT make more CO2 in the process. Secondly, we're looking at a systemic crises thats occurring throughout the solar system, NOT just here on Earth. "Man created the problem" simply isn't true and calls into question the REAL motive, the REAL agenda, behind this program.
One MUST keep in mind that the SUV you drive, the SUV you know and love, for every gallon of gasoline it burns, 20 lbs of CO2 gas are produced! HOWEVER, forget about every volcano that blows its top, there's enough CO2 gas released in a single eruption that dwarfs the CO2 put out by all of mankind since before the industrial age. And what about this Chemtrail SO2 Global Cooling Spray program thats been clandestinely implemented over our heads?
These are indeed, interesting times...
Bill
--- William S.
Alek, INTALEK, INC. Exploring Gravitational and Inertial Mass
fluctuations, Low Energy Nuclear Fusion, and Temporal Anomalies eGroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/intalek
URL: http://www.intalek.com/
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Re: The Hydrogen Hoax and Take the Branson Challenge (Score: 1) by kurt9 on Saturday, February 10, 2007 @ 17:09:58 UTC (User Info | Send a Message) http://www.metatechnica.com | Yes, Zubrin's analysis is mostly correct. The only point I disagree with is the best method for producing the ethanol fuel. Rather than farming, which produces an entire plant matter, which must then be processed to extract the ethanol, it would be much better to figure out the molecular biology of ethanol production, then use synthetic biology to make the ethanol.
The synthetic biology route would result in a "system" that produces the ethanol (presummably a "synthetic" algae) that does not product the plant leaves, stocks, and everything else that then must be gotten rid of. Also, production efficiency, measured by how much ethanol from a given biomass of starting material, will be far higher with synthetic biology than in conventional farming.
This is the method that Craig Ventor, the guy who did the human genome sequencing, has chosen as a means for methanol production. |
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PLEASE pass on to PACE's scientific mailing list (Score: 1) by vlad on Sunday, February 11, 2007 @ 16:08:51 UTC (User Info | Send a Message) http://www.zpenergy.com | The first thing that must be realized is that Environmental Science and most environmental scientists are not at all scientifically inclined. They are more attuned to making slogans based on hypothesis reflecting very short term trends.
Real science would consider the effects on climate by changes in sun spot activity and energy output, by changes in ocean currents due to disruption of water flows caused by volcanic activity on the ocean bottom, etc., etc.. It is for example a very well documented fact that the earth has frequently been a lot warmer and has frequently been a lot colder than now. In other words, the only thing constant on earth is change, be it climatic or plate tectonic, or otherwise. That is indisputable fact that anyone can look up.
To blame human activity for all the problems is a very narrow and politically motivated view. A true environmentalist, such as I consider myself will not run around shouting slogans based on unfounded science but will do something him/herself to clean up the earth by doing proper recycling or simply consuming less. Remember, we cannot throw waste away because the only "away" that we have is earth, the planet we live on.
Now to the CO2 question. Does everyone actually realize that, for example, there is 30 times as much Argon in our atmosphere than CO2? Argon comprises .934% of the earth's atmosphere while CO2 is about .04%. Nitrogen is about 78.1% and Oxygen is nearly 21% of the atmosphere. To use the example of 100,000 tennis balls representing the make up of the atmosphere, over 78,000 would be Nitrogen, almost 21,000 would be Oxygen, 934 would be Argon, and 40 would be Carbon Dioxide (CO2) leaving the remaining 50 or so tennis balls to make up all of the other gases, including Hydrogen which very rarely occurs in free state. It loves to combine with other elements. When you look at that reality, does it really matter in the scheme of things if CO2 went from 40 tennis balls to 50?
Have you also noticed that there has been very little written about acid rain these days? Could it be that this would destroy the by now famous "greenhouse gas" argument since CO2 readily combines with water vapour to fall out of the sky as acid rain? When you have your beer or coke or Perrier, remember, the bubbles that come from your drink are CO2 emissions! They were created by the Carbonic Acid (the same as the acid rain I referred to earlier) that is injected into soft drinks and other beverages.
As to ocean levels rising and other fear mongering . . . surely man's ingenuity will find a way to build dykes, assuming the global warming lobby does not change its mind and worry about the advancing ice age again.
In summary, I find it sad that real science is being ignored by publicity seeking ideologues. I can respect them for their efforts to create awareness that continuing neglect of the environment will spell trouble for the 6 billion inhabitants, not counting the animal kingdom, etc., but I cannot accept the rhetoric of their pseudo science. Ernst Bauer
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Re: The Hydrogen Hoax and Take the Branson Challenge (Score: 1) by malc on Monday, February 12, 2007 @ 00:44:12 UTC (User Info | Send a Message) http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mripley | The net effect of a hydrogen economy on CO2 would be zero depending on the method used to produce the hydrogen in the first place. If you use the intermittent wind and solar to generate electricity to electrolyse water into hydrogen then the net effect after using the hydrogen is zero. Yes of course CO2 will be produced to manufacture the equipment for this but as the balance of hydrogen to fossil changes then the amount of CO2 produced rapidly falls.
Using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen is utter madness but I don't suppose that will stop certain folks, probably the US government. |
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