NationStates Jolt Archive

Bush was yamering about those "Hydrogen Cars" of his a while back and last time I checked (October) there was still a link on his website. What are your thoughts on them?

The only bad aspects I see are we'll be driving the hindenburg and they'll at first be impratical so the Hindenbug Cars might flop and we'll all ride on horseback through a barren inhospitable wasteland when we run out of oil.

But, let's see:

1) Clean (WWJD, what would Jesus Drive?)

2) Don't need that oil from the middle east

Don't need oil from the middle east? I haven't extensively studied economics, but can that me we can sever economic ties from the Middle East? I mean they'll still be bickering among themselves, bashing Israel, and all that kinda shit that prevents paranoid right-winged Americans from sleeping. I mean we can pull out in many places. ANd everything will be Hunky-Dorey! I mean they don't like us and want us out, hey, we'll probably crush their economy when Hydrogen becomes increasingly practical, but hey we won't be there! No more terrorist attacks on us because we would've made like mitosis and split!

Unless they're pissed because we won't buy their oil and are (I'm no economist, someone correct me or back me) CRUSHING THEIR ECONOMY!

But can someone blow up a building and say rather childishly, "I used to hate them for their influence here, tainting the holy soil on which only muslims can walk... but then they left and crushed our economy... so um... I blew up this building... so they'll come back..."

Instead of H-Bombs, we should be pouring money into H-Cars. Crush them, but crush them economically!

Equating H-Cars to Hindenburg cars is stupid. Prototypes have containers that are 7 times stronger than conventional gas tanks. Also, the hydrogen was not the main reason for the fires on the Hindenburg, it was the fact that they didn't have anything to prevent electrical sparks, and the fact that the cotton sacks in which in the hydrogen was held were sealed with iron oxide and aluminum powder, if anyone has heard of thermite they'll know those are the ingredients.

The Hindenburg was not a disaster because of hydrogen, but because of idiots poorly designing it.

As for the actual idea, their economy would crash anyways. Their oil will run out eventually, switching to H-Cars would just mean it happened faster. Plus, there will still be 3rd world countries who don't have enough money to switch running on oil. There will be a market until their oil runs out, and then they will have no one to blame.

I always wondered why they coated the hindenburg with a material that burns hot enough to melt steel.

Hydrogen generally cannot be a replacement for oil, because hydrogen is not a power source at all. Hydrogen itself has to be produced out of other things through an energy consuming process. And any such process will waste more energy than the one we can get from the resulting hydrogen. So the real question we should be asking is- where shall we take the energy to make hydrogen?

Hydrogen generally cannot be a replacement for oil, because hydrogen is not a power source at all. Hydrogen itself has to be produced out of other things through an energy consuming process. And any such process will waste more energy than the one we can get from the resulting hydrogen. So the real question we should be asking is- where shall we take the energy to make hydrogen?
Use a bunch of solar and wind stations solely to produce the hydrogen.

Hydrogen generally cannot be a replacement for oil, because hydrogen is not a power source at all. Hydrogen itself has to be produced out of other things through an energy consuming process. And any such process will waste more energy than the one we can get from the resulting hydrogen. So the real question we should be asking is- where shall we take the energy to make hydrogen?

Ahh! What's that shiny ball of hot stuff in the sky? *hiss!*

Or hyrdodams, or tidal power, or biodesiel, or ethanol.

Use a bunch of solar and wind stations solely to produce the hydrogen.
Good luck getting that to happen. Costs too much.


(Say, ever noticed what happens when you compress lots of hydrogen in order to get the same energy out of it that you get out of a gallon of gasoline?)

When the price is right we'll change to Hydrogen..

When gas prices are so expensive that it would be better to round up a bunch of solar and wind plants to produce hydrogen, we'll do it.

There was an article in an issue of Popular Mechanics that stated that hydrogen fuel, as nice as it's made out to be, is not a feasible energy source. Here's what it said:

In order to have enough hydrogen to produce the energy comparable to the engine of a gasoline-powered car, you'd need a hydrogen tank twice the size of the car itself.

Even though hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, it's extremely rare to find hydrogen by itself, because you usually see it bonded to other elements. The most feasible source of hydrogen on the planet is water, but, in water, hydrogen is bonded to oxygen. The amount of energy required to refine the hydrogen (ie, break the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms) is greater than the energy you'll get out of the hydrogen itself.

And the belief that hydrogen is a clean source of energy is a myth. If you were to have mass-production of hydrogen-powered cars, they'd be releasing so much hydrogen into the air that it would create a complete imbalance of elements in the atmosphere, much in the same way that there's too much carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuels.

There was an article in an issue of Popular Mechanics that stated that hydrogen fuel, as nice as it's made out to be, is not a feasible energy source. Here's what it said:

In order to have enough hydrogen to produce the energy comparable to the engine of a gasoline-powered car, you'd need a hydrogen tank twice the size of the car itself.

Even though hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, it's extremely rare to find hydrogen by itself, because you usually see it bonded to other elements. The most feasible source of hydrogen on the planet is water, but, in water, hydrogen is bonded to oxygen. The amount of energy required to refine the hydrogen (ie, break the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms) is greater than the energy you'll get out of the hydrogen itself.

And the belief that hydrogen is a clean source of energy is a myth. If you were to have mass-production of hydrogen-powered cars, they'd be releasing so much hydrogen into the air that it would create a complete imbalance of elements in the atmosphere, much in the same way that there's too much carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuels.
Just two things:
First, proposals consider using liquid or compressed H2 gas.

Second when hydrogen combusts it produces H2O. Its only a matter of having it be liquid H2O and not gasious H2O. The H2O would replace the H2O split to produce H2.

The problem with energy is that it doesn't go where you want it, unless it doesn't want to move and then it's of use to no one. Plants use solar energy to create chemical compounds. These compounds can be stored neatly and put away out of sight until you need them. Then you take them out of their container, combine a couple and they start breaking up and releasing the energy they had stored.

Some plants die before this process can be completed. To add insult to injury they are then crushed under thousands of tons of rock and intolerably heated. Of course, the plant is not going to take this lying down, and instead melts into a gooey substance. Fortunately for us the chemicals the plant used to store the energy are still there, you just have to get them out from under all those rocks and take them.

Unfortunately for the plants only one doesn't really store all that much energy, so millions have to go through this process for you can go to work or school. On top of that, the process isn't particularly quick either. It takes millions of years to turn the plant into a gooey mush.

Entire forests have gone through this process for hundreds of millions of years.

After a bit more than a century we've gone through almost half of the stuff.

Now, the convenience of oil is not only that the energy is stored in a nice, easy to carry package, but also that the initial energy investment was not made by us, but by those plants all those millions of years ago. This means that anything you want to replace oil with will be necessarily more expensive. Not only getting the energy from somewhere, but converting it to a form that you can store, pipe or put in a tank somewhere.

Therein lies the problem. Hydrogen is only one solution, but it's very hard to handle. Other forms of chemicals result too toxic, explosive, or difficult to produce. Nevertheless, the middle east is investing into finding alternatives, so the answer to this topic would be "no, economic ties won't necessarily be cut-off after oil."

There was an article in an issue of Popular Mechanics that stated that hydrogen fuel, as nice as it's made out to be, is not a feasible energy source. Here's what it said:

In order to have enough hydrogen to produce the energy comparable to the engine of a gasoline-powered car, you'd need a hydrogen tank twice the size of the car itself.

Even though hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, it's extremely rare to find hydrogen by itself, because you usually see it bonded to other elements. The most feasible source of hydrogen on the planet is water, but, in water, hydrogen is bonded to oxygen. The amount of energy required to refine the hydrogen (ie, break the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms) is greater than the energy you'll get out of the hydrogen itself.

And the belief that hydrogen is a clean source of energy is a myth. If you were to have mass-production of hydrogen-powered cars, they'd be releasing so much hydrogen into the air that it would create a complete imbalance of elements in the atmosphere, much in the same way that there's too much carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuels.

. . . I think you missed my point. . .

There was an article in an issue of Popular Mechanics that stated that hydrogen fuel, as nice as it's made out to be, is not a feasible energy source. Here's what it said:

In order to have enough hydrogen to produce the energy comparable to the engine of a gasoline-powered car, you'd need a hydrogen tank twice the size of the car itself.

Even though hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, it's extremely rare to find hydrogen by itself, because you usually see it bonded to other elements. The most feasible source of hydrogen on the planet is water, but, in water, hydrogen is bonded to oxygen. The amount of energy required to refine the hydrogen (ie, break the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms) is greater than the energy you'll get out of the hydrogen itself.

And the belief that hydrogen is a clean source of energy is a myth. If you were to have mass-production of hydrogen-powered cars, they'd be releasing so much hydrogen into the air that it would create a complete imbalance of elements in the atmosphere, much in the same way that there's too much carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuels.

Based on size of car, those of us who... feel... insignificant will be happy... I mean, over compensation! Honestly!

It really causes pollution!? Wow! That sucks. Time to create Nitrogen Powered Cars!

I really don't know what I'm talking about....

Maybe not in the near future. But once we have viable technology.. Who knows.

*news report, man crashes car into lamp-post, city goes up in mushroom cloud of smoke* :D

Don't worry.. Thats just a joke.

Beyond the obvious issues with hydrogen fuel cell cars, that have been brought up, Going completely away from gas cars will not completly remove dependency of a country from oil. Don't forget about the multitudes of industrial sites that burn oil in many forms, or that use petroleum products (distillates) as a precursor for other commonly used things. Many plastics, start from catalytically cracked petrolleum distillates if memory serves me rights.
mh

It really causes pollution!? Wow! That sucks.Yeah, hydrogen cars could do serious damage to the ozone layer, although scientists aren't sure if the hydrogen would do that or get absorbed by the soil.

My view on hydrogen cars: IF they won't harm the environment, and IF they're built safely, and IF they have a sufficient range, and IF they have sufficient performance, then I'm for them.

Use a bunch of solar and wind stations solely to produce the hydrogen.
Both are troublesome in their way and not efficient enough.
Producing wind power in such quantities requires an awful lot of rotors. The sheer size of the territory required would be an extreme headache. Not to mention that they are unreliable and weather dependant.
Solar power is better, but it is STILL weather dependant, surface hungry and the installations are extremely expensive. In fact, there is no alternative to nuclear power in the foreseeable future.