The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Point and counterpoint in response to an Alt Power Digest Yahoo group message...


1. I think utilizing (and improving to handle it) the nation's existing natural gas delivery infrastructure for a faster entry into a hydrogen energy economy is a great idea. The piping will have to be replaced with materials not susceptible to hydrogenization, but the right of way and initial plumbing and technology is mostly there. Gas appliances can also be adapted by simply re-jetting the burners, which would open up a manufacturing niche for retrofit kits. Existing vehicles could be retrofitted to either directly burn hydrogen in their existing engines or with a fuel cell / sterling engine generator / high output electric motor combo designed to accomodate existing models and bolt right into them and onto the existing transmission housing. All this activity could result in gains in domestic economic volume and jobs. Having both options would satisfy the collector car market's "original equipment" leanings.

>1. Consider the problem with hydrogen-powered cars. The
>Honda FCX can travel 350 km before it needs more
>hydrogen, but no regular gasoline station can
>currently deal with that. (Researchers at Britain's
>University of Warwick, however, are working on a
>program called "Hydrofueler" to develop technology to
>connect gas stations to the normal natural-gas supply
>to fuel hydrogen-powered vehicles.)


2. No matter how safe the USAGE of nuclear power becomes, it will never overcome the devastating problem of nuclear waste disposal in my personal opinion. Far, far better to devote the surface area to wind, solar, geothermal, ocean tide, wave, and thermal differential systems and eventually put up solar sattelites. Keep the nuclear reactions on the Sun. After all, all energy sources other than geothermal are nuclear derived through a stellar reactor off the planet, with the POSSIBLE exception of geothermal. (Thank goodness, "off the planet.") Let the nuclear crowd comfort themselves with that knowledge and let's stick to no radioactrive waste production increases, shall we?

>2. Grant admits there are problems, but suggests that
>those with fossil fuels (and wind- and solar-derived
>electricity, which would require vast areas of land)
>are bigger.
>
>"I believe that a resurgence of nuclear power is
>necessary for the continuing industrialization of
>world society with minimal environmental impact and
>eco-invasion, one in which hydrogen will supplant
>fossil fuels."


3. Actually, in the USA, where shift work often accompanies long commute distances, a vehicle has become a necessity. I spend five days a week commuting over 40 miles one way to and from my place of employment and praying there aren't any traffic jams due to my employer being the most prodigious clock watcher in my life. Since my hours are very inconvenient to local mass transportation schedules, such that I would have to suffer three hours to get there and three to get home to work eight, mass transit is a very poor option unless it becomes available 24 hours / 7-days on a half-hourly schedule. Personal vehicles are a necessity. However, were there a hydrogen conversion kit that could match the functionality of my vehicle's current power plant at a price I could afford and available fuel, I would spend up to an additional hour to get the fuel and gladly install it.

I wonder the feasiblity of laying permanent magnets under our roadways and having the vehicle power plant run an electromagnet built into the body of the vehicle and run on a fuel cell coupled to a Sterling cycle engine and secondary generator to propel the vehicle? The roadways are under construction so often any more that the delays produced by the installation work would seem routine.

>3. In 1964, the Canadian communications scholar Marshall
>McLuhan wrote, "The car has become an article of dress
>without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete
>in the urban compound."


Dan