So if the Army propaganda website can be believed, they may have found a clean fusion alternative

[FSUTribe76]

https://www.army.mil/article/191212...medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Of course if it really works and is as clean and efficient as it purports to be, the oil company's will put a stop to it.

 

[Nole Lou]

I wonder if this changes the game on hydrogen fuel cell cars at all.

 

[FSUTribe76]

I wonder if this changes the game on hydrogen fuel cell cars at all.

What's interesting is with these new manmade micromaterials they've made a screen that can filter out pure H2O from seawater or sludge. You could then take this new material and break it further down into H and O. So this has tremendous possibilities for space exploration as there's plenty of water on Mars and other interesting moons and asteroids in the solar system.

But first and foremost you could definitely focus on hydrogen fuel cells for cars as you mention and maybe even a water not hydrogen fuel based engine at some point.

 

[fsu1jreed]

I wonder if this changes the game on hydrogen fuel cell cars at all.

Those are such a waste of time at this time with our current technology, just watch 'who killed the electric car' for reference.

Here are some problems with hydrogen fueled cars:

• Technology
  • Still in its infancy, the hydrogen market has a long way to go before it can become the industry standard. True, Honda has the FCX Clarity, but that car is of limited production and heavily funded by the Japanese automaker. Hydrogen fuel cells are fragile and expensive to produce, and not yet able to withstand cold temperatures .
• Cost
  • The cost to produce just one Honda hydrogen car is upwards of one million dollars as of 2009, a price well beyond the reach of nearly every consumer. Even if demand for hydrogen vehicles was strong, prices would still be well above the cost of a similar gas powered car, limiting its customer base tremendously.
• Fuel
  • Unlike fossil fuels such as oil, hydrogen must be produced in order to be used. Certain fossil fuels such as clean burning natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen, effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Infrastructure
  • Widescale hydrogen use would mean the creation of a distribution network that does not currently exist. Though currently widely available for commercial use, hydrogen is virtually unavailable to the public. The Shell Corporation estimates that it could easily cost $20 billion to establish a hydrogen network across the United States.
• Storage
  • Currently stored at the point of use, that is, in the tanks found in a car, hydrogen is difficult to store or transport with large tanks needed to hold the fuel. Developing tanks that are smaller and lighter is a goal not yet reached, a step which would make hydrogen usage sensible.
• Safety problems
  • Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to freeze air, and accidents have occurred from pressure build-up following plugged valves. Some say these problems can’t be overcome. In a collision the hydrogen tank may rupture, as can a gasoline tank. The release of hydrogen into a confined space like a garage risks an explosion.

 

[F4Gary]

They are getting better.

http://www.caranddriver.com/compari...rogen-fuel-cell-cars-compared-comparison-test

 

[Nole Lou]

Those are such a waste of time at this time with our current technology, just watch 'who killed the electric car' for reference.

Here are some problems with hydrogen fueled cars:

• Technology
  • Still in its infancy, the hydrogen market has a long way to go before it can become the industry standard. True, Honda has the FCX Clarity, but that car is of limited production and heavily funded by the Japanese automaker. Hydrogen fuel cells are fragile and expensive to produce, and not yet able to withstand cold temperatures .
• Cost
  • The cost to produce just one Honda hydrogen car is upwards of one million dollars as of 2009, a price well beyond the reach of nearly every consumer. Even if demand for hydrogen vehicles was strong, prices would still be well above the cost of a similar gas powered car, limiting its customer base tremendously.
• Fuel
  • Unlike fossil fuels such as oil, hydrogen must be produced in order to be used. Certain fossil fuels such as clean burning natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen, effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Infrastructure
  • Widescale hydrogen use would mean the creation of a distribution network that does not currently exist. Though currently widely available for commercial use, hydrogen is virtually unavailable to the public. The Shell Corporation estimates that it could easily cost $20 billion to establish a hydrogen network across the United States.
• Storage
  • Currently stored at the point of use, that is, in the tanks found in a car, hydrogen is difficult to store or transport with large tanks needed to hold the fuel. Developing tanks that are smaller and lighter is a goal not yet reached, a step which would make hydrogen usage sensible.
• Safety problems
  • Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to freeze air, and accidents have occurred from pressure build-up following plugged valves. Some say these problems can’t be overcome. In a collision the hydrogen tank may rupture, as can a gasoline tank. The release of hydrogen into a confined space like a garage risks an explosion.

Yeah, I'm familiar with why hydrogen cars are behind, but I do not want them abandoned. I think it's reasonable to question how much government money goes to a trailing technology, but sorry, I'm not going to cheerlead the abandonment of an alternate clean approach. Many of these things could have been said for electric 20 years ago, especially initial cost and distribution. They've already made awesome improvements in many of these areas, even without broad public support.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. To abandon this technology on the faith that electric will crack the code on longer ranges and refueling in 2 minutes...that just doesn't make sense to me. I'll NEVER buy and electric car that doesn't refuel in minutes for an acceptable range. Is electric going to crack that in the next 10 or 20 years? Maybe so...but if they don't you've got a very low ceiling to how much of the nation's automobiles will ever be electric. At least theoretically, hydrogen cars could be an acceptable replacement for almost all the population.

My gut feeling is that part of the reason many environmentalists get so riled up about hydrogen is that their vision is bigger than cars...they don't want to simply change cars, they want to see changes in population density, public transportation, urban development etc that would be necessary to make electric cars with their short ranges and long fuel times the vehicle of choice.

For a technology like hydrogen, that has the potential to simply replace the combustion engine vehicle, but NOT change our patterns of living and urban development and still enables suburban sprawl and mcmansions, etc...that's only a partial win, where electric promises a more full overhaul of how we live.

All that said...jreed you know a million times more than I do about any of this stuff, and I weigh your opinion heavily.

 

[FSUTribe76]

Those are such a waste of time at this time with our current technology, just watch 'who killed the electric car' for reference.

Here are some problems with hydrogen fueled cars:

• Technology
  • Still in its infancy, the hydrogen market has a long way to go before it can become the industry standard. True, Honda has the FCX Clarity, but that car is of limited production and heavily funded by the Japanese automaker. Hydrogen fuel cells are fragile and expensive to produce, and not yet able to withstand cold temperatures .
• Cost
  • The cost to produce just one Honda hydrogen car is upwards of one million dollars as of 2009, a price well beyond the reach of nearly every consumer. Even if demand for hydrogen vehicles was strong, prices would still be well above the cost of a similar gas powered car, limiting its customer base tremendously.
• Fuel
  • Unlike fossil fuels such as oil, hydrogen must be produced in order to be used. Certain fossil fuels such as clean burning natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen, effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Infrastructure
  • Widescale hydrogen use would mean the creation of a distribution network that does not currently exist. Though currently widely available for commercial use, hydrogen is virtually unavailable to the public. The Shell Corporation estimates that it could easily cost $20 billion to establish a hydrogen network across the United States.
• Storage
  • Currently stored at the point of use, that is, in the tanks found in a car, hydrogen is difficult to store or transport with large tanks needed to hold the fuel. Developing tanks that are smaller and lighter is a goal not yet reached, a step which would make hydrogen usage sensible.
• Safety problems
  • Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to freeze air, and accidents have occurred from pressure build-up following plugged valves. Some say these problems can’t be overcome. In a collision the hydrogen tank may rupture, as can a gasoline tank. The release of hydrogen into a confined space like a garage risks an explosion.

Some of those aren't real problems though. Costs always start high with any new technology. In 2013 Sony released the first commercially viable 4K 55in tv was $5,000.00. This past weekend only 4 years later I bought the same specs 55in 4K tv but with built in Roku device for $385 to act as the TV in my guest bedroom. So in four years it dropped from only richers use it in their main entertainment area to even college coeds get it for their main tv and people like myself get one just to keep the occasional guest happy for a couple of hours a year. And of course technology doesn't advance swiftly until there's a market for it. So that takes care of 1 and 2 on your list.

If this propaganda piece is to be believed you won't need fuel or much of it to create the hydrogen. Obviously you have to create the new material to separate it and that costs energy but it sounds like it's almost perfectly reusable.

And I'm not buying it would cost $20billion to create a hydrogen based infrastructure, most of the infrastructure (supply chain etc) would be reused from the current petrochemical. You don't need new transportation companies, new supply depots, new point of sale retailers etc... Just some new storage at most assuming the old gas storage wouldn't work.

So the only real hurdles in my mind is the storage and safety concerns. Both of which would be addressed by the increase in tech. And really the safety issues are overstated as hydrogen cars are safer than petroleum based cars. If a petroleum car gets into a serious enough accident to crack its fuel tank the liquid gas pools and can start a massive high heat fire and even explosion (although seldom like on Hollywood). If a hydrogen car has its fuel cell cracked it's presurized at about 1,000 normal air pressure and its 16 times lighter than air so it basically nearly instantaneously harmlessly dissipates into the atmosphere before it could catch fire. So it sounds dangerous but basically one crack and poof most of the fuel is instantaneously gone. So the real danger would be somehow it cracks in your super airtight garage and then you walk in with a fire source. So any simple gas exchange system like a covered vent would solve that problem. Hydrogen doesn't hang around long unless it's 100% trapped.

 

[seminole97]

For a technology like hydrogen, that has the potential to simply replace the combustion engine vehicle, but NOT change our patterns of living and urban development and still enables suburban sprawl and mcmansions, etc...that's only a partial win, where electric promises a more full overhaul of how we live.

I don't follow, what do electric or hydrogen cars have to do with McMansions?

If anything, it seems to me that this discovery if scaled would simply mean cheaper energy, and thus be a boon to the affordability of McMansions.

 

[Nole Lou]

I don't follow, what do electric or hydrogen cars have to do with McMansions?

If anything, it seems to me that this discovery if scaled would simply mean cheaper energy, and thus be a boon to the affordability of McMansions.

I'm just speculating why environmentalists hate hydrogen cars so much, and actively discourage research and development. I think the claim is that electric is so much further along that any available dime should go toward that, but it still seems extreme how much they want to kill the hydrogen car. You'd think there'd be a more the merrier approach to alternative fuels.

My hypothesis is that the idea that hydrogen cars could basically 1 for 1 replace our gasoline cars with very little disruption to our way of life is actually not enough for environmentalists. It would not solve a lot of their other pet causes around residential density, public transit, land use, etc. I think in their ideal world, in an electric car world we all would restructure our living to high density urban clusters served by mass transit as a way to accommodate the low ranges and slow fueling of electrics.

Whereas hydrogen has promise to just replace our gas cars, and let us go on living in suburban sprawl. I don't think that environmentalists want that.

There has to be something behind it, otherwise you wouldn't see so many armchair science bloggers talking about some of the worlds greatest research and business minds at Toyota and Honda etc being stupid, idiots, etc for pursuing hydrogen cars.

All that said, jreed can come in here and and make his own case eloquently I'm sure.

 

[fsu1jreed]

Yeah, I'm familiar with why hydrogen cars are behind, but I do not want them abandoned. I think it's reasonable to question how much government money goes to a trailing technology, but sorry, I'm not going to cheerlead the abandonment of an alternate clean approach. Many of these things could have been said for electric 20 years ago, especially initial cost and distribution. They've already made awesome improvements in many of these areas, even without broad public support.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. To abandon this technology on the faith that electric will crack the code on longer ranges and refueling in 2 minutes...that just doesn't make sense to me. I'll NEVER buy and electric car that doesn't refuel in minutes for an acceptable range. Is electric going to crack that in the next 10 or 20 years? Maybe so...but if they don't you've got a very low ceiling to how much of the nation's automobiles will ever be electric. At least theoretically, hydrogen cars could be an acceptable replacement for almost all the population.

My gut feeling is that part of the reason many environmentalists get so riled up about hydrogen is that their vision is bigger than cars...they don't want to simply change cars, they want to see changes in population density, public transportation, urban development etc that would be necessary to make electric cars with their short ranges and long fuel times the vehicle of choice.

For a technology like hydrogen, that has the potential to simply replace the combustion engine vehicle, but NOT change our patterns of living and urban development and still enables suburban sprawl and mcmansions, etc...that's only a partial win, where electric promises a more full overhaul of how we live.

All that said...jreed you know a million times more than I do about any of this stuff, and I weigh your opinion heavily.

I'm not saying it should've have been abandoned, the more diversified our transportation technology is, the far easier we can adjust if one part is taken away.

But think about we would be if the electric technology would've been allowed to progress...........but no, Big Oil and Big Car's wanted nothing to do with that (especially Big Car's), they would have lost far too much money in the last couple of decades.

Humans, always thinking about the short term.

Some of those aren't real problems though. Costs always start high with any new technology. In 2013 Sony released the first commercially viable 4K 55in tv was $5,000.00. This past weekend only 4 years later I bought the same specs 55in 4K tv but with built in Roku device for $385 to act as the TV in my guest bedroom. So in four years it dropped from only richers use it in their main entertainment area to even college coeds get it for their main tv and people like myself get one just to keep the occasional guest happy for a couple of hours a year. And of course technology doesn't advance swiftly until there's a market for it. So that takes care of 1 and 2 on your list.

If this propaganda piece is to be believed you won't need fuel or much of it to create the hydrogen. Obviously you have to create the new material to separate it and that costs energy but it sounds like it's almost perfectly reusable.

And I'm not buying it would cost $20billion to create a hydrogen based infrastructure, most of the infrastructure (supply chain etc) would be reused from the current petrochemical. You don't need new transportation companies, new supply depots, new point of sale retailers etc... Just some new storage at most assuming the old gas storage wouldn't work.

So the only real hurdles in my mind is the storage and safety concerns. Both of which would be addressed by the increase in tech. And really the safety issues are overstated as hydrogen cars are safer than petroleum based cars. If a petroleum car gets into a serious enough accident to crack its fuel tank the liquid gas pools and can start a massive high heat fire and even explosion (although seldom like on Hollywood). If a hydrogen car has its fuel cell cracked it's presurized at about 1,000 normal air pressure and its 16 times lighter than air so it basically nearly instantaneously harmlessly dissipates into the atmosphere before it could catch fire. So it sounds dangerous but basically one crack and poof most of the fuel is instantaneously gone. So the real danger would be somehow it cracks in your super airtight garage and then you walk in with a fire source. So any simple gas exchange system like a covered vent would solve that problem. Hydrogen doesn't hang around long unless it's 100% trapped.

Some truth to that, but again just imagine where we would have been by now if the electric car would have been allowed to propagate through the industry for the last two decades.........instead, perfectly good cars were transported out into the desert and shredded.

 

[Nole Lou]

I'm not saying it should've have been abandoned, the more diversified our transportation technology is, the far easier we can adjust if one part is taken away.

But think about we would be if the electric technology would've been allowed to progress...........but no, Big Oil and Big Car's wanted nothing to do with that (especially Big Car's), they would have lost far too much money in the last couple of decades.

Humans, always thinking about the short term.




Some truth to that, but again just imagine where we would have been by now if the electric car would have been allowed to propagate through the industry for the last two decades.........instead, perfectly good cars were transported out into the desert and shredded.

Oh, I fully agree with that, there was no real reason to shelve EV development, even if the viability of the EV1 might be a little bit overblown. It should have been encouraging enough to continue.

I don't think anyone who's saying hydrogen should still be pursued is claiming to want to kill EV vehicles all over again (as if that was even possible).

The question is why environmentalists want to ridicule hydrogen vehicles and do the same thing to hydrogen development that was done to EV...i.e. kill it in it's infancy.

 

[BelemNole]

I'm just speculating why environmentalists hate hydrogen cars so much

The push back on hydrogen cars was because when they were first championed there was nothing green about them. They were pushed by an admin that was friendly to the carbon fuels industry because they only way at the time to make the hydrogen was by using carbon sources. It was a way to look green without being green. You were just moving the emission source. At least with electric there are significant sources of clean electric power.