Austin Shackles wrote:

so what's the next magic solution, Hydrogen I suppose. which is a LONG way
from being the magic pollution-free fuel that everyone keeps dreaming of.

Yep. Been reading about it for quite a while. The compressed hydrogen
vapour doesn't have enough energy density to be useful. The liquefied
hydrogen has to be refrigerated, requiring the use of energy just to
keep the fuel in the tank. IIRC, BMW are using a fuel cell to power
the refrigeration of the hydrogen in the tank - the fuel cell uses fuel
out of the tank, meaning that eventually, the tank will self-empty!
The focus of their research is to minimise the rate of fuel usage in
the fuel cell, thus extending the "standby" time.

IIRC, Methanol is able to be directly used in certain designs of fuel
cell. It is a liquid at normal temperatures and atmospheric pressure,
and has an energy density about half that of petrol... Much more
logical as a fuel, particularly considering that _any_ fuel that works
in a fuel cell is fully reacted - methanol through a fuel cell will
produce _no_ pollutants.

I reckon that with serious investment, you might get a substantial amount of
genuinely-renewable hydrogen (not produced, for example, from methane but
cracked from water by renewable electricity) in oh, about 20 years.

LOL. Renewable energy. Don't make me laugh...

BTW, methane is a more renewable than electricity... Methane can be
produced from a range of decomposition processes. IIRC, it can even
polymerised into butane and propane, but this would be more expensive
than current butane and propane sources...

even then, it requires a radical rethink of the way the whole system works -
you start working out the volume of fuel which is used currently for
transport of all kinds, and it's a truly big number.

Granted that high-efficiency PV solar panels have been made and demonstrated
and work, and you can get H out of the H2O with such, the sheer volume of
the problem is such that this ain't gonna be practical in the short or even
really medium term, and governments only look at most 3 years ahead anyway.

Have they yet manufactured a PV cell that produces more electrical
energy during its economic life than the gross energy required to make
the cell in the first place? Last time I checked, they were close but
hadn't broken even.

Economic life of wind turbines was similar last time I checked - the
energy required to make the parts, assemble and install the whole
thing and maintain it through its lifespan was more than the amount of
electrical energy produced...

--
Athol
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol
Linux Registered User # 254000
I'm a Libran Engineer. I don't argue, I discuss.