Nanoparticles could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline

Hi Garth

I surely hope they would!

Here in SA our tax component of fuel is quite high. (It seems that the tax is only used to build bigger and better pot holes)

(Paranoid cap) I hope the powers don't get to them too.

"Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."

Nonsense. Perhaps the technical folks know what they are doing, but the president seems clueless. Even at 96% efficiency, making hydrogen onboard is a ludicrous notion. Would you use a huge battery bank to power the electrolyzer? Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. There must be an energy source to split the water. Far better to use that energy source to power the vehicle directly to avoid the 4% loss in the electrolyzer and the 50% loss in a fuel cell. Even if the electrolysis were 100% efficient and the fuel cell were 100% efficient, you'd eliminate a lot of useless hardware by simply powering the car with whatever you use to power the electrolysis.

Absolutely correct! It may allow H to be made at home in quantities enough for short range driving using electricity from the grid or solar photovoltaic panels, but it is silly to try to make it using battery power when you could use the batteries directly. Hydrogen is NOT a fuel! It is a way to store energy and a very difficult way at that.

It sounds like using the electricity from the batteries to make the H which powers the car and makes the electricity to make more H which repeats the cycle. It is another perpetual motion device that way. LOL

Here's something to think about. Even BMW has bought into the "water-for-gas" concept. True, the car only runs on H₂ gas produced from electrolyzing water, but considering the amount of energy needed to do that, it makes one wonder why they don't use the money and energy spent to make electric cars instead.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/09/12/bmw-officially-announces-the-bmw-hydrogen-7/

"THINK COAL"

Absolutely. Think coal. It could give us another 1000 years of inexpensive energy so we don't have to rush precipitately into expensive alternatives. It could give us time to really develop better and cheaper ways of making and transporting energy.

The GW hysterics will fight it though. Their chosen period of a "normal" climate model may not be deviated from, as all change from what they say is "normal" is evil and must be stopped at all costs, including freedom and standard of living. Look at the climate records for the entire Holocene and it shows it was warmer for 7,500 years of the last 10,500 and that when the Vikings were living in Greenland it was warmer than now. Research past climates. Warmer times were wetter, so less desert and less tundra enabling plants and animals to live where they cannot now. Most warming is from natural causes, not manmade.

Coal can be made into synthetic fuels which can make us less dependent on oil from dictatorial regimes that hate us. Nanotech could help keep it as clean as possible.

I like Hydrogen, but I only have one itsy bitsy concern...350 million people trying to make explosive gasses, and the Average US IQ is 100, that leaves 175 million that are starting to dip well below that...and I know some of em live right next to me (I am in an RV park, you know! )