Ravenwood - 06/16/05 08:15 AM
Environmentalist wackos are going ga-ga over a hydrogen powered motorcycle.
While attention has been focused on developing pollution-free hydrogen-powered cars, Intelligent Energy and some others have turned instead to two-wheeled transportation.Hydrogen is not pollution free. Disposal of the fuel cell aside, hyrdogen gas is generated through electrolysis of water. That is, water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen gas using electricity; electricity that is largely generated from oil and other fossil fuels.The firm, which is relocating to Los Angeles from London, says the motorcycle's fuel cell develops the equivalent of eight horsepower, good for speeds up to 50 miles an hour. The cycle has a range of about 100 miles on a tank of fuel. Currently, a hydrogen fill-up would cost about $3, says the cycle's project director, Andy Eggleston.
Hydrogen is not a "primary fuel" at all. It is simply a means of storing/transporting energy. A hydrogen fuel cell is actually more of a battery than anything else.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not going to do us a damn bit of good until we can increase our electriciy production by a significant amount (hint, hint...the key rhymes with muclear).
Posted by: Nick Bourbaki at June 16, 2005 7:04 AMThe current Honda fuel cell automobile costs around $200K (if you could buy one). It's basically an econobox design, so let's just call it eight times the price of a comparable, low-end, moden gasoline-engine automobile.
This eight horsepower "motorcycle", capable of a whopping 50 miles-per-hour doesn't appear to be much more than a moped. Eight horsepower. Lawn mower territory.
Future headline:
Fuel-cell powered lawn mowers, emitting only water, mandated by CA legislature...
Talk about your utopian "wet dream". Mow the lawn and water it too. Add the optional electrolyte infuser, and you have a sports drink dispenser at the ready for those really big jobs!
Snore...
Nick: The key might also rhyme with "mucular". ;^)
In addition, IIRC, don't a lot of coal burning power plants actually produce more pollution per unit of energy produced than a new car?
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian at June 16, 2005 9:10 AMUntil someone with some influence seriously suggests we start building nuke plants to give us electricity during the day, and use excess capacity at night to produce hydrogen for mobile fuel (in leiu of gasoline), we're just not serious. Hydrogen is all sorts of spiffy, but, that daggone second law of thermodynamics says it'll take more energy to produce it than you'll get by burning. So... if you're burning something to get the energy to make hydrogen from water, well, you only increase the energy needs.
Nukes and hydrogen... that might well be the best solution.
Posted by: Nate at June 16, 2005 9:44 AMFusion power, the holy Grail of energy prodution.... still a good 25 years off at the minimum.
Hydrogen could also be produced from electricity from wind turbines, but the environuts don't like bird blenders in their backyards.
It could be produced by solar cells. What's the environmental impact of producing semiconductors by the acre, considering that producing teeny little chips seems to have significant impact? And what would be the impact of paving Arizona over with them?
And finally, a tank of hydrogen, however constructed, will contain less energy than the same size tank of almost any other fuel. Also, it will spring more leaks than anything that isn't actively corrosive, and the leaks will be more likely to burst into flames (which are invisible!) or to accumulate enough H2 to detonate.
Hydrogen is far closer to practicality if you consider it as a way to store excess off-peak power for use by large immobile installations.
Posted by: markm at June 17, 2005 5:21 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
