Molten,
Nitrogen - Hydrogen carrier in the form of ammonia,
Nitrogen makes up 78% of our air, forgive my lack of all things chemical, but why cant you liquify air and bleed off the nitrogen, with no NOx created in the low temp FC then the nitrogen is released into the atmosphere and the life cycle of the nitrogen has little or no effect on the atmosphere.
expensive maybe but liquid oxygen as a bi product could reduce this cost.
Liberty,
Quote,
Safety is just a set of engineering requirements to address the toxicity and voltatility of things like ammonia
- I think one of the reasons we have been using liquid fuels for so long and now bio diesel and ethanol are taken seriously is because, liquids are safer than gases. nat gas and LPG are now being used increasing more and safely, but you can not change the laws of physics and a liquid fuel will always be choosen if all other things are equal. I am a fan of hydrogen but am not a fan of a 10,000psi tank in my car, although I beleive they have a place on the roof of a bus, if a bus rolls over you going to be stuffed anyhows!!
The australian government is set on implimenting carbon sequestion (make them feel better about exporting so much coal, well it is the best quality in the world), I know of people working for CSIRO on projects of the manner. Put into simple terms it will be 20 years before any sequestion is done on a scale large enough to have an environmental impact, and they still dont know if once in ground it will have sesmic reactions or simply leak and prove pointless.
A 5MW wind turbine has just been installed in germany, the largest in the world.
from a quick internet search I think drax power station in the UK is the largest power station creating 400MW (10% of UK total demand) thus 80 5MW wind turbines will do the job. and yes they are really are cost competitive with coal fired power espically if you are going to use sequestion, so why bother?
trying to confirm the high efficiency of a FC system is difficult, at
you can download a table listing every FC vehicle built thus far. you will notice the highest efficency is the equivelent of a 80MPG vehicle and has a pathetic range.(other milages given are simply targets and have not been achieved.
This is not such an uncommon milage figure for small diesel powered vehicles and some of the the new TDI cars(turbo high pressure common rail Direct injected diesels) with all the mod cons i.e power steer, air, elec winds, 6 stacker cd can get 3/4 of this figure. but with a massive driving range on one tank and performance close to naturally aspirated petrol.
prototype diesels are even better again, check this out. .
and remember that this protype HAS been built.
Pee bee,
The phrase you are looking to describe hydrogen by is "energy carrier". It is commonly refered to as this and it is the correct description untill we find a large trapped source for the taking ;o)
NOx generation is temp depend and if a hydrogen engine is running lean (low temperature) less than equiv ratio 0.4, no NOx is produced. above this closer to stiocheometric conditions the temp rises, read "the inevitability of engine out Nox - lawrence livermore laboratory for more info. it's floating on the web somewhere.
Univ. of Melbourne has a hydrogen powered Ford cortina, on a FTP-75 drive cycle 51% less NOx is produced
I am keen on the use of hydrogen but the use of hydrogen in automobiles ties directly with the technology available for it storage. Carbon nanotubes are considered the best possible system, low pressure, low adsorption and extration energy needed, but there is a great debate over what is really possible from them.
Hydrogen from renewable electricity (ex wind turbines) piped to residental and commerical areas for the use in SOFC's to generate not just electricity, but heat and water(likely not drinking but irragation, washing etc.) in my mind is much more likely the first step.
Biodisel can be home grown, mixed with crude oil diesel or used on it's own, it holds just as much energy as diesel (cannot be said for ethanol, hydrogen and many other alternate fuels) and diesels engines of today are soooooooooo much better than yesterdays smokey ones.
To second guess the future is the hardest thing to do while the US DOE only has a target of 6% Wt hydrogen storage system for the 2010 it is going to be a long time before hydrogen will be used widley for practical reasons.
Here in aussie looking at the levels of pollution over the last 20 years, the toxins in the air have all gone down and not up, becuase of catylitic converter on cars. I don't think we need zero emission vehicles we just need low emission vehicles.
Hydrogen will make up part of the future energy distribution but not all of it. and unlikely to be the automotive industry execpt where mandated like california. But as earlier stated we all ready have capacity to have zero emission vehicles i.e. battery powered ones, they may even be better environmentally wise when you consider the quantity of platinum in PEMFC's, and what platinum mining will do to the third world countries it exsists in.