Quote:
Originally posted by yournamehere
Natural gas is (for now) the most common and cheapest source of pure hydrogen. The hydrogen is usually extracted using steam.
This is the problem with fuel cell cars - we'll still need natural gas to get the hydrogen fuel - so we're still using fossil fuels. Luckily, the US has a hefty supply of natural gas, and the biggest supplier - Russia - is currently on friendly terms with us.
The next breakthrough to really put us on the path to fuel cell vehicles will be when engineers can come up with a cheap (i.e. - solar powered) method of using electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water molecules.
|
Fuel cell vehicles are a load of crap. Even if we get hydrogen from a non-fossil fuel, we have the problem that hydrogen does not like to stay single. It bonds to other molecules at the drop of a hat. That means we have to separate the other molecule from the hydrogen, a process which takes a HELL of a lot of energy whether we do it with steam, electricity, or heat.
The simple fact is that hydrogen is an energy
storage medium. That means you can use it to store energy you already have, but you'll lose some of that energy in the process - - -it's just like a battery. Meanwhile, the energy to crack the hydrogen from the other molecules is wasted, that energy was produced with coal, oil, or nuclear power, all of which pollute, yet enviro freaks who should know better are saying it's great for the environment because there are 0 emmissions from the tailpipe of a hydrogen car. They fail to see the fact that this is only true because the pollution is simply happening far away from the car, but it's still happening.