Reply #15: It Won't Be Hydrogen

[ThomWV]

No rational analysis of hydrogen as fuel ever has it comming up a winner anywhere any time. I love the romantic idea that we'll just get it from sea water. And where, pray tell, will the energy come from the separate that precious hydrogen from the oxygen it will someday reunite with to return that energy for our use? They make hydrogen, in the limited quantities its now required in, mostly from the sludge at refinerys. Were we to go to a 'hydrogen economy' we'd be getting our hydrogen fix from coal (one fossil fuel we certainly are not going to be running out of in the next 50 years) and simply put the loss from the primary source, be it the mine or the well, to the point of end use, lets say a hybird car, is immense so that by the time you are tooling down the highway you are acutally making productive use of less than 20% of the energy held in the original fuel. Then think of this little problem the silly notion of fuel cells powering hydrogen driven cars has - what do you use for a fuel tank? Did you know that a tanker full of compressed hydrogen doen't have as much energy as 300 gallons of regular unleaded? Oh, and then there is the problem of leakage. Boys and Girls, if its a hydrogen economy you have your hopes pinned on you might want to start looking around for a new plan.