On Nov 19, 2014, at 6:22 PM, brucedp5 via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote:
> Recently (over the last couple of weeks), the automakers that are pushing > fcvs, spending money to provide copy to the media outlets so as to get their > word out (anti-EV, HEY! Look at our fcvs, etc.). I've seen a couple of those press releases (etc.) bubble to the surface, too. I thought about commenting on one here, decided on the better of it. I'll admit, it's neat technology. It's just a shame that it's always so damned inefficient and typically so dirty, even if tailpipe emissions are clean. In practical terms, it's really, really hard to beat gasoline (or diesel) as an energy storage medium. And what so few people realize is that it's actually an hydrogen delivery system. The chemical reaction in the internal combustion engine is to combine the hydrogen in the gasoline with oxygen in the air, forming water and releasing energy. The carbon in the gasoline is simply the carrier for the hydrogen. In one sense it's wasteful and just gets in the way and creates pollution; in another, it's what turns the hydrogen into a convenient liquid. You'd be really hard pressed to match the hydrogen density in gasoline by any other means. What interest me far more than fool cell vehicles is gasoline (etc.) synthesized from atmospheric CO2 using solar energy. It's not efficient nor cheap...but I consistently hear from various places that it would be profitable when oil is at or below $200 / barrel. As such, it provides something of a backstop on both the amount of oil we'll extract (why keep extracting dirty low-quality $220 / barrel oil when you can cleanly make high-quality $180 / barrel oil?) and the damage to our economy from extreme oil prices. And, of course, the fuels made in this manner are carbon-neutral; burn the carbon in the fuel and you just release back what went into making it a short while earlier. Better yet, if we ever ramp up something like this to truly industrial scales, we can eventually get to excess production levels and pump those excesses back in the ground and thereby heal some of the damage done to the atmosphere. And we wouldn't even have to cover a majority of the residential rooftop surface area with solar panels to have enough power to be able to do that and provide for all the rest of our energy needs. Not sure I'll live to see that day, though.... b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20141119/5e79085f/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
