Dear John,
I have interspersed some remarks in red.
On 2009/03/31, at 10:34 PM, John M. Steele wrote:
Yes, it is waste. Unfortunately storing electrical power in a
battery, then withdrawing it also involves waste. Which is more
wasteful is debatable, although the edge probably goes to the
battery, at least when measured as power from the wall.
You write 'storing electrical power in a battery' and I ask, how is
this possible? Since power is, by definition, 'the rate at which you
use energy' how can that rate be stored? Isn't that statement the
equivalent to saying, as you fill you car, 'I am putting some 100 km/h
in my tank to store for later? You can store energy but you can't
store power.
When the total efficiency from fossil fuel to kWh delivered from a
battery is considered vs steam reformation of fossil fuel to
hydrogen to fuel cell output in kWh, the advantage may go to
hydrogen but at MUCH higher expense.
I suppose that you have used the expression from fossil fuel to kWh to
mean the energy contained in fossil fuel to the energy that can be
extracted from the total energy stored in a battery. For comparison
between these different types of energy, might I suggest that you use
the single international unit for energy (joule) from the
International System of Units (SI)? As you probably know, the joule
has been agreed and supported by various international agreements
since 1889. I think that in this paragraph that you are confusing
words to differentiate the different names for different forms of
energy with energy measuring words; using joules for all forms of
energy removes the second half of this problem and you can then
concentrate on the words for the different energy forms.
For both, the weight and volume of tankage (and fuel) to contain the
"fuel" puts both at a huge disadvantage compared to gasoline or
diesel, hence hybrids.
Tankage?
There is no "good" answer, but perhaps a "less bad."
I agree.
--- On Tue, 3/31/09, David <totakeke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: David <totakeke...@yahoo.com>
Subject: [USMA:44247] RE: Nail in the coffin for hydrogen (at least
for now)?
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 4:39 AM
As for hydrogen, isn't it wasted energy to use electricity to get
hydrogen instead of just using the electricity to power the car direct
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
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