I keep hearing about this “hydrogen economy” idea. It seems like a lot of people talking about this never bothered to pay attention in high school physics.
A lot of noise gets made about the lack of a “hydrogen infrastructure” like the distribution network we have for gasoline. Nevermind that hydrogen doesn't really need a distribution network. I see little reason why there couldn't be little solar- or wind-powered hydrogen generators spread all over the place.
It would seem to me that the simplest thing to do would be to use electrolysis to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water, though I know there are certain problems with that. Heck, I'm sure people have had the crazy idea of keeping a bank of solar cells on top of a car, and using that power to generate more fuel while the car sits in a parking lot. It might not generate a lot of fuel, but it could be worthwhile..
A lot of attention is given to extracting hydrogen from gasoline or other fuel sources, which seems a bit odd to me. You'd lose some energy in that conversion process, though there is a method to the madness—fuel cells are much more efficient at using hydrogen than piston internal combustion engines are at using gasoline, for instance. I'm not sure if the scheme really works very well, though—perhaps a better approach would be to more efficiently use the original fuel, like in a turbine.
Well, whatever ends up happening in the future, we're stuck mostly using petroleum products for now. Just so I don't feel like an evil planet-destroyer, I think I'll have to consider getting a new fuel-efficient car in the next year or so. At the moment, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI and Toyota Prius are at the top of my list. Yeah, they might not exactly be performance automobiles, but almost anything is an improvement over a 4-cylinder automatic transmission Cavalier ;-)
Posted by mike at June 28, 2003 08:29 PM | Car | TrackBack