Why Bush Supports Fuel Cells.... It's the Platinum, Stupid

And I thought it was because he's so environmentally conscious... Must read article in latest Mother Jones...

The Russians Are Coming!

"The Bush administration is high on hydrogen. The president's proposed 2005 budget includes $228 million to help businesses develop better hydrogen fuel cells, triple the assistance the federal government provided in 2001. What's left unsaid in his speeches about America's potential to "lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles" is that the initiative holds out a massive windfall for Bush insiders and well-connected lobbyists, not to mention a Russian oligarch with a history of shady dealings and environmental destruction."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/05/04_406.html




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Uncorruptable metal. Superior conductor of electricity. Platinum is worth twice as much as Gold. I'm sure Poppy and his Barroick buddies have a hand in it.....

mental deficient that he's made out to be.

Bush's plan would get most of the hydrogen from coal, so it wouldn't reduce our reliance on fossil fuels at all. It would just switch us to a fossil fuel found more readily in the US.

Hyrdogen cars might get popular until the first time a fuel tank on one is punctured in an accident and destroys an entire section of highway along with all the cars nearby.

Hydrogen rises quickly, dissipates super fast when not contained.

The chances of an explosion are much greater with a gasoline leak. Gas hangs around and fills low spots with persistant, highly flamable vapor. Even a 10 gallon spill can be a serious environmental hazard.

I'm much more wary of gasoline.

That said, the energy density of compressed hydrogen is much lower than gas. I'm not sure if you will want to be filling up every 90 miles.

Then what happened with the hyndenberg and why would this be any different?
I'm not saying you're wrong but maybe you know a reason why a hydrogen car wouldn't result in a similar explosion. Since I ignored all my science classes in school I don't know.

I'm sure we're talking about smaller amounts of hydrogen but the stuff still blows up pretty good.

If you bring up the Hindenburg first? :evilgrin:

Hydrogen can be explosive, but that's not what brought down the Hindenberg. Von Zeppelin's baloon was covered with an experimental powdered metal coating to minimize troublesome solar absorbtion.

A compound that unfortunately burned like gunpowder when ignited. Conductive too. Hindenburg didn't explode, she burned baby.

For hydrogen, it's a bum rap, still. Quick word association test: Hydrogen, audience survey says, HINDENBURG!

Nobody knows what triggered the fire, but it was the hydrogen that fueled it. Hydrogen is ridiculously flammable, and certain concentrations it explodes, usually it just burns very quickly.

"COMM
He found that the doping mixture contained iron oxide and powdered aluminum.

ADDISON BAIN
Being associated with space shuttle activity I knew that powdered aluminum was the fuel used on the boosters, and I thought: Boy what a bad combination.

COMM
The external boosters on the space shuttle are powered by a solid rocket propellant containing both aluminium powder and iron oxide!

Bain's experiments had confirmed that those same chemicals were present in even greater quantities in the doping compound used to protect the Hindenburg's outer cover.

The Hindenburg had been painted in the ingredients for rocket fuel!"

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/flash/hindenburg_script.html

I was rather disappointed that PBS would air it, seems better suited for Discovery Channel type "science" shows.

Anyway, the coating the guy tested was flammable. But it was hardly like "gun powder." And pretty insignificant compared to hydrogen.

The Hindenburg was like a wooden keg filled with gunpoweder. If it explodes you don't blame the wood because it happens to be flammable.

was a standard ingriedient in explosives, rocket fuel & pyrotechnic devices.

It doesn't take much to set of powdered aluminum, check your Aldrich cat or MSDS for more info on the physical properties and handling precautions.

At certain levels, anyway. But the dirigibles skin wasn't made out of pure aluminum powder, it only contained aluminum powder. Which makes it flammable when exposed to an ignition source. And if you had been paying attention to the your show you'd seen them demonstrate this.

The designers of the dirigible weren't to worried about the flammability of their skin, since if their was ever a fire a few hundred square yards of flaming canvas was the least of their concern.

He's high on H2 because going to a H2 economy right now would increase fossil fuel consumption by fifty percent! Ie. more oil profits.

It's true. The only way we have of producing hydrogen is on the grid, and through electrolysis. An extremely inefficient method.

(I am personally involved in a fuel cell startup company, and even the fuel cells they are talking about in these articles are way behind the development curve. )

Here's a few items worth reading-

http://www.efcf.com/reports/

Hydrogen can readily be obtained from water, the planets most abundant resource.
The US Navy has been separating hydrogen and oxygen from sea water for many years.
Hydrogen production could be increased readily if the market for it were there.

That alone should have been the tipoff.

I'm a mechanical engineer for a fuel cell company. You can believe me when I say it's a highly energy intensive activity. Sure it's done. And the Navy couldn't care less how efficient it is. They need hydrogen. But to use grid power to electolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen is exactly what we don't want to do right now. It's not that it's a bad idea, it's that using nonrenewable resources to do it would be much worse than using fossil fuels for combustion. I was appauled when Bush brought up the hydrogen talk in his speech. Enough. It's a complex subject. But the bottom line is we need an array of items that support the hydrogen system before we even get to using hydrogen for our economy. Photovoltaics, solid oxide fuel cells, hydrogen storage. None of which are available.

I should have noted that, yes, right now extraction is highly inefficient as you had stated in your post.

It also isn't the answer to the worlds energy needs, but eventually will perhaps supplement them.

Right now I think our problem is that after all these years we, as a nation, have not placed adequate emphasis on alternative energy sources.

I'm sure old bushhole only brought it up to try to take credit for any advances in fuel cell technology over the last few years. Even though his administration has contributed nothing towards it.

is not an energy efficient process. It takes more energy to create the hydrogen then is recovered thru combustion.

Now, just figure out how to split a few of those hydrogen atoms. :evilgrin:

Build lots of windmills to generate lots of electricity, then use the electricity to make hydrogen fuel from sea water.

I don't really see hydrogen as a solution in itself. I see it as a place where energy generated from clean sources can be "stored" for cases where portability is needed.

You are right. All of the money that Bush is pushing towards hydrogen research is going towards making the extraction of hydrogen from fossil fuels more efficient. It won't do anything to solve the oil problem, because oil will be the source of the hydrogen.

So when all this hydrogen is produced, how is it going to handled? A massive storage and transportation infrastructure (pipelines?) would need to be developed.

We already have a viable alternative - the electricity grid. The technology already exists to produce electric cars using battery "fuel cells" that can perform comparably with current fossil fueled cars.

AC Propulsion have developed an electric drivetrain that can out perform a Ferrari F355 in their test car (the tzero). It can accelerate from 0 - 60 in 4.1 seconds with a proven range at highway speeds of 245 miles using Lion batteries. It still performs acceptably well using lead acid batteries for most peoples daily transport duties.
http://acpropulsion.com/

This technology exists now. It has for years. But still, people aren't using electric cars, most probably because they are prohibitively expensive. When is the government and the auto/oil industries going to back THIS sector instead of pursuing pipedreams?

Perhaps we should also ask WHY it isn't happening.

Bush actually reduced the amount of funding Clinton gave fuel cell research from $2.5B to 1B. The amount of money to required to develop a fuel cell infrastructure is enormous and his buddies certainly don't want to pay for it - reduced profit for a long time. And they don't want anyone else to cut into their profits either. There is still too much oil to be pumped out of the grown (though the amount is diminishing every year). They still get their profits no matter how high the cost goes.