[RustyLugNut]

It is obvious to me that most of you are stuck in the classic modes of thinking.

Hydrogen is perceived as useless because it is inefficient in production and use. As Niel Blanchard has pointed out in no uncertain terms, hydrogen and fuel cells are no competition to direct battery powered vehicles when efficiency is of great consideration.

The cascade of percentages illustrated by Old Tele man applies directly to hydrogen production and use in fuel cells.

And , Astro is right in that industry and market follow the easiest, most economical financial path.

But, consider this concept - long term storage of unused/unusable energy. Also, consider the transport of that same energy.

Batteries perform very poorly in both catagories. Discharge rates being what they are, storage of electrical energy in batteries for years down the line is not reasonable. Transmission of energy via electric cables has losses proportional to distance.


But chemical storage is excellent for doing both. Chemical storage allows us to use the stored energy many years down the line. The bulk transport via heavy terrestrial modes or pipeline is economical on a per unit basis.

Fossil fuels are essentially the energy of the sun stored chemically eons ago. This is currently the dominant primary power in our modern culture and will be for a bit of time more. Formation of fossil fuels is very energy inefficient. Collection via photosynthesis, burial and entrapment then the addition of heat and pressure plus time. Finally, it is ready for extraction, transport and use in a heat engine. The energy efficiency of the fossil fuel cycle from sun to my gas tank is a small fraction of 1%. And yet, at the current low prices, this fossil fuel beats your current and future battery solutions for energy density by a considerable margin. Because of it's advantages, even at much higher fossil fuel prices batteries cannot compete with fossil fuel on a cost/energy performance basis.

This whole cycle is what I and others are proposing - to mimic the hydrocarbon cycle but with carbon that is currently in the biosphere.

Astro, you simply missed what I am proposing - to synthesize fuel that is an analog to what is used today. Diesel and gasoline are already in wide spread use and can be closely mimicked or matched via several pathways. The pathways need carbon and hydrogen as the input plus energy added as the reactions are essentially reverse oxidation ( reverse combustion ) and are highly endothermic. Thus, cheap energy is needed. Or unused energy. These hydrocarbon fuels can be produced in times of energy excess as found in most current power generation. If we build out enough nuclear energy as I have mentioned, we can build to the point that Iceland is at - several times the energy capacity of it's population of 300 thousand people will need. Then you can use this excess electrical and heat energy to feed your hydrocarbon plants. The fuels can be stored indefinitely.

This synthetic fuel will not be as cheap as fossil fuel because we are actively adding effort at each step, thus we must use it more efficiently.

For personal light transport, putting the electricity directly into batteries for immediate use is by far the best solution for that niche. Our personal transport should not be using our synthetic fuel stream.

For heavy payloads such as 18 wheeled trucks, they can continue to use advanced diesels until LT-SOFC reach the 350 deg C operation range. At this operating temperature a LT-SOFC has a 60% thermal efficiency. This exceeds current and future diesel tech and will allow trucks to go further on each liter of synthetic diesel.

Aircraft can continue as before but flying on synthetic fuels.

All the above is not unicorn science. It is very basic. The complexity is in the need to change public opinion towards nuclear power. But, while waiting for that change, we can leverage excess electrical sources and start the storage of that power in hydrocarbons. It does not have to be efficient per energy calculations. But it must be efficient by market calculations.

At some point fossil fuels will cease to be the standard for primary power. Batteries are not a primary power. But they, along with hydrocarbons can store the energy of a nuclear age for short and long term transport use as well as the basic materials for our plastics consumption.

In the short/near term, renewable power can still be used on a personal scale. I tutor university students in science classes. Many move on to research in masters and doctoral efforts. One highly fascinating endeavor was an idea from India to use solar electricity, solar heat and carbonaceous plant waste. In an effort to provide concentrated and storable fuel on a local level a system the size of a large freezer box was fed with solar panel electricity, solar hot water and several kilograms of pulp wood. A few minutes of processing time resulted in several kilograms ( a gallon ) of liquid methanol. A long summer day might result in several gallons of methanol. Not an economic success by western standards but it allows the long term storage of energy for use at a later date. The efficiency is not near as good as storing the solar power in batteries, but it can be stored easily and cheaply. If my plug in LT-SOFC car is charged in half a day of solar connection, I can store the excess energy as methanol. I do have to provide the yard trimmings. My daily route may not see me go more than a few miles never draining my battery but my excess energy piles up as methanol as my energy "still" continues to plug away. A few weekends later, my wife wants to blast up to Lake Arrowhead. I just fill up the fuel cell with more than enough methanol to make it there and back. My methanol fuel cell is not near as energy efficient solar panel to wheels as a battery pack. But it is using that energy in a form that is concentrated and long lasting.

Just a remark on bio-fuels, specifically algae bio-diesel. The problem with this solution is the need for concentrated CO2 sources to make it worthwhile. Thus the need for flue gasses from current fossil fueled power plants. As someone has mentioned, at least the secondary use of this CO2 is essentially a halving of greenhouse gasses. But, once fossil fuels fall by the wayside, we will have to find waste CO2 streams. Places like Iceland have geothermal venting of CO2 gasses and can thus tap these emission sources. We can also trap the CO2 streams of municipal dumps and sewers.