Re: I doubt that economics will impede the hydrigen economy

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bobster .) wrote in message news:

<snip>

>           What we really need is for people to get
> their thinking caps on, and come up with new and creative ways of making
> and using hydrogen.   Become a part of the solution, rather than a part
> of the problem.

I've argued here that the only technical problem with hydrogen is
storage.  If you can come up with a clean, safe, dense and convenient
storage mechanism, the rest of it is economics.  Production of
hydrogen is completely a non-issue.  Distribution of hydrogen becomes
an imaginary problem if you can load 100 lbs into the back of your
truck.  If fuel cells don't work out as I think they will, we can
always burn hydrogen in an ICE.

The storage problem does seem to be a show-stopper.  If you use
metallic means, you've lost portability in many instances.  Go to
powerballs or borax, and the simplicity which originally sold the
"hydrogen economy" goes away.  Every solution short of Liquid Hydrogen
negates another compelling advantage--specific impulse.  Liquid
hydrogen also seems like a non-starter.  We can do cold storage, but
20 degrees Kelvin?  If we perfect economics like that, there are many
less complicated things we can do instead.  The gentleman claiming to
have perfected carbon nanotubes for hydrogen storage (and of course
the Japanese, who immediately "replicated" his findings) have both
been shown to be fraudulent.

I seem to be the optimist here.  I think the science is not complete. 
I think that serious brainpower has not been properly directed to
solve the issue of hydrogen storage, and I still think it can be done.
 There's a military organization here that reconfigures nitrogen into
counter-intuitive molecular structures based entirely on energy
minima.  The result is a room temperature liquid fuel.  It's possible
that a similar approach could work with hydrogen.  If so, we could
pump pure hydrogen as easily as gasoline.

Hydrogen obviously isn't the only thing that could work.  Somebody
could still build an amazing battery.  Chemistry could conceivably
supply us with a clean, cheap alternative.  We may find portable
nuclear reactions before we find a good hydrogen solution.  I agree
that the most important thing is to keep trying.