Read more reader reponses to DN Editor-in-Chief John
Dodge's "Get
Energized about Energy" column in the August 11 issue as well as Design
News' exhaustive hydrogen
fuel cell vehicle and fueling infrastructure package.
I am not going to waste a lot of time on the subject of hydrogen power.
I am an R&D engineer by profession and in all aspects of my life. I am a registered mining engineer as well as MBA and numerous BS degrees (that's bull sh*t but the BS degrees look good on a resume). All the peripheral things and degrees make no difference; it's the practical, final output that turns the wheel (torque at the rim so to speak).
Why are we considering hydrogen as a motive fuel? It requires serious quantities of high level energy (electricity) to produce even a small amount of hydrogen and then we want to burn it or use it in other inefficient ways. The overall efficiency will be worse than electric heat in a home.
We are already short on electric power and we are going to make hydrogen, compress it and then drive a vehicle? Even using fuel cells, the efficiency will be hard pressed to even approach that of the most inefficient battery powered devices.
Seems like we will need a lot of Nuclear or other power plants to support this effort.
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