Thread: Something to ponder

Originally Posted by Fifth Columnist

Petrol is an oil byproduct. What will we do with it after the cars are gone?

Electric aeroplanes next?

Do what we used to do with LPG when it was a waste product. Burn it off.

Originally Posted by Fifth Columnist

Petrol is an oil byproduct. What will we do with it after the cars are gone?

Electric aeroplanes next?

The light fractions of crude that currently are used to make petrol can be used as feedstock for various chemical processes. For example, to go back a few posts, most hydrogen produced today is formed from natural gas, but petrol could be used as feedstock instead.

Worth noting that when batteries become really viable for cars, they will also become viable for many uses of propeller driven aircraft.

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

It would be more efficient to run hydrogen in fuel cells. Honda used to produce the Odessy as a fuel cell vehicle for Californian market. Now they produce the Clarity.
The fuel cell was invented many decades ago. During the Gemini missions (FEED phase of the Apollo missions) batteries weren't able to provide the energy for the length of time required for a flight to the Moon. Gemini 5 was the first of the Gemini missions to utilise the fuel cell technology in a mission that lasted eight days.
And the beauty of the fuel cell, when you run out of hydrogen, you can quickly fill the tank. Well, that has been the experience in California.

Some old news:

California Fuel Cell Partnership - Wikipedia

California Hydrogen Highway - Wikipedia

I've been championing hydrogen cars for years. It is simply a lack of will that keeps them off the streets globally. Honda's Clarity was an awesome car 7 years ago. What could it be now? Hyundai have a couple of hydrogen models currently. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the known universe. The infrastructure required is in reality no more difficult to provide than LPG, and it exists already in California. There isn't anything like the environmental damage that batteries cause, and the cars can fill in about the same time an LPG car can. All the by-products produced by the cars themselves are simply oxygen and water. What's not to like?

Backchannel? Hydrogen creates it's own difficulties, but in all seriousness we already have oil refineries, all over the place, and hydrogen infrastructure is less of a problem than those. Electric cars rely on batteries. Sure, maybe they will get better, but currently they are far more detrimental to the environment than petrol or diesel. They rely on strip mining, unbelievable processing, coal to produce the frameworks, and there is still no seriously viable way to deal with them when they are past their useful life. Maybe all this will be overcome, and maybe not. Right now they aren't even scratching the surface, and they are creating many more problems than they may eventually solve.

All that ignores the question. Where does the charge come from to power these cars? The answer is, of course, from fossil fuel. Any argument that it comes, or even can come, from solar or wind is specious, as neither of those sources can even maintain grid security. Not for five minutes, not for five seconds, NEVER, as they cannot produce synchronous power without the grid already running. Anyone who says different is either ignorant or being deliberately obtuse.

So, where does the 'clean electric' car get it's power? Well, here in Oz, from NSW black coal, or, more probably, from Victoria's brown. In Europe, probably from French nukes.
Fine. NIMBY rules.

Hydrogen makes far, far more sense, if honesty, rather than ideology, is of any importance in this debate. But it won't be, as ideology is a religion, and honesty never has been.