erik schreef:josephine schreef:Hmm, daar heb je wat milieuvriendelijkheid betreft nog niks aan. Het verbruiken is milieuvriendelijk, het produceren nog absoluut niet en dat is ook een nog niet opgelost probleem.
the magic word is "electrolyse" met behulp van zonne-energie. Ok je moet de zonnepanel maken, maar het is wel een behoorlijke stap de goede richting op lijkt me.
Hydrogen fuels cells aren't the answer either. As of 2003, the average fuel cell costs close to $1,000,000. Unlike other alternatives, hydrogen fuel cells have shown little sign of coming down in price.
Even if the cost is lowered by 98%, placing the price at $20,000 per cell, hydrogen fuel cells will never power more than a handful of cars due to a worldwide shortage of platinum:
A single hydrogen fuel cell requires 20 grams of platinum. If the cells are mass-produced, it may be possible to get the platinum requirement down to 10 grams per cell. The world has 7.7 billion grams of proven platinum reserves. There are approximately 700 million internal combustion engines on the road. Ten grams of platinum per fuel cell x 700 million fuel cells = 7 billion grams of platinum, or practically every gram of platinum in the earth.
Unfortunately, as a recent article in EV World points out, the average fuel cell lasts only 200 hours. Two hundred hours translates into just 12,000 miles, or about one year’s worth of driving at 60 miles per hour. This means all 700 million fuel cells (with 10 grams of platinum in each one) would have to be replaced every single year.
Thus replacing the 700 million oil-powered vehicles on the road with fuel cell-powered vehicles, for only 1 year, would require us to mine every single ounce of platinum currently in the earth and divert all of it for fuel cell construction only.
Doing so is absolutely impossible as platinum is astonishingly energy intensive (expensive) to mine, is already in short supply, and is indispensable to thousands of crucial industrial processes.
Even if this wasn't the case, the fuel cell solution would last less than one year. As with oil, platinum production would peak long before the supply is exhausted.
What will we do, when less than 6 months into the “Hydrogen Economy,” we hit Peak Platinum? Perhaps Michael Moore will produce a movie documenting the connection between the President’s family and foreign platinum companies while following the plight of a mother whose son died in the latest platinum war?
If the hydrogen economy was anything other than a total red herring, such issues would eventually arise as 80 percent of the world’s proven platinum reserves are located in that bastion of geopolitical stability, South Africa.
Even if an economically affordable and scalable alternative to platinum is immediately located and mined in absolutely massive quantities, the ability of hydrogen to replace even a small portion of our oil consumption is still handicapped by several fundamental limitations:
1. Hydrogen is the smallest element known to man. As such, it will leak out of any container;
2. A hydrogen economy would require massive retrofitting of our entire global transportation network. How such a capital intensive endeavor will be accomplished in the midst of massive energy shortages is anybody's guess;
3. As mentioned previously, solar, wind, or nuclear energy can be used to "crack" hydrogen from water via a process known as electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes more energy than it produces.
Aldus.....
