The round trip is a net loss isn't it? We use electricity to convert H2O into H and O.
Then in a hydrogen fuel cell car, we RE-convert the H and O back into H2O again.
So it is a round trip.
But since every mechanical device LOSES energy through friction and heat and waste, the round trip from H2O to H & O and back to H2O LOSES energy.
Isn't this right? So how will a hydrogen economy run the country or replace oil-burning cars?
More efficient than gas? What a joke. Gas is the source for energy. Since hydrogen doesn't exist naturally it requires energy to separate from oil, since oil has more hydrogen than water and oil is more plentiful.
It takes more energy to refine hydrogen than you get from combustion. The byproduct is water vapor, another green house gas worse than co2.
In 1976 I was driving an old Ford pickup with a 6 cylinder engine and standard carbureator with a dual fuel attachment. The gas tank was disconnected and the truck was running on hydrogen contained in a propane tank fastened in the bed of the truck. The truck ran beautifully with no loss of power. The hydrogen was being generated by the hydrolysis of water with electricity generated by a micro steam turbine powered by two parabolic solar collector panels supplying the steam to run the turbine. The oxygen was vented back to the atmosphere and any condensate returned to the system. The additonal electricity generated ran a micro two stage compressor which routed the hydrogen through a dryer and thence to the storage tank on the pickup. All at relatively low pressures. Simple and neat. When the tank was full and pressurized the system automatically shut down and waited for someone to disconnect the storage tank when the truck was to be driven. This small experimental, demonstration model was still of sufficient size to supply a full years worth of the energy needs of a small farm with a few vehicles in approximately six weeks of full time operation.
The car you are driving today can run very nicely on hydrogen with very few changes. Any vehicle which now has or can be fitted with a dual fuel system or runs on propane or Liquified Natural Gas or Compressed Natural Gas can gain in power and do just fine on Hydrogen. Every municipality and every refuse collection agency should be running every fleet vehicle on free hydrogen! All such use is local and does not require high pressure storage to get through the day. Fuel cells are only a way to make the whole system very expensive and not available to “Joe the Plumber” except through “the industry” which insures the collection of the necessary taxes.
Anyone who says the system requires additonal electrical power which would come off the grid and thereby be “polluting” is simply lying or hasn’t even considered the generation of electricity by solar generated steam power.
This was a demonstration of the technology which was to be marketed to the agriculture segment of the economy. The inventor of the system needed money beyond what his solar panel manufacturing business could supply. I wrote a grant proposal for submission to the then Department of Energy for a grant or loan to complete upgrading the final system and begin production.
After months of work by the state’s Congressional Delegation and even though the Military was willing to do a demo project for the Minuteman Missile Transport Command the DOE totally backed away and said there wasn’t enough electricity generated to make it a paying proposition. No value was assigned to the hydrogen-none-not even a penney. Then to really cap it off–the DOE said that they couldn’t supply even a loan because somewhere, at some time, someone employed by the Federal Government was probably already working on similar technology and therefore the DOE could not compete with itself!!
If you’re interested in more of the story and the name of the inventor you may reach me at the email address.
Wouldn’t you be willing to pay a dollars worth of tax if you got your fuel for free?
Don Johannsen