Scientific American Frontiers: Hydrogen Hopes | PBS - Political Forum

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · 09-22-2007, 04:03 AM

Looks at solar, hydrogen and algae biodiesel power. I really enjoyed what I saw of it. It's coming on again Saturday afternoon. Half an hour long. Highly recommend.

Scientific American Frontiers . Hydrogen Hopes | PBS

I saw on Google that you can also watch this thing on line at Amazon.com It didn't work quite right for me when I tried it, had some technical difficulties, but it was like $2 for 30 minutes.

Slartibartfas · 10-07-2007, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

Looks at solar, hydrogen and algae biodiesel power. I really enjoyed what I saw of it. It's coming on again Saturday afternoon. Half an hour long. Highly recommend.

Scientific American Frontiers . Hydrogen Hopes | PBS

I saw on Google that you can also watch this thing on line at Amazon.com It didn't work quite right for me when I tried it, had some technical difficulties, but it was like $2 for 30 minutes.

The basic problem of hydrogen seems still to be that it cant be stored efficiently enough.

And thats a major flow for something that is planned to be used as energy storage. I sincerely hope they come up with solutions in the time to come for this problem, otherwise the hydrogen technology might face a huge wall it can't overcome.

But when looking at other storage technologies its still in the race, for sure.

PS:
Just to make it clear, hydrogen is no primary source of energy, its a storage for produced energy that is needed either somewhere else (mobile applications for example) or at another time.

Slartibartfas · 10-07-2007, 11:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MountainMike

Clear Lake, California, is a very large, shallow lake that naturally grows tons of algae every year. When nothing is done with it, it creates a stink, and that stink is bad for the tourist industry. It would be a win-win proposition for a corporation to skim the algae off of the lake for a lake shore power plant digestor.

The article itself stated that genetic modified algaes would be needed for good efficiency. That per definition has to be done in a controlled environment.

And principally I dont believe this technology would make much sense for being used to farm small natural habitats. After all those algeas probably dont experience any malnutrition which brings the entire concept to collapse.

Quote:

Don't forget about the article posted a couple of months ago about bacteria being developed that can break down crop wastes and switchgrass into a hydrocarbon fuel. It is allegedly a major cost break through for a plant based fuel.

Really? H2 producing microbacteria?
I have read once about this issue. With current possibilities its impossible to take the biotechnological way in any feasible way. H2 is at best a byproduct that is created only in low dosis.

While this solution might be sexy its utopic under current conditions. You would principally have to design an organism to large parts new to have a usable one.
Creating new life on from scratch is still a bit difficult for contemporary science. Not impossible, especially in the near future, but that will take some time at least.