Ford Announces $103 Million Investment in Local Vehicle Upgrade - Page 6

**Luke Plaizier** · 24-01-2012, 08:37 AM

True. But the good thing about electricity is that you can get it from sources OTHER than Coal too. Wind, Thermal, Hydro, Solar, Nuclear. Even Space Based power stations are on the radar of countries like Japan.

You could think of Hydrogen as just another way to store electricity, just like a battery. The early Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, as well as the Shuttle, used Hydrogen (and Oxygen - but we've got heaps of that here already) in a Fuel Cell to generate electricity.

There are some pretty ordinary issues to Hydrogen though, I agree. Like it just 'escapes' through the material it is stored in because it's atoms are so small. And it usually needs to be cryogenically stored (although I understand there are some new cool ways tostore Hydrogen that don't require it to be so cold). And it is not very dense. The BIG orange tank on the Space Shuttle had two halfs - the top half Oxygen and the bottom Hydrogen. If you take a close look at it, and observe the 'ridged' bit as the join between the two tanks, you can see how much more space the Hydrogen takes up.

Lukeyson

Buntz · 30-01-2012, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luke Plaizier

True. But the good thing about electricity is that you can get it from sources OTHER than Coal too. Wind, Thermal, Hydro, Solar, Nuclear. Even Space Based power stations are on the radar of countries like Japan.

You could think of Hydrogen as just another way to store electricity, just like a battery. The early Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, as well as the Shuttle, used Hydrogen (and Oxygen - but we've got heaps of that here already) in a Fuel Cell to generate electricity.

There are some pretty ordinary issues to Hydrogen though, I agree. Like it just 'escapes' through the material it is stored in because it's atoms are so small. And it usually needs to be cryogenically stored (although I understand there are some new cool ways tostore Hydrogen that don't require it to be so cold). And it is not very dense. The BIG orange tank on the Space Shuttle had two halfs - the top half Oxygen and the bottom Hydrogen. If you take a close look at it, and observe the 'ridged' bit as the join between the two tanks, you can see how much more space the Hydrogen takes up.

Lukeyson

15000psi carbon fibre tanks should do the trick. Sure it's expensive... but so is making batteries for band aid solution hybrids.

Hydrogen is the future. It's viable... it just needs the commitment to the infrastructure.