A hydrogen future could entirely do away with our dependence on petroleum as a transit fuel. The worrisome side is that achieving such a future will require changing every facet of our transportation energy system. We will need new refineries, new pipelines and new storage systems. We will have to replace internal combustion engines with fuel cells and gas stations with hydrogen stations. The capital cost to California alone will be more than $50 billion, and even the rosiest predictions don't expect the benefits to be seen for decades.

A better alternative exists, one that can achieve the same environmental and national security benefits decades sooner, and at a fraction of the cost. The strategy relies on hybrid vehicles and biofuels like ethanol rather than fuel cells and hydrogen. Even the National Research Council, the arm of the National Academies charged with advising Washington on scientific matters, advocates investing more immediate effort and energy in developing a system based on hybrids and biofuels. Unfortunately, that alternative is being obscured by the scene-stealing hydrogen vision being peddled in Washington DC and Sacramento.

 

At present, hybrids do not travel far on electricity alone. The improved vehicle efficiency comes from eliminating fuel consumption while idling and by using electric motors for acceleration. A modest modification in the hybrid design would allow the cars to charge their batteries from the grid system as well as from the engine. These vehicles are appropriately named Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Daimler/Chrysler has announced it will introduce test vehicles in Europe and the United States in 2005.

A PHEV has more battery storage and a smaller gas engine than a conventional hybrid, allowing electricity to become the vehicle's primary source of power. PHEVs can reduce the amount of gas needed by the engine by 85 percent. Such a dramatic reduction would enable us to completely displace our drive-time dependence on petroleum: a dramatic increase in the use of biofuels.

Biofuels can be made from either vegetable oils or sugars. Vegetable oils can be used instead of diesel, while ethanol, made from fermented corn sugars, can take the place of gasoline. Given that less than 2 percent of U.S. passenger vehicles run on diesel, it makes sense to focus on ethanol. What's more, there is already a national infrastructure for producing and delivering ethanol, with a 3 billion gallon production capacity.

 

Ethanol is the fuel that environmentalists and Californians love to hate. Many Californians and others view ethanol as a multi-billion dollar boondoggle for Midwest farmers and the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. But ethanol is undeniably a green fuel; clean-burning and renewable.

Back in 2001, California's vehicles were using virtually no ethanol. They consumed some 800 million gallons in 2004. Ethanol has gone from zero percent to about 6 percent of the state's transportation fuel without a hitch. Even the most ardent hydrogen advocate doesn't envision that fuel's achieving a similar market penetration rate for decades. In fact, the NRC panel asked to investigate the promises of hydrogen determined that the transition

 

Without any subsidies, the price of ethanol on a gallon of gasoline equivalent basis is less than half that of hydrogen. The cost of installing an ethanol fueling station

 

Ethanol today comes from a renewable resource, corn starch. And it will soon be fermented from the sugars of other abundant biomass materials like grasses, straw, organic wastes, kelp and wood. Hydrogen, by comparison, comes from non-renewable resources like natural gas, coal and petroleum. True, hydrogen can be made from renewable resources. We could generate electricity from wind and use the electricity to extract hydrogen from water and then transport the hydrogen to the point where it could be burned in cars' fuel cells. But this is a convoluted and inefficient way to use wind power. It is far more economical at this point to use the wind-generated electricity directly, or store it in PHEV batteries.

One final thought: Like natural gas, petroleum, and coal, ethanol contains hydrogen. It is cheaper to transport hydrogen-containing materials like ethanol than to transport hydrogen itself, because hydrogen must be compressed several thousand times for transport or storage, and that costs money and wastes energy. Significant advances have been made in cheaply extracting the hydrogen from ethanol. So, in the long term, an ethanol-fueled transportation system could lay the groundwork for a more incremental transition to hydrogen.

http://www.ilsr.org/columns/index.html

 

When I have time, I'll come back to read all these.

 

Why did you post this as several threads? Didn't you already put another thread on ethanol?

 

This is kinda off topic, but do you ever post threads that are not started with copy-and-paste info or fantasy cars?

 

My co-worker was telling me about this the other day, that Ethanol is a great alternative fuel.

Are there any disadvantages? It just doesn't seem to make sense. Ethanol was available as an alternative fuel source during the 70's oil crisis, but we didn't use it. Its available now and we're not using it. Conspiracies aside, why aren't we using it? Sounds like it makes a lot more sense to use a renewable energy source versus a non-renewable one. Plus it would help our own people out by empowering the farmers in our country. It could stimulate our economy and help our country out.

Oh well, who knows.

 

hmm, imo Gas (petrol) and diesel are now and in my lifetime will be around and the fuel of choice for automobiles.

The few things going against are it's location (middle east) and it's peak production. Peak production is max-output worldwide.

I think developing countries like China and India have to worry more than we do.

China and India don't produce much if any oil. Unlike the US. So if the price skyrockets they'll be more out of luck. Also we in the US are able to pay more for oil. Plus many oil companies are US Exxon etc..

It'd be nice for us to cut back. But I don't see us going away from gas anytime soon.

I believe gas/diesel hybrids and possibly plug-in hybrids are a better alternative. Hybrids cost more, but hydrogen requires massive change and cost that I don't see anyone jumping on that bandwagon.

I don't know that much about ethonol but if it's so great why hasn't any smart investor jumped on it to make mad coin?

IMO oil is still cheap. Gas today is cheaper in real dollars than it was 50 years ago.

IMO this "fuel scare" is just media hype. I think the days of Mad Max world without oil are a long long way in the future.