Free energy VS Fossil Fuel

[Fubard]

I fear you're operating under the assumption that his case rests only on its merits when in fact there is a large component of saving face and outright retribution involved. The US government wants to make an example of him and frankly doesn't care about the legal details.

So you can't even address one of the two simple questions.

One day you'll realise the simplest answer to any conspiracy theory is "There isn't one".

Assange has successfully destroyed himself, when he has to come out he'll go to court, get sentenced to 3 months, do 2 weeks in a comfy jail, then be shipped back to Australia with PNG on his record which will seriously cramp his ability to get a visa for many countries. He's alienated friends and allies, especially those who lost the bail money they put up, he's finished himself off so why would the US NEED to do anything to someone who can self-destruct things so majestically on his own?

Anyway, "Free Energy". There isn't such a thing, one way or another there is a cost, whether that is in the invention, development, construction, whatever, or in energy losses somewhere. It does not exist.

 

[ttystikk]

Anyway, "Free Energy". There isn't such a thing, one way or another there is a cost, whether that is in the invention, development, construction, whatever, or in energy losses somewhere. It does not exist.

I can think of one only; straight sunlight. Plants grow in it, we tan in it, passive solar homes can keep themselves warm with it (different than passive homes, there is a distinction).

We don't HAVE TO convert it into electric for it to be beneficial. Sometimes, less is more.

 

[Fubard]

I fear you're operating under the assumption that his case rests only on its merits when in fact there is a large component of saving face and outright retribution involved. The US government wants to make an example of him and frankly doesn't care about the legal details.

Then why didn't they do that before the Swedes issued their EAW, given that a VERY special bilateral extradition treaty exists between the USA and UK meaning doing so under the most trumped up of charges would have been much easier?

Like with "free energy", sometimes the only time a conspiracy is real is between the ears of a deluded narcissist. Since you still won't be able to answer that simple "why" above, we can assume there is no conspiracy to somehow "whisk away" The Deluded One as you cannot come up with a simple reason as to why the above was not done.

 

[Fubard]

I can think of one only; straight sunlight. Plants grow in it, we tan in it, passive solar homes can keep themselves warm with it (different than passive homes, the apparently it's a distinction).

We don't HAVE TO convert it into electric for it to be beneficial. Sometimes, less is more.

Your "passive solar" has a means to store energy captured from solar generation, heating water is an example, and these systems come at a cost one way or another as you have to create, install and maintain them.

Even "converting to electricity" comes at a huge cost, as for every megawatt of "green" energy, there is a megawatt waiting to come on at a moment's notice to keep the supply stable. That means that you have fossil fuel stations, generally gas as that can be cranked up quicker, running inefficiently "just in case" they're needed when some clouds appear or the wind drops. That one word, "inefficiently", tells you there's a real cost.

Or you get the farce which regularly happens here where a "rich" area basically covered every roof with solar panels, and every year they get upset because they don't get paid for the time they're cut off from generating as too much solar at the wrong place at the wrong time, when those very people are at work and not using said energy in the middle of summer, means that energy gets wasted as these people are disconnected from the generation so they can keep things balanced and stable across the grid.

"Cheaper" or "More Efficient" energy, fine. but "Free"? Come on, all the costs from conception to realisation to invention to development to deployment alone tells us that there is no such thing as "free energy", not unless you are running at over 100% efficiency and then we're into perpetual motion territory...

But I have one idea to float to you. Get the Hydrogen problem sorted out, storage and transportation being the biggest issues even though we do have "H² powered" buses running past me every day, get that in use. Production is easy, we know it needs large amounts of water and electricity, so use coastal wind power to crack seawater until the latest one under development, floating solar powered "rigs", are fully up and running, and that's before other methods like new nanomaterials can crack seawater better are considered.

As I say, here in my little part of little old Belgium there are H² powered buses, let's get that tech in use to get off of fossil, start with public transport then people don't see "Hindenburg's" every day and know that H² is a "safe" fuel, move onto haulage, move it to autos. Hell, even use an unstable generation medium such as wind or solar to crack water to power an H² powered generating plant, that way the "unstable" becomes "stable" as you're basically doing what the "solar/wind and giant battery" storage packs are doing, converting that solar or wind energy into another form of energy and using that to somehow distribute electricity. The ultimate in "green" energy, wind/solar used to turn the most abundant substance on the planet into it's two basic elements, only releasing oxygen, and then the combustion of the other element results in nothing more dangerous than water.

Makes you wonder why so much time and money is being spent on some deeply unpleasant practices in the pursuit of "green" energy when there seems to be a fairly simple solution right in front of our noses...

 

[dstroy]

In this case, history supports @choomer's contention.

Thorium might well be better. How likely are we to make the switch? I'm thinking not very.

Apparently we rather throw billions at fusion power pipe dreams.

This stuff isn't hard to find, and it is no conspiracy, just operating cost in most cases, sometimes technical obstacles need to be overcome.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx

Thorium is used in a variety of reactors, for a variety of reasons, and its use is definitely not being discouraged. I think the conspiracy theorists here just live inside a bubble and plug their ears and sing lalalala when you show them evidence contrary to their beliefs.

The reason we are spending so many resources on researching fusion energy is simple, the amount of fuel we have is finite. Fusion reactions would theoretically use much less fuel to produce equivalent power. Pretty fascinating subject.

I respectfully disagree. The extremely high cost of nuclear technology would tend to make decision makers very conservative in terms of the technology chosen. Uranium had been far better researched, in part because of government sponsored weapons research.

Thorium represents a big break from the known body of knowledge and so it would have been very hard to justify such a big and expensive step into the unknown.

Nuclear power is so expensive that even now it isn't cost effective. A whole new and improved- but still extremely expensive- technology based on thorium would therefore be a very hard sell.

I don't see the conspiracy here. I just see a path taken and the fork left unexplored. Keep in mind that uranium based nuclear power was touted as 'too cheap to meter' when first proposed. Once bitten, twice shy is very real when talking about billions of dollars of investment.

Uranium was/is chosen because it is very fissile, aka very good at being fuel for a nuclear reactor. The properties of thorium are well known, it comes again to added complexity for some reactors, and operating cost.

The thorium-uranium fuel cycle is also more radioactively dangerous than the U-235 which most reactors use today. The thorium-uranium fuel cycle produces thallium-208 as a byproduct which produces 2.6 MeV of gamma radiation in decay mode. Gamma radiation is the hardest and most expensive radiation to shield for, so typically fuels that do NOT produce a lot of gamma radiation are chosen.

No conspiracy here.

 

[Grandpapy]

Your "passive solar" has a means to store energy captured from solar generation, heating water is an example, and these systems come at a cost one way or another as you have to create, install and maintain them.

Even "converting to electricity" comes at a huge cost, as for every megawatt of "green" energy, there is a megawatt waiting to come on at a moment's notice to keep the supply stable. That means that you have fossil fuel stations, generally gas as that can be cranked up quicker, running inefficiently "just in case" they're needed when some clouds appear or the wind drops. That one word, "inefficiently", tells you there's a real cost.

Or you get the farce which regularly happens here where a "rich" area basically covered every roof with solar panels, and every year they get upset because they don't get paid for the time they're cut off from generating as too much solar at the wrong place at the wrong time, when those very people are at work and not using said energy in the middle of summer, means that energy gets wasted as these people are disconnected from the generation so they can keep things balanced and stable across the grid.

"Cheaper" or "More Efficient" energy, fine. but "Free"? Come on, all the costs from conception to realisation to invention to development to deployment alone tells us that there is no such thing as "free energy", not unless you are running at over 100% efficiency and then we're into perpetual motion territory...

But I have one idea to float to you. Get the Hydrogen problem sorted out, storage and transportation being the biggest issues even though we do have "H² powered" buses running past me every day, get that in use. Production is easy, we know it needs large amounts of water and electricity, so use coastal wind power to crack seawater until the latest one under development, floating solar powered "rigs", are fully up and running, and that's before other methods like new nanomaterials can crack seawater better are considered.

As I say, here in my little part of little old Belgium there are H² powered buses, let's get that tech in use to get off of fossil, start with public transport then people don't see "Hindenburg's" every day and know that H² is a "safe" fuel, move onto haulage, move it to autos. Hell, even use an unstable generation medium such as wind or solar to crack water to power an H² powered generating plant, that way the "unstable" becomes "stable" as you're basically doing what the "solar/wind and giant battery" storage packs are doing, converting that solar or wind energy into another form of energy and using that to somehow distribute electricity. The ultimate in "green" energy, wind/solar used to turn the most abundant substance on the planet into it's two basic elements, only releasing oxygen, and then the combustion of the other element results in nothing more dangerous than water.

Makes you wonder why so much time and money is being spent on some deeply unpleasant practices in the pursuit of "green" energy when there seems to be a fairly simple solution right in front of our noses...

We've (Big Oil) been stuffing this tech for over 20 years, we're just trying not to leave any oil (profits) laying around.
(shhh)
You can't see the pride in Hydrogen ownership on the History Page but I'm sure it there.
https://www.llnl.gov/about/history

It's well worth making friends with an employee and taking a tour on (the limited) family day event.
I took my kids there 15-16 yrs ago they had a blast.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with corporations as such; they're just man-made instruments of agreement and ownership for the purpose of some economic activity. The problem is allowing them to have any voice whatsoever in the affairs of government; if it's so important or beneficial to society, surely plenty of real live human beings will advocate for it.

I agree that such a switch would be a big, yet worthy project. We might well find synergistic effects, such as how well spaced solar panels reduce the heat on the ground enough to allow crops to thrive in otherwise inhospitable places.

This is a democracy; stop looking for leaders to solve your problems for you and get involved in the process to help bring those solutions about. If you don't, history has certainly shown that someone else will and their choices are not likely to reflect your interests.

there are 7.4 Billion people on the planet. not all of them can be leaders. i'm a good soldier, i can lead a squad, but that's about the extent of my leadership abilities. the only reason we have politicians is to have a unifying leader....but our "leaders" have sold us out. we need to start picking leaders from outside the field of hand picked, rehearsed, bought and paid for shills. we need to DEMAND campaign reform, and we need to DEMAND that not one single lobbyist is allowed in the entire country. never mind separation of church and state, we need separation of business and state.

 

[ttystikk]

This stuff isn't hard to find, and it is no conspiracy, just operating cost in most cases, sometimes technical obstacles need to be overcome.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx

Thorium is used in a variety of reactors, for a variety of reasons, and its use is definitely not being discouraged. I think the conspiracy theorists here just live inside a bubble and plug their ears and sing lalalala when you show them evidence contrary to their beliefs.

The reason we are spending so many resources on researching fusion energy is simple, the amount of fuel we have is finite. Fusion reactions would theoretically use much less fuel to produce equivalent power. Pretty fascinating subject.



Uranium was/is chosen because it is very fissile, aka very good at being fuel for a nuclear reactor. The properties of thorium are well known, it comes again to added complexity for some reactors, and operating cost.

The thorium-uranium fuel cycle is also more radioactively dangerous than the U-235 which most reactors use today. The thorium-uranium fuel cycle produces thallium-208 as a byproduct which produces 2.6 MeV of gamma radiation in decay mode. Gamma radiation is the hardest and most expensive radiation to shield for, so typically fuels that do NOT produce a lot of gamma radiation are chosen.

No conspiracy here.

For the zillionth time, I'm not saying there was or is a conspiracy about thorium tech. America made a choice to use uranium for reasons military and otherwise and that's pretty much it.

 

[choomer]

Jesus this is long. Lots I agree with and still plenty I don't. But didsized ok?

I'm a little confused by "didsized" (midsized?).
The length was to address each argument you had (with supporting opinion). I've seen you post things just as long via copy/paste of someone else's words.
Are you saying the length made anything less applicable?

Keep in mind that if electric cars and trains are several times more efficient than fossil fuel powered equivalents then you're still coming out ahead by burning fossil fuels in power plants to make electricity to run the trains and charge the cars.

You're not bringing in the losses of electrical transport and the waste energy any power plant creates to stay above demand.

I never said thorium isn't potentially very useful, I said that we lack the infrastructure for it. Perhaps that will change.

Conversations like this is where it starts.

Rare Earth materials is a bad excuse to quit making solar panels and wind turbines. Conventional cars and much more use rare Earth metals too.

I didn't say we shouldn't keep trying w/ solar panels, just that when everything used in their creation is taken into account they aren't as "clean" as marketing (propaganda) would lead you to believe.
Did you know the conversion factor of a stirling engine beats solar panels for efficiency?
Except for the last 30 years, cars have been made w/o rare earths. Electronic ingnition/emission control has done very little to increase MPG efficiency and the Prius manufacture has a carbon footprint MUCH larger than a conventional IC (internal combustion vehicle). I'll put the 30+ yo diesel vehicle I drive up against one for efficiency over time any day and it comes w/ the added bonus of being able to do all repair/maintenance myself. I don't need power windows.

Yes, my smartphone is a Samsung Note 4, quite a bit faster than my and most people's desktop. 4G and soon 5G connectivity is drastically faster, too. Strange but true.

I'd look into recent studies of 5G's added risk of causing cancer before turning cartwheels over that faster 'net speed.
WWII radio/radar was responsible for the microwave. Think about how long it was used for it's initial purpose being spewed over large areas of the earth.
'Net speed does not equal machine processing speed. Try an online CPU processing speed test to on both your phone and desktop to find out.

Trains are extremely viable for intercity transit and light rail does fine in big cities. You might just be biased by American attitudes. Freight rail is a huge step forward from trucks, just ask Brazilians.
There's a lot more, let's break those book length posts down to size a bit for clarity, please.

Dirigible freight beats train freight (which beats truck freight) hypothetically, since the Hindenburg nixed that, in that it doesn't need track/maintenance, can deliver to almost anywhere pin point, e.g.
https://www.piarc.org/ressources/documents/479,44-4-DGPA-Paper-E.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/30/blimps-aircraft-freight
Couple that w/ the superior lifting and less impacting production potential of H² vs. helium if you can imagine that dirigible accidents would probably be on par w/ that of aircraft.
Right now it only lives in the realm of science fiction, but so did the cell phone once upon a time.

If you think my posts are "book length" don't try War and Peace or any of the other book in that link.

 

[choomer]

When he can't even get the right fucking embassy, then that tells you everything that's needed to be known.
And when you jump straight in and support his obvious ignorance without contemplating such basic errors, that tells us all we need to know about you.

You're right.
I made the mistake of specifying the embassy of another SA country that borders that of the actual embassy off the top of my head. @Roger A. Shrubber made a mistake too and was man enough to own up to it. I can only use his example of being first as a support in admitting mine.

Mea culpa.

So does that mean I shouldn't know you meant Assange when you posted:

Let's go to the basics about Arseange.

 

[too larry]

Forget the money side of things. Free energy isn't possible from a physical standpoint. Matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. They can be converted one to the other. High school science.

 

[ttystikk]

there are 7.4 Billion people on the planet. not all of them can be leaders. i'm a good soldier, i can lead a squad, but that's about the extent of my leadership abilities. the only reason we have politicians is to have a unifying leader....but our "leaders" have sold us out. we need to start picking leaders from outside the field of hand picked, rehearsed, bought and paid for shills. we need to DEMAND campaign reform, and we need to DEMAND that not one single lobbyist is allowed in the entire country. never mind separation of church and state, we need separation of business and state.

On this we are in complete agreement.

America's leaders are incompetent and unaccountable. This must change and soon if we are to survive the challenges ahead, let alone thrive.

 

[choomer]

Your "passive solar" has a means to store energy captured from solar generation, heating water is an example, and these systems come at a cost one way or another as you have to create, install and maintain them.

I said something to that effect

Wait for the following post dealing w/ "free energy" (a stupid term and quite unrepresentative of a source of energy not yet known to society at large)

and agreed w/ @Cx2H when he said what you are saying pages ago, but it does bear repeating.

Even "converting to electricity" comes at a huge cost, as for every megawatt of "green" energy, there is a megawatt waiting to come on at a moment's notice to keep the supply stable. That means that you have fossil fuel stations, generally gas as that can be cranked up quicker, running inefficiently "just in case" they're needed when some clouds appear or the wind drops. That one word, "inefficiently", tells you there's a real cost.

Dead on here.
I've worked for G-n-T (generation and transmission) concerns (it's how I know those who talk to NE's) and it's a dirty little secret of utilities that they don't put in the brochure.

Or you get the farce which regularly happens here where a "rich" area basically covered every roof with solar panels, and every year they get upset because they don't get paid for the time they're cut off from generating as too much solar at the wrong place at the wrong time, when those very people are at work and not using said energy in the middle of summer, means that energy gets wasted as these people are disconnected from the generation so they can keep things balanced and stable across the grid.

Very true as well.
Green energy is a lot like feast/famine energy.

"Cheaper" or "More Efficient" energy, fine. but "Free"? Come on, all the costs from conception to realisation to invention to development to deployment alone tells us that there is no such thing as "free energy", not unless you are running at over 100% efficiency and then we're into perpetual motion territory...

Overunity (over 100% output) does have a case as far as heat pumps go.
We do have examples of (virtually) perpetual motion but no one has any idea how to harness planetary rotation and orbiting.

But I have one idea to float to you. Get the Hydrogen problem sorted out, storage and transportation being the biggest issues even though we do have "H² powered" buses running past me every day, get that in use. Production is easy, we know it needs large amounts of water and electricity, so use coastal wind power to crack seawater until the latest one under development, floating solar powered "rigs", are fully up and running, and that's before other methods like new nanomaterials can crack seawater better are considered.

I beg to differ in that the biggest problem is the amount of other energy used to produce H² is always greater than the energy output of the H², Add to that the energy needed to condense it for transportation, as well as transporting it, and it encounters the same obstacles as solar/wind/geothermal as a "clean" source.

As I say, here in my little part of little old Belgium there are H² powered buses, let's get that tech in use to get off of fossil, start with public transport then people don't see "Hindenburg's" every day and know that H² is a "safe" fuel, move onto haulage, move it to autos. Hell, even use an unstable generation medium such as wind or solar to crack water to power an H² powered generating plant, that way the "unstable" becomes "stable" as you're basically doing what the "solar/wind and giant battery" storage packs are doing, converting that solar or wind energy into another form of energy and using that to somehow distribute electricity. The ultimate in "green" energy, wind/solar used to turn the most abundant substance on the planet into it's two basic elements, only releasing oxygen, and then the combustion of the other element results in nothing more dangerous than water.

How does Belgium surmount the problems that Canada had when they used them?
I have seen very convincing arguments about using H² as a "battery" for wind/solar to combat the feast/famine aspect of "green" energy, but the storage (condensing) costs have yet to make it viable and why efficient on demand electrolysis is still the holy grail for H² as water is the greatest storage media for it.

 

[ttystikk]

I'm a little confused by "didsized" (midsized?).
The length was to address each argument you had (with supporting opinion). I've seen you post things just as long via copy/paste of someone else's words.
Are you saying the length made anything less applicable?

You're not bringing in the losses of electrical transport and the waste energy any power plant creates to stay above demand.

Conversations like this is where it starts.

I didn't say we shouldn't keep trying w/ solar panels, just that when everything used in their creation is taken into account they aren't as "clean" as marketing (propaganda) would lead you to believe.
Did you know the conversion factor of a stirling engine beats solar panels for efficiency?
Except for the last 30 years, cars have been made w/o rare earths. Electronic ingnition/emission control has done very little to increase MPG efficiency and the Prius manufacture has a carbon footprint MUCH larger than a conventional IC (internal combustion vehicle). I'll put the 30+ yo diesel vehicle I drive up against one for efficiency over time any day and it comes w/ the added bonus of being able to do all repair/maintenance myself. I don't need power windows.

I'd look into recent studies of 5G's added risk of causing cancer before turning cartwheels over that faster 'net speed.
WWII radio/radar was responsible for the microwave. Think about how long it was used for it's initial purpose being spewed over large areas of the earth.
'Net speed does not equal machine processing speed. Try an online CPU processing speed test to on both your phone and desktop to find out.

Dirigible freight beats train freight (which beats truck freight) hypothetically, since the Hindenburg nixed that, in that it doesn't need track/maintenance, can deliver to almost anywhere pin point, e.g.
https://www.piarc.org/ressources/documents/479,44-4-DGPA-Paper-E.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/30/blimps-aircraft-freight
Couple that w/ the superior lifting and less impacting production potential of H² vs. helium if you can imagine that dirigible accidents would probably be on par w/ that of aircraft.
Right now it only lives in the realm of science fiction, but so did the cell phone once upon a time.

If you think my posts are "book length" don't try War and Peace or any of the other book in that link.

I'm just trying to keep up and respond to one subject at a time and not miss so much, ya freakin' manic lol

Dirigibles are anything but a replacement for heavy rail freight service. Just for openers, 'wind' and other weather. Rail is frankly far more efficient than air travel even under ideal conditions, gas bags notwithstanding.

Dedicated power generation plants are almost always far more efficient than small power plants in moving vehicles. Load balancing is easier, too. Electric trains deliver the energy of braking and downgrades back into the grid. Insane it might seem, diesel locomotives also convert momentum into electricity- but then send it to giant heating coils on the roof of the unit where fans blow the heat out into the atmosphere. Gigawatts of electric power wasted every year, every time a train stops.

Solar panels replace other generation. It's a snowball effect and we should keep rolling that snowball bigger and bigger. Wind will help. Geothermal can be throttled and therefore used for load balancing. Fuel cells are an additional option, especially once more of the the necessary methane feedstock can be sourced from organic materials.

Better batteries are on the way. Stationary installations don't need to be compact; they need to be efficient and have high cycle lives. Capacitor tech is also advancing, these have the potential to accept a large charge quickly, reducing wait times and effectively extending practical range.

To be honest, I'd really rather not utilize nuclear power in any form; unless the processes involved leave no radioactive fractions with half lives longer than a few years or so, the price is just too high. Saddling dozens of generations yet unborn with massive amounts of nuclear waste is a cost we humans cannot equitably calculate, nevermind repay.

Stirling engine based solar power has real promise and I'd like to see how this technology matures.

Combined cycle technologies also have enormous potential. One of my favorite examples is the use of stationary natural gas or propane electrical generation onsite at a greenhouse facility; the power can be used onsite for lighting, HVAC, controls, etc, the heat can keep the facility warm in winter and has other uses, and even the CO² generated can be delivered to the plants, nullifying emissions issues even while improving growth! The Dutch are already well ahead of us in developing this approach.

 

[Fubard]

How does Belgium surmount the problems that Canada had when they used them?
I have seen very convincing arguments about using H² as a "battery" for wind/solar to combat the feast/famine aspect of "green" energy, but the storage (condensing) costs have yet to make it viable and why efficient on demand electrolysis is still the holy grail for H² as water is the greatest storage media for it.

The "test run" of them is in my area, all urban with lots of slow twisty bits and not just nice straight runs on open roads so they get the punishment, and a company called Solvay has a fuel station just for H2 fuel cell vehicles, anyone can use it with there being, I think, a few H² trucks in and around the Antwerp harbour.

Obviously that's the biggest difference, this was always planned as a "long term" test involving more than just a fleet of buses as some sort of promotional thing, so there was more thinking done on the supply, etc, front. Another huge difference is that Antwerp has one of the biggest harbours in Europe, so there's obviously easier importation IF the supply is not made by someone like Solvay in the Antwerp harbour industrial complex, plus the ability to use the hydrogen currently treated as a "waste product" of some of the chemical processes in said industrial complex. That bit of forethought and thinking, plus at least some of the supply potentially being there anyway, and the ability to expand as necessary if necessary, puts this one near me in a whole different ball park to the penis-waving which was the Vancouver escapade.

There's a lot of interest here, especially on the public transport and freight side of things as there's a lot of buses that need replaced and a hell of a lot of trucks which do nothing but shuffle around the harbour. That's why there's the H² projects, with viable infrastructure for them, CNG stations for trucks so more can be changed from oil burner to something cleaner, and so on, as there's a hell of an amount of pollution that can be wiped off the map in various places that are high pollution areas thanks to them being large cities which are also transportation/freight hubs due to things like major airports and/or harbours. Start developing the tech for there, get your infrastructure sorted out in these places then you have a "road map" for the real world, THEN move it out into the big bad world instead of the current stupidity of trying to make all cars electric when nobody is telling us when the massive building of power stations is to start because we can't even THINK about being able to charge up more than a small minority of all motor vehicles out there NOW, never mind in 20 years.

A lot of time and money has been wasted over the last couple of decades, especially on a dead end like EV's. They have a niche place, sure, but as a full replacement for the ICE? Don't make me laugh. If only all that time and money had been spent on something truly viable instead of something which has created a time bomb, for nobody's figured out how to recycle the batteries without further cost to the "environment" either..

PS. Forgot to add, as already mentioned there are nanomaterials being developed which are extremely efficient at cracking sea water. Sure, they're "in development" but I reckon they're closer to reality than this "super battery" tech we've been promised for 3 decades.

 

[ttystikk]

The "test run" of them is in my area, all urban with lots of slow twisty bits and not just nice straight runs on open roads so they get the punishment, and a company called Solvay has a fuel station just for H2 fuel cell vehicles, anyone can use it with there being, I think, a few H² trucks in and around the Antwerp harbour.

Obviously that's the biggest difference, this was always planned as a "long term" test involving more than just a fleet of buses as some sort of promotional thing, so there was more thinking done on the supply, etc, front. Another huge difference is that Antwerp has one of the biggest harbours in Europe, so there's obviously easier importation IF the supply is not made by someone like Solvay in the Antwerp harbour industrial complex, plus the ability to use the hydrogen currently treated as a "waste product" of some of the chemical processes in said industrial complex. That bit of forethought and thinking, plus at least some of the supply potentially being there anyway, and the ability to expand as necessary if necessary, puts this one near me in a whole different ball park to the penis-waving which was the Vancouver escapade.

There's a lot of interest here, especially on the public transport and freight side of things as there's a lot of buses that need replaced and a hell of a lot of trucks which do nothing but shuffle around the harbour. That's why there's the H² projects, with viable infrastructure for them, CNG stations for trucks so more can be changed from oil burner to something cleaner, and so on, as there's a hell of an amount of pollution that can be wiped off the map in various places that are high pollution areas thanks to them being large cities which are also transportation/freight hubs due to things like major airports and/or harbours. Start developing the tech for there, get your infrastructure sorted out in these places then you have a "road map" for the real world, THEN move it out into the big bad world instead of the current stupidity of trying to make all cars electric when nobody is telling us when the massive building of power stations is to start because we can't even THINK about being able to charge up more than a small minority of all motor vehicles out there NOW, never mind in 20 years.

A lot of time and money has been wasted over the last couple of decades, especially on a dead end like EV's. They have a niche place, sure, but as a full replacement for the ICE? Don't make me laugh. If only all that time and money had been spent on something truly viable instead of something which has created a time bomb, for nobody's figured out how to recycle the batteries without further cost to the "environment" either..

Still need energy to make hydrogen fuel. Where do you suggest we get that from?

 

[Fubard]

Still need energy to make hydrogen fuel. Where do you suggest we get that from?

Already given you that, do keep up.

 

[ttystikk]

Already given you that, do keep up.

Soooooo what's the solution, Ace?

 

[Fubard]

Soooooo what's the solution, Ace?

RTFT

 

[Fubard]

Dirigible freight beats train freight (which beats truck freight) hypothetically, since the Hindenburg nixed that, in that it doesn't need track/maintenance, can deliver to almost anywhere pin point, e.g.
https://www.piarc.org/ressources/documents/479,44-4-DGPA-Paper-E.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/30/blimps-aircraft-freight
Couple that w/ the superior lifting and less impacting production potential of H² vs. helium if you can imagine that dirigible accidents would probably be on par w/ that of aircraft.
Right now it only lives in the realm of science fiction, but so did the cell phone once upon a time.

If you think my posts are "book length" don't try War and Peace or any of the other book in that link.

Given how many attempts there has been to relaunch the blimp, why do you think none have been able to become viable?

I mean, they're hardly "point to point" as the bigger the load the bigger the "landing area" needed before local distribution and we have that already, they're called airports, harbours, road/rail freight hubs, and so on.

Sorry, but the idea is like trying to fit a square peg into a hole that hasn't been cut out yet.