Well, That Tears It For Me - I'm Voting GINGRICH!

[Sue U]

The biggest and cheapest way to reduce oil imports in the short term is to improve efficiency, which he is doing.

Yes, I recall that when I was looking at the research data, some very modest increase in fuel efficency (like 10 or 15%, maybe not even that much) would make up for all the oil that might be pumped out of ANWR.

[Andrew D]

Well, according to those fools at Scientific American:

The fuel of the future could be hydrogen—if it can be made cheaply enough. Currently, electrolyzers (machines that split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen) need a catalyst, namely platinum, to run; ditto fuel cells to recombine that hydrogen with oxygen, which produces electricity. The problem is that the precious metal costs about $1,700 to $2,000 per ounce, which means that hydrogen would be an uneconomical fuel source unless a less costly catalyst can be found. But researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and Monash University in Australia report in Science today that they may have a cost-effective solution.

Chemist Daniel Nocera, head of the M.I.T.'s Solar Revolution Project, focused on one side of the equation: splitting water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen molecules. This can be done well, but it remains difficult to actually separate the molecules. But Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan discovered it could be accomplished by simply adding the metals cobalt and phosphate to water and running a current through it. In contrast to platinum, cobalt and phosphate cost roughly $2.25 an ounce and $.05 an ounce, respectively.

"We [have] figured out a way just using a glass of water at room temperature, under atmospheric pressure," Nocera says. "This thing [a thin film of cobalt and phosphate on an electrode] just churns away making [oxygen] from water."

Inspiration for the new catalyst came from nature; Nocera studied the chain of processes that take place during photosynthesis, such as how plants use the energy from sunlight to rearrange water's chemical bonds. In a future hydrogen economy, he imagines, a house would function much like a leaf does, using the sun to power household electricity and to break down water into fuel—a sort of artificial photosynthesis.

According to John Turner, a research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., who was not involved in the research, the discovery could reduce the need for platinum in a conventional electrolyzer. He believes it could also play a role in a future large-scale hydrogen generator, which would collect the energy from sunlight in huge fields and then run that electric current through water to produce vast amounts of hydrogen to meet, for example, the demand from a future fleet of hydrogen-powered vehicles. "That's what his advance is pointing towards," he says, "finding an alternative catalyst that will allow us to do oxygen evolution (breaking the bonds of water or H2O and forming oxygen) in concert with hydrogen" on a grand scale.

But that still leaves plenty of platinum in the other side of the equation: the fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen back into water to harvest electricity. Chemist Bjorn Winther-Jensen of Monash University in Australia and his colleagues addressed that problem by developing new electrodes for fuel cells made from a special conducting polymer, that costs around $57 per counce.

During experiments, the polymer proved just as effective as platinum at harvesting electricity—and the work could prove immediately relevant in mini fuel cells, such as the kind that are being designed for computers.

In order for this to work on the grand scale of a fuel cell stack for a hydrogen vehicle or power plant "we need to develop a more three-dimensional structure to get thicker electrodes and a higher current per square centimeter," says Winther-Jensen. Regardless, by reducing or eliminating platinum, the two studies help pave the way for a future hydrogen economy.

But what do they know?

[Crackpot]

Well for one they;re smart enough to avoid declaritives

[rubato]

The process of splitting 2 H2O ---> 2 H2 and O2 still uses energy which has to come from somewhere.

yrs,
rubato

[Rick]

The process of splitting 2 H2O ---> 2 H2 and O2 still uses energy which has to come from somewhere.

yrs,
rubato

You mean yer not trying to develop a catalyst?

[Long Run]

Me, I'm holding out for the guy who can get the price of gas back down to when I bought my first gallon at about 30 cents.

[dales]

You were over charged

Did you ask for ethyl?

[rubato]

The process of splitting 2 H2O ---> 2 H2 and O2 still uses energy which has to come from somewhere.

yrs,
rubato

You mean yer not trying to develop a catalyst?

No, reducing the price of the catalyst has little effect overall. Almost none. Catalysts are not consumed and simple metallic catalysts like platinum can be 100% recovered and recycled.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

CNG is the only REAL alternative that I see.

Of course BIG OIL has most of that sewn up, it seems we're screwed no matter what.

Until far more energy can be compressed into a battery/ charging times are reduced/ infa-structure is built/ and the prices for EV's plummet - BIG OIL has all of us by the balls.

If I lived closer to where I worked, I would ride my 10-speed, the bus service where I live STINKS, so I have no choice butt to get reamed by BIG OIL.....I hate those bastards as much as the banks!

[Crackpot]

was that double entendre intended?

[rubato]

Go electric. Your fuel costs will drop by about 75%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_ ... equivalent

[dales]

Makes sense if one has the $$$$$ and lives close to work.

For us 99 per centers, not so much.

[dales]

was that double entendre intended?

yes.

[Lord Jim]

Yes, I recall that when I was looking at the research data, some very modest increase in fuel efficency (like 10 or 15%, maybe not even that much) would make up for all the oil that might be pumped out of ANWR.

Wow, you mean to tell me that we could meet 10-15% of America's energy needs just by drilling in ANWR alone? And we haven't started yet? Disgraceful.

By contrast, I wonder how long it would take to get that high a percentage of US energy need met by, say, wind power:

In 2010, generation from wind power increased 28.1 percent over 2009, bringing the share of total generation to 2.3 percent.

http://205.254.135.7/cneaf/solar.renewa ... /wind.html

Wowsers! A 28% increase in wind power production brought it all the way up to a whopping 2.3% of US energy supply....well zippity dooda, color me impressed....

Take that Hugo Chavez!

But surely the picture must be better for our President's favorite energy source, solar power, right?

Solar power currently accounts for less than 1 percent of electricity production in the United States.

http://www.c2es.org/technology/factsheet/solar

Oh my.

Tres embarrassing...

BTW, those folks who have been complaining recently that Google search results have a left bias are absolutely spot on. Those numbers were not easy to find. I did searches for "percentage of us energy solar power currently" and "percentage of us energy wind power currently". Pretty straight forward.

But I had to wade through link after link with pie-in-the-sky "future prediction" crapola from such well known objective scientific journals as Mother Jones, and through grossly misleading gushing about "growth rates," (yeah, when you're talking about less than one percent, an impressive sounding "growth rate" doesn't amount to a fart in a fish bowl...come to think, of it we could probably get more energy from fish farts then we're likely to see in the life times of anyone currently alive on this planet from solar) to finally, at long last, dig up the actual real, paltry, puny numbers....

It really hands me a chuckle when I see folks, (like our President, and some here) who will on the one hand moan and whine about how long it would take to drill more oil, or mine more coal, or extract more natural gas, or build more nuclear power plants...

And then in the next breath turn right around and trumpet energy sources that will provide a meaningful percentage of US energy needs about the same time we roll out the first Warp 5 Starship....

[Sue U]

I am personally generating enough solar energy on my rooftop to cover an average 70% of my monthly electric usage, plus getting one SREC for every 1000 kwh generated (about one a month). It's working just fine for me.

[Grim Reaper]

Wow, you mean to tell me that we could meet 10-15% of America's energy needs just by drilling in ANWR alone? And we haven't started yet? Disgraceful.

If what we drilled in the US really mattered that much we wouldn't be exporting as much as we do now.

[rubato]

"...

Wowsers! A 28% increase in wind power production brought it all the way up to a whopping 2.3% of US energy supply....well zippity dooda, color me impressed....

Take that Hugo Chavez!
... "

At a constant 28% annual increase it would double in less than 4 years to 4.6% (ca)

That is actually quite a lot.

Nuclear, with huge subsidies and very high costs is only 8% of the total.

The rate of change with solar is very high too.

The job of the president is the change the future. He did not create the world which existed when he took office. Bush-Cheney fucked us by lying about global warming for 8 years, failing to promote efficiency for 8 years, failing to promote new technologies for 8 years and giving huge subsidies to the oil companies for 8 years. Obama is changing things for the better.



yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

I am personally generating enough solar energy on my rooftop to cover an average 70% of my monthly electric usage, plus getting one SREC for every 1000 kwh generated (about one a month). It's working just fine for me.

A colleague just installed a system which will break even in < 10years using (very expensive) U.S.-made SunPower panels. The design goal is to generate about what he uses over the course of a year (so he in in surplus in the summer and deficit in the winter). So far it works as planned.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Bullshit.

Cooked numbers.

[Grim Reaper]

No proof.

Bullshit.