Energy-dense liquid fuels will be important for aircraft and spacecraft for some time to come- the bar is a bit lower for vehicles that don’t have to go UP to do their job.

Solar-powered aircraft already exist in the form of expensive, featherweight drones. The military wants these for long-endurance surveillance and data relay nodes. As solar cells and batteries continue to develop it’s only a matter of time until piloted versions appear.

That being said, H-cells are a great way to have portable energy. Solar cells or wind turbines are not practical in cars or planes :) Charging a H-cell using an alternative/renewable energy source and using that H-cell is a great way to use renewable energy. Also, global warming contribution from H is much less than from petrol, because no green-house gas is produced during the combustion, only heat.

How long would it take for it to earn its manufacturing and purchase cost back, compared to using mains? Handy if you need hydrogen and don’t have mains power though.

if it’s talking about the amount of hydrogen being produced then Watts are a very odd way of measuring it. if it means the amount of energy being consumed by the unit then this is at lease an admirably tiny amount, however as the poster up there pointed out, you aren’t getting anything for nothing here, and given that a gallon of petrol has 1.3x10e8 joules in it and 1 watt is 1 joules per second.. I make that 14 thousand hours.

ok so electric cars are more efficient but lets not run busses off this system.

It really depends on what methods of storing and consuming the hydrogen are used, otherwise were talking apples and oranges.

Hydrogen stored as a compressed gas or liquid is extremely bulky.

No, no, he’s “a sustainability and personal technology consultant.” …Oh….Wait…

But at least he cited Wikipedia in his science article. That beats our Navy research all to hell.

Taras is confident his invention is the very first step to a so-called hydrogen economy where hydrogen displaces oil as our chief source of energy.

Hydrogen will never displace oil as our chief source of energy because hydrogen is not a source of energy. As long as people keep hyping hydrogen as a source of energy, this will need to be pointed out.

Remember, all electricity has a source and its cleanliness as a fuel is only as clean as that source. That might be wind, solar, coal, or nuclear…but the electricity in your wall did have to be made somehow. Just because you store its energy with hydrogen cells doesn’t instantly make it cleaner.

Storing hydrogen in a solid substrate is also not anything new. It’s an interesting and valid technology. It’s no breakthrough. Hydrogen fuel cells are nothing new. There’s nothing fundamentally different about them than any electrical cell driven by a chemical reaction. GM built a hydrogen fuel cell concept van in the Sixties.

It’s genuinely neat (assuming it really works) that they have put together these technologies in a package that allows you to run hydrogen fuel-cell-powered gadgets at home. If I was wealthy I would be eager to buy one. But this is a lifestyle toy that nods towards environmentalism. It is not the first step to anything. It is not intrinsically a clean technology because it uses electricity inefficiently. The way the product is being framed is very deceptive.

I think you’ll find that garbage is only enough to power your flux capacitor and other time circuits. You still need conventional fuel to power your average hovercar. Well… that or a stolen train.

(Nerd pedantry is where the annoying in annoyingmouse comes from)

But, I may be wrong. It may be that the state of the hydrogen changes over time, or that there are inevitable minute leaks that occur. But if my assumptions are right, this may be a “greener” method of longer term energy storage. Although, they say that LSD NiMH and NiCd batteries hold a charge over long periods of time much better. I just don’t have experience with them.

The takeaway points apparently are:

1. Hydrogen is, like fossil fuels, only a medium that stores solar energy.

2. Fossil Fuels store greater amounts of energy, but took millions of years to capture and condense that energy, and burning them is also burning our planet up, so there’s that.

3. Hydrogen is, at this stage, and inefficient storage technology, releasing a small fraction of the energy put into it.

I’ll throw in a fourth takeaway point:

4. We need to switch to something like hydrogen because a.) our supply of fossil fuels is limited and demand is only increasing and
b.) No matter what the economic disruption from ceasing the use of fossil fuels, the impact and economic disruption of continuing their use is astronomical by comparison.

Context is important, we WILL be switching to an alternative fuel medium, it is just a question of how painful that transition will be, both economically and mortality-wise.

The whole article is about making your own hydrogen rechargeable batteries. So which misconception is it that you’re so keep to correct?

…. that aside… it would be interesting to know what the advantage of these are over batteries. I assume that they can store more energy? How much? And can the power stations that run off these cartridges release it faster than a battery, perhaps? Or maybe scale anywhere from 0.5-120V, say? All that would be cool, but it’s hard finding this information out.

Fact 1) The Hindenburg’s skin had nothing to do with the disaster.

See:

http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/project1/index.html

http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/myths

http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.htm

Fact 2) The Hindenburg burned because it was filled with hydrogen.

Fact 3) FACT 2 DOESN’T MATTER!!

Just because hydrogen is a bad lifting gas for dirigibles has ZERO to do with whether it is good as a fuel, either by itself or in fuel cells. That’s like saying that because arsenic is a bad food additive, it must also be a bad rat poison. There are many things that are terrible for one purpose and wonderful for another. Gasoline is a terrible breakfast beverage, and an awful shampoo, and a lousy floor polish… and it burns like crazy… but we use it for fuel all the time. What is this crazy obsession with the Hindenburg?

That would be in her article:

“… hydrogen is a compact and relatively light source of power … ”

Here’s some more misinformation along that line from the article:

“Taras is confident his invention is the very first step to a so-called hydrogen economy where hydrogen displaces oil as our chief source of energy.”

Journalists consistently mix up energy source and energy storage. It’s important to call them on it when they do, so that they get it right next time.

This device produces a continuous output of hydrogen to be stored in cartridges. What can it power? You can’t choose a voltage or current until you pick what kind of fuel cell is going to consume the hydrogen, but you know precisely how much hydrogen is produced per unit time, and how much energy that hydrogen contains. Hence, wattage. At 2.5W, it can run a game boy, but not a laptop.