Is it true that the new fuel has already been discovered/developed?

Question

I read that the reason oil is so expensive is because the big oil companies are manipulating the price to get as much profit from a dead technology.

Hydrogen cells are so stable now that they can be put in cars and withstand catastorphic crashes. You can fill your car with about $10 worth of hydrogen....this would devistate the oil companies becuase ALL industries not just cars would switich to hydrogen.

Also, that even electric companies would be obsolete because for just a few cents a day a family could generate their own electricity with a hydrogen powered generator.

in other words, this technology would devistate oil as an industry if it were allowed to just roll out at this time.

supposedly, the U.S. postal service is using full-on hydrogen powered cars.

Also, the technology is so inexpensive that even building hydrogen engines is very cheap to own and maintain.

I want one of those hydrogen engines to heat and power my home....where can I find more information?

Answer 1

Well, a lot of research is being done on hydrogen for power. Hydrogen fuel cells and HHO generators are two of the more popular methods.

The thing about it that bothers me is that it is SO cheap. If there's little profit involved..there's not much incentive for business to utilize the technologies.

Also, like in HHO generators they USE hydrogen as fuel. Well, most of the world's hydrogen is in water. If you essentially use water as a fuel source.. You could be dehydrating the planet. Considering the volume of liquid used to power things is so small..it may not seem like much, but if these are universally accepted. They'll add up. We only have so much water on this planet. When it's gone..life ceases to exist.

Aside from that. Arguments are flaring in regard to bad business ethics on behalf of the oil companies. I stop and ask, "What would you do in their position?" I'd think you'd try to make money. That's the sole purpose of a business. The company themselves have little control over the price aside from the amount they produce. They have to get approval for production from the government. So, the finger shouldn't just be pointed at oil execs..look at the government as well for this dillemma. Also, the oil industry has a HUGE amount of asset. It costs a lot of money to put a hole in the ground and pump out crude. Millions and millions of dollars. If overnight these companies were pushed out by hydrogen fuel sources (or any other for that matter).. It could spell an economic issue.

The economy has to move at a gradual pace to stay stable. Any drastic moves and things shift uncontrollably. That would be pretty scary on Wall Street.

Answer 2

They are making reliable, working Hydrogen cars, but they are very expensive. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has been around for a while, but never as a mainstream, consumer product. Our primary source of Hydrogen is natural gas (which doesn't help the environment) and electrolysis is not efficient enough yet. I don't think the USPS is using Hydrogen (but I think they are using E85 and biodiesel in some areas).

Fuel cells are here, just not very cheap of available for the consumer. You'll have to wait a few years for that. I think it will take at least a decade (possibly a few decades) for fuel cells to be competitive with internal combustion in price.

Answer 3

This is a dismally common conspiracy theory. I don't know if someone has found a way to use gamma rays to power vehicles but I can tell you it's not hydrogen. The bonds that hold hydrogen and oxygen together require so much energy to break them apart into constituent gases that you can't recover that energy. Every time you produce hydrogen this way, you're losing energy in other words. It's not much more than a chemical battery that's as lossy or more as others, except that the gas inside won't just burn you, it can easily explode and kill you. If it's in liquid form the leak of any hydrogen would freeze you instantly so you'd be dead before the explosion. Hydrogen is just not a good idea until we can use it in a sustained fusion reaction which is still decades away.

If you really want a hydrogen 'engine' to power your home, go buy the Home Energy Station from Plug Power, it's used to refuel the Honda FCX. I'm not sure you can buy it separately and it uses natural gas to produce the hydrogen, which process releases more greenhouse gases than gasoline does (though the site claims this is not true). But it is cheaper than gasoline since natural gas is still cheap, and the power station can power your home if the power goes out, until the hydrogen is depleted.

Answer 4

we have had alternative fuels for over 100 years. remember that the first car built was powered with benzene. henry ford designed his early cars to run on ethanol as well as gasoline. rudolph diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil. electric cars, and steam powered cars, were around in fair numbers until the late 1920's. in fact hydrogen power has been around since the early part of the 20th century. the problem isnt the availability of the fuel, it is the lack of infrastructure, and the lack of cars today to use those fuels.

Answer 5

$10 worth of hydrogen only if you aren’t going to drive very far hydrogen is currently going for about $2.70 per kg (excluding fuel taxes), comparable to a gasoline at $3.10 price including tax. (A kg of hydrogen contains about the same usable energy as a gallon of gasoline). Now if even a fraction on the cars use hydrogen the price of hydrogen will go up that whole supply and demand thing.

If you use electricity to make hydrogen you lose about 34% of the energy converting water into hydrogen so electric companies would have to expand and they would be making money hand over fist. Here’s something to think about, if you put solar panels on the roof of the average American home, you could charge a battery pack that would all the average American to do all the driving they do in an average day (about 50 miles), if you take the same solar panels and use them to make hydrogen you could only drive about 10 miles.

Hydrogen cells are still very expensive to produce and when compared to batteries not that efficient.

Until someone comes up with a cheap, clean way to produce hydrogen, it’s just a pipe dream that is still 20 years away, just like it was in the 70’s and the 80’s and the 90’s etc.