New Idea...Why isn't this being done?

Question

Everyone is all upset about how high gas prices are, and the government wants to put more taxes on the fuel companies that supply the gas for our cars. Alternate fuels are being developed but no road-safe car that runs on total ethanol or hydrogen will be out for quite some time. It doesn't solve the problem NOW, but will help in the future.

My idea is this: build a hydrogen or biodiesel POWER PLANT to fuel our homes and offices. That would reduce the demand for oil (even slight reduction is good) and thus lower the price we pay at the pump. With enough funds a hydrogen plant / biodiesel plant could be built in a few months and could fuel several cities. WHY ISN'T THIS BEING DONE!?

Answer 1

Well that would be another idea to save money in the future too. Even if they did build these plants imagine how long it would take to run the proper wiring to every house, just building the plants alone would take about 5 years. So either way all of the things people think of can't be done now but in the future.

Answer 2

Hey, I have 2 cars that run on methane (natural gas), which is also used to heat homes and cook with. They don't use a single drop of gasoline or oil, and Ford made them in 1999 and 2000, so the technology has existed for years. It's just hard to get the government going on new ideas, I guess. The problem I see with hydrogen is that it usually takes natural gas to make it, so why not just use the natural gas and eliminate a step?! It's very cheap and much better for the environment than gasoline, too. Just a thought!

Answer 3

Lost interest in your too-long question.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, biodiesel is not the best method as even if all of our food crops went to producing it, you still wouldn't be able to supply everyone with it and you also can't have it in cold climate areas, such as the Northeast, as it is still an oil and will slow down or solidify in cold climates.

However, with that said I believe you're onto something when it comes to a Hydrogen Power Plant.  There is a lot of legitimate research and information online regarding Hydrogen as a potential for fuel.  The only real issue left to remedy that I could find is how to safely burn the hydrogen!

Answer 5

Are you talking about an electricity generating power plant that burns bio diesel or hydrogen? Or are you talking about a factory to make bio diesel or hydrogen for cars?

Either way, the problem with bio diesel is there isn't enough vegetable oil to supply the bio diesel factory with the raw material (vegetable oil) from which bio diesel is made.

The problem with hydrogen is that it takes energy to make it so you would need a big regular power plant to supply that energy, and it is easier to just build one plant instead of two, and just use the energy directly instead of using it to make hydrogen and then using the hydrogen in another power plant to make energy.

(EDIT) You are wrong about electrolysis being a self sustaining process. It is not. The false belief that it is may be why so many people think you can make a car that uses water as fuel.

Electrolysis is the use of electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. You start with water, add LOTS of electricity and end up with hydrogen and oxygen. Then you can burn the hydrogen in an engine to turn an electric generator, but it will not be able to make more electricity than was used to split the water in the first place, so you have to keep adding more electricity from an outside source to keep the hydrogen flowing.

This is an example of conservation of energy. You cannot create energy, only change its form. You take electric energy and change it into chemical energy (hydrogen gas). Then you take chemical energy and change it back into electric energy. But you can never create more than you started with. X amount of electricity can be changed into Y amount of hydrogen, and that Y amount of hydrogen can be changed back into X amount of electricity, but not more than X. You get no net extra power out. Actually, since both processes are not 100% efficient in real life, you actually loose energy each time you make hydrogen or electricity.

Life is just not so simple. 99.9999% of the time, when you think you have figured out a solution to a big problem that the rest of the world has somehow missed, it turns out that you have made a mistake. All problems this big have been studied in great detail for many years by people much smarter and with more knowledge that you and I, and if some simple fix were possible, at least one of those smart people would have already found it. Don’t take this as a put down. It isn’t. But don’t just call me stupid and ignore what I say. Learn the science and understand WHY this has not been done, and maybe then you CAN be one of the 0.00001% of the people in the world to find another way to fix it.