Frederick Sparber wrote:
What is exciting about getting hydrogen from methane using a solar concentrator,when you can run methane/hydrocarbons over hot (800 C) carbon to do the same thing?
Where do you get the hydrocarbons? The exciting part of solar concentrator is that the starting products are only water and sunlight.
Also this is faster, more efficient and it takes less space than photosynthesis.
This would be a great way to produce hydrogen in places like Arizona or Texas to be shipped via pipeline to the East and West Coast population centers. (The natural gas pipelines are already there, and after retrofitting and relining they will probably work with hydrogen.) There is less sunlight in winter, but more wind, so we could have a nifty combination of wind turbines in the Dakotas plus solar collectors in the southwest.
All in all, large-scale alternative energy is more practical than people realize. The only drawback is that it would cost more than today's fossil fuel, at least in the initial phases. If fossil fuel does run out gradually over the next 30 years I think we will have plenty of time to install a million solar collectors and wind turbines, and these will produce more than enough electricity and synthetic fuel, with some left over for export. I think it would also be a good idea to build ~50 new nuclear power plants for areas that have no wind or solar resources, such as Connecticut. The Feds are working on direct hydrogen production with next-generation U fission reactors.
- Jed
