A little incentive is nice...
But trying to follow the progress (through the maze of Congress)
of this potentially important legislation is not that easy. Now
there appear to be four versions of the X-prize bill (HR 5143):
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:h.r.5143
But one version has apparently gone to the Senate - and there are
always hopes that it will be considered for vote soon - as
Senators seem more supportive than other legislators. Maybe the
genius - Bush - will veto it in the end - who knows how much
stupidity is recirculating in the Beltway these days?
The H-Prize is intended to attract the brightest minds to attack
technological obstacles of moving to a hydrogen economy. This will
surely jeopardize oil company profits - so who knows about getting
incentives passed. We have seen a lot of 'hollow-talk' about
hydrogen and energy-independence coming from this Administration :
is all sound and fury... ?
The H-prize was modeled after the successful $10-million Ansari X
Prize awarded for entrepreneurial space flight. Of most interest
to your-truly, and maybe a few others, is the four $1-million
prizes to be awarded annually in hydrogen production. Will one be
available in 2006?
A fairly simple water pretreatment regime, combined with a small
electrolysis unit - in every automobile could make the US (in
theory) self-sufficient on petroleum (if you are an
"optimistic-extrapolator," that is ;-)... That level of
"independence" can never happen in actuality, due to the lethargy
of the infrastructure- but any reduction in oil imports could be
important, and allow us to "buy time" as they say.
The creators of the Ansari X Prize announced that they too are
forming a new Automotive X Prize to focus on the creation of new
fuel-efficient vehicles that far exceed anything available on the
market today.
http://www.xprizefoundation.com/prizes/xprize_automotive.asp
Rules for the Automotive X Prize may be announced soon, but every
time I check it seems they have been pushed back.
Anyway, I am planning an official entry into either of these or
both - based on improving the results which have been alluded to
in recent postings here. Most of the ideas are derivative from
what is known loosely as the Joe_Cell combined with the
"hydrobooster" and input from Fred and other Vos. If anyone out
there in Volandia is interested in contributing to a joint
effort - let me know. Post directly to me please. All past and
future input will be recognized in any final accounting, should
miracles happen. There are many challenges and it would take a
large R&D organization to address them all adequately.
Here is one instance - and it may be the last I post on this -IF-
there is to be a substantial prize. After all, even
alternative-energy-activists enjoy the spirit of competition. But
this is indicative of the many problems which arise with anything
new.
Proto-fact#1 : pretreated water allows for a drastically enhanced
production of hydrogen gas in electrolysis.
That is major news in itself, but there is a glaring Catch-22.
Compared to using regular water in electrolysis, one can get
massively more combustible gas than with untreated water (using
the most optimistic indicators, of course - but lacking firm data)
but the Catch is this - after about 5% of the original supply of
treated water has been depleted, the increase stops, and you have
returned to essentially normal water.
Not hopeless. A partial solution to this predicament is somewhat
obvious - that being a much larger and ongoing pretreatment
setup - with some kind of separation mechanism so that an active
level of pretreated water is continuously fed to an electrolysis
unit - and depleted water returned. Fortunately, there appears to
be a density-gradient to work with.
Even so: "easier said then done" - since when you do the numbers,
you are going from half-liters and watts --> to 20 gallons and
hundreds of watts; and finding a way to separate the active
component is probably going to be a big issue.
Still the bottom line situation is this: dime-to-dollars.
You put a dime of electricity into a pretreatment regime and you
return about $2-3 in the cost of gasoline (almost a gallon) based
on extrapolating the apparent increase in mileage which has been
seen (for a few minutes). At least that is the way the situation
stands .... but needless to say - dangling a million-dollar carrot
out there will likely motivate potential sponsors to get
involved... even if the results seem "impossible".
OTOH maybe orgone is really in there - and it makes you crazy ...
<g>
Given the Stem-cell legislation veto, there must be an orgone leak
in the Rose Garden- or so it would seem. One wonders if there is
any hope for the HR 5143 ($ m,m) incentive, given the blatantly
anti-scientific pandering being witnessed there ... But looking on
the bright side, this is an important election year - and the CEO
of Chevron has the same number of votes as the average-Joe (of the
Joe_Cell persuasion ;-) and the immoral-majority (700 Club) has no
problem with hydrogen AFAIK.
Jones
