Hydrogen
The periodic table definition of the most abundant element in the universe.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells
The invention of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell.
H-Power Where Are We Going With Hydrogen Fuel Cells
Read about the invention of the hydrogen powered fuel cell beginning in 1839 to its near perfection by a direct ancestor of Sir Francis Bacon in 1959 and gain perspective about more recent development and some of the engineering hurdles yet to come.
Hydrogen Energy
Commercial Hydrogen Energy Resources
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Friday, February 27, 2004
hydrogen must attend
Join fellow Canadian Energy, Utility, Mining, and Public Service leaders at SAP Business Forum 2004, March 9, at The Metropolitan Centre. Learn technology and business best practices that will help increase your returns, improve reliability, and enhance customer responses.
9:15 FEATURE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Hon. Murray D. Smith, Minister of Energy,
Government of Alberta
SAP Business Forum 2004 in Calgary, March 9, at The Metropolitan Centre.
To register for this event, visit
http://www.sap-presents.com/fm/cal6
7-8:30 a.m. Registration, Continental Breakfast
General Session:
9:15 FEATURE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Hon. Murray D. Smith, Minister of Energy,
Government of Alberta
SAP Business Forum 2004 in Calgary, March 9, at The Metropolitan Centre.
To register for this event, visit
http://www.sap-presents.com/fm/cal6
rave on cradle to grave
Forward thinking solutions are an everyday part of the California Hydrogen Business Council. The following link leads to a wealth of information about a cradle to grave model of hydrogen production and use.
Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Fact Sheet
Please send comments or links to other exciting project you may be involved in or have read about so they can become part of the growing repository of information soon to be made available.
Investors please look to
Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Investor. Poke around the site a little for some of the free information gathered there before you decide to buy. Your financial choices matter. Don't forget though, less than 2 per cent of the world's population controls over 90 per cent of its wealth. Convince others to vote with their feet if you have to.
A more comprehensive list of hydrogen and fuel cell related resources is in the works. Again, if you've got something to contribute, please don't hesitate to forward what you've got and we'll see if a place can be found for it.
Write to Tim
Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Fact Sheet
Please send comments or links to other exciting project you may be involved in or have read about so they can become part of the growing repository of information soon to be made available.
Investors please look to
Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Investor. Poke around the site a little for some of the free information gathered there before you decide to buy. Your financial choices matter. Don't forget though, less than 2 per cent of the world's population controls over 90 per cent of its wealth. Convince others to vote with their feet if you have to.
A more comprehensive list of hydrogen and fuel cell related resources is in the works. Again, if you've got something to contribute, please don't hesitate to forward what you've got and we'll see if a place can be found for it.
Write to Tim
Thursday, February 26, 2004
fossil vs. hydrogen mirrors browser wars
Just as things begin to heat up with the adoption of hydrogen as tomorrow's fuel the worry creeps in that fuel cell technology is going to be like the browser wars between Microsoft Inc. and Netscape Communications.
A feud that ended with a whimper when finally, somebody big blew into town (Time Warner), bought out Netscape and eventually shut the company and it's web browser down at version 7.
We have the boys and girls at Netscape to thank for such fine things as RSS feeds along with an open source browser called Mozilla given a final push by Time Warner with a couple of million dollars. After achieving an 85 per cent share of the browser market before Microsoft even had a strategy the death of such an enterprise is disturbing.
Fossil vs. hydrogen fuels still look very much like Microsoft vs. Netscape in that one implementation has deeper pockets in which to survive and thrive despite an apparent will in the market that would have contested such a loose foothold at the outset. Part of that is ownership. Ownership of the infrastructure. Ownership of the money. Does that sound at all like the basis of an anti-trust lawsuit? Maybe not, but it sure looks like somebody can bundle the browser with the computer and get away with it and call it consumer choice.
Shell Hydrogen
Shell Hydrogen -- Consumer Choice Drives Future
In fossil vs. hydrogen the problem exists in fossil enabling technology which 'reforms' the fuel to extract the hydrogen from it before it hits the anode. This enabling technology also comes with another caveat. The fuel cell must be different from one that runs on pure hydrogen, effectively eliminating customer choice for the life of the vehicle or home energy system. This situation exists because Proton Exchange Membranes (PEM Fuel Cells) that run on 99.99 per cent pure hydrogen can not run with a less pure fuel that would result with Hitest (hydrogen and natural gas for combustion), methanol, ethanol, or gasoline.
Yahoo! News - Officials say Calfornia governor's 'hydrogen highway' is realistic by 2010
Reformers aren't the problem. It is the people who use them.
BETA vs. VHS anyone?
A feud that ended with a whimper when finally, somebody big blew into town (Time Warner), bought out Netscape and eventually shut the company and it's web browser down at version 7.
We have the boys and girls at Netscape to thank for such fine things as RSS feeds along with an open source browser called Mozilla given a final push by Time Warner with a couple of million dollars. After achieving an 85 per cent share of the browser market before Microsoft even had a strategy the death of such an enterprise is disturbing.
Fossil vs. hydrogen fuels still look very much like Microsoft vs. Netscape in that one implementation has deeper pockets in which to survive and thrive despite an apparent will in the market that would have contested such a loose foothold at the outset. Part of that is ownership. Ownership of the infrastructure. Ownership of the money. Does that sound at all like the basis of an anti-trust lawsuit? Maybe not, but it sure looks like somebody can bundle the browser with the computer and get away with it and call it consumer choice.
Shell Hydrogen
Shell Hydrogen -- Consumer Choice Drives Future
In fossil vs. hydrogen the problem exists in fossil enabling technology which 'reforms' the fuel to extract the hydrogen from it before it hits the anode. This enabling technology also comes with another caveat. The fuel cell must be different from one that runs on pure hydrogen, effectively eliminating customer choice for the life of the vehicle or home energy system. This situation exists because Proton Exchange Membranes (PEM Fuel Cells) that run on 99.99 per cent pure hydrogen can not run with a less pure fuel that would result with Hitest (hydrogen and natural gas for combustion), methanol, ethanol, or gasoline.
Yahoo! News - Officials say Calfornia governor's 'hydrogen highway' is realistic by 2010
Reformers aren't the problem. It is the people who use them.
BETA vs. VHS anyone?
will hydrogen create garbage?
The good news today is that a lot of great information has been made available in Spanish and Portuguese in the field of fuel cell technology. This thanks to the US Fuel Cell Council
release of two important publications from its archives.
USFCC back issues
Read the story
You know? This organization is great. They do what a coordinating body should do and work towards open standards and cooperation between members of industry and at all levels. Sharing this level of information in these languages is also a great bonus to Middle and South Americans. There is sure to be a fair amount of technology transfer from the public to private sectors, along with very targeted and realistic funding in a timely manner.
Everybody wants implementation too, don't they? And this is where that niggling 'but' always inserts itself. A review of each of the organization's key group missions revealed deep involvement and forward thinking. BUT why aren't they studying the legislative areas related to corporate responsibility for the entire life cycle of the products to be manufactured and sold to consumers and industry? Isn't this the sort of issue that got us into the mess we seem to be crawling out of at this very moment on a worldwide basis.
I suggest that this organization is one that is eminently capable of assisting in a worldwide move to hydrogen for the masses, but that it needs a new working group to watch out for the garbage. If these new technologies have a built-in lifespan nobody is going to be impressed when curbside pickup costs three times as much as it does to buy in.
Platinum today: Fuel Cell Science & Technology, Munich
Of course, platinum, an expensive material used in most fuel cells operating under 120 degrees Celsius, is going to be worth something to someone. However, if this group is banking on the value of platinum as a commodity in the recycling industry they should look to the glut of circuit boards and electronic components that are about to pile up in the next five years. There is gold in it for those who care to look.
On the scrap heap is equipment we can't even, in good conscience, donate to the underprivileged.
An idea of the problem to come
Killing two birds with one stone may be less costly than not understanding why the bird died.
release of two important publications from its archives.
USFCC back issues
Read the story
You know? This organization is great. They do what a coordinating body should do and work towards open standards and cooperation between members of industry and at all levels. Sharing this level of information in these languages is also a great bonus to Middle and South Americans. There is sure to be a fair amount of technology transfer from the public to private sectors, along with very targeted and realistic funding in a timely manner.
Everybody wants implementation too, don't they? And this is where that niggling 'but' always inserts itself. A review of each of the organization's key group missions revealed deep involvement and forward thinking. BUT why aren't they studying the legislative areas related to corporate responsibility for the entire life cycle of the products to be manufactured and sold to consumers and industry? Isn't this the sort of issue that got us into the mess we seem to be crawling out of at this very moment on a worldwide basis.
I suggest that this organization is one that is eminently capable of assisting in a worldwide move to hydrogen for the masses, but that it needs a new working group to watch out for the garbage. If these new technologies have a built-in lifespan nobody is going to be impressed when curbside pickup costs three times as much as it does to buy in.
Platinum today: Fuel Cell Science & Technology, Munich
Of course, platinum, an expensive material used in most fuel cells operating under 120 degrees Celsius, is going to be worth something to someone. However, if this group is banking on the value of platinum as a commodity in the recycling industry they should look to the glut of circuit boards and electronic components that are about to pile up in the next five years. There is gold in it for those who care to look.
On the scrap heap is equipment we can't even, in good conscience, donate to the underprivileged.
An idea of the problem to come
Killing two birds with one stone may be less costly than not understanding why the bird died.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Flight of the Exxon Valdez
Personally, my thoughts have turned to the environment. I don't want to build websites as much as I want to build consensus around things like the air we breath or what happens to the products we buy that we just throw away. It's a common enough problem that we kind of just live with it these days and hope that the weak light of good news on the cleanup front gets steadier regardless of the choices we make personally. If you think that's a dim view, I can understand that. You've probably made some sacrifices yourself.
My aim is to jump ahead on the timeline on the adoption of the hydrogen economy and to avoid pitfalls where it is now threatened.
Hydrogen evaporates faster than the memory of the Exxon Valdez.
Recent bad news about this possible transition to a Hydrogen Economy has struck a foul blow to those who thought the promise of this maturing technology 20 years ago would bear fruit in just a few short years from now.
I spoke with the PR Director of Ballard Power Systems a few years ago while working on a story. She told me commercial rollout of PEM Fuel Cells would be accomplished in 2005. Unfortunately, this is NOT a given. Governments are protecting jobs, infrastructure investments, petrochemical R&D and geological resources, among other things.
One of the major factors "appears" to be that pure Hydrogen can neither be supplied in the quantities needed nor transported nearly as efficiently as petrol, methanol, ethanol or natural gas. Even electrolysis (a way of using electricity to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water) as an on-site method of fuel distribution is considered difficult. Car companies expect that in order to meet the demand properly 30 per cent of the 170,000 plus gas stations in the US alone would have to make Hydrogen or a reformable fuel mixture available.
The fall back position is OIL. OIL! OIL! OIL! Oil before methanol. Oil before ethanol. And all of these before Hydrogen. Fossil fuel and nuclear and natural gas electricity production before hydrogen or hydrogen storage. No soft path. No earth, wind or sun fire.
And certainly no Regenerative PEM Fuel Cells or futuristic electrical generation built into the car's motion (yes, some hybrid models do recharge 'traditional' batteries under braking, but how many use each wheel as a generator).
Please notice your local gas station under construction or renovation... Is it supplying natural gas? Propane? Hydrogen? Where is all the profit going?
Government will is one thing. An interest in change is fine. But who wants to phase themselves out? What individual has the time to invest in building their own car or heating/air conditioning system in an effort to fight off corporate interests in maintaining dependencies?
And just where do we draw the line politically about what is in the public's interest anyway? Public policy may acknowledge dependence but it fights just as hard for corporate independence even during an era when the corporation has been seen to become government. By way of extending this it must be asked whether corporate self interest is the public policy of the future. Perhaps the French were not wrong when they declared "A market economy, but not a market society."
So, what is this favor I am going to ask you, right?
Well, it's simple really...
1.) Help make utility companies buy power from individuals to the effect of seeding the soft path to distributed energy stored as hydrogen for electricity production, transmission and distribution.
2.) Help break the 'egg' by campaigning against new car purchases until all car companies (or the most powerful among them) use their equity to bring regenerative fuel cell vehicles to market.
3.) Help build an open source knowledge base of industry needing to be phased out, training requirements, transitional requirement and other identifiable assistive information for employees, managers, executives and owners under each region in which these stakeholders live and operate.
4.) Build an open source organization to gather information for and to research and promote:
a.) Smart roads vs. smart cars (commuter clog and smog cleanup)
b.) Public patents for donated technologies
c.) Grassroots hydrogen focused planning, technology and implementation
d.) Debatable public scenarios for future adoption
c.) Features and benefits, reassurance of individual choice, safety and advancement in personal and business transportation future
d.) Knowledge base for house, apartment, business and industry as well as collecting ideas for legislative change in locality, activist resources
Anyway, I could go on, but I don't want to completely turn you off. These plans are big, of course, and it would be impossible to do anything without help and consensus, or being pointed in the right direction.
My aim is to jump ahead on the timeline on the adoption of the hydrogen economy and to avoid pitfalls where it is now threatened.
Hydrogen evaporates faster than the memory of the Exxon Valdez.
Recent bad news about this possible transition to a Hydrogen Economy has struck a foul blow to those who thought the promise of this maturing technology 20 years ago would bear fruit in just a few short years from now.
I spoke with the PR Director of Ballard Power Systems a few years ago while working on a story. She told me commercial rollout of PEM Fuel Cells would be accomplished in 2005. Unfortunately, this is NOT a given. Governments are protecting jobs, infrastructure investments, petrochemical R&D and geological resources, among other things.
One of the major factors "appears" to be that pure Hydrogen can neither be supplied in the quantities needed nor transported nearly as efficiently as petrol, methanol, ethanol or natural gas. Even electrolysis (a way of using electricity to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water) as an on-site method of fuel distribution is considered difficult. Car companies expect that in order to meet the demand properly 30 per cent of the 170,000 plus gas stations in the US alone would have to make Hydrogen or a reformable fuel mixture available.
The fall back position is OIL. OIL! OIL! OIL! Oil before methanol. Oil before ethanol. And all of these before Hydrogen. Fossil fuel and nuclear and natural gas electricity production before hydrogen or hydrogen storage. No soft path. No earth, wind or sun fire.
And certainly no Regenerative PEM Fuel Cells or futuristic electrical generation built into the car's motion (yes, some hybrid models do recharge 'traditional' batteries under braking, but how many use each wheel as a generator).
Please notice your local gas station under construction or renovation... Is it supplying natural gas? Propane? Hydrogen? Where is all the profit going?
Government will is one thing. An interest in change is fine. But who wants to phase themselves out? What individual has the time to invest in building their own car or heating/air conditioning system in an effort to fight off corporate interests in maintaining dependencies?
And just where do we draw the line politically about what is in the public's interest anyway? Public policy may acknowledge dependence but it fights just as hard for corporate independence even during an era when the corporation has been seen to become government. By way of extending this it must be asked whether corporate self interest is the public policy of the future. Perhaps the French were not wrong when they declared "A market economy, but not a market society."
So, what is this favor I am going to ask you, right?
Well, it's simple really...
1.) Help make utility companies buy power from individuals to the effect of seeding the soft path to distributed energy stored as hydrogen for electricity production, transmission and distribution.
2.) Help break the 'egg' by campaigning against new car purchases until all car companies (or the most powerful among them) use their equity to bring regenerative fuel cell vehicles to market.
3.) Help build an open source knowledge base of industry needing to be phased out, training requirements, transitional requirement and other identifiable assistive information for employees, managers, executives and owners under each region in which these stakeholders live and operate.
4.) Build an open source organization to gather information for and to research and promote:
a.) Smart roads vs. smart cars (commuter clog and smog cleanup)
b.) Public patents for donated technologies
c.) Grassroots hydrogen focused planning, technology and implementation
d.) Debatable public scenarios for future adoption
c.) Features and benefits, reassurance of individual choice, safety and advancement in personal and business transportation future
d.) Knowledge base for house, apartment, business and industry as well as collecting ideas for legislative change in locality, activist resources
Anyway, I could go on, but I don't want to completely turn you off. These plans are big, of course, and it would be impossible to do anything without help and consensus, or being pointed in the right direction.
Alchemical Tea Leaves
For as long as this tiny three inch space exists for me to cram little words into I am happy.
Big words fit here too, although they may be looked down upon as snobbish or as lurid examples of wanna-be intellect. Covering up with words is for lawyers and geologists -- pretty much anybody who works in a profession for which words are a necessity of life knows the protection of a secret language. A language encrypted by education and experience takes time to decode and perhaps generations to write.
A lot of this exists today. The arcane and the codifed. Some of it is bound to protect us too. It's for this reason that parents babyproof their living spaces when that child is due to arrive. Some things you just don't need to experience.
However lead is turned to gold in our own lives we almost all of us share the belief in our dominion over nature. The choices we make with the precious little time we have beyond the virtual chemistry of making a living might allow some of us to learn several secret languages. And with that some may yet make some sense out of the crucible into which these languages mix and make the world in which we live. And yes, even the environment is different from the one we inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears. Consider roaming now. You won't get too far with a fence in the way, nor will the branded herds be yours for the taking.
Let the words grapple with themselves. Dominion over stewardship. Humana Vitae and the creation into which God placed Adam and Eve without promising them life everlasting. Consider a chain of generations moving in isolation from and toward speciation now capable of massing into one humanity. Uni-culture. Uni-gene. All because none of us can truly read the spectrum of color reflected by the chlorophil in the leaf of a plant. The bush was burning, not talking.
Where would we stop if we finally discovered how to speak with the tea leaves instead of tramping them. Or what if a person knew exactly what to eat and in what quantity to completely satisfy every cell in his or her body. Even our evolution has taken us away from the fine-grained understanding each cell has of its own needs in its own environment. We might be better off to detect chemicals and their harm at the level an ant would. But since this is impossible without genetically altering ourselves we resort to technology to solve what our own senses can not. We build canaries for our coal mines, and we hope to detect the cumulative impact of our concentrated presence in things like sewage treatment plants, garbage dumps and nuclear decommissioning.
The roads must roll -- and all the people on it.
Big words fit here too, although they may be looked down upon as snobbish or as lurid examples of wanna-be intellect. Covering up with words is for lawyers and geologists -- pretty much anybody who works in a profession for which words are a necessity of life knows the protection of a secret language. A language encrypted by education and experience takes time to decode and perhaps generations to write.
A lot of this exists today. The arcane and the codifed. Some of it is bound to protect us too. It's for this reason that parents babyproof their living spaces when that child is due to arrive. Some things you just don't need to experience.
However lead is turned to gold in our own lives we almost all of us share the belief in our dominion over nature. The choices we make with the precious little time we have beyond the virtual chemistry of making a living might allow some of us to learn several secret languages. And with that some may yet make some sense out of the crucible into which these languages mix and make the world in which we live. And yes, even the environment is different from the one we inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears. Consider roaming now. You won't get too far with a fence in the way, nor will the branded herds be yours for the taking.
Let the words grapple with themselves. Dominion over stewardship. Humana Vitae and the creation into which God placed Adam and Eve without promising them life everlasting. Consider a chain of generations moving in isolation from and toward speciation now capable of massing into one humanity. Uni-culture. Uni-gene. All because none of us can truly read the spectrum of color reflected by the chlorophil in the leaf of a plant. The bush was burning, not talking.
Where would we stop if we finally discovered how to speak with the tea leaves instead of tramping them. Or what if a person knew exactly what to eat and in what quantity to completely satisfy every cell in his or her body. Even our evolution has taken us away from the fine-grained understanding each cell has of its own needs in its own environment. We might be better off to detect chemicals and their harm at the level an ant would. But since this is impossible without genetically altering ourselves we resort to technology to solve what our own senses can not. We build canaries for our coal mines, and we hope to detect the cumulative impact of our concentrated presence in things like sewage treatment plants, garbage dumps and nuclear decommissioning.
The roads must roll -- and all the people on it.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Silicon Nervous System
A Nobel Prize is probably in the works for a group of researchers who have developed a technique to grow living nerve cells on silicon and exchange information between the organic and the inorganic. So far they've used snails and rats for their experiments, but it is hoped that some day humans will have some use for the processing power of custom chips to run prosthetic limbs or eyes. The potential uses are endless. Apparently memory would even be available for perusal. We've known about stuff like this for a long time though, haven't we? I just want to know if an implant is going to help me remember my wife's birthday and our anniversary. If the technology can't do that why bother?
Mind Control Forum - Archives
The brain on a microchip: Calgary researcher finds cells can grow on silicon
Why doesn't somebody develop a shrub that you can plant and grow inside your head that turns out some nice green leaves while it photosynthesizes and stores energy for you, it's host? Now that's symbiosis! None of this can be too far off with gene manipulation.
Of course photovoltaics are the inanimate corollary to roots and twigs. In future we might be able to plug the old laptop in to ourselves to get a jolt out of the internet, along with the satisfying feeling of being energized by mocha lathe heaped with sugar as the power trickles in from the sun. Might give sunburn a whole new meaning.
For now we will have to settle on doing things the 'old' way with an electricity infrastructure to pipe the electrons all over the place.
Powering A Generation: Transmitting Electricity
Yeah, technology is here to stay. Any of our upcoming problems are going to be solved by replacement technologies as the path of technology would dictate. And, hey, we've got an entire world just dying to become first-time adopters too. It will remain to be seen whether the word progress will come to mean that you'll get a lot of cool features you'll never use and don't need, but that you pay for and can never get rid of.
AutoSpies.com
And -- ACTION...
Mind Control Forum - Archives
The brain on a microchip: Calgary researcher finds cells can grow on silicon
Why doesn't somebody develop a shrub that you can plant and grow inside your head that turns out some nice green leaves while it photosynthesizes and stores energy for you, it's host? Now that's symbiosis! None of this can be too far off with gene manipulation.
Of course photovoltaics are the inanimate corollary to roots and twigs. In future we might be able to plug the old laptop in to ourselves to get a jolt out of the internet, along with the satisfying feeling of being energized by mocha lathe heaped with sugar as the power trickles in from the sun. Might give sunburn a whole new meaning.
For now we will have to settle on doing things the 'old' way with an electricity infrastructure to pipe the electrons all over the place.
Powering A Generation: Transmitting Electricity
Yeah, technology is here to stay. Any of our upcoming problems are going to be solved by replacement technologies as the path of technology would dictate. And, hey, we've got an entire world just dying to become first-time adopters too. It will remain to be seen whether the word progress will come to mean that you'll get a lot of cool features you'll never use and don't need, but that you pay for and can never get rid of.
AutoSpies.com
And -- ACTION...
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Poseidon Rules
Ancient Greece invigorates the mind with images of heroism, triumph and tragedy. What other people have influenced the modern Western world (minus the slavery, of course) in such a profound way? Euclid proscribed a geometry none could compromise or add to for a millennium-and-a-half, and secret sects guarded the Greek fruits of mathematics as proof of their worth, perhaps even the worth of their proofs...
But what strange wonders did cease when the industrial middle ages caused these abstract acrobatics to be malformed into mechanisms of human movement? What did the adoption of the '0' do to us all, as it made the possible of immeasurable calculations? Unknown and unknowable vistas that redefined a Christian God and made a small word of life. Specialization worked at cross purposes to the whole man, and perhaps it can be argued the same became true of the environment man found himself creating by his removed self.
What criticisms Poseidon would make of the many rafts cast into his sea as he watched a launch from calm into a maelstrom of complexity. His tempest fracturing even the worthiest vessels behind the peaks and troughs of his sea borne riddles. Now we're riding high. Now we're riding low. Now I see you. Now I don't. And all the stomach of a tossing pot.
Now that we've gotten rid of DDT and the Bald Eagle is coming off the Endangered Species List we have annual growth greater than 9 per cent in China accompanied by a growing cloud of carbon dioxide/monoxide and particulate obscuring a lens more worried about military mass than consumption and rampant Western ideals.
Who is accounting for a 180 year schedule to allow these clouds to dissipate even if combustion for power stopped in less than 20 years? Poseidon keeps stirring with his trident and your stomach is churning. If everyone else is on the same ride who is left holding the bucket?
But what strange wonders did cease when the industrial middle ages caused these abstract acrobatics to be malformed into mechanisms of human movement? What did the adoption of the '0' do to us all, as it made the possible of immeasurable calculations? Unknown and unknowable vistas that redefined a Christian God and made a small word of life. Specialization worked at cross purposes to the whole man, and perhaps it can be argued the same became true of the environment man found himself creating by his removed self.
What criticisms Poseidon would make of the many rafts cast into his sea as he watched a launch from calm into a maelstrom of complexity. His tempest fracturing even the worthiest vessels behind the peaks and troughs of his sea borne riddles. Now we're riding high. Now we're riding low. Now I see you. Now I don't. And all the stomach of a tossing pot.
Now that we've gotten rid of DDT and the Bald Eagle is coming off the Endangered Species List we have annual growth greater than 9 per cent in China accompanied by a growing cloud of carbon dioxide/monoxide and particulate obscuring a lens more worried about military mass than consumption and rampant Western ideals.
Who is accounting for a 180 year schedule to allow these clouds to dissipate even if combustion for power stopped in less than 20 years? Poseidon keeps stirring with his trident and your stomach is churning. If everyone else is on the same ride who is left holding the bucket?
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Song Of The Blog
Well, I've decided that blogging really is fun! But there is one huge problem with it. There is so much to read. Some people are so funny it makes my sides split. Some people are so funny they've gotten book deals. Now I can forgive them for not harping on about hydrogen in each one of their entries. I mean being a magnanimous sort of person I might even give them mention in this blog from time to time. Recently I discovered mimi smartypants who had me howling long past my self-imposed and quite flexible i-don't-have-to-do-it-if-I-don't-want-to deadline. That's what I like about editors like myself. Caring less hardly matters because you're not going to get paid anyway. A thought which paves the way to a seque about the nature of work and our observation about change.
It really comes down to who your boss is, doesn't it? Up the chain that is. Rapid adoption of anything really doesn't turn the crank of the boss who, after all, is upholding the status-quo, and who might even claim to be doing so for your own good. Having read mimi smartypants I know she still has to go to work every day to make ends meet (and to feed her steady diet of sushi and other culture-vulture consumables). She, at least, takes the train. Heck, I'm in the same boat. And I hardly want to rock it for fear that my status is going to quo all on it's own. So it must be true that we all observe change in a way that, if it has any whiff of potential to sink the boat, we ain't gonna support it.
Ummmm, does that remind you of anything? Personally, I suggest you go read mimi smartypants, then thank whatever deity you have hiding around in the bathroom that you aren't living in a world where your lungs are underdeveloped and your prognosis for a long life from the time of your birth is profoundly impacted.
Have a happy day.
It really comes down to who your boss is, doesn't it? Up the chain that is. Rapid adoption of anything really doesn't turn the crank of the boss who, after all, is upholding the status-quo, and who might even claim to be doing so for your own good. Having read mimi smartypants I know she still has to go to work every day to make ends meet (and to feed her steady diet of sushi and other culture-vulture consumables). She, at least, takes the train. Heck, I'm in the same boat. And I hardly want to rock it for fear that my status is going to quo all on it's own. So it must be true that we all observe change in a way that, if it has any whiff of potential to sink the boat, we ain't gonna support it.
Ummmm, does that remind you of anything? Personally, I suggest you go read mimi smartypants, then thank whatever deity you have hiding around in the bathroom that you aren't living in a world where your lungs are underdeveloped and your prognosis for a long life from the time of your birth is profoundly impacted.
Have a happy day.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Lessons In Hydrogen
The past week has been extremely busy in the world of The Hydrogen Economy.
The journal Science published a report by researchers in Minnesota that have developed a utility-sized reformer capable of converting ethanol into H2 usable in a fuel cell application. The article was published on Friday, February 13, 2004 just two days after the US Senate announced it's new Energy bill to double the use of corn-based ethanol by 2012.
Senate ethanol bill doubles US ethanol use by 2012 -- Yahoo
But wait... There's more. A Toronto-based company called Stuart Energy went IPO on the 12th of February. The company focuses on water-electrolysis, a method of using electricity to split available water into oxygen and hydrogen. The technology offered by this company could pave the way to a hydrogen economy using just an electrical connection and water service. Something you've discovered every gas station now has if you've ever had to use the bathroom on those long trips. Oh, and yes... Stuart offers a gas-pump type delivery system, stationary fuel cells for power generation and on site compression and storage equipment. What more could Governor Shwarzenegger ask for as he considers the bids to build his 200 H2 pumping station infrastructure.
Hydrogen Energy Station
Hydrogen Hackers
Hardware hacking is any kid's pastime. Remember taking apart your first radio or figuring our how the toaster works? Well, even if you didn't do any of those things you probably know a kid who does or really wants to (keep the tools up high is my advice).
Sharpen your flint tip with these primitive designs using cutting edge technology. Keep a close eye on the regenerative cell.
Regenerative Fuel Cell Car -- Editor's Pick
Fuel Cell Kit
Build Your Own Fuel Cells by Phillip Hurley
FuelCellStore.com -- Products to make H2
If you have any comments or information to share please send to the email listed above.
The journal Science published a report by researchers in Minnesota that have developed a utility-sized reformer capable of converting ethanol into H2 usable in a fuel cell application. The article was published on Friday, February 13, 2004 just two days after the US Senate announced it's new Energy bill to double the use of corn-based ethanol by 2012.
Senate ethanol bill doubles US ethanol use by 2012 -- Yahoo
But wait... There's more. A Toronto-based company called Stuart Energy went IPO on the 12th of February. The company focuses on water-electrolysis, a method of using electricity to split available water into oxygen and hydrogen. The technology offered by this company could pave the way to a hydrogen economy using just an electrical connection and water service. Something you've discovered every gas station now has if you've ever had to use the bathroom on those long trips. Oh, and yes... Stuart offers a gas-pump type delivery system, stationary fuel cells for power generation and on site compression and storage equipment. What more could Governor Shwarzenegger ask for as he considers the bids to build his 200 H2 pumping station infrastructure.
Hydrogen Energy Station
Hydrogen Hackers
Hardware hacking is any kid's pastime. Remember taking apart your first radio or figuring our how the toaster works? Well, even if you didn't do any of those things you probably know a kid who does or really wants to (keep the tools up high is my advice).
Sharpen your flint tip with these primitive designs using cutting edge technology. Keep a close eye on the regenerative cell.
Regenerative Fuel Cell Car -- Editor's Pick
Fuel Cell Kit
Build Your Own Fuel Cells by Phillip Hurley
FuelCellStore.com -- Products to make H2
If you have any comments or information to share please send to the email listed above.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Where Hydrogen and Linux Meet
Messages abound in this space. Being heard or thought of as important comes with the price of crack observations from an elevated position or spam-like audacity. I have neither. My message is simple. As anyone does, I grapple with demons and the motives behind them. I look for the paths of change and wonder why it appears to be happening so fast without anything being accomplished. But not everything is an oxymoron or some tripped-up juxtaposition... The soft path is like that.
In North America Timothy Leary's advice to Turn ON, Tune IN, Drop OUT was followed around the same time as the Energy Crisis bred a new consciousness about what it cost to get around. People wanted to farm the wind and sail the sun. And then we had a few decades of silence. Perhaps green and gold stood in the way of happiness (or paved the road your car was driving on). Renewable energy was a thing of individual people not of the masses. The masses under the protectorate of "other" issues forgot the soft path in centralized energy at moderately affordable prices. Turkey dinners still warmed under the element as the work day lengthened. And we called it progress. Products that cost less in the short-term piled up. The volkswagon (wagon of the people) walked a person to work along a two-lane hiway. And the traffic never bothered anybody.
The Hydrogen Economy. Yep.
Panel Says Hydrogen Fueled Cars Won't Hit Hiway Soon
New Report Finds Fuel Cell Forecasts Cloudier Than Expected
No one wants to believe we aren't there yet. Do they? Is 25% of the world's vehicles (owned and operated by 13% of the world's population) powered by hydrogen in 25 years a positive message?
Some pundits argue that unless sales in hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles pick up the transition could take even longer.
In the next few years you are going to see distributed electricity production by stationary fuel cells powered by hydrogen or natural gas. Realistically this means The Hydrogen Economy is still 75 years off. Not in my lifetime.
This move to small scale local production satisfies the security and service conscious electrical power generating industry, alleviating fears over large-scale outages recently experienced in North America and Europe. Local production means that if part of a grid gets knocked out then you don't have to worry about your neighbourhood. But is the soft path served by this? Not likely.
Here's why. The soft path really means appropriate energy for the need derived from distributed sources. This doesn't mean the network infrastructure must be distributed. It means generation from alternatives such as solar, wind, wave, geothermal, microelectric, fuel cell, etc. What legislators fail to see is that even distributed energy production is served by the infrastructure we have already built. Perhaps the focus on preventing outages similar to those already in the public mind will blind the issue to even strident environmentalists. Time will tell. What does seem clear is that something must be done to ensure the soft path is not threatened.
In the US and elsewhere around the world it is the proponent of the centralized model of distribution who leads the future as in this address to the US-based National Academy of Engineering.
The Future of the U.S. Energy Industry as outlined by CEO of American Electric Power (AEP), a utility with 4.9 million customers in the US alone.
Two measures are immediately important:
Legislate large-scale producers to buy power from individuals.
Legislate in all building codes that new housing starts be fitted with power-sharing circuitry.
Such a change has far-reaching implications, especially as it relates to hydrogen-powered vehicles implementing Regenerative Fuel Cells (RFC). One of the pervading arguments against this closed system cell is that photovoltaic input hasn't been sufficiently developed and that to run these cells need to be 'charged'. This is where the electrical grid comes into play.
In a future scenario let's say your car is manufactured and 'charged' with hydrogen. Solar panels adorn the outside of your vehicle. In fact, all vehicles on the road use some sort of photovoltaic arrangement. Yet, the adverts on the side of the bus seem intact. You drive home on hydrogen and plug your vehicle in again when you get home to 'recharge' it by using electrical power to create hydrogen from the waste of its use as the 'fuel' of the 'battery' driving your car.
Different Types of Fuel Cells -- see the bottom for Regenerative Fuel Cells.
There is so much to say and there is so much to do.
Plans to use ethanol or diesel fuels as transitional combustibles which pass less particulate into the air don't seem to take into account that diesel is a cancer causing fuel. People who live within a block of a diesel engine run for just 10 hours a month are at 50% greater risk of contracting cancer than someone who does not live within the same radius (If someone has a link to this article please post it).
Eventually I wan't to break this blog down into useful bits where new information can be posted and properly sorted. I envision an RSS feed from this blog with multiple contributors in each of the sections. My hope is that some of the brainier hacktivists out there will be able to help with creating an OpenSource repository of fuel cell information for the purposes of hastening the pace of the world's transition to the Hyrdrogen Economy by the grassroots. After all, it would be nice to be able to afford some of this technology. A lot of it is absolutely ready to go.
So, I post this challenge.
Give Hydrogen to the world.
In North America Timothy Leary's advice to Turn ON, Tune IN, Drop OUT was followed around the same time as the Energy Crisis bred a new consciousness about what it cost to get around. People wanted to farm the wind and sail the sun. And then we had a few decades of silence. Perhaps green and gold stood in the way of happiness (or paved the road your car was driving on). Renewable energy was a thing of individual people not of the masses. The masses under the protectorate of "other" issues forgot the soft path in centralized energy at moderately affordable prices. Turkey dinners still warmed under the element as the work day lengthened. And we called it progress. Products that cost less in the short-term piled up. The volkswagon (wagon of the people) walked a person to work along a two-lane hiway. And the traffic never bothered anybody.
The Hydrogen Economy. Yep.
Panel Says Hydrogen Fueled Cars Won't Hit Hiway Soon
New Report Finds Fuel Cell Forecasts Cloudier Than Expected
No one wants to believe we aren't there yet. Do they? Is 25% of the world's vehicles (owned and operated by 13% of the world's population) powered by hydrogen in 25 years a positive message?
Some pundits argue that unless sales in hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles pick up the transition could take even longer.
In the next few years you are going to see distributed electricity production by stationary fuel cells powered by hydrogen or natural gas. Realistically this means The Hydrogen Economy is still 75 years off. Not in my lifetime.
This move to small scale local production satisfies the security and service conscious electrical power generating industry, alleviating fears over large-scale outages recently experienced in North America and Europe. Local production means that if part of a grid gets knocked out then you don't have to worry about your neighbourhood. But is the soft path served by this? Not likely.
Here's why. The soft path really means appropriate energy for the need derived from distributed sources. This doesn't mean the network infrastructure must be distributed. It means generation from alternatives such as solar, wind, wave, geothermal, microelectric, fuel cell, etc. What legislators fail to see is that even distributed energy production is served by the infrastructure we have already built. Perhaps the focus on preventing outages similar to those already in the public mind will blind the issue to even strident environmentalists. Time will tell. What does seem clear is that something must be done to ensure the soft path is not threatened.
In the US and elsewhere around the world it is the proponent of the centralized model of distribution who leads the future as in this address to the US-based National Academy of Engineering.
The Future of the U.S. Energy Industry as outlined by CEO of American Electric Power (AEP), a utility with 4.9 million customers in the US alone.
Two measures are immediately important:
Legislate large-scale producers to buy power from individuals.
Legislate in all building codes that new housing starts be fitted with power-sharing circuitry.
Such a change has far-reaching implications, especially as it relates to hydrogen-powered vehicles implementing Regenerative Fuel Cells (RFC). One of the pervading arguments against this closed system cell is that photovoltaic input hasn't been sufficiently developed and that to run these cells need to be 'charged'. This is where the electrical grid comes into play.
In a future scenario let's say your car is manufactured and 'charged' with hydrogen. Solar panels adorn the outside of your vehicle. In fact, all vehicles on the road use some sort of photovoltaic arrangement. Yet, the adverts on the side of the bus seem intact. You drive home on hydrogen and plug your vehicle in again when you get home to 'recharge' it by using electrical power to create hydrogen from the waste of its use as the 'fuel' of the 'battery' driving your car.
Different Types of Fuel Cells -- see the bottom for Regenerative Fuel Cells.
There is so much to say and there is so much to do.
Plans to use ethanol or diesel fuels as transitional combustibles which pass less particulate into the air don't seem to take into account that diesel is a cancer causing fuel. People who live within a block of a diesel engine run for just 10 hours a month are at 50% greater risk of contracting cancer than someone who does not live within the same radius (If someone has a link to this article please post it).
Eventually I wan't to break this blog down into useful bits where new information can be posted and properly sorted. I envision an RSS feed from this blog with multiple contributors in each of the sections. My hope is that some of the brainier hacktivists out there will be able to help with creating an OpenSource repository of fuel cell information for the purposes of hastening the pace of the world's transition to the Hyrdrogen Economy by the grassroots. After all, it would be nice to be able to afford some of this technology. A lot of it is absolutely ready to go.
So, I post this challenge.
Give Hydrogen to the world.
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