As an engineer I have been studying and following the renewable energy debate and developments for well over 30 years and many useful as well as useless inventions/solutions have crossed my road of discovery.
One tendency, which always seems to stand out, is the all or nothing approach.
All wind power or all nuclear power or all wave, solar etc. and lately all hydrogen, rarely ever a composite/combination of current conventional and renewable energy resources.
The latest fads seem again all nuclear or all hydrogen and the most laughable of them all "Carbon Sequestration".
Compressing CO2 to pump it to the bottom of the oceans or into some geological cavity is as costly in energy consumption as the building, as well as decommissioning of nuclear power stations and the storage of radio active waste and equally hazardous.
Using Bio Fuels, with its current technology, is a bit like incinerating your breakfast, lunch & dinner to drive your car.
Even more fascinating is that all of these latest offerings are not feasible for another 10 to 30 years, requiring huge amounts of funding to prove or disprove their viability. So it seems that invariably concepts are being promoted which have no immediate application when there are ample and proven concepts that can be implemented now with considerable immediate benefits.
Methods such as co-generation (recovery of waste heat) or preheating by renewable resources rarely rate a mention. Both methods are only a few of the many options guaranteeing substantial reductions in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Again the aspect of the hydrogen as fuel debate is the all or nothing approach. It is nothing new that cars (and planes) can run on hydrogen. The catch here is the, currently, enormous cost of the fuel storage and the non-existing infrastructure. It is even proposed to generate the hydrogen from, would you believe it, carbon based fuels or, lo and behold, nuclear power.
One can only wonder why the viable and relatively low cost conversion of existing means of transport is so rarely being considered as an option. For many years now the conversion of petrol powered vehicles to LNG/CNG was feasible, economical and aided the reduction of greenhouse gases.
Hybrid cars, powered by a combination of internal combustion engine, batteries and electric motor can be another, but still very expensive, option to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
So why not use hydrogen in combination with conventional fuel to reduce your fuel consumption and your environmental footprint? It is a proven technology. A low cost on-board hydrogen generator produces small quantities of hydrogen serving as a combustion enhancer. This hydrogen generator only operates while the engine is running making it perfectly safe, saves substantial amounts of fuel and does not require any hydrogen storage. In other words no hydrogen is produced when the engine is not running.
For more detailed information head over to this site Hybrid H2O2 Engine
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