Would water be a good automotive fuel?
There have been a number of companies and inventors whom have claimed the ability to utilize water as a fuel, and it may very well be possible. Still, the question must be asked, would water be a good fuel?
For one thing, if clean water is a water fuel requirement, then it seems quite obvious that water is not a good fuel. Already some futurists speculate that one day soon clean water will be far more valuable than oil, for example. If America started water guzzling the way it gas-guzzles, I can't imagine how that could be a good thing.
If clean water is not needed, then it would seem dirty water will either have to be purified, or significant sediment and residue deposits could form in engines, valves, etc. - possibly transferring vehicle expenses from fuel to maintenance and water filtering. Moreover, it seems salt water would be needed. Would desalination be required?
For another thing, hydrogen advocates often claim that fuel cell vehicles running on hydrogen will only emit clean water vapor. How do we know that such 'clean' emissions won't have an unintended effect? For many decades carbon emissions were not considered a pollutant because carbon was natural, however, everything in life is determined by balance. Too much carbon, even too much oxygen, can be dangerous. Isn't it possible that unnatural, massive increases in humidity might have some unintended affect on the atmosphere?
Whenever something seems too good to be true I am always reminded of the economic principle of TINSTAFL - there is no such thing as a free lunch.
posted by Dahcredyns @ 12:25 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I would think that too much water vapor emissions could cause climate change. Can you imagine what huge quantities of excess water vapor could do to areas of saline wetlands? It would kill off plants an fauna that require a saltwater environment.
I think EV Cars are the only real environmentaly sustainable transportation technology.
Well sense water in the air accounts for 97 percent of the heat trapping effect and CO2 only accounts for 3 percent and that less the 1 percent of the CO2 is man made it would make a lot of sense that pumping a lot of water into the air will have a much greater effect than CO2. Now whether it has a good effect or bad effect is up for debate.
Activists of various flavors have managed to get people's shorts in a knot over enhanced greenhouse (the concept of increased atmospheric greenhouse gas availability cranking up the misnamed 'greenhouse effect' and causing catastrophic surface heating). One major problem with this hypothesis that always seems to get lost or glossed over is that there has been three times more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than required to deliver the current greenhouse effect since at least the end of the last great glaciation. There has never been a need for anthropogenic greenhouse enhancement to increase potential greenhouse warming because the atmosphere is already opaque in the relevant absorption bands in most regions (that is, there's 'competition' between overabundant GHG molecules for available outbound infrared radiation with only limited, regional potential remaining). This is why catastrophic warming scenarios generated by woeful 'climate models' are so laughable because models are programmed only with 'positive feedbacks' (even greater warming from trivial increase in absorber availability) while real world potential actually works with negative feedback (you get progressively less bang for your buck by adding more GHGs because there's insufficient suitable infrared radiation to go around). So, why the hysteria over something that physically cannot happen?
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