Stuck on Stupid

That's a phrase that got popularized during the Iraq War.  When it comes to analysis of the Energy Problem, I think we may all be stuck on stupid.  This country imports way, way too much oil.  With current events unfolding in Egypt, the consequences of stupidity could be mind boggling.

I hate to do this, because I tend to sympathize with these guys, but this post is stuck on stupid.  The only way that it isn't SOS is if you can put one of these in a car.  Because that is where they are needed.  It doesn't help much that they have efficiencies that are much higher than most heat engines and appear to rival fuel cells.  The advantage of fuel cells is that they be fit into cars.  And as I've pointed out in an earlier post, it is feasible to make them run on methanol.

You see, that is where the problem comes in.  How to power our automobile fleet. The current system requires gasoline, which requires oil.  And we import a lot of this.  Burning natural gas in a turbine does nothing to address this problem.

Making methanol with natural gas is cheap.  Transporting the methanol is cheap.  Electrolyzing it is cheap. The expensive part is putting them in a car.  Fuel cells require expensive catalysts.  There may be other reasons for this expensive price of over 100k dollars for this car, but I suspect the major roadblock is the cost of the platinum in the fuel cells.  The other part is the cost of the hydrogen.

My understanding is that a major cost of hydrogen is getting it compressed or liquified.  If this can be bypassed, by electrolysis, then it should become much cheaper.  That would leave the major stumbling block the cost and availability of platinum and platinum group catalysts.  This is why I am in favor of mining it from asteroids.  You solve the metals problem, you solve the hydrogen problem and ultimately the energy problem.

Another way to solve the catalyst problem is to find a cheaper one!  Now, if this idea works, then you won't need platinum, nor platinum group metals which are expensive.  Wish I could remember where I saw this, as it was posted on another blog.   Sorry I can't give a hat tip for this one.