[Brokinarrow]

Originally Posted by DGthe3

Hawii, or any other large island, is a good place to test out ideas for hydrogen cars and the associated infrastructure. They're self contained, so you don't run into the problem of wanting to take your hydrogen car from LA to Vegas, then realize there are no hydrogen stations in Nevada (for example). If you can drive your car anywhere on the island and still be reasonably close to a H2 station, it makes a pretty good test bed to develop the technology.


Synthetic Natural Gas is typcially made from coal (though there is no reason why oil couldn't be used, probably works a bit better with oil). Its called 'gasification' and uses steam and oxygen at high temperatures to react with the fuel (in this case, oil) and creates hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and a number of other light hyrocarbons. The hydrocarbons byproducts (methane, ethane, propane, etc) can be further refined into hydrogen gas using a very similar method.

Using electrolysis won't work to produce a hydorgen fuel. It will make hydrogen gas, sure. But the energy that you put into it is greater than the energy you get out. Meanwhile, it is possible to get more energy out of hydrogen when making it from methane than you put in. One proposed method is to use next generation nuclear reactors as the heat (and steam) source for producing hydrogen from methane.

Good info I remember that electrolysis was very energy intensive, wondering if the use of solar power to produce the required electricity would keep costs low (while obviously not being very efficient)? Guess it would depend how expensive the solar cells are and such...