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It makes a whole lot more sense, energetically and in terms of takign advantage of existing infrastructure, to use electric power to produce synthetic hydrocarbons.

The only advantage of this over pure hydrogen is that storing Aluminum and Gallium in a "just add water!" hydrogen fuel cell is easier than handling pure hydrogen. But the result of this is to produce Aluminum oxide from recycled aluminum, so the spent fuel cells would have to be recycled into Aluminum-production again. Also, I am not convinced the Gallium will catalyse as oppose to being consumed and ending up as impurities in the Aluminum Oxide.

This scheme will result in making Aluminum, Gallium and electric power more expensive, and no reuse of existing liquid fuel infrastructure.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat May 19th, 2007 at 12:03:45 PM EST
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The thing is, if there is a carbon slurry (or other carbon source) going into a direct carbon fuel cell, that is likely to be more power per kg of fuel than water plus aluminum/gallium pellets.

And carbon powder can be created from biomass through direct charcoal conversion, giving very good transportability and stability.

But altogether I'd rather bike to the closest electric train and let the train operator worry about dragging the motors and brakes and all of that around. That way I don't have to park anything in front of the house.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sat May 19th, 2007 at 12:57:39 PM EST
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