• Lithium Vs Hydrogen – The new war of the alternatives

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    If you still haven’t realized how serious the fuel problem is, it could only mean two things either you live on an island disconnected from the rest of humanity or your filthy rich. The price of fuel doesn’t seem destined to fall anytime soon even though Saudi Arabia promises to ease up on trade norms. The automobile manufacturers didn’t see the present fuel crisis as a long term situation, and automobile manufacturers somehow thought that announcing better fuel efficient hybrid vehicles to be launched years from now will ease our present woes. Toyota is slipping out info of its next generation Prius almost everyday, and Honda soon coming out with its Clarity FCX Fuel Cell car. What are we to do by knowing of future cars being more fuel efficient while we drain our money into $4 a gallon gas everyday till the next hybrid is out that promises 40Mpg. With the plethora of new alternative fuel projects being announced everyday, it makes it very hard for us to decide on which technology will stand the test of time in the new war of the alternatives. It is the same reason car companies are hesitant to roll off alternative fuel cars into the market; they simply cannot afford watching more loss graphs already donated to them by the recent gas price inflation. The technology to build alternative fuel cars simply hasn’t been available until recent years.


    What the future of fuel wars depends on is the underlying technology implied in the new alternative fuels namely being Lithium and Hydrogen, Hydrogen is everywhere on the planet. Lithium isn’t. Hydrogen has to be extracted from something else. Lithium has to be extracted from fairly scarce, but apparently adequate resources. Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be sold at the pump as a fuel. Lithium also holds energy but can be “refueled” from any source of electricity including grid or some home-grown power source. Hydrogen needs an infrastructure to be built for refueling. The infrastructure for refueling plug-in hybrids is already in place: Conventional filling stations provide liquid fuels, even bio-fuels. In the industrialized world the power grid is already in place; only a small link needs to be made to connect vehicle with grid. Hydrogen would be sold by existing fuel companies. Electricity to charge lithium batteries would be sold by power companies and liquid fuels by existing fuel companies. Hydrogen could be extracted from local sources (water for instance) anywhere in the world – thus a domestic fuel. Yet the source energy needed to extract hydrogen might be imported. Lithium sources are scattered worldwide. Hydrogen can offer zero emission provided the source of energy to extract it is also emission free. Lithium batteries could be recharged from a zero emission source, or not. The plug-in hybrid’s petrol engine will emit noxious fumes and greenhouse gases.
    Then comes the problems related to the distribution of these fuel technologies. Hydrogen could be extracted from local sources (water for instance) anywhere in the world – thus a domestic fuel. Yet the source energy needed to extract hydrogen might be imported. Lithium sources are scattered worldwide. Hydrogen would be sold by existing fuel companies. Electricity to charge lithium batteries would be sold by power companies and liquid fuels by existing fuel companies.
    We just hope in the end that the greener technology of them (PSST! Hydrogen) wins and provides with it a cheaper alternative for mass transport. The traffic problems won’t go away if the cheapest fuel wins and we may end up being a migratory species all over again.
    Source
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    Posted in Topics:Alternative Energy, Tags: , on June 28, 2008