วันพุธที่ 5 สิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2552

BURNING UP OUR FUTURE


WHY WE NEED TO CREATE A HYDROGEN ENERGY ECONOMY


In the name of energy we suffer the indignities of rising prices and shortages. We warm the Climate, deplete the ozone layer, pollute our air, poison our environment with acid rain, dump tons our mercury into our oceans each and wage wars. We also cultivate a dangerous dependency on foreign sources of fossil fuels that weakens our national security.

Where does the world get its energy? According to the energy information administration, worldwide consumption comes from petroleum (39), Coal (25), Natural Gas (22), and Renewable, (Primarily burning 120 million barrels of oil a day. Natural gas consumption will shoot up from 90 trillion feet in 2001 to 176 trillion cubic feet in 2025. By 2020 we'll be pumping 9.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide the primary culprit in global warming into what remains of our atmosphere.

How long will the party last? At current rates of consumption, our oil reserves will last 45 years, natural gas 70 years and coal the world's most abundant and polluting fossil fuel somewhere around 200 years.

The fossil-fuel party might end sooner than expected. In a world hungry for energy, so called “current rates of consumption” increase by month & day. Fossil fuels are burned to produce energy and electricity, and the developing nations want their share. China, India, Latin America, Africa and the and the rest of Asia will help grow worldwide demand for electric power 75% over the next decades.

Yet all the while as we protect, defend and use up the finite supply of fossil fuels, while we burn it up and deny it to future generations we steadfastly turn a blind eye to an unlimited fuel supply, oceans of it, the same fuel that powers the sun.

That fuel is hydrogen. Hydrogen, bound with oxygen makes water. Hydrogen is the simplest element known to man. An atom of hydrogen has only one proton and one electron. It is also that most abundant gas in the universe and the source of all energy we receive from the sun. Hydrogen dos not exit naturally on earth and are found only in compound forms such as water, methane, coal and petroleum.

Hydrogen as a fuel is currently produced by a process called “steam reforming”, where high-temperature steam separates hydrogen from carbon or by “electrolysis” which splits water into its basic elements, hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel that produces water vapor as it’s by product. Hydrogen can be made from water and when it burned turns back into water. Sounds simple, but it takes energy to make hydrogen from water. So the question becomes: is there a way to make hydrogen without burning fossil fuels and continuing of this relentless path of depletion and pollution?


There furnace 93 million miles away that keeps us alive on this planet. A very small portion of the energy radiated by the sun one part in two billion strikes the earth. Just one day of the solar energy is enough to supply only few country needs for one and a half years. We have technology to capture and use it but we are shortsighted, deferring to the convenience of fossil fuels and ignoring the problems entail.

The vast and readily available energy from the sun isn't news. The technology has been developed to use the heat from sun to produce hydrogen as an energy source. It’s a fantastic energy loop. The heat from focused solar energy can be used the power engines that produce electricity with no pollution. That electricity, in turn, can be used to separate the hydrogen from water. The hydrogen can then be used as a fuel.

Yet, even though we have this practical, hands-on knowledge, even though we have proved technology we continue to take baby steps to prevent the deadline when our oil and natural gas and sooner or later coal reserves will be exhausted, once these fuels are gone, burned up in the short space of a few hundred years, they are gone forever.

Our Hydrogen Fuelled car is in use today, Prototype cars is using Hydrogen/Hydride storage system developed by us and our devices will be entered in commercial markets in Europe 2010.

We can end over energy dependence and despoiling of the earths environment with a fuel that will last humanity tens of millions of years.

Hopefully, that transformation will come about when enough of us raise our voices and urge our government, organization, representatives, and whom it concerns to move toward a clean energy economy based upon renewable fuels.