I am sorry if I came across too strong on the hydrazine hydrate option.
Looking more closely at the Daihatsu article... their proposal for how to
store the stuff on a car sounds a bit like a kludge, and they say
nothing about fuel flexibility.
In preliminary checks, I haven't yet heard any problems with HH
compared to say, methanol,
for hoses and valves and engines. But what they say about the gas
tank itself is not so encouraging.
--------------------------------------------------
Let's go back to the context.
There is something unpleasant about the idea of powering the US car
and truck fleet from reprocessing
fumes from coal plants.
Worst case -- the best we KNOW we can do cost-effectively with cars
is optimally
controlled plug-in hybrids with a 40 mile driving range, leaving us
still with about one-quarter of
the energy to come from liquid fuels, unless we cut into people's
standard of living.
Maybe biofuels can supply all that, if we have full GEM flexibility
in cars; maybe not.
So people have asked -- what could energy from space do here, to
improve the situation?
MAINLY it could supply electricity, which is not at all the same
thing. We already have electricity,
and the means to expand it. Energy from space can help us get better
and maybe even cheaper electricity,
but that doesn't really help us with the car fuel problem as such.
So some people have suggested... what about OTHER liquid fuels
besides biofuels?
It they have to have carbon, and we want some degree of economic
reality, it comes back to processing
waste streams from coal-fired plants. Unless we can think of something better.
This in turn comes back to an old question which has been nagging at me:
What are the chances of non-carbon LIQUID fuels? (Given that straight
hydrogen really is off the map.)
HH is better than hydrogen, but that may be like saying disease is
better than death;
it is true, but is it good enough?
*I really regret seeming to recommend that GEMH flexibility should be
an explicit part of
any legislation this year. It is certainly premature, at best, when
the questions are unresolved.
A better way for folks like the oil companies would be to support the
GEM proposals already there,
recognizing that it opens up markets for many CARBON-BASED
alternative fuels that are very real
product possibilities for them near-term, and that it MAY allow other
possibilities.*
An obvious question is: is HH really the best that NAIST and Toyota
could find, for noncarbon based fuels for
cars, after a very extensive and well-informed search?
Are we stuck with 40-mile batteries, biofuels and exhaust from coal
plants, short of a breakthrough?
One corollary, of course: since breakthroughs in batteries seem
POSSIBLE, we should be doing a whole
lot more to try to get them.
For a proposal to make this real, go to
http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/phev/program.asp,
and then click on "Sadoway."
And there are a few other possibilities...
And there may yet be a noncarbon liquid fuel better for cars than HH.
Who knows?
Still, HH for aviation still sounds worth considering.
Best of luck to us all
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