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Fuel Cell Creation

Cities that power them selves
 
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Everyone knows that Fuels Cells are this great technology. The only problem is how do we get hydrogen for them? The answer is simple, Each city with the capability to create a hydro electric dam could do this. Take St. louis, Missouri for example, you build a hydrelectric dam and you use the water from the river to splice the hydrogen molecules off to make hydrogen, but this process takes energy to do so, but in stead of using fossil fuels for the electricity so this doesnt help the enviorment. But becasue you have a hydroelectric dam right there you use its own energy to make the electricity to slpice the hydrogen off of the water and bam you have your power source for a fuel cell. So you have these hydrogen plants right in the heart of your city inside of a dam and then you have a local pipeline that gives hydrogen to all of the hydrogen dependant devices cars etc. No more importing and being dependant upon oils prices which keep going up and up. Your own city does it all locally and better yet it would help the economy, people get jobs for building dams maintaining them, building pipelines. Only downfall is the effects of the river wild life, will more dams effect it in a negative way?
macguy815, Nov 16 2003

Hydrogen Didn’t Cause Hindenburg Fire http://www.seas.ucl.../releases/blimp.htm
...UCLA Engineer, Former NASA Researcher Find [Detly, Oct 04 2004, last modified Mar 12 2005]

Poop to power the future? http://www.redoxpowersystems.com/
Methane could turn Farts into electricity. [travbm, Oct 29 2015]

[link]






       hwo would you do it? have a pool of water and use power from a coal powerplant to slpice hydrogen from water? My way the dam makes the power it has the water right there, then uses the power it makes to slpice the hydrogen from the water which is right there all around the dam. Then a pipeline comes from the dam and supplies the entire city. Seems pretty dam efficient, all of the energy made all in one place.
macguy815, Nov 16 2003
  

       [UnaBubba] - check the link. :)
Detly, Nov 16 2003
  

       Okay, hydrogen didn't *start* the Hindenburg fire, but it damn sure made a good finish of it. Back to the idea...   

       Why not just use the electricity to charge batteries which, in turn, run automobiles? Also, I think you'll get a bit of resistance from the people of St. Louis if you were to tell them you wanted to dam the Missouri. Not only would you flood the city out, but you'd destroy all commerce up and down the river.
phoenix, Nov 16 2003
  

       One of the advantages of hydrogen fuel, or any chemical energy medium, is that it is relatively efficient to transport over large distances. The disadvantage to electricity is that transmission losses are proportional to distance transported. Any time energy is converted from one form to another, losses are created.   

       If you have a power source in the middle of a city, it is a prime opportunity to make electricity, as the transmission losses will be small. Using a centrally located power source for conversion to chemical energy is a waste of that opportunity.   

       Power centrally converted to chemical energy, transported just across town, and then converted back to electricity, adds one more step of conversion and one more point of losses.   

       Also, most rivers that can be used for electric generation already are, at least in the sorts of parts of the world where people would also use a hydrogen energy system. I don’t think that St. Louis is the sort of a place that can get hydroelectric power from dams because there isn’t enough head.
Laughs Last, Nov 16 2003
  

       the missouri allready has hydroelectric dams. They are part of the lock and dma system. You could just use that.
macguy815, Nov 17 2003
  

       I’ve looked into it now, and while St. Louis head isn’t that great, the volume of water is very large. (I was distracted by watching so much water go over the spill way, forgot some of it got used.) And indeed, many of the lock and dam structures incorporate power generation, but that makes it seem like the electricity is spoken for.
Laughs Last, Nov 17 2003
  

       Hey! Enough knocking St. Louis already!
BunsenHoneydew, Feb 28 2004
  

       Redox power has a methane based fuel cell that may be effective for domestic use.
travbm, Oct 29 2015
  

       ^ methane or methanol ?
FlyingToaster, Oct 29 2015
  

       Methane gas fuel cells because it is a more common fuel.
travbm, Oct 29 2015
  
      
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