On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 02:16:52PM -0500, Ed Kelleher wrote: >This 1973 study used heat from nuclear reactors to desalinate and >also produce H2 gas on an impressive scale. >They agreed electrolysis was too expensive. >The PDF is really crappy though. >They mention metal hydrides as form of storing H2 also. > >Combined nuclear and hydrogen energy economy : a long term solution >to the world's energy problem >http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00269006.html Uh, that paper says that "As yet, none of these cycles [for thermochemical extraction of hydrogen] have been proven experimentally, even on the bench scale." >Some others ... > >Thermochemical production of hydrogen from water, a critical review >http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00258556.html That's from 1978, five years later, at which time "The only plant (100 liters of hydrogen per hour) in operation is one at Ispra, Italy...", and the predicted cost and efficiency for large-scale operations were about on par with electrolysis. (At least they'd given up, by that point, on the cycle that required large amounts of mercury as a reagent, and moved to nicer chemicals such as sulfuric acid.) In any case, I'm with Henry Spencer on this: you're going to want a liquid fuel as the end result. Trying to maintain millions of installations of an exotic technology, one in each car, is just not going to be competitive with maintaining just a few large-scale installations of an exotic technology in centralized liquid-fuel-production facilities. And if you want a liquid fuel as the end result, the optimal chemistry likely won't have molecular hydrogen as an intermediate product (though it might). -- Norman Yarvin http://yarchive.net/blog