PC/WI USA goes all out for Bio-Hydrogen to replace Petroleum?

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
I was reading about Bio-Hydrogen on the net, ie Hydrogen that is made in tanks from Algae and how just 25,000 sq km would be enough to replace all the petroleum used in road vehicle usage in the US.

What if the US Govt went all out to replace petroleum at the start of the year 2000, before Shale Gas was pursued?, say around 2% per year?

I was thinking of using desert areas in the South West such as Texas, Arizona, Nevada etc so as not to encroach on pastoral and crop production.

Would this be possible?

How much investment would it take?

How much would the cost come down, as at the moment it comes in at around $13 a kg, the optimum price needs to be $2.60?

Regards filers.
 
Hydrogen as a fuel sucks in many ways.
It is difficult to send from one place to another - 1) low density means you have to pump harder or use bigger pipelines, 2) hydrogen makes steel brittle, which is nasty for your pipeline and 3) it escapes easily (so a tiny crack that's too small for any effective amount of natural gas escaping would allow rather more H2 to escape).
It's difficult to store. Again, see above.

And fuel cells just haven't met the promises of performance and cost that in the '70s meant we thought hydrogen would be the fuel of the future.

Biodiesel/ biopetroleum analogues / biogasoline replacement are all probably far easier to do with algae.

Yes. I think algal fuels will likely be a big player - but the people that have claimed the best results tend to not be able to scale up or sometimes even repeat them under controlled conditions.
 
Probably better to let the hydrogen contribute to a further reaction down the line and make methane. Far easier to ship/pipe/store CH4 than H2
 
Methanol economy seems like the best bet to pursue a policy independent of petroleum. Hydrogen fuel seems to be a dead-end. With methanol, all you need is enough energy to make the methanol (might piss off environmentalists since nuclear power is the quickest way to that required energy especially pre-21st century) and automakers onboard with your scheme.

But if anyone could replace petroleum, it's the US.
 
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