RE: big secretThanks for letting us in on the secret...it's weird to feel like someone is talking behind your back...even if you have no idea who they are! Anyway, hopefully they just sold because they had watched their stock sit at around 10 cents for a long time...$4.00 had to look pretty good. For those who are interested in the hydrogen fuel cell technology, attached is an article by David Suzuki about same; it certainly appears to be technology intended for big items such as cars:
Science Matters by David Suzuki
Science Matters is published weekly in newspapers across
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Heading Towards a Hydrogen Future
3/22/00
The automotive world has recently reached an interesting
crossroads. On one hand, there's the rampant popularity
of Sport Utility Vehicles. Virtually every car manufacturer
on the planet now produces at least one version of these
trucks - which are some of the heaviest, most inefficient
passenger vehicles ever made.
Yet at the same time, some of the most fuel-efficient
cars ever mass-produced are also due to roll off the
assembly lines this year. These cars use a combination of
a small gasoline engine with an electric motor pwered by
a battery that never needs to be plugged in. A computer
decides which motor to use to get the best fuel
efficiency. This "hybrid" system reduces greenhouse gas
emissions by 40 per cent and also greatly reduces the air
pollutants that cause smog. Both Toyota and Honda will
be selling these vehicles in Canada by this summer and
Ford isn't far behind.
Most auto-makers are also working on hydrogen fuel
cell-powered vehicles that could reduce emissions even
more. Massive amounts of money have been invested in
this technology and working prototypes of a variety of
fuel cell vehicles were paraded around autoshows this
year. Often dubbed "zero-emission" cars, these vehicles
don't burn their fuel the way conventional internal
combustion engines burn gasoline. Instead, they run on
pure hydrogen, which they convert directly to electricity
without combustion. The only thing coming out of the
tailpipe is water vapour and heat.
The fuel cell is considered the first viable alternative to
the internal combustion engine, which we've used in cars
for more than a century. Purely electric vehicles have
been available for decades, but they've never become
very popular because their batteries are heavy and need
frequent recharging. Fuel cell vehicles, on the other
hand, are on the verge of commercialization, with
manufacturers keen on mass-producing them within five
years.
On the surface, fuel cell vehicles seem like an ideal
solution to the problems that gasoline-fuelled cars cause,
like greenhouse gas emissions and smog. However, pure
hydrogen does not exist in nature. It's plentiful in fossil
fuels and water, and can be removed from these
compounds by breaking them down into their
components. Unfortunately, that process can create
greenhouse gases and other emissions. So instead of
polluting from the tailpipe, fuel-cell vehicles could just
push the problem upstream to where hydrogen is
produced. Depending on the method of production, the
emissions could stay virtually the same and only the
location of their source would change. That hardly
sounds like a solution!
Hydrogen can be produced without any emissions, but
only if it is made from electricity generated by renewable
sources like solar and wind power. Unfortunately, these
are not yet widely available on a commercial scale. The
only way to find out which of the current methods of
producing hydrogen creates the least emissions is to
conduct a "full-cycle analysis," which considers the
pollutants created at all levels of the fuel's production
and consumption.
A recent full-cycle analysis by the David Suzuki
Foundation and the Alberta-based Pembina Institute for
Appropriate Development found that the greatest
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved
by stripping hydrogen from natural gas - a process called
reforming. This would reduce emissions by nearly 70 per
cent. Using gasoline to produce hydrogen, on the other
hand, would reduce emissions by just 20 per cent - less
than the reduction offered by the new hybrid vehicles.
Making hydrogen from natural gas also has the added
advantage of not requiring major infrastructure changes.
Service stations on natural gas lines could create
hydrogen on site and we could pump it directly into
vehicles, just like we fill our gas tanks today. Fuel cell
vehicles are indeed a promising technology, but if they
are going to reduce air pollution and climate change, the
hydrogen they use must be produced cleanly.
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