Metal Air Fuel Cells are energy source of the future

[EVDebs]

Posting at http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/index.php?showtopic=5388&hl=LLNL with reprint of an Lawrence Livermore National Labs speaks of zinc as a future fuel. Actually all metal air fuel cells are potentially a way out of a fossil fuel future

The ZINC AIR FUEL CELL project that was undermined in order to promote Hydrogen fuel cells (with their fossil fuel 'bridge' fuel to the future, although dependent upon platinum as a catalyst) is potentially a Pacific Rim oriented way to escape the Middle Eastern geopolitics of oil, which will run out by 2035 (natural gas will run out around 2050).

We need to explore Zinc oxide pellets and potassium hydroxide as its catalyst since these are abundant and a great complement to conservation and photovoltaics as fuel sources for the future. Powerdown by Richard Heinberg will attest to this.

[brainshrub]

1. You have no idea how doomed we are.

Okay, I wave a magic wand and 75% of all transportation is powered by zinc by 2010.

Hooray!

We STILL run out of oil by 2035; thus ends the plastics industry, road construction and modern bio-medicine.

Batten down the hatches... the storm is coming.

[Maple]

3. We are NOT doomed

for goodness sakes.

We have alternatives for all these things.

We've just never bothered with them, because oil was handy and supposedly cheap.

[Mr_Spock]

7. Cool - what are the alternatives to plastics and asphalt anyway?

I don't doubt that they exist, I'm just not familiar with them. As a mechanical engineer, I'm always interested in the technologies of the future...

[yella_dawg]

2. This is yet another energy storage mechanism

The text at the link rapidly glosses over the stage where zinc oxide slurry is reprocessed to create new "fuel pelets". This is the stage where energy is inefficiently stored for another round of chemical reactions. Nice idea, but it doesn't address where the energy is supposed to come from in the first place. Just another stop-gap, and not a particularly effective one.

[shady lane]

4. How about frozen methane hydrate?

There is enough frozen methane hydrate on the ocean floor to power the world for a thousand years according to some scientitst.

The trick is getting it off the ocean bottom and into transporation fuel tanks. Or course they said that about oil in 1910 also.

[Massacure]

5. Oil will never rund out -- it will just become too expensive to use.

They give too much time with their dates.

[Old and In the Way]

6. Here's a good resource on zinc air electric fuel...

http://www.electric-fuel.com/evtech/index.shtml#battery