...cheap as chips, water molecule cracking technology? The only thing right about Alan B's sentence is the question mark. Hydrogen can certainly be produced, by a variety of technologies, but the laws of thermodynamics guarantee that the product will offer less energy than used in its making. Hydrogen may have some useful properties as a special fuel. It is certainly not a solution to an energy shortage.

Tombee, it goes without saying that hydrogen on its own is not the solution to an energy shortage. But when combined with an overbuild of solar panels and wind turbines (or maybe even nuclear power) it could well be the solution.

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Alan B, it is quite easy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, either electrically or thermally. But the process you've described seems very dubious - it seems implausible that the addition of a little CO2 would prevent an explosive mix.

What is this three beam laser cooling technology to which you refer? And how much gas is it able to cool? Laser cooling is a well established method of achieving ultra cool temperatures, but not a practical refrigeration method at high temperatures.

I don't think hydrogen was known about in ancient times. If they did manage to produce it, it would've been by reacting iron with acid.

And by "cubic litre" I guess you could've meant a nine dimensional quality or a litre constrained into the shape of a cube, but due to hydrogen's relatively low calorific value and very low density, I'm guessing you really mean a cubic metre, aka a kilolitre.

Yes the energy used can be considerable for the hydrogen produced, but if that energy comes free from the sun and from a large scale solar thermal project large enough to completely power a small city, then we can create copious, very low cost, endlessly sustainable fuel, and still recover all the build costs inside the (50 year) life of the project!

Catalytically produced hydrogen, by the way, implausible or not, works quite well in conventional combustion engines, and seriously better in fuel cells.

I'm wondering if using magnetic bottling to produce liquid plasma, might not be adapted in some catalytically assisted process, to combine some carbon as a new compound or liquid fuel?

I'm not sure the energy input, wouldn't be less than that needed to recover and refine fuel?

Biogas (methane) can be easily and endlessly produced from currently problematic biological waste.

Every family produces enough to power their domiciles, along with endless free hot water.

However, if the slightly modified diesel engine is replaced with the Aussie invented ceramic fuel cell, which I'm assured, works nearly as well with (scrubbed) methane, as it does on hydrogen the energy coefficient (@80%) is literally doubled.

This vastly superior, smell free, closed cycle process, still produces endless free hot water! Moreover, the addition of food scraps or waste, markedly increases the available surplus!

Passing pure methane through an appropriate catalyst, knocks off a few hydrogen molecules, to then produce petrol replacing liquid methanol. It's a patented process Aidan, However implausible it seems to you? Further, there's no conventional combustion engine that can't be tuned or slightly modified to run quite happily on CNG! (methane)

Aidan, You come across, if not a St Petersburg Troll, like a stay at home juvenile or very immature adult, who has as they say, failed to launch?

Should that be the case, some free advice.

Grow up, move out, get a job, pay bills, now while you still know everything?
Alan B.

It is true that if you already have the solar system then you can
produce hydrogen at "zero" cost.
However as usual the "IF" is the problem.
A solar installation has a high energy input and as Aidan said every
energy conversion costs energy.

Sorry Alan B there is no free lunch.
It is this inbuilt energy cost that has torn down the dreams of a lot
of greenies who think solar is all wonderful and just put up enough
panels and the world will be lovely with the birds twittering in the trees.
Your scheme has so many energy conversions that not much will appear at the wheels.

Bazz,

It's the cost of labour input, not energy input, that's likely to be the dealbreaker.

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Alan B.,

If I thought I knew everything, I wouldn't've asked you abut the 3 beam laser cooling process.

You yourself seem to me to be very immature, but I'm intrigued by the St Petersburg Troll reference. Whose agenda do you think I'm pushing?

There is nothing remotely implausible about hydrogen produced catalytically from methane or other hydrocarbons. What is implausible is producing hydrogen catalytically from steam but not getting an explosive mixture.

Not all combustion engines can be modified to run on methane, though most can.

You also overestimate how much methane can be produced from biological waste.

BTW, plasma is one state of matter. Liquid is another state of matter. Liquid plasma is an oxymoron... unless it refers to the biological (not the physical) meaning of "plasma", but you don't need magnetic bottling for that!