In September 2008, I had first talked about South Africa trying to market platinum for fuel cells worldwide. You see, South Africa mines about 80-percent of the world’s supply of platinum and would like to continue selling this expensive metal long into the future. But, it hasn’t been until recently that South Africa has actually [...]
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by guest blogger Stan Thompson Unless you have access to Dr. Who’s TARDIS or H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, you’ll have to depend on old texts to envision William Murdoch’s 1784 steam locomotive debut in Britain or Peter Cooper’s Tom Thumb, the first locomotive to run in America. But if you can afford an air [...]
Filed under: Advocates, Fuel Cells, Hydrail, News | 1 Comment »
By guest blogger Stan Thompson It’s way too easy to miss really important events in the history of hydrogen railroading if they don’t contain the magic searchable word “hydrail”. I missed a huge one last month: the demonstration of Europe’s (and perhaps the world’s) first hydrail train—or maybe the first hydrolley—now planned for regular passenger [...]
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By guest blogger Stan Thompson The University of Birmingham, UK, will host the next International Hydrail Conference there in the summer of 2012 in cooperation with Appalachian State University. Dates and details will be available in late September, 2011, on the hydrail web site of the Energy Center at “App State” in Boone, North Carolina: [...]
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by guest blogger Stan Thompson Perhaps the single greatest impediment to the advent of the hydrogen economy has been the media-led insistence that hydrogen fuel cell technology is an automotive design experiment that has not yet been made to work. The ubiquity issue—the controlling obstacle unique to the car application—is never examined. Mention hydrogen and [...]
Filed under: Fuel Cells, Hydrail, Hydrogen Cars, Hydrogen Economy | 2 Comments »
I had the pleasure of speaking with and interviewing Stan Thompson, Chairman of the Hydrogen Economy Advancement Team (HEAT) and the force behind the largest hydrail website on the Internet. Here is the interview: HydroKevin (HK): How did you come to the decision to pull the plug on this year’s hydrail conference? Stan Thompson (ST): [...]
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by guest columnist Stan Thompson You are so unlikely to believe this that I’ll let Google tell you; enter this search argument in your browser: copper + church + (steal OR stolen OR theft) As of this writing, that entry nets well over ten million Google responses and over five million from Yahoo. An EPA [...]
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by guest blogger Stan Thompson When asked “How’s your wife?” Henny Youngman famously quipped, “Compared to what?” Lately I’ve been conflicted by the flurry of interest in High Speed Rail and the several states whose governors have “just said ‘no thank you.’” My hunch is that they may have made the right call for the [...]
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by guest blogger Stan Thompson When the history of railway evolution in the first half of the twenty-first century is written, it may largely be a tale of two metals and their respective economics. Copper and hydrogen are both essential to the long-term economical delivery of electric power: copper to stationary applications and hydrogen to [...]
Filed under: Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy | 3 Comments »
by guest blogger Stan Thompson In my February 10, 2011, commendation of public broadcasting for its help in raising hydrail awareness, I failed to credit Ira Flatow’s excellent program, Talk of the Nation – Science Friday. On September 4, 2009, Ira ran a great segment on hydrail but never mentioned the technology by name. Web [...]
Filed under: Hydrail, Hydrogen Education | 2 Comments »
