Did we have an alternative to fossil fuels in the the 20th century?

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2 points·alexzeitler··3 comments

Wiki is pretty scant on how his device generated electricity. The photoelectric effect was known about before the invention of the solar cell per se, but converting the experimental effect into a mechanism to charge a battery demands a little 'more'

This article [*] implies he was making a thermal-electric effect device, and may have hit on efficiency from solar effects as well by accidentally making a junction device.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...

Yeah they had a prototype of a hydrogen car that gave out water vapor as exhaust. Some use fuel cells: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a41103863/hydrogen-car...

You can fill your tank with water and the hydrogen engine will separate hydrogen from oxygen and burn the hydrogen.

Not just a prototype - that article says several models were on the market.

You don't fill your tank with water. You fill it with high-pressure hydrogen produced elsewhere.

What you describe is thermodynamically impossible. It takes energy to separate hydrogen from oxygen - more than you get from burning the hydrogen generates water.

The article you link to says "Most hydrogen today is derived from fossil fuels like natural gas", so hydrogen cars weren't really a 20th-century alternative to fossil fuels.

Yes, hydrogen can be made from non-fossil sources. So can diesel fuel.

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