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MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power
An anonymous reader writes "Bummer story on Science Blog for people looking to gas up on the H. Even with aggressive research, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle will not be better than the diesel hybrid -- a vehicle powered by a conventional engine supplemented by an electric motor -- in terms of total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, says a new MIT study. If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go."
Don't worry, by 2020 the main problems with C02 emission will be from third world countries with exploding populations anyway.
So diesel is better than Heroin for "gassing up"?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
A few years ago I read a lot about some guy who had his car running normally on plain old tap water, I even contacted him and got him to send me plans of how he did it (foolishly I lent these to friends). He disappeared like smoke. It all comes down to who you want to believe, be it the petroleum companies or the greens. Only an idiot would think that the gas companies are spinning that green is good and they are really helping them. In the UK, they are running deisel cars on old cooking oil in some areas, works fine! The gas companies will have you believe that only gas is good until they are good and ready to sell us something different.
Cause I'd really love to be as green as possible!
Here in California we are old hands at eco-political ranting that disregards science. So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions? No? We can't support it.
At least California recently backed off it's requirement for a certain percent of all new vehicles to be zero-emmissions (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located). The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).
A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.
So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics - I just hope they are wearing their asbestos underpants.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Diesel has been used in Europe quite extensively for some time now. Superior mpg, and clean emissions.
Of course, why not move up the schedule on particulate standards for big rigs, buses, garbage trucks etc. in the USA? World leaders my a$$...
There's hydrogen, hybrid, solar, electric, diesel and tons of other alternatives to gasoline. So which is actually the purest? Which is the best for mother Earth?
Hydrogen isn't being used to reduce CO2. It's used to reduce other traditional polutents. No one ever said it was more efficient.
Damn it! Don't you know that if we keep blindly supporting hydrogen fuel-cells without discussing where the energy comes from (probably coal power plants) then we can safely ignore more immediate and viable options such as improving fuel efficiency and encouraging hybrids?
;-)
Come on, kids. Think of the auto and oil industries and all of their lobbyists.
Geeze, some people.
A speech...
One part of this equation I haven't heard about yet is: where are we going to get the Hydrogen? If fuel cells are to become ubiquitous, how much energy are we going to dedicate to farming the Hydrogen? And what methods are we going to use? Is there a procedure that won't use up more energy than is yielded by the "crop" it produces.
If I'm not being clear, try this analogy.... Some are big fans of using ethanol from corn as a fuel alternative. What they don't realize is that (in the US at least) with gov. subsidies, it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn which kind of flushes any efficiency gained from using corn fuel down the drain. I hope hydrogen fuel cells don't take this route.
Granted, as more are produced, the process becomes more and more efficient, but if it will always takes an order of magnitude or more energy than it yields, we're still right back to the fossil fuels thing.
I guess all we can ask for is something that is slightly better/more efficient (or yields less pollutants) than what we have today, which makes me wonder why solar power (or a solar power hybrid) hasn't been thoroughly explored over the past fifty years.
moto411.com
There is such a thing as a car that runs on water. It's called a boat.
Has anyone tried snake-oil as an alternative fuel? It's what I always think of whenever someone mentions a new engine that runs on [Camel dung | Dead cockroaches | Bacon rind | Copies of the Reader's Digest | AOL CDs].
Back to the hydrogen from algae, here is the Google link using those search terms, several good hits, neat stuff
Politically, for Bush, there were two cool things about pushing for Hydrogen cars:
1) It has a neat hi-tech feel that even the greenest couldn't complain about;
2) It means he didn't have to do anything about SUVs or CAFE or such, 'cause, after all, he supports Hydrogen.
Why is it any surprise that Hydrogen is not a real viable solution?
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
Nobody ever mentions nuclear power in relation to hydrogen manufacture. It is undoubtedly in the back of some people's minds but they dare not mention it for fear of alienating many of the very people that support hydrogen.
Now I am not advocating the proliferation of today's (really yesterday's) messy fission plants but let's support research into modern nuclear technologies be they fusion or fission.
Nuclear CAN be clean. Give it a chance.
The only thing they're saying is that using a carbon based fuel to generate hydrogen isn't better than using the fuel directly. This isn't terribly surprising. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, since we don't have piles of it ready to burn. The only way it will be a clear win is if there is a viable way to generate it without using carbon fuels, e.g. solar, wind, nuclear, etc.
The headline is a bit misleading.
One, this result assumes that the production of H is a derivative of fossil fuels. that is currently the only economical means to do so, however! Fusion energy is not only the most enviromentally sound means of producing energy, but it has a higher energy density than just about any other energy production technology (barring matter/antimatter etc.) We all know that fusion has been somewhat pie in the sky, but it is a viable alternative and less than 20 years away. See http://www.iter.org
Two, Until we can light the fusion flame and keep a sustained burn, I would seroiusly love to have on of these. A hybrid bike that gets 180mpg and will do 0-60 in 6 seconds.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Just what's wrong with fission, anyway? According to this list, nothing touches uranium for energy density. Nothing even comes close.
Coal has an energy density of a little less than 30 GJ/tonne (10^9 Joules per 1000 kg). Natural gas is almost 40 GJ/tonne. Kerosene and gasoline are about 45 GJ/tonne. Metallic uranium has a listed energy density of 560E3 GJ/tonne, twelve-thousand times as dense as gasoline!
In other words, to get as much energy from coal as we would from one metric ton of uranium metal, we'd have to burn nineteen thousand three hundred ten (19,310) metric tons of coal.
You'd think that finding a place to put the equivalent of a cube 37.4 cm on a side (actually smaller; the fission products would be lighter and smaller than the parent uranium!) would be easier for the environmentalists to handle than burning 19,310 metric tons of coal!
There is one key ingredient missing from this plan. . .electricity
You need a strong electrical current running into one electrode through the water to the other.
When hydrogen and oxegen combine chemically they form a very strong and stable bond. It requires a lot of electrical energy to separate the water back into hydrogen and oxegen and this is the problem.
Diesel and Gas, however just require slight modification to exisiting use and application. They require little new infrastructure. They are going to happen naturally in the market now anyway.
Hybrid cars will be the temporary stop. Eventually leading to fuel cell models. Hybrids don't need any more boost than the current state of oil prices.
Look at Tommy's new hot rod, he got the big wet one!
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
There's a difference. Biodiesel is available today, and will run in all Diesel engines. It's clean and cheap: 1L of vegetable oil will make 900mL of Biodiesel. It's becoming even cheaper to manufacture as it comes into use, and with the rising price of oil, Biodiesel is approaching par with gasoline.
Take a look at the emissions here. Significantly cleaner than Diesel, which is cleaner than Gasoline anyway.
Biodiesel is definitely a much more viable and clean alternative to hydrogen fuel cells. It isn't quite as clean as H2 cells, but it's available now.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
"I prefer a vehicle that doesn't hurt Mother Earth. It's a go-cart powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction." -Ed Begley, Jr.
Why can't we build a hybrid hydrogen car? Sure it will take longer that just a hybrid deisel or just a hydrogen car, but it seems like it would combine the best parts of both worlds.
If you're interested in newer nuclear reactor technologies, examine this /. article, which contains information about reactors that use dense steam instead of water to carefully control nuclear reactions and allow us to fission U-238 instead of just the more rarely occuring U-235, in essence using what is currently nuclear waste as an additonal fuel.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/0 3/2057212&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=134
What gets me, is this huge investment in fuel cells has had the writing on the wall for a very long time as not the most efficient way to go.
The most efficient is battery power. For some bizarre reason we've been trying to use technology that's 100's of years old (lead acid) and mostly ignoring current technology.
We already have batteries that have enough KWH/Kg (power per weight) to drive a car over 300KM's, it charges in 15 minutes and last fot 100,000Kms. That's getting close to petrol, and the current technology is in a massive growth curve. (Li polymer technology used for lap tops is a prime example)
The only thing holding it back is cost... and when you mass produce millions of battery powered cars, that cost will substantially reduce. (why not put fuel cell R&D costs into battery)
It's then far more efficient to generate the electricity centrally with hydro, nuke, wind, wave, solar etc.....
Why hasn't this taken off then? Is it something to do with an oil _distribution_ economy?
So everyone is going to stick a windmill in their backyard? Sounds kind of ugly to me. I doubt your neighbors would be too pleased about a big eyesore they have to look at all the bloody time. Also, how much does the windmill cost vs. how much power does it produce? Right now we've gotten to the point where windpower is an economically viable electricity source in certain parts of the country if the producers get big tax breaks for each kw produced. I'd hardly think the same would be true for small, individual producers of hydrogen.
AccountKiller
Why was this story linked to Science Blog and not the actual MIT press release? Science Blog adds absolutely no content whatsoever to this story, they simply cut and pasted the first two paragraphs as a summary and then included the rest of the press release. If you want to mention that you saw this at Science Blog that would be one thing but saying that "there's a story on SB about X" is really pushing it.
Next up on the gripe list, slashdot story submissions that consist of a cut and paste of the first few sentences of the linked content. If you can't write a concise summary of the article in your own words, then you probably didn't read it, you're lazy, or you lack the language skills of a ninth-grader.
There's a wealthy of knowledge and production capability for diesel systems. By developing a hybrid solution, you optimize the diesel engine to operate at a specific speed/output range and use the efficiency of electric motors to operate over a wide range of speeds.
Diesel hybrids have already been around for a long time powering freight trains. It's about time that car companies start using that approach!
Plus, there's fueling infrastructure. That makes it much more pallatable for potential customers.
If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.
Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.
What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.
The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.
These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.
Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.
Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What??!! The car manufacturers LIED to us??! I can't believe it! You mean that technology we've had for years can reduce emissions just as much as undeveloped potential technology 5 to 10 years from now! Scandalous!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Biodiesel is great and promising in many ways, but in no way is it cheaper than petro diesel -- at least for large scale commercial production. It's true that a farmer or other industrious user can make biodiesel for his own use for about a third to half the cost of petrodiesel, but this assumes he's getting used fry oil or something for free. Also, he's doing it in steel drums in his backyard, not building a plant that's efficient and safe for large scale production. Companies who have done this must charge about double the retail price of petro diesel in order to break even, and that's wholesale -- plus, that's still using free, used fry oil as a base stock. If veggie oil had to be produced for biodiesel, the cost would go up considerably. The best estimates are that commerical biodiesel would always cost at least 2-3 times as much as petro diesel. There's no getting around the fact that it's cheaper to pull oil out of the ground and use normal petro refining techniques than it is to grow crops and refine them into biodiesel.
Plus, what would happen if so much farmland were devoted to growing crops for fuel? What are the environmental ramifications of that?
If you look up this article,
Moriarty,P. et Honnery, D., "Alternative transport fuels: the long-term future",
Int. J. of Vehicle Design, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2003
you will see a wonderful look at the alternative fuel sources. Bio-fuels take energy AND considerable plant resources to make; resources that are not adequate to meet any serious demand. Fact is, fossil fuels are it for now and the very long term. Long term? Yep: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Study thermodyamics for a semester. It is alternately depressing and extremely enlightening.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Of course, you submerge your electrolyzers as deep as you can in order to take advantage of the efficiency increases with pressure.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I have since refined my analysis; it appears quite practical to have a half-electric (not merely hybrid) vehicle which can run a substantial distance on batteries alone (perhaps 20 miles) and then start up a sustainer engine for the rest. This offers the prospect of cars which have the option of charging from the wall, but don't have to, and also have the option of burning fuel for short trips, but don't have to do that either; you could get around locally even with a total fuel cutoff (as long as there was electricity) and of course you could still get around in a blackout. The real irony is that CARB is still cluelessly glued to the absolutist position, and when they could not achieve it they had no fallback; because their Holy Grail was unattainable, they wound up attaining much less than they could easily have done. If they really want to promote greenhouse-gas reduction they should just tax gasoline up to $5/gallon and watch everyone start buying hybrids.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist