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US Army Pursues Hydrogen Fuel Concepts
securitas writes "According to GlobeTechnology/AP, the US Army is excited about the potential of hydrogen-powered tanks. The interest is the result of a technology demonstration that took place at Auburn University in December. Scientists have invented a process that removes the carbon and sulfur from hydrocarbon fuels like oil and gasoline. Hydrogen-powered vehicles could go three times farther than diesel-powered counterparts. DoD officials say 'it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.' The new process could let them take advantage of the existing oil industry infrastructure. Auburn University scientists 'realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel' and 'took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.' The Auburn team is now pursuing military funding."
Does it seem kind of backwards to be using Oil in the fuel cell process?
depending on how much this costs, it seems like a waste of time extracting the hydrogen from 'oil', when there is a *chance* it could get up to 3 times more energy.
Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
DoD officials say 'it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.'
It really costs that much? Seems a hell of a lot to me. How many gallons does an oil tanker hold? Let's me guess at 20,000. If so, then to drive an oil tanker from Kuwait to Badhdad is costing $800,000!!
I guess these must be the prices that Haliburton etc. are charging. The war in Iraq looks like a damn efficient means to move money from the American taxer into the hands of friends of those in power in the USA. Go Bush!
Doesn't it seem kind of backwards to use an explosive gas to power vehicles that are designed to drive into a gunfight?
There's a reason tanks run on diesel and not gasoline...
Joke apart, isn't hydrogen a major safety concern for standard road vehicles? I mean, they even have to store it as hydrates to make it safe, at the cost of limited trunk space and complicated heating equipment to get the gas out.
If it sounds dangerous for an average car, it's probably even more so for tanks, that may be hit by any kind of nasty projectile while in battle. And if the tank stores the stuff as hydrates, or has a lot of shielding to protect the compressed gas area, that's as much less ordnance it can carry.
Diesel fuel on the other hand is quite difficult to ignite, let alone explode. For example, pour a bit of diesel fuel in a small glass and try to light it up with a match : it won't ignite, no matter how hard you try. Diesel therefore would actually be a rather suitable combat-situation fuel.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A good alternative to burning Oil for the Hydrogen would be to use Nuclear Energy to split Hydrogren from water.
I could see the Navy building Nuclear Powered "Hydrogen Tankers", ships that could both store and provide Hydrogen Fuel. These ships could be moved to an operational zone and parked to produce all the Hydrogen fuel needed for an expeditionary force.
...if we can power vehicles using hydrogen, then what would be the point of invading all those oil-rich countries, anyway?
What an inane comment:
The Palestinians have nothing to do with fuel.
If invading Iraq were simply about attaining oil, we would have just dropped the sanctions. It would have been $200 billion cheaper and been faster to bring a lot more oil onto the world market (to lower oil prices). Which is not to say that Iraq isn't partially about protecting oil supplies, but it's not as direct as you seem to think.
Finally, it's not just "the Yanks" who have to deal with the problem that the world economy depends on fuel. If there were a major oil crisis - let's say the Saudi fuel depots get hit by a terrorist attacks, which makes oil prices rise by 80% (totally possible) - everyone is fucked. China is a major oil importer now whose economy becomes more dependent on oil every day. Japan is hugely dependent on foreign oil. Europe is dependent. America is dependent. You think the world economy will do well after America, Europe, China, and Japan (jointly responsible for, what, 80% of world GDP?) go into recession? You think you're still going to have a job after that?
Shit, maybe you should thank the Yanks for safeguarding the foundation of the world economy, rather than attacking it.
Plus the losses you incur when the guerillas succeed. I reckon a lot of the cost would be in air cover for the fuel convoys. Flying planes and helicopters not only costs large amounts of fuel, it also costs a lot in aircraft maintenance. That's before you consider the loss of any multi-million dollar aircraft.
I'm sure Haliburton (or whoever) is making money on this (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it). I don't know what the convoy protection cost is but I'd be careful about concluding that most of the $40 is going to their bank account.
Also, let's not forget that fewer trucks means fewer targets for the guerillas and therefore hopefully less casualties, so maybe this fuel cell idea isn't so bad.
Also, the sentence seems to imply that hydrocarbons contain carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide within them. They don't, of course. The CO2 and CO are simply by-products of the hydrogen removal process: the carbon comes from the fuel, the oxygen from an outside source (most likely air, in which case combustion is directly involved again.)
The byproducts from this process are pretty much the same ones that come from an ordinary engine.
And then the quote you noticed, completely ignores the fact that hydrocarbons are currently the primary source of hydrogen in fuel cells. It's just badly written.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
If a round penetrates the diesel fuel tank of a current vehicle, the crew is pretty screwed anyway. If they could make the hydrogen tank smaller than the diesel fuel tank, thus less likely to be hit, it would be an improvement.
-B
Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.
Except that you can use renewable power to separate the hydrogen from water. First you distill the water to purify it, then you electrolyse it to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. It's really not a complicated process. All you need is electricity, which is what the majority of "clean" and renewable energy sources deliver.
The whole point of "the hydrogen economy" is abandoning oil and its costly and politically risky infrastructure (generate fuel where you need it, instead of shipping it in from dictatorships). Reusing the oil infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars is pointless. You're wasting even more energy than you would be if you just burnt the oil directly.
Ofcourse, it's probably cost efficient for the specific case the military has in iraq, but for general use it's not a good strategy.
> Devices like this, known generally as "reformers", have beeen in use for a decade at least.
My thoughts exactly. What's news about this, other than that the military are all of a sudden interested in fuel economy? A clean and compact/cheap reformer has been the holy grail of fuel cells for quite a while, I don't see anything Auburn has done to change that. Perhaps they just had the brilliant insight that there's hydrogen in them thar fossil fuels?
The two Iraq wars have been for the oil.
All the critics said the money was better
spent developing alternate energy sources.
Imagine what the billions wasted on the war
could have done for solar, wind, fuel cell tech.
Now the military is moving away from oil
because it costs too much.
Once this bleeds over into civilian use it will make a great transitional step. Hydrogen is too difficult to transport in bulk, and we can't afford to just up and replace the existing fuel transport infrastructure. If the catalytic converter can be made small enough it can be installed at individual gas stations allowing the Hydrogen to be produced on demand or in small batches that are stored locally. Using a calytic conversion process also allows us to capture the carbon dioxide, sulfur and other by-products at a control point for further processing, rather than just dumping them into the atmosphere as we currently do.
It could be, especially for the internal needs of the carriers. They use large amounts of fuel for their air wings. Using Hydrogen generated by their Nuclear Reactor can lessen / eliminate this requirement, lowering the need for extra fuel tankers.
Against it operational needs would come to play. The Navy tends to keep Carrier battle groups out to sea, in order to keep them away from close-in threats. A "Hydrogen Tanker" would need to be brought close-in and moored for the duration of operations.