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BMW Shows Off World's Fastest Hydrogen Car
loid_void writes "According to Reuters and others BMW unveiled the world's fastest hydrogen-powered car at the Paris auto show on Wednesday, dubbed the H2R, capable of exceeding 300 kilometers (185 miles) per hour. The are also working with Shell on hydrogen dispensing stations.
'"Our drive toward the future is called hydrogen," BMW management board member Burkhard Goeschel said before the tarp slowly slipped off the teardrop-shaped body of the sleek race car.' All I want to know, does it come with an iPod hookup?"
When you run head-on into something at 185 will the hydrogen fireball be a different color than a gasolene one?
Hydrogen is obtained either from fossil fuels such as natural gas or by applying electrical power to water molecules. Ecologically, the problem of finding a regenerating source of primary energy remains.
;)
let's see now if you can develop the world's cheapest car
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Hydrogen pretty dangerous stuff? I mean, I know it's quite explosive....(From what I recall from freshman chem :) ) Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?
Which brings my question - how do you stablize hydrogen so it's not so explosive?.....A car accident could spell disaster if not properly contained...Or am I wrong?
-thewldisntenufff
My MythTV HowTo
German engineering and hydrogen.
This is an incredible first step towards becoming oil-free.
I wouldn't compare a giant bag full of hydrogen to a modern car engineered by a company well known for its safety engineering. Here's an older article that discusses their safety (scroll a bit) on CNN
I'm going outside right now to change the VTEC sticker on my Civic to read "HTEC".
Let's see how long it takes before some Slashdotter uses this opportunity to "accidentally" inform us that he drives a BMW.
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...didn't get screwed-over because of the hydrogen, it got screwed-over because the paint used on it was highly flammable. Hydrogen is actually pretty safe, especially compared to petrol. Though hydrogen can have a stronger concussive blast when ignited, it goes 'foom' and that's it, the danger is gone. Petrol in liquid form doesn't burn, its fumes do, so it takes quite a lot time for a petrol fire to go out.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
What I find moderately interesting about the hydrogen fuel idea is that, despite the fact that it emits only steam as a byproduct, it still takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen. As a result, it pretty much will cause pollution regardless.
Don't get me wrong, this still reduces our dependence on oil, and will be a huge help to city pollution, but I think we need to quickly figure out some way to make hydrogen cheaply and cleanly. Maybe nuclear powered hydrogen production plants? Just thinking...
Why couldn't we use Wind-power to extract Hydrogen from water? That seems like an infinite supply of hydrogen right there...
I was too busy driving my BMW.
Isn't building a thirsty hotrod that runs on hidrogen pointless. We still burn fosil fuels in order to produce electricity that will in turn produce hidrogen. And to that we add the problems of storagre and safty.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
They work on using Hydrogen Combustion and not a fuel cell, then they use an advanced fuel cell for the electronics. Amusing.
A hydrogen car that uses an ICE misses the whole point. It doesn't improve efficiency much, given that it is still limited by the thermal efficiency of a heat engine. Moreover, although burning hydrogen doesn't produce carbon emmisions, producing hydrogen does. Finally, the higher combustion temperature increases the formation of NOx pollutants.
The reason for all the effort to create a new hydrogen fueling infrastructure is to take advantage of fuel cells/electric motors. A car with a hydrogen burning ICE is just an ordinary car that you can't refill at a gas station.
Saw this on Yahoo some days ago. Cool tech of course, the acceleration seemed a bit on the lowside as I recall but the top end was supercar perf. Could make a Pinto look like a pop-rock though.
/. article.
Yahoo news --->[2 day holding pipe] --->
All I want to know, does it come with an iPod hookup
At that price, it better come with a freaking iPod.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
From the BMW web site:
"...the specially insulated 140-liter tank for the liquid hydrogen provides a range of 400 kilometers....By cooling hydrogen to -253 degrees Celsius, hydrogen is shrunk to a thousandth of its original volume. 70 layers of aluminum and fiberglass sheets between the exterior and interior vehicle walls insure that the liquid hydrogen remains at extremely low temperatures."
What I don't understand is how they manage to keep it at such a low temperature. If the tank warmed up to the normal temperature of the surrounding environment, the pressure inside the tank would be 1000 times greater than sea level. Wouldn't that pose a danger of explosion?
Because it is currently more efficient (power out/power in) to use the power generated from wind for other purposes, rather than use it to split hydrogen from something, pressurize it, and convert it back into mechanical energy via combustion. Its more efficient to use it to recharge a battery, and use the battery to power the car than it is to convert to hydrogen, pressurize, etc.
Any word on the range of this vehicle?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
If you aren't green, you don't care what it runs on.
Couln't it be even more economical if it wasn' so "performance" oriented?
Ah, what do I know? I am a pay-in-cash ubiquitous middle-of-the-road [performance/quality/price, but above average reliabliity/resale value] Camry buyer.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
There has been GREAT debate about the cause of the Hindenburg disaster. Many people point not to the hydrogen but the makeup of the exterior (skin fabric)...
Main Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
From Wikipedia:
Proponents (http://www.dwv-info.de/pm/hindbg/hbe.htm) of the "flammable fabric" theory point out that the coatings on the fabric contained both iron oxide and aluminium impregnated cellulose acetate butyrate. Cellulose acetate butyrate is well known to be flammable and iron oxide is well known to react with aluminium powder. In fact, iron oxide and aluminium are sometimes used as components of solid rocket fuel or thermite. (However, the oft-cited claim that the ship was "coated in rocket fuel" is a significant overstatement.) While the coating compenents were potentially reactive, they were separated by a layer of material that should have inhibited the reaction from starting.
Is it just me or does this picture look like the batmobile from movies.
When H2 leaks in the open, it tends to rapidly disipate beyond explosive concentrations in the air (it rises and the wind spreads it out). Gasoline on the other hand sticks around on stuff and burns for a long time.
wag more
bark less
...the power density of current fuel cells wouldn't allow the track performance achieved.
Given ther is hydrogen on-board allows the use of a fuel cell for the electronics because it's a technology showcase - not a practical car.
Forget one of the major problems with cars? Oil is expensive and will run out one day, hydrogen won't. Even if making hydrogen creates harmful emmisions its still better than relying on a car that produces harmful emissions AND relies on a substance that will run out eventually. At least with hydrogen ICEs we won't be running out of fuel.
Here's something that's been bothering me for some time.
We keep hearing about all these ultra high-tech hydrogen cars of the future. And, I've heard persistent rumors of, for example, some guy in Tucson who's converted a regular old (and I do mean old) pickup truck to run off hydrogen gas.
So...why can't I buy a fuel tank and carburetor alternative for my '68 VW Camper? It would seem to be a natural. Keep the exact same car, the exact same engine, and just deliver aerated hydrogen to the intake manifold rather than aerated gasoline.
I've come across a few references, but only of people wanting to sell tickets to expensive seminars where they'll reveal the secrets of the technology. What secrets? It can't be worse than the technology all those buses running off of propane or natural gas are using, can it?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I think I would be an early adopter for this if:
I don't think I'd even need shell to be on board if I could make the stuff at home.
Now I wonder what the engine sounds like! It probably growls at wide open throttle in third gear : )
Liberty.
For all our talk about how hydrogen is the future of cars, I've not yet seen one American car--not even a concept car--running on hydrogen. The Germans really build spectacular cars.
The Japanese, too; the New Ford Escape Hybrid runs on Toyota's first-generation hybrid motor.
In the unlikely event that the car's structure was intruded enough to damage the tank, the leaking hydrogen would escape upwards and dissipate extremely rapidly. This makes it rather difficult to be ignited by, say, sparking from electrics or hot components in the engine compartment. There is no environmental impact and no cleanup- the hydrogen harmlessly dissipates up into the environment.
In a car accident with gasoline, the gasoline pools on the ground and vapors are heavier than air. That makes them very easy to ignite. Gasoline(especially with MTBE) is cancerous and must be cleaned up, and it takes a while to do so because it's so easily ignited.
Hydrogen also requires a much higher fuel/air ratio; ie there has to be a higher concentration.
The main safety problem with hydrogen is that it is molecularly so small that hoses and seals are very hard to make for it. A balloon full of hydrogen would deflate even faster than one filled with Helium...
The REAL problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is (repeat after me, kids!)...
HYDROGEN IS A NET LOSS FUEL. IT TAKES MUCH MORE ENERGY TO PRODUCE THAN YOU GET BURNING IT.
Oh, and the fact that the main method of production cited by our really smart President is- surprise- natural gas! Well, guess what folks- you gotta use chemicals to get the H2 out of the complex hydrocarbon of LNG, and you gotta put those leftover Carbon (and other elements) into something. Expect to see hydrogen plants which dump lots of waste in the form of toxic catalysts and leftover byproducts. Or just toss it up a smokestack and make it the problem of whoever is 5,000 miles away.
Please help metamoderate.
Let's not be cynical. This BMW vehicle is a significant accomplishment. It shows that a high-performance vehicle running solely on hydrogen can be built.
Now, let's just entice Honda to apply Japanese manufacturing technologies to reduce the cost of the vehicle by a factor of 1000. Please remember that the Americans invented the videotape recorder (VR), and it started out at more than $10,000 per unit. Then, Japanese companies took it and shrank the price to $50, the current price.
We should applaud this German accomplishment in automotive engineering. The BMW vehicle is certainly more amazing than the ridiculous solar-powered vehicle, which will "never" be practical. Yet, solar-powered vehicles seem to entice more interest than hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Go Deutschland!
I'm not so sure.
The best way to wean people onto such renewables is to do it in a way that seamlessly replaces what they are used to. Look, electric cars have been in use for 110+years, in fact at one time an electric car set the landspeed record (Jenatzy's 'Le Jamais Contente') - so where are the electric cars? Right, limited range, severe performance:range tradeoffs etc. This doesn;t change just by using the magic word ' fuel cell'. They are heavy, have complex control regimen and are too fragile for mainstrean use.
The infernal combustion engine is old-tech, well known and *thoroughly* well understood. The best performance-per-pound-carried is obtained by running an ICE on hydrogen. It's a natural development, allows dual-fuel use for the interim (whilst that hydrogen infrastructure is built as the price of oil climbs), and buys time for the fuel cells to develop - I can foresee those being used for trolling about town, but that's about it for a few years yet.
BTW dual-fuel hydrogen/gasoline is something BMW have been working on for at least 18 yeasr to my knowledge. Apparently it's a seamless transition and can be done on the fly. The driver doesn't notice, except the ICE tends to run quieter on hydrogen...
Mazda's rotary engine is well suited to the combustion of hydrogen, not least because it completely separates the intake, combustion and exhaust stages - with a piston engine there is a lot of potential for catastophic backfire, and high performance without any valve overlap (which would somewhat prevent this) is difficult to acheive.
i c. php&imagenum=1&carnum=1792
The renesis (side-ported intake and exhaust - 'normal' rotaries have peripheral exhaust and often intake ports and intake/exhaust port overlap is employed to maximise performance at high revs, resulting in the characteristic 'brap-brap-brap' pulsing idle of a race or drag rotary engine and incredibly poor fuel economy at low revs) rotary engine doesnt suffer from this problem, allowing high-revs, aggressive induction and exhaust port profiles, along withthe light weight and excellent power-weight ratio rotaries inherently possess.
The current hybrid engine in the RX-8 only produces about 120hp when operating on hydrogen which isn't exactly stunning, but bear in mind that the original RX-7 produced less than this, while the last model to roll off the production line produced in excess of 280.
400+ HP is relatively easily acheiveable with proper porting, fueling and turbocharging of the 1.3 litre 13B engine on petrol, and with further development (or even tuning for hydrogen-only operation) it is not too far fetched to imagine the hydrogen-powered rotary performing on par or better than conventional fuels.
More info can be found:
http://rotarynews.com/?q=node/view/216
and a hydrogen--powered RX-8 looks like:
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/frame.php?file=p
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Can you show me one site that says anyone survived the Hindenburg? IMO that's just a whole load of too much fire + big fall to be survivable.
Windows is only $500 if your time is worthless.
... which I purchase in a convenient hydrogen storage container called "gasoline".
I think the major problem preventing hydrogen ( with fuel cells) powered cars, or electric cars for that matter is storage. A battery can't store much juice, and takes ages to recharge.
Tanks of hydrogen can't store much either, and It seems like big tanks of hydrogen under pressure would be pretty dangerous.
If people researched more economical ways to generate electricity and still be mobile, I think that would solve a lot of our problems.
I think I heard of a concept somewhere ( by Chrysler I think ) of a car that used a mechanical way of storing energy by using flywheels that are in a vaccum to store the energy in its kinetic form. if I recall correctly, each of these little modules would act as a generator to generate electricity from the kinetic energy and also as a motor to rev up the flywheel inside again. It looked like an interesting idea, although not without it's share of problems.
Hydrogen comes from OIL.
That's right - you heard it here. The vast majority of the worlds hydrogen is "generated" through catalytic cracking from oil - simply because it is the cheapest and easiest way to get hydrogen (ie, HYDROcarbons, anyone?). Hydrogen-powered vehicles, whether they use fuel cells or ICEs, or something else - won't do jack to lessen the world's dependence on oil. If anything, such vehicles will either keep the status quo moving along, or increase our consumption (because at least for a while, you will have to support gasoline and hydrogen fuel vehicles).
Throw peak oil (yes, peak oil is REAL - just about every oil and energy company on the planet knows about it and acknowledges it as a fact) into the mix, and you have the makings of BIG PROFIT for those who get into it at the right point.
Please note that I am not against the use of petroleum or its products - just that I think there are better solutions available for our energy needs (there isn't ONE alternative energy solution - but there are MANY alternative energy solutions which we could be using to make a real solution in total). If we just built our houses properly (monolithic dome earthships?) and got off this kick of "more power, more speed, damn the environment" for our vehicles, we could probably save a bunch and use the alternative solutions we already have. There are many other better things those fossil sources could go to (medicine, chemicals, plastics, etc).
But, I doubt it will ever happen - and the public is just going to take it up the rear again, because the public is so damn uneducated and ignorant of the truth...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Wait a minute...
Or are we talking marketing exercise here?
Internal combustion engines using conventional materials can only be around 30% efficient on a good day, that drops to around 10% after going through the gearbox, including air resistance, traffic jams etc.
The whole idea of fuel cell vehicles is to increase the efficiency by making use of natural efficiencies of electrical drive.. This particular Internal Combustion Engine vehicle is only 30% efficient, *AND* the energy required to make the hydrogen has to come from somewhere, a 55% efficient combined cycle turbine power plant drops the efficiency of this car to 17% before it leaves the engine which'll give you a vehicle which is approx 5% efficient rather than a 10% efficient one.
It's a marketing exercise.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
There is a test project in which they use windmills to generate H2, and then use that to run public transport (full cell type, iirc). It's being done due the problem of moving the electricity from genaration place to usage place. The project is called Hydrobus.
Marketing.
This particular hydrogen vehicle is less efficient than a conventional petrol or Diesel vehicle so we're not exactly taking acheivements here.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Car companies keep showing us all theese incredible looking prototypes, but why won't they sell us a car that looks the same? By the time a new car makes it to the salons it looks almost exactly like all the other damn cars you can choose from, and attaching a baboon's but to the rear end is considered to be a bold new design direction. yech.
Oil is expensive and will run out one day, hydrogen won't
Sure it will. It already has. The Earth's gravity isn't strong enough to retain hydrogen in the atmosphere.
Hydrogen simply does not exist in a free state. So to get hydrogen, you need to manufacture it.
This is done commercially via the reformation of hydrocarbons like natural gas. And, like you suggest, they'll run out.
You can also manufacture hydrogen through the electrolysis of water. This takes electricity. You get your electricity from burning fossil fuels, which like you suggest, will run out.
Unless you have a clean source of electricity to begin with, hydrogen-fueled cars aren't going to clean anything up, and they still rely on "a substance that will run out eventually."
It's the first generation of hdyrogen engines...cut them some slack. You're absolutely right, but think about the kind of mileage gasoline engines got 40-50 years ago. If 10 years down the road they don't have 50% efficient hydrogen engines, then we have a problem.
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When using hydrogen. Fantastic.
Even battery electric vehicles are way better than that on current technology.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Hydrogen can be produced easily enough from water using solar energy. To really fix the energy economy, we need more effiecient solar cells. The sun bombards us with more energy every day than we use in a year. The vast majority of it is simply wasted.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Yes, but imagine a 'space elevator' + huge hydrogen 'tankers'. Imagine there is a 'cloud' of hydrogen gas fairly close to earth.
You could just take the huge hydrogen tankers up to space, build them there, set them off, come back later with 5million 'barrels' of hydrogen, refine it using very large solar panels and compact it, send it back down to earth using the space elevator.
All of which would be very feasible (apart from the cloud of hydrogen) within a few decades - certainly longer that the amount of coal or fissionable uranium left on earth.
I used to be very 'peak oil aware' but then I realized the running out of oil is going to give huge benefits for all of humankind.
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One can use nuclear power to generate that hydrogen, which would be not 10% more or less, but orders of magnitude more efficient.
Batteries are not infinitely rechargable. What about the externalities caused by the waste of batteries? What you call efficient thinking, I call wasteful.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Might we see your sources for this conclusion?
I hope the cherubim-like mods aren't calling your statement on efficiency "Insightful" based on your opinion alone.
Please cite your reference material for those of use who do try to research matters of this sort, as opposed to those who would claim knowledge yet put a capital letter on Diesel yet not petrol.
The simple facts are that hydrogen is not a source of energy, but rather an energy carrier, like electricity. And hydrogen is a rather poor energy carrier at that; it's far less efficient than the electric power grid, which already exists and goes almost everywhere. Hydrogen isn't even a good energy storage medium in a car, due to its extremely low density.
The fact is that there's nothing a hydrogen fuel-cell car can do that isn't already done better, more efficiently and more cheaply by a battery EV. Just when new battery technologies like nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion were starting to prove their worth in EVs, CARB pulls the rug out from under them.
Call me cynical, but that seems to fit the facts.
Hydrogen Ignited Linear Lunch
So fast...it's HELL
Life is not for the lazy.
Saguaro cactus
Scam Warning: Do not try to buy auto parts from:
The Parts Bin.com,
Speedy Auto Parts.com,
overnightautoparts.com,
autopartswebsolutions.com
or any of their affiliates or ANY web page you do not know.
Against my mechanic's advice I ordered a brake master cylinder that sells for $216 from thepartsbin.com for $144. The part I got looks like it was made in HS shop class, no exaggeration. This is not a mistake, the worthless junk they shipped me is simply not found any near any legitimate auto parts operation and would not fit any car. They do not risk any money by shipping junk. Here is how they make their money: when I return it not only do I pay return shipping but they want to charge $29 for restocking, about 10 times what the part could possibly have cost them. They don't make money selling parts, they make money "restocking". They say it takes up to 4 weeks to receive credit. I'm not holding my breath, I've talked to a couple of people and I pretty sure I've been Saguaro cactus scammed. VISA has told me "it's between you and the merchant".
Order parts from a store where YOU can CHECK the part otherwise you WILL be ripped-off.
And when someone like your MECHANIC tells you not to do something LISTEN!
Its actually an old monomer that hydrogen was what caused the Hindenburg disaster. In fact three main factors caused the disaster none of them being Hydrogen.The first was the outer surface of the Hindenburg was painted with aluminum powder, for those not in the know aluminum is used as an accelerate in rockets. The second factor was static electricity built up on the outer covers mixed with the third factor water making the ropes between the outer sections conductive. So what happened was when the tether was earthed as the Hindenburg came in for the landing there was a massive static discharge this made the aluminum coating combustable and before you know it you have this horrible chain reaction. Also petrol is far from safe just add oxygen and keep it contained inside a hot container and you have a bomb just waiting to go off. Ive heard of cases were peoples families have gone up in flames with the kids in the car and the parent outside so petrol is far from safe.
Anyway, the point is that you can't include air resistance in the efficiency measurement. Remember, work = force times distance. If you reduce air resistance, you reduce the force and therefore the work done by the car. Hopefully the fuel consumption lowers proportionally, leaving you with the same efficiency you started with.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
BMW has a problem, WinCE powered I-Drive that is so bug ridden that it is almost unusable.
....... never mind
............
Well they have 2 problems, the 2nd is Chris Bangle who seems to be almost single handedly destroying one of the great auto marks.
I could rant
I see a new book comming:
Unattractive at any speed
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
A man encounters a small boy on the street. He is standing and looking intently at a hat sitting on the sidewalk.
Tha man asks the boy what he is doing. "Sir, I have captured the world's fastest squirrel and I have him under this hat."
"And just how fast is this squirrel you have captured?" asks the man.
"This squirrel is the fastest thing on the earth. It is faster than the fastest car, faster than the fastest train, and I have suceeded in catching it under this hat."
The man replies that this is impossible and that there can be no squirrel under the hat to which the boy challenges him to look. "You will first need to put your hand under the hat to hold the squirrel or it will run away as soon as you lift the hat."
The man bends over, lifts the hat just slightly and slips his hand under it prepared to grasp the squirrel firmly so he can see if the boy's claim is true.
As his hand goes under the hat he feels something warm and firmly wraps his hand around it. But something does not seem quite right. What should be a squirrel is actually rather soft and warm and squishes through his fingers.
Startled the man lifts the hat to see that he is holding a rather large, steaming, piece of sh*t. Angrily he says to the boy, "What is the meaning of this? All that's here is this piece of sh*t!?"
To which the boy, taking his hat from the man smugly replies, "See sir, that really was the fastest squirrel in the world. It was so fast that it sh*t in your hand and ran away."
I'm sorry, but talk of hydrogen cars and clean energy for the masses makes me think of this story. With all of the work done we should have already had a useful and marketable product but I admit I grow more doubtful every time I see a new story. This one is getting closer but there's still no cigar (although you could say it's rather cigar shaped).
See here.
I suppose, if you were cutting things close with a very heavy fixed weight for the aircraft itself, there could be a difference that matters.
Simple is best. Just install a toilet seat with a built-in extractor fan ducted to the engine compartment. The fuel is your diet. A three-meals-a-day cycle of baked beans should get you to the office and back with enough spare for the aircon. It's highly scalable; premium vindaloo curry should get you to around that 185 mph mark and 3 passenger's worth of Sri Lankan Kothu Roti can put you in contention for the Ansari-X prize.
Yet more Science-Wankery. Yeah, I know the score. "We'll have practical fusion power Real Soon Now(TM)." "We'll have hydrogen-powered cars Real Soon Now(TM)." Please... wake me when I can go down to a local car dealership and get a hydrogen-powered car, and actually use it in day-to-day life. Until then... please don't bother us all with this speculative BS. Remember all the ho-hum in the 1960s about "FLYING CARS BY YEAR 2000?"?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Hydrogen combustion is only an environmental win if you don't emit carbon in the process of producing the hydrogen - unlike fuel cells, which are a win regardless because a fuel cell is far more efficient than an internal combustion engine.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yes, everything you said is true.
Now to the part you haven't bothered to learn about. Several types of algae exist in nature that produce hydrogen as a byproduct of photosynthesis.
In addition, hydrogen can also be produced using biomass.
Both are renewable, and don't rely on fossil fuels to make hydrogen.
I'm suprised nobody has mentioned using oil from vegatables to power a vehicle. Granted this might not be a long term solution, if you could get it to be somewhat the same power as running on gasoline it could give us time to develop hydrogen or what ever while not using our oil. Thus lessing our dependancy on the middle east for petroleum products Some Links:c onomy/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1309201.stm
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/30/hydrogen.e
...somebody could just find a place where when you drill a hole in the ground, liquid hydrogen comes squirting out. Until then, there is an energy cost just to separate hydrogen from everything else....
norton says it blocked an active perl overflow when it loads that page. fyi, whatever the hell that means
Personally, I use biodiesel in my '03 TDI Beetle. For now, I believe it's the best option for a minimal footprint vehicle. When something in a reasonable price range comes along, I may have to reconsider my choice. But for today, biodiesel is certainly one of thebetter options.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
So we just declare that Jupiter has weapons of mass destruction and invade and extract all its hydrogen.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Granted this might not be a long term solution, if you could get it to be somewhat the same power as running on gasoline it could give us time to develop hydrogen or what ever while not using our oil.
.vs vegetable oil debate when you can just get your fuel from the garden hose.
Why bother with ye olde hydrogen
I must commend all /.'rs, as this has been one of the most interstesting of discussions concerning a great problem. Might I throw this into the ring, that we could well figure out the energy problem right here on this site. But could a piece of the answer lie in the fact that we are really moving out of this so called energy dependent industrial age and moving deeper into the next revolution; this technological phase of human history; one that will ultimately rely less on the physically "getting around" and more on "technilogically getting around," and yes to all who say that, atomic energy looks good in the long term for producing electricity.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
"You can also manufacture hydrogen through the electrolysis of water. This takes electricity. You get your electricity from burning fossil fuels, which like you suggest, will run out." Except that clean energy will never solve the problem of finding oil. If we discover a true source of clean energy then we still havent solved the problem of finding an alternative to oil. Two scenarios. Let's say we are running on oil based ICEs. If we find a clean source of energy, we haven't fixed anything. Let's say we are running on hydrogen based ICEs and we find a clean source of energy. Then we HAVE solved a problem. In other words, hydrogen based ICEs DO solve a problem in that they solve part of the problem that cars pose.
I see people here bitching about the fact that it takes energy to rpoduce hydrogen, and that that energy usually comes from oil, or when the poster is "enlightened", nuclear energy. I'm surprised, really, although I shouldn't be, that yet again, no one bothered to read the article about BMW working with Shell to produce automatic filling stations with solar power.
And solar power is where it's at. In these times of global warming and increasing desertification, there's really one source that provides energy constantly: The sun. I seriously doubt that the investements needed to get a solar powered economy up and running, with the power coming from all the huge deserts in the world, would be that huge.
It would be a boon for most Saharan countries, the Arabs once again, as well as basically anywhere there is a lot of sun.
All it requires is someone to get the ball rolling. And that's what I like about this BMW/Shell project. It's getting that ball rolling.
Oh, please don't get me wrong. We definitely need to find better energy souces than digging up fossil fuels. However, terrestial solar power is an expensive option. You also need to consider how much pollution you will generate just to make the solar cells. I personally would like to see the federal government invest in research to make solar cells cheaper and more efficient. Not likely with the current administration, though.
And if you're going to compress hydrogen without liqufying it, that will still take a lot of energy. TANSTAAFL.
Hydrogen makes a poor energy transport because it is much less dense that other molecules.
This is easially solved, just add a liquid oxygen tank and a surplus russian rocket in the boot...
If you do this, upgraded brakes may be desirable!
Would certainly teach tailgaters a lesson!
Do you like your Tailgaters well done?
Really, picking on cars for emissions is by now a dead horse. The exhaust from a modern, emissions-controlled car is so clean that it is difficult to kill yourself by leaving the car running with the garage closed. There are bigger fish to fry, like tractor trailers, that emit far dirtier emissions than any modern car.
It's not even like hydrogen-burning cars are entirely clean. Sure, you can drink the water from the exhaust, but any compression engine will produce oxides of nitrogen unless they also carry a tank of pure oxygen (which would clean up a gasoline engine in much the same manner). Fuel cells are much cleaner, but I don't think they're developed enough yet for the mainstream.
The use of hydrogen makes cars more dangerous, too. To put it simply, a compressed fuel is a dangerous fuel. Any accident that breaches the H2 tank turns the vehicle into a fuel-air explosive. I don't think the public will stand for too many fireballs on the highway. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, cars almost never explode and rarely catch fire in accidents.
Worse still, a mass changeover to hydrogen as our vehicle fuel would cause huge economic upheaval. Hydrogen consumes huge amounts of power to produce, and it adds no energy to our system; it merely acts as a relatively convenient energy storage vessel. Petroleum, on the other hand, consumes very little energy to reach its refined state and contributes a large portion of our total energy use. If it were mandated today that hydrogen must replace gasoline for vehicles, energy prices across the board would probably triple.
Hydrogen makes nice PR, but it will never power vehicles until oil has become so expensive due to scarcity that we've already migrated to other, renewable energy sources.
It's spelled hydrogen, fossil, storage and safety.
And as another poster pointed out, you can generate hydrogen with a solar panel, a couple of precious metal electrodes, and a water tank. The only byproduct of this reaction is oxygen (oxygen gas even).
The whole issue has plenty of info and I haven't read it all yet. Got a hardcopy days ago from the old man.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Back in the olden days, say pre-1960, if you wanted to keep something very cold you used a Dewar flask (pronounced DOO-er), which operated on the principle of "one layer of very good insulation." Namely, a vacuum. No gas to carry the heat away, so good insulation.
Then along came NASA and the space program, which needed to build insulation into the space capsules and the astronauts's space suits to protect them from the extreme cold of space. (Of course, here the insulation is to keep the cold *out* of the container, but the principle is the same.)
They decided putting astronauts into Dewar flasks just wouldn't work. 8^)
A different type of insulation was needed, and they came up with the idea of "lots of layers of pretty-good insulation". It worked surprisingly well, has been widely used ever since, and is the type of insulation mentioned in the article: alternate layers of aluminized mylar and fiberglass, enough of them (70 in this case) that the liquid hydrogen stays cold because very little heat is leaking in.
Please read Twenty hydrogen myths (pdf). (HTML version by Google). This guy KNOWS what he's talking about.
:)
I was kinda shocked when I read that many people who died at the hindemburg incident did so because they JUMPED OFF the thing before it could land.
And when i read about the hydrogen exploding with a "pop" instead of a "boom" in laboratory, i remembered my chemistry lessons. We DID put a flame in a test tube full of hydrogen. It popped really nice
You better check out the article to get more informed.
Why is hydrogen expensive today? Because we use TRADITIONAL ENERGY in producing that hydrogen.
Hydrogen will not be expensive to produce with Nanotechnology advances. Specially when the energy comes directly from the sun.
Hydrogen is great because it can make a long-lasting battery. What we need now is more advancement in solar panels (like the recent /. article using spinach). Our cars may not run directly off of them, but solar panels would help a lot with extraction of hydrogen from water.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Not so sure about that ... there is more than one way to skin the "hydrogen cat" .... :-)
What about the bugs that Craig Venter and his mates are working on? They munch away on some kind of "gruel" and produce hydrogen as a by-product.
If we were only looking at "chemical" ways to get H2, I'd agree with you. But bugs sound very low-energy-input to me (especially if the stuff they're feeding on can be made from waste of some kind).
Whoever marked that offtopic is an idiot. BMW's marketing slogan is 'The Ultimate Driving Machine'. How do get hydrogen? You electrolyse water.
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
In Holland about 5% of all cars on the road (and the ones that get the most mileage) run on Liquid Petrol Gas (LPG). My car is one of them. LPG is used in the rest of Europe as well.
I have never heard of an exploding gas tank, the tanks are apparently so solid that they crush everything around them but stay intact themselves.
Forgetting to unplug the nozzle while filling up happens relatively often. There's a special weak spot in the tube that breaks in such cases. Also you have to keep a button on the gas pump depressed for the pump to operate. Release it and the gas flow stops. Driving away without unpluggng is harmless (except to your wallet). I've never heard of accidents with pumps.
There have been some accidents with LPG delivery trucks that supply the gas stations. I believe there was big one near a camping ground in Spain quite a while ago.
I can understand driving with a gas tank in your car may seem scary to people who aren't used to it, but we do so without worrying over here.
Of course, I don't know how Hydrogen compares to LPG for these purposes. That might well be a whole different story.
X.
It is not far future but it has more hydrogen
than standard gasoline:
1. It is twice cheaper (here in Europe)
2. It is from Russia (killing Chechens) not from Saudi Arabia (funding those who kill us)
3. Due to higher hydrogen to carbon content it is more enviroment-friendly
Just to clean up some myths about hydrogen powered cars:
Myth: In an accident, the whole car will blow up in a giant fire ball.
Reality: Hydrogen is a highly mobile gas molecule. It is also much lighter than air. This leads to very quick dissipation, and normally, the lower combustion limit, which is 4.0 volume percent in air, is never reached.
Myth: Fuel cell powered cars are always more efficient than ICE (internal combustion engine) cars.
Reality: Not always true. Fuel cell powered cars lose efficiency, if temperature gets higher, due to the entropy of the hydrogen oxidation. OTOH, ICE engines are limited by carnot cycle efficency. The higher the operating temperature, the higher the efficency. Cross over (the temperature, where combustion is more efficient than fuel cell) is at approx. 900 degC and 70 percent theoretical efficiency.
This article talks about how the Chinese are working on melt-down proof nuclear reactors, and they intend to use some of them to generate hydrogen.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
Free Market, Supply and Demand, and all that. But it's times like these, when there is a significant market barrier for technology with societal transforming ability, that the government is supposed to focus the collective resources.
However, I have faith that with our current choice of politicians, it's not going to happen. Didn't Thomas Jefferson say something about something every 2 centuries?
Now can we work on a car that I can pull out to pass the person in front of me and not have to pull back behind them because I couldn't muster the power to pass? I don't need 185 mph, I need to be able to pass in an acceptable distance. I would love to drive a hydro or hybrid, but the thing's got no nut. It doesn't have to have the power of a Hummer, but it would be nice to be able to pass people (until it's outlawed by GPS anyway).
Also,
Do you think it is more efficient to generate energy for your car in a power plant or in a car engine?
I'd much rather get burn the fossil fuels in one place, to generate hydrogen or e- where the process can be optimized, rather than depending on joe consumer to use the most efficient engine to burn these nonrenewable fuels.
plus, as was said above, if everyone is running hydrogen vehicles, you can switch the e- generation at the power plant any time you find a better process without replacing every vehicle on the road.
you forget the quality of life improvements.
If all cars are running hydrogen and spitting out water as their contaminants, we reduce the long term health consequences of having a personal transportation vehicle.
So, if you look at the big picture, and add in efficiency improvements over time and renewable energy sources for hydrogen production, you get a net societal benefit in both the long term and the short term.
...we should use Helium. It'd be much safer, and at the end of a long hard day you could unwind by sticking your mouth over the tank and talking like Alvin the Chipmunk. Hours of fun AND enviro-friendly!
This engine is a heat engine, just like a petrol or a Diesel engine. The efficiency of a hydrogen, petrol or a Diesel engine is defined by the temperatures of the combusting gasses and the exhaust gasses.
The temperatures the engine can handle are defined by the materials it is made of. Diesel and petrol engines are limited to around 30% because they are made of aluminium and steel, a ceramic engine could be far more efficient because it could handle much higher temperatures but the same technology would apply to Diesel and petrol as well, there's no inherent reason a hydrogen combustion engine would be any more efficient than using conventional fuels.
A hydrogen *combustion* engine is *always* going to be less efficient than simply burning the fuel in the first place because energy has to be supplied to make the hydrogen with a corresponding loss. This is why fuel cells are so important.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Drag increases with the square of the speed. The faster you go the more fuel you have to use to travel the same distance, reducing the efficiency.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
We are not going to transistion to hydrogen overnight, not even close .
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Most ppl will want their gas powered cars for a few decades to come
if for any other reason than cost
In a decade or two, or three, more clean power will be developed
like Bubble Fusion(proven) or Cold Fusion(unproven)
Tidal Generators at the Bay of Fundy alone could make more power
than all the dams on earth combined . Just need to make them
underwater turbines so as not to destroy the sea floor like the large french one is doing in their country
Wind Farms and Solar farms sometimes have excess power, it could be
used to make hydrogen, and I still think the massive amounts of sewer gas world wide could be used for energy
There are PLENTY of alternative power sources
Just think if we developed a way to capture the majority of the
power from the majority of land based lightning in the world
I am not saying it would be easy, but then again the amount of
effort/money it took to make the manhattan project or the
apollo project could be applied to make us less oil dependant
Notice I did not say oil free, we will still use it for lubricant, plastic, and what not
The keyboard, mouse, and monitor in front of you is made of
plastic, as is your cell phone, cd's, dvd's, tires, etc etc etc
Oil is used to make most exterior paint too
We can move to alternative energy FULLY in the next 50 years, but
it is going to take a MAJOR commitment by the powers that be
I think it will be resisted due to the three most powerful emotions of human beings
1)Greed 2)Fear 3)Apathy ; Greed of the powers that be
Fear of the powers that be they will lose their power and wealth
for them and their children, etc etc, Drop in stock value, etc etc
Apathy of the common man who would rather watch (x)ball, as they
take a animal skin and bash it about on a grass field on the
ground or in the air . Total expediture for all the various
ball related sports being TRILLIONS of dollars world wide.
If we put in 10% the effort that went into sports from pee-wee
league to the pro leagues, we'd be off oil as a fuel in 20 years
or less . But it isn't gonna happen, no way, no how
Call me cynical, and sarcastic, I will wear
it like a badge of friggin courage
I know hypocrisy, the human race is it
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
The hydrogen will be manufactured using grid electricity. Most of that is fossil powered. This particular vehicle will increase the demand for fossil fuels *because* of it's inefficiency.
An internal combustion engine is anything but simple or cheap to own. Electric motors are far simpler, more reliable, require less servicing, last longer, are more efficient *and* have better torque characteristics.
Battery vehicles can be recharged fairly quickly these days, 20 mins to 2 hours depending and now have ranges of hundreds of miles.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
From an Anonymous Coward? Why should I bother?
Diesel is the name of the inventor of the Diesel engine Rudolf Diesel.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
When you speak of car emissions, you are speaking of TRACE emissions. That is, you are talking about various byproducts of combustion, you're not talking about the primary emissions of a car, which are H2O and CO2. And also, be sure that there is enough CO to asphyxiate you.
Now this doesn't mean hydrogen is any better, as mentioned below, even a hydrogen car will release NOx and plenty of H2O vapor (the primary greenhouse gas).
But we are a long way from being able to disregard the emissions of cars as a pollution factor.
They have been done, but really they are impractical. The reason is the flywheel acts as a stabilizer. It doesn't want to turn when it is rotating. If you do force it to turn, it precesses. Because of this, you have to gimbal mount the flywheel on 3 axis. Now it takes up a lot of space.
It'd be a great system for a stationary motor, but not really a moving vehicle. I would imagine we'll see these systems for electricity storage (to even out day vs. night power consumption) before we see them in cars.
These new compressed air buses seem interesting. You store the energy by compressing air, then release it through a piston (like a steam engine) to move the vehicle. You can fill a vehicle with compressed air rather quickly, and it can be made to fit any available space reasonably. I wonder if compressed air has a higher energy density than LIon batteries?
Ok, so you're splitting water to get the H2 then liquifying it. Anybody care to comment on the cost per mile (km) of running on H2 vs gasoline, assuming idealized production & distribution of H2?
http://http//www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0504. html/
The US imports ~20% from persian gulf nations.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
http://www.llnl.gov/str/September02/Pham.html
I am not certain but I think these type of solid hydrogen fuel cells are less likely to have the same issues as using hydrogen gas.
I ll be filling my car with REAL gas (eeerk...its petrol you morron!) :)
Just curious.
Hmmm! Hydrogen Bombs?
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(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
What is the optimal energy needed to do a commute to work and back? Well, the perfect car would have no drag at all, and since the car begins and ends at the same place (and therefore gains or loses no potential energy), the optimal energy is zero. Since most cars use at least a little energy, their efficiency is zero percent. And therefore you have just made statements about efficiency meaningless.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The Hindenburg didn't explode; it burned. Hydrogen (like gasoline) doesn't explode at normal atmospheric pressure.