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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?"
Hydrogen pretty dangerous stuff? I mean, I know it's quite explosive....(From what I recall from freshman chem :) ) Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?
Actually, with the hydrogen being in stable fuelcells, instead of a mass collection, the chances of a hydrogen-oxegen explosion is very remote.
That and with the Hindenberg the main problem was the explosive nature of the paint, not the hydrogen within. The Hindenburg would of been one of the cheapest, and safest, methods of flight, except for just a couple of "cost saving measures" that ware taken that reduced the saftey.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?
While the hydrogen contents of the Hindenberg certainly didn't help matters, that wasn't the main problem. The skin of the Zeppelin had been cured and doped with an aluminum oxide compound that is pretty much identical to solid rocket fuel (although this flammable quality wasn't known at the time).
Go back and watch the film again-- the skin ignites and burns quickly-- rather than the whole structure exploding/popping like a ping in a balloon.
davejenkins.com |
...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.
Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?
Hydrogen was not the cause for the Hindenberg disaster. Hydrogen burns without any visibile flame or smoeke. In the Hindenberg case, what burned was the external paint, which had a chemical composition quite similar to nitroglicerine (it wasn't known at the time).
Even more sad, most the deaths from that disaster were people jumping down while the ship was still in the air. Most of those who remained in the airship survived.
They work on using Hydrogen Combustion and not a fuel cell, then they use an advanced fuel cell for the electronics. Amusing.
Actually, with the hydrogen being in stable fuelcells,
/., where people feel compelled to post before rtfa. The car doesn't use fuel cells for the engine. It's an hydrogen combustion engine.
Ahhh, good old
The article says that BMW is researching fuel cells as well, but it's concentrating on combustion engines "because the sum total of its features and characteristics offers the largest number of advantages and benefits all in one."
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
What the no-sense-of-humor poster above you was trying to say is that hydrogen burns cooler than gasolene and does so clearly (invisibly). What he failed to consider is that while hydrogen dissipates rapidly and needs a dense concentration to ignite, there is a perfectly dense mixture of it in the fuel cell. ANYTHING will explode when supplied with enough energy, even a hydrogen fuel cell. Quite a bit of energy is transferred by going from really fast to not moving in 0.25 seconds, and a lot of energy is transferred when you're rear ended by a tractor trailer at the red light. Just because it may be safer doesn't mean it is perfect. No need for anyone to go hydrogen fanboi on any /.ers
Somebody already invented a car that was cheap and lasted a lot longer than conventional parts. He died broke when all the car companies lobbied against him because of the economic consequences.
Their was also a movie by Francis Ford Coppla about him with Jeff Bridges:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096316/
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
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.
[..]doped with an aluminum oxide compound that is pretty much identical to solid rocket fuel (although this flammable quality wasn't known at the time).
Actually, it was iron oxide and solid aluminum. These two substances can react in a very exothermic redox-reaction forming aluminum oxide. Such metal-metal oxide compounds are known as thermite.
The flammable quality was most certainly known at the time. The Germans actually used Zeppelins to drop incendiary thermite bombs on British targets during WWI.
While the coating compenents were potentially reactive, they were separated by a layer of material that should have inhibited the reaction from starting.
Alas, the Wikipedia article forgot one aspect: the mounting bolts for the canvas covering were made of steel, which allowed a static discharge to move through the canvas covering VERY quickly. Because the Hindenberg had flown near a thunderstorm just before the explosion, there was a buildup of static electricity on the entire airship and when it discharged the mounting bolts transmitted the static discharge, causing a large portion of the canvas covering to literally explode on the initial explosion.
That's why on the short-lived airship Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), the Zeppelin engineers switched to bronze mounting bolts for the canvas covering, so the static discharge would not be transmitted through the mounting bolts.
By the way, the Zeppelin company actually produced an internal report about the Hindenberg explosion and that report cited issues with the potential flammability of the canvas covering doping compound. Alas, that report was quickly surpressed by the Nazi government for various reasons.
Google "hindenburg survivors" perhaps? I mean, come on, there are links on the first results page! They might not give you the number of survivors, but they definitely confirm that there were some.
For the lazy:
http://www.airships.net
http://www.vidicom-tv.com/hindenburg/making_of.htm
http://www.authentichistory.com/audio/1930s/histor y/19370506_Hindenberg_Disaster_Herb_Morrison-short .html
-Alex
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.
Using electricity generated from nuclear powered plants is still going to create a lot of toxic nuclear waste that we really cannot manage properly. Why aren't we harnessing the ability of microbes to generate hydrocarbons like methane (CH4) on a large scale? Currently the cheapest way of producing hydrogen is by 'cracking' natural gas and other hydrocarbons. It's a well known fact that many animals emit massive amounts of methane and other gases that are produced by microbes in their innards. Has anyone crunched any numbers as to how much methane might be captured if we were to apply this to agricultural livestock? What kind of work has been done to understand the microbes that produce methane? Maybe we could have large methane production facilities based on photosynthesis and some other feedstock for these (perhaps genetically engineered) microbes? This would also have a profound postive affect on the environment in regards to the 'green house' gases. Not only would we be eliminating the emissions from the combustion of hydrocarbons but we would be preventing massive amounts of methane from entering the atmosphere. I know that methane accounts for up to 20% of green house gas emissions and is much potent because it traps 23 times as much heat then CO2. Any thoughts ?
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."
From here
Hydrogen burns like... well hydrogen but in case of an airship you don't have a hydrogen oxygen mixture that will explode but pure hydrogen which slowly mixes with the surrounding air and burns down (the same reason why cars don't explode like in Hollywood movies but burn). Due to the sheer size of an airship, its seperated tanks and the lucky fact that the fire on the Hindenburg started at the back and during the landing the ship came down rather softly
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
One can use nuclear power to generate that hydrogen, which would be not 10% more or less, but orders of magnitude more efficient.
I'd just like to point out that 66% of the people on board the Hindenburg survived.
I'm not saying that more people couldn't have been saved, I'm just pointing out that the number of survivors is a lot higher than most people think.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Iron oxide and aluminum powder are commonly referred to as thermite and are used for producing molten iron at temperatures well in excess of aluminum's 660 C melting point. However, there is a rebuttal to this argument which indicates that the paint lacked the requisite proportions for the thermite reaction.
No, you're wrong. Oil is not used for hydrogen, natural gas is. They are not the same.
Compression ratio.
A normal 8:1 compression small block Chevy V8 from the mid-80's will generate 25-50% less power on hydrogen than on gasoline. The reasons for that 8:1 compression are emissions, preignition due to octane rating, and a few other things.
Hydrogen doesn't have the preignition problems of gasoline, though, so you could run an 18:1 compression ration in the same SBC, provided the crank and main bearings can take it. This should give you close to the same power output as 8:1 on dead prehistoric things, but wouldn't be able to be run on gasoline, anymore. Nothing short of jet fuel, anyway....
The problem becomes, no after-market manufacturer makes piston/head combinations for SBC's to go over about 13:1 compression. So, without a turbo, supercharger, or ram-air, you can't get the "required" amount of power.
If you're ok with a slower car, with near-zero emissions, go for it. Otherwise, you're going to need to get engine components custom-made, which is prohibitively expensive for most hobbyists. (I know...I've already looked into doing this for a 3.8 Buick-powered 1984 Pontiac Grand Prix.)
The other alternative would be to start with a diesel engine, which will already have an appropriate compression ratio. You'll need to do some interesting machine work on the head, though, as the diesel has no spark plug holes. I don't know if a diesel fuel injector could be replaced with a standard spark plug, or whether the threads/diameter wouldn't match, though, so this could turn out to be only a minor problem. Also, diesel engines are more expensive than gasoline, due to their heavier construction. This wouldn't bother some people, but I don't have a diesel engine sitting around to experiment with.
The next thing would be to somehow connect a spark ignition system to a diesel engine block, which was never designed to use such an animal.
etc.etc.etc.etc.
Suffice it to say, there are problems with this approach. Not insurmountable, by any means, but not something average Joe Schmuck is going to do in his back yard.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
As for converting a car to partially power it via hydrogen...why not just run it off pure vodka?
I'll tell you why not...they both cost more than gas!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
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.
This is too bad inaccurate. The only serious point where hydrogen is less safe than gasoline is the flammable and explosive limits (see e.g. here). While you need a spark to start a gasoline fire, a air-hydrogen mixture can start burning only because of environmental static electricity (i.e. a windy day).
Not sure it is relevant, BMW are committed to using internal-combustion engines with hydrogen. This may not be efficient as fuel cells, but is definitely cheaper from the point of view of who buys the engine. Furthermore, BMW have already manufactured some 11 models of a series 7 running on both hydrogen and gasoline, with 150 kW of power.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
You know the URL you supplied doesn't back up your statement, right?
"The SEC took him and five associates to court because his cars didn't have all the technical features that he had promised investors in his prospectus they would. That stymied his ability to raise the money he needed to produce the 300,000 cars he had orders for. It was not a case of the "big three" motor companies acting to crush him - in fact Ford gave him steering wheels for the Lincoln Zephyr as a gesture of help."
--RJ
Actually, it's because of thermodynamics that H2 has some promise. Take natural gas as a fuel source: if you burn it in a heat engine (car engine), you are limited to a maximum heat engine efficiency of around 20-30%. That is, 20% of the energy moves your car, the other 80% goes out the radiator. Heat engines are limited in output by something called Carnot efficiency. For a car, it might be 30%. But, fuel cell are NOT Carnot limited. It is still bound by thermodynamic rules of course, but it is a chemical reaction which has an upper efficiency much higher, like around 60-70%. So, the promise is to take a fossil fuel like natural gas, extract the hydrogen with an efficient process (like steam methane reforming) and then use it in an efficient fuel cell. That's the promise. Personally, as the previsous author, I have my doubts about future of fuel cells. Just too damn expensive.
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"