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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?"
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 |
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.
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
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.
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......
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