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Fuel Cell Powered Scooter
!Freeky2BGeeky writes "In an article by Fuel Cell Works, Samsung Engineering announced that they've developed a Hydrogen-based scooter which can go 140Km on 6 liters of hydrogen. The downside? The process that produces the hydrogen uses a component in short supply."
The downside? The process that produces the hydrogen uses a component in short supply.
Let me guess: that component is a renewable, non-polluting source of energy?
Guess I'd better go RTFA.
Efficiency is not as important as the fact the fuel won't be depleted and burns cleanly. There is lots of energy in inconvenient places like deserts, if you can figure out how to make the fuel there and ship it elsewhere, it's a win.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Try inhaling gasoline, or leaving THAT on yourskin for any extended period.
Steve
Do you mean to secure the worlds sodium borate supply, or to prevent this source being used?
The press release says "The development and testing of the hydrogen-powered scooter shows that South Korea's technology is on a par with that of the world," which is totally accurate.... ...it's just the rest of the world isn't that hot at paying for real R&D either :\
Beep beep.
The problem IS storage. Today, many hydro-electric dams run nowhere near capacity during off-peak hours. These dams could be running full throttle 24/7 if the electrical energy could be stored in liquified or compressed hydrogen created thru electrolysis. The 24/7 assumes that the reservoir levels do not get too low between rainfalls. The electricty used to create the hydrogen would be pretty much free because it would be created with the water that would otherwise have been released without passing thru the generators. Unfortunately, it is not easy to store so much hydrogen safely.
Fortunately you thought wrong. The real roadblock is the price of fuel cells, which everybody expects to plummet once mass-production is commenced (today most production is pretty much manual), and of course the missing infrastructure.
Hard to substantiate. Current efficiencies in electrolysis processes rank up to 90% energy efficiency. This is however the "reported" one, which might be away from the standard operating point of equipment; 80% and 94% are reported here. Compare with the 20-30% of internal combustion engines, which does normally not account for dead time in queues, where some gas is being consumed, which does not happen in fuel cells as there are no major moving parts to keep spinning.
Of course there are other considerations than just efficiency, as usability of current distribution networks (which favours the use of liquid fuels as methanol, formic acid), presence of existing technologies (reforming of natural gas, oil and hydrocarbons in general).
Remark: efficiency is often given (faultily) as the ratio of Work obtained / Available enthalpy ("W/Delta_H"), which is BS: Gibbs' free energy should be used, "W/Delta_G". This causes electrolysis processes to look a bit better than they atually are, since the reaction enthalpy is ca. 286 kJ/mol, while the Gibbs' free energy is less, about 237 kJ/mol. Therefore, we actually need a minimum of 237 kJ to split a mole of water. Don't be surprised when someone will claim "over 100% efficiency in electrolysis", because that is well possible if you use the enthalpy definition.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Aside from the question of measuring the fuel, I do think that a hybrid fuel (hydrogen/gasoline) IC engined car might be a better way forward than a electric/gasoline hybrid. I don't have a link, but according to Consumer Reports, the actual mileage of the Toyota Prius is much less than its EPA rating. And one of the concerns facing the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell cars is the lack of infrastrure (the other is the technology itself and the cost thereof). So with a hybrid fuel vehicle, you could foster the development of the distribution network while waiting for the technology to catch up.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
..the vehicle can travel three times farther than a scooter powered by a nickel-cadmium cell, saying that the technology can also be applied in automobiles, laptop computers and mobile phones.
That's a great achievement, except that it can not be applied in automobiles, laptop computers and mobile phones because there's just not enough sodium borohydride in the entire world to produce enough fuel for this to work on a large scale.
Did they know this at development or did the question where all this sodium borohydride would have to come from pop up later?
Sample this!
Bullys don't take on countries that can and will fight back.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
We need very efficient solar panels for the hydrogen economy to start.
In other words, it wouldn't be a hydrogen economy at all, but a solar economy, and I'd cheer for that.
Ra, Ra, Ra!
KFG
140km per 6 liters means 23.3 kilometers/liter. Even the Smart car, mentioned here, does better (60 MPG, which is 24.14km per liter). And Smart doesn't require a nearly-depleted energy source (yet).
Borax is a sodium borate, and it's cheap enough to throw away with the waste water when we wash clothes. While there is not a lot of borates in the world, there are several highly concentrated deposits that are easy to mine.
It's be obvious to experts for a long time that we may end up regretting using up so much of our borate deposits washing clothes, but given a free market economy and the time value of money, no one has found a way to stop it.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Does anyone know of a location to se what this thing looks like? I am curious due to various regulations about "scooters". For example, if this was a moped style scooter it would have a quite different effect then if it was one of those "little metal plates with 2 wheels a motor and handle bars" like you buy at your area department store for you kids. In Florida where I live, the moped style is street usable while the second "recreational" style would be pointless. The second version can not be driven on public streets or sidewalks, only on private property. also, even though it has be used on private property, you still have to hold a valid Fl driver's license to ride one. That would make it somewhat pointless to have.
The area of the Sahara alone is 9,000,000 square km or 9e12 square metres. The average energy per square metre on the earths surface is around 1kW. If we allow our solar panel to be 25% efficient that makes for 2250 Terawatts of electricity. That means we only need to cover 3% of the Sahara to meet total world electricity requirements today. This is forgetting deserts in the Middle East, Austrialia, North and South America and Asia.
All these figures where Googled in 5 minutes. That also turned up a link that suggests that researches at MIT have a multiband gap material in the lab that would be 50% efficient!
Looks to me like we could easily meet current total world energy demand several times over using just solar power alone. We have not started on other renewable sources such as geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, wave and wind, which would only add to the total power generation capacity.
Looks to me like you have brought into what can only be described as the propoganda that renewable won't and cannot work. Ten minutes ago I had no idea whether this calculation would show solar was viable or not. Clearly it is.
Also on the 25% efficient we can get 336 Terrawatt from the Australian desert, and no need to talk to any politically unstable Arab countries either. You can also get 225 Terrawatt from the subtropical deserts in North America alone. I make the total potential energy output from the worlds subtropical deserts a staggering 3766 Terawatts with 25% efficency. If the guys at MIT can increase that to 50%, then that is 117 times current total world electricity demand. How much power do you think we need?
Admittedly these are back of the envelope calculations using quickly Googled figures. However they would have to be several orders of magnitude out to make to the point invalid. However this does not seem likely to me.
That's probably the most expensive means possible.
Steven Den Beste provides some good numbers on this use-solar-power-to-crack-water suggestion:
Read the rest of it. Nuclear? Sure. But solar's just not feasible for this kind of scale.
Are you saying that the US is a bully for "picking on" Afghanistan and Iraq, both of whom have a history of fighting back (and starting fights), or that China is a bully for it's hold on Tibet, since Tibet doesn't?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!