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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 is that there are only about 300 million tons of sodium borate worldwide, located mostly in Tibet, and that annual global production of sodium borohydride stands at 10,000 tons, it added.
well, we know where Bush will be sending the troops to next year.
mods: it's a joke
What happens when lightning strikes it? Does it explode in a big fireball as radio reporters scream "oh the humanity!"?
-ND
I suspect that an internal-combustion engine such as one already used in production motorcycles could be tuned to burn a hydrogen mix, and that 6 liters (at what pressure? liquid?) for that mileage is not really news. Indeed, there may not be much new science here and the release mostly propoganda.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.
I'm not a chemistry buff, but this lecture from a Perdue chemistry prof describes the discovery of sodium borohydride, the compound used to generate hydrogen for this thing.
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
Hydrogen is an energy carrier and not an energy source. Currently, hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels or natural gas. Electrolyzing hydrogen from water is very expensive. We need very efficient solar panels for the hydrogen economy to start.
g e.html
Biodiesel looks more promising. There are some algae which contains 50% oil. Here's a link:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_al
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Mod or teach the world some chemistry. hmmm teach some chemistry I think.
When it comes to chemicals please please please don't think have a knee jerk reaction and claim that all chemicals are evil and sent by satan himself.
Everything around you is a chemical so to say you are scared of chemicals is pretty stupid. Further more to say a chemical is bad or nasty is pretty silly as you are attributing a bunch of atoms a human personality.
Sodium Borohydride is a faily commonly used chemical and for the most part it is completely safe. There are no really special handling requirements (for lab scale use) although if memory serves it's generally best not to get it wet but even then it's generally only a fairly quck reaction. I'm not saying that you can eat the stuff just correctly managed it's safe.
There are a few really dangerous chemicals such as nerve gasses that require very special treatment and you really don't want to be messing with them but most chemicals are quite inert.
To give you some perspective have a look at the MSDS data for cadmium. You no doubt use NiCad batteries and I think you will be somewaht shocked. Do you have a mercury thermometer. That mercury is dangerous stuff. How about metholated spirit. If it was a toss up between eating 1g of sodium borohydride or drinking 1ml of meths I would probably go with the sodium borohydride and yet you probably splash meths about.
Ok that's enough chemistry for one day.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.