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Honda Fuel Cell Concept with Home H2 Refueling
It doesn't come easy writes "Honda unveiled their next generation FCX fuel cell concept car, along with a home hydrogen generation filling station, at the Tokyo Motor Show this week. The car has a range of 350 miles (560 kms) using two separate 350 psi hydrogen storage tanks. The tanks use a newly-developed hydrogen absorption material that doubles their capacity without raising the required storage pressure and thus allows the concept vehicle to exceed the DOE's targeted driving range for hydrogen powered vehicles. The home refueling station uses natural gas to produce electricity, heat and hydrogen. Honda estimates that the HES system [will] lower by 50% the total running cost of household electricity, gas and vehicle fuel. As the FCX is a concept car, no mention of when the technology might be introduced in a real automobile or what it will eventually cost, but the advances demonstrated by the car are quite amazing."
And just when natural gas is getting so cheap, too....
So, it relies on natural gas to produce the hydrogen, but they say it'll cut costs? Have they seen the prices of natural gas lately, not to mention their volatility? And isn't natural gas just as scarce as regular gasoline?
...so if I put some "powered by Honda" stickers around it, lower it, and add a cool exhaust tip, will it be fast just like a Civic?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
This is a great advance but its unlikely to be massively successful until the point at which Gas Guzzlers are taxed at a rate based on their environmental impact. In otherwords until Gas is $6+ a gallon (about the UK price) there won't be the driver in the US to adopt green technologies, thus meaning there won't be the huge volumes of purchases to make the technology really affordable.
For anyone who wants to understand what I mean, go to Honolulu airport and look at the pollution "clocks".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This is probably the only way to solve the chicken-n-egg problem of hydrogen cars. Sure you won't be able to drive it cross-country for a while, but for burning around town, it should work, and then once enough of them are out there, THEN the commercial stations will follow.
Still, as others mentioned above, with high natural gas prices, I can't see this helping, though if it doubles as your home heating, hopefully the amount of natural gas per household increased useage isn't much.
Mercedes-Benz also has a prototype. Their concept car will be available for production around 2015, using a fuelcell+lithium ion combo.
I'd be really interested to know how well these 'chargers' could be adapted to work with other sources of power for charging the cells. I mean if we had to buy like 3 or 4 cells in order to have them charge for like 3 or 4 days to get that 300+ miles, then okay fine... but to burn yet another fossil fuel is kinda like picking your evils... though I suspect other gases could be used but again, the method of extraction or manufacture almost always leads back to fossil fuels. How soon can we get into a source that is significantly more "free"?
but it still doesn't fly.
I can imagine, that when it freezes, your pimped & overtuned H2 car leaves behind a trail of snow when you burnout to impress bystanders!
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
What I want is a electric/diesel car. Something more along the lines of 200hp and 50+mpg! While the newer Prius, Civic, etc hybrids are nice and all they are just way too underpowered. By swapping out the gas engine with a diesel one you can get better gas mileage AND better performance.
Here are some pics of the Mazda RX-8 that has two tanks: the hydrogen can be filled on one side, and regular gas on the other side.
a /gallery4.html
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http://autos.goo.ne.jp/motorshow/gallery/car/mazd
there is an article here in japanese: http://autos.goo.ne.jp/motorshow/news/tms/article
The tanks do not only hold 350 psi it is 350 atmospheres. 15 psi per atmosphere sea level so that would be 5250psi.
Why not just power the car with natural gas to begin with? This has to be way more efficient since you skip an entire energy conversion.
I was in Europe recently where people were retrofitting natural gas tanks on their cars for about $300. No real modification was needed for the motor only the tank had to be connected to the fuel injection. Economically it made sense since the price of gas was about $6 a gallon and this allowed a savings of approximately 50% over the cost of gas.
In the US, however, natural gas is not really economical so I don't think it would save you any money.
The SYMPTOM here is high energy prices.
The way people are trying to fix all our woes is by treating the SYMPTOM, i.e. making energy costs lower and searching for alternative energy resources.
The SOLUTION however is to simply use less. If we thought more and were less lazy, oil etc. wouldn't be a problem.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
I am amazed that Honda is cutting the gas stations out of the industry with this prototype. I guess decades of better gas mileage has left Honda and the gas stations less than natural allies anyway. With American automakers edging so close to bankruptcy after cannibalizing their mid-decade sales with 2002 "dumping" prices, and relying on gas guzzling SUVs for most of their profit, maybe Honda is just ahead of its time. More of that car buck is now in demand for fueling up, and the cozy old relationships might just be coming apart.
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make install -not war
What I want is a electric/diesel car. Something more along the lines of 200hp and 50+mpg! While the newer Prius, Civic, etc hybrids are nice and all they are just way too underpowered. By swapping out the gas engine with a diesel one you can get better gas mileage AND better performance.
So tell me again why you want 200hp? 200hp has no intrisic value, it can only be used to accelerate you faster or to give you higher top speed. Most of these cars can do 80 or 100mph (unless they are computer limited), so lets talk acceleration.
Cars with internal combustion engines need all that power since these engines have very low toque at low RPMs, so need to rev up, then shift, and shift again, to keep the torque on. The beauty of electric motors is that they have max torque at 0 rpm. When you are accelerating from 0 with your 200hp pocket rocket, you are actually only using a fraction of that horsepower. Of course if you have a 300hp engine, that fraction is higher, but you are not really using all 300 horses.
Back when GM was promoting the EV1, I drove one at a demo event at Caltech. Those things were rockets off the line. The computer kicked in at 30 mph and limited acceleration to reduce energy consumption. They found that people were racing around town and getting very low distance between charges. But from 0-30, the EV1 would easily beat a 300Z.
So what you really want is to either hack the computer to not limit your acceleration, or perhaps a larger electric motor or higher current draw capability. But a 200hp diesel would be a complete waste, expensive, heavy, and slow.
Theres ALOT of petroleum left on Earth in the normal form "Oil", Tar Sands and Shales. Hundreds of years worth at 2000 levels if all the known Shale, Tar Sands and Rock Oil is added up. Theres lots of it left, the idea that it's "scarce" is a fiction, right now the price is high because of speculation, storm damage and a lack of refinery capacity.
Combustion of one cubic metre of commercial quality natural gas yields 38 MJ (10.6 kWh). Natural Gas import and movement is difficult from a safety and logistics standpoint due to the nature of a tanker full of it and the ports needed. Moving NG through pipes is hard, so the best way is to liquify it and move it then in chilled pipes and on tankers.
In the US there are between 1,300 and 1,779 Tcf remaining in proven and unproven deposits, theres estimated to be about 5,210.8 Tcf in the world in proven deposits.
In 2003, world natural gas consumption was 95.5 Tcf. Russia, which consumed 15.3 Tcf, and the United States, which consumed 22.4 Tcf, accounted for 47 percent of the total. Consumption of natural gas is projected to increase by nearly 70 percent between 2001and 2025, with the most robust growth in demand expected among the developing nations. By the year 2025, total world consumption of natural gas is expected to bet 151 trillion cubic feet.
If there are 5,210 Tcf of NG, at 2003 levels theres about 54.6 years of proven Natural Gas.
Energy is never lost, it becomes heat. If you live someplace where it's cold, that can be handy.
Ideally, a battery with enough capacity and efficiency would be best. Ultimately, I think some kind of direct electrical storage is going to power everything we own.
But there's that capacity and efficiency issue... a lot of the power used to charge a battery is lost to heat, and not all the power "inside" the battery is usable. And batteries, per weight, can't store anywhere near the power gasoline can. (I use Power on purpose here, since it is not just an issue of energy storage, you have to be able to pull the energy out at a useful rate. I realize storage of power is not really a coherent concept.)
Someone will probably link to real data on efficiencies and densities - I could be wrong on the energy density for newer (very expensive) battery technologies, but I suspect nothing is coming close to gasoline yet (neither does hydrogen).
A big capacitor with no standing power drain would be perfect - high discharge rates, efficient charging, etc- but we don't have capacitors with the capacity or ability to hold charge forever while not in use. Some day, the entire hydrogen economy will be rendered obsolete by a better electrical storage device. Even then, there'll probably be a coal or deisel power plant somewhere, still generating the electricity we'll be storing in our portable supercapacitors.
I'll just let him do the talking. This is an excerpt from October 10.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I see many people really don't understand Hydrogen fueled cars. Natural Gas is one of many sources used to produce Hydrogen but currently is the cheapest method to do so. It can also be made from petroleum, coal, various chemical reactions, and from biomass (landfill waste, wastewater sludge, and livestock waste). Solar and Wind can also be used to produce hydrogen.
.357 magnum at it, detonating a stick of dynamite next to it, and subjecting it to fire at 1500 degrees F.
Now to address hydrogen safety for those who might worry about it.
1. Hydrogen combusts at 550 degrees celsius. Gasoline will combust long before Hydrogen does.
2. Hydrogen disperses rapidly because it is lighter. Ignition is unlikely.
3. When Ignition takes place, It burns upward and quickly.
4. And tanks that are used to store hydrogen have been subjected to firing
You can find useful information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen/
http://www.hyodrogennow.org/
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For starters, theres a lot more too it then that but the Wikipedia article gives the jist.
Natural gas is also a lot more abundant so isn't as likely to undergo quite the same massive cost increases over the next decade and beyond like petroleum will.
It's called the ocean.
And you could have one for about $75,000, according to the developer when I talked to him at a trade show a few months ago.
o ns.htm
http://l3research.com/vehicles/enigma/specificati
For those too lazy to follow the link:
Peak Power: 250 HP (combined)
Acceleration: 0-60 MPH 7 Seconds
Fuel Economy: 80 MPG est
Maximum Range: 650 Miles est. (8 gal)
All-electric Range: 20 Miles
It uses a 200 HP electric motor (!) to provide the major "thrust", with a 60 HP, 80 MPG diesel engine (running at peak efficiency RPMs) to recharge the battery or provide extra oomph to accelerate or to cruise at highway speed.
And it is a convertible.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
for gasoline, but not for biodiesel.
Another dumb moderator on the loose! Damn I had points yesterday.
Yes - we do need to focus on using less energy. The issue is that the North American natural gas supply peaked in 2001. We have already lost at least 1/3 of the Nitrogen fertilizer industry as a result.
We can get hydrogen mind you from the coal gas method that was used around the turn of the century. Essentually we put some coal in a bucket - slap the lid on it - heat it up and inject steam at high pressure and temperature.
We have decent amounts of coal for the present. We have a huge north american shortage of hydrogen with Suncor for instance presently spending billions to design and build hydrogen plants.
This is for the production of liquid fuels from bitumin. Liquid fuels typically have 2 parts hydrogen for each atom of carbon - ie - they follow the parafin series C(n)H(2n+2). N=8 => octane.
Bitumin comes in about 1:1 H:C and coal is about 0.6:1 depending on what grade.
So the issue is that the hydrogen shortage is sort of going to make this uneconomical. That being said I think there is reason to believe that thermal cracking of water (steam electrolysis) has promise from solar or nuclear sources. Many people don't realise that the temperature of the photons from the sun is quite a lot higher than even the hottest nuclear power plants are run at.
Nevertheless one would have to cover their house and out buildings with solar collectors and these would need to be a combination of thermal and electrical. There is some thought towards attaching a thermocouple to a solar cell which might bring the efficiencies up. Any way we look at it however its going to be prohibitably expensive to try to make your own source of hydrogen. It also might actually be dangerous because this is an industrial process and high temperatures and pressures are involved.
Even a large parabolic mirror is dangerous because improperly set up it can light your place on fire.
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If anyone is interested check the BP statistical energy review. This will break down the various energy sources. Since most of the oil is used for transporation it follows that the hydrogen source will have to grow large enough to replace the oil. Currently the USA uses about 10 million barrels of oil per day.
The energy bonds associated with carbon are greater than hydrogen so you need an INCREASE in the hydrogen if we manage to go with this system. However that is offset by greater efficiencies so perhaps it actually will take less hydrogen.
This leaves Suncor for instance in a dilemma. They can produce the hydrogen and use it to upgrade the bitumin. Or they can produce the hydrogen and forget about their tar sands mines and put the hydrogen in a pipleline. Which is better? There is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than in a gallon of liquid hydrogen and you don't need tanks capable if holding 350 atmospheres. The infrastructure from distribution is in place.
The rain on the parade however is that more than a billion dollars per year are currently flowing into Alberta, Canada in an effort to ramp up tar sands to about 3.3 million barrels per day by 2015. Even with this massive investment the total synthetic crude that is going to be available is going to represent less than 1/5th of what North America burns today.
If we couple this with the fact that world oil production is likely to be well past peak by even 2010 with a conservative (very conservative!) decline rate of say 3%, given that the world oil production is currently about 82 million barrels per day (with the USA burning 1/4 of the world's production) then just two years of decline will wipe out what the Tar Sands ops can make available.
This means we are going to be facing a very severe energy problem in very short order.
As Dave Hughes from the Geological survey of Canada says, the good news is the oil and gas industry is going to make a lot of money. The bad news is that they might have to b