Slashdot Mirror
Truckers Choose Hydrogen Power
hipernoico writes to tell us Wired News is reporting that hundreds of semi trucks now on the roads are being partially powered by hydrogen. From the article: "These 18-wheelers make hydrogen as they go, eliminating the need for high-pressure, cryogenic storage tanks or hydrogen filling stations, which, by the way, don't yet exist. These truckers aren't just do-gooders. They like Canadian Hydrogen Energy's Hydrogen Fuel Injection, or HFI, system because it lets them save fuel, get more horsepower and, as a bonus, cause less pollution."
They like Canadian Hydrogen Energy's Hydrogen Fuel Injection, or HFI, system because it lets them save fuel, get more horsepower and, as a bonus, cause less pollution."
Could our root problem be that we consider less pollution a bonus instead of a motivating factor?
The faster and farther we get away from oil the better IMHO. I think the bonus should be the extra MPG, and the environmental impact should be the reason. We can spare a few $$$ for environmentally friendlier vehicles. I guess the real problem is, if the government does not intervene, companies will only do what will profit them, and if it does, we end up with violations of rights. Will we ever make the switch in consumer end vehicles in the long run?
Help Fight SPAM today!
You mean some cars physically disconnect the stator wheel from the crankshaft? I'm probably a bit rusty on my car mechanics, but as long as that thing is spinning you're generating electricty. That electricity has to be enough to cover the maximum current draw of the electrics system plus some headroom, so you're always generating more power than you need.
Surely it's a No Brainer that putting the excess power back into the engine (electrolysis, hydrogen, blah blah) is Good Thing.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Are we talking about perpetual motion?
...this fuel source may not be exactly the "less" polluting alternative as one may think.
No, the trucks still run mainly on diesel augmented with hydrogen.
It's less polluting because the hydrogen boosts the performance of the engine over burning diesel alone, lowers particulates, and all that good stuff. So it does pollute less, by burning the fuel more efficiently.
Wha? I always thought the stereotypical trucker was pissed about how much gas prices were cutting into their income (or the corporation was if the trucker didn't own his rig).
In either case the diesel is cutting into someones proffits and someone is eager to cut costs. Maybe the ends isn't a decrease in pollution, but it's a natural by product in using less fuel, which is a major goal for any semi-truck owner.
Conservation of energy and thermodynamics tells us that this system has to operate with a net loss in efficiency for the *same* operating conditions. Perhaps the enhanced combustion improves the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine enough to offset energy required to produce the hydrogen and yield a 10% reduction in fuel consumption.
For all the naysayers, keep in mind, these truckers make their LIVING hauling product long distances. If this didn't work, or made the overall process less effecient, they'd know it. We're talking about their own profits it would be eating into, not some mystery lab result.
Sorry, but doubt hundreds of truckers are going to do that just to help out a company that involved in "psuedo science".
Did nobody read up on this? The hydrogen helps the engine burn more of the fuel that would have been released unused. That is why you use less fuel and have lower emissions.
When will people finally figure out that causing less pollution should be a goal, not just a pretty side-effect? Unless people do, our planet is doomed.
This is not hydrogen power. Not even close. All it's doing is generating a small amount of hydrgen to make the diesel combustion more efficient and complete. This is not perpetual motion (taking energy out and putting a greater amount back into the system), it's just a bit of fancy chemistry to make the existing diesel burn better. This has nothing to do with the hydrogen fuel debate.
When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.
Or, look for failures of logic and/or math. Using your numbers, and the numbers of a reply to your post: his truck drives 4500 miles a week, and he gets about 7mpg (1200 miles on 175 gallons). 4500/7=640 gallons consumed a week; 2.75/gallon=$1767 in fuel per week.
Your numbers assumed that this device might allow for a 10% in fuel savings--that'd be $176/week, or x4=$707/month, or very close to what the article estimated the savings were--$700/month. On a $14K device, you'd make it back in 20 months or so-although I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?
The only ones suggesting that there is some magic in the hydrogen didn't RTFA. It was pretty clear to me, at least, that the extra power/fuel savings isn't from the hydrogen burn itself, but that the energy released by that burn allowed otherwise unburned (and therefore uncaptured) exhaust particulate to be consumed.
When you go to light a fire with a match, you get more energy in return than what it took to produce the match; you burn the kindling. Here we have kindling flowing out the tailpipe because it wasn't ignited--so the hydrogen is just a match. You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.
--
$tar -xvf
Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder.
Ever have a campfire? Although you had unlimited air supply, why did you have unburned logs at the conclusion of it? Answer: because the material that didn't burn didn't reach the heat needed to combust. If you took a blowtorch to those remaining logs, you may be able to get another fire going, as the particulate that didn't reach it's combustion point the first time is burned off. With enough unburned logs, you might be able to get more energy back than the blowtorch uses. Same principal here.
At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.
Or maybe he just knows what he's talking about, and doesn't draw conclusions from a single faulty premise.
--
$tar -xvf
Air normally contains (roughly) 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon, and trace amounts of a couple of dozen other molecules. This is increasing the amount of Oxygen and Hydrogen in the air entering the engine and conversely lowering the ratio of the Nitrogen, Argon and other (mostly nonvolatile) gases. This will naturally allow for a quicker, hotter, more complete burn that generates more power and less naughty parts like Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
I would imagine that the additional Oxygen provides a large chunk of the benefits, rather than it just being attributed to the Hydrogen.
They've actually invented a way to use some handy prepackaged "air for burning" (distilled water) that is (relatively) efficient and simple to make by using electrolysis. Not too much of it, because there it can be too much of a good thing. Try running an engine off pure oxygen and see what you get. You'd still get explosions, but they'd likely be uncontained this time around. The amount of electricity to electrolyse a lot of water would be quite counter-productive anyway.
I would imagine you could get much of the same results if you could figure out a way to filter some of the Nitrogen out of the incoming air. Unfortunately, there's no good, cheap, efficient way to do that... yet....
My point is that if it's economically ripe, the truckers will be the first to use a new form of energy. If they ain't using it, it ain't ripe (unless it's an amphetamine). Moreover, "If you got it, a truck brought it."
about $.50us/gal to produce yourself
I would like to see where you came up with this number, if truckers could produce their fuel at 1/4 the cost, I'm sure we would see bio-deisel everywhere.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Some one did not read the article. The hydrogen comes from electrolysis. This is powered by the alternator on the truck and results in some pure O2 as a byproduct. The energy ultimately come from the diesel fuel but the net result is improved efficiency.