Slashdot Mirror
Fuel Cell Powered Japanese Trains on Trial in July
ScorpFromHell writes "As per this yahoo! news item, "East Japan Railway Co. is to conduct a test run of the world's first fuel-cell-powered train in July.
The fuel cells, which generate power from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, will help reduce environmental pollution compared to the existing electric and diesel engines, the company said."
But I wonder how much energy did it consume to produce those huge amounts of Hydrogen & Oxygen? Will it be lesser than the power generated by the reaction between them?
In other words, can this technology be used by countries with not so deep pockets as Japan?"
"In other words, can this technology be used by countries with not so deep pockets as Japan?"
I think a better question would be "Why isn't the U.S. doing more to be in the forefront of promoting alternative fuel sources?
Steve,
http://tail-f.net/
Wikipedia calls it an "Electrochemcial" reaction. Which sounds a little more reasonable to me, though I suppose it can still be referred to as a plain "chemical" reaction. It just doesn't seem very precise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Cell
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
hold on a sec.... Electric train engines produce pollution? How is that possible?
Granted, a fair amount of power is lost in the transmission lines, but given that they're run at such a high voltage to begin with, that shouldn't be a huge issue (P=I^2*R). Is more power lost in the transmission process than the process necessary to manufacture and produce all this hydrogen and oxygen?
Fuel Cells are nifty as an energy storage medium, but for trains, they seem wholly inappropriate, especially when electric trains eliminate the need for a storage medium at all (and in a country as densly populated as Japan, this shouldn't be an issue at all)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You need to look into how that hydrogen is being produced. The only large scale production of hydrogen that I know of makes hydrogen from natural gas, a fossil fuel. And it is amazingly wasteful and inefficent, and as dirty as burning natural gas or gasoline in a motor veichle. Although it does allow one to relocate the polution from a given area, it contributes even more to global warming than older technologies.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
But that's largely irrellevant if the energy to produce them was derived from an energy source that is not exausted by use, such as solar, hydro, or geothermal sources.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What, rich people should do things that are economically stupid?
It's not about this being stupidly inefficient, yet Japan can afford to do it anyway because they're rich. The question is, which is a more efficient use of electricity (or, more generally,. resources), running an electric train, or running a hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell train? Whether you're rich or poor, you should still use the technology that works best for you.
I think it might have occurred to someone in Japan to check and see if this is better than running a conventional electric train in otherwise similar conditions before building it. Although it's quite possible they didn't care. It could be like ethanol in the US, which is used for political reasons, not because it's an efficient way to improve the environment. Depending on who's counting, it generates between .7 and 1.5 times as much power as it consumes to make. We could reduce pollution (including carbon emissions) much more by spending the money we spend on ethanol on nuclear power, solar arrays, or wind power. Ethanol fuel, in it's present state, is government graft to benefit corn farmers and ease the conscience of environmentalists who don't understand it.
I am interested to know if this train really is about a great new technology for saving the environment, or a political ambition.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
More energy is still cheaper and more "green" if you are getting it from nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, etc. It's also trivially easy to charge them off-peak, when the energy is cheaper to produce because it's available in excess.
4X wouldn't be a good number, but even 2X would work-out just fine, and there's no reason to assume it's anywhere near that bad, anyhow.
Yes, it certainly is. Even when you count the line losses, charger losses, battery losses, etc., you still come out ahead of burning gasoline directly. Besides that, your car doesn't have complex exhaust filtering and control systems, as power plants do. And, NIMBY should apply here, since the power plants can be far away from you, and polluting where there are far, far fewer people to be affected by it.
Electric cars would likely be charged at night, as well, when a much lower percentage of that power is comming from coal, and more is comming from hydro, wind, etc.
No statistics from me. I've posted them to
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant