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NASA Tests Hydrogen-Fueled BMW
Rio sends us word that NASA has completed an 8-week test of a fleet of BMW luxury sedans powered by liquid hydrogen at Kennedy Space Center. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. Its engine can burn gasoline or liquid hydrogen and can switch seamlessly between the two. From the article: "One hundred BMW Hydrogen 7s have been built, and 25 are used in test programs in the US. The cars have already covered more than 1.3 million miles in test programs around the globe."
Hydrogen may be clean to use and get, but is it energy efficient to use it?
If patriotism is racist, is racism patriotic?
Quote: "and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent,"
OK, where did the other 10% come from?
Even if they do come out, unless they sticker under $40k, nobody's going to buy them. Nice idea, but way too impractical.
but why does NASA need a fleet of luxury BMW sedans?
I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration.
Yes you do. You want it to be able to get above 60mph and do that in a reasonably small amount of time (say, less than 20 seconds?). Otherwise, you'll never be able to take it on the interstate or most roads due to the slow speed or bitched at at lights when the light turns green.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
What's the cost per mile for the fuel? It seems to me that the practical consideration that makes or breaks any technology for oil replacement is the cost per mile of the fuel. What ever that cost is, it's got to come pretty close to gasoline if anyone expects a majority of people to make the switch.
I suspect with all the research into ethanol, and the availability of dual fuel ethanal/gas cars, ethanol will get there first. I have certainly read/heard of crunchy rich enviromental types who already use ethanol just to get the look-at-me-i'm-not-polluting holier-than-thou feeling. Is suspect as ethanol gets cheaper, that population will grow, funding more research and better delivery infrastructure. It seems as if it should work similarly to consumer goods where the early adopters pay the premium for new technology and eventually the price drops and then the rest of the population jumps on the bandwagon.
Yay for hydrogen and nasa though.
This is not to mention the life cycle of the vehicle itself. The manufacturing of hydrogen vehicles can be 3 times more detrimental to the environment than the manufacturing of a gas powered vehicle.
Clearly we are on the right path to less impact on the environment from vehicles, but it really depends on how nations/corporations choose to get their hydrogen fuel. Putting all the emissions in one location rather than from millions of cars is a good start.
Do you get the feeling that manufacturers are stumbling around in the dark a bit when it comes to replacing the 'classic' automobile? "Gosh, Juergen... let's run our century old internal combustion engine on a new fuel! We should make it unnecessarily large and capable of blinding (and unnecessary) performance! Ausgezeichnet!!" and off they go to spend millions on an idea that isn't sensible in the grand scheme of things. It would be far better to rethink the automobile altogether. It's possible to design something very small and lightweight - like the www.twike.com - except with the benefit of hundreds of millions of euros design and research. A true "personal" vehicle would be far easier to propel with electricity or extremely small internal combustion engines. It would also require significantly less fossil fuel to manufacture (because we can't make plastic out of hydrogen...)
I can hear the naysayers now: "But it'd get squashed by a Hummer." or, "I need a high performance car." But the reality is that *if* scientists are right and we've reached Peak Oil, fuel is going to get incredibly expensive and shortages will become a regular occurrence. Once that happens, companies will start to aggressively compete to create a solution and the car will evolve into something that fits the new reality of a fossil fuel depleted world.
I don't think adapting existing designs t hydrogen is the answer for one moment - the infrastructure would cost billions, the technology would cost billions, and it doesn't solve the root problems: 1. Our transportation devices are wasteful and 2. We're turning a blind eye to the benefits of mass transportation, and 3. Planned obsolescence has trained generations of vehicle purchasers to devalue six or seven year old cars as "old" and replace them unnecessarily.Try getting on a highway/freeway where everyone else is going 65+ MPH (don't have the KPH conversions right now) and you will care about how much acceleration the car you are in has. Unless you like causing accidents. You are (well should be) responsible for getting your car up to the speed limit as quickly and safely as possible.
There are speed up lanes most people I see go slow in the speed up lane, then stop at the end of it. Then they try to merge. This is not in rush hour!
I do see you point though. I have no need to have a car that does 120+ MPH. If the max speed of a car is 80 MPH, it is fast enough to get on the highway without me losing a few years on my life, and get good mileage (over 40 MPG would be great), and I can load my stuff when I travel I am fine with it.
Run your electrolysis off nuclear plants. Boom a zero CO2 emission cycle.
"OH BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE" you say. Who cares? Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun.
Nuclear is the source solution to most of our energy problems. If the general public was not so misinformed and paranoid about it, and did not have so much of a "not in my backyard" syndrome, we'd be much better off right now.
The problem with hydrogen today is that most of it is made from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, so the process of making pure hydrogen releases CO2. Also, I would think moving to a fuel cell would be much more efficient than an internal combustion engine, though at this time more expensive.
Sadly right now I have not seen any affordable technologies that can eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels for cars (though electric cars are coming down). We can't grow enough ethanol to fill our tanks (over 20% of all corn in the US goes to making ethanol, and the national average of ethanol use in fuel is about 3%).
Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a fuel. It still is not that practical as a fuel since it requires refrigerating it to a very low temperature or compressing it to a very high pressure (both of which require a fair amount of energy to do). And hydrogen loves to leak. It will seep through the smallest holes and has a habit of making metal brittle.
-Aaron
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Slow drivers don't cause accidents - idiots who aren't aware of their surroundings and/or are agressive with their driving do. When did it become OK to drive like your a member of NASCAR on public streets? It's real fun when you're on a motorcycle going 65MPH, and there's some jackhead close enough behind you in a SUV and you can hear that he has a lifter ticking in his engine...
I still think the compressed air powered car looks the most promising. And I think we should focus on producing and delivering cheap electricity, then base our transportation on that.
You checked wrong. Your standard automotive engine is around 20% efficient[1]. Fossil fuel plants vary based upon their design but typically are in 35-40% efficient range[2]. In addition, power stations will have better pollution controls than an automobile.
References:
The solution we need to be working towards is more nuclear for the power generation and hydrogen generated from electrolysis for use in mobile applications.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
Drivers that vary greatly from the average speed of traffic do cause accidents. It's not a matter of who is causing the speed differential, it's the differential itself that is the problem.
The CO2 generated during the CH4 split process can be collected and used as raw material for some industrial applications. But the CO2 generated from our car's engine can't be collected. This is the difference.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Because the American automaker execs are too busy spending time and money lobbying against efficiency and emissions legislation to actually have the time and money to do R&D for efficiency and emissions improvements?
just an analog boy living in a digital age.