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."

Comments

How efficient are they?

[ThatFunkyMunki]

Hydrogen may be clean to use and get, but is it energy efficient to use it?

Re:How efficient are they?

[Monkey]

According to the specs on this car, it uses 3.6 kg of hydrogen per 100 km.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Ginger Unicorn]

so that's $7.20 per 100km. Or £3.55 for 62 miles in english. Equivalent in petrol about 62 mpg. That's not bad at all.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Opportunist]

Well, how "clean" is it, really?

I'm not an expert on H2 refining, but the methods I know either create quite nasty and poisonous waste products or need incredible amounts of power. So unless we got some very clean and efficient way to generate power to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one. And unless I didn't sleep through physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells me that this better be some really, really clean way of generating H2.

It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.

Now, it might be more efficient if you convert energy large scale than in the small scale of a combustion engine. But the question remains: Where do we get clean H2? H2 isn't available naturally on earth. It has to be refined out of molecules containing it. Water would offer itself, being quite abundant and cheap, and all that's required to get H2 out of water is electricity. Which gets us back to the question, how do we get clean electricity?

Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Monkey]

And to lamely reply to my own comment, this article at Motor Trend has a FAQ about liquid hydrogen in the context of using it to power automobiles.

According TFA, 1 kg of H2 has roughly the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. The cost per kg is estimated at $3.50 /kg using the natural gas reformation process to create it or $6.50 /kg using electrolysis. This cost is expected to drop if there is widespread adoption of the fuel source.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Chris Burke]

And unless I didn't sleep through physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells me that this better be some really, really clean way of generating H2.

It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.

The 2nd Law says nothing about how efficient a process is, only that it will not be 100%.

A power plant is more efficient than an automobile ICE. Even if both are burning hydrocarbons dug up from the ground, the power plant will be more efficient and produce less pollution largely due to the scale. It's much easier to add expensive and heavy scrubbers to a coal plant smoke stack than to the exhaust system of a car. It's easier to make an efficient engine when the weight of the engine is not a concern.

So your 95% efficient electric engine times a 40% efficient coal plant is better than your 35% efficient ICE with much better emissions controls to boot. And that's using coal, which I'm certainly not a fan of.

Which leads me to the big advantage of electricity-based transportation (whether it's electric batteries or electrically produced hydrogen from water) which is that once you have decoupled power generation from transportation, when you bring online new environmentally friendly power plants you can use this new source seamlessly with no disruption to the transportation infrastructure. Already we're producing far more "green" electricity in this country than we are using "clean" transportation, and this has happened without you even having to be aware when you flick the light switch. We should be so lucky as to be able to do the same with transportation.

Basically what I'm saying is that electric/hydrogen power has efficiency and environmental advantages now, but also has the potential for vast improvements in the future and that's even if you keep the exact same car!

Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.

If you're going to look at the environmental cost of solar power, then you should include the environmental cost of acquiring oil. Adding every cost associated with ICE-based cars or coal power plants certainly do not make them look better compared to solar power.

And what's wrong with wind power again? It's not bird deaths, those were never any more than city office buildings produce, and new designs that discourage nesting on the turbines has put it in the noise.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Mr. Bad Example]

> So unless we got some very clean and efficient way to generate power
> to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one.

A man.

Some water.

A very, very sharp axe.

(And yes, it's patented, so no stealing my idea, you insensitive clods.)

Re:How efficient are they?

[BytePusher]

Fortunately however, they will begin placing satellites in UELEO(Ultra Extreme Low Earth Orbit) anywhere in the US for about as much as a few tanks of gasoline. This simply involves piloting the new BMW UELEO vehicle to the desired location and depositing the UELEO satellite in UELEO. An added benefit is that UELEO Satellites require no altitude repositioning mechanism because gravity and normal forces cancel providing a static and stable orbit. Another benefit is that owners of UELEO satellites may maintain the satellites themselves as UELEO is easily accesible by the millions of UELEO vehicles already in use. Many experts are anticipating however, NASA will face fierce competition from current private sector UELEO deploying organizations such as UPS and FedEx.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Chabil Ha']

Is it efficiency that we're after or dependence on, say, oil? As long as oil (or some other foreign nonrenewable resource) wasn't heavily involved in the process of creating the H2, isn't that a plus? As much as the sky is falling over what we're doing to the environment, shouldn't we overcome the issue of renewable energy before we focus on what it does to the environment?

Re:How efficient are they?

[JustNiz]

>> So a trace gas in the atmosphere is directly responsible for environmental damage?

Yes. It increases global warming.
Oh wait, are you one of those die-hard Americans who refuse to believe that global warming is caused by human activity because it means you'd have to take responsibility to do something?

*boggle*

[ubrgeek]

> hold-the-lox
What the heck does smoked whitefish have to do with this story? Or am I missing something?

Re:*boggle*

[FuzzyDaddy]

lox is smoked salmon. Whitefish is something different.

Re:*boggle*

[rah1420]

At the risk of your setting the hook, "LOX" is rocket-speak for liquid oxygen (the oxidizer side of rocket fuel that uses LH2 as the fuel.)

emissions

[slapout]

"same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent"

In that case, we should all be driving space shuttles to work.

Re:emissions

[ben_thompson21]

I think the important thing to remember in all this is that hydrogen is effectively a battery technology and is not a fuel source. The earth has few reserves of hydrogen - it has to be created by electrolysis of water which requires a lot of power. There are other small-scale methods such as fractional distillation of air but I hope you get my point. It's simply weight efficient and cheaper for motor transport to store the energy in hydrogen that can be burned than it is in batteries. Rechargeable lithium ion batteries are expensive and the charging time may be unacceptable.

So the reductions in CO2 rather depend on whether it's more efficient or less polluting to electrolyse water using energy from power stations some of which burn oil, store the hydrogen and burn it than it is to refine oil, store it and burn it.

The emissions at the car may be reduced by 90% but the total emissions will be similar.

Re:emissions

[LWATCDR]

Actually most hydrogen is made from natural gas. It is cheaper to split CH4 than H20. What I want to know is how does this reduce CO2 emissions by just 80%? Burning H2 should produce NO Co2 except what was already in the air and what little you might get from burning any free CO or hydrocarbons that are naturally in the atmosphere. Heck I don't know if LH2 is lighter and cheaper than batteries.
While cool I don't expect to see LH2 cars any time soon.

Re:emissions

[cyfer2000]

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.

Finally, action movies are vindicated

[BlackCobra43]

We finally have cars that are actually likely to explode violently when shot! Stallones, Schawrzneggers and Norrises of the world rejoice!

Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent,"

OK, where did the other 10% come from?

Solution to Global Warming!

[Antarius]

The solutions is right here:

The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent

If this remarkable fuel powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, then simply send up more space shuttles! Duh!

If we send up a shuttle per year, we can pollute as much as we like! The plants will take care of the other 10%!

We're in the minority

[iknownuttin]

Hydrogen may be clean to use and get, but is it energy efficient to use it?

FTFA:The V12 cylinder engine delivers 260 hp; the top speed of the Hydrogen 7 is 143 mph and acceleration 0-60 mph is 9.2 sec.

I had a similar question: "What are the operating costs?"
But unfortunately for those of us who are more interested in efficiency are in the minority; so car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery.
I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ironsides]

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.

Re:We're in the minority

[Usquebaugh]

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.

Re:We're in the minority

[Usquebaugh]

Bullshit

Having driven/ridden on the autobahn at speeds up to 165mph I can tell you the speed differential is not safe. Closing on a car with 80mph speed differential is crazy stupid, passing at that differential is asking for an early grave. Trying to judge if they've seen you are they going to stay in lane, reducing speed just in case. The only safe thing to do is roll off the throttle miles away and pass doing no more than 20mph more and then wind back on the throttle.

Now when the road is empty it's some of the best riding in Europe, hour after hour of very fast riding on immaculate road surfaces. Passing police bikes/cars and not having to worry. Stopping off in small villages for great food and beer. The only times have had anything remotely similar is riding through Nevada and Utah, but still you had to watch out for the revenue generators.

Internal Combustion!

[josquint]

I like the fact that it uses a standard(ish) internal combustion engine. Most of the work seems to be focused on fuel-cell/electric vehicles. While eleectric is probably the eventual future, I think dual-fuel systems like this would be a very good transition.

Not to mention i rather like my rough loud piston engine... sometimes. Granted, I will be weined off and eventually learn to like the quiet boring (but REALLY high torque) electric motor.

It was weird enought driving the company hybrid with CVT transmission, no shift points and odd engine RPM sequences makes driving less-than-intuitive. I find myself having to look at the speedometer far more with that than any other car.

i'm all for new tech

[acvh]

but why does NASA need a fleet of luxury BMW sedans?

Inside the box

[Dzimas]

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.

Solution to the H2 problem

[E 99]

Using earth-based H2 power doesn't make a lot of sense, since there's no real energy-efficient way to make it. However, what if we (seriously) built enormous space tankers capable of making the trip to Jupiter and scraping H2 out of the surface of its atmosphere and compressing it into liquid to bring back ginormous amounts to earth? It's a long round-trip, but if there was a fleet making continuous deliveries, at some point this would scale to to the point where it was an incredibly cheap form of energy. The only real downside, is we're making the Earth no longer a closed system -- what will be the long-term effect of the added H2? Will the world's algae keep up with the loss of oxygen as we burn all of that?

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[brunes69]

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.

Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[AaronW]

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

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[BobMcD]

GOOD LORD! You want to fling Nuclear Waste into the SUN??? Have you tested this? What if it generates a Teenage Mutant Ninja Sun?!?!?!?

I like Pizza, but COME ON!

And to the other guy that wants to fling it at our intergalactic neighbors, well, you get to be the one who explains it to them when they come a-knocking!