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New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
An anonymous reader writes to mention Boeing has successfully completed tests for the engine that will power HALE, the new prop plane that will be able to stay aloft for long periods of time. "The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus and apparently exceeded their expectations on fuel economy. Chris Haddox at Boeing's Advanced Systems said that while it will be several years before HALE flies, the key to this aircraft is the propulsion system and this recent test was very promising."
What sort of mileage does a Taurus get at 65000 feet?
liqbase
The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight
This must be why the average fuel economy of American cars continues to suck so much dirt, all of the engineers are working on high altitude aircraft engines for use in the upcoming (any day now) FLYING version of the Ford Taurus...yeah.
New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
Oh, the humanity!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
How about that, I didn't know that Ford's new Taurus could fly that high. The last time I tried to get a Taurus to fly, I could only get about 3 feet off the ground and usually ended up shoving the front suspension through the hood upon landing.
My, how far they've come with car technology these days...
Boeing: Building a Better Big Brother
Hate to be the downer of the party, but that's the way our leaders think. Gain the "high ground."
Would've never guessed that fuel efficiency was prized more by military than civilian customers. Or is there some subsidy for "green" fuels in some Defense appropriations bill?
So, the fuel economy would go up with less fuel in the tank? Is this the reason why my wife always seems to drive her Taurus around with the fuel gauge always on "E"?
You people need to stop feeding this sort of stuff to the mechanically inept. I mean, it took me two hours to explain there was no such thing as "blinker fluid" to her friend the other day.
Hydrogen! Yay! It's everywhere - heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen - meaning it is safe and plentiful and when you burn it all you get is water! But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water? At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age: LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing. Hell, it's not even easy to store the corrosive stuff.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
"And despite its light appearance, the aircraft will be able to carry a 2,000-pound multi-sensor payload, plus a custom fender, flame stickers for an extra speed punch and/or synthetic leather finish."
:-)
Cool! I didn't know those sorts of add-on options worked for planes too!
How much energy does it take to produce the hydrogen?
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's an energy storage system, and not a very good one.
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The diareses should be taken away from wünderengine, where they don't belong, would come in handy on "über(yourexpression)" where they would be more correct.
You just won't buy the fuckers.
Deleted
I have to wonder how this works. Hydrogen engines that I have heard of are supposed to carry out the reaction of
2(H2) + (O2) -> 2(H2O)
But this of course requires oxygen to happen. Is there much oxygen available at 65,000 feet? Consider even Mount Everest is in the neighborhood of 29,000 feet, and life (generally) needs supplemental oxygen at that altitude. If there is barely enough for life at less than 30,000, is there actually enough for combustion when you're more than twice as far above sea level?
I also wonder what happens to the exhaust at that altitude. What becomes of water under those conditions? I'm not a pilot of any sort, so I don't know what happens in that part of the atmosphere.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Does the military need yet another airplane to carry bombs? This is a prop-engine plane we're talking about, designed to stay aloft for long periods, but I doubt it moves fast (relatively speaking, of course). I suspect that, for the problem of ordinance delivery, the Military already has superior solutions to that problem.
Your statement would have been very insightful, oh, say, 100 years ago, when the Wright Bros. biplane first got off the ground at Kitty Hawk.
Hydrogen power is the environmentally friendly codeword for nuclear power. It's a hoax and the greens are eating it up. Face it, it's just a fancy battery.
Personally I think nukes are the way to go so I don't complain ... much.
TCAP-Abort
For aircraft developers, the advantage of hydrogen has always been that it delivers more energy per weight unit than traditional hydrocarbon fuels. The matching disadvantage is that because of its low density, it is much bulkier, so requires bigger and heavier fuel tanks. Temperature is also an issue with pro and cons. On the one hand, LH2 is very cold, so ice formation on the skin of the aircraft can be an issue. On the other hand, LH2 is still chemically stable at high temperatures that would turn fossil fuels into a nasty sludge, or even break down hydrocarbon molecules before they can be properly burned. All that always made LH2 a very suitable fuel for a big rocket or for the hypothetical Mach 4 space plane. Its use on a slow high-altitude UAV poses very different challenges.
The best thing about moving to a hydrogen fuel, is that it can be produced by all of our energy production. So when the fossil fuels run out, we can keep using our technology with the nuclear plants generating the gas, as well as the hydrogen and electric hybrids that look very promising. (Zeppelin jokes aside).
Though for this to be a realistic goal, we (America) need to start building new plants now, to the scale of France. And funding fusion research as well wouldn't hurt. At this moment, Nuclear energy is stagnate in America. We haven't built a new reactor in ages, and the old ones are being bought by those running them 24/7 at full load, just begging for a meltdown.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Why it's not called der Wündermaschin?
You know what other aircraft was hydrogen powered? THE HINDENBURG! *hides under the desk*
Hydrogen fueled engine in the stratosphere for days at a time, eh?
...
So we're talking injecting tons of water vapor into the stratosphere - where it can produce long-lasting high-altitude clouds.
They'd be thin. But they'd do a DANDY job of reflecting sunlight.
Cloud reflectivity is a FAR greater forcing function of temperature than greenhouse gas.
So use of this plane could cause significant (wait for it)
GLOBAL COOLING!
Ice ages! Oh, Horrors!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
TFA is light on details. You might be interested to know that this is a hydrogen-burning internal combustion engine, not a hydrogen fuel cell.
BMW has also been developing hydrogen ("Wasserstoff") burning internal combustion engines: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/09/12/bmw-officially-announces-the-bmw-hydrogen-7
Due to the sky-high price of fuel cells, the good ol' internal combustion engine might turn out to be the most practical way to use hydrogen fuel, for the forseeable future.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus...
Heck, I'm surprised a Taurus can go 12 miles without a breakdown...
Because we all know that FORD stands for Found On Road Dead.
(Ducks!)
Thanks, folks, I'll be here all day...
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You must be using a strange definition of corrosive. Most people think of corrosion as some set of oxidative reactions, which result in the accumulation of a product on a surface which has significantly less strength and/or toughness than the "parent" material. The conversion into product results in less effective area or volume for withstanding stress.
Atomic hydrogen can embrittle some materials, but usually there is no product produced. The hydrogen is "dissolved" in the material. The effect on the material is a volume effect, not a surface effect. The result is almost completely a toughness reduction. Strength reduction is not typically a problem.
Seems that very few people work the total cost per mile of any fuels. I've seen only 1 study that mentions that for any vehicle.
... http://jdpfu.com:60080/#%5B%5BThoughts%20On%20Energy%5D%5D
Here's an article on "well to wheel" costs http://www.memagazine.org/mepower03/gauging/gauging.html
I've thought through this and run a few numbers over the last few years. Ethanol is simply stupid. The conversion costs are too high. Hydrogen is worse, **unless** the power to convert water into H2 is renewable, cheap, and locally produced. No large company will support that infrastructure since it removes their reoccurring profits.
Sadly, the solution will have to be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Steps:
1) electric car - done, but not in numbers or distances acceptable to consumers
2) rechargeable at home cars - say 4-6 hours to recharge
3) create hydrogen at home to power as much as possible (solar or wind or other conversion)
4) Recharge / refuel car in less than 5 minutes.
5) convert electric cars into hybrid electro-hydrogen cars
6) 300+ mile range - hydrogen comes in here
7) build hydrogen storage facilities (gas station replacements), but with most homes producing their own hydrogen, there will be many more sources.
Without hydrogen being produced decentralized, we'll be back where we are today with big oil or big auto makers doing everything they can to ensure parts are needed every 3,000 miles. When was the last time an electric car needed an oil change?
I know I've missed something really important AND sadly, where I live, wind power will never work. There's no river or creek nearby for hydroelectric power either. If you've made it this far and want to think a little deeper, there's more here
All use Jet A1... Or near as damn it.
Except motorcycles, and they developed one which would run on it for that reason.
Deleted
Ford Deluxe Option package A: Assorted Squeaks and Rattles.
Interestingly, 1995 was the last year Ford offered Deluxe Option package A as a standalone option. Subsequent years included bundled option packages such as:
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More survived than died. IIRC, of the 100 or so people on board, only about 30 died. Almost all of the deaths were from jumping. When it caught fire, people panicked and jumped; the ground is what killed them. Almost everybody who rode the ship to the ground lived to tell their tale. It was a relatively slow and controlled crash, and the flames were all above the people and billowing upward. Try that with an jetliner.
The reason the Hindenburg disaster is remembered so fervently is that it was the first transportation accident covered in mass-media audio/video distribution. Bloody everybody has heard Herbert Morrison's "Oh the humanity". These days, the general population would hardly bat an eye, but at the time, it was unprecedented.
The real tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster is that the world gave up on lighter-than-air craft, perceiving hydrogen-filled balloons as inherently dangerous. In fact, it's very likely it would have been safer than conventional fixed-wing jetliners. You don't fall out of the sky due to engine failure in an airship. Meanwhile, a blimp on approach hold uses drastically less fuel. Sure, they're nowhere near as fast as jets, but they would have made a great complimentary technology.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Ford's in his flivver, all's well with the world.
http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2006/3rd_quarter/QinetiQ_s_Zephyr_UAV_achieves_flight_record.html The aircraft uses a combination of solar array and rechargeable batteries and, when fully developed, is expected to operate for months at a time at an altitude above 50,000 feet But i wonder if combining solar with hydrogen would be possible for such projects.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It's fine trying to sound suave and all, but it kinda breaks the illusion when you mix in "röckdöts". Or maybe, just maybe, that wasn't on purpose?
"Good news, everyone!"
This discussion you're having reminds me very much of the thousands of paper balloon bombs that Japan sent across the ocean (to the US) during WWII. It's not very well known, but it's there if you look for it.
"Good news, everyone!"
Hydrogen is not and never has been a proposed solution for energy generation. It is a proposed solution for energy transport. Imagine the following scenario
- We perfect launching payloads into space with hydrogen engines
- We launch an orbital power power station that uses solar energy (at a much higher efficiency than we can get planet-side) to produce hydrogen from launched water payloads.
- Periodically we launch up a water payload and bring down a hydrogen payload.
There you go. Closed loop cycle for perfectly clean energy thanks to the Sun.
You can also substitute hydrogen launching of the payloads with electromagnetic slingshot launching if you want.
Won't help SouthWest Airlines up&down flights very much, but would be a big help in the long-haul across the [Big] Pond.
>>> most of these options would be considerably more expensive than the present energy sources
Wind is cost-competitive with coal and gas. We're on track to have 10% of total world electricity generation come from wind in about 2020 (based on fitting a logistic adoption curve to either the capacity or capacity-addition data).