Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have a bright idea — at least at first sight. They want to create a sustainable transportation system by using hydrogen-powered cars. They would like to create an infrastructure where people could use a liquid fuel for driving while the carbon emission in their vehicles is trapped for later processing at a fueling station. 'The carbon would then be shuttled back to a processing plant where it could be transformed into liquid fuel.' Where will all this liquid carbon be stored? The researchers don't know. They suggest that it could be stored in geological formations or under the oceans."

Comments

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

like no one has ever thought of that before.

What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[KublaiKhan]

The carbon-fibre industry's been taking off like a rocket, and we keep studying those nanotubes. The manufacturers are going to need carbon to make 'em. Why waste time and money burying it under the ocean or in the middle of a mountain?

Waste not, want not.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Zymergy]

Combustion Carbon will be in the form of Carbon Monoxide (CO) and/or Carbon Dioxide (CO2). We do not have technology to create solid forms of carbon (quickly enough) to be useful on a passenger vehicle. (but that would be cool)
Both of these waste carbon gases (CO2 and CO) require significant refrigeration with high compression to store them in any significant quantity and that, my friends, *Requires tremendous Energy*. The work of "sequestering" the Carbon and storing it will eat away any profits in the manufacturing of and efficiency of the vehicle and it will add complexity to an already complex piece of machinery. Not to mention there will have to be one or more pressurized vessels (think explosion, frostbite, and suffocation hazards potentials too).
Carbon Sequestering is a pipe dream (thermodynamically) but it is great for getting venture capital from those investors who have not studied and understood the principles of thermodynamics and basic organic chemistry and who also want to claim that they are investing in "green" technology. (And there may just be tax breaks for such obvious non-competitive investments like 'Sequestering' to the 'Fossil Fuels Industries'??)
"Carbon Sequestering" is really only handy (though still very efficient) if you happen to be talking about a sessile terrestrial power installation over a suitable subterranean geological Carbon gas receiving reservoir. Like this one: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/03/1845204&from=rss (A budget increase from 1.0 Billion to 1.8 Billion proves its inefficiency alone, and that's before you consider how much more fuel is required to capture all of the HOT exhaust and cool it down to the point it could be compressed and injected into exhausted/abandoned Oil or gas 'injection' wells.

The "Oceans" basically make CaCO3 (Calcium Carbonate) out of CO2 and CO (with the help of Trillions of organisms) and it falls to the ocean floor and becomes rock eventually. This is the PRIMARY carbon "sink" on the planet. I would put more research into helping that process (oceanic Carbon capturing) and focus on Electric Cars powered by Hydrogen cells and NOT Hydrocarbons and not Hydrogen combustion engines... they are too inefficient. Carbon is simply not needed in the fuel cycle. (Unless you want fuel cells that run off of Natural Gas (Methane/Ethane AKA CH4/C2H5) or some form of Alcohol (Methanol/Ethanol AKA CH3OH/C2H5OH)).
Ultimately, using electricity to power the car's electric motor is the only truly efficient way to go (as of today)... It is only a matter of whether it is powered from a battery that is charged with electricity from the grid (preferably Nuclear and/or Hydroelectric), from an internal generator burning fuel (like modern diesel/electric Trains), and/or capacitors, solar cells, or small nuclear reactors... Burning Carbon-containing fuels (from whatever source...but note: they *WILL be from Fossil Fuels* as long as they are cheaper) is just more of the same since the invention of the combustion heat engine. It is business as usual.. Using Corn to make alcohol is a pretend market that will utterly fail without the heavy government subsidies it is seeing. (Research ADM and its lobbying efforts.)

Carbon Sequestering is really interesting, but it requires TOO MUCH energy to do.. Last time I checked, you use about 2 Watts of power to remove about 1 Watt of heat from your home/office using efficient air conditioning. What will it require in energy to remove the heat and to compress (compression releases MORE heat BYW) the exhaust of a car buring some Carbon-containing fuel? Exactly. Electric is the ONLY way to!

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

and focus on Electric Cars powered by Hydrogen cells and NOT Hydrocarbons and not Hydrogen combustion engines... they are too inefficient.

You talk about efficiency and advocate hydrogen fuel cells in the same sentence? You do realize that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are extremely inefficient, right? At low loads, fuel cell vehicles are typically 46% efficient at turning hydrogen in the tank into wheel torque and 36% in the NEDC driving cycle. On top of that, you have generation losses (modern power plants are 40-50%, older ~30%, and possibly up to 60% in the future), transmission losses (7.2% average in the US), electrolysis losses (80-85% efficiency if done in the most efficient manner possible, regeneratively on hot steam). Which makes hydrogen worse than gasoline in terms of a carbon footprint. You can also make it from methane reforming, but that's no better. You can grow it from bacteria, but that costs an utter fortune. There are direct sunlight to hydrogen cells, but they are expensive, very inefficient, and break down quickly.

The hydrogen economy is simply unrealistic. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of promise in electric vehicles.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Zymergy]

You make a very good point, Thank You. I do not disagree, I should have re-read the post before submitting
Hydrogen Fuel Cells are not as efficient as what I would consider to be "Efficient" either. BUT, they are more efficient than the burning any Carbon-containing fuel in order to spin a generator or to spin a drive shaft. I was thinking of Hydrogen fuel cells as being more efficient than the mechanical "heat engines", but you are absolutely right. (plus fuel cells have to have ultra-purified fuel stock and the membranes breakdown and become even less efficient, etc...

I am hopeful that the new Lithium-Silicon-Nanowire Batteries as discussed here recently will make the rechargeable storage-battery to electric motor-powered passenger vehicles efficient and practical: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/16/027236
A Toyota Prius with one of these new batteries (about the same size/weight as the existing Toyota Lithium Ion battery module) would have a range of over 300 miles per recharge (about the range of a standard fuel tank's worth of gasoline and farther still if one pulled out the gas engine and added more battery capacity under the hood too).

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

Do realize that those batteries don't provide a 10x increase in energy density. After the first charge, the capacity drops to only 8x. Furthermore, it's only an anode advancement, so it would only provide a 2-3x increase in battery density. Of course, in pure electric vehicles, that's good enough to put them on range-parity with gasoline. Other techs that have the potential to do the same are lithium vanadium oxide and barium titaniate ultracapacitors.

Also, two neat things happen as you increase the energy density. Unless they cost a lot more to manufacture, you lower the cost per stored watt at the same time. Also, you reduce the number of charge/discharge cycles they need to be able to tolerate, since a single charge/discharge cycle takes you further. Then factor in mass production on top of that all...

Yeah, the future for EVs looks pretty good right now.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Wow, all that carbon will make a lot of nano tubes. Think of how fast the internet will get! Of course, you can only send really small web pages...

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[khallow]

Eh, while electric engines are somewhat more efficient than internal combustion or hydrogen fuel cell, they aren't that impressive. They have the same power generation inefficiency and higher transmission losses than hydrogen. Then toss in the considerably lower energy density of electricity storage and even though you might get more wheel torque from the original source, the vehicle is going to be heavier than a fuel cell driven vehicle (even though the latter will probably have some sort of electricity storage as well).

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Bucky340]

Did you even read the article? They're talking about onboard reformation of hydrocarbon fuels--which don't necessarily have to come from petroleum. Granted, fuel cell technology still has a way to go, but this system has great promise, much better than the idea of using compressed hydrogen. Using a hydrocarbon fuel with onboard reformation is much better for distribution with existing infrastructure. Heck, solid oxide fuel cells--if you can get them cool enough--would be even simpler and carbon neutral if your hydrocarbon source came from biomass.

So are you negative about this because it's Georgia Tech? Hate greenies? Or are you an Ubergreen of the "all we need is solar and cannabis" variety?

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[mlts]

Another thing that the hydrogen/fuel cell "economy" is missing is the fact that there are virtually zero hydrogen fueling stops. The cost to put in hundreds of thousands of H2 pumps and the infrastructure to haul the liquid H2 to the corner gas station will be enormous.

Electric cars? Got a 120VAC or a 240VAC outlet? Its not that simple because 120VAC won't charge a car's batteries quickly (though its viable for overnight use.) However, adding circuits and having people standardize on a charging mechanism for cars when parked in parking lots is a lot simpler than the tanks, transportation, and specialized fuel dispensing systems needed for hydrogen. The technology for bringing electricity to every car in a parking lot does exist -- Many Alaskan shops and businesses have plugs for customers to plug in their engine heaters because at -20 (F) and below, the oil starts solidifying in the car.

I look forward to electric cars. In a lot of cities, 100% of power comes from wind and solar, so its not shifting the carbon to another source. Slow charging can be done at home, fast charging (especially with supercap batteries that can charge very quickly) can be done at the normal filling stations, so the existing gas stations won't be losing market anytime soon.

I don't look forward to a hydrogen economy, and the bugs and hassles a vastly new fuel infrastructure will bring with it. Not to mention the fact that someone has to pay the cost of sinking the H2 tanks underground in tens of thousands of gasoline stations... and that will end up being the customer.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice combination. The advantage of high energy storage in hydrocarbon fuel, combined with likely reduction of moving parts due to electric drive. But if it takes energy to store the carbon, it might be more efficient to release it and have the fuel-making plant capture carbon dioxide from the air. One can do a lot of processing when you have a nuclear power plant to power it. And they'll need nuclear power to do the fuel "recycling".

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

We already have one better than that: RV parks. RV receptacles are 240V/50A, and you can even find them in the boonies. That's enough to charge an Aptera Typ-1e's batteries from dead to full in 50 minutes. One step up from there, three-phase power sources are nationwide, so any charger that runs on three phase power could easily bring that time down to the low double digits. And obviously, installing an extra fast discharge battery pack in a given location means that you can rapid charge even big vehicles in minutes.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

Eh, while electric engines are somewhat more efficient than internal combustion or hydrogen fuel cell

Huh? What planet are you from?

* ICE: 30-35% efficiency for the engine, but due to internal losses, only about 20% efficient to the wheel well
* Fuel cell: 40-60% efficient *before* the power goes to the electric motor.
* Electric motor: 85-90% efficient in typical driving conditions (in optimal conditions, with an optimal engine, you can near 95% efficiency).

They have the same power generation inefficiency and higher transmission losses than hydrogen.

Huh? In the US, there's only an average 7.2% efficiency loss in electricity transmission. That doesn't even compare to the energy costs of making and pressurizing/pumping hydrogen.

[quote]Then toss in the considerably lower energy density of electricity storage[/quote]

Once again, huh? Hydrogen not in a storage medium will get you 250 miles, perhaps 300 at best. Li-ion present-day typically gets 200-250, but there are three different techs being worked on which each individually can 2x-3x that range (lithium vanadium oxide, silicon nanowires, and barium titanate caps). To get the range on hydrogen up, you need to either increase the pressure (which nobody wants to do), use liquid hydrogen (whole host of major, major problems that nobody wants to deal with), or use a storage medium. With a storage medium, you can get up to 300-350x (the reported range of the upcoming all-electric ZAP-X is 350mi, might I add -- and 300-350x is still way below the upcoming battery techs), but you lose even more efficiency in the process. The more hydrogen dense a storage medium, in general, the more inefficient it becomes. So, you take something that's already less efficient than an ICE, and you're making it *even worse*.

and even though you might get more wheel torque from the original source, the vehicle is going to be heavier than a fuel cell driven vehicle (even though the latter will probably have some sort of electricity storage as well).

Since when are fuel cell vehicles any lighter than electrics? The FCX weighs in at almost two tons. The Tesla Roadster's not even 1 1/2 tons.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

They're talking about onboard reformation of hydrocarbon fuels

Which is even worse. The longer the chains of hydrocarbons, the less efficient reformation is, and methane reformation is only ~65-75% efficient in industrial scales. Make a reformer smaller, and you can't recover as much of the lost heat. I'd be surprised if they get more than 30% efficiency or so on the reformation. Then you have 40-60% efficiency on the fuel cell, then factor in an electric motor, for a grand total of something like 12% efficiency, *not counting the energy used to make the biodiesel*. Might as well just burn gasoline if you're going to waste energy like that.

So are you negative about this because it's Georgia Tech? Hate greenies? Or are you an Ubergreen of the "all we need is solar and cannabis" variety

Yes, let's not talk numbers -- let's insinuate motives for disagreement and degenerate to insults.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Calinous]

"Last time I checked, you use about 2 Watts of power to remove about 1 Watt of heat from your home/office using efficient air conditioning"
      I haven't measured anything, but my 9000BTU air conditioner uses about 1,000W max power. Those 9,000BTU per day are about 3,000W, so by the numbers, it would be 1:3.
      Anyway, this efficiency decreases when the difference in temperature increases (if your air conditioner cools inside to 25C and outside is 30C, it has a higher efficiency than cooling to 22C when outside is 42C

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[khallow]

Let's try this again. First, in the vehicle, electric motors are maybe twice as efficient as a fuel cell. Second, as mentioned early, making hydrogen from electolysis is around 85% efficient with minor losses from pressurizing and pumping hydrogen. That's because most of the energy of pressurization can be recycled by the time it gets used in the vehicle. I figure 90-95% is reasonable depending on how much of the energy of pressurization can be recovered (if it's in the car, it's ptobably going to be far lower). Meanwhile we have at least a 7% hit from electricity transmission for electric engines plus losses from rectification (2-5%). I don't see the electric motor being a factor of two better in efficiency. It sounds like a lot, but energy cost is a surprisingly small part of the total cost of the vehicle especially with the efficiencies we're discussing here.

And again hydrogen has much higher energy density than any electricity storage. Googling around, I'm seeing at least a factor of 5 better just for pressurized hydrogen (over supercaps). And the FCX versus Tesla comparison is flawed. The FCX is a somewhat light but standard 4 passenger car while the Tesla is a 2 person convertible. The Tesla is also in excess of $80,000 while the FCX will be competing with mundane gas powered cars and has to be a lot cheaper.

Ultimately, electric engines do have an efficiency edge. But they are severely hindered by energy storage. Neither of the above options has the infrastructure in place for mass use. It's not clear to me which would be cheaper to put up though hydrogen is notoriously explosive. That risk might tip things in favor of electric engines.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[KDR_11k]

I'm not sure about specifics but I recall hearing that batteries explode quite violently (never threw any into a fire myself). A hydrogen tank by itself doesn't explode, it only burns since there's not enough oxygen for an explosion.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Rei]

I don't see the electric motor being a factor of two better in efficiency.

The factor of two is the combination of electrolysis and the fuel cells, especially the latter.

And again hydrogen has much higher energy density than any electricity storage. Googling around, I'm seeing at least a factor of 5 better just for pressurized hydrogen (over supercaps).

First off, blanket statements like that don't work; you have to indicate a hydrogen pressure. Secondly, "supercaps" vary a lot; are you talking about traditional double-layer supercaps, next-gen double-layer supercaps, or barium titanate supercaps (which are really just regular caps on steroids)? Third, energy density statements can relate to either volume or mass, and yes, it does matter. Fourth, hydrogen has a tank to wheel efficiency of 30-40%, while electricity has a battery to wheel efficiency of 85-90%, so a joule of stored electricity takes you 2-3 times further than a joule of stored hydrogen energy.

The FCX is a somewhat light but standard 4 passenger car while the Tesla is a 2 person convertible.

With enough horsepower to do 0-60 in 4 seconds.

The Tesla is also in excess of $80,000 while the FCX will be competing with mundane gas powered cars and has to be a lot cheaper.

The FCX has cost Honda $1,000,000-$2,000,000 per vehicle.

----
"Honda hasn't publicly disclosed its investment in hydrogen technology, but General Motors has committed more than $1 billion and produced only a handful of cars. When vehicles are hand-made by Ph.D.'s as part of blue-sky research projects, can you even speculate on how much they are "worth"? A Honda spokesman, Andy Boyd, says the FCX's estimated expense ($1 million to $2 million) is based on "the cost of body and powertrain, and also the experimental nature of some key components, like the fuel cell itself."

The pricing of hydrogen remains fluid. The Department of Energy has estimated that the cost of a kilogram of hydrogen (with roughly the energy content of a gallon of gasoline) could fall to $3 by 2008, but that assumes certain economies of scale that have not yet been established.

The California Fuel Cell Partnership puts the average capital cost to add low-volume hydrogen refueling to gas stations in that state at $450,000. The cost of the Latham station - opened by Honda and a locally based engineering company, Plug Power, aided by a $735,000 state grant - is proprietary.

At my daughters' school, the youngsters were happy to squeeze into the back seat like college students in a phone booth. Their questions about fuel cells were simple.

"Is this the car of the future?" they asked. "Maybe," I said.
----

Why so expensive? Partly because they're low production -- but then again, so are automotive li-ion batteries. But also because, quite simply, fuel cells are inherently expensive beasts. They require nanoscale perfection on the membranes. They involve the use of precious metals like platinum. There's no way that something like that can ever become "cheap". Even when you consider the highly subsidized price -- a $600/mo vehicle lease -- that equates to something like $50k per car. That's more expensive than the EV1's subsidized price, which was something like $350-$520/mo (I'd have to look up the exact numbers) (the EV1 actually cost GM $80k per car, which doesn't include liability risk or profit).

But they are severely hindered by energy storage.

The range statistics on production electricity vehicles speak otherwise -- and EVs have a 2-3x increase on their horizon from three different techs, while hydrogen cars only have different, even more energy wasteful storage mediums that offer only incremental improvement on the horizon.

Neither of the above options has the infrastructure in place for mass use.

Yeah, when will we get some of this "electric infrast

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

This commentor assumes that the the carbon-fuel would be decompressed and then recompressed. Couldn't they strip hydrogen from the carbon-fuel at the storage pressure and bypass the in situ thermodynamic limitations?

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[GWBasic]

I look forward to electric cars. In a lot of cities, 100% of power comes from wind and solar, so its not shifting the carbon to another source. Slow charging can be done at home, fast charging (especially with supercap batteries that can charge very quickly) can be done at the normal filling stations, so the existing gas stations won't be losing market anytime soon.

An electric car charged by a coal power plant generates significantly less carbon dioxide then a gasoline or diesel car. It's not perfect, but it'll help significantly. The same electric car will also be able to use renable energy sources without any modifications.

I don't look forward to a hydrogen economy, and the bugs and hassles a vastly new fuel infrastructure will bring with it. Not to mention the fact that someone has to pay the cost of sinking the H2 tanks underground in tens of thousands of gasoline stations... and that will end up being the customer.

The hydrogen economy will:

• Keep the existing petrolium business people rich.
• Fail in the marketplace, because people will see electric cars as cheaper, faster, sleeker, more convenient, and more reliable.

I suspect that auto manufacturers may end up coming out with full electrics before hydrogen-powered cars, as it's a natural progression from hybrid vehicles.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious?

[khallow]

Sorry for the late reply, I think you make a compelling case for electric powered vehicles. It still remains to be seen what technologies make it. I don't see electric powered vehicles as being a sure thing.

Liquid carbon?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

6381 F according to http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/C/heat.html

Crash and burn!

Re:Liquid carbon?

[Guinness2702]

Good job then that the article later clarifies that it's referring to carbon dioxide !

Not that that is gonna be easy to keep at the right temperature either.

Re:Liquid carbon?

[KublaiKhan]

Not really an issue, actually. You'll just need to find a way to keep it at the right -pressure- that weighs less than the usual steel tank.

(Remember, phase changes can be accomplished with pressure changes, not only temperature changes. Your local fast food joint has a big ol' tank of liquid CO2 in back for the soft drinks)

Re:Liquid carbon?

[Guinness2702]

Very true. I would be interesting to know how this is achieved though, since both reducing temperature and increasing pressure will take energy to achieve, as, I assume will the initial extraction process. I will be interesting to see, assuming that it can be done at all, what effect this will have on fuel efficiency (cf. the effect of air conditioning - which relies on compressing fluids to extract heat - on fuel efficiency). Will the benefits of extracting and storing the carbon offset the cost of doing it?

Re:Liquid carbon?

[KublaiKhan]

Presumably there will be a differential between the volume of the fuel and the volume of the waste product that is stored--the hydrogen gets to go off and become water, so it's not included in the compound that gets stored.

As such, it wouldn't waste as much in the way of energy as you might think.

Re:Liquid carbon?

[Rei]

Or, rather than jump through all of these hoops and lower the range of conventional cars, we could simply transition to electrics. Let's look at the facts: the charge time issue is already solved (there are no fewer than a dozen li-ion battery chemistries that can charge in minutes). There are at least three techs out there that would 2-3x the range and have the potential to be extended a lot further (lithium vanadium oxide or silicon nanowires for li-ion, barium titanate for ultracaps). Modern automotive li-ions have no lifespan or fire problems. If all of our vehicles were suddenly transformed into EVs overnight, 84% of them could be powered by our existing grid thanks to the fact that most would be charging at off-peak via timers (and get a discount for it to boot). Even if that weren't the case, it's not like power infrastructure is somehow harder to build than, say, developing new oilfields and refining infrastructure.

Even Wal-Mart wants to get in on the charging business. Fast charges can be provided via battery banks (certainly no more expensive than a gas pump/tank), and since most people would off-peak charge at home except on long trips, there wouldn't be a huge amount of people charging at once at a given charging station. Delivering the charge that fast isn't a problem if you use active cooling on the wires. Safety can be easily guaranteed by having no current delivered until a connection is verified by the plug, and have an outer sheath that if damaged cuts all current delivery.

Electric cars typically cost a penny or two per mile in energy costs (my Aptera will end up costing me about half a penny per mile where I live), and have very little maintenance (my Aptera's drivetrain's total moving parts are: three wheels, one motor driveshaft, and one belt; plus the batteries are designed to outlive the vehicle). EVs are quiet, convenient, emit half the greenhouse gasses of a conventional car even when charging from "dirty" power, emit none when charging from "clean" power, any emissions from "dirty" power charging being displaced to out of the city, and so on.

Really, once mass production kicks in and drops prices -- five to ten years from now -- what reason will there be to be concerned about things like onboard carbon sequestration? Why not just go straight to an EV? Even with current prices, I can easily defend the purchase of a $27k Aptera Typ-1e over a gasoline car with similar features. Slash the battery prices in half and mass produce the cars, and you're looking at widespread adoption.

Re:Liquid Carbon?

[dbIII]

I don't think the article mentions "Liquid Carbon Dioxide". That would take great pressure and extremely low temperature to pull off

It's not really difficult, your local pub has gas bottles with a lot of the stuff at the bottom of them. You can also get CO2 gas bottles that have a tube going down to the bottom so you can squirt out the liquid to make dry ice when it gets down to atmospheric pressure.

The summary does appear to be as confusing as the usual Roland article where the physics, chemistry and materials science is untrustworthy so it's probably not worth trying to second guess what he really means.

Re:Liquid Carbon?

[Bloke down the pub]

The product is Sodium Bicarbonate, the main ingredient in baking powder.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Liquid Carbon?

[Bloke down the pub]

It's not really difficult, your local pub has gas bottles with a lot of the stuff at the bottom of them.

True, but the pub's only taking the gas out - which is a rather simple matter; getting it in there requires a thing known in the trade as "a whacking great big chemical plant".

Hydrogen? Carbon?

[_merlin]

First you say the cars are hydrogen-powered, then you say the carbon emissions will be trapped and disposed of when refuelling. Hydrogen doesn't contain carbon. Where do carbon emissions come from? This has to be the most contradictory Slashdot summary in a long time.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[moderatorrater]

That's one of the worse summaries I've seen on Slashdot, and as we all know, that's saying something. Basically, there are three parts to the plan. Instead of using an internal combustion engine, you use a reactor that changes the hydrocarbon chains into hydrogen and carbon. The hydrogen is used to power the car using the already developed fuel cells while the carbon is stored. You fuel at a station, but instead of just filling up with hydrocarbon (like we do now), you also give back the carbon that your car's been storing.

In the short term, this carbon would be taken and sequestered in a variety of methods that scientists have been studying for years, either under the ocean, in old oil wells, other underground locations, or in solid carbonate form. In the long term, the carbon would go back and be remade into hydrocarbon chains to be distributed back out. As someone else pointed out, you could also use the carbon for nanotubes.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[milsoRgen]

FTA:

Georgia Tech's near-future strategy involves capturing carbon emissions from conventional (fossil) liquid hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles with an on board fuel processor designed to separate the hydrogen in the fuel from the carbon. Hydrogen is then used to power the vehicle, while the carbon is stored on board the vehicle in a liquid form until it is disposed at a refueling station.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Kuukai]

In the short term, this carbon would be taken and sequestered in a variety of methods that scientists have been studying for years, either under the ocean, in old oil wells, other underground locations, or in solid carbonate form. And this can in turn be used by the Hutts to freeze smugglers who owe them money. Yesss, it's all coming together perfectly...

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[nschubach]

I was thinking the same thing. I thought burning Hydrogen and Oxygen produced primarily water.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[RingDev]

Step 1: Generate pure hydrogen in highly efficient processing plant
Step 2: Merge with carbon to create less stable and lower density hydrocarbon based fuel
Step 3: Using a vehicle based unit, crack the hydrocarbons back into hydrogen and carbon
Step 4: oxidize hydrogen to power fuel cell.
Step 5: return carbon to processing plant.

This would work amazingly if there were a shortage of carbon and an excess of easily accessible hydrogen. Unfortunately, our problem is the other way around. I can walk to any local gas station in the middle of summer and pick up a 20lbs bag of carbon for a few bucks. Getting my hands on 20lbs of hydrogen is a bit more challenging and expensive.

Not to mention there is no way they are going to get a vehicle based cracking unit to be more efficient than the factory unit. Not to mention that energy density is already an issue in pure hydrogen storage, turning it into hydro carbons isn't going to help on that issue if they are only using the hydrogen for energy generation.

The whole concept seems to fall on it's face as yet another attempt at a perpetual motion device.

-Rick

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Attila Dimedici]

So, let me get this straight. We are going to exchange CO2 emissions (a greenhouse gas) for H2O emissions (another greenhouse gas). In the meantime, we are going to have to consume more energy to accomplish it. I'm sorry, something about this equation doesn't add up.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[g1zmo]

How is water a greenhouse gas?

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[MikeDirnt69]

RTFA: Georgia Tech's near-future strategy involves capturing carbon emissions from conventional (fossil) liquid hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles with an onboard fuel processor designed to separate the hydrogen in the fuel from the carbon. Hydrogen is then used to power the vehicle, while the carbon is stored on board the vehicle in a liquid form until it is disposed at a refueling station.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[SatanicPuppy]

The car runs on hydrocarbons, but instead of burning them it pulls the hydrogen out and burns that, leaving carbon-rich goop. If the hydrocarbon was, for example, methane (CH4) this would seem to be pretty cool, because it would allow us to burn it without any CO or CO2 being fed off into the atmosphere.

They're probably not thinking methane though, because methane is annoying to transport, same as Hydrogen.

As you move down the scale toward bigger, more likely to be liquid molecules, however, you move toward the stuff that most of us put in our cars already, which makes it a little weird. You could run Octane through this sort of process, but...why?

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[timmarhy]

your comment is typical of all global warming idiots, you don't even understand your own imaginary problem.

water vapour is THE green house gas. the majority of the greenhouse effect comes from water vapour. hence why everyone is trying to tell you people CO2 doesn't drive climate change.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

Water is the one of the best green house gases.
It's absorption of IR is a lot higher then CO2.
Water vapour carries a lot of energy as well to drive extrem weather effects.

On the plus side clouds do help reflect sunlight.

handy link
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[eln]

The argument is not that CO2 is causing global warming, it's that the increase in the amount of CO2 in the air is driving global warming. Yes, water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but the amount of water vapor in the air hasn't been steadily increasing over the past hundred years, while the amount of CO2 in the air has been. I suppose it's possible that a mass conversion from hydrocarbon fuel to hydrogen which emits water vapor as waste could end up being just as bad for the global climate as the CO2 it replaces, but I don't know of any studies that have been undertaken in that regard.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[wattrlz]

I guess it has something to do with water being a good absorber of long-wave infrared. Maybe our friends at the wikipedia can help explain that.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Guinness2702]

"And this can in turn be used by the Hutts to freeze smugglers who owe them money."

Until some do-gooder bitch comes along and unfreezes them, thus fucking up the climate for us once again!

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[oldsaint]

It seems obvious. Steam is introduced to the hydrocarbon fuel, and the oxygen is stripped from the steam, combining with the carbon and leaving hydrogen. The oxygen stripping process creates the carbon dioxide. Old technology, although not for very small scale devices like cars. Capture of the newly created carbon dioxide can be done, although the scheme seems to be to compress it to a liquid. What, dry ice? The energy balance is questionable.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[protolith]

or in solid carbonate form

Hate to break it to you but that was carbonite not carbonate.
Carbonate is the CO3 ion that makes limestone (CaCO3) and dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2)

It would have been interesting if Han was turned to limestone but a marble statue of Han would have been a little too Clash of the Titans.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Guinness2702]

"Hate to break it to you but that was carbonite not carbonate."

Hate to break it to you, but this is /. and we're all nerds. Accuracy is inconsequential to us, especially when we can get a Star Wars reference in!

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[cplusplus]

Water molecules also have a tendency to clump and fall to the ground. Carbon dioxide molecules don't. A massive increase in precipitation would probably affect things in detrimental ways.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rostin]

You were doing more or less ok until you got to the energy density part.

According to Wikipedia, liquid hydrogen has a density of 70.8 kg/m^3. That sets a generous upper bound on the density we could hope to achieve in pure hydrogen storage.

Let's assume a density of 700 kg/m^3 for our liquid hydrocarbon. According to Wikipedia (again), gasoline is around 737 kg/m^3. Let's further assume that hydrogen makes up about 15.8% of the weight of our fuel. I arrived at that number by doing a straight average of the percentages for C5 to C12 linear alkanes. That means the part of the density we can attribute to usable hydrogen is around 111 kg/m^3.

So, in terms of effective hydrogen density, liquid hydrocarbons beat the pants off of even pure liquid hydrogen.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sectionboy]

I might be one of "global warming idiots" - for not knowing too much about it, but I failed to see how water is as bad as CO2 in this issue. Earth, as we know, has 3/4 of its surface covered by water, thus the atmosphere is basically saturated for water vapour, i.e., no matter how much water (liquid, vapour, ice, all forms combined) exists on this planet, the amount of water vapour in atmosphere as a whole system is almost constant as long as the climate (temperature, pressure) doesn't change dramtically.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[DavidM01]

Too bad that argument has zero real, you know, falsifiable evidence. We know C02 levels coincide with increases in temperature, but as any good scientist will admit correlation != causation. Of course Al Gore is making a pretty good living off of this garbage. In 10 years this 'man made global warming' crap will be laughed at in favor of the next big scare.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[TapeCutter]

Yes H20 is a greenhouse gas in that it traps heat, but the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temprature and pressure. In other words the H20 content of the atmosphere is stable. The only side effect of releasing 10Gt/pa of water vapour would be 10Gt/pa more rain (good thing if it all fell here in SE Australia).

The side effect of releasing the current 10Gt/pa of CO2 is that 7Gt of it will not be absorbed back into the biosphere. Some of it stays in the atmosphere and heats things up. The rest of it will dissolve in the oceans raising their acidity, which in turn lowers the planktonic biomass, which then lowers the amount of CO2 the biosphere can convert to limestone, which means next year more CO2 hangs around,....rinse & repeat until the blue globe of death appears.

BTW: Climatologists realise CO2 is not the only problem gas, they take this into account by using a standard unit called CO2_equivalents, the units are also used to quantify cooling effects such as reflection from ice. Personally I think it's confusing and can't fathom why W/m2 is so hard for policy makers to deal with, but IANAC or a policy maker.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rei]

And it only stays in our atmosphere for a couple days on average thanks to preciptation ;) Hence, water vapor can only function as feedback, not forcing.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sumdumass]

An increases in water vapor doesn't automatically mean an increase in precipitation. You can look at the dew points and see how this is possible. and yes, there has been more water vapor in the air as of late. This could be an effect or a drive in the global warming that we know but it could also mean that the Co2 model is coincidentally pointless.

It is a toss up if you ask me, the amount of Co2 that is claimed to be the problem is less then .001% of the total green house gases in the atmosphere at any given time. OTOH, if you were to take the reports of the sun being behind the global warming, you could easily see increased evaporation at a rate significantly higher then what then before which could account for increased temperatures. Or you could follow the Co2 model and claim it was a reaction to it. Either way, the next 20 or so years is going to be important because the solar activity has changed with the solar cycle. If we have magically fixed global warming by then without significant reductions in Co2 emissions, well, you do the math.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the worse summaries I've seen on Slashdot

Now do you guys understand why we've been complaining about Roland Piquepaille for so many years? It's not just the fair use issues. His summaries are consistently that poor, but usually with more pseudo-technical mumbo-jumbo to disguise that fact from the average reader.

And by the way, the key thing to remember here, as always, is that this process requires lot of energy (solar, nuclear, coal, etc) to power the overall fuel cycle. As much energy as we already consume in gasoline for transportation, plus some more to deal with the inefficiencies of the conversion process and extracting the CO2. The expected benefit is it would reduce somewhat the infrastructure change needed to accomodate carbon-free transportation.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[g1zmo]

I didn't know I had a problem -- real or imaginary. I don't know anything about global warming, but if you wanna call me an idiot across the internet I guess I'm fine with that. I was asking because I'm no scientist and I've never heard of water referred to as a greenhouse gas. I took physics and chemistry in high school, but that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of atmospheric dynamics.

You, however, seem to have a rather large chip on your shoulder.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[h2_plus_O]

You fuel at a station, but instead of just filling up with hydrocarbon (like we do now), you also give back the carbon that your car's been storing.

...so if you're going to reform hydrocarbon fuel to yield hydrogen, why do that on board the vehicle instead of simply having the vehicle take hydrogen as its fuel? If carbon capture and sequestration is anything but a pipe dream to begin with, it will be a damn sight easier to engineer without the added constraints of having to fit onboard a motor vehicle.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Water vapor is A greenhouse gas. Any gaseous molecule with an IR/microwave spectrum will trap heat and act as a greenhouse gas if it's present in a large enough quantity. The nice thing about water is that it reaches an equilibrium vapor pressure when all else in the atmosphere is equal. So at our current temperatures on earth, it's hard to saturate the atmosphere with more than just a little bit of water (a few percent). However, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere adds another greenhouse gas and upsets this equilibrium. And yes, I know there are plenty of CO2 sinks (one earlier poster correctly pointed out the oceans as a major CO2 sink), but with the amount of CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere (about 10% or so of total CO2 generated on earth), the sinks can't soak up the carbon emissions as effectively or completely. You can think of it this way: if you have a bathtub where the spigot empties water into it as quickly as the drain takes it away, then you're in equilibrium. But if you turn the flow of water on the spigot up, even just a little bit, the bathtub will begin to fill. That's the situation we're in right now with CO2 emissions. The big problem comes when the carbon sinks are full and the atmosphere begins to accumulate CO2 in appreciable quantities. Since you have more greenhouse gases in the air, the temperature rises. It's at this point when your water problem comes in. If you raise the temperature, then the vapor pressure of water in the atmosphere rises. This means more water evaporates, exacerbating the warming, which leads to more water evaporating, further exacerbating the warming, etc. Classic positive feedback (until another equilibrium is reached). So yes, the majority of the greenhouse effect comes from the water vapor in the air (right now). It keeps our planet comfortably between about 0 and 100 deg F (about -20 to 40 deg C for all you purists). But this doesn't mean that the science behind global warming is flawed.

By the way, if I said I loved Windows and Linux, would you mod me up or down? I'm kind of new here, so I don't know how it works.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sumdumass]

No, well. yes and no. It would be a feedback no matter how you looked at it because it isn't a driving source. Solar energy being the most common alternative to Co2. But water vapor can stay in the atmosphere quite a bit longer then a couple days. And the atmosphere can hold different amounts of water. It isn't a static operations. You can look at the differences in the dew points to find increased relative humidity even in a drought.

So no, it isn't a static number that only saturates to a point and then dissipates. I had a link that explains it better then I can but I lost is in a crash and haven't found it yet. The easiest way to view it is to watch the dew point since humidity is relative to the temperature. The dew point shows a consistent saturation level that can accurately be measured. The higher, the most saturation, the lower, the less. Also, if solar forces are causing it, it would warm the clouds as they block sunlight from reaching the earth, but this warming also increases the amount of time the water stays in the atmosphere- increasing the long wave absorption- it prolongs the rain-.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[juan2074]

Step 6: ???
Step 7: Profit.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rei]

No, well. yes and no. It would be a feedback no matter how you looked at it because it isn't a driving source. Solar energy being the most common alternative to Co2. But water vapor can stay in the atmosphere quite a bit longer then a couple days.

The average is about ten days. Remember the word "average" in my post? That word has meaning.

"To demonstrate how quickly water reacts, I did a GCM experiment where I removed all the water in the atmosphere and waited to see how quickly it would fill up again (through evaporation from the ocean) . The result is shown in the figure. It's not a very exciting graph because the atmosphere fills up very quickly. At Day 0 there is zero water, but after only 14 days, the water is back to 90% of its normal value, and after 50 days it's back to within 1%. That's less than 3 months. Compared to the residence time for perturbations to CO2 (decades to centuries) or CH4 (a decade), this is a really short time."

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Jeremi]

your comment is typical of all global warming idiots, you don't even understand your own imaginary problem. water vapour is THE green house gas. the majority of the greenhouse effect comes from water vapour. hence why everyone is trying to tell you people CO2 doesn't drive climate change

And ironically enough, your comment is typical of all the global-warming-denial ostriches: You're so sure that global warming is a hoax and that anyone who takes it seriously is an uninformed fool that you don't see the glaring hole in your own argument. Since you don't see it, I'll point it out to you: the average amount of H20 in Earth's atmosphere is neither increasing or decreasing, so H20 content is not a factor in global warming. CO2 content, on the other hand, IS increasing, and that's why the planet is getting warmer. Change in output is based on change in input. It's not a difficult theory to understand.

As for why "everyone(sic) is trying to tell you CO2 doesn't drive climate change", that has more to do with people not wanting to give up the profitable/comfortable status quo than it does with atmospheric conditions.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. If you look at the facts instead of the propaganda, you would see that temperatures rise BEFORE the increase in carbon dioxide. You're putting the cart before the horse. Or just lying through your teeth (more likely).

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[apoc.famine]

Outside my house it is currently 21 degrees F. When I discuss with my students the potential of using hydrogen as a clean fuel, as it releases only water vapor as a byproduct, they generally realize that there is another issue with it other than greenhouse gas emissions. In a good portion of the world, there is this thing called winter. A massive increase in water vapor on roadways when the temp is below freezing is not necessarily a byproduct that many people think of when debating a hydrogen infrastructure.

Not to say that it can't be overcome, but it's not something that most people think of.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[fractalVisionz]

Bad summary, it was written by our all time favorite... Roland Piquepaille!

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sumdumass]

And again, yes and no.

The problem is that humidity, or the amount of water in the atmosphere isn't constant. There isn't a set normal. There is simply a level that can be used as a baseline and and measurements can be made either way from it. That page doesn't attempt to do anything of the sort, it attempts to say that X is normal and correlate that to all the interactions within the atmosphere. The problem with this is that there is no normal X. It varies due to temperature and numerous other factors. 70% saturation could remain 70% saturation but because that ability to hold water is relative to temperature, 70% isn't the same amount at 40 degrees as it is at 90 degrees. And it doesn't matter which scale you use to validate that (C or F). That is why I said you need to look at the dew point to determine saturation levels. When the dew point is higher, you can see the increase in water in the atmosphere. And you can measure these differences in a drought.

So when the temperature rises, the air can hold more water. But it can only hold as much as the temperature will let it which is why looking at the dew point shows how much moisture is in the air. The dew point has been rising which means more moisture has been in the air. The real science article you linked to doesn't show what it thinks it does and it takes an extremely complicated way of not proving the point we are talking about.

Now, you will notice that the article doesn't mention anything about this, but it was created in a response to this very topic. Real science is a propaganda site just like there are propaganda sites against global warming. The difference is that unlike Hansen, one of the most prominent advocates mentioned on that site, none of the anti or alternative global warming sites has stated that it was ok to stretch the truth to impress the point of global warming. Hansen made these comments in response to questions about knowing the data set that showed the 90's as the hottest on record instead of the 30's for the US. Now a direct contradiction to what your article is saying is that more water can stay in the atmosphere for longer times when the temperatures are warmer. So a static reading at 70 degree F is only usable for a guide at 70 degrees F. And normal water levels aren't at 100% so in order for there to be rain, there has to be fluctuations in normal levels present at any given time. This realization alone is enough to disprove what this article is attempting to prove. Anyone who has paid attention to the local weather knows that the relative humidity isn't constant.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Mspangler]

My version, which is only slightly modified;

Step 1: Generate pure hydrogen in highly efficient processing plant
Step 1A: Remove CO2 from air and reduce it to carbon in a highly efficient processing plant.
Step 2: Merge with carbon to create lower density hydrocarbon based fuel called methanol.
Step 3: Use existing liquid fuel transport system to ship methanol.
Step 4: Use methanol fuel cell to the power the car, producing CO2 and H2O
Step 5: $$$, at least compared to hydrogen fuel cycles.

If methanol is good enough for 5000 hp tractor pullers, it should do just fine to get me work, even if the fuel cells don't work out.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

To be honest it is the water coming down that worries me.
or it staying up a bit longer and not coming down where it use to.
Or staying up longer and coming down much harder than it use to.
Or just coming down much more forcefully than it use to.

Ok Water is feedback.
It is feedback to the total energy trapped by the system.

So reducing CO2 might reducing some trapping energy, but unless we think about the energy used the water will still go and come down.

Energy is the driver, made worse by most of energy harvesting being via carbon deposits.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[russotto]

Except we don't have a method of generating pure hydrogen efficiently, we don't have a way of removing CO2 from the air efficiently, we don't have a way of reducing CO2 to C + O2 efficiently (though it's fortunately not necessary, producing CO is sufficient for hydrocarbon synthesis), and we don't have a workable methanol fuel cell.

But aside from that, no problem at all.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[timmarhy]

i do apologse for calling you an idiot, i jumped the gun a bit as i immediately thought you were a global warming nutter. my scinere apologies

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[g1zmo]

We can be friends now. :)

And I learned something new today - that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and is a factor in the planet's temperature regulation. I guess that seems like a fairly elementary fact, but I never had cause to consider it before.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rei]

The problem with this is that there is no normal X. It varies due to temperature and numerous other factors,?I>

At a given point in time in a given location? No.
Statistically, across the entire planet, over years? There most definitely is. And this is what we know as "global climate".

Once again, something that averages 10 days in the atmosphere simply cannot be forcing, by the very definition of forcing. It can only be feedback. Any water thrown "out of whack" will simply be rebalanced in short order.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[The Great Pretender]

Personally I think guys are on the right track, even if they aren't there yet. http://www.asemblon.com/hydrnol. I've talked a little to a couple of them and they have a liquid organic carrier that can release H2 under reasonable conditions using a catalyst. The carrier can then be rehydrogenated for reuse. The carriers supposedly easily produced and the net energy is pretty good.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sumdumass]

No. At best your going to have an average of different locations at certain temperatures but that has no real reflection of the situation. And because of the relative nature of the capacity or capability of the atmosphere to hold water, you need to look at factors like the dew point.

Once again, something that averages 10 days in the atmosphere simply cannot be forcing, by the very definition of forcing. It can only be feedback. Any water thrown "out of whack" will simply be rebalanced in short order.

Wow, just WOW. I don't know where to begin here but you just showed your extreme ignorance of the situation. First, A feedback can have a forcing effect. That is to say that a feedback can raise temperatures which under the Co2 model would generally be a forcing. Water vapor is a feedback and a forcing though, I though I made that clear. But under the Co2 models, they aren't prepared to account for water vapor as a variable which is why you see explanations using it as a constant. And no, water doesn't average 10 days in the atmosphere because the saturation points differ. I suggest you quite getting your information from loaded sites designed to convince you regardless of the truth. Real science and at least one of the scientist contributing to it is one of them.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[moderatorrater]

Because storing pure hydrogen is tricky. It's hard to get a lot of it in there, and it happens to be the most reactive element on the periodic table. Also, if you can use gasoline as the hydrocarbon, then you're not even changing the fuel you're putting into the car in the first place.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Attila Dimedici]

The reason that policy makers have such difficulty dealing with this issue is that reducing CO2 emissions is outrageously expensive. The cost of dealing with the problems created by Global Warming instead is comparatively cheap.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

"and it happens to be the most reactive element on the periodic table."

Bullshit.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[timmarhy]

I'm challenging the generally held assumption that CO2 is driving climate change, yet somehow i'm the ostrich? ok if i'm an ostrich you are surely a sheep.

while i'm having trouble googling to find my source (swamped in a sea on nonsense blogs on rising sea levels) i'm positive i've seen an article on rising levels of cloud cover (your H2O vapour). I would also point out that while you were an eager beaver pointing out the supposed flaw in my argument you left your own gaping hole - Why does rising C02, which is a very minor greenhouse gas, instantly mean it's to blame? you've found a correlation not a CAUSE. This is why i hate the current global warming "science" and wish you'd atleast step up with some decent arguments.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

thus the atmosphere is basically saturated for water vapour...

I will not call you an idiot for not having a thermo class, but the atmosphere is only saturated when the water falls out of it. Actually the local temperature and pressure changes the amount of water the air is able to hold. You might have seen relative humidity in some of the weather reports for example. Now the original poster was correct about H2O being the largest contributer to the greenhouse effect. If these cars were ever produced in any quantity I don't think it would ever quit raining in many of the major metropolitan areas (and it might raise the temp of the earth more then CO2 also).

The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

Personally I don't think that global warming is that much of a problem for a number of different reasons. First the amount of warming is less then our ability to measure the temperature of the planet. I think the amount of warming is .6 degrees C and the measurement of the earth is something like 14.x +/- .7 degrees C. Second I think that if it is actually occurring it is not likely to be that large of an issue because it is a small change over a long period of time and we'll adapt. However, as an engineer I am looking forward to electric cars the hysteria will create because of the increased performance (100% torque at 0 rpm) and increased efficiency they are able to deliver.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rich0]

That is only a factor of about two. Sure, that is significant, but how much space will all that fancy conversion and sequestration technology take up? Why not just make the LH2 tank that much bigger?

I can't see this being cost-effective. How do you obtain H2 from hydrocarbons without producing CO2? It has to be cheap and take little energy or there is no point in it.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Rei]

No. At best your going to have an average of different locations at certain temperatures but that has no real reflection of the situation.climate zones depend on climate falling within a given statistical range or anything, or that changing that range would be a change to a completely different zone. What was I thinking?

First, A feedback can have a forcing effect.

Look, you can argue against definitions all you want. Feedback is, by definition, not forcing.

That is to say that a feedback can raise temperatures which under the Co2 model would generally be a forcing.

No! That is feedback. It occurs in response to a long-lasting stimulus, and only in response to that stimulus. Feedback can be positive or negative. What you described is known as "positive feedback".

Water vapor is a feedback and a forcing though, I though I made that clear.

You made it clear that you're wrong.

But under the Co2 models, they aren't prepared to account for water vapor as a variable which is why you see explanations using it as a constant.

In *NO* model is water vapor a constant.

And no, water doesn't average 10 days in the atmosphere because the saturation points differ.

Wow, do we need to go all the way back to the definition of the word average?

I suggest you quite getting your information from loaded sites designed to convince you regardless of the truth. Real science and at least one of the scientist contributing to it is one of them.

I suggest you get your data from somewhere other than your a**^H^H^Himagination.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[h2_plus_O]

if you can use gasoline as the hydrocarbon, then you're not even changing the fuel you're putting into the car in the first place.

If you're not changing the fuel you put in the car, why bother? It's more energy efficient and less polluting to just burn the gas than it is to try to reform it to get H2 out of it- and that's BEFORE you figure in the energy costs of trying to capture and sequester the carbon in the gasoline. Will the end process be energy-profitable enough to make it worthwhile? Not polluting is nice and all, but gasoline is only going to become more scarce- and if your average consumer has to choose between not polluting and getting, say, half the mileage out of a tank of gas, guess what they're choosing?

Basically, you're trading one problem (how do we store Hydrogen?) for another (how do we capture and sequester carbon onboard a vehicle in a cost-effective way?). For the former, we have 3 proven solutions- compressed gas, liquid cryo, and metal hydride (which allows for the densest storage of the 3 and at room temperature to boot, but requires you to have a bunch of metal in your 'tank'). For the latter, we have no proven solutions.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[TapeCutter]

You are obviously one of these people who think the worst side effect of AGW will be wet feet.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Attila Dimedici]

What are the problems with Global Warming? I can't address more specifically, unless you tell me what you think the problems are. However, for the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocols, one can save 10 times more polar bears, decrease the incidence of malaria by 50 times, relocate the people who will be displaced by rising sea water, and still have 90% left over.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[TapeCutter]

The most pressing question is where do you grow food and position dams when rainfall patterns change and mountain glaciers dissapear? Here in SE Australia we have found out the hard way that a 20% drop in rainfall dictates a 60% drop in run-off, as a result our 'breadbasket' (the 4th largest in the world) is rapidly turning into desert. Having said that relocating Bangladesh and a large chunk of India and China is neither cheap nor easy.

Reducing C02 will very likely boost the economy just like every other major shift in infrastucture has done in the past. Sure the fossil fuel industry may be the major loser because of the shift but I don't see anyone crying over the demise of buggy whip manafacturers, nor do I see lines of unemployed stable hands. The cost of ignoring the root cause and treating the symptoms will continue to rise until the economy itself dies.

Trick question: The US (and until recently, Australia) have both been adamant that Kyoto will 'ruin the economy', yet at the same time they both claim to be 'on track' to meeting the Kyoto targets, so which statement is a lie?

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[sumdumass]

zones depend on climate falling within a given statistical range or anything, or that changing that range would be a change to a completely different zone. What was I thinking?

The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has been increasing by about 8.4% per decade. I have seen estimates that there is roughly 20% more moisture in the air then in 1930. It simply isn't a constant value as your attempting to claim.

Look, you can argue against definitions all you want. Feedback is, by definition, not forcing.

A feedback or forcing is an arbitrary designation depending on the model being used. Co2 is both a feedback and a forcing. If scientist where claiming water vapor was the cause of global warming, it too would be a forcing. But they are considering the heating effects as a feed back of Co2 in the Co2 model. The thing is, the amount of water vapor has increased significantly more then any amounts of Co2 has in the last 100 years.

No! That is feedback. It occurs in response to a long-lasting stimulus, and only in response to that stimulus. Feedback can be positive or negative. What you described is known as "positive feedback".

Lol.. In the Co2 model, There are people working in a solar model which would use it as a forcing. It is both depending on which models you are looking at. Not everyone is convinced of this Co2 is teh root of all evil so destroy big oil and big coal now and distribute the wealth to other countries model.

Either way, water vapor plays a significant role in both and contrary to the link presented, it is increasing as well as Co2 which should, under sane rules, make is a forcing under the Co2 models too.

You made it clear that you're wrong.

Lol.. No, as I explained above.

Wow, do we need to go all the way back to the definition of the word average?

I don't think you understand the concept. There is more water in the atmosphere today then there was in 1930, 1950, 1980, 1990, ten years ago, and even two years ago. You can't take an average and claim that because it takes 10 days from evaporation to rain or that if you pull the watter out is comes back and claim it denies this fact. There is more water in the atmosphere today then there has been in the past.

I know it has taken 5 posts for you to get this through you head. But do you understand it now? I know it also breaks your Co2, down with industry and population growth model, but it doesn't make it untrue.

I suggest you get your data from somewhere other than your a**^H^H^Himagination.

Well, I got my data from sites claiming it was caused by global warming. It was a few other sites that attempted to look at the increased water vapor as an effect of the solar cycle that is leading to the weather extremes we are seeing blamed in Global warming. And so far, they aren't forging numbers and claiming that it is ok it lie in order to press the issue of global warming. You on the other hand, seem to be obsessed with the work of someone who had admitted to it.

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the worse summaries I've seen on Slashdot,

Welcome to the world of Roland Peoplecock, Paulliquace, whatever

search by tag for ohshititsroland

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[Attila Dimedici]

Trick question: The US (and until recently, Australia) have both been adamant that Kyoto will 'ruin the economy', yet at the same time they both claim to be 'on track' to meeting the Kyoto targets, so which statement is a lie? Neither. If they had signed the Kyoto protocol some groups that use "environmentalism" as an excuse to insist on greater regulation of business would have gone to the courts to implement their pet regulations. Instead, people and businesses have freely taken actions which have reduced CO2 emissions. Trick question, the members of the EU have signed the Kyoto protocol, yet their emissions of CO2 have risen as rapidly as before signing the protocols. Who really cares about the environment?

Re:Hydrogen? Carbon?

[TapeCutter]

"Who really cares about the environment?"

Why do you insist on parroting ultra-conservative propoganda? Do you not have an arse of your own to pluck 'facts' from?

So how much

[Sylos]

you wanna bet that the dinosaurs were actually as advanced as we are and all the oil was their same exact idea!

I thought

[Altus]

There were already some pretty good ways of storing hydrogen for cars and the issue was just creating the hydrogen in the first place.

Seems like using hydrocarbons and storing liquid carbon in the car for later processing would be a real pain for very little gain. Though maybe this would be a good way to get hydrogen to the "gas station."

Re:I thought

[ciggieposeur]

There were already some pretty good ways of storing hydrogen for cars and the issue was just creating the hydrogen in the first place.

Not really. The Department of Energy has estimated that one would need at least a device capable of storing up to 0.6 kg of hydrogen per kg (e.g. a 100kg storage tank has 6kg of raw hydrogen in it) before hydrogen is just barely usable as a transportation fuel source. Ideally, 12% wt/wt storage is necessary to achieve the 300 miles per tank that most cars get today on gasoline. The best storage systems (circa 2004 when the report came out) topped out around 8% for liquified hydrogen tanks, but those are very difficult to use in practice because the hydrogen leaks out quickly. All other systems topped out around 4% and required either high temperature (metal hybrides) or very high pressures (700bar, approximately 10000 psi), again making them not yet ready for widespread use.

Hydrogen production is still an issue too though. Most of what we get now is a byproduct from natural gas processing, so it's still not carbon-neutral.

(Disclaimer: This topic is actually part of my master's thesis.)

Re:I thought

[Altus]

I remember something about tiny ceramic beads... with micro perforations, helping to hold more hydrogen without leakage. It was a while ago that I saw this though.

Clearly production is the big issue, but these guys are talking about harvesting hydrogen from a hydro carbon right in your car. If you can do that, why not do it somewhere else where you can more easily store, or reprocess the carbon.

I'm certainly no expert on this topic but the articles description makes this seem like an excessively complicated system.

nonsense

[ILuvRamen]

This article doesn't make any sense. Hydrogen + burning = water. Hydrogen contains hydrogen atoms and no carbon at all. And if I assume they mean how engine lubricant oil burns off a bit and that's the carbon emissions, they said they're going to trap the carbon emissions and ship it back to be made into fuel. Besides such a system having to use more energy than it generates, why would you do that when you have hydrogen powered cars? You wouldn't need to make hydrocarbon fuels from emissions if cars don't run on it anymore. And then they say they're going to dump the liquified carbon emissions somewhere under the ocean or in a mountain or whatever.
So in summary, they're going to trap non-existant carbon from cars, process it into useless fuel, and dump that fuel in a mountain...wtf?

Re:nonsense

[dgatwood]

I think this is part of the solution to the problem of obtaining the hydrogen in the first place. Specifically, I suspect this is talking about storing the waste carbon that is a byproduct of splitting hydrocarbon chains into hydrogen using a gasoline reformer.

Re:nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

...and dump that fuel in a mountain...

Anyone else waiting for the estate of L. Ron Blubber to claim prior art?

Re:nonsense

[heinzkunz]

That was a much better summary, and it was funny, too.

Slashdot, please hire this man as an editor.

Re:nonsense

[ILuvRamen]

can't we just go out to a nebula and get some? lol jk. But seriously, then we're still relying on hydrycarbons to make our fuel, just adding a step. Kinda dumb. Now if we could figure out how to make diamonds out of all the spare carbon, then we've got something!

Re:nonsense

[Chuckstar]

The proposal is that the hydrogen is delivered to the car in the form of a liquid fuel which contains carbon. The fuel is broken down into hydrogen and carbon (carbon dioxide?). The hydrogen goes into the fuel cell, powering the car. The carbon is stored in the car, to be returned to the gas station the next time the car is refilled.

Re:nonsense

[Damarkus13]

Now if we could figure out how to make diamonds out of all the spare carbon, then we've got something! You're right! We would have a bankrupt diamond industry.

Re:nonsense

[ILuvRamen]

naw, we'd just have diamond everything! I want a solid diamond bladed exacto knife! There would be reverse diamond spiked hurricance nails and diamond hunting arrows and diamond knives and diamond...everything else that needs to be hard or cut something oh and diamond earrings :-P

Re:nonsense

[saintm]

It's all a Scientologist plot to find and destroy Xenu in an ironic fashion.

Re:nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, serves them right. Bunch of fucking jews.

I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[victorvodka]

Here's why: hydrogen takes enormous amounts of energy to make. Stop saying that when you burn it all you get is water; in the case of a hydrogen economy, all the polluting happens in the supply chain, although it can also manifest in more direct forms such as a hydrogen car plowing into a container full of pesticides. Another thing: hydrogen cars are just a distraction to allow car manufacturers to keep kicking the ball down the road on producing a truly fuel-efficient car, one far more modest than the one you're presently driving. Get used to it people; when peak oil rolls through, that moped that was "fun to ride until your friends saw you" (much like a fat chick) is going to look like Fonzie cool. Rent "Who Killed the Electric Car" to learn more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[lachlan76]

There are plans to produce hydrogen directly from the thermal output of a nuclear reactor using the sulphur-iodine process, so if you want no carbon emissions, it will be possible. It's possible now, just more expensive than using natural gas.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[dgatwood]

Hydrogen cars are just a distraction to keep people from noticing how absolutely horrible auto manufacturers' electric concept cars are. Case in point: the Chevy Volt. I saw an ad for this last night. Up to 40 miles without using gasoline. Oh, yeah. That will barely get me to work and back, and I live one town away. Want to go on a longer trip? You're back to gas guzzling. Worse, you have all the weight disadvantages of hauling around a gasoline powered engine, which means you're far less efficient than you would be if you did an all-electric design. Basically, their idea of the perfect electric vehicle is just another damn hybrid. The sad thing is how far behind the major automakers are compared with minor companies like Tesla motors (whose vehicles get 220 miles on a charge) and even many homebrew cars.

To make a long story short, the major automobile manufacturers are so scared of change that they are basically going to drive themselves out of business and be replaced by new manufacturers that actually understand where technology is heading. If history is any indication, this process will repeat itself every twenty years or so. The last time this happened was when the Japanese auto manufacturers killed off/forced consolidation of most of the American car companies in the 80s. Same old story....

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[cheier]

One thing to keep in mind is that more interest in hydrogen vehicles is stemming from greater advancement in production technologies. Hydrogen can be easily produced today from various forms of feedstock in a plasma gasification process. The main advantage in the process today is that newer gasification processes now produce near zero emissions, and can still produce various types of fuels and chemicals.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[Charcharodon]

I've been looking at the Volt too. The thing with it it seems that technically it's a hybrid, but the motor they're talking about putting in it would be far too small to be able to drive around on. It would be more like a gas powered battery charger, you'd have to let it sit for a while in the parking lot running to get you enough battery power to make it home, if in the city, or to be able to get up to speed on the highway and then it could keep up once the load dropped and you were cruising.

Personally I like the idea alot. As a daily commuter a car like that would be perfect for me (6 miles - I would bike to work, but where I'm at between the weather and the crapy roads it would be a death sentence there's no way for anything but a few months out of the year.). Give it some black thin-film solar cell racing stripes and paint the rest of it blue and I'll take one.

I'm interested in anything that can do it completely without petrolium based fuel. As a back-up source like the Volt I can deal with. I want to be able to collect it myself and give the oil companies and countries the big double middle finger.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[c6gunner]

Rent "Who Killed the Electric Car" to learn more.

Or, if you want a more productive way to spend an hour and a half of your life, go run head first into a wall.

Market demand killed the electric car. These conspiracy theories are no better than the claims that "big oil" is suppressing conventional engines which could get 100 miles per gallon (and violate the laws of thermodynamics, all in one stroke!).

The rest of your comment was actually quite insightful, it's just too bad you had to end it with that particular bit of lunacy.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[letxa2000]

hydrogen cars are just a distraction to allow car manufacturers to keep kicking the ball down the road on producing a truly fuel-efficient car, one far more modest than the one you're presently driving. Get used to it people;

Guess what? I don't want a car far more modest than the one I'm driving. I don't have a massive SUV but you damn well better believe I don't want a Smart. You get used to it.

when peak oil rolls through, that moped that was "fun to ride until your friends saw you" (much like a fat chick) is going to look like Fonzie cool.

Peak oil? Sigh... It's a non-issue. If peak oil happens, oil will not dry up overnight. Supplies will get tighter and tighter driving prices of gasoline higher and higher. This will lead to incentives to find alternative energies. The market will do this all by itself, with no government action, as soon as it makes sense to do so. Meanwhile, trying to force something that the market doesn't want and the technology isn't ready for isn't going to help anyone.

My friggin' laptop can only last a couple hours and all it's doing is lighting up a screen and driving a hard drive. And you expect me to believe some killed the electric car? The technology isn't ready yet! It will become mature as the market demands it all by itself as gas prices go up.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[neumayr]

It's not neccessarily about more modest cars - even though many environmentalists would claim otherwise. It's about fuel-efficiency. Drive your car of choice on less gas.

Government does have a say in the matter, ever since that big oil crisis a few decades back it was generally accepted as a wise move for the gov't to make sure the economy doesn't run out of fuel.
Besides, they're using a lot of that stuff on their own - so of course they're interested in its supply/demand situation.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[Anonymous Coward]

i think highly radioactive waste counts as an emission.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[c6gunner]

The real solution would bet to get people out of the "need a new car every 2 years or i wont look cool" mindset.

This isn't really a problem. Generally, if you get rid of your car after 2 years it doesn't get thrown in the garbage. Cars get sold, and re-sold, and re-sold again. They're expensive enough that nobody wants to junk one if there's any other option. The resources don't get wasted, they just change hands.

The rest of what you said is pretty accurate though. I'm not sure we could ever hit 100mpg, even if we were willing to take a hit on reliability, but yeah we could probably come close. And no, it's not worth it. As for re-using appliances, etc, you're right, our society has grown too used to simply tossing away anything we don't want any more. The constant improvement in recycling and garbage reclamation technology means that we'll probably have a solution to the problem eventualy; in the meantime, I try to encourage people as much as possible to either donate their used goods to charity, or make use of programs like the Freecycle Network. The Freecycle network is especially convenient - it costs me nothing monetarily, and almost nothing in effort, to post a message announcing the availability of whatever item I'm thinking of throwing out. Most of the time someone out there will respond, and one more piece of used equipment, clothing, or what-have-you, will find a new home instead of landing on a garbage heap.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[FroBugg]

You seem to misunderstand the Volt somewhat.

In a current hybrid car, like a Prius (even the ones modified to work as plug-hybrids), the electric and gasoline motors work in parallel. Either can run to move the car. In the Volt, they run in series. The gasoline motor only provides electricity. This means that it never has to run at high RPM and is always operating at its peak efficiency. The electric motors used to actually propel the car are efficient enough to take the electricity generated by the motor and use it to drive in a normal fashion.

Basically, the Volt will run off its batteries, charged by the grid, for short drives (I think they're quoting 60 miles). For anything longer, the generator will kick in and you'll have the same range as any other gasoline car: limited only by the availability of fuel. With pure electric vehicles, you need to wait for a charge. For hydrogen vehicles like the article, or other special fuels, you need a complicated new infrastructure.

Plug-in hybrids are our best hope right now. They provide vast gains in efficiency without requiring ridiculous new infrastructures or behavioral changes.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[NevermindPhreak]

it's debatable. i've seen a lot of arguments about being able to re-use the fuel.

besides, hydrogen can be made from any electrical source, including solar, wind, and geothermal power. it's just that conventional ways are the cheapest.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[Rampantbaboon]

The Stonecutters hold back the electric car. They do. They do.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[Anonymous Coward]

Shooting it at Iraqis is not reusing it.

Re:I never want to hear "zero emissions" again

[Charcharodon]

No I'm not misunderstanding it at all, though you seem to be a bit off. The Volt is really no different than the Prius, they are both purely electric cars. Neither of them have the gas motor attached any other way than electrically. The only real difference is that the Prius battery pack does not provide enough juice to fully power the electric motor by itself which is why the gas motor kicks on for anything other than very slow speeds, the Volt's pack does so you can drive around without the gas motor kicking until the batteries are low.

You could if you wanted, gut the gas motor out of a Prius and put in a better batter pack and drive it around like an electric car, it doesn't need a gas motor.

Parallel hybrid systems are found in GM other hybrids and Hondas, where you have a car that is being driven by the gas motor, but has an electric motor attached to the transmission.

Now my point is do you really think a 3 cylinder 1L engine is going to be able to provide enough power to be able to drive the car normally if the batteries are depleated? Because that is exactly how much direct power your going to have access to till the much more capable battery pack gets chance to recharge. I don't unless its performance is going to be a lot less than its looks.

Maybe this example will better explain what I'm talking about.

GM tried doing something similar with a test truck they made hybrid. It was a fully sized truck with a 4-cylinder recharge motor. It ran great as long as you stayed well within the limits of the battery, but if you tried to tow, carry a load in the back, or travel beyond it's electric only range the performance would drop from being like a normal 8-cylinder full sized truck to the capability of a 4-cylinder full sized truck once the battery ran down. Which is to say it ran like an absolute dog. Sure it got 45mpg, but you couldn't use it as a truck except over short distances, so they put the 8-cylinder back in and it worked fine, but got only a more modest extra 5mpg boost over the standard model.

So what this means is there are going to be times where you're either going to need to pull over, time for a bathroom break anyway, so the auto-recharge function can do it's thing, or your're going to find your top speed and acceleration degraded to the power out put of a 3cylinder 1L engine (what the old Geo-Metro's had) until the recharge motor can get a chance to catch up. Not a problem if where you live is flat, it doesn't take much power to keep a car moving once you get up to speed which gives the generator plenty of time to store some power, but that won't be the case if you live someplace hilly.

Don't get me wrong I thoroughly love the concept of the Volt and I think plug in electric hybrids like the Volt and Prius are the only way to go, since I'll finally be able to generate my own "fuel" and tell the oil companies to go to hell. I just think they are being overly optomistic about how well it'll perform on long trips.

Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[RobertB-DC]

From TFA:

The Georgia Tech team has already created a fuel processor, called CO2/H2 Active Membrane Piston (CHAMP) reactor, capable of efficiently producing hydrogen and separating and liquefying CO2 from a liquid hydrocarbon or synthetic fuel used by an internal combustion engine or fuel cell. After the carbon dioxide is separated from the hydrogen, it can then be stored in liquefied state on-board the vehicle. The liquid state provides a much more stable and dense form of carbon, which is easy to store and transport.

I don't know what planet they were planning to use these vehicles on, but on *this* one, CO2 is a GAS. You've got to have some serious refrigeration (requiring, uh oh, ENERGY) and some darned high pressure to store liquid CO2. Laws of thermodynamics aside, I'd rather not be sitting on a mobile dry ice bomb, thankyouverymuch.

A side note: the original tag for Roland articles was "pigpile", not "ohnoitsroland" (or any of the cruder variants). Piquepaille = Pigpile, get it? And it's usually an apt description of the science behind the "discovery".

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[flaming error]

I believe the plan is to combine the CO2 with the Hydrogen's steam emissions and a box of concentrated syrup of Mountain Dew.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[RajivSLK]

Piquepaille = Pigpile, get it?

Yes, originally it did. But it was deemed offensive to pigs everywhere and is, therefore, no longer in common use.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[pclminion]

You've got to have some serious refrigeration (requiring, uh oh, ENERGY) and some darned high pressure to store liquid CO2.

Refrigeration has nothing to do with it. At standard pressure, cooling CO2 just causes it to solidify. To get liquid CO2 you must increase the pressure by quite a bit, but again, no refrigeration is required.

Laws of thermodynamics aside, I'd rather not be sitting on a mobile dry ice bomb, thankyouverymuch.

I have several CO2 tanks sitting in my garage for serving beer. These contain liquid CO2. I hardly consider them dangerous objects. If a CO2 storage tank got punctured during a crash, a lot of gas would vent rather quickly but the tank isn't going to just peel apart. I've seen tanks shot with high power rifles, and they don't explode. You get a jet of CO2 "snow flakes" like out of a fire extinguisher. Is it dangerous? Yeah. But so is a car crash.

Interesting that you are concerned about a little liquid CO2, but apparently not concerned about driving a vehicle carrying gallons of highly flammable liquid? You do realize that people burn to death in car fires... a lot.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[pla]

I don't know what planet they were planning to use these vehicles on, but on *this* one, CO2 is a GAS.

Ever seen dry ice?

Or, for that matter, a fire extinguisher? CO2 has a liquid phase at pressures above 5.1 atmospheres - A fact that some of the earliest fire extinguishers (and a few modern ones) made use of to store their charge at ordinary ol' room temperature.



You've got to have some serious refrigeration (requiring, uh oh, ENERGY) and some darned high pressure to store liquid CO2.

No, pressure alone will suffice - And internal combustion engines excel at producing just that. In fact, every other form of energy they produce requires the conversion of pressure into something else.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[Dun Malg]

I don't know what planet they were planning to use these vehicles on, but on *this* one, CO2 is a GAS.

Ever seen dry ice?
C'mon, he's obviously talking about CO2 at STP.

No, pressure alone will suffice - And internal combustion engines excel at producing just that. I'd love to see the efficiency cost of tapping an engine to produce pressurized liquid CO2 from the hot CO2 exhaust out of an internal combustion engine. I can't find the specs on a CO2 compressor offhand. Regardless, I imagine it ain't pretty.

In fact, every other form of energy they produce requires the conversion of pressure into something else.
Now you're just being ridiculous. There's no simple way to run an efficient compression system directly off the combustion expansion cycle of a conventional piston-driven engine. Given the thermal isolation needs plus the need for rotary output to provide propulsion, you'd have to be a screaming idiot to think you could come up with an (economical) better way than a modern rotary compressor driven by the crankshaft of a modern piston engine.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[IdeaMan]

Sounds good to (pounds chest) buuuurrrrrrrp me.

Re:Liquid CO2 storage in your car?

[RobertB-DC]

I have several CO2 tanks sitting in my garage for serving beer. These contain liquid CO2. I hardly consider them dangerous objects. If a CO2 storage tank got punctured during a crash, a lot of gas would vent rather quickly but the tank isn't going to just peel apart. I've seen tanks shot with high power rifles, and they don't explode. You get a jet of CO2 "snow flakes" like out of a fire extinguisher. Is it dangerous? Yeah. But so is a car crash.

If Slashdot allowed it, I'd take the mod points off of my posting and put them on yours. Thanks for refuting my (now-)glaring mistakes!

Hydrogen is a code-word

[Anonymous Coward]

It means "government subsidy for stuff that will never ever work". Renewable energy sources are more expensive than all current non-renewables. Hydrogen has the joy of being such an energy inefficient thing to work with, with huge inherent costs, that it would be unaffordable even if the energy were free. Well, add on the requirement of renewable energy and you get double-unaffordable.

Before any hydrogen vehicle ever hits the road, lithium batteries will be good enough and cheap enough that hydrogen will be irrelevant. But taxpayers will keep on paying the bills for this nonsense research!

Re:Hydrogen is a code-word

[letxa2000]

But taxpayers will keep on paying the bills for this nonsense research!

Did the conversation just change to global warming?

Crappy summary, had to RTFM

[dmatos]

For those of you who scratched your head at the summary and title:

The car _is_ hydrogen powered, sorta. However, it generates the hydrogen on-board from a hydrocarbon fuel. The hydrogen is then used to power the vehicle, and the leftover carbon remains in the car, and is taken back to a central location for disposal.

Apparently, they are able to create H2 + liquid CO2 using a special CO2/H2 Active Membrane Piston (CHAMP) reactor. The liquid CO2 is never released to the atmosphere.

Hydrocarbon powered cars

[abigsmurf]

The summary is incredibly poorly written. Essentially the cars extract the hydrogen from hydrocarbons and store the carbon leftovers in a tank. This is a poor idea as not only is extracting the hydrogen inefficient, you're only using a minority of the mass of the fuel to power the car and worse, you're transporting the waste around with you, then shipping it back to a processing plant where more energy will be spent making it usable. You waste so much energy throughout this process and you're using non-renewable resources doing it. Can't see anything coming from this.

Already is a way, and it's in development

[goombah99]

I think what they are after is a carbon source liquid that releases hydrogen and traps the carbon. THis is presumably to get around the low density of pure hydrogen storage. Perhaps some sort of fuel cell that liberates hydroggen from methane, keeps the carbon and burns the hydreogen. just a guess. low density is a problem both for the cars and for the fueling stations. to top it off liquid handling is easier than gas phase for consumers.

But there's an israeli company with an even better idea.

You use solid magnesium and water. the magnesium a spool of wire that is fed slowly into a bath of water. it reacts to produce hydrogen which bubbles out and into the engine, and also a solid magnesium oxide which sinks and is collected. THe solid magnesium waste is collected, and sent to a plant where it reproccessed back to magnesium metal electochemically, releasing oxygen in the process which itself could be collected for other uses.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[goombah99]

Link. also google for magnesium hydrogen car and you'll also find other companies.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[blair1q]

And where do they get the electricity to reprocess the Mg02?

From an oil- or coal-burning power plant, of course.

Or a nuke plant.

These ideas of using renewable chemical fuels is all pretty silly, because they all use electricity to renew the fuel. But electric vehicles are efficient, viable, can be made attractive and fast, and they cut out the middle-man by allowing you to plug into a supply of electricity you already access. No infrastructure cost = lowest economic barrier to entry. And it's infrastructure that we have 150+ years of experience maintaining and improving.

Eventually all of our energy will be delivered from electrical utilities, generated from coal (the oil will run out soon but we have several hundred years' worth of coal left), nuclear processes (about a thousand years' worth), and the sun (several billion years, but it's terribly inefficient so far).

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[moderatorrater]

But electric cars need to run off of batteries, and batteries are very bad at storing energy. They also take too long to recharge. They've tried pushing electric cars on the market and they were pushed right back off. I take road trips of over 300 miles every couple of months, and there's no way that an electric car would be able to make it in the same time period that my gas car can.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[UbuntuDupe]

Well, here's my suggestion, which seems much more straightforward:

1) Take CO2 from the air and H2O from any source.
2) Generate energy from nuclear power and store it in octane (gasoline) molecules formed from the above. (Basically, reverse of combusion, though not necessarily through that path, and no, this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.)
3) Use that gasoline to power cars as usual.

Benefits:

1) All vehicle carbon emissions are only returning to the atmosphere, what was taken from it to produce their fuel, so vehicles would be carbon-neutral.
2) No need to import oil.
3) Can be completely safe, since you can locate the plant arbitrarily far from populated areas.
4) No infrastructure or automobile changes except for different distribution route.

And, I recently found out that someone else has already thought of this and worked out the details, though it would only be able to produce the gasoline at $4.60/gallon. Still, it proves that all of Europe already "feels" the maximum externality cost on the demand side.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[blair1q]

Batteries are cheap and less inefficient than the Otto cycle engine in your car.

As for charging times, you can charge it when you're sleeping.

Long-distance travel will take a major hit when the oil runs out. There's nothing to use as jet fuel that's as good as jet fuel. That's why it's jet fuel.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[moderatorrater]

As for charging times, you can charge it when you're sleeping There are no convenient outlets near my apartment building.

Long-distance travel will take a major hit when the oil runs out Which won't be for a long, long time, certainly not in the next few decades. Oil wells are still putting out a lot, when they're out there's a lot of shale laying around in Canada and the US, then there's the ability to extract it from coal. Oil's going to be around for a while.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[Anonymous Coward]

And where do they get the electricity to reprocess the Mg02? From an oil- or coal-burning power plant, of course. Or a nuke plant.

So? Trading the emissions from millions of inefficient engines travelling all over the place for the efficiency of a few centralised nuclear power plants sounds like a good deal to me.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[Jeremi]

Oil wells are still putting out a lot, when they're out there's a lot of shale laying around in Canada and the US, then there's the ability to extract it from coal. Oil's going to be around for a while.

That's true, but it's not enough for oil to exist. It has to also be cheaper than the alternatives. How cheap will a gallon of gas be when you have to extract it from shale? How cheap is it after we've factored in the cost of global warming damage? What's the price of a gallon of gasoline if you add in the cost of "securing" the Middle East? My guess is that alternative technologies are going to start looking mighty attractive, long before the oil supply dries up.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[Yoozer]

As for charging times, you can charge it when you're sleeping.

(not mine)

2025:

I was really tired today, so the house alarm had to shock me awake again. Same spot as last time, that scar is never gonna go away. I forgot to plug the car in so I had to carpool with Madi, my neighbor. I'm late for work because he doesn't subscribe to AutoPilot 2020, which lets you take faster routes and use the HOV lanes even when you're alone. It would almost be worth it for me to add his car to my subscription, if that was allowed. But no, he has to buy a license himself because the biometric scanner in his car won't scan MY hand for the Autopilot and then let HIM drive. Maybe in the next upgrade. At least he has a hybrid so he doesn't have to plug in... but like hell am I paying $25 a gallon.

At work they dock me a sick day for being late, and I missed this week's drug test so I have to go to a private lab on my own time if I want to get my paycheck for this month. And government health care won't cover that. Before lunch I am called into HR to go over family planning. My wife works for a subsidiary and they want to go over telecommuting costs for her while she takes her 4 weeks max leave. I wanted her to take unpaid leave because I can afford it, and they have to take her back, but she's afraid that the sour taste left by the temp they'll have to hire will hurt her when promotion time comes. And I don't blame her. We've had them on notice for 6 months that we are trying to have a child, ever since they called me to ask why she stopped filling her birth control prescription, but they still aren't prepared. So they want us to put it off. That's why they're trying to pre-bill me for the telecommuting costs.

I go to lunch with my department but I have to order from the salad bar because I had a burger this week, and I can't afford private insurance. Terry gives me the bacon from her sandwich and I crumble that on top. Pat's son is being shipped off to Syria next month. She told him not to sign up, but he wanted to fight the WOT. Some friends of his were vacationing in Boston when they hit the natural gas tanker there, that burned down half the city, and he even gave them skin for grafts... so I guess for him it's more personal. He was recruited before that, in 6th grade, but they switched him from Air Force to Marines after the Lasik surgery couldn't fully repair his astigmatism. Tough break.

Boss handed me a bunch of crap to do from home tonight. I need to do at least 10 hours a week or they dock me for undertime, so I might as well get it out of the way. Madi forgot to wait for me, so I had to take the bus. I turn my phone off, against company rules, so some kid can't ride my signal and use up my bandwidth quota. It's cheaper to get docked for not being on call than to pay their bandwidth fees for personal use. I forgot my face mask and gloves so I try not to touch anything with my hands, or breathe too deeply. All I need is to catch some superbug, the waiting lists for those specialists are the worst.

The ride is nice, but the advertising gets annoying. At least with my phone off I don't have to worry about them accidentally selling me anything. Just try to send that stuff back, they never cover the return shipping and it costs more than the product. Better to just keep it... I try to keep my hands in my pockets, but an Ad Reader must have got a glimpse, because they identify me and start trying to sell me fertility drugs. For a second I get angry then I realize that a subsidiary of my company makes that drug, so they are legally entitled to have my personal information.

When I get home, the neighborhood association leader is talking to Wendy about our car. It's 5 years old and we have to trade it in before the year is up, or we are an Eyesore. If enough of us are Eyesores, our neighborhood becomes Blighted, and can be sold to the highest bidder. We're near one of the last parcels of undeveloped national parkland, so developers

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[blair1q]

> certainly not in the next few decades

30-50 years, by my calculation; backed up by others I've seen since.

We know how much oil there is, and we have statistical models of what's left to be discovered, and we know how much we use, and how fast that grows. Simple extrapolation.

And when it runs out it's not gradual. One second you're sucking on the straw, the next second it's gurgling in the bottom of the cavern. Since we're accelerating our usage all the time, we're going to hit that wall fast and sudden.

The alternative is to start replacing our oil usage with electrical usage. There's no other portable solution that's nearly as inexpensive or manageable.

Your apartment building can install outlets in the parking lot for a few hundred dollars per unit. He's got a decade or so to get on it.

Re:Already is a way, and it's in development

[IdeaMan]

Eventually all of our energy will be delivered from electrical utilities. Or alternatively beamed from space

Ok so those studies talk about beaming power to a mile-wide power collection facility, but it shouldn't be a stretch to see using a steam dirigible or high altitude plane as a power relay.

ohnoitsroland

[Aaron Isotton]

Roland obviously botched the summary. It's not about hydrogen powered cars as in "cars in whose tanks you put hydrogen", but about hydrogen powered cars as in "cars with conventional fuel in the tank, which then gets split into hydrogen and carbon, and the hydrogen is used in the engine". TFA is actually interesting.

Re:ohnoitsroland

[dbIII]

Roland obviously botched the summary

I for one am looking forward to this wonderful liquid carbon!

Here's are two brighter ideas!

[Anonymous Coward]

These requires no pie-in-the-sky technology:

1. Real public transit. In the majority of the USA, public transit is so bad your really have no choice except to drive if you want to get to work in a reasonable time.

2. Real fuel economy standards for cars and SUVs (so-called "light trucks"). Average vehicle fuel economy peaked in the late 1980s. A typical family sedan has over 250 horsepower. Not long ago, that was a sports car. In 1989 I drove a Honda Civic with better mileage than some modern hybrids.

This is entirely feasible with off-the-shelf technology, with reasonable cost.

Re:Here's are two brighter ideas!

[letxa2000]

Real public transit. In the majority of the USA, public transit is so bad your really have no choice except to drive if you want to get to work in a reasonable time.

Won't happen. Our sprawl won't allow efficient public transit except in concentrated downtown areas. And malign sprawl as much as you'd like, but I lived in another country where there wasn't as much sprawl. No thank you. I'll take the sprawl any day of the week. Not everyone wants to live in a crowded city.

For what it's worth, I'm self-employed and work from my home 99% of the time so my contribution to the "problem" is less than that of most tree-huggers, including those that take the bus or train.

Or diamonds....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

With all that surplus carbon you should be able to give your Valentine a diamond the size of a brick.

Folks, we have no shortage of C, that's why there's a disposal problem.

Hint to moderators: parent was hoping for funnies, not insightfuls.

Re:Or diamonds....

[KublaiKhan]

The Diamond Age, here we come.

Though it's going to be a bitch finding shampoo strong enough to get the toner out of your hair....

(Wasn't hoping for any particular moderation; was just amused at the lack of anything other than "hey, let's store it someplace" as a solution--why not start working on that space elevator?)

whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Tag this and every other story with 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong'.

It is your duty as a slashbot.

Red Herring Alert!!!

[t33jster]

On one day in 1980, Mount St. Hellens released more carbon into the atmosphere than human beings have in our collective history. This carbon-footprint obsession must be stopped. If you want pollution-free transportation, try bolting a mast with some sales to your car. You can head back home when the wind shifts. Be careful around power lines & overpasses.

Re:Red Herring Alert!!!

[milsoRgen]

Why would you have to wait for the wind to shift?

Re:Red Herring Alert!!!

[t33jster]

I, for one, am not an avid sailor. I lack the skills necessary to take a headwind and turn it into forward momentum. Besides, tacking wouldn't be practical in gridlock.

Re:Red Herring Alert!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

Pure, unadulterated, ignorant, bullshit.

I won't even get into the fact that you haven't proven anything with this statement. Did the earth warm overnight as a result of this blast? If so, you might have an argument...instead, the global temperature raised more or less hand-in-hand with the carbon/pollution output of mankind over the last hundred years. Proof? Maybe not, but more than a preponderance of scientific evidence? Yes. But I give you too much credit.

For one thing, when you claim to have a fact, you might try backing it up with a reputable scientific source. Here's one by Terry Gerlach, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who studies volcanic gases:

"Worldwide, people and their activities pump 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The total from volcanoes is about 200 million tons a year -- or less than 1 percent of the man-made emissions."

I leave it up to you to do a better job convincing me or anyone else of that bullshit you're trying to sell. In the meantime, consider this:

Even if the Mount St. Helens blast released TWENTY SIX MILLION TIMES more carbon dioxide in that blast than the maximum it does in a normal year (500-1,000 tons), it would still only add up to ONE YEAR'S worth of human activities.

So don't break your arm patting yourself on the back as armchair skeptic. Instead, why don't you tell us how much carbon dioxide is up your ass, since that seem to be where your head is located.

Are these people idiots? Or are the editors?

[HEbGb]

I can't believe this kind of schlock is getting any attention at all. This is so stupid and impractical that I don't even know where to start.

Here is what they are proposing:

1. Capture the exhaust
2. Pull the hydrogen (?) out of the exhaust
3. Run the car from the hydrogen
4. Dispose of the carbon somewhere.
5. Eventually re-use that carbon somehow to make new fuel.

These people are morons. How much hydrogen is there in emissions? I doubt enough to run a car.

I swear, the public press is so desperate for free "green" energy they're willing to pay attention to any sort of nutty idea that comes along, no matter how ridiculous it is. And from GA Tech, no less. They really should know better.

why?

[TheDawgLives]

I love to be captain obvious, so why are the cars separating the hydrogen from the carbon and storing the carbon? Why don't they separate it at a central plant, then ship the hydrogen to the fueling stations? Then the car wouldn't have to carry all that extra carbon around and they fueling stations wouldn't have to send the carbon back to be stored somewhere. - SuckItDown!

Re:why?

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

Because transporting and storing hydrogen is a lot more difficult than storing and transporting a liquid hydrocarbon.

Re:why?

[TheDawgLives]

California seems to have figured it out...

Can we make this any more inefficient?

[Radon360]

1. Fill up with regular gasoline
2. Instead of burning it outright, let's strip the hydrogen off the hydrocarbons and just burn that.
3. Somehow sequester the leftover carbon from the breakdown (this is the ???? step)
4. Return the carbon (somehow stored in liquid form) for recycling >>> Profit!

First, let's ignore how much energy we're throwing away in step 2 by not utilizing the full energy potential stored in the hydrocarbon molecules. Second, somehow we'll expend more energy to liberate the hydrogen and capture the carbon, both without oxidizing them. Third, we're going to tote around another 75 - 100 pounds of weight with the stored (and somehow liquefied) carbon that will be returned. Less energy potential that ever reaches the engine/fuel cell, and even more expended to refine something fairly energy dense into something that's a fair amount less energy dense.

The problem with this idea is there's too much fixation on sequestering every last bit of carbon, rather than focusing on a bigger, more important concept called energy efficiency. Work on improving that and the carbon emission reductions usually follow.

What else could 'they' use it for?

[florewacks]

A commenter on Greentech Media points out that this research is mostly NASA and DOD funded.

Not the first company to try this

[edwardpickman]

There's a British company trying the same thing the article is confusing but the system essentially spilts off the hydrogen inside the vehicle then stores the carbon from hydrocarbon fuel. They reprocess the stored CO2 back into a hydrocarbon fuel so it's a closed loop system. It's more a way to store hydrogen as a hydrocarbon then recycle the storage medium, the carbon. It's in no way a fuel source it's a storage medium. ALL hydrogen based systems are storage mediums not fuel sources. Hydrogen is too friendly about combining with other elements so the hydrogen always needs to be spilt off to use as fuel. I take it you can store a lot of hydrogen safely this way if the system can ever be perfected but the real point is there's little difference from an electric vehicle other than faster refueling. Because of transfer losses I have to believe it's less efficent than straight electric. Even hydrogen cars are generally all electric so the hydrogen largely replaces batteries. Because of all the technical problems it seems focusing on improving batteries would be a better solution. There's no proof this system is in anyway practical let alone the technology still doesn't exist.

A better cleaner choice

[g0bshiTe]

Finally something good to come out of France in awhile.

A better and cleaner solution is the "Air Car". Powered by compressed air.

The prototype is supposed to travel up to 150 miles off one fill up with a top speed of 60 mph.

When they hit final production, I think I'll be buying one just so I can laugh my ass off as I pass every gas station.

Re:A better cleaner choice

[c6gunner]

And I'll be laughing when your car gets turned into free-floating molecules by a collision with some guy's family Van.

Seriously, that vehicle has such low mass, low cargo carrying capacity, and poor performance, that you may as well go buy yourself a scooter instead. It might be an ok vehicle for booting around the downtown core of a major metropolis (in which case you could make a decent business using them as taxi-cabs, or renting them to tourists) but you wouldn't catch me trying to take one of those death-traps on the highway.

Re:A better cleaner choice

[g0bshiTe]

Putting around town is about all I'd do in it anyway. I drive on the highway maybe less than 3% of the time I spend driving annually.

Oh, wow

[Sciros]

Is this a study to see how energy *inefficient* a vehicle can be over its lifespan? From manufacturing these vehicles, to the fact that they still take in fossil fuels, to hydrogen giving you not "zero emissions" but water vapor (which functions as a greenhouse gas), to liquid CO2 being stored on-board and then... under an ocean hahah. Car manufacturers would have to be out of their freaking mind to ever go along with this ridiculous idea.

This is all such a BAD IDEA that I'd probably have been happier to read a "researchers develop 30hp 5mpg engine" headline. They may as well spend tax money developing a car that runs on farts, so you gotta eat them "popcorn jellybeans" from Jelly Belly while you're on the move. At least it'd be funny. Plus you'll be using that methane on something useful, like powering your car, instead of warming the planet!

Actually it's pretty freaking cold right now. Excuse me while I buy 100 Hummers.

Hydrogen is not an energy source

[MountainLogic]

In this case hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium. Just a high density "battery". You still need to generate massive energy to make the hydrogen and you've added yet one more step that makes they whole precess a looser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI). Furthermore, no one is sure if carbon sequesteration will really work and if it does work it will generate more green house gases go move the carbon and and ram it into the earth than it will sequester.

The solution is to dump the big fat cars, trucks and SUVs. Redesign our cities where we can enjoy walking to work. Build efficient, fast and luxurious rail transport. Stop air freighting fruit half-way around the world. Wall street is already making bets on oil prices to more than doubling to over $200/barrel in the near term. Our economy is going to restructure itself - plan on how you are going to fit into the new economy.

Also needs a pure O2 source

[G4from128k]

Although the article claims it does not mix the hydrocarbon fuel with air, it must do so to produce the hydrogen. Oxygen is a key ingredient to converting a hydrocarbon fuel into hydrogen and carbon diOXIDE. Where's the oxygen coming from in this system?

a sound understanding of thermodynamics

[circletimessquare]

is apparently not a precursor for babbling on about energy schemes

all hydrogen fuel schemes are idiotic

it takes more energy to convert any fuel source to hydrogen. unless the hydrogen is found naturally, or is the byproduct of some other industrial chemical process, there is zero sense in converting any energy source to hydrogen, simply because you waste so much energy doing that. translated: hydrogen isn't green

solution: more nuclear plants, electric cars. get with the f***ing program

Carbonated Ocean Water

[probityrules]

Under the ocean? Why not store it *in* the ocean! Imagine all the possibilities: oceans filled with Club Soda. Yum!

Oh Nos! Wait till Al Gore hears about this!

[GlobalColding]

With all that liquid carbon dioxide we will slip into GLOBAL COLDING!!! Jump ahead of the curve and start lobbying for zero HYDROGEN footprint initiatives!

"Wells-to-Wheels" vs Tesla has shipped p1

[pg--az]

"Wells-to-wheels" is a nice Google query. (( "Wells-to-wheels" Tesla )) surprisingly does not bring Martin Eberhard's blog entry of several months ago to the top, I thought that he really explained it nicely. Anyway www.teslamotors.com reports that they have received the first production-line car now, although since it was delivered to Elon this does not count for so much as the first one delivered to an end-user, THAT will be a milestone !

Still a waste of time and money!

[crhylove]

Hydrogen, Bio-Fuel, etc. are all a waste of time, money, energy, and a blind alley. We have the solution to our energy crisis. It's called Solar Power. Solar panels continue to get more efficient and fall in price. This is a process that would accelerate if we bought more of them. This coupled with cars modeled on the Tesla design would be the fastest and easiest way to upend are oil based economy, and then eventually driving would drop much nearer to the price of free as well.

Of course automakers, oil companies, and other large corporations stand to lose, but that's no barrier to adoption. Oh wait, they own the media companies, too?!? Damn.....

I'm with stupid.

[C10H14N2]

No, what they are proposing is:

"The Georgia Tech team has already created a fuel processor, called CO2/H2 Active Membrane Piston (CHAMP) reactor, capable of efficiently producing hydrogen and separating and liquefying CO2 from a liquid hydrocarbon or synthetic fuel used by an internal combustion engine or fuel cell. After the carbon dioxide is separated from the hydrogen, it can then be stored in liquefied state on-board the vehicle. The liquid state provides a much more stable and dense form of carbon, which is easy to store and transport."

The problem with hydrogen is the "easy to store and transport" part. Basically, CO2 is a big molecule that is easy and safe to store for long periods of time. H2 shares none of these properties. It's a small molecule that is extremely difficult to store for extended periods and inevitably brings up images of Shuttle launches and Hindenburg crashes. Besides, it is more efficient to crack H2 out of hydrocarbons than to pull it out of, say, water through electrolysis. Though, if you're a country like Iceland with lots of renewable, practically free and non-polluting geothermal energy and water lying around everywhere, suddenly electrolysis starts to make a whole lot of sense despite being otherwise horribly inefficient, but that still doesn't solve the whole storage and transport problem.

Sure it's inefficient, but it's free carbon!

[StaticEngine]

You're missing the best part! We can build some pressure cookers into these cars to compress the released carbon into diamonds, and then we can win girls hearts, or sell them off at a profit to buy more gasoline! Even it we don't get diamonds out of it, maybe we can make graphite pencils and then drop a load off at the nearest school. Think of the Children! Sure, maybe the four-wheeled diamond manufacturers will drive nice companies like DeBeers out of business and destablize the paradise that is South Africa, and perhaps the pencil-making lobbies will shake their splintered fists at us, but this is innovation, man!

Only one deciding factor in this

[GlobalColding]

Is there an influential senator behind this technology? Whoever got the most influence and bribe money can probably get us into cars powered by deep fryer grease.

Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I..

[Quiet_Desperation]

...desire.

There's an even better way to separate the hydrogen and carbon. Burn it. :-)

Eample: C7H16 + 22 O2 = 7 CO2 + 8 H20

Yeah, your C and H gets all mucked up with that nasty O, but there ya go.

Cars not sustainable

[trainman]

It doesn't matter what you put in the fuel tank, a world of car dependence is not sustainable. Where will you put the roads needed for these cars? The parking spaces for these cars? You can't build your way out of congestion.

We have to smarten up and move away from the car. That doesn't mean there won't be a place for cars in the future, but for the majority of trips, people will have to use some kind of mass transit.

Trying to build your way out of congestion is like trying to lose weight by loosening your belt.

Cousin Eddie in Xmas Vacation: "Shitter was full!"

[BUL2294]

Seriously, with this plan, we will have cars that shit!!! I can see the "Cousin Eddie"s of the world standing in the cold with hoses, dumping the carbon sludge down the local storm sewer--while smoking cigars. "Car wouldn't go--shitter was full!"

Where do we get the hydrogen from?

[91degrees]

The answer: Fossil fuels.

Now,you could actually get these from electrolysis of water but that requires electricity. It would be more efficient to simply redirect the electricity to base load and cut down on the fossil fuels used for power generation. Then refine the fossil fuels to diesel or something.

The best place to get hydrogen at the moment, is from oil and gas.

Hydrogen... bah! Automotive X Prize!

[EricBoyd]

I've had enough of all the hydrogen hype, slashdot should run more stories on the Autmotive X Prize. For which hydrogen is not an acceptable fuel. Check out the X Prize Cars - and we're still 2 years from the race yet!

Liquid Carbon?

[dogs4ar]

I don't think the article mentions "Liquid Carbon Dioxide". That would take great pressure and extremely low temperature to pull off. I think it says "stored in a liquefied state" or something of the sort. I propose they would do this in such a fashion:

NaOH + CO2 --> NaHCO3

The reaction would have to take place in aqueous solution, or the ions would crash out. The product is Sodium Bicarbonate, the main ingredient in carbonated beverages. Umm...so I think that the inventors may be leaning more toward soda water, and less toward liquid dry ice. I am not saying this is a sane answer to the problem of automobiles, fuel, sprawl, whatever. I figure no one is insane enough to propose that we sit on a "dry ice bomb" as someone else so eloquently put it.

Still, they are going to have to use a pretty strong base to solubilize carbon dioxide. What else could they use? Anhydrous Ammonia? Yeah, sounds real pretty.

Bio Solution

[GregPK]

I think a better solution would be to carry that algae stuff they are testing on coal power plants now and use it in our vehicles. Since fuel cells produce the two primary ingredients anyways. Water, and CO2.

Basicall, we'd be producing biodiesel while we drive. We'd get a tax credit in return for our continued donations of carbon growing algae. Granted this wouldn't pull out all the carbon we produce. But it might come close enough to pay for itself or damn close to carbon nuetral.

Sale!

[GoddessOfDeath]

try bolting a mast with some sales to your car. Would the car get pushed along by the masses of people trying to buy something?

History repeats itself

[allcoolnameswheretak]

"Where will all this liquid carbon be stored? The researchers don't know. They suggest that it could be stored in geological formations or under the oceans."

Sounds just like what the Titanians did before it all got out of hand and ruined their planet.
The doomed Titanians

A science plan? In Georgia?

[beamin]

Why don't they just ask Jesus to take care of it for them, like they did with the drought?

solace in the miseducation: hydrogen & fuel c

[milalea]

hello folks :)

my friend sent me this link and asked me to comment. sadly, most of what i have read on these posts is inaccurate information. So much so, i'm experiencing palpitations!! ;) But truely it's impossible to blame anyone for this as the information one can find on the matter is, well, just a mish mash of ****sh**t from badly researched articles, biased documentaries and people pumping out information based on a polar opposite agenda of helping save this poor little planet earth, which is what this is all about RIGHT???!! RIGHT????!!!! Sigh~ and can we do it without getting down each other's throats??!

So, in all good conscience, here's my moment to write this below (I'm really trying to finally get on with my album so need to stay calm and peaceful and kind of stuff for a little while) and suggest that if you are interested in knowing more about what the hydrogen issue entails from people who are actually doing it instead of just passing around random **llock*, please, please visit our website we have made about fuel cells, hydrogen, waste and all things good, green and TRUE about how we can shift out of this crazy matrix of centralised power into the distributed generation, co-op owned, clean, cheap energy paradigm. The address is http://www.cenergie.com/ (my brother and i made it based on what our father's company Cenergie does so it's informative but hopefully also a fun place to learn). As for credentials, we made those London Hydrogen Taxi Cabs that ferried bewildered mp's around Marble Arch in 2000:: yup the one and only ones- one of which incidentally was just stolen from a car park in central London- and ODDLY enough, the police can't find it! So if anyone has seen a cab with ZERO - Emission Vehicle on it, then can you email us please??) Anyway, if any of you remember them, yes, they ran on hydrogen and they worked all that long time ago! Back then the company was called Zetek and was the largest fuel cell company in Europe (until september 11th killed us. - a long story, albeit interesting). We have since reemerged as Cenergie, have survived so far though death threats from russians (they have a nice defamation site against us where you can see phallic rock art etc) total disregard by the UK government yadah yadah, to create a completely new type of fuel cell technology for STATIONARY power with pennies to the pound.

So, anyway, what i want to get across to you peeps, is that it's not a matter of whether hydrogen is bad, or a fuel or not, it's about WHERE YOU GET IT, HOW YOU USE IT AND WHAT IT TAKES TO DO THOSE THINGS.

For example one way NOT to get it, is by extracting hydrogen from hydro-carbons as that means you are using oil to get the hydrogen. Asides from it being the most expensive way to get it, it is ecologically and socially damaging, so it is absolutely correct to say that it is not worth the expense and externalities it takes to get it. Furthermore, one example of how NOT to use it is for combustion, which by the laws of thermodynamics, will never yield an justifiable efficiency, at least when compared with one of the ways TO use use, notably electro-chemically with a hydrogen fuel cell. And that would have to be an energetically efficient and ecologically friendly fuel cell. So, for that, we have developed the Cenergie fuel cell, a zero-emission (all it makes is electricity and pure water), 90% recyclable, no noble metal, mass manufacturable and cheap electricity GENERATING technology (THIS IS NOT A BATTERY, no fuel cell is.

So, on to how TO get Hydrogen within the constraints of what is efficient and ecological. Well, seeing as it is the most abundant, simplest, number 1 element in our known universe, you'd think you could get it just about anywhere, and that is true. Incidentally the cheapest way, albeit only one of the viable ways, is by getting it out of TRASH via Pyrolysis (or Plasma Arc and the likes).

And yes, with the current technologies, this

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Show me the energy

[XNormal]

This type of closed-cycle system is a method to store and transmit energy.

So what's missing?

An energy source. Where is all the energy going to come from?

Whither the vaporware tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ecotechnology coming real soon now... but prolly not until some time after IPv6 appears.

University? LOL! The rich get richer-

[X'16435934]

They should be extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. (See J Swift - Gullivers travels) Hey why not just get hydrogen from Titan, along with all those hydrocarbons it supposedly has. (see other article in today`s slashdot) Migod, how do these idiots manage to get tenure? The US university system is corrupt.

Coal and nukes suck and here is why

[bussdriver]

Coal never includes pollution costs, the many mining costs and the massive government subsidies for mining, burning, and for building new plants.

Nuclear have waste issues and the better "new" plants are largely unproven. The biggest problem with it is that NOBODY has ever been profitable; it takes tons of government funding and needed safety regulation. The waste management is another long term cost issue that is rarely addressed.

I think we should stop funding old power so alternative power at least has a level playing field! Simple government rate setting and even some incentive programs could be funded by taking out the handouts for coal, nukes, oil, and bio-fuel. Fixed energy rate plans like Germany has would promote a distributed diverse grid and make it a safe investment.

Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geothermal, and Wave power are realistic alternatives and promote a distributed grid. Flow Batteries are the best grid load balancer we currently have and its entirely realistic to rely upon it instead of nuclear plants and probably has a lower net cost to us tax payers. The OTHERS had funding to get started...

Solar is over 30% now, which IS highly efficient. Coal and Oil are stored solar energy; their cost to power ratio is better because of the "free" accumulated power over vast spans of time.
Direct harvesting can't compete with cheap long term naturally accumulated power. Its somewhat of a red herring to bash alternatives on "efficiency."

Re:Cousin Eddie in Xmas Vacation: "Shitter was ful

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Seriously, with this plan, we will have cars that shit!!!

The Amish already have them.

Oh WOW, what an amazing new idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT!

Circa 1760, maybe...

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EV power generation

[sabt-pestnu]

I'm sure folks have mentioned it in this thread before, but what you're throwing around is how efficient just the electricity-to-motion conversion is.

Becomes a different ball game if you do power-source-to-electricity-to-motion.

And yes, some power generation models generate less carbon than others. I'm sure you can name a few.

We don't have gobs of spare generating capacity just laying around. Where is that extra electricity going to come from? Wind, solar, tidal? Call me a skeptic, but the energy density isn't there. Nuclear? A solution, maybe, 7-12 years from now, if we start building them today. Coal, oil? I thought you were trying to get away from that...

Re:EV power generation

[Rei]

If you want full calcs, I've got those too.

We don't have gobs of spare generating capacity just laying around.

Yes, we do.

Re:EV power generation

[sabt-pestnu]

Glad you brought those up, they do need to be talked about.

From Mileage from megawatts: Study finds enough electric capacity to "fill up" plug-in vehicles across much of the nation
 
 
A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of these 198 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.

Some key words there: "Off-peak". "plug-in hybrid". "electricity production".

And from the referenced study: ... This has an estimated gasoline displacement potential of 6.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, or approximately 52% of the nation's oil imports.

Which is quite spiffy, halving oil imports.

And again from the referenced study: Overall, PHEVs could reduce greenhouse gas emissions with regional variations dependent on the local generation mix. Total NOX emissions may or may not increase, dependent on the use of coal generation in the region. Any additional SO2 emissions associated with the expected increase in generation from coal power plants would need to be cleaned up to meet the existing SO2 emissions constraints. Particulate emissions would increase in 8 of the 12 regions.

So... my original point about offsetting oil usage by using more coal stands. Add in the question of which is worse: particulates + SO2 or CO2, and things get more muddled yet.

Tried to access your full calcs, the link would not load. Got an alternate URL?

Back to the key words...

• "off-peak" guess when folks will plug their hybrids in? when they get Home From Work, did you say? When everyone is running ovens, lights, heat... not off-peak. There's a reason there's "off-peak generating capacity" laying around, and a reason it's called "off-peak".
  
• "plug-in hybrid", as opposed to plug-in fuel cell, or all-electric. That's a different discussion, so I'll just nod and pass on.
  
• "electricity production" - Sorry, just covered that.

All in all, better to find ways around these problems (alternate generation, incentives and education about off-peak hours and EV charging draws, etc) than to simply say "that won't work" and fall silent. Thanks.

Exactly, sorta.........

[Anachragnome]

The reason "they" are promoting this, rather then a 120 AC scenario, is because OF the fact that some 2nd layer distribution structure remains. They get to add the cost of transportation(done by trucks they own), manufacture(done in refineries they own), etc. to the end cost of the product.

More money in their pockets. Simple as that. It is merely a bid to retain control over a market(the one the current petroleum interests nurse from), when 120 AC is the logical means of solving the issue of distribution.

Wow, just wow. THIS is the obvious solution

[Bryansix]

While you two fight back and forth on the issue, the solution has already been found. The cars of the future will be Plug-in Hydrogen Hybrids!!! Toyota already has a test vehicle in the form of a last gen Highlander. This brings the best of both worlds together. Hydrogen for REAL range now not 50 years in the future when that battery tech gets worked out and you still have the ability to charge your car and collect the energy lost during braking.

i refuel my car on trash day

[AP31R0N]

Just drump some coffee grinds and orange peels in the Mr. Fusion and i'm good to go for another month.

I love the title

[sgt scrub]

Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

And next in the news, "Water and Oxygen combine to make water?"