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Boeing Hydrogen Powered Drone First Flight
garymortimer writes with news of the test flight of a hydrogen powered UAV. From the article: "Phantom Eye's innovative and environmentally responsible liquid-hydrogen propulsion system will allow the aircraft to stay on station for up to four days while providing persistent monitoring over large areas at a ceiling of up to 65,000 feet, creating only water as a byproduct. The demonstrator, with its 150-foot wingspan, is capable of carrying a 450-pound payload."
Those 450 pounds won't be flowers and kittens, right?
Isn't this kind of like strapping a bomb to a bomb? All that hydrogen could make one hell of a detonator if the folks involved aren't careful.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Water as a by-product!? We can make it rain I tells ya! We just need enough of these. So we'll have to charge 50 times GDP. But that's okay the desperate farmers will pay. To offset the costs we can write a play and musical about it!
Environmentally-responsible airplane that can also carry a wicked-heavy bomb....*sigh*
Are they going to use them for watering the crops or something?
Is the facility where these violations of our privacy are orchestrated going to be solar powered?
Funny thing -- the higher-end batteries (NiCd, LiPO) aren't all that environmentally unfriendly. It's the cheap lead-acid ones (which happen to be widely used in Chinese electric scooters) that are pretty nasty.
And what it takes... really depends on the approach taken. I mean, splitting hydrogen out from water is something I'd expect every child who graduated primary school to have done in science class, though there's been plenty of work on more efficient approaches. (Not that it doesn't require plenty of energy... but again, that's a matter of where folks choose to get that energy from; if it's solar, hydro, responsible nuclear, &c...)
When will the technology of this UAV trickle down to automakers?
I'd love to drive a bomb.
Along with water, isn't there quite a bit of heat produced as part of the fuel cell process? It would seem to me that this may take away some of the stealth benefits, no?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Actually Coal will also release water. Simple example: CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O
Yes its methane but you get the point. Fossil fuels create CO2 and water.
I'd mod up if I had points, but I don't. Mod 'em up!
Look up ortho and para hydrogen. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_isomers_of_hydrogen "If orthohydrogen is not removed from liquid hydrogen, the heat released during its decay can boil off as much as 50% of the original liquid[5]." This is a demonstration of quantum mechanical effects on a macro scale.
Actually, if you read the rhetoric of the far-left environmentalists, its not ironic at all.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Saw the video of it taking off.. was on a cart until lift off leaving the only obvious wheels behind. So how does it land? didn't see anything on the page about that.
It's pronounced "Nuke-u-ler"; the "s" is silent.
uhh, you do realize that in the real world, splitting water creates either caustic soda or brown's gas, not clean hydrogen and oxygen, and is horribly inefficient. Hydrogen in commercial quantities is created by hitting hydrocarbons with steam to strip the hydrogen off. This is not carbon neutral in any way.
but hey, its politically correct now because its "enviromentalist".
California uber alles indeed. oh, its related. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8UlY8eXCk&feature=related
Given the, at best limited, ability of anti-nuclear lobbyists to do much of anything about the nuclear navy, I suspect that defense types have some very clear ideas about where they plan to find a source of electricity next to a large supply of water...
When do I get my flying car?
All these shenanigans about Hydrogen being a perfectly clean fuel ignores the fact of where it comes from.
We don't get hydrogen from splitting water. That costs too much. We get it from natural gas, which has 1 carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. This is done by steam reforming, and while it's possible to sequester the resulting CO2 by injecting it underground, it's not done by anyone. Because, again, it costs money.
We can also get it from coal, after conversion to "town gas" and that's not the cleanest of processes either.
Yes, I'm jaded. I used to be a true believer in this stuff, then I read more and grew up.
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BMO
Actually Coal will also release water. Simple example: CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O
Yes its methane but you get the point. Fossil fuels create CO2 and water.
Ignoring the fact for a moment the high temperatures it takes to burn real "anthracite" coal which would probably make it impractical for a light weight drone, burning coal is mostly C + O2 -> CO2 (and some carbon monoxide). The problem with coal is not that it has much Hydrogen in it (which would be volatile gases like hydrocarbons dissolved like Cannel Coal or residual sugars from organic molecules), but most coal has lots of Sulfur which makes acid rain. Whatever hydrogen there is in coal usually doesn't make water, it often makes phenols (carbolic acid) and other benzene ring compounds due to high heat and insufficient oxidation. Also the high temperatures also cause secondary reactions with the nitrogen in the air to make various fun nitrogen oxides which are great for smog...
While hydrogen sucks for density per volume at 5.6 MJ/liter versus gasoline at 34 MJ/liter, it's actually has good energy density by weight with 123 MJ/kg versus gasoline at 47 MJ/kg. The huge bulbous body of this thing is simply to store all the fuel. I suspect their main reason for going hydrogen was that it's easier to burn at high altitude and has a wide useable fuel/air ratio.
This low energy density per volume, is also the reason why it can't really be used for trucking. You'd take up half of the usable cargo room just to get the equivalent amount of energy as a normal diesel fill.
So you think. It's so good at being silent that you don't even know it's there. It's what's known to orthography researchers as a "ninja letter". Very rare. Well, we think it's rare, because since it's a ninja, we can't tell for sure if it exists or not.
You are welcome on my lawn.
splitting water creates either caustic soda or brown's gas, not clean hydrogen and oxygen, and is horribly inefficient
Caustic soda is a valuable product, and we have electrical power going to waste at night in this country. Your point about hydrogen in commercial quantities being made from hydrocarbons is well-taken though (I would say that, since I've been making that point elsewhere in this thread.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People have a problem with how hydrogen is produced now, while ignoring that as technology progresses it will solve storage and generation issues like the one mentioned. For some reason they cannot imagine that processes and materials will continue to be improved.
The simple truth is that hydrogen is readily abundant, and that fueling will always be faster than transferring the equivalent amount of energy via electrical transfer.
Hydrogen will win the end, we just don't know how yet... but its victory over other alternative fuels is there to see for those who think about the future.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am surprised that no poster so far mentioned the Boeing Condor. Same layout, same propulsion concept, same mission, only a different fuel this time. I guess some guys at Boeing never stopped working on this plane.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
When do I get my flying car?
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I, for one, am rather disappointed to see autonomous spy capabilities within spitting distance of 99.999 percent uptime when the average consumer smartphone becomes a glossy brick within 5 hours of being disconnected from the power grid.
Liquid hydrogen has long been used as a rocket propellant (including the Saturn V upper stage) and environmental impact has nothing to do with it. Liquid hydrogen has triple the specific energy density of jet fuel, which is awfully handy for pushing the limits of endurance.
I was really surprised to see that this Phantom Eye has a cable-braced wing, that it's not a cantilever wing like every other large-span plane built in the last 80 years. Granted, it makes a lot of sense structurally -- long span cantilever wings have to be built very strong at the root, as the bending stresses are enormous -- but still, it's a surprise to see.
Boeing's Sugar Volt is a proposed hybrid electric/diesel commuter plane with a strut-braced wing -- so Boeing is apparently thinking outside the box on a number of concepts.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
fnord en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord
Back when I was young, and dirt was new, a "clean-burning" engine was "clean" when it produced only water vapor and carbon dioxide (and didn't produce, say, carbon monoxide or carbon particulates, et al.). The reason given for this assertion was that both water vapor and carbon dioxide were "natural" constituents of the atmosphere -- i.e., they were already there, in measurable amounts -- so no harm could be done by their production. People then just could not understand how water vapor and carbon dioxide could cause any harm: After all, animals -- including people -- had been exhaling them both for millennia.
Now, however, it has become clear that one can cause a problem not just by putting a *new* component into the atmosphere (e.g., CFCs), but by putting an existing component into the atmosphere (e.g., CO2) in such large quantities that the natural balance is disturbed.
I think we should keep in mind that anything done can be overdone. Water vapor is a natural part of the atmosphere, too, but if hydrogen-powered aircraft become popular we could see the CO2 problem redux, with water vapor.
I bet a big part of the reason for H fuel is to limit the trakablility of the crafts exhaust with telescopes via the vapor spectrum.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
"Responsible nuclear [power]"... Now, there's an oxymoron for you. Especially in the context of the full processing cycle, from mining to waste management.
Will
Not sure if you're trolling or not, but the atmosphere is currently more or less saturated with H2O. In fact, it frequently condenses and precipitates out of the atmosphere to fall on land in great quantities.
Creation of new clouds at altitude has been shown to play a bit of havoc with earth's albedo, IIRC, but it really isn't possible to put more water vapor into the atmosphere than is already there.
..but when there's too much water vapor in the sky it falls down as rain?
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Wow - that is a "faith based" point of view if ever I've seen one.
It's not faith. It's simple science, understanding that hydrogen is (A) vastly abundant, and (B) extremely clean to use. That along with electric motors making way more sense than conventional combustion engines, and battery technology getting harder and harder to ramp up to store a decent range makes the domination of hydrogen inevitable after we have a brief flirtation with battery driven electric cars.
It's just looking at all the facts and thinking about what it will mean ten years hence.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No Hindenburg jokes at all yet?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Um, no, the atmosphere is nowhere near saturated with H2O; even in the tropics the relative humidity only approaches 100% near the surface, in the lower troposphere. At altitude there is plenty of opportunity to add H2O; think of the number of aircraft contrails you've seen in your life.
My point is that the same type of argument you make about water vapor was made in 1965 about CO2 -- there is a natural atmospheric regulatory mechanism (in the case of CO2, it was plant photosynthesis), so there's nothing to worry about -- and that that type of argument is specious: Adding all that water to the ecosystem, in a place that has never seen that quantity before, is going to have consequences. One aircraft flight per day? Sure, unmeasurable on a global scale. 100,000 aircraft flights per day? Well. . . .
because we all know that Hydrogen and Aviation is a successful match.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Not to take anything away from the what appears to be an exciting design. But, I hope I am not the only person to take issue with the words "environmentally responsible" and "only water as a byproduct" when in reference to the atmosphere. Atmospheric water vapor is one of the the greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect.