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New Chemical Process Could Make Ammonia a Practical Car Fuel
overThruster (58843) writes A phys.org article says UK researchers have made a breakthrough that could make ammonia a practical source of hydrogen for fueling cars. From the article: "Many catalysts can effectively crack ammonia to release the hydrogen, but the best ones are very expensive precious metals. This new method is different and involves two simultaneous chemical processes rather than using a catalyst, and can achieve the same result at a fraction of the cost. ... Professor Bill David, who led the STFC research team at the ISIS Neutron Source, said 'Our approach is as effective as the best current catalysts but the active material, sodium amide, costs pennies to produce. We can produce hydrogen from ammonia "on demand" effectively and affordably.'"
The full paper. The researchers claim that a two-liter reaction chamber could produce enough hydrogen to power a typical sedan.
I'm not sure if I understand the point. Why crack the ammonia to get the hydrogen out-- anhydrous ammonia is flammable; why not just burn the ammonia?
--stinky and poisonous, of course, but I suppose no worse than gasoline.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Actually, the furthest along are gasoline engines. 100% of all research funds should go to increasing fuel efficiency.
They called me crazy for keeping all those jars of pee, but now I have free fuel!
"For a fraction of the cost". There is no money to be made by selling the world something it needs for just pennies. Ammonia is available everywhere for pennies, and I suspect sodium amide is available for pennies as well. This doesn't equal good business when you can still sell gasoline for some orders of magnitude more, and as such you can be damned sure no one will ever allow this to be a legit fuel for cars.
OK, I'm officially confused.
According to wiki:
So, we're going to generate hydrogen, so we can make ammonia, and then we're going to ... use the ammonia to make hydrogen?
Either I'm completely not understanding my own link, or there's a magic step in there which eludes me.
If you're already efficiently making hydrogen to make ammonia,and you wanted hydrogen for fuel, why not skip the step of making ammonia?
I guess the obvious conclusion is that it's easier and safer to deal with ammonia, but my dad used to manage refrigeration plants, and ammonia isn't something you fool around with either.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If I can't drive from Atlanta to Chicago without multiple hour stopovers, it's no-go. What I think we NEED are electric/gas hybrids; something I can head back and forth to work in solely on plug-in power, yet I can kick a small electric generator on for essentially unlimited range.
Yes, because centrally planning technology development worked so well for Russia.
Ammonia reacts to form hydrogen. Hydrogen reacts in a fuel cell to produce electricity. Electricity drives the electric car. This is electrical storage, just one implemented as an irreversible flow battery rather than a solid rechargeable one.
Catalyst: "a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change."
Yes, metals like palladium and rhodium cost a good chunk of change, but you don't need a lot of them, and you only need them once (per car). You add them in trace amounts to a porous honeycomb-like structure to maximize surface area, and bam, that whole gram of palladium adds $30 to the total cost of your car. Make no mistake, the more ways we have to accomplish a particular reaction, the better, and I consider TFA very cool news... But the cost of the catalyst wouldn't break the bank vs the cost of a new car.
Call me paranoid, but I can tell you a much more realistic reason we don't already have cars running on ammonia - The DEA. I can't buy a goddamned bulk pack of (real, not reformulated) Sudafed without showing two forms of ID, and $Deity help me if I actually need to get more in the same month! On the other side of the meth equation, a convenient source of anhydrous ammonia would make it much easier and safer to manufacture, so no ammonia for you!
Long term, I should think it would be to our advantage to pursue as many different kinds of fuels as we can find.
Because some might be better suited for some applications, and until you have a universal replacement for gasoline, you have no idea of what will be viable.
You're suggesting we decide a winning technology now, and ignore all others. Problem is, we don't yet know what the winning technology is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You're an idiot. That isn't a mandatory part of electric cars. I bet in 5 years we'll be able to charge them in 5 minutes and go 5x farther.
100% electric cars with electrical-output-only generators have been proven to get unbelievable gas mileage and range in Europe so that's not a bad idea.
Whoosh!
I will piss in my gas tank at each rest stop, providing ample ammonia for my journey.
Supercap technology is one of those that addresses it. Yes, it takes a lot of amperes, but instead of feeding a battery a constant voltage/amperage and nursing it along with its chemical reactions, while watching its SoC and temperature level, a supercap can be charged quite quickly, since the charge is a physical process (electrons stashed at one end of the dielectric.)
Of course, the problem is that batteries have such a relatively low energy density per volume. Get battery energy within an order of magnitude of diesel or gasoline, and this revolutionizes things. Ineffecient diesel and gasoline engines that have a sizable chunk of their energy spat out the tailpipe now get replaced by vastly more efficient electric motors. Noxious fuels get replaced by whatever electrical source is usable in a region, be it geothermal, wind, solar, or others. Petroleum can be used for its most important use -- making plastics, rather than just turned into carbon dioxide.
Actually, we should spend a bit more money on increasing traffic control and road design efficiency. Every car gets 0 miles to the gallon unnecessarily stopped at a light.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Yeah, because that's a limitless fuel.
Translation: Basement-dwelling pasty Slashdot poster takes time between Mommy bringing down meals to throw rocks at things he doesn't like, thinks he knows what's best, and everyone else is an idiot.
The only match for your limitless ego is your lack of awareness regarding your limitless stupidity.
Taken to extreme and you've got a whole nation committed to Lysenko genetics/socialism or some other bad idea.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because why ?
Why carry that generator around with you all the time. Just slap in on a little trailer and bring it along when you need it. Or, rent one.
Except the cars that turn off their engine, of course.
And those who came at first to scoff
remained behind to pray
Well that's just it, mate, not all the research has been done. We're far from fixed on the best solution to this problem. Not to mention the fact that you're comparing apples to oranges with this "IT project" thing.
Lack of diversification in fuels is one of our main problems. So to counter your other argument, the very best outcome in 30 years would be to have at least 10 different fuel options available. For example, if continual research on other fuels had been going on for the last 50 years, it would be much easier to transition away from fossil fuels right now. But your mode of thinking got us stuck in the fossil fuel ditch, with no way (or at least an extremely difficult (i.e. expensive) way) out.
You have an extremely narrow-minded vision. I'm really glad you aren't running the show.
Because charging your electric car that fast would require more than 10x the entire power supplied to your whole house. (Not to mention the cabling...)
Wrong ISIS. Kreiger is behind this.
Uhm, we're pretty close to that already. About 700 miles give or take. Tesla can do 250 easy, some are pushing 300. So a 1 hr full charge stop (you do have to eat, right?) plus another 30 minute stop (pee break) to 50% charge would get you there. Next year, in the lighter Model X a single 1hr stop might do it.
You'll need a new excuse soon. I suggest Miami to Seattle. People are *constantly* driving that route, so if an electric can't do it, it will never be a success.
They still get 0 miles to the gallon technically... Plus even if they aren't running the engine, it probably doesn't turn off the radio/AC/accessories, so they are running on some sort of energy that will need to be recharged. Regardless, better flowing traffic with minimal stops is much better for everyone. Longer battery range for electrics, better fuel economy for gas cars. Sadly, pretty much every city has lights that are poorly timed for rush hour that really screw everyone over for the other 22 hours of the day. Not to mention every residential neighborhood that has stop signs instead of yield signs, or 4 way stops when they should be 2 way stops. So much energy savings could be had with some good design, but it's the government that would have to fix it, and they have no incentive to do so...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Because a Pegasus perched on the back of a Unicorn is less fictional than a battery that can charge in 5 minutes.
What are the byproducts?
How about reducing weight that we all have to drag around with us just to get our bodies from point A to point B. Do I really need to haul around a backup camera? How about a computer to manage stability control? 15 airbags? A plastic engine cover?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Hey, don't forget asphalt for paving roads and straight up gasoline for cleaning things!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
This article was published Jun 24, 2014, a day later an article states Japan Moves to Fast-Track Cars Powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Coincidence? I think NOT!
That's not true they were more common than gas at one point but since gas cars have greater range and were cheaper the electric car eventually lost popularity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
I think you've played too much Civilization or similar games. Real life does not have a tech tree with resource allocation sliders.
It's also slow, pollutes more than cars made in the 21st century, and a veritable deathtrap, but hey...
Every car gets 0 miles to the gallon unnecessarily stopped at a light.
I'm wondering, instead of using red/green switches at intersections, maybe we can have the cars drive through diffraction plates set up around the intersection. Then the wavefunction of you and car can spread out into the intersection via diffraction and arrive randomly into one of several quantum states (outbound lanes) which head toward your destination. If we made cars and their drivers out of bosons instead of fermions, it might work. Only one fermion can occupy any given quantum state. So with fermionic cars, there's always a small probability of quantum entanglement within the intersection between you and some other guy trying to make a left.
Well, bureaucratic idiocy ignored, there is another small wart on this process.
Catalysts are very sensitive to "poisons" - chemicals that stop their catalytic activity. Sodium amide used as a catalyst has a vulnerability to a potent catalytic poison - that being water. A little moisture in the fuel tank, a little moisture in the fuel lines, and presto. No catalyst.
I'm not saying it's not possible, I just don't know how one would keep that pestilential dihydrogen monoxide carefully excluded from the process. It's cumulative, every tiny scrap of moisture kills off some of the catalyst.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
This fragmented "let's try everything" car fuel crap is getting really old. 100% of all research funds should go to electrical storage for electric cars...
The article here is about using ammonia as the energy storage medium for fuel cells, which are for electric cars
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The whole central planning Russia meme is overused. China is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams with centralised planning. Every country on earth has centralised planning.
That ammonia's not insanely explosive.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
They still get 0 miles to the gallon technically...
If they are traveling zero miles on zero gallons then that is zero divided by zero.
When you divide zero by zero (ignoring calculus and limit theorems) the result is undefined, not 0 mpg.
As long as all drivers keep their eyes closed.
Battery powered cars are have always been and will always be failures. People just don't have hours to waste waiting for a piece of shit electric car to recharge.
I don't see why you say that-- I, personally, spend at least eight hours every day when I'm not driving my car. Often more.
As long as the car can charge up overnight, it won't "waste my time waiting", because I'll be asleep.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
4. Find out "fresh" battery has gone through so many cycles it only has half its capacity left and find yourself stranded just short of the next "filling" station.
Look, all of these technologies have issues... maybe those batteries made from carbon that supposedly don't loose their capacity will end up being practical in a large scale, that would be great, but also, maybe this design will turn out to be a huge boon for the hydrogen car industry, basically solving one of the biggest problem in hydrogen fuel cells.... how to store enough hydrogen safely to have a reasonable rage.
Now I would be curious how the energy density of Ammonia, converted using this process, compares to that of gasoline which is currently pretty much top of the heap for portable energy density. It would also be nice to know how it compares to the current generation of batteries.
Everyone has their own particular chosen winner/looser but that is stupid. Innovation could come from anywhere and right now we need all the irons in the fire that we can get. We can't afford to put all of our sustainability money behind one thing that may or may not turn out to be the best choice in the long run.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Producing ammonia today consumes more than 1% of all man-made power, and natural gas is used as a source of hydrogen. Like hydrogen, it is an energy carrier and not a energy source. That considered, ammonia produced with nuclear heat would be an excellent carbon neutral liquid fuel, and is expected to cost significantly less than gasoline.
And on the other side of things is the "no central planning at all, ever" which gave us the streets of the Metro Boston area.
1 hour to travel 25 miles. Realize the joy. Live it. Join my commute.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Ammonia is very much renewable. The Haber process is well understood and has been running on an industrial scale for over half a century.
Ammonia is toxic, but it's not THAT toxic. It is certainly less likely to kill you or leave lasting harm than a hydrogen fire/explosion.
The car CAN be fuel cell based, but TFA was talking about reforming a small amount into hydrogen to form a mixture of hydrogen and ammonia that can fuel an internal combustion engine.
Meanwhile, ammonia is much easier to store in liquid form
Replace traffic lights with roundabouts a.k.a. traffic circles. As a bonus, it also saves electricity and reduces light pollution.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
They'll sell ammonia for only slightly less than the equivalent amount of gasoline and increase their profits. The oil industry has been known in the past to fix prices through cabals.
Actually, we do. Electric will win in every category that it isn't winning now, with the simple, predictable, and already-in-the-lab advances. Mostly, it's already winning anyway:
Simpler mechanically; significantly better torque curves; ultimate performance, considerably more horsepower for less weight and complexity (four 250 hp motors per wheel gives you a 1000hp 4wd vehicle with more torque than you can put on the ground -- you're gonna need a padded headrest and a massive tire budget); higher efficiency than any other technology, most especially including IC engines; lighter; direct drive or geared drive capable; greener both by virtue of efficiency and because as power sources become greener (for instance, a coal plant is replaced by a solar array), the car becomes that much greener as well; easier replacement; ease of recovery of energy at braking; no need for a new national energy distribution system as with hydrogen or ammonia; ability to move charge acquisition to off-peak hours; quick recharge by pack swap; fully amenable to ultracap power, presuming someone ever gets a decent, affordable high voltage ultracap to market; Agnostic to fuel cells, generators, line power, staged storage systems, solar, etc.; excellent for keeping center of gravity low; easy to produce; no inherent waste emissions (meaning that if the power source is clean, so is the vehicle); scalable to almost any imaginable vehicle from a bicycle to heavy equipment; allows much more practical utilization of petroleum in other sectors such as lubricants, plastics; fibers, synthetic rubber, etc.; and believe it or not, I could still go on. :)
There's only one serious remaining obstacle, and that is power supply, which puts the onus squarely on new storage tech. From my POV, betting that such tech will not come to market seems like a foolish thing to do. One moderately careful look at current battery and/or ultracap research will turn up significant discoveries and prototypes utilizing various technologies that show gains in everything from charge rates to size to discharge rates to longevity and thermal manageability.
No doubt early adopters will pay boutique, small-quantity prices for truly adequate vehicles, but that shouldn't last too long in terms of our current technological revolution.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That solution is so simple its a wonder no one has thought of it yet, but where would you put the flux compactor?
How about reducing weight that we all have to drag around with us
So you're suggesting a large portion of the American population get off their fat asses and lose weight so they can increase their vehicles fuel economy?
You might as well ask a starving lion to put down that leg of zebra it's gnawing on.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The fundamental particle humans are made of is not fermions. That particle is called moron. That is why they are able to occupy mutually contradictory policy positions simultaneously.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There will always be a need for rare elements.
Besides, even mining asteroids for water will be economical once we have more people in space.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I wrote a traffic metrics recording and forecasting program for a transportation research company a few years back.
Roundabouts are the WORST thing there is for an uncontrolled intersection. They're only useful around rural high schools so that kids don't get impatient and rush into an intersection to get t-boned at 55mph. The tradeoff is that you increase fender benders by 10x. For any kind of significant traffic, roundabouts simply seize up.
They get 0 miles to 0 gallons. Infinite fuel, technically.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not zero over zero. A small amount of power will be used, even if it's just powering the radio or infinitesimal internal battery discharge or fuel evaporation/degradation. That energy will be made up using gas. If two identical cars are idling and one has just been jump-started with a dead battery while the other is fully charged, the jump-started car will burn very slightly more fuel.
So, it's zero over an infinitesimal amount = Zero.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"You might as well ask a starving lion to put down that leg of zebra it's gnawing on."
American are hardly starving. More like "You might as well ask the fat kid to put down his cake."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because in a world of capitalist systems, that's all that matters. At the moment, I buy 25 miles of transportation for about $3.45 cents.
I'm pretty sure that ammonia doesn't have anything like the energy density of gasoline, and that it costs more per unit of energy. Feel free to show me how wrong I am.
TL;DR: Another horseshit, "we're saved! There's never going to be an energy problem again!" article.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Most people are familiar with the Ammonia that you buy in a store... but it is not Anhydrous Ammonia... it is diluted in water, and even so, you don't want to take a big whiff of the stuff, it will knock you on your butt. Anhydrous Ammonia is pure Ammonia... It requires hazmat suits to transfer that substance from container to container (fuel pump to fuel tank in a car?). It's possible that you could distribute a more dilute formula to "gas" stations, but the effect would be dropping lots of water on the roads as you used the fuel. Do we have enough fresh water for this? Perhaps. Not to mention that the more dilute you make it, the more of it you will have to cart around per mile. Anyway, it is much more likely to cause accidents than gasoline. Don't believe me? Ask a farmer how much he likes using the stuff...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
They don't work once you get even a moderate amount of traffic. Traffic in one direction can monopolize the roundabout and traffic from other directions can be stopped for hours. There's basically no control whatsoever.
Well, gasoline engines are the furthest along and they still suck. Trying to make them more efficient is a dead end, that is why hybrids appeared in first place.
Most modern gasoline engines (in cars) no longer have carburetors so technically, they can't suck but instead inject.
A 5 minute charge would require a charger that could supply about a megawatt (for about 250 miles). Even if you could design a battery pack that could handle that kind of power input, supplying the energy isn't trivial.
Do I really need to haul around a backup camera?
Well, if you remove that plus the equipment it takes to integrate it into the existing display, you've just saved enough weight to bring a burrito with you on your trip. As long as it's not a big burrito. You could save more weight by driving barefoot. Or naked even. And run some laps first to shed water weight.
I really think that if we're to the point where we're worrying about single grams, we've gone too far.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
It's also slow, pollutes more than cars made in the 21st century, and a veritable deathtrap, but hey...
So you are saying that you need a bigger, higher fuel burning vehicle to lower pollution? As for the deathtrap, that's not really related to the engine, but the design of the vehicle itself.
China only started to succeed when it dropped the central planning of everything model.
Central planning got them famine.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"anhydrous ammonia spill"
I come from a farming family, anhydrous ammonia is used as a fertilizer for corn and is injected into the ground between the corn rows. One year my grandfather was running the rig and he turned too sharp or the hose became snagged in the equipment and it ripped the hose out of a probably 2000 gallon anhydrous ammonia tank. He realized just in time what was happening and leaped out of the cab of the tractor before it filled with the chemical, it melted most of the consoles and shattered the fuel/temperature/other gauges.
China is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams with centralised planning.
China has a mostly market economy. It still has SEOs (state owned enterprises) but those tend to be the slowest growing sector of the Chinese economy, and they are slowly shutting them down or privatizing them.
Ammonia is toxic, but it's not THAT toxic. It is certainly less likely to kill you or leave lasting harm than a hydrogen fire/explosion.
The ammonia in your cleaning bottle is hydrous ammonia, which is a fancy way of saying it is mostly water. Hydrous ammonia is pretty tame stuff. Anhydrous (no water) ammonia, like the kind required for chemical reactions, is nasty nasty stuff. If you breathe the vapors it can cause permanent damage to your lungs. If you get it on your skin, you can easilly get a nasty chemical burn. The vapor is flamable and forms explosive mixtures with air. It reacts violently with a variety of compounds.
Anhydrous ammonia is dangerous. Certainly much more dangerous than you seem to think it is.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"Ammonia is toxic"
So is gas, coal dust, CO2, an so on.
".. isn't renewable"
what? of course it is. Stop your nonsense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Roundabouts are a good solution as you said in rural areas and also in residential neighborhoods. In low traffic situations, they work great to prevent having to stop in most situations. But yes, go to Carmel, IN (north side of Indianapolis). Try to go east or west through the town during rush hour (most traffic going north or south). You can't. Block a roundabout with traffic going one way, and all ways come to a dead stop, probably backing that street up to clog up another roundabout and you get a chain reaction from intersection to intersection.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Your geo metro also accelerates slowly, can't carry much (all 3 square feet of storage space) and get squished in an accident because it's the size of a postage stamp.
Meanwhile, for a little less efficiency, my Honda Civic has pulled trailers across the country (added a hitch), tons of storage room and is relatively safe.
The chances of surviving a real crash in a Metro is slim to none... You go ahead and tell me how that head on crash goes for you WHEN it happens. I know I'm still walking...
I think you miss the original poster's point. Obviously safety standards have improved since the Metro came out. But really, are you thinking that having air bags and crumple zones makes a car less fuel efficient? The reason the Metro gets good mileage is that it is relatively light weight and doesn't have a high horse power engine that allows one to far exceed the design specification of the vehicle.
There is no doubt that a Honda Civic is a good car, but as for efficiency, it is more than a "little less" unless your civic gets around 50 or 60 miles per gallon. When the civic was first introduced to the US in the 70s, it was a very fuel efficient sub compact economy car. Today's Civic, while a wonderful car is not any of those things.
What causes a vehicle to be fuel efficient is aerodynamics and low weight. The engines are more fuel efficient than even a decade ago, but manufactures have used that increased efficiency to build bigger cars instead of burning less oil.
Think of a race car. It's one of the most fuel efficient vehicles made. It squeezes every bit of energy out of the fuel that there is. And yet, it gets lousy mileage (but great HP). What is more efficient in solving real world problems, creating a car that can accelerate quicker without using more fuel than it's predecessor or one that can get from point A to point B on less fuel than it's predecessor. Engineers seem to think it is the former where as scientists say we need the latter.
Hydrogen powered cars would almost certainly be electric cars. Whether or not chemical batteries prove the best option for average size/average trip cars, other types of storage might prove more efficient for larger/long haul vehicles.
Speaking as somebody whose newest car has one, you can have my backup camera when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I'd like to *install* them on a few other cars around me sometimes, but there's no way you're taking mine. I'd trade an awful lot of other features (many of which weigh many times as much) before I'd give that up.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
100% to 95% is still centralised planning.
As opposed to a hydrogen explosion with a fire you cannot see?
The fire department is very good at hydrating anhydrous ammonia.
1. Unlatch side battery door.
2. Slide out weak battery.
3. Slide in fresh battery.
That's 30 seconds tops.
You realize that most electric cars have a substantial battery pack. If it was as simple as opening the hood and removing a simple battery, don't you think somebody would have thought of that before you?
If you are only looking at the consumer side, sure I'll give you that, but you have to look at the macro policy with the currency, central bank policy, and fiscal policy to see that it is anything but free. China exercises massive capital control. Don't get me wrong western countries should adopt similar macro policy, but these are hardly things that the mainstream would consider traditional "free market."
It's very much related to the engine: the car is a deathtrap because the ultra-lightweight body is unsafe. If you put in the safety features and body strength needed to bring the car up to modern safety standards, that 55HP engine wouldn't cut it anymore, and your fuel economy would go down even if it did.
Modern engines produce more CO2 - that's pretty much a direct function of the amount of gasoline burned - but produce fewer other pollutants. There are an increasing number of PZEV cars out there, for example; they produce more carbon dioxide than your car, but less (effectively nothing) of everything else. In most cases that's better, environmentally speaking.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Myth Busters took this on for a very congested test (also very controlled)
They got somewhere around 180 cars through a traditional 4 way stop, and over 300 through the same space as a roundabout. I was floored it was that great of a difference, they said because at any given time there were multiple cars in the roundabout doing their own thing. (may be off on the numbers, but the roundabout was unbelievably better in their test)
Granted the layout of the roundabout matters a TON, and most I have seen around here are cram a roundabout in a tiny space so you don't REALLY know if the car to your left is leaving the roundabout or continuing...
They derive the hydrogen from methane currently for cost reasons, but they can also produce it by splitting water. Of course, if you are otherwise willing to power the car with hydrogen, there must be a cost effective source of it to feed the Haber process.. Or do you expect the hydrogen for cars to come from a horde of hydrogen faeries who hate the Haber process?
So yes, renewable unless you expect us to run out of water./
If you want to post an abrasive reply, be sure you are right first or at least that your logic didn't tangle into a ball of fail.
Anhydrous ammonia is used by meth cooks. The DEA will simply not allow it to become a readily available vehicle fuel.
It is also used in the manufacture of explosives, thus the BATF will never allow it either.
Just the very notion of selling anhydrous ammonia outside of tightly controlled industrial and agricultural marketplaces is a no-starter.
Ammonia is toxic and isn't renewable.
No, it's gasoline that is toxic and not renewable. Ammonia is manufactured from air and water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Kinda puts the DEA behind the 8-ball when they have spent years and pissed away millions of tax dollars tightening regulations on anhydrous ammonia (used as a fertilizer), and now this comes along and promises to make the stuff available at every local gas station!
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I'm not really buying the 70mpg claim for your Metro. I had a metro, and it was almost always at 52 mpg averaged over about three tanks of gas. It is possible that you drive more efficiently than I do, but that is a mighty big spread. My Suzuki Swift (4-cylinder Geo Metro) was pretty consistent at ~42 mpg. Other than, that, I completely agree. There really is no excuse for 30 years of innovation, and the move to hybrids for gas mileage to have gone down. Sure, newer cars are heavier, but new innovation should have more than covered the difference in weight.
Water soluble catalyst. Which means anhydrous ammonia. Which means that your local fuel station is going to be dispensing anhydrous ammoinia in bulk to everyone with such a vehicle.
What else is anhydrous ammonia used for? I don't know... Nothing detrimental, anyway...
Your software disagrees with reality.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Science and Technology Facilities Union...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If you breathe the vapors it can cause permanent damage to your lungs. If you get it on your skin, you can easilly get a nasty chemical burn. The vapor is flamable and forms explosive mixtures with air. It reacts violently with a variety of compounds.
Well, we'd never want to put something in vehicles that is dangerous to inhale in vaporous form, or is volatile/explosive. Oh wait...
Mind you, gasoline is nicer on the skin than a relatively pure ammonia... but it's probably still not something you want to have prolonged contact with (especially given the flammability).
And on the other side of things is the "no central planning at all, ever" which gave us the streets of the Metro Boston area.
1 hour to travel 25 miles. Realize the joy. Live it. Join my commute.
I fell your pain. JP to Cambridge/Watertown, surface roads all the way.
Our current liquid fuel transport system is not all that efficient. It is largely shipped via large semi trucks, which are definitely using up fuel to deliver fuel.
Despite constant improvements in the efficiency of electronic devices we are using more and more of it every year. We have to continually upgrade our grid infrastructure constantly regardless of whether or not cars are drawing power from it.
100% electric cars with electrical-output-only generators have been proven to get unbelievable gas mileage and range in Europe so that's not a bad idea.
Name one. E.g. the BMW i3 has absolutely horrendously bad mileage on gas, and practically everything else is a parallel hybrid, not a serial.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
There really is no excuse for 30 years of innovation... for gas mileage to have gone down.
The only way this works is if cars remain exactly the same while improving only the engine technology. In 1981, the Honda Accord was 175" long, 64: wide and weighed 2,083 lbs. The 1.8L engine made 75hp. A current Accord is 191" long, 72" wide and weighs 3,287 lbs. Its 2.0L engine makes 154hp. The power-displacement ratio of the engine went up by 84% but the weight went up by more than 50%. As long as people want faster/bigger/more we will eat up any efficiency gains to have more comfort. Only when forced will the average person use efficiency to decrease consumption.
I think the utility of this idea lies in the cost and method of production of the ammonia. How much energy does it take to make it and what are the byproducts of production.
Roundabouts do scale well with traffic, that is in Europe. America is a different story because better than half the drivers treat the roundabout entrance as a stop. I've seen dozens of roundabouts that pass less traffic than a 4 way stop, in the US. A good portion of this is because most of the smaller ones are designed by land developers who think roundabout means circle when in a properly designed roundabout traffic rarely moves purely circular.
Instead of encouraging those who are too scared to understand where their bumpers are (you know, those people who drive large vehicles but take forever when they back out of a parking space because even though they've got like 10 meters clear behind them, they creep back centimeter by centimeter out of fear of backing into something), we now give them cameras to abet their driving incompetence. Wonderful.
Almost all the accidents I've ever been in were because I was backing up and mis-estimated the location of something. And I prefer smaller vehicles. I'd as soon drive a semi as an SUV.
I rented a car a couple of years back and an ultrasonic proximity alarm went off while backing in an unfamiliar lot and I was very, very grateful.
You sound like the type of person who'd advocate vehicles with no brakes because if you couldn't throw a cinder block with a rope on it out the window at the right time you shouldn't be allowed to drive. Unfortunately, the DMV doesn't share your view and there are a lot of people on the road who need all the help they can get.
If your car divides by zero, it's probably a Fiat.
And on the other side of things is the "no central planning at all, ever" which gave us the streets of the Metro Boston area.
1 hour to travel 25 miles. Realize the joy. Live it. Join my commute.
I fell your pain. JP to Cambridge/Watertown, surface roads all the way.
And those of use who live down South hate you because you have the MTA.
You haven't really realized an automobile addiction until you've been to Florida. Urban sprawl and mass transit that's a cruel joke.
We have started using roundabouts in a major way in parts of Arizona, so I have observational data on them. They work well until the volume of traffic gets pretty high, especially traffic in one direction. Then you need a separation to really keep things moving smoothly.
Think of it as tarballing or zipping up hydrogen.
From gas compressed in liquid form using Nitrogen.
Then, unpacking it on the fly, back to gas... you dump the nitrogen into the exhaust, and the hydrogen into the combustion chamber.
The breakthrough these guys are claiming is that they've found a way to unpack on the fly, fast enough to supply enough hydrogen to drive a mid sized sedan, without it costing a fortune in precious metals.
Also, as a bonus, if your get in an accident, your hydrogen pours out instead of exploding.
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
Then there are all the incentives to make traffic worse... stop light cameras that generate revenue but don't increase safety because the yellows are too short. Or the urban legend that shopkeepers push to get lights timed so more cars are stopped out in front of their shops, an idea that's believable, although I don't know if it's true. Then of course, there are bad driving habits, and the fact that one tailgater or one slowpoke can cause major cascades that lead to huge backups (and I'm not talking about accidents).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It's very much related to the engine: the car is a deathtrap because the ultra-lightweight body is unsafe. If you put in the safety features and body strength needed to bring the car up to modern safety standards, that 55HP engine wouldn't cut it anymore, and your fuel economy would go down even if it did.
Modern engines produce more CO2 - that's pretty much a direct function of the amount of gasoline burned - but produce fewer other pollutants. There are an increasing number of PZEV cars out there, for example; they produce more carbon dioxide than your car, but less (effectively nothing) of everything else. In most cases that's better, environmentally speaking.
One can build a small light weight car that meets current crash standards. There are several on the market. Unfortunately they come with high or at least relatively high HP engines. Instead of a 260HP engine capable of high speed and great acceleration, a more reasonable 100hp engine would still allow for speeds upto 90mph and good acceleration. All at a significantly better mpg rating.
Additional CO2, seems to be considered problematic by many today. That's not to say the other byproducts of older engines are good, but nobody is saying to use the older design. Surely, those same design changes that allow for a large 4 cylinder engine to perform like a 6 but at better fuel economy than a 6 to be applied to making a small 4 cylinder engine also perform better.
Don't confuse the traditional large European roundabout with the "modern roundabout" style being built new in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Each entrance to a modern roundabout is a Yield. With experience, several traffic movements can be taking place simultaneously and the total traffic throughput can be much greater than a 4-way stop and greater than most signal intersections until the number of lanes goes to three or more.
Around where I live, a lot of drivers already seem to be bosons... Especially the ones that camp out in the passing lane on the highway, oblivious to those that pass them on the right. Seriously, I wish those bosons would just get off the road already. Maybe having them all drive through a diffraction grating is a good idea after all...
Block a roundabout with traffic going one way, and all ways come to a dead stop, probably backing that street up to clog up another roundabout and you get a chain reaction from intersection to intersection.
That's not the case. If most cars are going from the north to the south, the entrance from east to west isn't blocked. If there are cars going both N-S and S-N then it is blocked, but only until one car from N or S goes E or W.
The alternative is a crossroads with traffic lights, which will show red to the E and W roads for most of the time, and have to stop all the cars for a whole light sequence when one arrives.
Cars don't have to be as fast as they are today, but thats what people, driven by the automotive press, have decided they want. Today's toyota camry and honda accord both can be bought with engines that approach 300HP and have sub 6 second 0 to 60 times.
40 years ago, that was the realm of sports cars. Now we have that with dime-a-dozen, bake-potato-on-wheels flagship sedans
build a sedan with a 10 second 0 to 60, which used to be quite common, and your car will be universally lambasted as "sluggish".
even the new kia sedona minivan has a 0 to 60 of 7.4 seconds and a quarter mile just over 15 seconds..
Your software disagrees with reality.
I think it's even better than they show -- the roundabout was so efficient they sometimes run out of cars (there are sometimes entrances with no waiting car).
What you will actually be doing in less than five minutes is pumping out a depleted tankful of vanadium electrolyte and replacing it with a charged tankful of the same stuff.
I don't know the figures, so I don't know if it's just Americans that aren't used to them, but accidents on roundabouts are much less dangerous. That's a decent trade-off, even if there are more accidents.
The Chinese economy also has the advantage of just being able to ignore any Luddites, rather than having to spend the first few years of any major infrastructure project swatting away at the useless lawsuits they generate. This is why China has high-speed trains while California - which funded such a project - does not.
And if your Ammoniamobile runs out of fuel, you can scarf down that emergency bag of dehydrated asparagus you keep in the glove compartment and pee a few more miles worth into the gas tank.
I can't understand your accent.
To use locally, though. Water from space will never be more economical than desalinated seawater, which becomes economical even with present-day reverse osmosis at 2 x the current California water price.
Well, nitrogen and hydrogen actually, which can be EXTRACTED from air and water respectively.
Plus a whole hell of a lot of energy. In practice the hydrogen is almost always produced by steam reforming of natural gas, not electrolyzing water, because the latter is terribly inefficient and expensive.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix...
I think that guy tested your idea. Doesn't look like it worked too well.
Roundabouts are all over major UK highways, they work rather well if you know how to drive.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is why China has high-speed trains while California - which funded such a project - does not.
The bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing was approved in 2004. Engineering and planning were completed, and construction began in 2008. It was finished in 2011. Total cost was about $32 billion.
The railway from SF to LA, while much shorter, is expected to take more than 30 years to complete. The official estimate is that it will cost $100 billion, but big American infrastructure projects, on average, cost three times their initial official estimates, so $300 billion is more realistic. About $10 billion has already be spent, almost all on administrative and legal costs.
And saves tarmac too, as the incoming and outgoing roads no longer have to deal with spikes and troughs in traffic, and can become substantially narrower.
Bullshit. Roundabouts are used as the primary method of forming intersections between multilane major roads, and motorways in any country other than the US. They are perfectly capable of dealing with huge amounts of traffic.
Nonsense. You are dividing, and the result is undefined - there are no remainders in division except in gradeschool arithmetic where decimals are considered too difficult (in real math the concept is known as modulus, and is a conceptually independent operation from division). Basic first-week calculus can usually even tell you what the result would have been if your calculation didn't have a discontinuity in it - just perform the calculation at shorter and shorter intervals from the discontinuity to determine where the value converges from either side.
0/x as x -> 0? 0/1 = 0, 0/0.1=0, 0/0.000001 = 0. Therefore the value at the limit is 0
1/x as x->+0? 1/1 = 1, 1/0.1 = 10, 1/0.0001=10000, and the value at the limit converges to +infinity (or -infinity if you approach -0).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You would be better off with two more on each side of the car and losing the outside mirrors, those things are like speed-brakes on a fighter jet; after that you can shutter the radiator grill so your not pushing that turbulence when the radiator doesn't need air-flow and wheel well skirts and full-moon hub caps help tons.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
No, technically X/0 equals +/-infinity only if X is non-zero. If X is zero then you need to do further analysis of the calculation to determine the relative sizes of the two zeros at the discontinuous point (limit calculus). Depending on the nature of the calculation from which the zeros emerge the limit at the discontinuity zero could converge to an infinity, 0, 42, 7/9, or any other value. And there's no guarantee that there is a well-defined answer at all - for example sin (1/x) oscillates between +/-1 infinitely fast as x approaches zero.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That the same kind of bullshit as saying that photovoltaics isn't renewable electricity because right now, as not all coal firing power plants have been turned off yet, some coal electricity finds its way into PV-manufacturing factories.
Ezekiel 23:20
That implies that the the reality is flawed. ;-)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
They've been promising flying cars for 60 years, hydrogen fusion power plants are 30 years away for 50 years, oh and don't even get started on Duke Nuke'em III and the year of Linux!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Hell, you can even pump several megawatts over standard extension cord wiring with minimal losses, provided you keep the current under 15 amps or so and instead pump the voltage up to hundreds of kilovolts. Of course with that kind of voltage you're going to want some serious insulation, and probably an active system to detect when a firm connection has been made to the load before applying full voltage to prevent massive arcing.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
1) becomes irrelevant, the fueling station recharges the battery at it's leisure, and puts it in the queue for the next person once charged.
2) One word: robots. They could pick up your entire car and hurl it across several city blocks to hit a bug on the sidewalk a fraction of a second later if there was a reason to build such a thing.
3) You wouldn't. Virtually all of these sort of systems rest on the assumption that you don't even own the battery, you just borrow/lease it from the people you buy the power from.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Many have - there've even been a few abortive attempts to implement it. It's just a matter of designing the batteries to be easily replaced.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
>supplying the energy isn't trivial.
Sure it is - you put a bunch of batteries in the basement of your fueling station and charge them as fast as the grid can supply. They can then dump their power into your car when you plug in. You don't even need a terribly thick charging cable if you design the system to run at high voltage. Or you could use slot-car inspired charging pads on the undercarriage which use thick metal bars to transfer power with minimal flexing or human involvement.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
1. Unlatch side battery door.
2. Slide out weak battery.
3. Slide in fresh battery.
That's 30 seconds tops.
You realize that most electric cars have a substantial battery pack. If it was as simple as opening the hood and removing a simple battery, don't you think somebody would have thought of that before you?
http://www.teslamotors.com/bat...
Somebody did. Granted, it takes 3x that 30 seconds.
They already have, anhydrous ammonia was used to fuel diesel buses in Belgium during WW II.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Three words: Automotive commuter trains.
They already have them along some routes on the East coast. I'd love to see a "car ferry" car or two be common on all passenger trains - after all pound-for-pound nothing comes close to the efficiency of rail for transporting loads. And if you're trying to drive cross-country without significant stops then you're not going to be stopping at tourist traps long the way, and would probably be happier off spending the time in the lounge car than sitting behind the wheel for 12 hours
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yes. Hydrogen is a very benign substance, mainly because it floats off into space in the event of a leak. In order to breath in hydrogen, you would pretty much have to seal your lips around the nozzle it's coming out of. There's no such thing as clouds of lingering hydrogen vapors, like you get with gasoline and other chemicals. This is why the fire/explosion risk is minimal as well. In perfect circumstances, you can get a jet of flame outside of a punctured tank, but because of the pressure differential there is no way air can get inside the tank to make it explode. The jet is also very difficult to ignite (like a match in a hurricane), and freezing cold. The only time hydrogen becomes dangerous is if it leaks inside a sealed room (like those reactor housings at Fukushima) that prevents it from escaping into space.
One of the things that should be possible now is to network traffic lights and make their timing dynamic to cope with flow and the movement of traffic. Too often I find my self stopping at every set of lights along the way, and it's a massive waste, all the energy to move from a stop, just to lose it all in braking to a stop.
I understand it won't be perfect, and maybe it might be better with the theoretical capabilities of a quantum computer, but my experience is that the quickest way to get places where I live is to avoid traffic lights as much as possible.
I get the feeling that aggressive drivers who frequently change lanes with little room, do a lot to slow traffic down.
Ammonia has an energy density of 22.5 MJ/kg and gasoline's is 42.4 MJ/kg - roughly 53%. The physical density is also lower, with gasoline coming in at an average of 0.75 kg/L and the ammonia at 0.68 kg/l. If you want to look at energy per volume, then the results are about 15.3 MJ/l for ammonia, and 31.8 MJ/l for gasoline (or about 48%).
Assuming that the conversion efficiency is the same, then your fuel tank would need to be double the size for the same range, however fuel cells and electric propulsion is generally in the 80% range whereas an internal combustion engine is around 25%.
As a fuel for a conventional engine, ammonia has the downside of needing more physical storage space, and its cost has to be less than half that of gasoline per volume unit (gallons or liters) to be economical - especially since it requires modification to existing engines to be used, and tends to not produce nearly the same power output. In a fuel-cell hybrid that has higher efficiency, it would be quite viable, though that would depend on the retail cost of the stuff along with the cost delta of the vehicle itself.
But it leaks VERY easily. It makes the tank brittle. I'm not claiming that hydrogen is some kind of screaming horror, just that ammonia in the quantities a vehicle would carry for fuel isn't such a horror either.
Neither is likely as dangerous as gasoline.
There was an article or two in the likes of Mechanix Illustrated or related magazine about the US Army experimenting with ammonia fueled engines. Reports indiacted that engines would function, but had not been developed to the point of practicality. Shudder to think what kind of NOx levels are present in the exhaust.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I'm a transportation engineer numbnuts I know the difference, I've designed them. Regardless of how the roundabout is supposed to be used, the fact is a vast majority of drivers treat them as stops. I've yet to see a roundabout that operates correctly and consistently in the US. Most of the states have begun to realize it's futile to try to educate US drivers about them because no matter how much information they've spread they still operate at less than 50% capacity because US drivers just don't understand how to use them.
Hell we still have drivers freaking out and driving the wrong way down the street on CFI's and DDI's and those aren't much different than standard intersections. There's a roundabout not more than a couple miles from me that is nothing more than a 4 way stop with sight obstructions that make it perform even worse, not because it's signed that way or even because it's designed or built wrong but because every driver stops at the yield sign for 3 seconds.
A billion people are often wrong.
Phooey on you and your logic fallacy argument. I worked at one of only 3 places in the nation that ran those metrics. I'll take my professional opinion or your unprofessional opinion.
Depending on where the hydrogen in the ammonia comes from, this is a complete waste of time.
Much hydrogen is consumed to make ammonia. Why waste the energy to reclaim it?
Another source of ammonia involves reacting steam with coke to form ammonia and....get this...carbon dioxide.
Until ammonia from other sources is readily available, making hydrogen this way is not wise or helpful for the environment.
In essence the more specific CO2 output (that is per unit of air/fuel) is better, because it means that the engine is achieving a more complete combustion. That basically means you can extract more energy out of combustion. The reality is, while specific outputs may look bad in some cases, the real world application is an engine with improved efficiency, using less fuel, meaning overall, less CO2.
There are always going to be by-products, such as NOx and some CO emissions, as unavoidable things happen in the combustion chamber, the gap between the piston and cylinder wall is one where you get incomplete combustion, and black carbon build up.
Now a lot can be done with these things, but, factors also at play are, statutory emissions requirements, reliability of an engine, and longevity. These all can potentially prohibit certain things from happening to improve engine efficiency further.
When removing hydrogen from ammonia (NH4), we create nitric oxide, which will absorb water to form nitric acid.
What are they going to do with it?
The one part of his comment that has merit is that if you have a major arterial road intersecting with a side street at a roundabout, the arterial will completely dominate the traffic if vehicles within the roundabout have the right of way.
Lots of things are dangerous. It's a question of the kinds of safety measures that can be used to prevent injury.
For example, your car has antifreeze made out of methanol. If you consume even a tiny amount of that, it will cause permanent nerve damage and blindness. Your car also contains a large tank of highly flammable gasoline which can explode and light you on fire during an accident (whereas ammonia only combusts under pressure when it's in the cylinder of your engine). Your car also has a pressurized coolant system, and if you open the hood of your engine and unscrew the cap to the coolant system while the engine is hot, the coolant will flash boil and stream up into your face and burn your eyes. Your car also produces carbon monoxide during its normal operation, which will kill you if it leaks into the cabin. However, those things don't happen that often. The coolant cap has a sign on it saying "DO NOT OPEN WHILE ENGINE IS HOT", and the tank of gasoline is reinforced and protected in such a way that it doesn't usually explode during an accident, and the anti-freeze has a childproof cap and a prominent warning, etc.
Ammonia vapors are only dangerous in an enclosed space. You can tell right away if ammonia is leaking into the cabin because ammonia a characteristic pungent odor even at very low concentrations. (Contrast this with carbon monoxide, which your car produces now, and which can kill you and has no odor).
The main danger from ammonia is that it must be stored in mildly pressurized tanks. If you puncture the tank while staring at it, the ammonia can flash boil, stream out into your face, and cause a chemical burn on the surface of your eyes. That is the most significant danger. In order to mitigate this danger, the fuel tank would have to be designed in such a way that people do not have access to it, and it vents downward in case of accident. Also, refueling stations would be different from how they are now.
I don't know offhand how much of a danger ammonia fuel would be in practice, after reasonable precautions are taken. It's a question of what kinds of technological mitigations we can employ to prevent the fuel tank from splitting open and spewing into someone's eyes directly.
I live right next to one of our town's eleven recent-vintage roundabouts, and the only people I see stopping are occasional clueless tourists. My intersection used to be a pretty busy signal serving traffic coming off the Interstate six miles away, with a residential cross street. The roundabout gets traffic through in all directions much more efficiently than the signal did. Bonus: late at night, the constant gunning of engines when the light changed used to disturb us late at night. Now, late-night traffic just glides through and we don't hear a thing.
And why do you think that every one of our infrastructure projects costs triple what we thought it was going to? Because the default mode of the very Democrats who proposed and approved the train is BANANA: build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anyone. They tie it up in court until the costs balloon out of proportion to all sanity. Then they crow - "See - too expensive!"
Buckaroo Banzai, is that you?
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Miles per gallon is a 1-dimensional discrete measurement unless you decide to define something bigger...but blithely talking about "sin(x) miles per gallon" without defining what x is (e.g. a continuous function input with a unit of chuckle*seconds per beer*meter, etc) is absurd as drinking SQRT(-1) cups of coffee while running i + 2 meters, since we're talking about something that is not continuous by any conventional or apparent context.
And X/0 for positive X does NOT "technically" equal infinity. Rather it is a convention in some special-needs pre-algebra courses that X/0 "can be read as" Letting X be positive, take the limit of X/Y as Y approches 0." Which yields infinity...for what that is worth, only god knows.
</snark>
The real path to male liberation
One word: robots. They could pick up your entire car and hurl it across several city blocks to hit a bug on the sidewalk a fraction of a second later if there was a reason to build such a thing.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
By what measure? Real ammonia boils off and dissipates. Gasoline pools.
It is used safely all the time in everything from textiles to cooling ice rinks.
Not that ammonia gas is lighter than air. It disperses easily.
It must be treated with respect, but it really isn't the horror you seem to think it is.
No, seriously. It's much easier to use methane to produce hydrogen. Nitrogen fixation is amongst the most energy-consuming processes, because conditions required for it are hellish. And then you want to use hard-won ammonia just to get hydrogen???
And I don't even want to think about ammonia leaks. It won't simply stink a lot, but it'll easily kill a lot of people.
Some numbers for the green power electric transportation dreamers:
14 million barrels of petroleum per day of transportation petroleum. Each barrel has 5.8 million BTUs of energy. Multiplying, that is 81.2 million million BTUs. Internal combustion engines are about 25% efficient, so the USA requires energy of "only" 20.3 million million BTUs per day. Since electric motors as used in electric cars are about 90% efficient, that means we require 22.5 million million BTUs per day. But battery charging is also about 90% efficient, so we then need 25 million million BTUs per day. Then, unless we're charging the batteries right at the power plant, we have to figure in the 93% efficiency of the power grid, so we really need 26.9 million million BTUs per day. There are 3413 BTUs per KwH as a conversion factor, so we need 7.88 billion KwH per day. Since there are 24 hours in a day, we need a generating capacity of 328,000 megawatts. The Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona can generate at a rate of 3810 megawatts. Dividing, we find that we need about 86 new nuclear power generating plants the size of our largest one to power US transportation completely and completely green.
Wind? Biggest wind machine so far is 8 megawatts, so we'd need 41,000 of them, but probably, for a fudge factor for the times that the wind doesn't blow sufficiently for 8 megawatts, we'd probably want maybe 4 times that many, or 164,000 really big wind turbines. There are 3,794,083 square miles in all of the USA so there would be a density of 0.043 wind turbines per square mile, but of course not all areas have wind or can be built (mountains), so maybe we'd get to needing 1 square mile per turbine. Doable, but how much would it cost? Read on internet 1.6 - 2.2 million per megawatt, so the large 8 megawatt turbine would be $17.6 million on the high end, and 164,000 of them would be $2.88 trillion. Build 'em out over 50 years or so and yeah, that's "only" 57.7 billion dollars per year. Chicken feed for a gov't that is already broke, eh? In contrast, the Palo Verde Nuke plant cost $5.9 billion, so 86 of 'em would cost $507.4 billion - lots less than $2.88 trillion for wind.
Solar only produces during the daytime. Not going to try to calc that.
What could possibly go wrong?
yes, but China will have cheap labour, no concern for whose property they bulldoze or worry about any due process concerns. we've got the same issue in the UK as you do in the US.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Not having RTFAd yet" - maybe its pointless to comment then
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
All naturally aspirated engines still (technically) suck, even if they use injection. Injectors inject only fuel, air is still sucked into the cylinders.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
First you produce hydrogen gas from a hydrocarbon, which requires a lot of energy, and then you add nitrogen to get ammonia.
So why is the USA buying its rocket engines from a former Soviet factory ?
I didn't know electricity came in gallons.
So your saying you have experimental evidence that American drivers are idiots.
Interesting.
It could really be great if pee from livestock and people could become the precursor to people's fuel needs.
Unless the engine is super- or turbocharged, then the air is pushed into the cylinders while the sucking is left to the charger.
Why should anyone listen to you? You keep making things up.
I know, that is why I have written "naturally aspirated" ;-)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
With one mention: the roundabout offers much better chances of going from the side road - even in that extreme case - than not having a roundabout (and no semaphores). I know, I've used to exit from a side road to a major road, and after the roundabout was set up, it was so much easier (you have to yield to only one direction of traffic, not to both)
You pulled 95% out of your ass.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Don't believe it! This is really part of The Sontaran Strategem!
And will they call it Atmos?
Did the mysterious catalyst breakthrough came from a kid scientist named Luke Rattigan with a mansion outside of London full of Mensa kids?
Sontar Ha! Sontar Ha!, Sontar Ha! Sontar Ha!, Sontar Ha! Sontar Ha!
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
1. Unlatch side battery door.
2. Slide out weak battery.
3. Slide in fresh battery.
That's 30 seconds tops.
You realize that most electric cars have a substantial battery pack. If it was as simple as opening the hood and removing a simple battery, don't you think somebody would have thought of that before you?
http://www.teslamotors.com/bat...
Somebody did. Granted, it takes 3x that 30 seconds.
That's comparing apples with oranges. NASCAR can fill a tank much quicker than the gas pump, so sure, if you want to drive up to their charging station and the attendant is standing there waiting with your battery and you does, you can get it done that quick for the right price. For the right price, you can also get it set up to be able to pull in and drive off in less time than that, including changing your tires out.
Your argument sounds good, but any NH3 that is not converted to N2 and H2 gets converted to NOx (aka the brown stuff in smog) when it is combusted, just google fuel bound nitrogen (FBN)
The catalytic converter that came from the factory on the exhaust of the vehicle is already designed specifically to deal with NOx emissions.
I should have mentioned that though. Didn't think of it!
I just saw this other post this morning, about some industrious teenagers in Africa making a generator that runs on urine. Related tech? A URINE POWERED GENERATOR http://makerfaireafrica.com/20...
numbers were way off.. but still 5 more cars per minute is impressive.
4 way stop average number of cars through in 15 minutes was 385.
Roundabout average number of cars through in 15 minutes was 460.
Improvement of about 20%.
If you don't care to watch the video they set up a 4 way stop course and then a roundabout course. They used a bunch of drivers and did two 15 minute tests of each course counting the number of cars that got through and averaged them. The roundabout was a 20 percent improvement over the 4 way stop. And even though they let the drivers practice a bit on the roundabout before the tests they were American drivers that for the most part don't have the day to day experience that European drivers do with roundabouts so I am thinking the efficiency of the roundabout is even greater.
http://webcache.googleusercont...
I really don't need a car that'll drive 90 mph, but acceleration can be very handy when merging onto a busy highway.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've personally never gotten this response from anyone. On the couple of occasions in the past where I've challenged people regarding their poor use of the passing lane, the response I got was "but I was going above the speed limit!". These same people also seem to call the passing lane a "fast lane" and are firmly of the belief that if they travel even a little above the speed limit they should be in that lane, regardless of what the average speed of traffic is around them, because they are going "fast". Getting a response like "because I pay taxes and it's my right" would be an improvement as far as I'm concerned, because it shows that they understand what they are doing and are conscious of it, even if they are being complete jerks.
Haber Process. Strip H2 from CH4.
Energy consumed.
Compress with NH2 in Rayne Nickel Bed at 15 atm..
Energy consumed
Cool to liquid at -80F
Energy Consumed
Crack with reaction
Energy Consumed
Burn in ICE
Energy wasted.
Anyone done the power / transmission / conversion losses for electrics?
Like as in roadbed broadcast power?
Solves the problem with maximum efficiency.
Offtopic:
I don't know where I heard this. I heard that division by zero equals an infinity on a complex plane.
Is above nonsense? I certainly can't find it googling and slashdot audience is the best community for such a question.
I'm not particularly happy about "Joe Sixpack, Car Mechanic" working with hydrogen, because it is a bastard for leaks. A thorough-going bastard.
And I'm not terribly ecstatic about a fairly nasty gas like ammonia sitting around by the ton in tanks maintained by Joe Sixpack's brother. (I once broke a carbouy of 880 ammonia solution in water - and had spend hours cleaning the laboratory out ; that is nasty stuff. But it's nowhere near the lethality of my beard-sacrificing gas, H2S.).
And I'm fully aware of the hazards of hydrocarbon fuels too - I get paid to find the damned things.
On balance, if the conversion efficiency were adequate, I suspect an ammonia storage with local (i.e. within the engine block, where Joe Sixpack uses his best tools and concentrates, with the manual in hand) formation of hydrogen for use, either in an IC engine or in a fuel cell, could well be the lowest risk outcome. It certainly bears looking at.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The H2S is truly remarkable. I was affected by a small amount once. I didn't even feel myself passing out, just one moment I smell the gas, the next I am sitting down hard. The effects clear just as fast. Fortunately, I was working with such a small amount that sustained exposure wasn't possible.
..said Socrates to pretty much everybody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... No traffic signs give you no zero miles division by zero fuel headaches.
Sorry, I should have clarified that I was comparing a roundabout to a signal, not a stop sign on the side road only.
I'm sure you're right. Tailgaters too.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
About $10 billion has already be spent, almost all on administrative and legal costs.
This is so crazy you'd think lawyers and bureaucrats dreamt it up.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Not from the research I did in the 1990s.
If you had a knock-down then neurological sequelae are a high (50% +) probability. You had a full suite of neurology tests for damage to peripheral nerves and brain damage afterwards. Didn't you? If not, get onto the medics for your employer's insurance company as soon as possible.
I'd expect you'd have to report such an injury to the local medical and health-&-safety authorities. They should have been insisting on full neurological follow up too.
H2S is really do-not-fuck-with-me stuff. Absolutely, totally, fuck-not-with material.
If there was ever sufficient there to knock you out, even for a second or so, then you came so close to being dead that you should have a coffin made up. It has a horribly well-earned reputation for pooling near ground level, then knocking people down into a pool of more concentrated gas where they then die over the next several breaths. It's not an asphyxiant like most "poisonous" gasses, but it actively gets it's way into every cell of your body and blocks vital parts of the metabolism (oxygen processing in mitochondria). In fact, it is so poisonous that that is one of the few things that helps protect people when they take a hit - it can drown your lungs and shut down your heart before it really gets a chance to destroy your brain. Which isn't much consolation.
I suppose on the good side, from the research work that I did for the trade union some years ago (on chronic exposures to personnel working on oil installations that change from "sweet" to "sour"), there is no substantive evidence of heritable or genetic damage from H2S hits. OTOH, it is unsurprising that the presence of enduring sub-ppm H2S poisoning is probably an abortifacient.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Your research seems to have covered large amounts in an area, not small amounts encountered for under a second. In my case, the effects were gone in under a second and I continued with my day. Of course, it wasn't even enough to have a full lung full. Chronic exposure is certainly a bad idea. Unlike the other actually toxic gases, the human body has enzymes that break it down harmlessly (it is present in small amounts in the body normally). As long as those enzymes aren't overwhelmed, it does no lasting damage and indeed clears quickly. That is as opposed to carbon monoxide which takes some time to clear.
This happened 30 years ago. If there was going to be a problem, it would have shown by now.
There is current medical research that suggests it could be used in trauma to induce a deep hibernation like state. Other research suggests it could be used for resuscitation in cases where a patient has been without circulation for as much as 30 minutes. In that case, it seems to temporarily prevent the mitochondria from initiating apoptosis, long enough for cell metabolism to normalize in the presence of oxygen.
You say "the human body has enzymes that break it down harmlessly (it is present in small amounts in the body normally). As long as those enzymes aren't overwhelmed" ; yes, the human body has enzymes that can process H2S, "as long as they're not overwhelmed." Problem is, that overwhelming happens many times that the enzyme molecule encounters a hydrosulphide ion, leaving the cytochrome enzyme literally plugged and resulting in a back-up of un-processed hydroxide free radicals. If that sounds like good news to you, then we've got different understandings of "good news". That said, though there has been some work done looking for post-exposure (to H2S) cancers and other sequels to the oxidative damage, with no strong effect noticed. (Caveat : vintage mid-1990s, and this is an under-researched area.)
There are programmes following up people after such periods, though mostly (AFAICT) in the paper pulp industry. The exposure of some hundred thousand of people in Edmonton to several ppm for several days after a blowout ... sorry, I've forgotten the location ; about 1981, some hundred kilometres upwind from Edmonton ... Lodgepole blowout ... has produced a considerable cohort for a longitudinal study. Getting funding to actually perform such studies seems to have been difficult - probably because it would be politically inconvenient, and partly because - well, everyone knows that H2S is do-not-fuck-with stuff, so to stop fucking with it seems a pretty good start to management.
Yeah, I saw those reports. And I thought that sounded like pogo-sticking across really thin ice above a pool of hungry sharks. With lasers on their heads. I do understand the mechanisms they're proposing for preventing apoptosis (well, IANA metabolism researcher ; but I've forgotten more biochemistry and chemistry than most people), but that really doesn't encourage me to be on the receiving end of such treatments. I'd rather plan to avoid such injuries instead.
On a complete aside, I just discovered New Zealand's favourite part of Central Europe : Bad Aussee.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"