Hydrogen car

Im not sure that they are inevitable. Maybe.

You could always go back to chicken shit as in the 70's

In message , Austin Shackles writes

Together with a hot air balloon?

True. But the more recent hydrogen conversions have included exhaust gas recirculation (steam) to lower peak combustion temps to reduce nitrogen oxides.

Exactly as is done with gasoline engines, which, when employed, results in non-stoichiometric fuel/oxygen proportions, an overly lean mixture, less power and lower efficiency.

Actually, the mixture isn't lean simply because the car's fuel controller injects less fuel to compensate for the slightly reduced amount of O2 that was displaced by the recycled exhaust gases, so no, no overly lean mixtures.

And on reduced power, that is completely irrelevant because the only time EGR is enabled is during part throttle cruise, never at WOT. Since there is no EGR during full power there is no loss of power at all.

Regarding efficiency, I doubt that there is a measurable decrease in efficiency, and in fact I have seen marked reductions in gas mileage on vehicles where the customer had disabled their EGR system on purpose or it had ceased functioning on its own.

The amount of nitrogen oxide pollution dumped into the air I breath by cars has been significantly reduced thanks to EGR, that makes me happy.

JazzMan

...forget your personnal little world (accent turning germanic)...you must learn to share...open up...let go....be free...

If it can be, then why is it assumed that most of the hydrogen for large-scale use in cars will be obtained by removing it from hydrocarbons?

This magazine:

ran an article a few months ago about electric cars and mentioned that when the whole fuel cycle is considered, including achievable efficiency improvements in hydrogen extraction and fuel cells, a hydrogen-electric car would use triple the energy of a battery-electric car.

On or around 11 Sep 2005 00:44:09 -0700, "larry moe 'n curly" enlightened us thusly:

because it is... mostly from Methane, AIUI. Commercial Hydrogen production on a scale that produces several million gallons a day just doesn't exist. And while granting that electrolysis can be efficient, I think it requires pure water. You can't electrolyze seawater, for example. Production of H in suitable quantities requires something silly like 3000 sq. mi. of solar panels somewhere sunny, or a whole country full of windmills. Or a nuclear power plant, of course.

This lot are refreshingly practical:

however, the link I was looking for is this:

IIRC my high-school lessons you can't electrolyze pure (distilled) water, because it does not have any iones (sp?) in it. In other words, pure water does not conduct electricity and thus cannot be electrolyzed.

AFAIK sea water electrolyzes just fine, but you get all sorts of byproducts collecting at the electrodes. And, electrodes deteriorate as well.

I had no idea metal hydrides have been advanced that far... wonder how far they really are from public release?

Peter

maybe.... then again, quite possibly not.

The only difference between LPG and CNG systems are tanks, steel pipes coming from tanks, and vaporiseur/pressure reducer. Step motor, gas EC, low-pressure pipes are just the same.

'fraid I won't have that much BS in my backyard... ;)

Peter

So, if it uses more fossil fuels to run hydrogen cars than it does currently, why go that route? The only people that doing so helps are the big oil companies. The increased demand on natural gas supplies (primary source of H) would drive the prices even higher, really higher. I can't see this as being a wise thing to do, and I wonder why the current administration is wanting to go down this road.

JazzMan

To steal a phrase from another newsgroup I read:

"HEY! I've got an idea!

Let's put two oil guys in the White House, and put the retarded one in charge of the crooked one, and see what happens!"

That pretty much explains a LOT of stuff that's happened over the last 5 years or so.

nate

That's very nice.

It's hilarious to see that the nuclear industry is still coming up with claims that it produces no pollutants, and is even environmentally beneficial.

I suppose the misery of those involved in the extraction processes isn't counted, nor is the growing, 1000 year waste problem, nor the contaminated beaches in Scotland. Are there still uneatable sheep in Wales due to Chernobyl fallout?

Generations to come are really going to thank us for all this.

On or around Sun, 11 Sep 2005 15:50:04 +0100, Stewart Hargrave enlightened us thusly:

well, yeah... but then again, the figures for alternatives are what I was really after. 'course, they may be equally accurate.

If they're not all dead from heat exhaustion due to global warming...

Because the current administration doesen't really want to promote a vehicle solution that is doable now.

Electric battery-operated vehicles that charge off the power grid can be built in large scale today. That is what General Motor's EV-1 program was all about. There is a restriction in that it takes time to recharge the batteries and thus you can only use these vehicles for things like commuting, where the car returns to the charger each night. Even with this restriction, if electric cars were pushed heavily it would significantly curtail the demand for oil to use to make gasoline.

However, the problem is that unless you coupled a program like this to significant increase in wind generation capacity, your just burning the oil in electric power plants now.

Wind generation is the fastest growing electrical generation segment today. The cost is dropping and it will not be long before it is cheaper to build a wind farm than an equivalently producing power plant. It is already much cheaper than building a nuclear plant. And it is faster since there's not nearly the environmental complaints about it.

Despite this, it will be long after Bush is out of office before significant wind generation capacity is available.

And the important thing to understand also is that as more wind generation is brought online the power companies will want to use it to take their oil-fired power plants offline first. It will be a great many years befire we are not generating electricity in the US with oil. So it will be some time before any large scale increase in the demand for electricity, such as created by a surge of electric cars, will do anything more than increase oil burning for power generation in electrical utilities.

Ted

As long as the steam is not hot enough to disassociate the mixture ratio of oxygen to fuel is not altered. We have to realize that when we speak of an air-fuel mixture ratio, that is not ordinarily the same as the fuel-oxygen ratio, and does not in itself affect the stoichiometry. With any mixture of inert gas, the inert gas has thermal, but not chemical reaction with the primary combustion. It may chemically combine with reactants after the increase in cylinder temp and pressure as a result of combustion, however.

I am not sure what the situation with steam in chamber is. Does the disassociation happen soon enough that there is any real effect on primary combustion?

Exactly. R&D money should NOT be spent on hydrogen automobiles. It is easy to make them run on hydrogen if one has hydrogen. First we must do the R&D on an economical, efficient, and environmentally sound method of generating hydrogen. THEN we develop the cars (a much simpler matter).

: Scott Dorsey wrote: : : > : > No, electrolysis is 100% efficient! All of the electric power goes : > directly into the hydrogen, and burning the hydrogen gets all of that : > power back. : > : >

: : No industrial electric process is 100%. Admittedly thermal generators : are far less efficient. But you have joule heating in the conductors : feeding the cells in electrolysis.

However, since water electrolysis is endothermic, part of the process, at least, is more than 100% "efficient". It's still a lousy way to make hydrogen, though.

Ian