Running a car on water via electrolysis

Communist ?

Democracy's a bitch isn't it ?

Graham

So how do you plan to get it ?

Invade them ? How many US servicemens' lives are you prepared to sacrifice to be able to fill the tank on your over-powered SUV / Pickup.

Graham

Where do you plant to site more hydro facilities ?

Let's just say if you want hydrogen you need to go for a crash programme to build 1000 nuclear stations.

Graham

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So ?

Graham

You're suggesting nuclear war is the way to get your oil ?

Just how mad are you ?

Graham

"adm" schrieb

The best thing about it: Uranium will last forever! No shortages of it, no wars over it! Never! Even in a thousand years! ;-)

What's the percentage of nuclear energy (not only electricity!) currently produced globally? How many hundred reactors do you want to build each year to provide enough hydrogen for the cars, how long will the uranium last *then*, and where do you buy it?

Jochen

Do you have any idea *how much* power we're talking about here? Let's say that your conversion process is 75% efficient (a number I just pulled out of my colon; I have no idea what the actual current practical maximum efficiency of electrolysis *is,* but I do know from basic chemistry that if it were 100% efficient that you would need to put in exactly as much power as you were planning on getting out, ASSuming you had a 100% efficient fuel cell) and that your ICE is 30% efficient (a generous estimate,) that means that not even counting transmission losses or transportation costs you're down to barely over

20% efficiency for the system as a whole - meaning for one equivalent of gallon of gasoline's energy that your car actually uses, you'd have input the equivalent of *FIVE* gallons of gasoline to the system to get to that point.

Now multiply by the number of hydrogen-powered ICE cars that you anticipate being on the roads, and tell me if we have that kind of generating capacity, and if we have the infrastructure to deal with that kind of load.

IMHO it'd be FAR better to concentrate our research on producing fuel cells that achieve high efficiencies, and even better if we can get them to run on fuels other than pure hydrogen (various alcohols would be nice; so would currently available fossil fuels) as then we can get vehicles that not only use their energy more efficiently, but can also take advantage of regenerative braking (being by necessity electric, neatly utilizing the developments already made with hybrid vehicles) for even greater efficiency than is possible with an ICE vehicle.

Another good place to concentrate research would be in electrical energy storage, either through a chemically reversible fuel cell (ideal, but probably impractical) or batteries or ultracapacitors with higher than currently available energy densities - due to the fact stated above that a fuel cell vehicle would by necessity use an electric motor for its motive power, and therefore regen. braking is a logical next step.

Unfortunately, nothing will replace the sheer wood-inducing factor of a well-tuned, nearly-overcammed V8 shaking and spitting at idle, or the glorious howl of the same engine sucking in great whacks of atmosphere at 6500 RPM, but I guess that is something we're going to have to get used to :(

nate

Yeah, and clear-cutting rainforest to grow enough sugar cane to supply the methanol is REAL smart, too.

Y'know, I just got a thought... perhaps I should be skimming the hydrogen off the electrolytic derusting tank set up outside my buddy's garage that we use for cleaning those irreplaceable car parts that nevertheless haven't weathered well :)

Perhaps once this hypothetical hydrogen economy gets going an enterprising sort could start a side business of letting vintage car restorers run their sheetmetal through the electrolysis tanks :) I can see this being particularly popular in England and Italy (oooh, I know that was a little uncalled for, but I couldn't resist - although being a Studebaker owner, my own house has a significant amount of silicate in it...)

nate

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They seem to be particularly afraid of the USA and its nutty goverment - who has the most firepower in the region ?

And something to be said for recently cleared former rain forest land that hasn't been turned to infertile dirt through repeated growth and harvest of a soil depleting crop like sugar cane... Brasil's little experiment is not sustainable in the long run. If people still understood the basics of farming instead of being urban hive dwellers that can't grow a potted plant without a bottle of Miracle Gro, this would already be well-known.

Read what you wrote. This doesn't make an example.

It was more likely for closing the gold window.

Corn is what can be realistically grown in the vast majority of the US's agricultural land. You can't grow sugar cane in Nebraska and Iowa. And all the methanol crops are pretty horribly soil depleting, so there's the fact that to maintain production year after year in the volumes required you gotta fertilize with (wait for it!) petroleum-derived fertilizers. Duh! I say again DUH!!! You can *barely* argue that methanol is not energy negative if 1) you pretend that all the crop can be grown in an equatorial climate, 2) you conveniently forget about soil depletion and the need to fertilize, and 3) you conveniently fail to recognize that synthesizing adequate fertilizers is a HUGE energy consumer that HAS to be accounted for. Natural phosphate fertilizer deposits are even more limited than petroleum, and "organic" methods just won't work when you have to keep on churning out high-energy crop at a volume sufficient to feed the transportation needs of the US.

Again, if the energy debate weren't being held by urban hive dwellers that don't even have a lawn of their own, a little basic farming knowledge would enter the discussion and sanity would prevail.

This is usenet. Nothing very serious is done here. Graham will take you in circles then turn around and claim you a making circles.

That's immaterial. My point is that it is possible. You're going off at a tangent.

Personally, I don't think mass production and distribution of hydrogen is the way forward either.

That would be zero. Why use an ICE when an electric motor would be far more suitable ? And why use hydrogen to feed a fuel cell if you can just store the electricity directly in a battery or similar ?

It's a moot point. Why try to product hydrogen inefficiently to drive an already inefficient ICE ?

I fully agree with you. They key is in getting the energy density high enough and developing a fast refueling system that has the same time benefits as gasoline.

Sad but true. Electric motors just don't have that same emotion factor.

The guy doesn't understand a third person reference...

My point is that it is NOT possible. A quick back of the envelope calculation will confirm that it would require several times the electricity generating capacity that we already have, if not an order of magnitude. You really think that it is even POSSIBLE never mind practical to suddenly produce the same amount of electricity that we're already producing (or several times that,) solely from renewable sources? This is why efficiency is of paramount importance when we're talking about a paradigm shift away from fossil-fuel powered ICEs.

If it's used as a *battery* and everyone keeps that in mind, it might be practical. Considering it a *fuel* will only lead you down dead ends.

Because that was the proposition that I was responding to. I agree, the idea is crap.

Because right now there's no clear winner in the energy density competition. A tank full of hydrogen produced by electrolysis might conceivably weigh less than a bank of batteries that stores the same amount of energy (I don't actually *know* this to be a fact, but the fact that research continues with hydrogen would lead me to believe that that is the case.)

Exactly the point that I was trying to make.

which is probably why some people are concentrating on hydrogen, because it takes less time to fill a pressurized tank with hydrogen than it does to recharge a battery.

I still like the idea of an alcohol-fueled fuel cell. There's no physical law that says that you can't grow something and then ferment it to produce alcohol and use less energy than the alcohol yields - that's the appeal, there.

I'm still looking forward to the perfectly flat torque curve though :)

nate

I'm no expert on South and Central American history. But what is common in this theme is wealth disparity. The results are understandable. The U.S. had a lot to do with making this a very messy place in the name of fighting communism. Cuba was the first example. Economic, (capitalist), disparity created the communist revolution. The want of socialism by the many was fostered by a very real precursor.

As for our, (U.S.), help; our track record stinks.

You can show the numbers to support it.