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Hydrogen fuel cars
Do they have a future? Oct 17 20 11:54 am Link IMAGINERIES wrote: if youre asking 'will they have a practical application in the future' ? Oct 17 20 12:01 pm Link My former boss was very bullish on fuel cell vehicles. In the technology wars, it appears that battery electric vehicles have won. Probably either could have done the job for next generation transportation, but both need big infrastructure investments. BEV has that happening now, not so much FCVs. On the other hand, interesting things are happening in the marine sector, where there could be a mix of the two. See, for example, https://watergoround.com/ for the FC vessel. And there are battery electric ferries in revenue service in Norway. Oct 17 20 01:38 pm Link that website is so bad, it turned me off to the idea haha. Oct 17 20 02:08 pm Link Mr. Stan Meyer story "youtube"... Fake news news of the seventies? No question that the Exxon an BP's of the world wouldn't like the idea. What if China jump of the concept and make it the only way to move a car!! Then we would be crying that it was an American invention/idea....Stolen etc... But China could become a leader in car in manufacturing.....Again it's a matter of $$$$ not what is good for the future...I am a dreamer who love sail boats Oct 17 20 04:02 pm Link IMAGINERIES wrote: congratulations, you made a post so preposterous i cant even dignify it with one of my idiotic replies. Oct 17 20 04:19 pm Link Battery electric vehicles are not practical for replacement of all gasoline/diesel powered vehicles. The production of the batteries pollutes too much, batteries are too heavy, battery range is too short, battery charge times are too long, batteries pose a serious fire/chemical danger in accidents and then the battery has to be disposed of at the end of it's life. Add to that the huge additional amount of electricity that will have to be produced and the infrastructure to deliver it, if even just half of the vehicles in the US were battery electric. Some kind of on board fuel, that can be quickly re-filled, and with the capacity for a 300 miles range, is going to be required if gasoline/diesel vehicles are going to be anywhere close to being totally replaced. Oct 17 20 06:12 pm Link
Post hidden on Oct 22, 2020 05:38 pm
Reason: off-topic Oct 17 20 06:34 pm Link in the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report" the lore of the movie is that in the future the highways and roads have electronic magnet strips in them. and cars move about not by engines that need fuel, but by vehicles that essentially are moved electronically on the strips. and wherever the magnet strips are the cars can go hence in the movie the cars can climb up walls of tall buildings. I wouldnt be surprised if this concept is used someday. one of the other cool things, your car actually is attached to the wall of your house like a docked spaceship on a larger station. you want to go to work you just step from your living room into your car and down the wall of the high rise building the car goes taking you to work and goes where you want. Oct 17 20 07:23 pm Link Tony From Syracuse wrote: that was invented in 1901. you might be familiar with the "third rail" system for a train. its a vehicle moved 'electronically' on strips. Oct 17 20 07:58 pm Link there's people all thru history like you. "how can it possibly work?"..... "that makes no sense" "talkies will never catch on." just as I am sure there were people back in the day who thought....driverless cars?! HOW?! what guides them? humbug! as far as making up the lore, you havent even seen the movie yet you think I've decided to give myself a writing credit. heres a quote from the minority report future technology page regarding the "Maglev" system which is based on magnets. the bonus features on the DVD go into more detail, on the magnetic system. "One of the advisers for the film's transportation elements was automotive designer Harald Belker, who's built quite a career creating vehicles for movies (as well as real life). In Minority Report, the driverless cars are linked to a Maglev system, which Belker described as "individual transportation within a mass transport system." That allows the cars to travel not just on traditional roads and highways, but also vertically -- even delivering a person directly to the outside of their apartment." here is a scene of it in action and it looks great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZQ6p69Kg6c Oct 17 20 08:12 pm Link i was just curious if you speculated it was magnets, or if they explained it as that in the movie. thanks for clarifying. we have had maglev transport for decades now. of course in reality it cant work like it does in that movie, but thats irrelevant. in reality the future option for transportation is going to be powered by electric motors for majority of citizens. its not necessarily environmentally friendly or efficient but its appeal can be sold to the ignorant masses and building infrastructure is feasible. That will allow oil reserves to be allocated differently; planes, cargo ships, military etc will still be burning dino. at that point we'll need nuclear power plants to generate enough electricity to meet demands, or just get people to consume less energy in general ...or less people  as of now, most our electricity and hydrogen are produced as a result of burning fossil fuels. Oct 17 20 08:23 pm Link I would guess that the scientists have an idea of when we will run out of fossil fuel...50 years? a century? In my life time the world population has triple.. So in 50 years it could be 30 billion or more!.. That could be a lot of cars and maybe not much fossil fuel left if any. I am sure all this has been studied but any plans laid out for a child born today? Oct 18 20 06:56 am Link IMAGINERIES wrote: Belaboring what should be obvious, the issue is not whether we run out of fossil fuel. If we burn remotely a fraction of what is available, we are toast as a civilization. We are already witnessing dreadful effects of climate change, and much more is locked in. We absolutely need to leave most of the fossils where they are. Oct 18 20 09:10 am Link Getting back to the OP's question, I believe that in the long run we'll be operating in a hydrogen economy - if for no other reason than the source of the hydrogen is so plentiful: water. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen - add energy in the right environment, you get the two gasses. Burn those two gasses in any application (cars, factories, power plants, etc.) and you get back energy and water. Hydrogen can be distributed like natural gas, assuming we solve the metallurgy problems Granted that all of this is easy to say, and really hard to do. But us humans do a kick-ass job in situations like this in which there is a really desirable goal and lots of invention needed to make it there (and make a new business and lots of bucks in the process). Oct 18 20 10:45 am Link Hydrogen fuel cells for busses and delivery trucks in larger metropolitan cities make sense to reduce polution. In a couple centuries, maybe Star Trek like transporters to get around. Personally I don't drive enough to warrent buying an electric car. For me, gas is still cheaper. And I recently took a road trip to Nevada where there wasn't much availablity for a midside electric suv rental. Oct 20 20 11:28 am Link Managing Light wrote: Essentially all hydrogen for FCV cars is made by reforming methane (industrial hydrogen mostly comes from petroleum refineries, I think). To make hydrogen from water, means electrolysis. I haven't run the math, but it seems fairly straightforward that the energy balance vs straight EV doesn't look good. There are also potential issues of purity (I don't know, for example, if seawater can be used in current electrolysis processes, and that's where the overwhelming amount of unused/unclaimed water exists). There are a few specialized applications where hydrogen may be the better choice, at least in the near term (Very large ocean going vessels is the only one I can think of. Trains can easily be switched to line power with pantographs. Heavy duty trucks and passenger cars are well on their way, and new ones will be all 100% electric very soon in California. Oct 21 20 08:27 pm Link matt-h2 wrote: I agree that the process now uses reforming methane. In thinking about this long term though, unless an "endless supply" of methane becomes available rather than the petrochemical industry we have to face the scarcity factor. This leads back to electrolysis, augmented by catalysis. There is an interesting Wikipedia article on this at: Oct 22 20 08:31 am Link I used to work in the automotive industry as a senior product development engineer on propulsion systems I had worked with BMW oh their hydrogen systems. I was a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers. Here are some of the problems with Hydrogen: 1. High combustion temperatures requiring more expensive metallurgy in the engine to resist engine degradation. 2. High combustion temperatures resulting in more oxides of nitrogen, requiring more expensive systems for exhaust gas treatment/ 3. Lower specific power output for ideal air/fuel ratios 4. Limited range due the the amount of hydrogen fuel that can be carried. 5. Hydrogen fuel tank had to be filled every couple days and the small hydrogen molecules could escape the 40 layer fuel tank in a couple days. 6. Infrastructure cost were high. BMW believed that they could economically build solar farms that could "Crack" water molecules at 700°C into oxygen and hydrogen with solar energy. Hypothetically, this would be less expensive than electrolysis. So the unit cost per unit of energy was very high. 7. Infrastructure cost for transpiration and refueling were high. Special carriers for hydrogen would have to be invented to transport it from the CRACKING site to refilling station. Then refilling stations would have to be implemented with appropriate technology. 8. Safety was a huge concern as the fuel is highly flammable. Unlike a lot of fuels, hydrogen does not require a precise air/fuel ratio for ignition and deflagration to occur with rapid combustion and fire. BMW went as far as having robotic refueling on their test car. All the drivers had to do is drive up to the refueling centre and position the car properly and the robotics would do the rest. Extreme safety measure were required at all stages of handling hydrogen. 9. Underhood electrical power generation was to be done by fuel cells and not have an alternator. They believed that a unit could be designed compact enough and at a reasonable cost, but would have to develop the technology. Their belief was that it was a more efficient system of energy conversion. If you ran out of fuel, it would be the same situation as gasoline powered cars. However, if you had an engine failure, the fuel cell (alternator replacement) could supply electrical as long as there hydrogen left to convert into electricity and water. So there were a lot of engineering challenges. Ultimately, it is the accountants that make the decision of what systems become implemented. Oct 22 20 09:57 am Link I can also add to Dorola's list above with real world examples. Infrastructure for hydrogen is not in place nor do I see it in place in the near future. Toyota makes the Mirai. A total hydrogen fuel cell car. These vehicles were offered to Toyota dealers on a case by case method based on location of fuel sources to fill the vehicles. There are currently 5 dealers in Nor Cal that offer the vehicle for sale. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/art … 916428.php The above tells you alot about the infrastructure in place. Real World! Last year, June 2019, a Hydrogen plant had a fire and explosion and completely knocked there operations out for months. I am not sure if they are back up and running still as of this date. People were complaining, that had Mirai's, that there was no place close to get hydrogen or they didn't have enough fuel to drive to another location. Quietly, Toyota sent letters to those customers affected and offered them incentives to trade their Mirai's for another Toyota and even another Mirai,,(HUH?) As a transportation fuel it is lacking without an infrastructure in place for the everyday person. But as for commercial applications, there are great examples of Hydrogen Fuel Cells. One example is the Port Of Long Beach. Toyota and other manufacturers, along with the Port Of Long Beach and the City of Long Beach have already started using this technology. They have started to convert the port trucks to Hydrogen. They have an infrastructure in place on site for the hydrogen. They have also discussed using Hydrogen to generate their own electricity for the Port. Older article from last year: https://www.act-news.com/news/long-beac … -hot-spot/ Oct 22 20 02:48 pm Link A quick search looks like there is still research into carbon nanotube capacitors, this is the best direction IMO. Charge fast, and last for many cycles. I guess the big issue is how they'd handle an impact, could turn into a lightening storm... Oct 22 20 03:20 pm Link ethasleftthebuilding wrote: As the driver of a battery electric vehicle, I can say that most of your assertions are wrong. Oct 22 20 05:52 pm Link |
