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- ramiro, on 07/10/2008, -2/+20Electrolysis is really bad. This is a WASTE of electricity. You're better off with a plug in hybrid.
- ubernoggin, on 07/09/2008, -6/+18Fill it with helium and it will make your commute a bit smoother as you fly above the gridlock. One side effect, though, is that you'll talk like a Chipmunk.
- brettg102, on 07/10/2008, -2/+1225 miles? Wow...horrible. Electric cars have this totally own3d.
- tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+8Yeah, I've been learning more about this recently - hydrogen fuel is one of the harder ways to get power to your car - plugging it in is one of the most efficient.
- RunawayElf, on 07/10/2008, -0/+7http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/
A US based company, United Nuclear, is working on a truly viable option. This article refers to a company that is not.
A little info from the link...
There are materials call Hydrides that absorb Hydrogen like a sponge absorbs water. Typically, the tanks are filled with granulated Hydrides, and Hydrogen is pressurized into the material. Hydrides have many advantages over liquid & gas. One is that the density of the Hydrogen stored in the Hydride can be GREATER than that of liquid Hydrogen. This translates directly into smaller and fewer storage tanks.
Once the Hydride is "charged" with Hydrogen, the Hydrogen becomes chemically bonded to the chemical. Even opening the tank, or cutting it in half will not release the Hydrogen gas. In addition, you could even fire incendiary bullets through the tank and the Hydride would only smolder like a cigarette. It is in fact, a safer storage system than your Gasoline tank is.
Then how do you get the Hydrogen back out? To release the Hydrogen gas from the Hydride, it simply needs to be heated. This is either done electrically, using the waste exhaust heat, or using the waste radiator coolant heat.
Our kits heat the Hydride tanks electrically, and as soon at the Hydride is sufficiently warm, Hydrogen is released from the tanks and the on-board computer detects the presence of Hydrogen pressure. The fuel system remains in "Hydrogen" mode until the tank pressure begins to drop. If the tanks run out of Hydrogen, the engine will seamlessly switch over to Gasoline, which enables the car to run conventionally until the Hydrogen tanks are refilled. - bincoder, on 07/09/2008, -5/+11That would be very expensive.
I guess it would work nicely if you also happen to have your own nuclear plant at home too, in order to supply the large amount of electricity required.
Solar cells just ain't gonna cut it.
Converting electricity to hydrogen, then converting the hydrogen back to electricity in the car would also cause a loss of energy far greater than simply charging up plain old normal batteries in one step, or just burning gasoline. - JoemcC00L, on 07/09/2008, -1/+7Please, no smoking.
- Mystlyfe, on 07/10/2008, -4/+9Hydrogen fuel cells as a whole aren't the solution. There isn't enough platinum in the world to produce enough fuel cells in order to change all the cars in American to fuel cells.
Not to mention the many other risks and problems with a hydrogen economy. - MasZakrY, on 07/10/2008, -0/+5I really hope people understand that to make hydrogen you are dealing with a 50% efficiency rate right off the start before you even factor in the efficiency of the hydrogen "motor system" to power the vehicle. Using electricity right out of the wall to charge a series of batteries is readily available, considerably more efficient and extremely fast (80% charge in as little as 60 seconds!).
references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_batt ... - inactive, on 07/09/2008, -0/+4Hope these will have some sort of security feature, or you might be supplying the entire neighborhood, granted they all have hydrogen cars.
- EtherGnat, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4"How much energy loss is involved in the electrolysis -> hydrogen -> electricity process?"
A lot, it's an inefficient process. Electric vehicles have an overall efficiency (from electricity generation to where the rubber meets the road) of 21%. Hydrogen vehicles are only 5.9%. In particular converting to hydrogen is 50% efficient and converting it back to electrical causes another loss of 50%.
"I thought the big win with Hydrogen was that it could store more energy by weight then batteries can."
While this is true on pure energy density, I don't think that includes the hydrogen storage tank which is big and heavy. The true advantage of hydrogen IMO is refueling speed, but advancements are being made all the time in high-speed battery recharging.
"Other then the mega expensive Tesla I have not seen anyone touting an electric car that can travel > 100 miles on a charge most of them are < 50 miles."
Batteries are EXPENSIVE, but they're getting cheaper. Honda recently cut the price on the battery for the Insight by nearly half. Economies of scale and process improvements should cause prices to drop dramatically over the next 5-10 years. - inactive, on 07/10/2008, -3/+7...and arrive at your destination dead.
- dragon76, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4I'm just going to wait for Mr. Fusion and get a converter kit, 'cause we know it's coming in 7 years.
- tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4I don't know, but ultra-efficient solar cells are on the way:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20021020210743dat ... - inactive, on 07/10/2008, -1/+4Got Platinum?
" When you consider that it takes 10 tons of ore and a five-month process to produce a single ounce of platinum, you'll begin to understand why this metal is so precious."
It take enormous amounts of petroleum to mine the ore and produce platinum, using it for fuel cells in cars makes no sense.
http://www.metalmarkets.org.uk/2008/02/13/platinum ... - Hurricane, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3Considering it will take more energy/fuel to make the hydrogen than you get back out of it would it not be more efficient to just have a 100% electric vehicle that plugs in?
This is another good example of what I call the Hydrogen from water scam. - tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3I see what you're saying. I misunderstood.
- vexu, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3Great... I'm already paranoid of an explosion from a meth lab in the neighborhood. Now we're going to have home-based hydrogen and oxygen production.
- jeffwrule, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3OK you seem pretty confident in your response here. I am truly curious...
1) How much energy loss is involved in the electrolysis -> hydrogen -> electricity process?
2) How many solar cells would it take to generate enough electricity to produce this amount of hydrogen. Granted the article is pretty sketchy about how much that actually is. No Weight or Volume produced given.
I thought the big win with Hydrogen was that it could store more energy by weight then batteries can. So you can produce a car that could go 200 miles w/o having to too much weight. Battery technology is pretty far behind here isn't it? Other then the mega expensive Tesla I have not seen anyone touting an electric car that can travel > 100 miles on a charge most of them are < 50 miles. - MalumProhibitum, on 07/10/2008, -0/+325 mile range..... holy missed the ***** bus batman!
- ramiro, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3Well, not if you consider that there are no sources of hydrogen in the Earth with positive net energy.
If you have to spend more energy to extract hydrogen from water (or other substances) than the energy you get from the hydrogen, then it is not a fuel.
It is like using electricity to heat water in order to power a steam engine - in this case, water can't be considered a fuel, but an energy transport media. - tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Advances with ultracapacitors are coming too: http://www.colemanflashcellscrewdriver.com/
- Trots, on 07/10/2008, -2/+4Big waste of $4000
- wassim2k, on 07/10/2008, -2/+4Uhm, isn't Honda coming out with a home hydrogen fueling station that runs on natural gas?
- alexanEmpire, on 07/10/2008, -1/+3You know what? This might be a good option for most people.
- GTPilot, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2i didn't see any electricity consumption stat in the article. how much electricity are you saying this unit uses which wouldn't be able to be generated by solar?
there's a ton of hho videos on youtube, and it sure doesn't seem like it takes a lot of electricity to generate a good amount of hydrogen. - shotgunefx, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Oh the humanity!
- tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2I'm still waiting for Mr. Fusion.
- supermanly, on 07/10/2008, -1/+3You know what? This might be a good option for all neo-cons.
Fixed. - atact88, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2What they don't tell you is that you'll put more energy into making the hydrogen than you'll get out of it. And right now, industrial production of hydrogen takes place by burning fossil fuels....
- linagee, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Is hydrogen a more dense storage medium than batteries? I can see one advantage of the hydrogen tank not having to be thrown in a landfill or battery recycling center every 5 years like a hybrid.
- GlassAgate, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2There may be nothing to throw in a landfill, but
what source of energy will be used to break apart
the water? We may end up pumping a bunch of CO2
into the atmosphere, if a clean source of energy isn't
used. How efficient are the commercial solar cells?
How about the experimental ones?
Also, does any fellow Digger know the theoretical
maximum amount of energy that can be gotten
out of a square foot area? I don't know if one exists,
but if it does, I'd like to know it. - ramiro, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Take a look at this article by an engineer:
http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp
Hydrogen is terrible as an energy transport media (it is not a fuel anyway). - BESTenemy, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Yep. GM's EV2 drove up to 160 miles on a 6-hour charge, and probably used less electricity per charge, considering electrolysis and subsequent water recomposition for electricity are less than 30% energy efficient, while electrochemical batteries are anywhere between 80% and 95% efficient.
- tkstock, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1Hydrogen as used by a fuel cell is not a fuel, but hydrogen used in a combustion engine is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle - GlassAgate, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1There will very likely be a number of people who try to cut corners,
to save money, and there operation will go up in smoke. Then
there will be lawsuits, with people saying something like "You never mentioned that
hydrogen was highly volatile!" - GilThielander, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1I believe the original idea was that hydrogen is overall a better mobile energy storage medium than batteries.
- jeffwrule, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1Humm... why not just run the honda on CNG directly? Cut out the middle man here.
- GlassAgate, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1We'll have a million little Hindenburgs on the road!
- tylermenezes, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1The way that's phrased it seems like it might kill me.
- linagee, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1Is hydrogen a more dense storage medium than batteries? I can see one advantage of the hydrogen tank not having to be thrown in a landfill or battery recycling center every 5 years.
- inactive, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1This can work, now we need to get the price of fuel cells WAY down.
They should be in every thing from lap tops to lawn mowers eventually.
Also remember a fuel cell can run on virtually ANY fuel, hydrogen is just the cleanest possilbe. - Hurricane, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1I am afraid you missed the point, the idea is to do as little processing as possible, thus leaving more energy for use.
If you use fuel to make electricity to make fuel to go in a vehicle, then you get less waste by just using the electricity as fuel to start with.
Every link in the chain looses more energy.
Think of it as using gasoline to power a generator to recharge batteries in an electric car. - linagee, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1What is the amp-hours per pound of a battery? What is the amp-hour equivalent per pound of hydrogen + fuel tank? Until I had those numbers....
- beauley, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1There have been many attempts to design an electric powered vehicle for as long as the the internal combustion engine has been around. Unfortunately, battery power was never a formidable contender to the present internal combustion engine, but it looks as though the future looks more pronising.
http://www.gomestic.com/Consumer-Information/The-E ...
The Electric Vehicle, is It the Answer? - ramiro, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1No, hydrogen is not dense at all - it is a gas.
There are more hydrogen molecules in a cubic inch of water (and even more for gasoline) than there is in a cubic inch of hydrogen gas. - inactive, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1www.funnieststuff.net/viewmovie.php?id=892
- GlassAgate, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1So, for the economy to boom is good, and for the economy to go boom
is bad....very bad. - GlassAgate, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1So, either way, we need petroleum. Damn.
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