Hydrogen is Here?!?!?!?!?

[FATHER]

Heu guys read this
http://www.bimmer-mag.com/art1/art1p1.html

Please post....

[318iS]

good to see bmw gettin into the game early cos thats where the market will probably be in like 10 years....

[jkilla71]

I am glad to see hydrogen is getting its due. It gives me hope that these gimmick gas/electric hybrids will disappear soon. I got better mileage out of a VW TDI in the late 90’s than most hybrids get today.

I would love to be able to add a pressure regulator on the TI and fill up and run hydrogen in the future.

[mohaughn]

There is also an article in roundel about the hydrogen 7.. I don't think hydrogen is all it is cracked up to be. It takes a lot of electricity to make liquid hydrogen. And that electricity comes from regular old fossil fuels. So this really doesn't solve anything. Yes I know that some places are using solar power to make hydrogen, but, solar power has been shown to not be able to fill the current demands that humans have for power.

Until we find a way to make a large quantity of electricity without fossil fuels and without polluting hydrogen engines won't really solve our current fuel problems. It takes more energy to make liquid hydrogen than liquid hydrogen releases when it burns. That makes hydrogen a power carrier and not a power source. Until we start making large quantities of hydrogen from nuclear power there is no real advantage to switching to hydrogen.

Some good info- http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/p.../hydrogen.html

[3DGE]

IDK its going to take years for the Americans to convert to smaller vehicles that dont run on Gas. I would opt for a new fuel cell that we could put in our cars. We would already have bio gas in the general market if the US government did not have a embargo with cuba and brazial.

Sorry for the grammer and spelling issues...

[mohaughn]

Discovery has a show they are airing called Future Car. On Wednesday they are showing part 3 in the series and they are going to cover the fuel of future cars. From the advertisements it sounds like hydrogen is going to be a big topic.. I'm interested in seeing some of the recent research into more economical ways of making hydrogen cleanly without fossil fuels.

[pnosker]

Originally Posted by mohaughn

There is also an article in roundel about the hydrogen 7.. I don't think hydrogen is all it is cracked up to be. It takes a lot of electricity to make liquid hydrogen. And that electricity comes from regular old fossil fuels. So this really doesn't solve anything. Yes I know that some places are using solar power to make hydrogen, but, solar power has been shown to not be able to fill the current demands that humans have for power.

Until we find a way to make a large quantity of electricity without fossil fuels and without polluting hydrogen engines won't really solve our current fuel problems. It takes more energy to make liquid hydrogen than liquid hydrogen releases when it burns. That makes hydrogen a power carrier and not a power source. Until we start making large quantities of hydrogen from nuclear power there is no real advantage to switching to hydrogen.

Some good info- http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/p.../hydrogen.html

One of the things I'm working on at Rutgers University (with my Dad) is a method (patent pending so can't talk too much about it) to extract hydrogen with essentially no energy used from cow manure. It's pretty cool stuff and there's a pilot program running in Denmark powering a whole city off farmer's excess manure running on a Diesel CAT motor. I think it's going to viable in the near future. Also, recently a bacteria with an enzyme contained within its mitochondria was found to be capable at releasing hydrogen when in an environment with a minuscule amount of platinum nearby.

[pdxmotorhead]

For the record, there is not enough biomass in the world to sustain the production of fuel from it, IE Biodeisel, Alcohol etc. The algae, cow manure have a chance but in the end Hydrogen is the only flamable material that outweighs oil or coal in our planet. Its also the only one thats so renewable that it virtually won't run out.

If you plant every square inch of arable ground in the US to the highest density crop to produce a fuel, you get 3 days of the US fuel supply.

Also though the oil companies are doing their best to discount it, more and more evidence says oil is renewing itself all the time.

In Pennsylvania they were doing some experiments in using old wells to store irrigation water, They started uncapping the old penn oil wells and pumping water down. They got some water in the well, but it didn't store what they thought it would, then when pumping the water out in testing they got more crude oil, these wells had been pumped. steamed. pressure cleaned, you name it, and had been labeled dry about 30 years ago. I knew one of the roughnecks on a crew contracted to work the project. When the rep from the oil company supervising the experiment saw the results he shut it down and locked them out.... This is also backed by a geologist in the SE that has been carbon dating oil samples for several years, he isn't finding most of the samples to be very old, some wont even date because they are too new, which makes them under a decade old.... His theory is that certain crude oil fields are actually the result of water and bio material being forced through high temperature zones in the earths crust.

Have I wasted enough electrons yet? <grin>
seeya

Dave

[pnosker]

You are exactly right. Nobody knows where oil comes from. And the ethanol thing is correct too-- people touting E85 as the ultimate answer and whatnot are just ignorant. It requires more energy to harvest, process, and distribute the ethanol than you get out of it. It's just not efficient enough. I can see a combination of Hydrogen via algae/bacteria + methane releasing things (cow dung) and ethanol from husks and other biomass to be discarded as a byproduct being successful, but seriously, as the current director of the Congressional Budget Office told me, for the past 100 years, analysts have predicted that we would run out of oil in the next 50-100 years. All we need to work on now is making it less polluting, which shouldn't be too hard with the direct injection ultra-lean technologies, new catalytic converter designs, and CO2 oxidation (into graphite particles and oxygen).

[mohaughn]

I don't think any respectable scientest has ever said we will run out of oil in 10-50 years, what is happening is that we have already reached our peak oil output. This is called Hubbert's peak theory and was put out by M. King Hubbert back in the early 50's. We will probably never run out of oil, but the demand is outpacing the supply and has been since about 2001. I was an evironmental studies major at one point in my college career and we talked about this kind of thing quit a lot back in 1995. Everybody, everybody being non-scientists and non-environmentalists, thought it was bogus at the time as our oil production capabilities made dramatic jumps all throughout the 90's, but peaked around 2000 or 2001.

If we continue to demand oil at a level that outpaces production at some point only the very rich countries in the world will have oil. More than likely they will have to take the oil rich lands by force in order to keep their production high enough to keep their citizens happy... Sound familiar?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

I also understand that there is a lot of research into finding a way to easily, cheaply, and without a lot of energy make hydrogen... But right now that is all happening in labs, and there is no process yet that is believed to have the capacity to completely replace gasoline. I do believe though that genetic engineering, specifically looking at life that lives around sub-aquatic heat vents, could lead to some revolutionary and breakthrough techniques for making energy.. We just are not there yet, and the big corporations and our governments are not doing enough to make this happen soon enough.. Any why should they? Fuel companies are making record profits selling oil products. Why look for alternatives?

[bullmand]

Unfortunately most of the general public confuse peak oil production with "oh my god we're running out". This is largely due to ignorance and just plain wrong information put out by the press. It's the same with any technical subject that gets discussed in the news. Anyway, check out this link. I read this book and it's very interesting. It really does make more sense than the dinosuar/plant matter theory. I would like to see more biodiesel and nuclear power used in this country. I also think we could do much more with solar in certain areas. We'll get there eventually but it's going to take a very steep rise in the cost of "fossil" fuels to get things to really change. China and India may help us with that. BTW, I think hydrogen powered cars are just a parlor trick. The hydrogen fuel cell variants might be viable, but liquid or gaseous hydrogen as an automotive fuel probably won't ever happen.

[zboot]

using e85 or hydrogen or any other fuel isn't directly about efficiency. Currently, we use the same if not more energy producing an alternate fuel as consuming it. The issue is the pollutants created when burning said fuels. Pound for pound or gallon for gallon, gasoline has WAY more energy density than anything else out there - including hydrogen. However, hydrogen, e85, horse piss. . .they all burn cleaner than gasoline. Reducing greenhouse emissions is the true. . . driving force, not improving the efficiency of automobiles. That is just a PRETEND side benefit. Why do I say pretend, because when they're touting those 100mpg alt fuel cars, they're conveniently neglecting to discuss the extra energy that went into producing the fuel that would lower the effective mpg if you look at the total fuel consumption from production to your use.

*steps down from soapbox*