This is basically old news. Not saying it's not relevant or interesting. I too would prefer to keep my rumbly V8 if it can be cleaned up (it is after all why we're on this forum!). But again, can hydrogen for combustion in an ICE be mass produced in huge quanitities without incurring equivalent or worse pollution and CO2 emissions from production vs gasaoine production and consumption? That is the bigest hurdle. Everything else from transport to storage can / will be solved within reasonable parameters.

Mazda already experimented with an turbo charged RX-8 that burned hydrogen only. Whilst torque and HP were only approx. half of the same egine burning petrol. But like anything, where there's a will there's a way... engineering and science applied to this problem will be able generate improvements on these results.

Not the same technical paper I read, and a different car (dual fuel gas and hydrogen this time) but the same line of research by Mazda:

http://rotarynews.com/node/view/468

 

Still has to be less expensive, particularly on large scales, than the fuel cell technology.

 

Hydrogen is very abundent, but it is all combined with Oxygen in the form of water. To split H20 it take a crap load of electricity, which we have to figure out where to get. Basically it takes more energy to separate H2 & O then you get out of the hydrogen you collect. Rechage was a great word to use, basically hydrogen from water is more of an energy starage than energy source. There is no hydrogen to harvest fron the air, you must be thinking of Nitrogen. If hydrogen was in the air it would make for a very explosive atmosphere.

 

yes it is abundant.. but uhh it takes time, and ironically... ENERGY. to separate the hydrogen from whatever it is. I'm sure it isn't as easy as opening a glass car, scooping up some sort of natural river of flowing H2, and closing the jar back up, taking it home.

 

I was just daydreaming...It would be cool if there was some form of hydrogen 'scoop' that they could put on cars. It actually scoops the air and transforms it to hydrogen under the hood and delivers it to the engine for combusting Maybe I should run to the patent office?

 

Thank you for trying to make me feel like a moron. Thankfully you are not in charge of my feelings.

Yes, I'm aware it takes energy to harvest the H. But it takes energy to harvest gasoline from raw crude deep within the planet to refined product. Don't you think there would be at least some net tradeoff in those expenses and energy requirements?

I'd like to see a side by side comparo of just how much energy (in the ground to your gas tank) it takes to create a gallon of gas vs how much it takes to harvest 1 KG of Hydrogen.

A quick google search brings up some interesting debate articles on the issue, and like the other solutions Hydrogen isn't exactly a magic bullet either, but a hydrogen powered IC engine has some definite implementation advantages vs other solutions.

A blurb I found said you get 20% less HP out of a Hydrogen powered IC engine. That's not suprising, but if the fuel is cheap and emisions are near-nil then you can increase displacements to make up for it.

 

There isn't much hydrogen int he air that isn't in the form of water. Your scoop would have to collect a sufficient quantity and find someway to split the water. Maybe you could get the power for electrolysis from a Mr. Fusion.

 

I wasn't trying to make you feel like an idiot. I was just replying. Some people are more aggressive in their replies when it comes to debating, if you havn't figured this out yet, then you'll lose them most of the time.

 

There is also more gold , Au in the ocean than has ever been mined from the Earth, but that doesn't mean there is a cost effective way to get to the Gold for profit to be made.

BTW if you come up with a way to get it out let me know.

 

I read that the actual number is 200 nuclear power plants . The biggest question is where are we going to get all the Hydrogen... Burning fossil fuels to power electroloysis is't the answer!

Hydrogen almost never exists in a free state. I is almost always bonded to another element. Here's a composition list for Air - you'll see that Hydrogen is not very common:

Atmospheric gases
Although the Earth's atmosphere consists of many different gases--nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, krypton, nitrous oxide hydrogen, to name a few--nitrogen and oxygen are by far the predominant components. The table below summarizes the components of the atmosphere and the relative percent or parts per million (ppm) of each component (Source: Elementary Meteorology by G.F Taylor. Prentice-Hall. New York. 1954. Page 63).
Component Percent/Parts per million (ppm)
Nitrogen (N2) 78.08 percent
Oxygen (O2) 20.95 percent
Argon (A) 0.93 percent
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 0.03 percent
Neon (Ne) 18.18 ppm
Helium (He) 5.25 ppm
Methane (CH4) 2 ppm
Krypton (Kr) 1.14 ppm
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 0.5 ppm
Hydrogen (H2) 0.5 ppm
Xenon (Xe) 0.087 ppm
Ozone (O3) 0 to 0.07 ppm (variable)
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) 0 to 1 ppm
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) 0 to 0.02 ppm
Iodine (I2) trace amounts
Sodium chloride trace amounts
Ammonia (NH3) 0 to trace amounts
Carbon monoxide (CO) 0 to trace amounts

 

Best bet would be LOTS of hydroelectric damsto power electrolysis.. but you'd need a crapload of those to even make it worthwild.. more than anyone would care to build


I don't think the supply of crude oil is THAT in danger, right now... There are like BILLIONS of barrels imported daily, or something like that.. If they are creating that many barrels, then there must be a huge amount left... it would take a long *** time to completely use up our supply.. But, anyways.. if you really want to make our supply last, cars are not the biggest consumers, here, I'd have to say. Because there are so many, though.. it does add up.

But there are ocean liners that seriously use like a gallon of fuel to move 6 ****ing inches (not exaggerating here).. that's a lot of fuel, there.. and considering how far they have to travel. They do carry a lot of the materials we need,though. So you can't actively shut them down. But that seems pretty inefficient.

And the damn drag racers and nascar guys.. those things burn gas quicker than you can chug the same amount

But, either way, I think we're ****ed in the end.. at some point. Nobody is going to get rid of dragcars, nascar, cruise liners or any of that. That's part of entertainment.. part of life. Best bet right now is coming up with what they did in Spiderman2.. except making it work :P

 

Problem is not when we "run out" of oil... the real problem begins when we reach the peak of oil production and from then on, the ability to supply oil decreases forever more. That's when it gets really expensive and the world as we know it is gone. Hopefully, we'll be able to find an energy solution, and it will be a change for the better... but with our current set of politicians and our "screw our children, we want to drive hummers" mindset, I'm not so sure...

 

You're opening a can of "werms"...

 

Problem with that is that we've supposedly hit that peak at least 3 or 5 times over the years. Everytime some chicken little forecasts we've peaked oil production, new reserves are found. Saudi Arabia just announced recently that they are going to be increasing their estimate of known reserves by 40%, and they already have 1/3 of all the oil on the planet, that we know of.

Plus there is a theory that oil is not from dead dinosaurs but is a byproduct of processes much deeper under the earth, as we've seen some oil fields actually re-fill somewhat over time.

I'm not saying we don't need to get off oil, because I certainly don't like us being dependent on the middle east for our energy. And I don't like all the emissions although I don't think we are contributing to global warming to the degree the mainstream media and activist scientists want us to believe. I just don't happen to agree with all the popular dogma out there on the subject, and I know there are no easy fixes. Any solution is going to be extremely costly. I also object to the guilt trip some try to give us about how we are living it up at the expense of our children. We get told this on the budget deficit, tax cuts, healthcare, and now SUVs? LMAO.....

I'm more worried about fixing Social Security so it doesn't go broke when I'm old enough to start getting checks. But oh no, it won't go broke for 40 years, so why worry about it now? Talk about selling out the future of your children......

 

That's partly because one of OPECs rules is that you can only produce a certain fraction of your total reserves. That leads to a lot of fudging in the "known reserves" column.