Car Tech: What do you think of hydrogen fuel cell cars?
- 4/12/07 2:04 PM
We're Sounding Like Patty - Who's Sorry Now
by plcard - 6/11/07 4:44 AM In reply to: No, I'm sorry. by Andy77eYou are so right about the government. That is why I am doing a whole lot of soul searching on this upcoming election. Back to basics and maybe we can end this corporate welfare state we are in.
Why must there be a fix? I guess I just have a lot of faith in the human mind. We can, supposedly, get a man on the moon, blow the earth up many times over, feed the world, and yet we cannot get a car that performs to expectations, is resource and earth friendly, and doesn't cost a fortune.
I guess I'm a dreamer. Ted Turner was just a name that popped in my head as a multi-millionaire who could do something like this. Heaven knows he wouldn't do it.
Y'all need to do what I and several other people have done. Keep putting pressure on Congress. One day they will realize they represent the people and not the money.
I do feel and believe in my heart the technology is out there. I'm not a techno nut so I don't follow all the new developments. But I do follow MIT and other colleges and what they as college students have developed and what is on the drawing board.
I believe, they are the future.... the future developers ... the future politicians ... and the future dreamers who will make us free of many things, but most especially blood oil.
Patrick
I have little faith in that
by Andy77e - 6/11/07 5:31 PM In reply to: We're Sounding Like Patty - Who's Sorry Now by plcardI have yet to find any politian that follows everything I believe in, but I have to choose someone. The problem is, people in both parties tend to have a big government view. Rarely do I see anyone that has a real constitutional view of government, oh well.
Well it's the human mind that makes me believe there isn't a fix. The problem with humans is, no matter how good they have it, no matter how easy their life is, it's never good enough. Just like dear ol Ted who when asked what does a billionair do, said "I do the same thing as everyone else. Look up the list to see where I'm at, and figure out how to get ahead of the next guy on the list".
Remember where we came from: Covered wagons roaming unpaved ground across a massive country full of wild animals and possibly hostile natives and other unknown dangers, it there was no AC and no heat, and it required months to travel.
Now we complain because our car with electronic climate control, heated seats, power mirror, power locks and windows, with a 6 speaker Bose radio with XM support, going 70 MPH, is just so horrible because it doesn't get 50 mpg.
There is no fix for this. Look how far cars have come, and all we do is complain and demand more. Even if they did come up with electric cars that required 5 seconds to charge and could go 800 miles a charge, there would still be people complaining.
And lastly, and I'll never understand this. Why do we run to government every time? What exactly has government ever done, other than in the military, that has worked? Name something government set out to do that it has accomplished? You really want government to take over what kind of car you drive? Don't you remember the Yugo?
Agreed
by plcard - 6/13/07 4:50 AM In reply to: I have little faith in that by Andy77eI agree with most of what you have said. You ask for an example ... the USPS was run better by Congress than it is now. Costs were lower, the service much better (and my partner works for them). However, they ran it like they do everything else ... into a huge deficit.
That being said, I really want to apologize to poor ol' Ted. I didn't mean for him to become the icon of this discussion. His name just popped into my head, but he is an example of NOT running to the government. You asked why. Basically because so much of our money goes to DC we have to go begging to get our money back to use.
Corporate welfare eats up so much of our tax dollars and much of that supposedly for R&D. I honestly do not see the return on the dollar for R&D or anything else for that matter.
For someone to be a Henry Ford today, he would have to be a millionaire or go to DC for R&D cash. Not to believe there is a problem in Washington is to stick ones head in the sand and think everything is OK. Perhaps if my candidate is elected and does away with the IRS and we have a legitimate taxation system as fore fathers envisioned, there would be more people trying to solve this problem and we would have what is needed to stop global warming, and the use of oil as the primary fuel. Time will tell all.
Yes we did start out in covered wagons and such, but what we have now is called progress. Several years ago, I was sitting on the porch of a wonder senior lady discussing the workings of the world. All at once she said, "Patrick, do you realize in my lifetime, we have gone from covered wagons to the moon. My, what progress we have made."
It is up to the individual person ... is the glass half empty or half full. There will always be people who would complain if you hung them with a new rope. That is just the nature of some and having worked with the public all my adult life, I can attest to that. However, that cannot keep us from dreaming, achieving, and receiving the benefits of our endeavors.
Patrick
Oh well huh?
by Andy77e - 7/2/07 3:42 PM In reply to: Agreed by plcardYou are talking to the wrong guy about half empty or half full. My glass is cracked and completely empty.
I'm confused about the USPS. You seem to imply it is not run by Government. That's confusing to me. As far as I know, every dollar they get is authorized by government to this day. If this is not true, then explain. What happened, and when did it happen?
What I really meant by my statement is, what great thing have they set up to do, that has worked? Like the war on poverty? War on drugs? The great society? Health care? Social Insecurity? War on hunger?
You talk about corporate welfare, and I agree that's bad. But most of the budget is lost on food stamps, welfare, subsidies, social insecurity, Medicare, Medicaid, HUD section 8, and the dozens of other entitlements.
O! You realized government research grants don't work. Nice. Here, figure this: If government offers money, there will be someone to take it no matter what. Example: in the mid 90s government offered money to research batteries. If I'm not mistaken, GM got the grant. Does GM make batteries? No. But hey if government is offering money, why not? So they researched batteries, never intending to use it. When the grant ran out, they sold what little information they got to a battery company, and said thanks for the grant.
I wish more people would figure this out. Government handing out money is always always always bad. "But it's for RESEARCH!" no... it's for votes and corporate donations to a political party. Well meaning, uninformed Americans vote for X because he supported "research" and X got thousands donated to him by the company that got the grant.
Figure it out, if Government was offering money to research farts as an energy source, I'd take the money, hire a researcher, and take a vacation until the grant runs out, and then fire him. If the American people are dumb enough to vote someone in office that will hand out their hard earned tax money, there will be people to take advantage of it.
I'll Try to Explain, but then I'm Gone
by plcard - 7/3/07 7:40 AM In reply to: Oh well huh? by Andy77eConcerning USPS: It is a private type of corporation. The only thing Congress does, unlike before is approve increases. The rest is determined by a board of regents type management. This is from my partner who works for USPS.
Secondly,
I would have you look at the pie for the 2006 Federal Budget. Entitlements are such a small amount they are barely visible on the chart. I follow this very closely so Please look and let's correct what appears a misunderstanding.
I do agree the billions of dollars spent on the various wars, especially on drugs and terrorism, are a total waste of time and money, but they look good and shows that our "do nothing Congresses" are maybe doing something.
Social Security, Medicare would not be a problem whatsoever, if Congress had not robbed it on a consistent basis without paying it back. Check the figures. It depends on who's figures you use and what they are trying to accomplish by their statements.
Hence, if the government would stop the Wars on everything, include the fiascoes in the Middle East, there would be plenty of money to help small inventors to accomplish energy, not matter if it is hydrogen or electric, or something not even thought of yet.
I would suggest you and others might go to www.ronpaul2008.com and check out all the information there. It might show you where the money is really going.
Take care you all. I've really enjoyed these discussions, but I'm afraid we have strayed very far from the subject, and it's probably my fault. So I am discontinuing my tracking of this discussion.
Patrick
I'll check on that, but the tax info is messed up
by Andy77e - 7/3/07 2:22 PM In reply to: I'll Try to Explain, but then I'm Gone by plcardThis is the first I've heard of this USPS private corp deal. I'll have to look into that.
For now though, your information on budget seems a little off.
The budget was spent on the following things:
37% Social insecurity, Medicare, other retirement
20% Social programs
10% Physical, Human, and community development
24% National Defense, Veterans, and foreign affairs
2% Law enforcement and general government
7% Interest on the debt
Social security, Medicare, and other retirement: These programs provide income support for the retired and disabled and medical care for the elderly. (this is an entitlement)
Physical, human, and community development: These outlays were for agriculture; natural resources; environment; transportation; and community development; and space, energy, and general science programs, ( from this point on, everything is an entitlement) --> aid for elementary and secondary education and direct assistance to college students; job training; deposit insurance, commerce and housing credit.
(at least half of this is entitlements, the rest could be considered "corporate welfare", but it's things people want. Agricultural subsides make ethanol affordable. If they didn't spend money on alternative fuels, everyone would be mad, but that is corporate welfare, and everyones mad about that. So it's American stupidity. Make up your mind)
Social programs: About 14% of total outlays were for Medicaid, food stamps, temporary assistance for needy families, supplemental security income, and related programs; and the remaining outlays were for health research and public health programs, unemployment compensation, assisted housing, and social services.
(all of these are entitlements except health research and public health programs, which are corporate welfare. If they didn't give money to these big corporations "for health research" everyone would be mad, but since they do, everyone is mad about corporate welfare. Again, American stupidity, make up your mind)
So let's recap. 26% of the budget was spent on national security, law enforcement, general government, veterans, and foreign affairs. All of which are what government is supposed to do. While another 67% went to things that are not constitutionally supported spending, namely entitlements. Finely another 7% was spent on the debt incurred by borrowing money to pay for the other 67% of unconstitutional spending.
26% Government is constitutionally supposed to do
74% Government is not constitutionally supposed to do.
Now how much was corporate welfare compared to entitlements? It doesn't divide up by that, so we have to make some logical guesses.
There's only 2 spots for corporate welfare. Social programs, and "physical, human, and community devolopment".
Social programs states the 14% of it went to entitlements. That leave 6%, of which, half of the outlays where listed as entitlements like assisted housing and unemployment comp. So only about 3% could be corporate welfare. Then the other group, about half of their 10% of expenses, were entitlements. Since it isn't broken down, I will take a wild stab at about half of the funding was corporate welfare.
So we end up with:
26% Constitutional spending.
59% Unconstitutional entitlements
8% Unconstitutional corporate welfare
7% To pay for the above unconstitutional spending
Bottom line: There is corporate welfare, and it is not good. But Entitlements, unconstitutional government hand outs to citizens makes up far more of the budget and it's costing even more, because we have to borrow money to do it.
ALTERNATIVES
by Lance Ware - 4/14/07 5:14 PM In reply to: What do you think of hydrogen fuel cell cars? by wcunning
A few months ago on the Science Channel, I saw a program that discuss alternative energy sources (I can't remember the name of the program). Wind power is simply converted solar energy except it's accessible 24/7. I don't understand why wind power isn't given more consideration. They actually showed a working hydrogen production station using a wind turbine as the energy source for creating hydrogen fuel from water. This would seem to be the perfect solution because it costs nothing except the maintenance of the equipment to obtain the energy for this process. Additionally, the program host discussed the fact that the alternative fuel industry doesn't even receive a fraction of the government subsidies that are given to the oil industry. It was also shown on this program that the United States has massive amounts of empty land and space where wind farms can be established. I think Montana or another mid western state was in the process of building a large one. On this program and in a National Geographic article, I saw the ocean based wind farm sitting off the coast of Ireland. I saw so many oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico on my last cruise that look like they were not in use. Imagine if these platforms could be converted into bases for wind farms. This is checkers not chess. Am I missing something?
I know that converting over all of the infrastructure necessary to use hydrogen would probably be on the scale of financing World War II and putting a man on the Moon but the cost of waiting until we run out of oil is too high. I also think having a president who's family has derived and continues to build wealth from oil investment is a huge conflict of interest. I'm sure the major oil companies don't want to give up this cash cow either.
I think hydrogen fuel cell cars are a very viable alternative but it needs the political and financial support to bring it to fruition. Change is only going to happen when the price of gasoline gets extremely cost prohibitive, politicians are not submitting to oil lobbyists and buying alternative fuel vehicles becomes financially palatable to consumers.
Change the way cities are built...
by Sunshine:0) - 4/14/07 7:30 PM In reply to: What do you think of hydrogen fuel cell cars? by wcunning
that is the only real solution... the car is a dieing tech whether you extend its life or not.
based on what exactly?
by Andy77e - 6/10/07 3:02 PM In reply to: Change the way cities are built... by Sunshine:0)What do you base the idea that the automobile is a dieing tech?
fuel cells an old (now) technology
by eglazier - 4/16/07 4:25 AM In reply to: What do you think of hydrogen fuel cell cars? by wcunning
i have been following fuel cells ever since i worked in the direct energy conversion group at GE in 1962. we were then supplying fuel cells for power for the gemini space capsule, and since then fuel cells have provided power for all the space vehicles. they may yet for autos, but it has been much longer than 50 years( GE had worked on them long before i was employed there). i despair of ever seeing them as practical everyday power sources in my lifetime. possibly if we really decided they might be useful and common, we could put our national resources to work as we did with the manhatten project. 'git'er done' as it were. right now , though there is great hope, there is seemingly only piecemeal work. i may be wrong and probably am but i do not know of any other technology that has so much theoretical promise that has languished so long.
Fuel Cells
by Jkirk3279 - 4/16/07 8:03 AM In reply to: fuel cells an old (now) technology by eglazierI also keep in touch with fuel cell research, and it's very promising.
The technology exists now to run a fuel cell directly off methanol, a tremendous achievement.
Usually, the common "hydrogen fuel cell" technology people think of is the fuel cells in service on the Space Shuttle.
Those work off pure hydrogen, which prevents fuel contamination, but that's just not practical for automotive use.
I always despair of people promoting the "Hydrogen Economy".
Hydrogen is fine for stationary or specialist use. It's got problems though.
In gas form, it's hard to get much of it compressed into a tank. That leads to poor driving range without adding a lot of weight to the compression tank.
And hydrogen atoms are the smallest atom in existence, so they tend to leak past the tank seals unless you have some serious quality control.
Most people wouldn't be happy to find out their car's fuel tank was evaporating away on a hot summer day.
It's putting hydrogen in liquid form that is the real problem though.
If we tried running cars off hydrogen, there would have to be Liquid Hydrogen tankers making deliveries.
And while gasoline is far more of a fire risk than Liquid Hydrogen, as I mentioned, hydrogen evaporates far faster, and liquid H2 is terribly cold.
Which makes it terribly dangerous.
There was a local case about twenty years ago of a liquid aluminum tanker that overturned and crushed a passenger car.
I hope the occupants died from the crash and weren't burned alive by the molten metal.
Take that image with you. Imagine this accident happening with liquid H2. Imagine the problems of handling super-cold combustible fuel.
(I somehow don't see robotic fueling stations being practical. And BTW, liquid hydrogen can't be kept compressed. It HAS to boil off, thus going to waste. Try to bottle it up, and you get a ruptured tank).
Yes, Hydrogen is the future, but not in gas or LH2 form.
We run our cars on hydrocarbons all the time ! What we need is technology to make synthetic hydrocarbons.
Butanol is my favorite for this. It burns like gasoline, evaporates LESS than gasoline, and is more stable.
Making butanol is like making ethanol but without the extremely high octane required to burn ethanol, and thus, it costs less to make.
And ironically, the process of fermenting butanol produces hydrogen as a by-product !!
If we discard the Ethanol process and convert all those plants to Butanol, we'd be well on our way to replacing gasoline permanently.
Couple of Clarifications
by rrapier - 4/16/07 8:49 AM In reply to: What do you think of hydrogen fuel cell cars? by wcunning
First, not only is over 95% (probably closer to 99%) of all hydrogen currently produced from fossil fuels, but I believe you have a fundamental misunderstanding with this comment: "While that is true, it also takes energy to create a gallon of gasoline."
If I invest 1 BTU of energy into finding oil and then refining it into gasoline and diesel, then my energy return is around 6 or 7 to 1. In other words, I can turn my 1 BTU investment into 7 BTUs of fuel. If I invest that BTU into hydrogen via electrolysis, then I end up with less than 1 BTU.
Where hydrogen could make sense via electrolysis is if you had excess electricity available. This could be via solar panels in the middle of the day, when you may produce more electricity than needed. Or, wind power or nuclear power might be able to do the trick. But the key is to have more electricity available than is actually needed, preferably from a renewable source.
But there are multiple big hurdles for hydrogen to overcome before we get to that point.
Cheers,
Robert Rapier
R-Squared Energy Blog
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/
Wrong end of the periodic table
by Gsteele - 4/16/07 10:46 AM In reply to: Couple of Clarifications by rrapierThe scope of this issue is far beyond what can be practically covered in a posting forum, but many of the points have been hit on in part already. Batteries (in the general sense of a store of electrical energy, irrespective of the means) are the averaging component of peak energy collection and distribution. That makes battery research critical, and central to the issue of elimination of the use of large quantities of hydrocarbon imports to the US from hostile nations who use the profits to discredit (Venezuela) or kill (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) us.
As for the source of the power placed in the battery, wind is unfortunately sporadic, as is solar (remember night? and clouds?) even when you don't factor in that you need to build the windmill or solar panel in the first place. Hydrocarbon fuel is popular because it has been created over a period of hundreds of millions of years, and is being eaten away at a rapid, but relatively sustainable pace. Think of it as a battery (energy store, anyway) that releases the energy therein via combustion, and you can see why it is economically feasible - the energy creation process (localization into pools of crude oil and natural gas) was done by geological processes for which we do not need to pay; we only pay for the extraction and refinement process.
There is really only a single infrastructure in place that can support the distibuted refilling need of the US transportation system, and that is the electrical grid. You won't see your local Cumberland farm station converting to Hydrogen storage tanks any time soon, both owing to the cost and to the the twin obstacles of local zoning/nimby-ism and the pressure from the oil companies against stations eating the oil company's young.
To come full circle to the subject title, then, where do we get the electrons from that will be distributed through that grid to power what will likely be serial hybrids? Coal-fired powerplants? (a dominant (especially in China), but highly-polluting source today) Oil-fired or gas-fired powerplants? (seems counterproductive - that's what we're trying to get away from) Hydro? (not enough of them - tiny (2.2%) percentage of current energy supply) Tide? Geothermal? Tiny sources.
No, you have to head down in the periodic table to Uranium to find a source with enough free electrons (and only if widely adopted beyond the current 6.5% of energy supply) to power that grid economically. A key problem, however, is that nuke plants are one-offs in the US; in the military, and in France, there's far more standardization that has driven widespread adoption and safe operation. (Imagine if every car had a different way to start, steer, brake, and enter, and you get why nuke plants require operator training specific to each site, instead of Uncle Jack taking you out to the local parking lot on Sunday and once you've learned, any car is yours to command)
The virtue of electrical power is the distribution grid, which allows power to be generated far from population centers and brought there nearly instantaneously. There's a sophisticated monitoring and routing infrastructure controlled by SCADA systems already in place. There's a chargeback system already in place, and meters and dispensers that can be attached to any pole in the country.
And there's still the service station infrastructure to provide you with a gallon or so of gasoline or other combustible, for emergency use by the highly-optimized and small combustion engine/generator that you will use to charge the battery when the battery gets low out in the boonies. Internal combustion engines 2007-style are flexible (smooth power band over a wide RPM range), but FAR less efficient than a combustion engine built to run at an optimized speed to run a generator.
So: nukes, far from urban centers, and manufactured like Dixie cups to a standard that permits a high degree of automation in their operation, are the goal. How to do? The "Manhattan Project" is the wrong analogy; it's more like the WWII wartime production process that turned ships out (3 per day!) using standardized practices and production methods. The US was the world's breadbasket, the world's production masters, and the world's model of laissez-faire capitalism to harness the production power, and still can be. And it would give laid-off auto workers something to do in a poetic justice fashion - work in a factory that builds nuke plants.
Or, we could wait until an earthquake cracks a hydrogen tank and blows up a small community in the Bay Area before we get the point.
Well Said Gsteele
by limbofrog - 4/16/07 12:18 PM In reply to: Wrong end of the periodic table by GsteeleI am encouraged to read so many good posts that actually have this issue nailed.
Original Article:
"...Critics point out that it takes more electricity to create the hydrogen then it will generate in a fuel cell. While that is true, it also takes energy to create a gallon of gasoline. Oil has to be pumped, transported, and refined. Electricity for electrolysis can come from clean sources, such as hydro or solar, which negates the energy cost argument."
The Critics have nailed it in this case. You suggest hydro or solar. As others have already pointed out, consider the costS of manufacturing these hydro power plants, wind mills, and solar panels and whatever. What about the repair and maintenance costs? What about the pollution generated from all that manufacturing? As was mentioned, naturally present hydrocarbon fuel has a much higher yield or return on energy than these "alternative" sources for power. Not only would we have to manufacture all these new plants, we would need far more of them. To come even close to being able to generate the power consumed in the U.S. in one year would require an immense grand national project and billions of dollars dumped into building such an
"alternative fuel" infrastructure.
Lets not forget your original motivation for switching to alternative fuel and power is because of pollution. Building new infrastructure for new types of power on a huge scale would create huge amounts of pollution more than we are now.
There are maybe three general fuel SOURCES of energy available to us on this planet. (1)Solar energy, (2) Fossil Fuels (chemical energy), and (3) Nuclear (not chemical... way, way more yield). Those are our choices. Read them again - there are no other true sources for energy. Hydrogen must be pulled from other materials or processes that cause pollution and use energy. Solar is nice but you have to build huge expensive solar plants that generate more pollution/yield than using oil or gas or coal. Hydro, I guess we could attempt to stop the flow of the river by lining it up and down with hydro plants. Would that even be enough? Again, more pollution to manufacture them too, never forget that point. Anything we create uses energy and generates pollution.
If we really want high yield/pollution energy, we need nuclear, nuclear, and nuclear. Fission is a bit dirty, but it would be better than what we are doing now. I am all for keeping our earth clean, but let’s not let all the emotional tree-hugging cloud our logic and dive off into senseless, wasteful ventures that solve nothing. If we can ever master fusion or even the holy grail of power, cold-fusion, we will have lots of relatively clean power far into the future. Oh yeah, China is building new coal or oil power plants like one a week or something crazy like that. One day we are going to wake up and think “huh oh, I think we missed the boat”.
We are so busy feeling we can’t make good decisions for our futures, and for our kid’s futures. And all this liberal scare tactic, “we’re all gonna die” propaganda is killing us, and they love it because it puts them in a position to save us from certain destruction. All they need is your vote and all your income via taxes and they can save your very soul, end racism, create world peace, and save the world. If they are so smart, why have they not solved all of these problems yet? I am getting sick of being promised the world by these clowns in Washington and then they just take away more freedom and more money. They fight for the next great cause or crusade, I am supposed to be amazed by their great deeds and miraculous achievements.
Let’s go for the immediate solution of becoming oil independent … we should start drilling off shore and remove some of the more ridiculous regulations holding back the oil companies. Get costs of gas under control. Then we should start building nuclear plants enough to provide for our entire country. We would use our existing power grid to distribute it and eventually be far less dependant on oil. Once we have this power source, we can find ways of using it in cars via fuel cells or the like. I might add this should not happen until the cost of gas overtakes the costs of converting to hydro fuel cells.
wartime production WWII style
by eglazier - 4/17/07 8:18 AM In reply to: Wrong end of the periodic table by Gsteeleyou are correct. it was really the full-out production that supported the troops in WWII. we might not always have had the better weapons, but we sure as hell had more of them and their support all the time. true we had the manhatten project, but we are now well beyond that and the standardized production of nuclear powered electricity production should do the trick. as an aside, one of the original ideas used to promote nuclear power was that all that waste heat could be used to provide pure water. that is also something we could use a lot more of.
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