Car Tech: What's your favorite alternative fuel?
- 4/24/07 5:45 PM
You forgot - Hydrogen comes from COAL
by Rx_ - 5/2/07 8:53 PM In reply to: WORST alternative fuel: HYDROGEN by impalaIn the book The Hydrogen Economy (DOE)
only 0.1% of hydrogen comes from water (electrolysis)
99% of industry Hydrogen comes from cracking a hydrocarbon we call COAL. Your right about the extremely poor effeciencies. But, the mess left over from the coal hydrogen process is nasty.
The Hydrogen funding is just a subsidy for the coal indusrty. i.e. a government waste. Hopefully, someday if our species survives, the school text books will be making fun of the entire hydrogen myth.
yes and no
by impala - 5/3/07 8:47 AM In reply to: You forgot - Hydrogen comes from COAL by Rx_um, coal is all carbon, like a diamond, no hydrogen there. you cannot hydrocrack it.
But, you are correct in a way...
They burn more coal to make more electricity to produce hydrogen through either electrolysis (not much) or more likely hydrocarbon cracking; which requires a hydrocarbon source such as natural gas or oil. The hydrocracking also produces a mostly carbon byproduct which is, gee, an excellent fuel to burn for electricity!
Therefore using hydrogen fuel increases CO2 emissions, if that is your concern.
Yes and Yes
by albizzia - 5/11/07 9:38 PM In reply to: yes and no by impalaHydrogen can be produced by combining the carbon (C) in coal with steam (H2O) at high temperatures to get CO2 and H2. A similar process can react natural gas or other hydrocarbons with steam to produce CO2 and H2.
It is also possible to produce H2 by reacting certain metals with water, steam, acids or alkalis. There are other chemical reactions that can produce H2, and of course, there is electrolysis of water.
What all these methods have in common is that they are all expensive and inefficient ways of making H2 fuel.
still emits CO2
by impala - 6/23/07 2:10 PM In reply to: Yes and Yes by albizziaand using fossil fuels, they still emit just as much CO2.
That's fine.
by Andy77e - 7/3/07 9:27 PM In reply to: still emits CO2 by impalaCO2 is a normal, naturally occurring gas.
Bio Diesel made in USA
by Sand_n_MudBogger - 5/2/07 8:37 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I know everyone thinKs hybrids are all the rave, But I personally don't like to drive around in my own rolling coffin, Not sure if you've ever seen a Scion get in an accident, It isn't pretty and I've seen to many fatalities involving the new ultra small cars. As far as alternative fuels Not sure if everyone knows about Bio-Diesel it a great alternative to petroleum based fuels, When burned smells like popcorn or french fries, And since it's grown in the American Heartland by the way of soybeans and some other beans I don't remember the name of. Not only do we take away Americas dependence on foreign oil our hard earned dollars fund American farmers that use American products thus saving American jobs and the American middle class.
Electric -- the technology is already here
by Rosesimone - 5/2/07 8:39 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Electric cars are the obvious choice.
Interestingly, electric cars were among the earliest vehicles on the road ... they were around in 1913, before internal combustion engines became all the rage.
The only reason that technology didn't get a foothold is because there has been a collusion of government and oil industry interests to keep oil has been cheap all these years --- a situation that is obviously rapidly changing with the rapidly rising price of gas.
The excellent documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car?" vividly documents how GM had a really great electric car on the road in the 1990s and then deliberately killed it ... refusing to let customers buy their leased vehicles and forcing them to give the cars back so that they could be sent to the dump and crushed.
Those cars, which could be recharged in your garage, had a limited range of about 60 miles before needing to be recharged ...
So, OK ... you couldn't go across the country with them, but they were just fine for in-city commutes ... the normal things most people use cars for: going to work and back, going to get groceries, etc.(and imagine: no gasoline fuel fillups for this!)
Now, GM says it it is resurrecting the electric car ... after losing years of momentum on that front. Yeah, I'm not impressed.
Meanwhile, great strides are already being made to develop much, much better batter batteries. We already have technology being developed that would greatly extend the range of electric cars. I personally don't think it would be hard to extend the range of an electric to 100, or even 200 Km.
So where will the electricity come from? Well, it is already technologically possible to build wind-generated plug-in stations, with the power coming from the wind turbines that feed the energy into the electricty grid. There are also great strides being made in solar energy production and batteries recharged by solar panels, so a combination of wind and solar could produce the energy needed.
The only thing stopping the progress is that politicians are too friendly with the oil industries. But if we made a concerted effort to vote out those politicians, I think zero-emission electric cars could become the norm within five years.
Electricity - no one killed the electric car
by JeffDeWitt - 5/2/07 8:52 PM In reply to: Electric -- the technology is already here by RosesimoneThat movie was a hack job, no one killed the electric car unless maybe you want to count the lawyers.
GM couldn't support their little electric car because parts were not available, yes the people who leased the cars and wanted to buy them were willing to sign paperwork absolving GM from any further liability, but blood sucking lawyers could have had a field day with that, and GM quite reasonably didn't want to take the chance.
Now if you really want to see where this is going take a look at the Tesla, or GM's really innovative Chevy Volt, a plug in hybred that does everything the Impact could do, and far more (like take that road trip).
Jeff DeWitt
Why?
by Rosesimone - 5/2/07 9:13 PM In reply to: Electricity - no one killed the electric car by JeffDeWittWhy didn't the company do a better job of promoting that car? Why weren't there commercials with sexy people promoting the existence of a great, reliable in-city car that didn't need any gasoline at all??
Frankly, I didn't even know it had been on the road. Yet the car companies spend zillions of dollars on TV and magazine ad campains promoting all their other new car models.
And now, suddenly, a decade later, GM is thinking about "resurrecting" an electric car based on virtually the very same technology?
Not a real car
by JeffDeWitt - 5/3/07 6:12 AM In reply to: Why? by RosesimoneGM didn't promote their electric car because it wasn't a "real" car, it was never intended to be a regular production car. GM built and leased them because they wanted to get some real world experience with electric cars on real roads with real people. When GM builds cars they build them in the 10's or 100's of thousands, not hundreds.
When the production version of the Volt comes out you will see it promoted because it is (will be) a real car.
Jeff DeWitt
EV1 Had Competitors
by FredMars - 6/24/07 8:56 PM In reply to: Not a real car by JeffDeWittFirst it was a good vehicle and both Ford and Toyota had electric vehicles too. Ford made an electric Ranger pickup and Toyota had an electric Rav4. I'm trying to locate a Ford Ranger that I "heard" was brought up to the Pacific Northwest from California.
All of the people that had the opportunity to lease them were quite disappointed when they had to give them up. It was a hydrogen fuel cell promise that helped kill it. because just like today, the real science is not public.
This isn't the right place for it, so let me just say that electricity is the only solution and there are many technologies that are available that do not depend on burning fuels or nuclear fission. There are some "nuclear" batteries that are used by NASA and the military, but for national security reasons that technology is not made for consumers. But imagine your cellphone powered by a K40 (Potassium Isotope) and never having to plug in to recharge! Or a road warrior's laptop computer.
There is technology available to make electric vehicles viable. But the current paradigm is not willing to give up the ghost, so we are played by the "powers that be" to "stay the course" and it will get better. Yeah, and I have a bridge for sale.
Hydrogen or Natural Gas would be my preferred fuels
by ClissaT - 5/2/07 8:40 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Here in Australia there have been several inventions to do with Hydrogen engines & all those technologies have been bought up & disappeared into the ether!! I wonder who might have done that!?
We also have about 300yrs worth of Natural gas which should be pressed into service to slow down the use of petrol & diesel.
Our government has recently given quite a good subsidy for people to change over to NG. It didn't come to much because the demand was so high that the installers ran out NG vehicle tanks & since they are all imported, we now have to wait for the OS makers to catch-up!
It's such a pity the only remaining Australian manufacturer was put out of busines by the same Gov't!
my favourite alternative fuel.
by simills - 5/2/07 8:44 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Propane. Been using it for years, burns clean, oil stays clean, valves and rings stay clean, oil stays on the cylinder walls during cold starts, engines just last and last. Plugs are good for about 50k miles.
In Canada it costs about half as much as gasoline. All it really needs is higher compression engines for better fuel economy, it tests about 120 octane and could use much higher compression pistons than are fitted as standard.
Electric
by magem1 - 5/2/07 8:45 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
The days of low mileage and poor performance are gone. Do a Web search for the TESLA ROADSTER. Faster than a Porsche with a 250 mile charge duration and a +100,000 mile lifetime on the battery pack. WHY ARE WE EVEN THINKING ABOUT ANY TYPE OF COMBUSTION FUEL!!!!!
Amen!
by FredMars - 7/4/07 12:05 AM In reply to: Electric by magem1It took some "out-of-the-box" Silicon Valley innovators to start Tesla Motors, and by making the Roadster very spendy, they have attracted lot's of press. Also they have attracted the interests in those that can afford one, and there is a waiting list.
Because of the design of a three-phase A/C drive motor, and the fact that it weighs only 70 lbs., it more that compensatates for the hefty weight of the batteries.
And contrary to popular belief, they didn't use Solar panels because they felt that solar panels would be used at Charging Stations, which would recharge the current system in about 3.5 hours.
When the "ultra-capacitor" storage system becomes available, that time will be reduced to about 3-5 minutes using 240VAC input. Estimates 15-20 minutes at 120vAC.
Oregon State University developed a transparent circuit about a year ago. I believe they have already begun to license that technology.
When some genius figures out how to make PV cells out of that transparent technology, all of a vehicle's windows could become solar collectors.
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