Car Tech forum: What's your favorite alternative fuel?

Hydrogen is something that will never run out and is the most abundent element in the universe as we know it today. It's clean and will not pollute our environment as long as we don't produce Hydrogen from Gasoline. You can use Solar energy to produce Hydrogen as well as other sources like sand and water. The way I see it the main issue right now is onboard storage and infrastructure and other political issues as well, which has nothing to do with the technologies viability.

Hydrogen is the only known fuel, that burns absulutely clean. Only byproduct: Chemical clean water ! Hydrogen can be produced relatively simple, by splitting plain water (H2O) with electricity. But the electricity have to come from somewhere. The ideal way to create electricity for this purpose is by windmills, solar cells and - God forbid) nuclear power. If a windmill can produce large amounts of excess electricity, the rest can be kept for when it is neaded. Use it to electrolyze water, contain the resulting hydrogen and Oxygen (in seperate containers - otherwise your are sitting on a very poverfull bomb !) That is one of the disadvantages. Any fuel has to be flammable, but Hydrogen is EXTREMELY flammable. If it get mixed with plain air, (or worce: Oxygen)it will not burn, it will explode with a very "sharp" and powerful explosion.

You could feed a modified combustion engine with the hydrogen, but that would be very ineffectice. Today we have a much more efficient, not to mention also much more safe way of "burning" the hydrogen: The fuel cell. What happens here is the exact opposite of whappened in our electrolyses process: There we used some electric power to split the water molecules, and when we inject both the hydrogen and the oxygen into the cell, we will get our electricity back - with a slight loss. One of the sources to vaste heat is, that the fuel cells get warm as they work. In wintertime this can of cause be used to heat the vehickle.

But Hydrogen also have backdraws. It is very light, s it has to be highly compressed to give, say a familicar, a reasonable range (by kilometer) before reflueling. And as I said before, large storages of Hydrogen are extremely dangerous to the workers and the sorrounding area. One promising possibility is to let the Hydrogen combine with a metal to form what is called a hydrate. Thats makes it easier and more safe to handle, but it also deminish the available capasity.

Another very promising technonoly is bioetheanol. Most people know how to make alcohol. Take a big flask, put luke warm water, some sugar (prefaryably monosacharid. This can be obtained by boiling the sugar in water with some citric acid to it. Then you add yeast, and after a fer months it tastes terrible, and it will give you a bad hangover. And don't drive the next day !

No, in fact bioethanol is a very good idea. I dont want to bother you with a lot of chemical abra-dacabra, but here is how it goes:

The yeast eats the sugar. The basic suger molecule consists of 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms, and 6 oxygen atoms. This is yummy for the yeast. So they eat the sugar.The byproducts are ethanol (alcohol), CO2 and vater. Wait a minute, were we not supposed to GET RID of the CO2 ? Yes, and thats why we mount a hose to each fermentation chanber, collects the CO2, dries it and clean it maybe, compress it to the well-known steel cylinders, and sell it for industrial use. E.g for welding in aluminia. And as long as we only ferment crops from THIS YEAR, we have not changed the CO2 level globaly or localy. Instead its the other way round: All the CO2 gas that was used before by the industri, can now be replaced with the excess gasses fron fermenting sugar to alcohol.

But now we will be faced with a tough decision: Should we put our bio-"gasoline" to our cars, or should we drink it ? Thats is in fact - as I se it - the ONLY problem with bioethanol. It can and will ALSO be drunk to some extent, and we vould have to emplement strict regulation of this.

I leave it to the chemists and other engenious people to fix the few "holes" there might be.

This could give us a totally carbon-neutral transportation sector.

My dream is not only a field here, a country there. The BIG solution: to put a green plant on each and every vacant squareinc on the planet. That it self would absorb a lot of CO2 for the photosynthesis from the atmosphere, and when we later ferment the plants, we collect each and every CO2 molecule for nessesary job that can not be done in any other way.

It is true, when we burn one molecule of alcohol, we will relaese 2 CO2 mulecules to the atmosphere, but that is just the normal carbon-cycle. As long as we don't burn or ferment more plant than those that was planted in the spring, this should be a very clean an "Climate-neutral" than any fossile fuel we have.

FOR A CLEAN, HEALTHY AND HAPPY FUTURE - FOR EVERYBODY !!!

Well, thats my idea about what tuo do. If any of you can use this for something (except drinking the alcohol!) it will give YOU and ME a bright future.

Hydrogen is really a way to maintain the status quo and not require all the support industries and aftermarket manufacturers from seekng new trades.

H2 will supplement petroleum products, since and internal combustion engine still requires motor oil and coolant. It also has many filters and belts, that wear and need replacing.

On the other hand, an electric motor has selaed bearings, generates less heat, so no coolant radiator is relevant. It does not "suck" air so it needs no air filters. And because it doesn't use "fuel" it doesn't need a fuel filter either.

When the power source becomes more accessible, it won't even require plug-in recharging.

Electric will eventually win the war!

This probably isn't available in the U.S. Here in Australia we have gone for LPG as an alternative fuel in a big way. Almost every petrol engined taxi or courier vehicle runs on LPG. Many pieces of industrial equipment, such as forklifts run on it too. It's bit like propane gas that runs your BBQ. The main advantage is it sells for about 45 cents per litre. Petrol (gasoline) is selling at $1.25 per litre, or nearly $5.00 per gallon. LPG gets slightly worse ecomony than petrol, and you need an upper cylinder lubricant (such as Valvemaster) for the engine, as it burns much hotter and drier. Otherwise, you are looking at regular valve work on the cylinder head. The Australian Ford Falcon is available right off the factory floor with a 4.0 litre DOHC 24 valve 6 cylinder engine that runs on LPG only. It still has the EFI setup for this. Most other vehicles are "dual fuel". Having both petrol and LPG tanks. The engine starts on petrol, then switches over to LPG for the rest of the time the engine is running. This also gives the advantage of having nearly double the travelling range if both tanks are full. Though at the cost of boot (trunk) space in a sedan. I'm surprised it isn't used much elsewhere. E.G. Most British taxis are diesel. LPG costs less to refine, and gives much cleaner exhaust. The government is giving a $2000 grant towards the cost of converting a vehicle to LPG. The cost of a conversion is about $3000, though if you do enough mileage, such as a taxi, the cost is recouped with the cheaper LPG price quickly. Availability is not a problem as almost every fuel station has an LPG pump. LPG has been in use for some 20 years now.

It's often difficult to find outlets when away from home. Sometimes you can coax or bribe someone into letting you plug into their outlet but unless you have solar panels to recharge your EC range is half of however long your batteries will hold a charge. That appears to be the only major drawback to electric powered vehicles.

In other countries that use Ethanol extensively, the price of the 'fuel' (for us it's corn) does in fact raise to a very high level, near the cost of the car fuel.

Ethanol is very expensive, and very inefficient. Finely, when you say it helps farmers, make sure you include such great American farms like Ted Turner.

The ramifications of ethanol will be thus: Taxes will increase to pay for Ethanol subsidies. The cost of corn, or whatever food of choice, will increase. Fuel costs will increase. The gas mileage of autos running on Ethanol will decrease. Ethanol is acidic, likely causing more car repair costs in the long run. Lower and middle class will pay for the higher costs on fuel, while the upper class like Ted Turner and such will collect not only our money for buying their Ethanol, but also collect government subsidies. Rich get richer, poor get poorer.

What kind of microchip powers a computer?

Electricty is the energy source in a computer, not a microchip. Besides, if it did provide power why would you need a battery? Batteries and generators do not create electricity, they provide chemical or mechanic means of extracting the electron energy from the Aether which is everywhere.

All of the methods used in propulsion today, are wasteful and harmful to plant and animal life. Anything that requires combustion will generate at the very least, heat that must be dissipated into the air, with or without toxic pollutants. Electric is the only fuel that does not.

Contrary to the paradigm of present technolgy, and to those who quote Newton's LAw of Consevation of Enery, I say then follow the law that states energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy is always present and hence available for use. Problem is our thinking has been analogous to using a sledgehammer to getting a fly off the windshield. Effective yes, but much more than is required to perform the task.

I guess the real issue is not what alternative fuel is our favorite or most viable, unless you are speaking of the viability of those that produce such fuels, but how to utilize what is there already in a simple and elegant manner.

Electrons provide that remedy for power needs. It costs nothing to produce, does not pollute, and it will never run out. Now, how do we get it to flow through a circuit to produce useful electricity, without the sledgehammer analogy? Simply by creating an environment which is conducive to the elctrons flow. As I have quoted before (J. P. Morgan to Nikola Tesla) "I am in the business of selling power not antennae." It's all about the money and it is the reason why we pay for what is all around. I guess if a company produced "clean air for breathing" people would line up to purchase that too.

H2 isn't the element. H is the element, H2 is the molecular form that's common on earth. But I think most of the hydrogen in the universe is in atomic form.

Kees

The "70 cents per gallon equivalent" wasn't for H2, that was for driving on electricity. H2 fuel is quite a bit more expensive.

Currently, the cheapest source of H2 is from steam reformed natural gas, with a price about $8 per Kg of H2. Since a Kg of H2 has about the same energy of a gallon of gasoline, that would make H2 "the equivalent of $8 a gallon". H2 from electrolysis is even more expensive, due to the energy losses involved and the energy needed to pack this bulky gas into a small enough package to fit aboard a vehicle.

Now, H2 fuel cells are twice as efficient as H2 IC engines, which would cut the per-mile fuel cost in half, but it is still more expensive than gasoline.

I prefer electric cars because, like Wayne says, there are a great many ways to produce electricity. You can even make electricity at home, and after a large upfront cost, it's free for life (that is, if you take care of it properly). You can have wind, solar, and microhydro systems (whether individually or together) produce ALL of your electricity needs. The first thing I'm going to consider in my first house (I'm only thirteen, cut me some slack) is how "green" it is and how I can make it even more "green." I'll even have an off-grid system and an electric car. That's it. That's my favorite alternative fuel.

algae (for the vast desert)

I think we should just demand that the automobile manufacturers give us the best fuel economy they possibly can. When we buy a car we should be asking what miliage a car gets and buying whatever gives the best miliage. We should demand that politicians tax gas guslers heavily and give incentives to manufacture good economy cars. They can do it and they have when forced to. There is too big a petroleum lobby which puts roadblocks in the way of developing efficient use of energy. The petroleum industry is what stops us from having fuel efficient vehicles. We would have cars getting over 100 MPG easily if it wasn't for them. We just need to tell them where to go and force politicians into passing laws against inefficient use of energy. We can then also tell the middle east where to go and bring the troops home. We are there only to protect the petroleum industry. Let the Arabian countries keep their oil. We should have gone electric years ago. If not electric, just tell the automotive industry that we want to be off oil in 5 years or we'll tax you for not doing it. I'm sure the companies that do will be very successful and those that don't can sink. Who cares.

Randomotion in post 20, and gr8leather in post 22.

Price of gasoline:
The document as listed at www.icta.org, does not have a good concise points. Much in there is, basically, crap. For example, in their calculations, they add things that would be true, with or without gasoline.

For example, they add the cost of car accidents, but car accidents would occur no matter what fuel is used. They add the cost of road congestion, but wouldn't an Electric car contribute to road congestion too?

They also claim that in some places the fuel tax is lower than the sales tax. How this adds to the cost to the consumer is beyond me. But where I live, I happen to know the state fuel tax is 30 cents a gallon. I also happen to know the sales tax is 5.75%. At $2.00 per gallon, the sales tax would be 11 cents. So it sure doesn't work here, the sales tax would have to triple.

Further, they claim it cost $200 million for exploration and development, yet as far as I know, there is little if any exploration going on in the US because the companies figured out that if we won't let them get the oil in ANWR, and in the Gulf, why bother exploring?

Finely they add the cost of importing oil. My beef here is the whole reason we have to import it is because we won't let them get the oil right here in the US. You can't blame that cost on oil, when it's our dumb policy that forces us to import oil.

Then they go on to talk about health effects, which is a joke when half the country sucks on cigarettes. Plus noise pollution, also a joke when it's teenager with their 1000 watt stereos that cause most of it. Then junked cars which would happen regardless of fuel choice.

Bottom line, the whole report is a complete and total waste. You found a bunch of idiots who hate all transportation and came up with a bunch of figures supporting their private crusade. It proves nothing, supports little, and ultimately is crap.

Lets get back to the basic facts. Hydrogen is not a fuel. Hydrogen has to be produced from a fuel. That fuel is electricity. The point is, it would be vastly cheaper to simply make an electric car run on batteries, and use less fuel, than to make hydrogen from the electricity, and convert it back to electricity from hydrogen using a fuel cell.

Why pay $20 worth of electricity to make hydrogen and drive your car on that, when you can spend less than half on electricity to charge a battery and run your car on that?

The http://cscinventorsclub.blogspot.com/ site does seem to have a plausible idea. At first I was looking for the snake oil, but when reviewing the information, it did come up with some interesting stuff.

The fuel is not water though. That bugs the **** out of me. The fuel is the carbon rods, that he claims should cost about as much as one months worth of Gasoline, and should last about a year. If that's true, this is a great thing. But I have a feeling there are some undisclosed limitation.

However I do find it hard to believe that at 70 PSI, hydrogen in gas form would be able to supply non-stop fuel. I also am confused about where the electrical energy comes from. I was under the impression it was a chemical reaction using the carbon rods that separated the oxygen and hydrogen, but it does say electrolysis, so where's the electricity coming from to do this? If I have to plug it in, that indicates a huge range limitation. If I do not, then does this mean the car alternator is providing power? In which case, a normal alternator has no chance of surviving. So, very interesting, shows some promise, but lot of question still left unanswered.

I checked out that "CSC Inventors club" website, the last post was June 1st. There was a list of "facts" that starts out good, until it gets to the line "Therefore, the volume of this mixture will be about
.293 X 34 = 9.96 Kg"... Excuse me, but volume is never measured in Kg! Kilograms are a measurement of mass.

Because of such an elemental blunder of confusing volume with mass, the results are in error. H2 has more energy per Kg than gasoline, but by volume it is another matter, as H2 has a very very low density. 1 Liter of H2 at atmospheric pressure is the energy equivalent of a few drops of gasoline. 15 liters at 70 psi wouldn't be enough to drive around the block. Compressed to 10,000 psi, (yes, 5 tons per square inch!) a liter of high pressure H2 has about 1/5 the energy of a liter of gasoline. There is a reason why most H2 vehicles use very large very high pressure H2 tanks.

Indeed, the problem is getting enough of this bulky gas and enough air to run an internal combustion engine succesfully. It has been done, but the performance and the fuel economy is rather poor.

There are a lot of would-be inventors trying to run their vehicles from on-board electrolyzers. They see the vigorous bubbling and large volume of gas, but don't realise how little fuel that low density H2 really represents.

Here is some real research in cold fusion:

SRI International and Electric Power Research Institute

"Development of Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Processes in Deuterated Metals," M.C.H. McKubre, et al., EPRI TR-104195, Research Project 3170-01, Final Report, August 1994, 128 pages, plus 342 pages on microfiche.

This work confirms the claims of Fleischmann, Pons, and Hawkins of the production of excess heat in deuterium-loaded palladium cathodes at levels too large for chemical transformation... Although nuclear reaction products commensurate with the excess heat have not yet been observed, small but definite evidence of nuclear reactions have been detected at levels some 40 orders of magnitude greater than predicted by conventional nuclear theory.



SRI International and Electric Power Research Institute

"Isothermal flow calorimetric investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd systems," M.C.H. McKubre, S. Crouch-Baker, R.C. Rocha-Filho, S.I. Smedley, F.L. Tanzella, T.O. Passell, and J. Santucci, Journal of Electroanaytical Chemistry, 368, 1994, pp.55-66.

...the generation of "excess power" was observed in a series of deuterium-based experiments, but not in a hydrogen-based experiment. The results of these experiments enable several (tentative) conclusions to be reached concerning the conditions necessary for the reproducible observation of this anomalous thermal effect.



Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, Research Department, Chemistry Division andUniversity of Texas, Department of Chemistry

"Anomalous Effects Involving Excess Power, Radiation, and Helium Production During D2O Electrolysis Using Palladium Cathodes," by Melvin H. Miles, Benjamin F. Bush, and Joseph J. Lagowski, Fusion Technology, Vol. 25, July 1994, pp. 478-486.

Previous experiments showed that eight electrolysis gas samples collected during episodes of excess power production in two identical cells contained measurable amounts of 4He while six control samples gave no evidence for helium... This places the 4He production rate at 1011 to 1012 atom/s per watt of excess power, which is the correct magnitude for typical fusion reactions that yield helium as a product... Simultaneous evidence for excess power, helium production, and anomalous radiation was present in these experiments. Completely new experiments with more precise helium measurements are reported that again show simultaneous evidence for excess power, helium production, and anomalous radiation.



Naval Ocean Systems Center andU.S. Department of Energy (Washington)

"On the behavior of Pd deposited in the presence of evolving deuterium," S. Szpak (Navy), J.J. Smith (DoE), J. Electroanalytical Chemistry, 302 (March 11, 1991), pp. 255-260.

...Three sets of preliminary experimental results are presented here, i.e., the production of excess enthalpy, the production of tritium, and the presence of some form of radiation.



Real science, not fruit bat science.