Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Toad on June 17, 2005, 02:44:04 PM
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Toyota aims for $50,000 hydrogen car (http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/06/17/toyota_fuel_cell.reut/index.html)
Toyota saying 2015, GM targeting 2010.
A light chill breeze passes over the Middle East.
Hey, it's a step in the right direction.
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Originally posted by Toad
Hey, it's a step in the right direction.
Sure is.
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Having the #1 auto maker (GM) and #2 automaker (Toyota) both aiming for it has got to be a good thing.
And for some odd reason I am perfectly fine with any loss of dependence on the Middle East. :p
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It'll take a while but at long last the issue is in play and moving forward.
Breakthroughs will occur and prices will come down. Other alternatives will get further scrutiny when roadblocks occur.
All in all a good thing.
Let them eat oil soup! ;)
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I thought I read somewhere BMW was working on that technology as well.
It is good news. Can't happen soon enough.
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BMW Hydrogen Cars (http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/)
BMW plans to offer a car that runs on both petrol and hydrogen within the next four years.
Yep. That's on their site now; no date attached to that statement.
Thanks, hadn't seen that about BMW.
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I'm not going to hold my breath. Heck I can't belive why it's so hard to make a decent performing hybrid car when they have been making hybrid earth movers for so long.
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Originally posted by Maverick
I'm not going to hold my breath. Heck I can't belive why it's so hard to make a decent performing hybrid car when they have been making hybrid earth movers for so long.
I guess the difficulty is coming up with a car that's cheap enough that buyers won't recoil in horror at the thought of replacing batteries for $3000.
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Oddly enough, I wonder how this will eventually effect the Middle East.
If they lose oil based export revenues what will happen?
What are their other exports?
Will they be reduced to extreme third world conditions if they lose this revenue?
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The price of oil would certainly moderate if hydrogen became the main automotive fuel.
Once their revenues decreased, they either probably get violent or finally get creative like they were back when Arabs were about the smartest folks in the world.
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Takes energy to "make" hydrogen too doesnt it?
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The BMW solution is a Clean Energy system where liquid hydrogen is produced from water using solar power, the hydrogen is dispensed from automated filling stations and it powers modified BMW production vehicles.
Obviously, we're not there yet. But we're "on the road".
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Originally posted by Sandman
I guess the difficulty is coming up with a car that's cheap enough that buyers won't recoil in horror at the thought of replacing batteries for $3000.
Toyota says $800 every 10 years or so. The $3000 number is made up, so far as I know, by anti-hybrid people.
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Originally posted by Nilsen
Takes energy to "make" hydrogen too doesnt it?
hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe
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Originally posted by Drunky
Oddly enough, I wonder how this will eventually effect the Middle East.
If they lose oil based export revenues what will happen?
What are their other exports?
Will they be reduced to extreme third world conditions if they lose this revenue?
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hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe
Drunky,
Couple things here. The oil reserves they have will still be very important to the world economy. Transportation isn't the only use for petroluem. Oil is in all facets of manufacturing from mechanical uses (lubes) to chemical components of every day procucts. Until we can use something like the "replicators" from Sci Fi we are still going to be stuck using petroleum and the denizens of oil producing areas will still be pulling in money. Granted the flow will slow in both directions but it will still go on.
While it is true that hydrogen is the single most common substance in the known universe that does not mean it is in a form that is usable. Until the car sucks it out of the air for use in propulsion the commonality of the element is a non issue. It will have to be produced in a commercially USABLE form and that will still take energy. But you already know that.
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quote:
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Originally posted by Nilsen
Takes energy to "make" hydrogen too doesn't it?
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quote:
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Originally posted by Nilsen
hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe
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It takes energy to free the hydrogen bound up in water, natural Gas, Coal, or Oil.
Hydrogen is not an energy source as humans use it, it is a storage medium. We need power plants to seperate the hydrocarbon molecule or seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water.
The United States has two abundant supplies of hydrocarbon, each supply larger than the energy supplies of the middle east.
Oil Shale can produce competitively priced crude within a few years and proven reserves are greater than the Saudis.
Our coal reserves are four times the energy of the world's oil reserves. Synthetic crude from coal is a known technology, developed 50+ years ago.
Coal gasification was standard practice before natural gas was exploited.
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I read about a hydrogen powered lawnmower that used hydrochloric acid as fuel in a closed system. The acid was separated into hydrogen and chlorine gas, which when mixed as gases in the combustion chamber would ignite using light. The chlorine went back into the "gas tank" during the process and returned to a state of HCL. No spark plug was necessary, but a strong strobe light instead. They ran the lawnmower for about 30 minutes. The only exhaust was water vapor.
The article (Popular Mechanics from years back) speculated on building a car with "skylights" in the hood to augment the "spark lights", making the car able to run from sunlight in bright sunny places, and use battery power other times.
The article sounded feasable, but haven't heard about that idea since. Guess having a sealed system car fueled with hydrochloric acid isn't a great idea because of accidents, but the lawnmower ran exactly that way.
It was very interesting.
Les
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Wowzers these hydrogen cars will be great when we find the vast untapped reserves of hydrogen that don't take more dirty energy to produce than they give back during combustion...
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Originally posted by Toad
BMW Hydrogen Cars (http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/)
Yep. That's on their site now; no date attached to that statement.
Thanks, hadn't seen that about BMW.
I alredy saw nice documentary about Hydro BMW. Its quite old project.
But chief of company , whitch manufacturing Hydrogen for Gas stations named real problem well.
Toyota, the world's second-biggest car maker, believes launching hydrogen cars earlier than 2015 would be difficult due to a lack of filling stations, the paper said.
The biggest problem of hydrogen cars is distribution of hydrogen. In other words, they expect that current oil giants will buy hydro technology and they will continue to produce hydrogen along with traditional fuel.
Chief of that company also refused to sell hydrogen to Gas stations. They are now cooperating with BMW.
It was kinda smelly attitude.... like no no ... nobody else can produce hydrogen fuel but our giants.
I didnt know if hes serious or not.
Im afraid, that hydrogen is not in interest of oil companies is it ?
btw. If im not wrong they have many bus's at Island since 1999 driving on hydrogen.
Its also funny to compare what happen, if you will put benzin tank on fire and hydrogen tank on fire. There might be video outside. Somebody has done that test on some US or UK university.
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
Wowzers these hydrogen cars will be great when we find the vast untapped reserves of hydrogen that don't take more dirty energy to produce than they give back during combustion...
Im just wondering if we will get more rain once we will fill athmosfere with so many water :)
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Originally posted by Holden McGroin
The United States has two abundant supplies of hydrocarbon[/B]
Are these petrochemical factories or nuclear facilities ?
it seems to me that you work around chemistry :)
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MMM yes The USA probably does have abundant suypply of Hydrocarbons but if you keep burning em at the rate you do at the moment the USA might be a little smaller! and not quite such a comfortable place to live! So maybe a fuel who's only by product is water is a good idea? No?
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if everyone was conserving and driving little crap boxes for the last 20 years we would not be doing anything till 2050
you can all thank me and my ilk in our 6-13 mpg Hot Rods and wasteful ways for forcing the issue. We are a reactive species not a proactive one.
enough blackouts and brownouts and we will get some real power sources too.
lazs
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
Wowzers these hydrogen cars will be great when we find the vast untapped reserves of hydrogen that don't take more dirty energy to produce than they give back during combustion...
Hey, everybody wants a little Nukie now and then!
....but seriously folks....
If the gloom and dooms are right and we're knocking on the door of running out of oil..... we HAVE to have something.
It's been pointed out that there's LOTS of coal or oil shale to use to produce hydrogen.
The simplest answer though is probably nuke; the technology is there, look at Japan and France. Although I admit the US has way more tree huggin' to go through first. Did the Japanese and French have to clear forests of tree huggers? If not, why not?
Last....SOLAR! Might be a great beginning use for advanced solar and we've got a large amount of Arizona, New Mexicon, Utah and Nevada to set up in with out bothering very many folks at all.
Just some thoughts.
Oh... Laz.... how much HP can we get out of a big block Hydro motor?
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Mankind has about 100 years to develop interplanetary spaceships to move us to another planet. The world will deplete resources in about that time at the current rate. I read that in a book about rockets and space travel. Science fiction or no?
Better get busy.
Les
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Sept 11th, 2015 AP/Al Jezzeriah News
Al Quedia tests new Hydrogen Car bomb outside Baghdad today
(http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2002/06/09/csp_hydrogen-bomb.jpg)
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sheesh... what a bunch of doom and gloomers... One good plague and we can pretty much start over.
lazs
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oil is still needed even with hydrogen cars,
think about plastic alone, its used everywhere.
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Originally posted by Gh0stFT
oil is still needed even with hydrogen cars,
think about plastic alone, its used everywhere.
I am sure some wiser than me have thought of this but what about Airliners, Tanks, Ships? you gonna convert all those too? Not sure you could power airliners on batteries. Tanks the range would probably be about 10 feet. Ships might can use hydrogen or something else but there are other forms of transportation that will suffer when we run out of oil, its not just cars.
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I think the idea is that getting everything possible switched over to hydrogen gives us more time to invent Doc Brown's "Mr. Fusion" machine. ;)
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Originally posted by Gh0stFT
oil is still needed even with hydrogen cars,
think about plastic alone, its used everywhere.
Gee I wonder who else said something similar some time back......
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"oil is still needed even with hydrogen cars,
think about plastic alone, its used everywhere."
yeah, but what do we make with plastic that absolutly could not be done with anything else, if it had to be done?
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You mean things like implants, artificial joints, sterile containers for IV solutions, surgical gloves, rubber parts, tires. Yep yer right we can make all that stuff out of tin and wood. :rolleyes:
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Actualy if the ammount of plastic that is currently thrown away was recycled we probably would not have to make any new plastics.
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Originally posted by Skydancer
MMM yes The USA probably does have abundant suypply of Hydrocarbons but if you keep burning em at the rate you do at the moment the USA might be a little smaller! and not quite such a comfortable place to live! So maybe a fuel who's only by product is water is a good idea? No?
You have to build hydrogen Skydancer.
Possible sources are water, but that is already been burned. Energy needs to be put into the H2O molecule to seperate the molecule into it's constituant elements.
Entropy says you will have to put more energy into the electrolysis to seperate the parts than you get out of the hydrogen product. Therefore, you need abundant supplies of energy from nuclear, hydropower, wind, solar or fossil.
An easier source is hydrocarbon. The USA has enough in coal alone to completely service the energy needs at todays levels for 250 years. Add the energy pent up in oil shale (more than the Saudi oil reserves) to liquified coal, and we could run todays automobile technology for many generations.
Hydrogen would be a good idea, but producing it will cause nuclear waste, dead birds from wind turbines, dead fish from dammed rivers, CO2 from fossil plants, etc.
Might as well go directly to solar vehicles. The technology for solar vehicles is a mature one.
(http://discovernd.com/images/horse.jpg)
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Originally posted by Skydancer
Actualy if the ammount of plastic that is currently thrown away was recycled we probably would not have to make any new plastics.
Every time we recycle we lose a little, so if we have no source for virgin plastic, and if we were to have 95% efficiency, after 5 recycles, we would only have 77% of the plastics we have today.
After 14 times through, we would be down to 50%
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Interesting stuff Holden.
Here Flicka!
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Solar IMO is not a mature science. As long as we still have to draw more out of a battery to run the car at speed than can be put into it by a solar panel it can't be a feasable power source for major transportation. Not to mention that the sheer surface area needed for solar panels makes it very unlikely for even a small car at this time. Couple that with the fact that only a part of the country gets enough bright sun without clouds / fog to make it reliable everyday and it falls further back. For it to be a viable source it has to be as reliable as the petro fueled vehicles.
FWIW there are quite a few folks who are fulltime RVers that depend on solar for a significant amount of their power needs. Theyu are limited to the Southwest during the winter time to depend on it. They use at least 4 of the major sized golf cart 6 volt batteries for a sizable 12 volt power source. They can run tv, computers and lights for several hours a day. They cannot run the air conditioner on the batteries during the day and charge them up so summer solar is out there. They supplement it with a generator on cloudy or rainy days. Back to petro fuel power source.
The experiance they have had in wind power indicates that the smaller wind generators available (sized to work in a RV environment) require a wind speed up to 25 MPH steady to charge the batteries.
The batteries are still the lead acid wet cells with a limited number of times they can be discharged even to only half capacity then recharged back to full levels before they deteriorate. For best life a discharge to 70% to 50% max is recommended.
All of this is great and it's a start but there is still a need for petroleum and their byproducts. At this time I do not see any source of power that will allow easy transportation comparable to the standard oil powered vehicle. Outside of transportation almost everything is related in one way or another to petroleum uses or derivitives.
Transportation is just one aspect that needs a solution there are other problems equally as vexing that will need to be solved.
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Originally posted by Maverick
Solar IMO is not a mature science.
Mr Ed begs to differ.
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If by Mr Ed you mean the horse, that is neither an arguement nor does it refute what I have posted. The age of the horse is past somone has to live in the present and look forward, not back. Subsistance technology is stagnant not forward looking.
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If you build a few nuclear powerplants, you will have pollution free energy to produce usable hydrogen for millions of people. Hydrogen rocks.
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I guess you didn't get the humor of my statement, "The technology for solar vehicles is a mature one." followed by a picture of a horse.
you see, the horse is a vehicle which exists in harmony within the carbon cycle and is totally biodegradable, and it's recycleable, and.... aw forget it.
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Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Every time we recycle we lose a little, so if we have no source for virgin plastic, and if we were to have 95% efficiency, after 5 recycles, we would only have 77% of the plastics we have today.
After 14 times through, we would be down to 50%
That all can be replaced by hemp. Just ask the hippies.
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It's tough to recycle hemp once you burn it.
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Sorry Holden I was taking you seriously frm your earlier posts.
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I was serious up to that last sentance and the picture.
Come to think of it, I think I'll move to Lancaster PA and learn to speak German.