Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: OZkansas on February 08, 2003, 08:20:40 AM
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Now that the government is subsidizing the hydrogen car it guarantees that it will be as well built as a Yugo and be priced at the Rolls-Royce level. It will also be in the junkyard before the first of five year’s payments are complete.
Yes, I will need income tax relief to pay for this more then likely mandated fiasco!
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What I'm wondering is where they have discovered these hydrogen deposits? Is there a great hydrogen field under the US?
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Come on, Funked! Every schoolchild knows that the Sun is 99% pure hydrogen. We will just build a few more shuttles and send them there.
Alternatively, the space is filled with hydrogen - about one atom per 100 cubic feet. The Earth is moving very fast through space - so all we need is to build a humongous scoop and then we just sit at it's narrow end collect free hydrogen.
miko
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you people need to get out of the 18th century and get up to speed, you can crack hydrogen out of any hydro-carbon, you can also make gasoline out of natural gas or coal, New Zeland has been making gasoline out of natural gas for years.
Honda is selling fuel-cell (hydrogen fueled) cars to the city of LA.
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How much energy does it take to make that hydrogen, and where does that energy come from, and how much pollution is created by that energy? :)
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Originally posted by funkedup
How much energy does it take to make that hydrogen, and where does that energy come from, and how much pollution is created by that energy? :)
huh.. the.. sun?
or maybe nucular?
:)
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Burning diesel in a power plant to create electricity, using that electricity to seperate hydrogen from ocygen in water, after that, using the Hydrogen to power the latest Honda STILL beats the energy converted by a normal car engine running on gasoline.
However, Hydrogen cars are no magic answers to the global energy requirement, - they are merely a sideshow. They can prolong the inevitable "run-out-of-oil" problem a bit, and of course, city traffic loaded with just Hydro cars would leave practically NO pollution. But eventually, mankind will either have to harness new energy sources, or change its habits drastically............
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"Honda is selling fuel-cell (hydrogen fueled) cars to the city of LA."
Heh heh, and LA is paying for those Hondas the same that they could buy a normal Lincoln Town Car for (500 bucks/month).
J_A_B
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For now the best solution are hybrid cars. The Honda hybrids are VERY VERY nice. You dont lose any quality at all.
And in some states you get a nice tax refund for using hybrids.
Here is a good review of a Honda Civic Hybrid:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/civic-hybrid/2003-civic-hy-1.html
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heh. Animal swap your dad's vette out for one of those hybrids and see if he doesn't notice any quality drop.
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Read about those Hybrid cars and they look interesting. Might make a great second car for around town and short trips. One in each two car family would save a lot of gasoline.
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Originally posted by Fatty
heh. Animal swap your dad's vette out for one of those hybrids and see if he doesn't notice any quality drop.
I drove a hybrid civic and compared to the regular one, its just as fast and handles as well.
The only difference is that it goes to battery mode when you are driving slow, and the car goes dormant in traffic stops.
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I haven't driven the civic, but the insight couldn't go uphill with 2 fdbs in the car.
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The Insight was crap.
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Say isn't all the hydrogen in the world under Iraq?
Bush, you wise man you:)
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Ever hear of hydoelectric?
Canada's full of dams, we have our share also.
Plus brute force isnt' the only way to split water.
Not saying it will happen tommorow but if we don't fund the research who will?
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Originally posted by miko2d
Come on, Funked! Every schoolchild knows that the Sun is 99% pure hydrogen. We will just build a few more shuttles and send them there.
miko
Dummy, don't you know the sun is HOT! Guess we could send 'em there at night.
;)
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Has anyone ever seen footage of electric powered Drag racers? Man those things go. Some guy has the nickname 'Vapor' cos that's what happened to his spanner when he dropped it across the motor connecion terminals.
Amazing thing about electric powered vehicles is that the power is all there whenever you want it. No lag, no revs to build up, just instant propulsion.
All they need now are batteries that weigh 5lb and can drive you 400 miles up a steep hill.
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"I drove a hybrid civic and compared to the regular one, its just as fast and handles as well. "
That's not the issue; the issue is Hydrogen-powered Hondas sold to LA cost 3 times as much as a normal one. It's a great technology, but isn't yet economical for the mass market.
J_A_B
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Not to mention the Pacific & Atlantic oceans are chock full of hydrogen, the trick is to convert it using solar/wind to keep costs viable, burning. Running vehicles on it is already proven.
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What I'm wondering is where they have discovered these hydrogen deposits? Is there a great hydrogen field under the US?
funked.. you're serious?
hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe.
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AFAIK molecular hyrdogen does not occur naturally on Earth.
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Make that unbound hydrogen funkedup.
Hydrogen is in alot of places on the earth... naturally. Its just that its usually bound to another molecule.
BTW... isn't GMs new concept changeable body car based on hydrogen fuel cell technology?
MiniD
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"molecular hydrogen" = H2
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The ocean is full of hydrogen. H2 is easily seperated from water. So is oxygen.
Lightening striking the ocean cause hydrogen and oxygen to seperate. An electrical current is enough to seperarte H2 from the O.
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WATER = 2xH2+1xO2, - so plenty of the stuff. Seperating is easy, with an electrical current. Hell, you can even split water with a Battery.
Storing it is another thing, - a lot worse than Gasoline, but not a lot worse than other "floating" Gases, - so in short, quite doable.
Converting energy into it is anbother thing, - a lot gets lost on the way, but NO MORE THAN RUNNING YOUR CARS ON GASOLINE, - i.e. to convert gasoline to electricity via Power plant, then the Elctricity to Hydrogen, then run your car on it, looses roughly the same amount of the original energy as tanking your cars on the gasoline in the first place. Reason: Powerplants are a lot more effective than small car engines.
However, even with the energy useage on pair, the benefit of a Hydro car is significant, - NO POLLUTION, - no soot, no lead, no CO2, no CO, etc. etc. etc.
Since there are swings in power (Electrical) usage on a 24 hr. scale etc, some surplus power can be used to produce Hydrogen, although much of those power swings are overcome in different ways (Dams, shutting fuelled generators of, etc, etc). But mostly, mankind would have to produce Hydrogen from a renewable source, such as Sunlight, Hydro power, or Bio Power.
Now there is something that is rarely mentioned, - Growing Power.
The Brazilians have been running their cars on Alcohol for a long time, - producing the juice from their own biomass. The engines have to be converted, but not much I belive. (carburettor mostly). I don't know about power output, but it probably drops some.
Another Biomass would be oilseed. Squashed Rape-seed produces oil that runs straight away on a diesel engine, - with about 10% power loss, lots of soot and short-living injection heads as a negative effect though. It can however be mixed with diesel, and also it would be burnable on larger scale powerplant with ease (oil turbines).
With large agricultural aereas unused on many places in the world, there is quite much we can do with this, - a possible benefit for the rural areas of Europe and the USA, and a drawback for the Arab states,,,,,,,
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It is amazing how ingorant half of the guys here are. I thought a child of 10 would know this stuff but I guess I have too high expectations based on the Soviet school system... The law of energy conservation rings the bell?
The water in the oceans is the hydrogen that has already burned - H2 combined with O2 to create H2O while the energy was released.
To make pure hydrogen out of water again we would need to "unburn" it - add the same energy, more with inevitable losses. And that energy cas to come from somewhere.
There is no free "unbound" hydrogen on in the Earth - it is too active an element to stay unattached for long and too easily penetrates stuff to stay bottled underground like natural gas.
Extracting hydrogen from hydrocarbons - oil, natural gas - and then burning it has exactly the same result as burning hydrocarbons directly. Same amount of energy, same products - water and CO2. Just done in several steps.
Animal: huh.. the.. sun?
or maybe nucular?
Solar energy is not efficient enough and disruptive to ecology - requiring a lot of surface.
Nuclear is not PC and it could use few more decades of improvement before it could be forcefully pusshed on people. Lot of issues must be resolved, not the least of them keeping spent fuel out of the wrong hands.
Angus: Burning diesel in a power plant ... STILL beats the energy converted by a normal car engine running on gasoline.
The only places I've seen that cared to provide numbers contradict your statement. It's currently about equal efficiency.
Internal combustion engines and hybrid systems can improve efficiency without radical change to the society.
And storing liquid fuel is much easier now than storing hydrogen and electricity.
miko
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I'm sure I'm talking out of my bellybutton here, but wouldn't it be easier to control pollution on a big, central energy station than on thousands of little cars?
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Miko and Funked...
Gasoline does not occur naturally either.
Most weight of vehicle exuast vs exaust to generate electricity does not include waste generated refining, transporting and drilling for oil.
Besides, its not solely about reducing emmissions, its about finding a more renewable source of energy to lessen dependance on oil (and the middle east).
MiniD
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DA98: I'm sure I'm talking out of my bellybutton here, but wouldn't it be easier to control pollution on a big, central energy station than on thousands of little cars?
Yes, it certainly would. But you are considering only a single aspect of a multifaceted issue.
Yes, today the central station may arguably be better by a few percent - if that - than burning fuel in today's cars. I doubt it personally but would concede this point for the sake of an argument.
Now, considering energy expenditures related to building it, the energy loss due to transmission which is about 10% for electricity, the fact that the station will be fixed at the current level of technology for the next 30-40 years while the cars improve constantly as older models get replaced by more efficient ones - would you still have any gain over the life of that station?
Mini D: Gasoline does not occur naturally either.
Yes, it does - it's the part of the oil and the energy that is contained in gasoline after it is separated has already been in the oil - not added to it by manufacturing process.
its about finding a more renewable source of energy
That's a meaningless slogan. There could be no "finding" renewable source. All renewable sources are known, the problem is using them in efficient manner.
1. Solar energy
1.1 Biomass - growing stuff and burning it (as wood, alcohol, oil, etc.) - requires a lot of land, which destroys ecosystems.
1.2 Solar cells/reflectors - requires a lot of land, which destroys ecosystems.
1.3 Wind (caused by sun) - my favorite
1.4. Solar collectors in space.
1.5 Muscular energy.
2. Gravitational energy
2.1 Tidal stations - screw up ecology on shores
2.2 Dropping asteroids on Earth - a lot of energy but hard to control
3. Geotermal.
4. Nuclear - not PC
4.1 Fusion - not controllable yet
4.2 Fission
miko
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Honda just released their ($1.6M per unit) fuel cell car. They are leasing them to the City of LA for $500/month. It's a 3700 lb vehicle with 80 hp. Imagine an old Honda Civic towing another Honda Civic.
They built a solar plant to create hydrogen from water. It can produce enough hydrogen to fill up one of the fuel cell cars. In a week. I think the plant cost like $100k.
If they can bring down the price of the car and the fueling station by like a factor of 100 and increase the energy density of the fuel cells by like a factor of 10 then they might have a viable product.
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Miko,
You do not drill for gasoline, you drill for oil. Crude is unusable as a practical fuel in its natural state. Refinement is necessary. Refinement itself also requires energy, as does the shipping, drilling and everything else. Both gasoline and hydrogen need to be extracted from the chemical home they naturally enhabit.
Hydrogen processing would minimize the transportation of the crude product since the source is readily pipeable from virtually anywhere in the world. Both need refineries.
As for renewable sources of energy... it is ALSO about that. Sorry that you don't really feel it is... but you've been known to be wrong before.
MiniD
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"wheres hydrogen???" theres a bloody great hydrogen feild in between the continents...h2o...h is hydrogen you fill up the car on water you give off pure water at the end...
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Originally posted by vorticon
"wheres hydrogen???" theres a bloody great hydrogen feild in between the continents...h2o...h is hydrogen you fill up the car on water you give off pure water at the end...
This is so very wrong. Water will be the byproduct, not the source of energy. Water will be an abundant source of hydrogen, but it may not be the most effecient source. I can't say I know what is the most efficient source either.
Regardless, hydrogen will have to be extracted from something.
MiniD
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You do not drill for gasoline, you drill for oil. Crude is unusable as a practical fuel in its natural state. Refinement is necessary. Refinement itself also requires energy, as does the shipping, drilling and everything else. Both gasoline and hydrogen need to be extracted from the chemical home they naturally enhabit.
Hydrogen processing would minimize the transportation of the crude product since the source is readily pipeable from virtually anywhere in the world. Both need refineries.
MiniD: It's an energy balance equation. Making H2 from water takes more energy than is generated by using the H2 in the fuel cell. Making gasoline from oil takes only a very small fraction of the energy in the oil.
So H2 is not really an energy source. It's just energy storage. You still need to get the energy from somewhere. Like burning fossil fuels, fission, wind, solar, etc.
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maybe...it would seem to be efficeint overall...how effecient is nuclear energy when you think about it...of course all we really need is some way to turn heat into energy directly with no catalyst...
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If hydrogen is so easy to seperate from water and use as a fuel, why doesn't the Sierra Club or Greenpeace just build one small fuel plant and one car to prove it? Probably because the resulting car would end up with the net energy efficiency of a Ford Excursion towing a Bayliner up Pike's Peak.
Simpler yet, they could just build the fuel plant and use the Hydrogen gas to heat a home, that way there are no storage issues. If they can do that more efficiently than heating the home on natural gas, I'll listen. Until then this is all hippy talk.
ra
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Originally posted by funkedup
MiniD: It's an energy balance equation. Making H2 from water takes more energy than is generated by using the H2 in the fuel cell. Making gasoline from oil takes only a very small fraction of the energy in the oil.
So H2 is not really an energy source. It's just energy storage. You still need to get the energy from somewhere. Like burning fossil fuels, fission, wind, solar, etc.
Ah... I see you're point in regards to energy potential, though H2 can be generated much more cleanly than gasoline. It can be burned much more cleanly than gasoline and it can be disposed of much more cleanly than gasoline.
The energy is avialable regardless... making it mobile is another issue. Making it clean is an entirely different issue.
When we were building our first fab on the new Intel site, Intel began a campaign with the neighborhood trying to say that it wouldn't cause that much polution, nor use that much energy. It was somewhat of a flop because it quantified things in a manner that didn't make Intel look good. One thing from that:The employees generate more emissions driving to work than the building will generate
At the time... there were about 200 employees working on the site (plus about 800 contractors). Currently there are about 8000 employees and 2000 contractors.
People, by far and away, generate more polution by driving than virtually all energy generating and consuming sources combined. We can continue to trim emissions from factories all we want... it just might put a tiny dent in the current polution problem.
MiniD
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I still think the best way to make this kind of progress occur is to bring all the troops home. Let the price of oil rise to its natural level that it would be at without US foreign policy meddling. Then let the market take care of the rest.
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Hydrogen is easy to extract from water in the sense that you just need the correct electrical current. That doesnt mean it is efficient. Hydrogen would cost more in dollars to produce and require a lot of energy to extract. More then what you would get from using the hydrogen as fuel. Plus storage and shipping would increase.
They built a solar plant to create hydrogen from water. It can produce enough hydrogen to fill up one of the fuel cell cars. In a week. I think the plant cost like $100k.
Funked is correct.
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You mean... time to get all 4 pipes from Alaska up and going 100%?
The consumption may dip a bit if you do that... though not enough to really matter. The fuel will just be sold cheaper elsewhere.... where consumption will bump up to cover any slum we see.
The automobile is the primary polution generator of the modern erra. It is time to seriously adress that issue.
MiniD
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OK, about hydrogen powered vehicles, or fuel cell vehicles... Their are some huge misconceptions. All the hydrogen does for you is STORE ENERGY. Just like a big battery. You still have to generate the energy to begin with. There are some inherent bonuses to doing it this way. A power plant can generate power much more efficiently than our cars will ever be able to. You can use nuclear power plants to generate the power. Yah, I know everyone hates 'em, but just wait for 50 years, what are people going to do, give up driving or build more nuclear power stations. Dams, tidal generators, windmills, geothermal, etc... are all viable means of power if used intelligently. Remember you don't get energy for free, If we extract enough energy for the worlds population from our environment, I gaurentee there will be catastrphic long term effects.
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Miko2D:
"Angus: Burning diesel in a power plant ... STILL beats the energy converted by a normal car engine running on gasoline.
The only places I've seen that cared to provide numbers contradict your statement. It's currently about equal efficiency."
Well, you're right. Its actually about equal, with the Hydro car in its infancy though. Had to provoke some responce though:D
For your info, a fuel cell car converts 80% of they Hydro's energy to electricity, and 80% of that electricity into motional power. A normal car running on gasoline converts about 20% of that energy into motional power. Gives a base to calculate from...
Also, static power plants use multiple power sources, while the car as it is demands particularly one.
Also:
"Internal combustion engines and hybrid systems can improve efficiency without radical change to the society.
And storing liquid fuel is much easier now than storing hydrogen and electricity. "
I don't get this. This IS the current efficiency, we are running on gasoline as it is. Its gonna change whether we like it or not, cos we're gonna RUN OUT OF IT. That's gonna be one radical change, and the sooner we do something about it, the softer the blow.
Also, Hydrogen IS one way to store electricity.
And finally:
1. Solar energy
1.1 Biomass - growing stuff and burning it (as wood, alcohol, oil, etc.) - requires a lot of land, which destroys ecosystems.
I have a comment on this. This is a part of agriculture, and agriculture in both Europe and the US is in a bit of a depression. It has been estimated that Europe's agriculture alone could cope with producing the energy to power itself completely without adding that much land. The magic is there is crop rotation, better utilization of goods already there (surplus biomass) and the Land which the EU is substitizing for being UNUSED (because of other products overproduction). Now Europe has more population than the US, and the US and Canada are Vastly better off regarding landzise than Europe.
Besides, the polluting manners of mankind ARE destroyng ecosystems.
1.2 Solar cells/reflectors - requires a lot of land, which destroys ecosystems.
Yeah, like powering your house with a cell on the roof destroyes a lot?
1.3 Wind (caused by sun) - my favorite
Windfarms are noisy, but they work well. NB: All three can be combinable, Crops, Wind energy and Solar energy.
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Originally posted by funkedup
I still think the best way to make this kind of progress occur is to bring all the troops home. Let the price of oil rise to its natural level that it would be at without US foreign policy meddling. Then let the market take care of the rest.
I think you're plain right.
strange to read that from a ugly socialist frog ;)