Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Hydrogen Cars

Uncle Al's claims to the contrary notwithstanding:

Japan's Mazda Motor Corp. said on Wednesday it will begin leasing a dual-fuel car that can run on both hydrogen and gasoline in the auto industry's latest effort to reduce oil consumption in vehicles.

Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/AUTOS/02/15/mazda_hydrogen_car.reut/index.html

Uncle Al knows it won't work but those foolish engineers at Mazda weren't listening. I wonder what fool came up with the following:

"It can cruise for a maximum 62 miles on hydrogen and 41 miles on gasoline."

Further on hydrogen than gasoline. Go figure!

Look again. The article says 62 miles on hydrogen and 341 miles on gasoline.

But I think that's only half of Als' point. The other part is that the only way this is economically feasible to H2 users at this point is government subsidy.

They must have corrected the story after I saw it as my copy, printed on my printer, says 41. It was weird but I figured good to get him involved yet again.

Also if the hydrogen cars became the big thing, we would need to create the hydrogen through electricity, which happens to be created mainly with oil. So in reality, it wouldn't be saving that much oil to run cars on hydrogen.

BUT that's what hybrid cars are for, 60+ miles per gallon city driving and ~42 miles per gallon on the highways. My friend owns one and it's awesome. (Mainly charges the battery when you apply the breaks)

Hydrogen can be created in a substantial number of ways that do not involve petroleum. That this is the current method says nothing about the economics of a hydrogen economy.

DA, in the 1900's light house lights, how did they get the power?

I wonder what happens to hydrogen when it is compressed?

I know that oxygen becomes a liquid.
what would happen if hydrogen could be compressed until it becomes a liquid.

would you still need a trailer to carry around all the hydrogen?

could the oxygen from the seperation process be used for other processes so that there would be a large consumtion of H2O to deter the sea level
rise?

what a great idea to use the oceans water as our new fuel source !!!

why not this way we might be able to keep florida.

Also if the hydrogen cars became the big thing, we would need to create the hydrogen through electricity, which happens to be created mainly with oil. So in reality, it wouldn't be saving that much oil to run cars on hydrogen.
*********

when you drive your car to work and park it.
it stays there for hours and hours.

I wonder if your car had solar power cells on it that seperated H2O into hydrogen and oxygen durring the daylight hours when your car is just sitting there.

or if your parking lot had a solar array attop it
that your car plugged into when you got to work.

if this would help to reduce the oil consumption?

This thead constitutes an eloquent demonstration of how a professionally managed corporation can only survive on insubordination. None of you has a sparrow's fart of an idea what you are talking about real world. You strut for political nuance while making technical asses of yourselves.


Given: the number of hydrogen atoms in a cubic centimeter of diesel fuel (or water) sitting in an open bucket at ambient temperature and pressure. Compare that number to any other extant or theoretical hydrogen storage modality. A bucket of diesel right now, today, as your read this, exceeds the DOE's wildest extrapolated published hydrogen storage density bullcrap by a factor of two. HDPE exceeds it by a factor of 2.2, which crushes hydrogen storage discoveries projected 100 years into the future.

If you had an air-alcohol fuel cell without noble metal catalyst you'd equal the best IC engines in electric engine cost/mile. If you had an air-hydrocarbon fuel cell without noble metal catalyst you'd have muscle cars doing 100 mpg. Putting NASA H2/O2 fuel cells in charge of US energy policy will get you space scuttles (that in constant dollars cost 3X as much as Saturn V boosters did per gram of mass boosted).

Burning H2 in IC engines is flat out stupid. 70% of the energy is discarded as waste heat, further less losses for manufacturing via the Second Law of Thermodynamics and losses for compression (101.325 joules/liter-atm).

70% loss of energy due to heat loss !!!

then why dont we just use gas turbine engines that are 90% efficient and basicaly have only one
moving part to connected to a generator
to generate electricity and use the generated electricity to power the electric motor in our hybird vehicles?

why do we use a 30% efficient IC engine?
when at best only 15% of the energy reaches
where the wheels meet the road?

the wheel hubs could be the electric motors armature there would be no loss of energy as in
the normal friction from piston to piston rod to crankshaft to transmission to rear end to wheel not to mention all the valves gears belts etc...

why?----> more gas is sold.

you cant get any funding from a government energy related funding program to research ( and develope and market ) anything that actually saves any gasoline.

why---> 48 cents per gallon taxes.

Its like were stuck using inefficient stuff due to taxes.

I know we need the taxes but theres got to be some other way to get the money that the fuel taxes bring in.