Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Sweet Little Hydrogen Car

Be it ever so humble there's no car like the little Hydrogen powered sportster now making the rounds in Europe.

It's a zippy little thing, carries liquid Hydrogen, goes from zero to sixty at a snappy, sexy rate. I won't tell you how fast, you have to read the article. With a dual Hydrogen/gasoline engine, it won't leave you Hi and dry stranded, either.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/bw/20050114/bs_bw/b3917097mz018&e=3&ncid=

Maybe Uncle Al's intense hyperbolic rhetoric on this subject could now be tempered with an apology, of sorts? I'm waiting, breathless.

"It's a zippy little thing, carries liquid hydrogen,"

Ha Ha Ha. Piece of unconscionable crap. Do you drive up to a European Space Agency launch pad, put on your protective cryosuit, suspend life and auto insurance, pray to everybody's gods there isn't the tiniest of leaks and a spark of static... Do you garage it? BOOM! Boil-off.

Have you ever worked with cryogens, even liquid nitrogen?

Do you have any idea how dangerous liquid hyrogen is? If you get in an accident and breach its dewar the physical explosion will kill you, followed by a chemical explosion that will level the surroundings. BOOM! The smallest leak - a physical imperfection in the plumbing or a virtual leak through elastomer - will kill you. BOOM!

I've worked in a place plumbed for hydrogen to do quartzblowing. When a line did not hold static pressure the whole facility was wetted own with shampoo in water - and nobody complained about looking for the leak. BOOM!

The H*Y*D*R*O*G*E*N car. Ha Ha Ha. Here's a hint, lady - when you liquefy hydrogen 1/3 of it will boil away in storage as it slowy undergoes ortho to para spin conversion. You need an in-line paramagnetic filter and another liquefaction stage to succeed. If the average 100 IQ git handles hydrogen, liquid or otherwise, he will die - and good riddance. BOOM!

Other than that the will emit loads of nitrogen oxides, NOx, because hydrogen burns hot. Brown skies, baby.

A liquid Hydrogen car? Yes they can certainly put out the advertising hype.
I must agree with Uncle Al, should anything go wrong, such as a Hydrogen powered car collision, they could be one Big KaaaBoooom.
Should the hydrogen escape, while strapped in the confines of your car seat (most likely). Parts of your super frozen fingers, legs or arms would crack off your body like broken china, were you to be moved. All plastic fittings seats and belts and clothes will either break up, or stick to ones body, causing cold burns, at worst.
Its not a pleasant scenario. Two or three accidents would scare the public off hydrogen.
It would always have to be kept under pressure, and permanently vented where-ever it was stored.

Its an interesting Utopian article Amaranth, if only for items that are conveniently notmentioned Such as addition high cost of personal insurance, and the additional vehicle weight due to the steel pressure, and expansion tanks.
Ti's wonderful how they only mention Hydrogen production by water electrolysis. Unless the water is pure, the electrodes will soon clog, and become inefficient. The continuous compression and expansion of air plus distillation, as a method for Hydrogen production would surely last longer than water electrolysis. I'd rather drive a car using cold Clathrates dredged up from the Artic ocean than dangerous hydrogen.
Better still, why not an electric car that used a couple of low voltage metal conductor strips, stuck to the surface of the road, to pick up power?

My take is that your responses have too much attitude and not enough you know what.

It is a step in the right direction as relevant to where the technolog will be when and if it goes into production as were the cars built before the model T.

Would you consider the Model T safe by today's standards? How about the Model A? How about a Yugo?

Would you consider the Space Shuttle safe? How about Spaceship One? Would you kill all space travel because of the pioneering vehicle(s)?

Get over it. Applaud loudly and often. Encourage the developent of something other than what we have or we, as a species, will not be here all that much longer with a life-style that any of us would recognize as enjoyable.