Fuel Cell Cars by 2010

Check out this article: Fuel Cell Cars by 2010?.

Call me a pessimist, but i just think it's too big of a fuss. In recent months, nothing major has happened at all! Sure fuel cells would be nice, but no one is doing anything about it. Or am I wrong?

 

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There are major technical problems involving the mass production, storage, and distribution of H. The car itself works fine.

 

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What about methane? who's playing with that? I mean, methane occurs naturally, surely mass production should be easier than mass production of hydrogen. let alone storage.

 

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I've seen a couple things that touch on methane (natural gas) I think a Nazi Armored vehicle used it, My house uses it to stay warm, and some show I saw on TV had a guy that built a car that ran off of it I have no clue about performance of a natural gas engine.

Implementing Hybrid vehicles (WW1 Submarine drive system) would probably yield faster results. Coupling a Methane engine with a hybrid system may be the epitome of efficiency, depends on the efficiency of burning Methane.

 

Natural gas is fine, but it also produces greenhouse gas, and there is also a finite supply of it, just like oil.

 

methane eminates from fecies, garbage, naturally! it's practically a renewable resource. can't say the same for hydrogen, unless solar cells become cheap enough and effective enough to electrolyze efficiently...

had no idea the Nazis played with it... wow. scary.

and greenhouse gas is a little over rated, methane doesn't absorb infared at earth's natrual temperature range

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. At least not that a report i read told me a while ago. CO2 does a little, but cmon, the more co2, the healthier the forests get, why complain? and CO2's absorbtion isn't extreme anyway, in fact as temperatures increase, CO2 absorbtion of IR drops.

 

Producing natural gas from manure is a good idea, but there is no way it will produce the quantities needed to meet world energy needs. It is parasitical in nature, the only reason so much garbage is produced is due to cheap supplies of fossil fuels.

Methane from cows is contributing to global warming. Burning methane produces CO2. It does not help the forest to have more CO2. Increased temps make forests more volnerable to insect damage and invasive species. Insect damage makes forests more volnerable to fire. In the arctic, the forests rely on having permafrost.

There are already fleet vehicles that run on Natural Gas, as well as many forklifts.

 

Well, some fuel-cell cars are already available, but getting fuel for them is a bit difficult. But fuel-cells are improved continuously, and are obviously far enough advanced to be used as sole propellant of Germanys newest submarine.
Also, I saw some cells for sale used as energy sources for laptops and other portable electronic devices that need a relative high amount of energy.

So I would assume the technology itself is continuously advanced, but the way of producing fuel-cells seems in dire need of improvement, since it is still too expensive in most countries. Alas, I have read an article some months past about Fuel-cell production in Iceland which supposedly was pretty advanced and cheap. So I would not be too pessimistic.

 

stop right there, spidergoat, cows contribute to global warming?! so should all the sheep and goats and cats, dogs, insects, trillions of insects, each making enough methane to cook us all alive! oh, wait, that didn't happen... hmm... wonder why... because methane does not contribute to global warming, and if it IS burnt in the wild as you assume, it's likely because of a forest fire or brush fire, meaning that CO2 is concentrated in an area with lots of plant life to absorb the CO2. Any that is left over would have an insignificant effect on the environment, and assuming that HELLISHLY LARGE loads of CO2 are produced, the environment changes globably by a few degrees. nature can adapt to that, it has done far more extreme in the past. thus, a few decades of methane use is not going to cause adverse affects on the environment, let alone have consequences any worse than fossil fuel use.

germany made a fuel-cell sub?! does it run on hydrogen? this i've got to look up, that is just cool.

 

Some interesting links and articles on naval fuel cells are here at International Clearinghouse for Hydrogen Commerce.

 

non-used methane (from rotting stuff)-(especially crops and compost) is already a greenhouse gas, infact, it is 24 more effective than CO2 (1 cm3 of methane = 24 cm3 of carbon dioxide). And some drivers are VERY lazy and refuse to fix gas leaks, and that contributes to global warming.

ps: i bet the nazis used diesel fuel cells (its the only fuel they had)

 

Amory B Lovins, one of the few "greens" I greatly respect, has an article in the current Brazilian edition of the Scientific American that describes in some detail a fuel cell car. (Perhaps bettter described as a low mass car that uses hydrogen fuel cell.) It is so efficient that the H2 is stored compressed in three fiber glass reinforced cylinderical tanks (two transvers under the back seat and one between the two front bucket seats. No engine - four in-wheel regenerative electric motors.) yet it gets approximately 400 miles between fill up of tanks (I forget exact number he gives.)

He also makes a statement in article, that I find interesting. Compared to producing alcohol from corn that wood yields are twice as great. I think the translation into portuguese is faulty as "alcohol" is everywhere "ethonol" and probably should be "methonol" when the source is wood. In brazil it is amazing how rapidly several types of trees grow (Brazil may be worlds largest exporter of soft wood pulp - not sure. Perhaps trees only three years old, grown in Brazil, could supply most of the automotive fuel requirements, if Amory is right about this.)

Does anyone know anything about this? How well would cars start on wood alcohol? We have been using sugar cane derived alcohol in cars for about about 30 years. The carbon content of this alcohol is a small fraction of the carbon removed from the air by the growing cane. Thus cane / alcohol powered cars remove CO2 from the air, are clean burning, renewable (solar) energy sources, use light weight fuel tanks, very economical (currently in Brazil a liter of alcohol cost less than half as much as a liter of gasoline), provide lots of jobs for relatively unskilled cane cutters, make for vast green fields, restore the soil as the roots and low stock get plowed under.

About all that I can say bad about alcohol cars is: (1) a liter tank of gasoline also is used for the initial starting, but is lasts many months (would you not like to use less than a gallon of gas each year?) and (2) the “grain crop growers” may sell less grain as the crushed cane (after juice extracted) is used to feed cows, who do produce methane, but so long as we don't all become vegetarians, these cows were going to eat something. Grain feed cows, as in US, not only produce methane, but also require lots of fertilizers for growing the grain., Brazilian cows eat only grass and fertilize the grass fields themselves.

If it were not for the “mind control” of the voting masses by the few top US leaders closely linked oil industry etc. (funded by them in campaigns) that will not lets cheap Brazilian alcohol into US, you could drive for about half the cost per mile. The reason is fundamental:
In Iowa, where one annual crop of corn is produced, the land costs are much higher and the labor costs are much higher than in Brazil where the warmer 12 month growing season permits three or four annual crops. The campaign contributions are not nearly as important, but the Iowa corn lobby is one of the biggest - they have a lot to lose if the American voters ever get smart.

 

Just a comment, but I find it interesting that the Space Shuttles run on hydrogen fuel-cells. Fuel cells can be developed on that large of a scale, but they cannot put one in a car. Really sad

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. Corrosion spoils bright future, nobody knows how to fight that. Pt is the only viable solution for time being. Pt supply worldwide will be dispersed in 30 years or so. Oil is not the only finite resource.

 

Just a link I have found on that, for those who are interested in it, but unable to find information on google: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/

At the bottom of the article, the type 214 sub is mentioned, which is an improved variant.

 

Yes they do. Other animals do as well, but not to the degree of cows, due to both the way their digestive systems work, and the industrial scale at which we raise them. I think they are possibly our most common source of meat. The methane itself as it comes from cows is a greenhouse gas, as has been pointed out.

 

Gudgeon, fuel cells were invented in the UK in the 60's I think. Just in time to be used on the Apollo moonlandings. One of the reasons they are used in space but not much on Earth is simply the cost. The materials needed are too expensive, the precious metals etc. That is what all the research has been about in the past 30 years, trying to find cheap stuff for fuel cells.

Billy T- although alcohol will be useful, it is not the answer to our prayers, since the energy input to produce it is quite high, and for example in the UK you would need to replace most of our current food crop farm areas with plants for producing the alcohol needed to run the UK's transport.

 

Why don't we just rebuild everything so it's closer together, and we don't have to drive so much. Each populated area could then be connected by electric trains.

 

But that would be, ummm.....
Sensible!

Plus it wouldnt work with this current economic system until transportation costs get too high.

Then the other way to transport hydrogen is as Ammonia. there are various ways being worked on to safely transport it, including hetal hydrides, but again it is hard to deal with. I cant see quite why having a fuel tank of ammonia is a problem, given that we can easily fill it without spilling any, and if you can make it a bit stronger you can reduce losses in accidents, and NH3 will evaporate quickly enough anyway.

 

I don't sugest UK try to produce car fuel alcohol (You might export some good scotch, etc. and import from Brazil etc.) The "energy input" is high, but it is sun shine (and sun distilled sea water, called "rain"). Growing fuel (sugar cane to alcohol) is one of the few currently economical solar energy systems, the only one for car fuel.