Your hard-earned gas money at work
Many of these issues could be solved with more exotic storage methods, but most of these technologies are still in their infancy, so I wouldn't expect them to be viable for consumer vehicles in the near future.
Personally, I think that all-electric vehicles show the most promise. They have the most direct route from energy source to engine, and thus a high efficiency. Additionally, most of the energy-transport infrastructure already exists, so considerably less new capital needs to be devoted to developing it. The major issue for all-electric vehicles is the batteries: they're expensive, and charge slowly. However, I think these technical issues will likely be solved before the storage issues for hydrogen, so electric cars will likely prove to be a more viable replacement for our current ICE vehicles.
Electric vehicles, eH? Well just exactly WHERE would the elctricity come from and HOW do you propose storing it in a space-efficient way? Electricity in fact is NOT an efficient way to store energy, and batteries arent such a great way to store electricity compared with capacitors. Fuel Cells efficiently convert chemical energy into electrical energy in a MUCH more efficient way than batteries do! THAT is what all this Hydrogen would be used for. Furthermore, the most practical way to transport Hydrogen is of course to liquify it and transport the liquidH in specially designed cryogenic transport trucks. So just HOW exactly does hydrogen degrade metal containers, eh? Hydrogen CAN accept electrons to form Hydride anions but these are EXTREMELY unstable and volatile.
Well, hydrogen is also very hard to transport and thus would be very expensive. I am not commenting on it's cleanness and efficiency. As stated by Rosa Young, a physicist and the vice president of advanced materials development at Energy Conversion Devices in Troy, Michigan states: a storage container to contain 5 kg of hydrogen would weigh 661 lbs due to all of the issues with storing it. Not only that, but hydrogen tends to leak given the small size of the element and thus containment issues are a major problem especially given that these leaks can be difficult to find until performance suffers and thus this can cause issues such as the flammability issues brought up by pbcoll.
Which is one of the reasons I favor developing some of the renewable energy sources. Having many small plants scattered about would reduce the amount of distance hydrogen would have to travel and the time it would have to be stored, lessening the leakage issue. It's a long term solution, and some areas wouldn't be able to employ it (i.e. a geologically stable, land-locked portion of the Yukon for example), but it really reduces the transport and storage issues of hydrogen.
Gas would have to get highly expensive before the infrastructure would be built and technology for the production would have to get comparatively cheaper. Not only that, but rich people and large companies can be major niches to grow out from as both have a lot of wealth and would be likely to jump upon a new innovation. The issue with large infrastructures is that the gain from creating them would have to be seen as worth the opportunity cost of the money in other sectors, and that issue of economic calculation is important to remember.
Which is why it is a good idea for the government to either inflate the price of gas or to invest in research and eventually new infrastructure. Goverments can survive spending lots of money for the public good; coporations cannot. It would be stupid to rush out and heavily fund the first idea that seems like it might work (*cough* ethanol), but IMO it's the best solution to the problem. Intervene until the market is created, then back off and let the free market do its stuff.
Gasoline is not as hard to transport as hydrogen is. Hydrogen is very likely to leak, and one of pbcoll's arguments is transportation costs, which seem very likely to be there with such a source as hydrogen.
It's true, gasoline is much easier to transport. Thing is, to repeat my point above, hydrogen can be produced anywhere you can create enough power, in contrast to oil that has to be drilled from a deposit. If the hydrogen is created close to the place where it will be consumed, transport becomes a much smaller issue.
The same place the electricity necessary to produce, store, and transport gaseous hydrogen would come from. Both hydrogen fuel cells and battery powered electric vehicles require human energy input. They mainly differ in how that energy is stored and transported.
Current production EVs have had a lot of success with Lithium Ion batteries, future generations of vehicles will likely use supercapacitors. Fitting a battery system that stores enough energy to power a functional car is not an issue.
Fuel cells are efficient, but not quite as efficient as batteries. There's also the problem of producing the hydrogen. Elemental hydrogen is not something you find in any large quantities on Earth, so it has to be synthesized from other compounds.
Liquefying hydrogen does absolutely nothing to mitigate the safety hazards outlined above, and adds a cryogenic hazard to the mix. Compressing the hydrogen into a liquid requires a lot of energy, reducing the overall efficiency of the energy pipeline. Additionally, the tanks have to be heavily insulated to prevent the liquid hydrogen from turning back into gas and putting additional stress on the tank. Finally, liquid hydrogen has a low energy content by volume, meaning you need to move a lot more of it
Hydrogen Embrittlement.
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The Solution: a NUCLEAR powerplant which supplies a good portion of the electricity it generates to operate an ajacent hydrogen plant run by electrolysis .
That same nuclear plant can be used to power EVs from the grid. Personally, I think directly piping the electrical energy into a car's batteries or capacitors would give better overall efficiency than using it to make hydrogen, physically shipping it to the consumer, and then using it to make electrical energy in a car's fuel cell.
Don't get my wrong, hydrogen fuel cells are a neat idea, I just don't think their technical issues will be resolved before other alternative energy solutions become practical. Of those solutions, the one that seems to show the most promise at the moment is battery or capacitor operated electric vehicles.
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One of the best solutions I have heard of is the use of renewable sources, such as solar and wind, to power the grid while at the same time using a portion of the power to charge hydrogen fuel cells that can pick up the slack when sunlight is diminished or wind is lacking.
I agree that battery powered vehicles are a better alternative then hydrogen for many of the reasons listed above. Which is probably why we see some of the former and really nothing of the latter in the consumer market. Except I have heard that a major drawback to the electric cars is that their batteries need to be replaced every two to three years at a cost of $10,000-$20,000.
Hydrogen is a gas at atmospheric pressure anywhere near room temperature, it is obviously far more volatile than a liquid fuel. As has been mentioned, it is explosive in a large range of pressures, produces an invisible flame and its combustion is extremely exothermic. Liquid hydrocarbons are nowhere near as dangerous as hydrogen in terms of combustion, explosions, and are much cheaper to store. It is also more problematic to keep hydrogen sealed, pump it around, etc than heavier gases like nitrogen.
Liquefying hydrogen requires either very large pressures or very low temperatures, both of which are expensive and have dangers of their own.
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I am the steppenwolf that never learned to dance. (Sedaka)
El hombre es una bestia famélica, envidiosa e insaciable. (Francisco Tario)
I'm male by the way (yes, I know my avatar is misleading).
Don't get my wrong, hydrogen fuel cells are a neat idea, I just don't think their technical issues will be resolved before other alternative energy solutions become practical. Of those solutions, the one that seems to show the most promise at the moment is battery or capacitor operated electric vehicles.
What about Planes? Part of the motive for producing hydrogen would be to provide fuel for Jetlines. I do NOT think its reasonable or practical to return to electrically powered prop planes for passenger air travel.
Many of these issues could be solved with more exotic storage methods, but most of these technologies are still in their infancy, so I wouldn't expect them to be viable for consumer vehicles in the near future.
Personally, I think that all-electric vehicles show the most promise. They have the most direct route from energy source to engine, and thus a high efficiency. Additionally, most of the energy-transport infrastructure already exists, so considerably less new capital needs to be devoted to developing it. The major issue for all-electric vehicles is the batteries: they're expensive, and charge slowly. However, I think these technical issues will likely be solved before the storage issues for hydrogen, so electric cars will likely prove to be a more viable replacement for our current ICE vehicles.
This is exactly why I don't like Hydrogen, I'm a big fan of electric cars. Give a few short years of heavy and sustained investment and we'll have electric sports-cars and pick-ups that are just as powerful as the oil-powered versions, and have a good range as well.
Yep, until someone comes up with a viable electric jet engine, jet powered aircraft will have to burn something to move. Many of the distribution issues with hydrogen would be less important with the streamlined pipeline from production plant to airport storage depot to aircraft. What could pose an issue is finding a way to store enough of it to give the plane appropriate range without taking up too much space (hydrogen has less energy density by volume than jet fuel) or adding too much weight (hydrogen storage containers have to be robust to contain the high pressure of their contents, and are thus heavier than your standard jet fuel tank). The primary impetus for this kind of development would be to divorce air travel from having to rely on increasingly pricey fossil fuels, so airplane manufacturers and airlines might be willing to put up with some loss of range or passenger capacity if it means remaining solvent.
Prop planes still get a lot of use in air travel, though, because they're more fuel efficient, can be operated from smaller airports, and tend to come in smaller sizes useful for regional transport. I think this segment of the market will benefit should anyone manage to adapt an EV drivetrain to an aircraft. Most private airplanes are prop-driven for many of the same reasons, and would also benefit.
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Prop planes still get a lot of use in air travel, though, because they're more fuel efficient, can be operated from smaller airports, and tend to come in smaller sizes useful for regional transport. I think this segment of the market will benefit should anyone manage to adapt an EV drivetrain to an aircraft. Most private airplanes are prop-driven for many of the same reasons, and would also benefit.
Prop planes MORE fuel effecient??? Im sorry but thats absolute Nonsense.Jet engines not only have greater power than props they also have much greater fuel efficiency. Try crossing the pacific on a prop plane Before the jet age, transpacific flights involved multiple refueling stops. A propellor plane basically uses an internal combustion engine with pistons used to rotate the driveshaft and generate thrust by rotating the propellors. You're going to need a LOT more force to push those pistons whereas with a get engine, the suction created by the heat of combustion within the igniton chamber draws air which 'pushes' the rotating fan blades.
Not really, Speckles. If you look at dirigibles, balloons, and blimps, you'll see that the volume of gas used to lift the aircraft is massive relative to what's being lifted (the Hindenburg was basically a series of massive gas bladders with a small passenger cabin mounted at the bottom. Hydrogen stored in a passenger jet for use as fuel would be compressed (and made many times more dense) to fit in the streamlined aircraft body to allow for high-speed flight, making it denser than air, and not contributing to the aircraft's lift.
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Maybe the environmentalist wackos lobbying to prevent our country from drilling in ANWAR?
Don't blame "tree-huggers" for the rise in gas prices. Exxon-Mobile made about $1,000 a second in profits last year. It's price jacking, not polar bears.
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People stopped traveling in Zeppelins because they (the blimps) had a tendency to blow up at the slightest provocation.
They're really dangerous, actually. That's why most modern air bladder crafts are remote-controlled.
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