hydrogen fuel cell car

Sinapus · #1 January 29th, 2003, 06:33 PM

IIRC, unless you have a cannister of pure oxygen as part of the fuel supply, you do get some nitrogen compounds in the exhaust. So it's not "only" water as exhaust. Still, it's probably a lot better than petrochemicals.

geoschmo · #2 January 29th, 2003, 06:45 PM

Nitrogen compounds? Fertalizer! Hydrogen cars emit water and fertalizer? We can plant crops in the median between the highway.

Desdinova · #3 January 29th, 2003, 07:03 PM

Automobile magazine, popular science and popular mechanics, i dont remember the issues, have had several articles on alternative feuled vehicles.

they mentioned methynol as one of them and the main drawback was the amount of land necessary to grow the feul. however there are plenty of farmers that are being paid not to grow crops, why not just ask them to grow the feul instead.
as mentioned earlier in the thread hybrid vehicles are out now and they are icreasing the gas mileage, particularly in non hiway driving where it runs off the electric motor instead of the gas one (i think the maximum speed is 35mph on the electric motor).
also europe has a couple of cars that are coming out that help reduce emissions but that wont be available in the us for a while. it mentioned that one of the drawback was low acceleration and that most americans probably would not like that.
another good thing about alternative feuls is it would reduce the reliance on the middle eastern countries for oil. thus maybe the us will keep its nose out of other peoples problems over there. after all that was the main concern during desert storm, the welfare of the people was a secondary concern of the government. also they would not be able to support terrorists if we arent paying them huge amounts of money. (rant over by me on this little subject)
imo within the next 5-10 years i think alternative feuled vehicles will replace most oil based feuled ones. of course it is also going to cause problems as people will have to by new vehicles as they phase out oil based feuls. (which is another scam similiar to the one mentioned about hdtvs in another thread

and the big 2000 scare of computers crashing

)

[ January 29, 2003, 17:05: Message edited by: desdinova ]

Wardad · #4 January 29th, 2003, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by couslee:
yea, I caught that myself after I hit enter. it was a brain fart. thats why I did an edit. ya just beat me to the punch.

there still is a downside to hydrogen fuel car exaust. that increase of humidity can cause a serious imbalance in the natural environment of that area. thta is what happened in Phonenix. for about 4 years in a row, home built in pool sales had skyrocketed, but during the summer months, the polution inVersion layer increased a lot also. they brought in environments specialists to analyse the problem, and the pools is what they came up with as their responce. the city began making more laws regarding pool ownership, installed more restriction on new ones, and 'asked" the public to slow down a bit.

This was when I was there, about 8yrs? ago. i am sure it would not be too hard to find the actual reports if one was inclined to do the search.

The Phoenix area used to be heavily irrigated for farming. I'm sure they had atmosphere inVersion layers back then also. I guess they just called it a fog or a mist instead of a pollution inVersion layer, because they didn't have much automobile pollution.
I'm all for a gentle clean morning mist that will drop the daytime highs below 120f.

(ok below 100)

Wardad · #5 January 29th, 2003, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
...It's quite reasonable actually. By concentrating the burning of fossil fuels to large electrical and H2 generation facilites you can retain stricter controls over the level of emmisions even if you don't reduce the overall use of fossil fuels...

Well said...
I'd like to add that the weight of the emission equipment is important in a moving vehicle. Moving this weight around adds the the combustion vehicles inefficency and results in more fuel burned.
A fixed location for emissions controls makes the weight a mute consideration. It also opens an opportunity for better controls.

rdouglass · #6 January 29th, 2003, 08:12 PM

Well, I've checked this thread a coupla' times today and a few people mentioned stuff about 'big oil'. I've been thinking that Bush's whole idea was not for a hydrogen car but a political decoy. Everyone knows Bush is 'big oil's friend. I just think it's a ploy - let's wait 'till someone gets the money and does some measurable research....

Sinapus · #7 January 29th, 2003, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Nitrogen compounds? Fertalizer! Hydrogen cars emit water and fertalizer? We can plant crops in the median between the highway.

Well, Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, so if you use a regular air intake to mix in with the hydrogen in the combustion chamber some of it's going to combine with nitrogen.

Still useful, though.