THE Hydrogen Thread (merged) Part 1

gg3 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:03 am Post subject:

So far the main criticisms of this method boil down to:
a) Electricity *or* hydrogen, and
b) The operating temp of the primary coolant loop is too close for comfort to the melt point of uranium.
(a) is always going to be true no matter which method is used.
(b) is cause for concern and could be used by anti's as a fairly reasonable arguement against building these reactors. You get a license to build one of these, then it gets squashed in the public comment phase, and then you come back with a different reactor design but it's already tainted by the bad memories of the first one. Easily a net loss of 10 years in the time to build.

So it seems to me the best route is to build reactors with designs that have better safety margins, and then use another process for getting the hydrogen.
Something that occurs to me is: Site some installations in the desert, use a more conventional reactor design, preheat the water via a secondary cooling loop in the reactor, and bring the water up to the appropriate temperatures via parabolic solar collectors. I recall reading somewhere that the latter were capable of generating quite high temps, don't recall the specifics.
Surplus electric output from wind plants could always be directed into hydrogen production. This was/is actively considered by at least two IPPs (Independent power producers) I'm aware of. Wind plants could also be sited in areas lacking transmission capacity (some of the best wind sites in the world, many of which are offshore), all of the output turned into hydrogen, and the hydrogen shipped out by tanker or dirigible.

That kind of stuff is entirely feasible, but the tough part is convincing investors, many of whom get downright phobic whenever anything having to do with engineering is mentioned.

The_Virginian · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 19, 2004 Posts: 1428

PalatineCreator

link Hydrogen car beats record
German engineers have built a car that can travel a world record 1,800 miles on less than a gallon of hydrogen fuel.
The so-called Hysun 3000, presented at the recent Fuel Cell Congress in Stuttgart, drove from Berlin to Barcelona on less than three quarters of a gallon of hydrogen.
"We have achieved a world record distance using hydrogen," said Hysun spokesman Joerg Schweigard.

"A fuel cell driven car has never travelled this far on public streets with such low fuel consumption - the equivalent of twelve litres of petrol."
The team of engineers personally took turns driving the car from Berlin to Barcelona, in what they called "realistic driving conditions".
"We wanted to subject the car to the demands of normal driving, with unpredictable weather, temperature and traffic conditions," said Schweigard.
The team hopes that the success of the experimental test drive will draw more attention to fuel cell power as an alternative to petrol.

"If the public supports such projects, it will become easier for politics and industry to create the necessary preconditions for this kind of future technology," he said.
The engineers, most of them employed at Ballard Power Systems in Germany, developed and constructed the Hysun3000 exclusively in their free time over the last two years.

The_Virginian · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 19, 2004 Posts: 1428

That's a car???? 5moped

OK 12 liters of Petrol....great except it's not petrol...
And it's not a PRODUCTION car...
Here is a a REAL car: link
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MonteQuest · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:55 pm Post subject:

I've owned stock in Ballard Power for years. However many shortcomings hydrogen has, there are many things being produced that have great utility. Take for instance Ballard's AirGen fuel cell generator. You can run it indoors. link
For a cool little animated video on how a fuel cell works click on the link on the page when you get there.
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TrueKaiser · Intermediate Crude Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 539

*watchs as the person who bought that said car gets creamed by someone holding desprately onto there beloved suv*

and as already pointed out this isn't a problem with technology so it can't be fixed by technology.

Concerned · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Sep 23, 2004 Posts: 1501

How far would a vespa moped go on the same fuel equivalent?
Sorry folks that is not a car. It would not take the kids to school and let mum do the shopping. Reminds me of the solar cars, great idea but it's not going to save us.
Bottom line is you need a certain amount of energy to move a certain mass over a certain distance.
It does not look to comfortable either how would someone feel after 4 or 6 hours in the seat?
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Aaron · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:50 pm Post subject:

You'd better be on good terms with the driver if you're in the backseat...
Ok, so the alien archaeologists who survey Earth will know we did invent fuel cell technology.
They will find a couple of skeleton's in the space station with fuel cells, and a guy in a unitard inside a fuel cell powered box with wheels.
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savethehumans · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Oct 20, 2004 Posts: 1541

Maybe it'll get more respect if they have James Bond drive it in the next 007 movie! Laughing

TrueKaiser · Intermediate Crude Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 539

dontworryaboutpeakoil · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 22, 2004 Posts: 114

1,800 miles per less than 1 gallon of hydrogen.
Say that a few times to yourselves, you pessimists!
Amazing. And you pessimists thought Fuel Cells could not solve peak oil!
If they can build a slightly larger car than can accomodate 5 passengers, and a trunk, and get 1,500 miles / gallon, our problems are solved.
Amazing what a little human ingenuity can do.
Are you pessimists still pessimistic over Peak Oil?
Collectively, here's what we have.
Together with the Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Air Car, Liquification of Coal (the world has at least 100 years of coal), Tar Sands/Oil Shale (at least 100 years supply), renewables (air, geo-thermal, solar, wave, etc), Thermal Depolymersation (converting organic matter to oil), BioDiesels, nuclear, are you STILL pessmistic over Peak Oil??
I'm not.

That's why I left for 2 months only to return and see you guys STILL clamoring over the Peak Oil.
Come on Pessimists. Answer one question. What about Coal? We've got tons of Coal. That will delay Peak Oil to at least 100 years. We've got Non-Conventional Oil: Oil Tar Sands. Shale. We can convert that to Oil.
We've got new solar panel technologies that you can unroll like plastic. We've got Hydrogen Fuel Cells that can go 1,800 miles per less than one gallon. We've got the brilliant Air Car!
In light of all this, how can you still be pessimistic over Peak oil??

WebHubbleTelescope · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 08, 2004 Posts: 909

MarkR · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 6:13 am Post subject:

There's been a slight error in the ananova story.
The car actually used 12 gallons of hydrogen, which is roughly equivalent (energy wise) to about 12 litres of gasoline. I think the confusion came because the actual mass of hydrogen used was 3.3 kg (approximately the mass of 1 gallon of gasoline).
link
So, in terms of fuel consumption - it achieves about 600 miles per gallon of gas equivalent. Certainly, this is very impressive engineering indeed. However, gasoline powered 'cars' which can do over 1000 mpg have been around for several years.

Devil · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:00 am Post subject:

Assuming the hydrogen consumed was made from methane, as is over 99% of the world's hydrogen, it means that 18.15 kg of CO2 were emitted to make that 3.3 kg of H2. Vive le global warming Sad

As for DWAPO, I just laugh at his naivety :D :D Talk about having one's head in the ozone layer! :D
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Devil · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:19 am Post subject:

Oh, and, by the way, 3.3 kg of liquid hydrogen at -253Â°C occupies a volume of 46.6 litres or 12.3 US gallons. Of course, it is not practical to store liquid hydrogen under the conditions of a car. As a gas at 20Â°C and 760 mm Hg, the volume is 36,715 litres. Let us assume it can be compressed reasonably to 100 atm, the volume is still 367 litres or 94.3 US gallons, but to do the adiabatic compression would require a terrific lot of energy, but that doesn't count, of course, even though the electricity was probably generated by coal.
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