Future car fuel technology

DonDaddyD

Rick Chasey wrote:

The issue with "silent' cars is a joke. It'd make the whole world a better places if there wasn't that general car roar.

As a point of safey cars need to make a sound.

From the current roll out of plug in points etc the most likely solution is electric cars in the short to medium term. As we begin to decarbonise the grid to meet our carbon targets (announced today) the 'moving emissions from tail to power station' criticism will become less valid.

Do electric cars have the range to be pratical in terms of everyday use? I mean motorway driving and not just city driving?

Aidy

DonDaddyD wrote:

Still, it seems to me that a self sustaining fuel source would need to generate more energy than it uses.

1 get started
2 sustain itself
3 energy byproduct which would power the car

Seems to me that either sustaining itself or powering the car would need to use less energy than it generates, obviously this would be powering the car...

Fine.

Sustainable fuel sources for the future of motoring:

1) Vacuum energy
2) We install giant magnets in each city and point the car in the right direction
3) Unicorns

rick_chasey

DonDaddyD wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

The issue with "silent' cars is a joke. It'd make the whole world a better places if there wasn't that general car roar.

As a point of safey cars need to make a sound.

People make the same argument about bicycles which is an equally sh!te argument.

DonDaddyD

EKE_38BPM wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Still, it seems to me that a self sustaining fuel source would need to generate more energy than it uses.

1 get started
2 sustain itself
3 energy byproduct which would power the car

THAT CANNOT HAPPEN!

OK OK OK, let me rewrite what I mean:

DDD's self sustaining car engine:

1: An external energy source gets the engine started.

2: The engine generates energy to do two things

a) Sustain itself
b) Power the car (derived, possibly from a byproduct form of energy used to sustain itself).

I suspect that powering the car would use less energy than the energy needed to sustain itself. Edit: In fact the energy used to power the car would likely need to be a byproduct of the energy used to sustain itself. I suppose the engine would need to reproduce the same level of energy needed to sustain itself that was used to get itself started.

Question: Isn't heat and light the energy byproduct from the Sun's self sustaining reaction and it's that heat and light that provides life. I really don't want to have to go into more detail than that, I had to once to explain how Firelord was different to the Human Torch, it was a bore....

Second question: What happens to electricity when it interacts with water?

DonDaddyD

Rick Chasey wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

The issue with "silent' cars is a joke. It'd make the whole world a better places if there wasn't that general car roar.

As a point of safey cars need to make a sound.

People make the same argument about bicycles which is an equally sh!te argument.

Less risk and potential for damage.

Sewinman

The Nissan Leaf has a range of up to 100 miles, so really it is a city car. Charging it can take hours. Some of the energy compnaies are launching special EV charging tarrifs, where you pay very little to charge over night.

Aidy

DonDaddyD wrote:

Question: Isn't heat and light the energy byproduct from the Sun's self sustaining reaction and it's that heat and light that provides life. I really don't want to have to go into more detail than that, I had to once to explain how Firelord was different to the Human Torch, it was a bore....

Even the sun will burn itself out eventually.

You might as well argue that conventional cars are self sustaining reactions.
The battery provides the initial power to start the process, and then the continued application of petrol/diesel sustains the reaction.

sketchley

Three options as I see it

1. Hydrogen - As mentioned. Although I recently found myself wondering about the possibilites of instead of electric charge point for electirc cars, could they not just supply power and water so you could plug in and make hydrogen instead.

2. Induction loop - Power in the road technology. So the car charges and is powered by them when on it, and uses batteries when off. Major infastructure changes but lots of benefits. And you don't have to do every road just the main ones.

3. Pedal Power. Everyone in the car pedals, that charges the batteries, or even use a chaing and gear direct to the wheel. Ok that one might be silly.

dhope

DonDaddyD wrote:

had to once to explain how Firelord was different to the Human Torch, it was a bore....

One could only imagine

EKE_38BPM

DonDaddyD wrote:

Do electric cars have the range to be pratical in terms of everyday use? I mean motorway driving and not just city driving?

Depends how far you are travelling on the motorway!

In all seriousness, not really. I heard of an Isreali company who are/were trying to get funding for a system of battery replacement service stations. Every ~50 miles along the motorway you stop at the service station and they take out the flat battery and replace it with a fully charged one.
For this to work car manufacturers would need to produce vehicles which accept standard batteries. The size/shape of the battery and the output would need to be standardised and the process of changing the battery would probably need to be automated.

DonDaddyD

Aidy wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Question: Isn't heat and light the energy byproduct from the Sun's self sustaining reaction and it's that heat and light that provides life. I really don't want to have to go into more detail than that, I had to once to explain how Firelord was different to the Human Torch, it was a bore....

Even the sun will burn itself out eventually.

You might as well argue that conventional cars are self sustaining reactions.
The battery provides the initial power to start the process, and then the continued application of petrol/diesel sustains the reaction.

I know the Sun will burn out.

So the point of a sustainable engine isn't that we don't have the technology its that we haven't identified a environmentally clean alternative to fossil fuels.

So we are back at my original question, though we've now shot down hydrogen. And I don't fully understand why.

Petrol needs to be dug up from the ground, refined, stored and transported to the pumps, right? It has a massive footprint that you cannot escape and it's running out. Swap petrol for hydrogen and though the process are slightly different, you would still need to capture it, refine it store and transport it to the pumps. The end byproduct (water if using the fuel cell) is cleaner so why isn't a viable option for mass production?

EKE_38BPM

If DDD carries on proposing perpetual motion cars, he'll lose a D again!

DonDaddyD

EKE_38BPM wrote:

If DDD carries on proposing perpetual motion cars, he'll lose a D again!

I understand that whatever the fuel source it'll run out. Hell, even the starship Enterprise couldn't overcome that conumdrum.

What I don't get is why we can't replace petrol for hydrogen. Yes the process is slightly different but it is not over and above what we already do with petrol and the end byproduct is cleaner.

Also I'm not seeing replacable car batteries as being hugely practical.

Aidy

Do you imagine that we dig into the ground and find large hydrogen deposits left there by the decaying remains of long extinct beasts?

snailracer

ride_whenever wrote:

You need an energy input for the hydrogen economy. The hydrogen/methanol for fuel cells is simply the energy vector as you're never going to be able to make hydrogen to run a car on without some sort of energy input.

That will come, most likely, from solar splitting of hydrogen. Either by some sort of oxide catalyst, microbes or some kind of magic. However it could also be produced by steam reforming of methane (obviously not hugely relevant in the future, but currently the most common way of generating hydrogen) or from any energy source such as renewables or nuclear.

My favourite option for cars would be nuclear.

Hydrogen is a rubbish "vector" as it has to be either cryogenically refrigerated, which requires lots of energy, or vented to prevent overpressure and bursting, which results in rapid loss to the atmosphere. It also leaks quickly through every seal material known. BMW experimented with it and found that half the hydrogen was lost out of their car's tank every 3 days.

The whole point of reducing carbon emissions is to reduce the production of CO2 as it aggravates the "greenhouse" effect, however hydrogen also promotes the greenhouse effect. ISTM that hydrogen is a non-solution.

UndercoverElephant

To be fair to DDD, he's right in some ways about hydrogen. The output is cleaner, and if we could get large-scale renewable energy (or even small scale renewable energy in your own back-yard) to convert water to hydrogen, then we'd be onto a winner.

The main problem is that a small wind turbine in your house would only produce a trickle of hydrogen, and for mainstream adoption, we'd need a flood. Also, petrol is relatively easy to store, hydrogen is not and frankly, petrol hasn't got expensive enough yet for us to bother.

The Rookie

Hydrogen is hopelss as a fuel, it has the most afinity for oxygen, which means most of its found some and is sitting there as water,. but as it has a great affinity, try seperating them, it takes a lot of energy, and the amount you get back from it is less than it takes to seperate them.

Also its a beatch to store, you are always losing some.

In the short term we will be using more EV's (realistic circa 60-70mile range off an 8 hour charge) as well as plug in Hybrids and range extended EV's (using good old Petrol or diesel to extend the range of an EV on the relatively few occasions we actually need it), however this isn't really a CO2 fix as current power generation works out at about the same CO2/km as the best current cars anyway, so it needs combining with lower CO2 generation (admittedly overnight generation is lower CO2 than daytime).

Discussions on on board noise generation for EV's is already well under way!

Simon

Sewinman

Hydrogen does not occur naturally, you have to make it...it takes a lot of energy to make it. The energy used to make it currently comes from fossil fuel s. The process of making the hydrogen is so energy intensive that the total footprint of hydrogen fuel is not dissimilar to burning petrol ...rather defeating its purpose as a low carbon technology. If electricity used to make the hydrogen came from a renewable source then that particular problem with hydrogen would be removed.

sketchley

Sewinman wrote:

Hydrogen does not occure naturally, you have to make it...it takes a lot of energy to make it. The energy used to make it currently comes from fossil fuel s. The process of making the hydrogen is so energy intensive that the total footprint of hydrogen fuel is not dissimilar to burning petrol ...rather defetaing its purpose as a low carbon technology. If electricity used to make the hydrogen came from a renewable source then that particular problem with hydrogen would be removed.

Use nuclear to make the electricty very carbon netural.

Sewinman

Sketchley wrote:

Sewinman wrote:

Hydrogen does not occure naturally, you have to make it...it takes a lot of energy to make it. The energy used to make it currently comes from fossil fuel s. The process of making the hydrogen is so energy intensive that the total footprint of hydrogen fuel is not dissimilar to burning petrol ...rather defetaing its purpose as a low carbon technology. If electricity used to make the hydrogen came from a renewable source then that particular problem with hydrogen would be removed.

Use nuclear to make the electricty very carbon netural.

They are experimenting with such methods (electrolysis of water using renewables/nuclear), but as yet they are not at a commerical scale.

EKE_38BPM

DDD, let me tell you a story.

Many, many, many years ago, long before even your parent's parents were born, the sun shone and many plants grew. Sometimes, animals ate the plants. When these plants and animals died they were buried under other plants and rocks. The buried plants and animals were squashed under the weight of the rocks above and the decaying plants and animals were transformed after millions and millions of years into what is known as fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels stored the energy from the sunlight into dense energy sources such as coal and oil. The oil is converted into petrol via a process called fractional distillation. The petrol is sunlight in liquid form!

Are you still with me DDD?
Eventually humans will either extract all of the fossil fuels from the earth or it will be so difficult to extract that it will be too expensive to extract and humans will have to find another form of energy. This is roughly where we are at now.

So to find another form of energy some people propose using hydrogen.
To generate hydrogen one of the easiest ways is to use electricity to separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms in water. However electricity would need to be generated to power the process of hydrogen production. How the electricity is generated is another problem that I will attempt to explain if you really want me to.

Once the hydrogen is produced it needs to be delivered to where it is needed (fuel stations) so that cars can use it. The atoms of hydrogen are so small that no container can hold it for long (just like a helium balloon eventually deflates), so hydrogen will leak out of the transportation system.
Once what hasn't leaked away has been delivered to the fuel stations, the highly flammable hydrogen (think of the Hindenburg) is then highly compressed and pumped into the fuel tank of the car.
Assuming everything always goes perfectly the only by-product of internal combustion will be water at the exhaust pipe, but one spark and BOOM.
BLOODY BIG BOOM!
And don't forget, hydrogen ALWAYS leaks, so now no-one can smoke safely in their car, or in the street and cars MUST never crash as that could puncture the fuel tank and produce a spark. BIG BOOM time.

So, once the problem of cheap electricity production has solved the problem of cheap hydrogen production and the problem of hydrogen leaking during transportation and the dangers of highly pressurised hydrogen tanks being driven around at high speed by poorly trained drivers and the risk of sparks leading to explosions, THEN hydrogen powered motor vehicles will be viable.

Geddit? Say yes or you lose a D!

wgwarburton

Rick Chasey wrote:

ride_whenever wrote:

My favourite option for cars would be nuclear.

I was about to say, before I read this bit, that "this all sounds like the nuclear chat in the '50s and '60s" where you'd have nuclear powerd planes, tanks, etc.


It won't happen - nuclear stuff is too much of a hot potatoe to be given willy nilly to the general public.

Car garages would be, literally, lethal.

Store and transport, remember. You don't generate in the car, you generate at a power station, where you can control the risks (eg Fukushima- no serious injuries despite a massive earthquake and huge tsunami... compare to Deepwater Horizon, Piper-alpha, a Chinese Coal mine or the risks in building and operating windfarms on- or off-shore...).
The garage just contains a high-output power connection with smart metering and a sophisticated billing mechanism that lets you, visitors to your property and potentially passers by, in need of a top-up, use it and get charged directly. Similar outlets at secure car-parks (multi-stories, shopping centres, workplaces etc.) and top-up stations.

If battery technology and infrastructure provision continue to improve, electrics will be able to move from low-range city vehicles to more practical ones. They need light, high-capacity batteries that can be recharged quickly and widely-available high-output power outlets. You can trickle charge a battery pack overnight and fast charge when you stop, or mid-journey... but only if you have outlets capable of delivering high-current power and battery packs capable of very high charge rates. Currently under development... may or may not be commercially viable in a few years time. Place your bets!

Cheers,
W.

sketchley

WGWarburton wrote:

compare to Deepwater Horizon, Piper-alpha, a Chinese Coal mine or the risks in building and operating windfarms on- or off-shore...).

You forgot the bit about burning coal releasing radiation....

Sewinman

Sketchley wrote:

WGWarburton wrote:

compare to Deepwater Horizon, Piper-alpha, a Chinese Coal mine or the risks in building and operating windfarms on- or off-shore...).

You forgot the bit about burning coal releasing radiation....

I would be more keen on nuclear if they had a good solution for dealing with the waste.

gtvlusso

I think the only way that we will actually get off fossil fuels are when they are entirely used up:

So, I suggest that we all buy V8 muscle cars and 4 x 4's to speed up environmental technology.....

And anyone who says that a Prius is an environmentally friendly car is wrong!

Must admit that I like the idea of power from biodiesel or methane from hot trash.....

snailracer

So why does a car weigh more than 4 bicycles?

DonDaddyD

Social forum social

So why is there such a need for some of you to be so patronising and rude?

Yes, hydrogen isn't the same as fossil fuel that is pretty obvious. My point was to get some of you 'dead before you've tried' types to think outside the box.

If cultivating hydrogen was possible and practical then (the solution of) storing and transporting it to the pumps wouldn't be too dissimilar to the systems we have now in that it would have to be stored and transported. Albeit the technology and finer details would be different.

Think solution and not 'I'm so up my own that I'm compelled to express contempt at every possible given moment. They once said combustion engines wouldn't work, (then it was 'never catch on' same with mobile phones, CDs, and most forms of new technology) until more practical ways of integrating it into society emerged. They're still improving those forms of technology and the tech that surrounds them. I'm glad those people didn't just stop at no.

Furthermore, I never expressed to be a genius, but I am a person willing to engage in the subject. Does it warrant being belittled?

But hey, it looks like hydrogen is a no go - there are other sources of clean energy.

I'm done.

davmaggs

EKE_38BPM wrote:

If DDD carries on proposing perpetual motion cars, he'll lose a D again!

+1

However I am raising money for my new clean tech company called Steorn2. Would you like to invest?

sketchley

Sewinman wrote:

Sketchley wrote:

WGWarburton wrote:

compare to Deepwater Horizon, Piper-alpha, a Chinese Coal mine or the risks in building and operating windfarms on- or off-shore...).

You forgot the bit about burning coal releasing radiation....

I would be more keen on nuclear if they had a good solution for dealing with the waste.

Read this. Simple put new reactors will be able to extract more energy from same amount of uranium they will also be able to "burn" current waste in storage and get more energy from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

Also read this excellent blog on renewable energy and nuclear power and it's role on reducing carbon emissions.

http://bravenewclimate.com/

Sewinman

DonDaddyD wrote:

But hey, it looks like hydrogen is a no go - there are other sources of clean energy

I'm done.

I don't think we should say hydrogen is a 'no go' - just that it is not really a commercial proposition as of yet. There is a lot of research and money being thrown at it - so that may well change!