Agreed. I'm interested in his question too.

Fuel cells don't generate fuel, they generate electricity.

You input Hydrogen and Oxygen, and you get water and electricity out.

Potentially useful in an electric vehicle, if you had a ready source of Hydrogen.

So, no old engine is going to run on a fuel cell, unless that old engine is an electric motor.


When people talk about hydrogen powered cars, they aren't necessarily talking about hydrogen internal combustion engines. Those would still pollute because you'd be sucking in nitrogen from the ambient air and still generating nitrogen-based pollutants.

With a fuel cell, there is no pollution and no emissions (except water).

Unfortunately, with the state of technology today, there's no easy, inexpensive way to generate large amounts of Hydrogen (and the generation pollutes somewhat and uses energy) nor is there an infrastructure to distribute it. Plus, fuel cell technology has a little ways to go, although its come a long way.


Something else to think about regarding Hybrids...

Once you have a hybrid vehicle, you could potentially swap the electric-generating mechanicals.

So, for example, gasoline ICE engines are probably a good way to go right now, but a diesel could easily work. If Hydrogen was available, you could run a Hydrogen ICE, or replace the whole engine with a fuel cell. Only have access to propane - run the engine on propane. Have a lot of oil grain - run the diesel on biodiesel. Lots of options.

As long as the powerplant can charge the batteries as fast as you discharge them driving, you get the same overall performance out of the vehicle.

Fuelcells can use natural gas which is 3 parts h to 1 part c. This style is already availble for your home. A propane fuel cell at the shack and an electric car would be the cleanest you could use a car. The propane isn't burned the hydrogen is seprated out and as said combines with ox in the air while the carbon atom is truly the only waste.

My problem with fuel cells in cars is in cold climates every ones tail pipes will be glazing the road like a zamboni prepping a skating rink. have to do something different with the exhaust water. I wonder if it was cold out and you let the car idle if it would freeze the back tire closest tothe pipe to the ground.

Polution is simply too much of one thing, more then the cycle of life can accomidate at one time. The best I would imagine, would be to walk, at least that is what Doc is always telling me. But then again we do exhale carbon dioxide, and leave behind some awfuly poluted ferterlizer.

I think the best would be diversity, many fuels. In the begining you could buy a car to run on electric, steam, lamp oil, alcohol, gas, etc. And I don't know that that wasn't the best answer; gives the environment a fighting chance, and the monopolies a losing one.

First I'd like to say that I didn't read all of this, there were some long posts and it's late.

Electricity, clean power?

My brother works at a power plant. The amount of coal they burn is unreal. train after train full of coal. The air stays somewhat clean b/c they have giant ion generators that pull the solid waste from the air. They do not affect the Co2. The Solid hydrocarbon waste is washed down into a lake{fly ash, carbon}. The Flyash has large amounts of arsenic {what I was told, I'm rambling}.

Ok, the point is that electricity is not as clean as it appears, but certainly a lot cleaner than a gadzillion exhaust pipes.
Nuclear power should be avoided at all costs{personal opinion, no flaming please}.

With that said, I think electric vehicles are the way to go.

Something that has been overlooked in this conversation{maybe just by me?} is the amount of energy we lose evertime we touch the brakes.

It would be so so so {sos?!} simple to recover that energy. So simple, it has been done by Ford and college students.
And.. imagine the launches you could get! Slow down from 100 MPH and release all that energy at once, it'd be pretty impressive even if you only had a 40 HP. Imagine.

I always remember old great game Fallout2, and car, which is VERY similar on ’58 MOPAR, and run on micro fusion cells…but as I said, I would prefer fuel which can use the old great engine. From such I can think of only alcohol.

AND you can drink it!!!
x

nude...good to see you're still around...

i did a science project a couplea years back where i made my own nuclear reactor (but used organics for the plutonium) it was a pebble-bed modulated reactor. the thing about this is that the damn thing never melts down. the melting temp on the graphite pebbles is way higher than the uranium contained inside. the system is modular, so they can make it very small, or add components as the operator sees fit (hotrodding. "i have more nuclear reactors than you do." replace "nuclear reactors" with "horsepower" and you would have a consensus). then you can run electricity as easy as a whip from the water that heats up during the sustainable reaction. the aircraft company, Convair was once contemplating running a b-36 bomber (massive, massive plane) on this type of nuclear power. they doted it as safe, or safer than hydroelectric power or wind energy. it's been around for a long time, it works perfectly and over 50% of the world's population that runs nukes is converting their nukes to run like this. if you think three mile island when you hear of nuclear energy, you are mistaken. apart from cold fusion generators (nice idea, but let's see them stick a monster reactor into a car) this is the safest, most cost effective way to run electricity generation.

oh, but what aboot the used fuel..

simple, bury it in a giant sand hill. no body's using the sand hill anyways.
the halflife if uranium 238 (nuke fuel) is about a hundred thousand years based on accurate calculations. the estimated breakdown and dissolving of the graphite shells is close to 5 million years. so the uranium is completley docile and not at all radioactive like you would think when the graphite cracks

simple.

x

I just read an artticle that Ford has a Super Duty V10 running around on Hydrogen. The big obstacles right now are the low power output and the range. It is a very clean burn though.
I am 52 and I doubt that I will see the demise of the internal combustion automobile in my lifetime. They do not need fossil fuels to operate. They continue to use it because it is big money for big business which in reality is what runs the country.

We need a guy like Doc, not the "Chevy, division of Corvette" one but the wierd goofy old man with the delorean that struggles to reach 84mph, and once it does that we all know what happens.

We just need to develop his orange peel fuel technology to produce some power... or maybe it was that the DMC was a fairly heavy car with a weak v6 to move it around. Too bad they folded.

Most of you are thinking more like conventional transportation cars, not hot rod "play" cars that mostly see limited use -- though I know there are a few (like me!) who use their rods for daily transportation. Gasoline will be around for special use for a long time yet -- 50 years from now when demand goes down for regular transportation (electric in one form or another, most likely fuel cell technology), I think gasoline will still be available for things like weed eaters and other small industrial engines where it will still be impractical to power in other ways. It might be $10+ a gallon though. So you can still take your rod out to special events or a once a week 10 miles drive for $100+.

Hydrogen can be burned as a gas too. I don't have the link, but there is a company that sells a solar powered hydrogen gas producing set-up. It uses solar to crack water molecules, then stores the gas in compressed cylinders like propane or natural gas. The problem is it takes several days to fill the tanks to the capacity equivalent to a tank of gasoline. So you can fill up every 3-6 days depending on the cloud cover and time of year. That might be fine for a "play car", but not for most daily drivers. There's the problem of long trips too. You could only drive the converted car locally, but that would make it a great "second car".

Hot rodders used to run various alcohol blends as far back as the 50s. Might not be a good alternative for general transportation, but would be for a play car. So is propane and natural gas. They will eventually be cheaper than gasoline. I know propane is a by product of producing gasoline, but then gasoline can really be called a by product of refining oil for other purposes. When oil is refined several products come out -- you can't refine just one product out of a barrel of oil.

Check pubs like "The Mother Earth News" out, and WWII era Popular Science , Mechanics Illustrated, and Popular Mechanics. With gas being rationed, there were all sorts of inventive ways to run cars! One burned wood. When you burn wood, a gas comes out that can be captured and fed to an IC engine. Not real efficient, but great when you can't get gasoline! Methane gas is naturally occurring also. I wonder how much could be tapped from big city sewers? A municipal electric generating station would benefit most from something like that.

Don't underestimate American ingenuity! The only reason there are really good alternative fuels right now is because gasoline is STILL very cheap for the amount of power that can be carried around. The "break point" that makes alternative power more attractive is $5-$6 a gallon. At that point alternatives are competivie with plain old gasoline. Profitability is what has been holding alternatives back, not technology. Manufacturing does play a key factor -- car makers can't just drop all their tooling and start producing new technology tomorrow. That would break even the largest (which is now Toyota, due in part to GM's non-mangement).

Like someone else pointed out, there are those of us who will never leave "well enough" alone! Remember slot cars in the 60s? Future rodders might be more like them -- your "crate motor" will be a re-wound electric instead of a built up gasoline engine. Then you'll need bigger capacitors, better controller, more batteries... similar to building rods with gasoline engines. Check some of the home built EV sites -- they are already into that sort of thing!

ethanol will work in canada ther is enough capasity to produce all the ethenall our country needs in manitobs and sask if our gov gave them a start, but big oil will hold it off untile they get contyrole. cliff

I think we will all be joining the Amish, anyone here know how to chop and section a buggy

I draw the line at those big beards and funny hats though.

Bio Diesel made from soy bean oil and vegetable oils will replace petro diesel.

Ethanol will continue to replace an even larger portion of the gas in "gas" culminating in 100% ethanol engines.

Hydrogen and fuel cells are crap. I used to work in that industry. It is all smoke and mirrors and Marketing PR BullS!@t. Those things are very unreliable and too expensive to be practical. Main problem with cost is that platinum is the catalyst that makes the cell membranes work. Platimum is expensive. This technology is 15 years away minimum.

Hybrids are a stepping stone to something better. Too many hybrids is a bad thing. The battery packs only last a few years and the batteries are full of nasty toxic crap that will need to be dealt with in the waste stream.

Itty bitty cars!

"alternative power" side note (?), some good news (?) I'm passing this along to those who may not know about the test project in the East river of NYC......best new practical power generation idea I've seen in a long time

they built a number of under water bladed "wind" turbine generators...the slow 5mph (?) constant river current spins the blades

don't recall their output example (hydraulic versus wind) but a 2mph river will generate more power than a 20mph wind turbine? you get the idea...

"direct" energy to energy conversion, no pollution, relatively inexpensive to build and maintain.....talk about a "untapped" energy resource! how many rivers in the USA!

you will need ALOT of electricity to crack hydrogen or charge batteries to power the cars