Green STuff

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Just been reading an aricle on how our future cars will operate in the future. The ones that run off fuel cells will basically pump water out. So bearing that in mind and if theoretically every car did this and there are say a billion cars , wouldnt we be still damagin the climate or our surrounding enviroment?? or am i worrying about nothing, not that im actually worrying mind

Ed

 

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what happens to water when it rains and it lies on the ground? It evaporates and goes back into the atmosphere to fall as rain again.

Same principle would apply.

 

sounds like everyones water bill will be going up then (drainage)

 

Sounds like a boat, not a car.

 

Won't say much but Honda have already got a car that does that ...you put water in one end and water comes out the other "Hydrogen" power .... someone I know works at Honda and they are ready to mass produce but the goverments have stopped them because they deem them unsafe!!!! Where in reality they are worried about how to tax water??? Another story for you americans out there is he was telling me about funny lawsuits. An elderly couple bought a new honda started going down the motorway at 60 stuck cruise control on and jumped in the back under the blanket an d went to sleep.... .suprisingly they survived the crash into the bridge but then sued Honda. Now under cruise control in Honda manuals it now says "This is not autopilot" !!!!!

 

If it really worked like that it would effectively be a perpetual-motion machine - so I suspect something has got garbled somewhere!

Er - we have just had that one in another thread - and I posted a link to snopes where it was reckoned to be an urban myth.

Harry.

 

Not sure the title vs content really does this thread justice
but it's a topic that sparks my interest so I will join in

Fuel cell cars don't exactly pump out gallons of the stuff per mile for starters, and we are still a long way off mass deployment

For fuel cell cars to become a reality we need to overhaul the entire auto infrastructure, petrol stations, mechanics, perhaps even roads, across entire continents! No easy feat I'm sure you can imagine

I feel a non oil based transport network is an awesome concept, and one I fully back, but there is not enough data to highlight what sort of damage a hydrogen based network would create, at the moment the production of fuel cells requires large amounts of electricity, which is predominantly derived from oil and coal burning plants, undermining a fuel cells sustainable status, the production of hydrogen is often done via electrolysis, how much damage will this do to our aquatic ecosystem? how much is actually required to sustain the western world?

I think mixing concepts is a better mid term solution, at the moment we have hybrid cars, electric and combustion engines, there are two primary types
the Prius uses the electric motor in low speed, low torque situations, and uses the combustion engine in high speed or high torque situations. The second type is purely electric driven, but uses a combustion engine to charge the batteries once they die, the Chevvy volt will use this type of hybrid engine

Without getting into too much detail about the state of the battery industry, going long range on electricity stored in batteries is not that practical, as density increases so does weight, negating much of the increase, a better alternative may be to replace electric/combustion hybrids with electric/fuelcell hybrids, using the electric for short journeys, and recharging from the grid (a grid that is sourced by sustainable electricity generation ideally) and then have the fuel cell kick in for longer distance, these also have the benefit of being able to be refueled quickly, batteries require significant time to recharge at the moment

It's an exciting time to be around I think, we are possibly on the edge of a new stage of civilized evolution, and much like the industrial and computer revolutions chaged the world forever, the sustainable revolution will do the same and create endless possibilities for us as a society

 

Just to wade in on the subject BMW actually have a fleet of 7 series vehicles driving around the UK and europe, these are different to the fuel cell vehicles in that they have a tank in the boot that you put, i think, liquid hydrogen into, this is then used in the normal combustion engine, which as a result also allows the vehicle have a back up petrol/diesel system ( I cant remember which).

The problem at the minute is there are very few fuel stations over here able to deal with hydrogen, theres a few more in germany etc but thats quite a drive out.

At present there is no clean cars available on the market. Electric cars are useless and of course electricity is very dirty to produce, Hydrogen is (aparently) also quite dirty to produce.

 

I could be wrong but i'm not convinced you can use liquid hydrogen and petrol/diesel in the same engine
in order to be liquid, hydrogen needs to be cooled to below -250c!!

 

I could be factually incorrect to be honest Phoenix, I gave my 10p worth before ive looked into it lol.
I know that they use hydrogen into a pressurised tank in the boot and that it uses the same engine, cant remember if its petrol or diesel but I think its petrol.

Ill have a look.

EDIT. Its a V12 that runs on Liquid hydrogen and petrol

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/cleanenergy/phase_2/cleanenergy.html

EDIT 2. your right about the temp though Phoenix, its stored in the 2 part tank at approx -250 degrees Celsius. You know your stuff

 

Marky, you are right, they do use liquid hydrogen, very unusual! I had read about the Hydrogen 7 before, but did not realize it used liquid hydrogen Unlike fuel cells that use hydrogen to generate electricity to run the drive shaft, the BMW injects the liquid hydrogen directly into the combustion engine much like a nitro injection Cool stuff, but there are some downsides from Wiki

exciting stuff and much closer to what I feel would be a more sustainable transport system, although I'm not sure skipping out on electric is the best way forward, hydrogen is not really renewable either! Edit: Oh and it only gets 4.7 mpg when using the hydrogen, ouch that sucks!

 

To be fair the full tank of liquid hydrogen does 125 miles so i'd be empty in 3 days anyway let alone 10-12
I'm not fully clued up on these new fuel idea's, I know that electric cars at present are crap, Hybrid cars are a con because I would never be running on the motor.

Theres a lot of information about the Hydrogen 7 on that bmw link i posted, obviously it does have a bias towards positives
Quote BMW.com

 

what about this then a bloody super fast electric car thats in production http://www.teslamotors.com/ but costs £76000 so they aren't going to sell many.

The thing that pisses me of about all this is from what I have seen and read is most of the climate change stuff isn't as bad as everyone is making out. Personally I think it's an excuse for governments to raise taxes and fuel companies to charge more.

BMW are infact working on a hydrogen & petrol based fuel system http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/bmw-hydrogen-7-production/

Sounds ambitious but good if it works.

 

who cares about what the government says? seriously what has it got to do with it? climate change aside, moving our society to a sustainable one is good for everyone, I dont care what your views or politics are, sustainability is the next major step in our society, to be at a technological point that we can become self sufficient is one of the most important goals we should no have. The Tesla is an awesome car, and they tackled it the right way, hit the high spenders first, they are pretty much sold out for the next 2+ years, so I wouldn't believe they wont sell many 100k USD is the same price as a hummer, and there are plenty of those Tesla are already working on a more mid market saloon type car for the masses

 

I don't think there is a sustainable option in electric cars. Everyone will have to put solar panel on their houses and wind turbines and not everyone has the money that they will get charged for that sort of equipment. Then people will have to get the charging unit in some place in their house.

Electric cars will die before they start or something bad will get found out just like that hybrids are actually really more damaging to the environment than a normal car. That is because to build one car parts come from different areas of the world so the shipping and transporting causes more damage than just building a car in a plant.

 

See the earlier posts GBL. BMW have actually been running hydrogen cars for a long time but the hydrogen 7 is actually the first 'production' one, its quite an impressive idea and does work, but as with everything it has its draw backs. It is however currently on our roads and driving around amongst us in a small quantity. The tanks are obviously very well tested for safety in crashes etc but I still wouldn't fancy trying it.
That said in the 7 series it would take a very large crash to get as far as the tank. We had the SCS mans 7 series and it had apparently been hit on the O/S/R corner at around 80 MPH when he was virtually stationary, the corner was slightly dented in but the car was to strong to straighten back out on a jig so had to have a new body shell. God I ramble on sometimes

All the main car manufacturers are actually putting a lot into trying to nail the fuel of the future, its big business and is costing them millions.

the global warming side of it is only a half the motivation, at the end of the day fossil fuels are not sustainable, they will run out hence the requirement for alternative 'fuels'.

 

Where do you get these ideas from GBL?

Everyone needs solar or wind on the roof to have a solar car? You don't have an electrified home yet or something? or perhaps those new fangled cars need 'special' electricity?

And people will need a charging station? maybe. I suppose those boiler things are a nuisance too right? getting an outside plug socket is going to be such a pita!

Hybrids use parts from multiple places? all brought together by boat and train to a single factory to be put together? then the finished product shipped somewhere else to sell?, unlike all the other cars on the planet?

Every time I take part on a thread that could remotely be an exciting discussion we get posts like this that remind me why we don't have many intelligent discussions on here anymore

 

Well i knmow what you mean but i disagree, as say for instance there are x amount of cars pumping x amount of gallons/litres of water, would that not have an adverse effect. Even tho water is better than all the poisoness gases i cant help but think that even though we have that natural cycle there will be a knock on effect. As all the water has to go somewhere, surely it will get caught in this natural cycle and have a doubling effect??? This is all theoretical and off the top of my head, really i should do some serious research but ive just moved house so thats my excuse

BTW, has anyone caught the programs on bbc2 about climate change, very interesting stuff.

Ed

 

More stuff here http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm about fuel cells including pictures of current cars.

Check out picture number 5.

 

Well if you download the BBC iplayer you will probably still be able to get the episode where they showed that the production process of a hybrid was actually more damaging to the environment than the production process of a BMW M5.

And to say that it isn't intelligent of someone to put a differnt stance on things isn't right. Not everyone is as enomoured by the thought of having to shell out loads of money on battery charging stations at their homes or having to shell out money they don't have to be involved in something like that. Most people will need government funding to be able to do that. It'll cost a hell of a lot more than a few hundred quid for a charging station. Plus the costs of petrol stations being converted and anything else involved is gonna cost a hell of a lot and who will pay, the tax payer.

So you say it's not intelligent discussion why is that? because somebody dissagrees and thinks it's just gonna be another excuse for taxes to go up and for people with money to line their pockets.

It's okay for someone in your position to say I welcome it but you can afford it, not many people can afford it and it would have to be considerably cheaper before it catches on in a big way.