See Fred, we told you it will be Hydrogen...

Toyota is also about to sell a Hydro car by 2015....

ANY rotary 'range extender' is a YAWN..BAH, Humbug, BS, No, meh, what tha, crap, who wants one?...did I say BS.

 

Mazda's CEO told a Chinese News paper : "We will be prepared to respond when the hydrogen supply network is spread."

Paul.

 

That sounds overtly naughty.

BC.

 

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe so when you take that into account then Hydrogen makes tons of sense. However on planet Earth it isn't naturally occurring in it's base element but rather has to be separated somehow from another substance such as water. This means energy needs to be expended just to get us the hydrogen that we want to use as energy. That makes no sense at all but it doesn't mean that someone isn't stupid enough to do it just so they can claim to be green and all environmentally friendly. It's easy to make claims about nearly anything when you leave out large pieces of important information.

If efficiency is low then it takes time. So if we could generate hydrogen in our backyards from solar panels and store it until we want to use it, that isn't going to be a problem. That is as long as we want to wait a month just to have enough to travel a mile. It's possible though! Even if the solar panel had 100% efficiency, it's still nowhere near enough. That means if we have low efficiency but not a lot of time, we need very large arrays of panels. That will make the environmentalists mad because all of those panels will shade some poor piece of desert dirt that the west Indonesian spotted albino leopard lizard lives in and will destroy his habitat. People will scream at their local governments, "not in my backyard" and it'll never happen.

That means a final option is needed if we have limited capacity, limited generation time, and need to be done quickly. We need to increase efficiency. A lot. A whole lot. Like 10,000,000%. That probably won't happen in any of our lifetimes. This means that while you may see hydrogen appear at some point in the future as a primary fuel, it will not be as efficient as what we already have and it won't be as clean as anything we already have. Just because someone does it doesn't mean they aren't completely stupid for doing so. They just need to find people that are equally stupid to follow their approach. In this case those stupid people are anyone who like hydrogen as an internal combustion engine fuel for anything on this planet. It is good to know however that in 3 million years when it finally is viable, Mazda will be ready for it!

 

1. The Hindenburg burned because its outer shell was coated with magnesium powder to reflect sunlight and keep the hydrogen cool. The hydrogen all floated away as soon as the airbags were ruptured. I'm sure some of it burned, but it contributed very little to the overall fire because it was too busy floating away.

2. Fuel stores energy, it doesn't give away energy for free. There is no such thing as fuel that releases more energy, or even nearly as much energy, as was used to make the fuel in the first place. Fossil fuel just seems quick and easy because we didn't have to sit around waiting for it. Gasoline is distilled from crude oil, which was made from dead plants, which spent millions of years collecting sunlight, and then millions more years decomposing under the earth's crust. Electrolysis can run on solar power, just like photosynthesis, and it's far more efficient than photosynthesis, which is only 1% efficient.

So, wrong on both counts.

 

@RG:
My only objection to that perspective is that it implies that it is stupid to pursue the efficiency goal needed.

Entirely agree that it's a net negative energy gain. Agreed that in the present efficiency of gathering it, there is very little reason to pursue vehicles using it at this time.

But anyone that works to figure out how to swing the energy to a net positive is to be encouraged.

 

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NET POSITIVE ENERGY. Entropy always increases. If you want to organize your broom closet, you burn calories to do it. If you want to electrolyze water to make hydrogen, you use electricity to do it. If you want to make crude oil, you collect sunlight in plant sugars for millions of years and then compress it under thousands of tons per square inch for millions more years. None of those scenarios stores more energy than it consumes. What you're asking for is physically impossible.

The point of fuel is not to release more energy than it took to create the fuel, it's to store energy in a compact space, release it quickly when needed, and allow for quick refills when the tank runs empty. Those are the only things fuel is useful for. There is no such thing as net positive energy.

 

Perhaps I was mistaken in using that term, though the intent is not.

For any fuel, there is a point at which the gains exceed the costs. Hydrogen has not reached that point. Gasoline has.

 

Like I said, gasoline only appears to be cheap and easy because we didn't have to sit around waiting for it to be made. If people had any concept of how much energy it takes to make fossil fuel, they'd see why hydrogen fuel is so much better.

Here's a fun fact: the energy released by burning fossil fuel since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (~300 years) is equal to all the energy stored by every plant on earth for 10,000 years. And that energy was captured at 1% efficiency, so the total amount of energy used to produce the fossil fuel we've used thus far is actually equal to all the sunlight hitting all the plants on earth for a million years. And even that number doesn't account for the percentage of energy used by those plants just to keep themselves alive.

1,000,000 years of energy consumed in 300 years. 1,000,000 / 300 = 3333x. Think about that. We're burning fossil fuel three thousand times faster than Planet Earth can produce it. That is unbelievably fast. More fuel-efficient engines don't matter. Cleaner gas doesn't matter. There is absolutely no way for Planet Earth to provide fossil fuel fast enough to keep us happy. We have no choice except to switch to solar power and solar-generated hydrogen fuel.

Fortunately, direct sunlight contains 1000 watts per square meter, so the Sun provides more than enough energy for us. We just need to get our heads out of the sand and start taking advantage of it, because that is the only option that obeys the laws of physics.

 

Gasoline doesn't exist in nature either, it needs to be refined from crude oil...

Hydrogen gas and hydrogen-rich compounds are also byproducts of many commercial processes and can be captured to be used as fuel...

there's many ways to look at it.

 

Where I live (south west Ontario), the use of solar and wind farms have been generating so much electricity that much of the "surplus" energy from the Bruce Nuclear plant is sold to the US at highly discounted prices. This in turn has been a negative effect on the value of generating energy. There has been discussions of using that "extra" energy to power a Hydrogen Lab. Even the Chalk River Laboratories that supply most of the worlds medical isotopes are considering this change to supplement/compliment its development in science.
For the rate that these generators sell their "overstocked" energy, development of hydrogen seems to be more attractive.
You just have to look at it upside down, up the renewable energy to our classic energy demands and use our costly generation systems to create a new product to sell and export.
I'd like to see a evMazda RE with no batteries (EDLC) and petrol free someday. I'll still own classic petrol Rotaries though.

 

RG was not implying anything about the Hindenburg. He and I continue to have opposing points of view on Hydrogen by he certainly doesnt have any misunderstandings about the Hindenburg.

 

I am not disagreeing with you about anything

I entirely understand your point. Yes, we are using oil far far far faster than the earth can produce it. However, from an financially economical standpoint, companies can make money by drilling, refining, and selling. The cost of energy to make a gallon of gas is indeed far more than the energy contained in it. But it can be produced cheaply enough for people to be readily willing to purchase it. Even ethanol can reach this point (not counting government subsidies). The sun burns far more energy per day than the earth could possibly use, but yet the corn still uses that energy to grow and down the chain till it's liquid fuel at the pump.

Hydrogen isn't to this point of net gain yet, since the cost of production makes the price per energy increment far too high for regular use.

As I noted earlier, my use of "net energy gain" was incorrect and not really in line with the intent of my post.

No energy source that we attempt to use for propelling vehicles is made at a gain. Even the sun wastes far far far far far more of it's energy than we really need, and it too won't last forever.

 

I'm not sure how anything I said was taken as referring to the Hindenberg. I never once referred to it or even thought anything of it.

I have no problems with increasing efficiency. That's a good thing. Trying to be cleaner and more efficient by using a less efficient fuel that is inefficient to create makes zero sense on this planet as the primary fuel source for an internal combustion engine and should be abandoned in favor of a useful idea. Hydrogen is 100% useless in a car with 1 exception. I see it as potential in a hydrogen fuel cell. Electric motors are the future. Period. End of story. Forget about everything else. Electric motors will ultimately beat them all. It's what powers the motor(s) that is where the effort should be spent. This is where hydrogen has potential. As a form of power storage rather than being burned where it is worthless.

 

Yes, oxidizing hydrogen releases less energy than oxidizing hydrocarbons, so the extra efficiency of fuel cells and electric motors makes that lower energy output more practical. However, if burning hydrogen in a combustion engine pays for building the hydrogen-processing infrastructure necessary to power fuel cells, then it is a worthy intermediate step.

I wasn't specifically correcting what Bladecutter said about the Hindenburg, I was correcting anyone who might have thought the hydrogen gas inside the Hindenburg was responsible for the fire. As with most catastrophes, it was caused not by one point of failure but the failure of an entire system with many weak points.

 

I don't find switching over an entire fuel infrastructure to hydrogen being a viable option right now (or ever). The very best and in my opinion only viable option is to keep using what we've got and making it better which is gasoline and diesel but phasing in electric options. Equipping stations for hydrogen or any other alternative is ultimately going to be a temporary phase during the transition to full electric and factoring in the cost of changing the infrastructure to accommodate it, it's too expensive to justify. Basically any "intermediate step" is a waste of time and money. You don't phase something in only to know it's not going to be the solution. That's bad business and a very short sighted approach to things. Companies looking into hydrogen should really focus themselves on the electric propulsion side of things instead. At the end of the day hydrogen is some sci-fi fantasy that is best saved for rockets. We've got far better, cheaper, more powerful, and more readily available fuels to work with. You may as well try to run a car on banana peels. It's too much effort for what is ultimately just a passing fad of an idea. Now saying that, it doesn't mean we won't see it. Just because some idiot somewhere does it and convinces other people to do it doesn't mean that it isn't still a completely stupid idea.

 

I agree rotarygod. if we really had to we could use methane. Piston engines can be easily converted to use it with decent efficiency and reliability.

 

If switching an entire fuel infrastructure were never a viable option, we'd still be fueling our engines with coal and whale oil. Similarly, full-electric sounds like a great idea until you realize just what a pain in the *** it would be to have an 8-hour recharge or a battery swap as your only viable options. Fuel is useful in a mobility scenario because you can just dump it in the tank and carry on your way. Recharging will always be something that's only practical when you can stay overnight wherever you park, be it at home or in a hotel. Fuel cells that are refilled with hydrogen or some other hydrogen-containing fuel are much more practical than batteries alone.

Of course intermediate steps are appropriate in some situations. I really don't feel like getting into an argument about this, so I'm just going to say I'm actually an engineer and I have actually participated in infrastructure transitions, and I've applied all of the concepts I've talked about here with success. You are welcome to have whatever uninformed opinion you want.

 

Your infrastructure example isn't exactly well thought out considering steam is a very far cry from internal combustion but it was a nice try. Stop thinking in terms of electrics being only run on batteries. That's short sighted. You are thinking in terms of what hydrogen could be in some sci-fi future world but aren't giving electric propulsion the same attention. Changing an infrastructure from gasoline to less efficient hydrogen doesn't make any sense. Even if it were equally efficient it doesn't make any sense. Going from a typically less than 10% efficient system such as steam to one that is 3 times more efficient, cleaner, and more readily available such as gasoline was a no brainer.

Oh good. Another engineer. That makes 2 of us.

 

there ya go infrastructure

oh and dont throw the engineer flag. that doesnt help you at all. We(RG and I) have plenty of experience with people who shout "I know better because im an X" and it turns out they really dont. We only care about what you can show and say/show here in the conversation. Im not an engineer but I frequently hold conversations with them and often know more about a given topic (this one for instance) then the ones that shout 'hey I'm an engineer'.

 

I still say use hydrogen only in a fuel cell approach. That's where it makes sense. I just don't see the point of burning it and getting far less power out of it than what we already have. Ford needed a supercharged V10 to produce 200 hp and even Mazda's own hydrogen rotary was less than spectacular from a power standpoint although far better than the horrible Ford attempt.

I guess if you can convert cars on an island that is smaller than the city I live in to all run hydrogen then you don't really have to worry about range although it still doesn't change the fact that conversion is insanely expensive and the end result is that you are still using a horribly inefficient fuel. Oahu also has the worst traffic in the country so you aren't going very far in that small area anyways. May as well breathe better air while you go nowhere.

 

im with you Fred i prefer the fuel cell approach. but burning it isnt that bad especially if you've got it and on Oahu for instance it would be preferable than the gasoline. Of course with their NG infrastructure and TGC about to bring in shipments of LNG they'll be better off moving to burning NG first and then to fuel cells.

 

I'd rather see NG used than hydrogen when it comes to burning it inside an engine. We've got tons of it and it's easy to find.

There's going to be a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle running in next years 24 Hours of Lemans. Hopefully a Toyota won't take it out!

 

toyota does seem to be on a mission

and who'd have thunk that even a year ago- fuel cell and clean diesel running in the same Lemans

 

I'd have never guessed that a hybrid would win.