Re: future fuels?

[James Montebello <jamesm@domain.elided>]

Yes, there are several working hydrogen engines now.  There have been
some fleet buses that use cyrogenic hydrogen in use for at least five
years now, on a trial basis.  BMW has built several hydrogen powered
cars, as has Mazda.  The engines are simply normal internal combustion
engines with specially tailored injection systems.  Mazda, in fact,
has found that the rotary is an exceptionally good hydrogen powerplant,
as it's main failing as a gasoline engine (poor thermal efficiency)
is a benefit when burning hydrogen, which is more volatile than gasoline.

Remember, too, that an oil refinery is hardly a zero-energy proposition,
esp. when one takes into account the energy spent in getting the oil
to the refinery.  A "hydrogen refinery" could simply be built on any
coastline.  Rather than use photovoltaics, one could use a tidal or
wave-powered electricity plant to drive the refining process, since
you're there on the coast, anyway.  All of this takes plenty of time
and engineering, of course, but it's all theoretically doable.

james montebello
(who'd much prefer hydrogen to electric cars, if only for the noise)

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002 Pottree@domain.elided wrote:

> In a message dated 02/23/2002 3:41:13 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:
>
>
> > As you can see Hydrogen has by far the highest calorific contant by weight
> > and therefore would be an ideal fuel as it produces no pollutants!
> >
> Not to get out of my depth, but I once attended a lecture on the topic of the
> hydrogen cycle and the potential of hydrogen as a fuel.  What I brought away
> from it was the notion that there is almost limitless hydrogen available in
> seawater, but to separate it from the O2 takes energy in itself, and the
> economics of the matter is that the amount of energy you get in the hydrogen
> is insufficient to offset the energy cost of liberating it from the water,
> but that at some time in the future this could turn around, for example, if
> very efficient photovoltaics were to make the electricity cost of the
> separating process very low.
>
> Assuming this or some similar breakthrough were to happen: what would it be
> like to drive a hydrogen-powered Alfa? How would that work?  What kind of
> powerplant would the car need?  How would that affect drivability?  And
> assuming for a test of the fuel in use now the cost of the fuel were not an
> object, is there a working hydrogen fuel engine now?
>
> Charlie
> LA, CA, USA
>
> --
> to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
> or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided