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MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power 108

Posted by timothy from the still-an-open-frontier-though dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bummer story on Science Blog for people looking to gas up on the H. Even with aggressive research, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle will not be better than the diesel hybrid -- a vehicle powered by a conventional engine supplemented by an electric motor -- in terms of total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, says a new MIT study. If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go."
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MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power More

MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power

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  • Not a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @01:41PM (#5486105) Journal
    Don't worry, by 2020 the main problems with C02 emission will be from third world countries with exploding populations anyway.
    • I doubt that exploding population will have enough resources to live for long. It'll balance out. But back to the article. If I'm correct, fuel cell vehicles take hydrogen and oxygen, and combine them using some form of catalyst, yielding electricity and water? Correct? Isn't this process completely reversible? I thought you could take two electrodes submerged in water, and seperate it into hydrogen and oxygen. If this is the case, then why would this be any less efficient than the generator that creates the electricity. Surely, this process only needs to be optimized a little for it to work. Why don't fuel cell cars keep the water they produce anyways, and just exchange it with a cheap seperator that does the process mentioned above?

      • Re:Not a problem. (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Congratulations. You've invented perpetual motion. I hope you publish.
        • Congratulations. You've invented perpetual motion. I hope you publish.

          I never said anything about 100% energy conversion. And the machine that seperates the water into hydrogen and oxygen components would be powered just like any electrical appliance.

          The car uses the energy stored in the seperated Hydrogen and Oxygen and converts it into electrical (and ultimately kinetic) energy. I did not imply the car converted this back into gas. I am just saying that this is a mechanism that would work with electricity as the Hydrogen and Oxygen generating engine, instead of relying specifically on solar, carbon based, geothermal or any specific type of fuel.
          • But the electricity has to come from somewhere. That is the problem with this idea.

            • Re:Not a problem. (Score:2, Insightful)

              by lcs-150 ( 89023 )
              There are in fact fuel cells that work both ways, creating current from combining hydrogen and oxygen and also flowing backwards to electrolyze water back into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the energy required for the electrolysis could come from regenerative braking, or turning the motor backwards when going downhill.
              Further, as stated the power has to come from somewhere, and there are always the renewable options of solar power, wind, hydroelectric and others. The article says that the study makes the assumption that hydrogen would come from hydrocarbons, which is one of the things that can be totally avoided with forethought. Why not just plug your car in when you get home at night, and have a full tank in the morning? Even electrolysis off of grid power is more efficient (though still a source of pollution) than many inefficient combustion engines.
            • Yes and no. What you fail to realize is that what I'm describing is a battery. What you and the article are describing is hydrogen and oxygen as the fuel. I'm just saying make the power transfer and storage mechanism universal. Any generator can generate electricity to do hydrolisis. Also, a power plant can generate electricity from the same fuel many times more efficiently than any car engine. But yes the electricity does come from somewhere. But this significantly reduces the problem space to just the domain of the power plants.
    • Wow, I didn't realize exploding people release CO2 emissions.

      At least their overcrowding problems will be solved!

    • But thats why I worry.

      Those countries have no gasoline infrastructure either(main point in the MIT studie: replacing the gasoline infrastructure with a hydrogen one).

      So building up traffic ways in China/India in combination with hydrogen infra structure in further combination with hydrogen powered cars/vehicles and probably houses ... that is something total different thant the mini MIT studie about northern america ...

      But well, the US are currently responsible for about 30% of the CO emmisions in the wh

  • Hmm (Score:1)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 )
    So diesel is better than Heroin for "gassing up"?

  • water, anyway (Score:1, Troll)

    by bobba22 ( 566693 )
    A few years ago I read a lot about some guy who had his car running normally on plain old tap water, I even contacted him and got him to send me plans of how he did it (foolishly I lent these to friends). He disappeared like smoke. It all comes down to who you want to believe, be it the petroleum companies or the greens. Only an idiot would think that the gas companies are spinning that green is good and they are really helping them. In the UK, they are running deisel cars on old cooking oil in some areas, works fine! The gas companies will have you believe that only gas is good until they are good and ready to sell us something different.
    • One day, somebody will devise a method of converting oil, to a nice clean substance that burns without any harmfull exhaust. This new process will also work on a 2:1 ratio! It will double it's source.

      Until then, let live the tyranny!

    • Re:water, anyway (Score:4, Funny)

      by skaffen42 ( 579313 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:10PM (#5486429)
      A few years ago I read a lot about some guy who had his car running normally on plain old tap water, I even contacted him and got him to send me plans of how he did it (foolishly I lent these to friends).

      Amazing! If you find the plans again you should publish them on the internet and end humankind's dependency on oil.

      BTW, want to buy a bridge?

    • There is such a thing as a car that runs on water. It's called a boat.

      Has anyone tried snake-oil as an alternative fuel? It's what I always think of whenever someone mentions a new engine that runs on [Camel dung | Dead cockroaches | Bacon rind | Copies of the Reader's Digest | AOL CDs].
  • Cause I'd really love to be as green as possible!

  • Let the political ranting begin (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:03PM (#5486356)
    Here in California we are old hands at eco-political ranting that disregards science. So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions? No? We can't support it.

    At least California recently backed off it's requirement for a certain percent of all new vehicles to be zero-emmissions (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located). The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).

    A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.

    So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics - I just hope they are wearing their asbestos underpants.

    • ...So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics...

      Actually, from what the short article says(which is probably incomplete) MIT chose the most "expensive" (from an environmental impact) way to create hydrogen and compared that to hybrid diesel. How would these two technologies compare if fossil fuels were not used to create hydrogen, but wind or solar energy was used instead?

      • MIT did not use these because you could never generate more energy than was used to create the wind or solar generation devices in the first place, so it's a (energy) loosing proposition. Bummer...
        • errr... What? Where do you get this information?

          The efficiency of electricity->hydrogen->motive energy would have to be microscopic for this to be true.
          • I think it has less to do with efficiency than size considerations. For the same size, an engine using fossil fuels can generate way way way way more energy than a fuel cell or other source of the same size. Perhaps this is analogous to this situation?
        • MIT did not use these because you could never generate more energy than was used to create the wind or solar generation devices in the first place

          windpower.org [windpower.org] claims an 80:1 ratio of produced energy to energy to construct and maintain for windmills. Granted they have a bias, but an 80:1 bias?

          A real reason not to include wind power is the expectation that even by 2020, there almost certainly won't be enough wind farms to provide enough energy for a significant fraction of the world's autos. So in the short run, hybrids will have the most dramatic effect on fuel economy.
    • So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions?

      At 50 or so MPG for the VW Golf TDI, the pollution must be pretty darn low. And, this car isn't even a hybrid. If hybrids are supposed to be even better than this, I'd say they are a good compromise for the eco-freaks out there.

      A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.

      That's because ferries have big-ass off-road-rated diesel engines, while cars have tiny regulated-out-the-wazoo diesel engines. Also, more of the ferry polution goes straight into the water. Motorized boats are pretty nasty when you think about it.
      • > At 50 or so MPG for the VW Golf TDI, the pollution must be pretty darn low. And, this car isn't even a hybrid.

        It's even more extreme than that if you take biodiesel fuel into account AND make it a hybrid. And then if you use a rotary diesel engine using biodiesel in a hybrid vehicle, you're going to be making one clean and lean machine. And, being a rotary diesel, it's going to last a very, very long time, too.

        And, using biodiesel instead of diesel means more work for farmers and related industries, and the ability to eliminate the import of foreign fossil fuels.
        • Oh yeah, also forgot that the infrastructure changes for switching to biodiesel are almost nil compared to doing the same for hydrogen.
        • And, being a rotary diesel, it's going to last a very, very long time, too.

          I have no argument at all against biodiesel hybrids. However, I have heard that rotary engines have different break-in requirements than regular reciprocating engines, and they can run poorly if the seals don't set properly. This could very easily be a non-issue for modern engines, so I wouldn't mind being re-educated.
      • Don't forget that in Europe, VW has diesel cars with even better efficiency - there are models of the Lupo (just a touch on the small side for most Americans) that currently attain 70-100mpg, and it was fairly recent that VW proved out a 239mpg concept vehicle [vwvortex.com]. Certainly not your best shot for everyone, but it proves that there is still quite a bit of room for improvement. A lower HP direct injection diesel can really rate well, and has significantly lower emmisions per mile than most vehicles on the road today.

        I'm certain that a hybrid DI diesel could end up being a very attractive solution for many cars in the long run. One thing to think about is trying to get the US to the same standards for diesel fuel as most of Europe (less sulfur, etc.). Biodiesel would help quite a bit towards that end, and could help farmers as well as consumers. It would take some time, but there are some really good solutions waiting out there.

        Coming from NJ to Minnesota, I was amazed that there aren't even basic car inspections required, much less the emissions testing. One can be rather frightened by the various vehicles running around on these snowy roads - i.e. windows made of plastic tarp and duct tape, severely cracked windshield, missing brake/turn signal, blue smoke belching from where a muffler/tailpipe used to be, and a bumper hanging at a 30 degree angle from twine. This was all just one car I was behind today on the way to work. Things like that should be taken off the road or fixed. Yech.
        • Coming from NJ to Minnesota, I was amazed that there aren't even basic car inspections required, much less the emissions testing.

          Then don't visit South Carolina--the shock might be too great for you! SC has no inspections (lots of billowing smoke around), no real registration inforcement (lots of cars without license plates), and a counterproductive property tax system (lots of old beater cars with no license plates and billowing smoke)...well, you get the idea.

    • Re:Let the political ranting begin (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bcboy ( 4794 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @03:05PM (#5486827) Homepage
      > (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located).

      A single point of emission is easier to clean than millions of points of emission, and there are advantages of scale.

      There are also higher air quality demands in high population areas that are better addressed by zero emissions vehicles. With millions of cars in a city, it makes sense to move the points of emission such that air quality is safe in all of California, instead of having localized unsafe areas.

      While at school at Caltech, I got an up-close and personal view of the problems in LA. The mountains trap the air, leading to a thick haze right over Pasadena. Zero emissions vehicles are a very good technology to address this problem.
      • Ah, but you don't remember the roaming blackouts from the last couple of summers in California, do you? The power generation infrastructure is already overburdened and you think this is going to help?
        • California has excess generating capacity, had excess generating capacity during the blackouts, and is building more plants. I'm not sure what your point is.

          The blackouts were caused by scads of plants being pulled off the grid at the same time, which was a result of deregulation -- there were no controls in place to prevent plants from pulling off the grid at the same time. Analysis has shown there was economic incentive for plants to do this -- pulling one generator off-line would spike prices enough that they made more money on the rest of their generators. Unlike other markets, the power grid does not degrade smoothly when the supply is limited -- it fails catastrophically. California's deregulation plan allowed producers to basically hold the state hostage, probably without even realizing that's what they were doing -- they merely had to act in their own economic self interest.

          This situation was made worse by the criminals at Enron -- who were closely involved in California's deregulation plan. Internal memos were discovered during their collapse describing how they milked California dry without actually helping to keep the grid up. This is last year's news.
      • true but there are also economies of transmision to take into consideration. There is a reason the US doen't have one big power plant in the middle of the country. You lose more the farther you transmit the power. Cars have the advandage of transmiting power about 6 inches. Sure we could put an enormous power plant east of the mounains but you'll have to pay for the power lost while getting from there to your car. If adaquate air quality could be achieved with hybrid cars there's a good chance that its

    • The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).

      Tell me something I don't know. My position on this subject was proclaimed publicly on the 'net better than a decade ago. Back then we still had sucky batteries that a century of physic

  • diesel (Score:3, Informative)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:07PM (#5486397) Journal
    Diesel has been used in Europe quite extensively for some time now. Superior mpg, and clean emissions.

    Of course, why not move up the schedule on particulate standards for big rigs, buses, garbage trucks etc. in the USA? World leaders my a$$...

    • Superior mpg, and clean emissions.

      Yes to the first.

      On the second point, I have some doubts.

      Diesel may qualify as cleaner compared to gasoline based on certains emissions like CO and NOx, but if you've ever been unfortunate enough to tail a diesel vehicle closely on the road you'll note that particulate emissions from diesel are a lot more noticeable.

      • Catalytic converters and particulate traps for diesel engines are a proven technology that reduce particulate emissions up to 99%. Adoption of these technologies is unfortunately slow, partly because of the usual footdragging of companies faced with new regulations, and partly because of the long lifetime of the diesel fleet compared to gasoline powered vehicles.

      • Think car, not big ass truck. Most cars in other parts of the world (not the USA) have diesel variants. Kinda like VW used to do with the old Rabbit...
  • Damn it! Don't you know that if we keep blindly supporting hydrogen fuel-cells without discussing where the energy comes from (probably coal power plants) then we can safely ignore more immediate and viable options such as improving fuel efficiency and encouraging hybrids?

    Come on, kids. Think of the auto and oil industries and all of their lobbyists.

    Geeze, some people. ;-)
  • One part of this equation I haven't heard about yet is: where are we going to get the Hydrogen? If fuel cells are to become ubiquitous, how much energy are we going to dedicate to farming the Hydrogen? And what methods are we going to use? Is there a procedure that won't use up more energy than is yielded by the "crop" it produces.

    If I'm not being clear, try this analogy.... Some are big fans of using ethanol from corn as a fuel alternative. What they don't realize is that (in the US at least) with gov. subsidies, it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn which kind of flushes any efficiency gained from using corn fuel down the drain. I hope hydrogen fuel cells don't take this route.

    Granted, as more are produced, the process becomes more and more efficient, but if it will always takes an order of magnitude or more energy than it yields, we're still right back to the fossil fuels thing.

    I guess all we can ask for is something that is slightly better/more efficient (or yields less pollutants) than what we have today, which makes me wonder why solar power (or a solar power hybrid) hasn't been thoroughly explored over the past fifty years.

    • Re:Where do we get the H? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:29PM (#5486594) Homepage Journal
      Windmills, of course.

      Tidal power, too.

      Solar?

      Some may argue the real draw of Hyrogen is not the clean-ness of the power as much as it is the ability to store it.

      Electricity is hard to store; Batteries must be huge to store large charges, and even then the larger th battery the faster it loses it's power in parasitic loss. Hydrogren, OTOH, is easy to store; presurize it, freeze it, whever. It's not as easy as a fluid such as oil, but loads easier than electrons.

      So you get windmills. No, not some nebulous organization, but YOU, the consumer. You have one or two that run all the time. They generate tiny amounts of power, and this power cracks water though hydrolosis to get your hydrogen and have it in a storage tank out back of your house (like propane). When you need it, you pull it out of the tank.

      Long story short: you get the same amount of energy back from a power cell as the engery it took to get the hydrogren in the first place (minus pesky thermodynaics): the good part is that using H you don't have to generate it all at one time -- you can do it over time using power from low-yield-long-investment instalation like wind, solar. geothermal, etc.

      (I still understand what you're saying, though -- until efficient molecule-crackers are common, we'll probably end up using hydrocarbon fuel to power machines to produce our hyrdo, or decompose hyrocarbons directly.. but we don't have many options at the moment)
      • Tidal power, too.

        This scares me too if implemented on a large scale. There was an article posted here a few months ago about the hypothesis that the earth was largely water-cooled (as opposed to primarily air/space-cooled as previously thought). If this hypothesis is true (I think it makes sense) and we stick enough resistance into the earth's water movement, it might be like slowing down the flow of coolant in your car or computer (not a good thing).

        I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, but what people don't seem to realize is that no matter what they do, each of their actions have consequences (reverse osmosis using sea water leaves behind a higher salt/organism content, etc.). Unfortunately, most people (at least in consumer-based societies) don't have the ability to consider, much less understand their impact on their surroundings. It seems empathy hasn't (historically) been a good survival trait.

        I just hope that we can up the ante for research done on improving our current methods. Our dependency on carbon-based fuels is huge. Our planet's CO2 converters (i.e., plants, etc.) can't keep up with our current output. Unfortunately, war seems to be a higher priority than harmonious survival and advancement (and I'm not talking solely about today in the US, this seems to be a theme throughout history for these curious man-animals).
        • Excellent general point, that we need to consider all of the consequences.

          In terms of tidal power though, the earth contains a heck of a lot of water, and what is more, the energy density of moving water is very large (e.g. compared to wind). I doubt that even if the entire world's energy needs were taken from tidal power it would make any appreciable difference to ocean currents etc.

          (The bigger problem with tidal power is the loss of habitat for wading birds etc where you dam off the estuary.)

      • So you get windmills. No, not some nebulous organization, but YOU, the consumer. You have one or two that run all the time.

        Why not put windmills on our cars? When I'm driving 80 MPH, that is some serious wind. The windmills could be built into the car's frame, like jet fighter's air intakes. They might even look pretty bad-ass!

        Then we can look into solar-panel car exteriors.
        • These windmills would significantly add to the drag of the car, requiring more energy to be pumped into it to keep it moving. of course, if they just popped out when the car was slowing down, it may help
          • These windmills would significantly add to the drag of the car, requiring more energy to be pumped into it to keep it moving. of course, if they just popped out when the car was slowing down, it may help

            Watching cars screeching to a halt at a blockage on a highway will be fun... Tires squealing, cars sliding, windmills popping up like crazy!

      • So everyone is going to stick a windmill in their backyard? Sounds kind of ugly to me. I doubt your neighbors would be too pleased about a big eyesore they have to look at all the bloody time. Also, how much does the windmill cost vs. how much power does it produce? Right now we've gotten to the point where windpower is an economically viable electricity source in certain parts of the country if the producers get big tax breaks for each kw produced. I'd hardly think the same would be true for small, individual producers of hydrogen.
    • Well we mine it from Jupiter of course...
      Duh.

    • > One part of this equation I haven't heard about yet is: where are we going to get the Hydrogen?

      It's on Aisle 1A, right next to the Stupidity. :)
    • it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn

      I call bullshit on this one.

      There is no way it takes 5 gallons of crude oil to create a bushel of corn. A gallon of crude costs about $ .50, while a bushel of corn costs under $2.00. If this was true, every corn farmer in America would have gone broke a long time ago.

      Not to mention, it would take 30000 (5 gal/bush * 150 bush/Acre * 40 Acre) gallons of crude to grow a small field of corn.

      There was over 9.5 Billion bushels of corn produced in the US in 2001. At 5 gal/bushel the corn industry would have accounted for over 19% of the total oil usage.

      • Re:Where do we get the H? (Score:4, Informative)

        by mbogosian ( 537034 ) <mattNO@SPAMarenaunlimited.com> on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @07:08PM (#5489326) Homepage
        it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn

        I call bullshit on this one.

        There is no way it takes 5 gallons of crude oil to create a bushel of corn. A gallon of crude costs about $ .50, while a bushel of corn costs under $2.00. If this was true, every corn farmer in America would have gone broke a long time ago.

        From this article [nytimes.com]:

        One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill President Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are really being served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow ever more corn, this despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus the plant already produces. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. But rather than design a program that would encourage farmers to plant less corn -- which would have the benefit of lifting the price farmers receive for it -- Congress has decided instead to subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that zea mays dominion over its 125,000-square mile American habitat will go unchallenged.

        From this article [nelivestockalliance.org]:

        Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes vast quantities of oil -- 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.

        From this article [cozine.com]:

        The corn, in breathtaking defiance of economic common sense, sells for 50 a bushel less than it costs to produce, without regard to the foregone value of the water.

        From this blurb about Frank Moore [tfaoi.com]:

        The amount of fossil fuel needed to produce one bushel of corn has been estimated at anywhere from one to six gallons.... Today's farm requires fossil fuels to manufacture fertilizer, power machinery and transport the final product. The short-term benefit is the corn gets to market more economically. The long-term effects are pollution, soil destruction and the depletion of a non-renewable resource.

        These are just a few references availabe. The point is that corn production is subsidized and it uses a huge number of natural resources. In the words of South Park's portrayal of Johnny Cochrane, "this does not make sinse".
        • These are just a few references availabe. The point is that corn production is subsidized and it uses a huge number of natural resources.

          Sorry, I can't believe any estimate with a 6X range. This isn't a future projection, the numbers exist. If somebody really wanted to do the work, they could get a much more accurate value. Not to mention neither of the articles quoted give any factual basis for the numbers, they are just stated as fact.

          Of course both of the articles are completely unbiased as they bo
  • --the biggest problems with hydrogen are physically storing the stuff, and getting it. Besides that it's great fuel. Requires electroylis now for the most part, and fuel cells are expensive to make and use some exotic materials in rather short supply for the catalysts. Electric motors are old hat, efficient enough of course, they will 'work" quite well if you can get electricity to them. Now obtaining hydrogen could be more easily accomplished if the currently running experiments with extracting it from some species of algae pan out. That's really the only chemical breakthroughs I have been impressed with. With that said, I also prefer the hybrid diesel/electric model as opposed to the various other schemes proposed, at least for "right now". Bring it on, I want a 4 wheel drive pickup model. Works already on several platforms in commercial useages. Lcocmotives, very large construction equipment, submarines, etc. Making it work for cars and normal trucks is just engineering detail of scale. And from my use of generators, I can see quite readily how running at a set optimum level increases efficiency, it's just easier to do and the sweet spot for the engine tune levels is reachable and constant. The parts that I think will prove problematic once large scale adoption occurs will be in the same areas you see now with "regular" vehicles, the electrical systems. They suck, work until they don't then it's a freeking nightmare to analyse and repair. More modern vehicles I mean. Hard to shield adequately to make them functional in impact/vibration areas and in particular with corrosion. Just about anyone who lives in the rust belt can offer a personal horror story about vehicle electronics if they have been driving any length of time I would wager. Won't even go into braking systems and repairs.

    Back to the hydrogen from algae, here is the Google link using those search terms, several good hits, neat stuff [google.com]

  • Hydrogen was overrated anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chriso11 ( 254041 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:22PM (#5486528) Journal
    Politically, for Bush, there were two cool things about pushing for Hydrogen cars:

    1) It has a neat hi-tech feel that even the greenest couldn't complain about;

    2) It means he didn't have to do anything about SUVs or CAFE or such, 'cause, after all, he supports Hydrogen.

    Why is it any surprise that Hydrogen is not a real viable solution?
    • I really wonder what Bush is up to. I mean he's also been pushing many laws which aren't viable solutions to the official problems. Makes you wonder about the Iraq thing.

      Is he making a habit of not giving the real reasons for a cause or "crusade" as he likes to put it? Or he's just being a puppet?

  • If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go.
    Even if every nation on earth mandated high-efficiency diesel / hybrid / whatever for all new vehicles today, we wouldn't see significant impact before 2020 anyway. Imho, better to focus effort now on developing production & infrastructure for hydrogen, where the true long-term benefits are, so when the storage & engine technology matures we'll be ready to put it to work.

  • Where is the nuclear option? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jakedata ( 585566 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:29PM (#5486599)
    Nobody ever mentions nuclear power in relation to hydrogen manufacture. It is undoubtedly in the back of some people's minds but they dare not mention it for fear of alienating many of the very people that support hydrogen.

    Now I am not advocating the proliferation of today's (really yesterday's) messy fission plants but let's support research into modern nuclear technologies be they fusion or fission.

    Nuclear CAN be clean. Give it a chance.
    • Just what's wrong with fission, anyway? According to this list [ior.com.au], nothing touches uranium for energy density. Nothing even comes close.

      Coal has an energy density of a little less than 30 GJ/tonne (10^9 Joules per 1000 kg). Natural gas is almost 40 GJ/tonne. Kerosene and gasoline are about 45 GJ/tonne. Metallic uranium has a listed energy density of 560E3 GJ/tonne, twelve-thousand times as dense as gasoline!

      In other words, to get as much energy from coal as we would from one metric ton of uranium metal, we'd have to burn nineteen thousand three hundred ten (19,310) metric tons of coal.

      You'd think that finding a place to put the equivalent of a cube 37.4 cm on a side [webelements.com] (actually smaller; the fission products would be lighter and smaller than the parent uranium!) would be easier for the environmentalists to handle than burning 19,310 metric tons of coal!
      • Just what's wrong with fission, anyway?

        1) Security issues. We have to keep fissionables away from terrorists. And if any nation we don't like wants to start a fission power plant, we apparently reserve the right to call "weapons of mass destruction!" and bomb them.

        A solution that only some nations are allowed to implement is no good.

        2) Fuel production costs. Digging uranium out of the ground is not a gentle endeavour.

        3) Disposal and decomissioning costs. We still don't have a solution for nuclear waste.

        Given all that, money spent on fission power plants would be better spent on improving efficiency of use (develop cheap LED lightbulbs and put them everywhere, offer interest-free loans for home insulation, etcetera) and on fusion research.

        • 1a) Granted.
          1b) When have "we" bombed a country for building a nuclear power plant?

          2) Digging coal out of the ground is not gentle either. Even a small facility like Plant Wansley [opc.com] requires two train loads of coal per day. As a student at Georgia Tech I visited Wansley as part of my power & distribution class.

          3) I thought "we" did! [epa.gov]

          Power generating companies are already giving all kinds of credits for reducing use-- not because of nuclear energy, but because NO new generation facilities have been built anywhere in ages. Since "we" haven't allowed new generation facilities of any kind to be built, there has been increasing pressure on existing facilities as demand has increased. Why do you think your utility company keeps pressuring you, even offering cash, to dump that old AC unit for a new 14+ SEER heat pump?

          I still maintain that nuclear is the most efficient power technology on a energy-per-pound-of-fuel scale available today, and the problems you mention are not insurmountable as long as "we" refrain from spreading FUD.
    • > Nuclear CAN be clean. Give it a chance.

      It can keep our air clean, but it's not "clean" in any form that I'm aware of. Most fusion scenarios still involve generating a lot of radioactive waste.

      Given the choice of viable fusion and viable solar, solar is clearly the better option for most applications. It remains to be seen which will be viable first, though there's a huge amount of clean solar technology available today that's simply not being used -- thermal applications of solar, for example, are cheap and effective.
      • Are you talking about fusion or fission? If fission, I submit that the waste materials are easily contained and stored -- no smoke dispersed on the wind -- and is thus cleaner than any alternative.
      • That's fission not fusion. Fission involves splitting the atoms, something we do currently with nuclear bombs and in nuclear power plants. Fusion involves the process that powers our Sun, combining hydrogen into helium, a very very good process for giving off energy. But it's hard to handle fusion, you need very powerful magnetic fields.

        Fission is easy to handle (relative to fusion), and is rather safe now-a-days. Much cleaner then coal or oil burning plants are right now.
        • > That's fission not fusion.

          No, that's fusion. I'm quite aware of the difference. Fusion is frequently pitched as "clean" nuclear energy, because in theory it generates less or less dangerous radioactive waste that fission. If you visit some labs that work on this stuff, you'll find no end of promotional material on this subject. But it's not at all clear that the "cleaner" fusion reactions will ever be viable, and most of the other fusion reactions being considered are quite dirty.
    • Would nuclear power really be effective for hydrogen production? I'm assuming the nuke would generate electricity to electrolyze water. Not very efficient. (Q: Is there a more direct / efficent way to crack H2O?) Then again, with a lot of nukes generating very cheap electricity (delivered over superconducting lines?) H could be produced locally, or even in-home. No need for expensive, ugly pipelines.

      Anyway, I agree with you 100% on the need to develop modern reactor technologies, be they used to pump hydrogen or electrons. The nukes we have now are nearing the end of their useful lifetimes, and if newer, safe(r) reactors aren't available, they'll be replaced with coal- or gas-fired plants - yecch.

      • If I recall correctly, water can be heated to the point where it disociates into H & O rather than just superheated H20. Couldn't we then seperate them by charge difference?

        It may not be worth the inefficiency and I don't have time for the googling right now.

        Give me a nuke plant over coal any day. Give me a practical solar H plant on my roof that doesn't cost $100K and I will think about it.

        -j
      • If you're interested in newer nuclear reactor technologies, examine this /. article, which contains information about reactors that use dense steam instead of water to carefully control nuclear reactions and allow us to fission U-238 instead of just the more rarely occuring U-235, in essence using what is currently nuclear waste as an additonal fuel. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/0 3/2057212&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=134
      • No need for expensive, ugly pipelines.

        Hydrogen pipelines would be expensive initially, but would solve a lot of the grid problems facing the US today. Mostly because there is far less transmission loss associated with pipelines than with power lines. I think it is far more likely (in the long run) that electricity will be produced in the home, rather than hydrogen produced in the home...

  • No news here (Score:3, Informative)

    by bcboy ( 4794 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:54PM (#5486757) Homepage
    The only thing they're saying is that using a carbon based fuel to generate hydrogen isn't better than using the fuel directly. This isn't terribly surprising. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, since we don't have piles of it ready to burn. The only way it will be a clear win is if there is a viable way to generate it without using carbon fuels, e.g. solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

    The headline is a bit misleading.

  • Two points (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Froze ( 398171 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:59PM (#5486787)
    One, this result assumes that the production of H is a derivative of fossil fuels. that is currently the only economical means to do so, however! Fusion energy is not only the most enviromentally sound means of producing energy, but it has a higher energy density than just about any other energy production technology (barring matter/antimatter etc.) We all know that fusion has been somewhat pie in the sky, but it is a viable alternative and less than 20 years away. See http://www.iter.org

    Two, Until we can light the fusion flame and keep a sustained burn, I would seroiusly love to have on of these [ecycle.com]. A hybrid bike that gets 180mpg and will do 0-60 in 6 seconds.
    • We all know that fusion has been somewhat pie in the sky, but it is a viable alternative and less than 20 years away.
      (chuckle) Fusion's been "less than 20 years away" since the '60s. I'm all for it, but the breakthrough that makes fusion power reactors possible still appears to be a long way off.

  • Pouring money into hydrogen infrastructure. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Odinson ( 4523 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @04:03PM (#5487384) Homepage Journal
    The only problem isn't with research, but the appearance of research. Big government needs to dump big money into research for fueal cells for any company to seriously consider building nationwide chains of natural gas to hydrogen converter stations.

    Diesel and Gas, however just require slight modification to exisiting use and application. They require little new infrastructure. They are going to happen naturally in the market now anyway.

    Hybrid cars will be the temporary stop. Eventually leading to fuel cell models. Hybrids don't need any more boost than the current state of oil prices.

    Look at Tommy's new hot rod, he got the big wet one!

  • Diesel or Biodiesel? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KillerBob ( 217953 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @04:55PM (#5487955)
    There's a difference. Biodiesel [biodiesel.org] is available today, and will run in all Diesel engines. It's clean and cheap: 1L of vegetable oil will make 900mL of Biodiesel. It's becoming even cheaper to manufacture as it comes into use, and with the rising price of oil, Biodiesel is approaching par with gasoline.

    Take a look at the emissions here [biodiesel.org]. Significantly cleaner than Diesel, which is cleaner than Gasoline anyway.

    Biodiesel is definitely a much more viable and clean alternative to hydrogen fuel cells. It isn't quite as clean as H2 cells, but it's available now.
    • And how many miles to the acre/hour does your car get? Could you support California's fuel needs if you dedicated all of Nebraska to biodiesel production?
      • If petroleum does regenerate quickly (ala Thomas Gold), then the problem is small - just becoming more efficient and planting tons of trees, converting them and fruits to products like furniture, paper etc will take out the excess CO2.

        If petroleum doesn't regenerate at a sufficiently quick rate, and nukes aren't in favour, the options get rather limited e.g. bio oil, methanol.

        The dependency on oil is so great that no matter what there'll be a huge economic impact. Just like doubling the oil prices will ha
    • Using biodiesel actually REDUCES the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Think about it, plants grow and absorb CO2. PART of the plant (the oil pressed from the seeds) is burned. The rest of the plant is (presumably) composted into fertilizer for next year's crop. So most of the CO2 in the plant ends up returning to the soil. Over the course of 100 million years it might even turn into petroleum.
    • Biodiesel is great and promising in many ways, but in no way is it cheaper than petro diesel -- at least for large scale commercial production. It's true that a farmer or other industrious user can make biodiesel for his own use for about a third to half the cost of petrodiesel, but this assumes he's getting used fry oil or something for free. Also, he's doing it in steel drums in his backyard, not building a plant that's efficient and safe for large scale production. Companies who have done this must charge about double the retail price of petro diesel in order to break even, and that's wholesale -- plus, that's still using free, used fry oil as a base stock. If veggie oil had to be produced for biodiesel, the cost would go up considerably. The best estimates are that commerical biodiesel would always cost at least 2-3 times as much as petro diesel. There's no getting around the fact that it's cheaper to pull oil out of the ground and use normal petro refining techniques than it is to grow crops and refine them into biodiesel.

      Plus, what would happen if so much farmland were devoted to growing crops for fuel? What are the environmental ramifications of that?
    • If you look up this article,

      Moriarty,P. et Honnery, D., "Alternative transport fuels: the long-term future",
      Int. J. of Vehicle Design, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2003

      you will see a wonderful look at the alternative fuel sources. Bio-fuels take energy AND considerable plant resources to make; resources that are not adequate to meet any serious demand. Fact is, fossil fuels are it for now and the very long term. Long term? Yep: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html.

  • Why can't we build a hybrid hydrogen car? Sure it will take longer that just a hybrid deisel or just a hydrogen car, but it seems like it would combine the best parts of both worlds.
    • Uh, conventional hybrids are advantagious because internal combustion engines are grossly inefficient when accelerating and idleing. Hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity on demand, so accelerating is just as efficient as coasting, and they don't use any energy (well maybe a very little to run the cars electrical system) at idle.
  • Why was this story linked to Science Blog and not the actual MIT press release? [mit.edu] Science Blog adds absolutely no content whatsoever to this story, they simply cut and pasted the first two paragraphs as a summary and then included the rest of the press release. If you want to mention that you saw this at Science Blog that would be one thing but saying that "there's a story on SB about X" is really pushing it.

    Next up on the gripe list, slashdot story submissions that consist of a cut and paste of the first few sentences of the linked content. If you can't write a concise summary of the article in your own words, then you probably didn't read it, you're lazy, or you lack the language skills of a ninth-grader.
  • There's a wealthy of knowledge and production capability for diesel systems. By developing a hybrid solution, you optimize the diesel engine to operate at a specific speed/output range and use the efficiency of electric motors to operate over a wide range of speeds.

    Diesel hybrids have already been around for a long time powering freight trains. It's about time that car companies start using that approach!

    Plus, there's fueling infrastructure. That makes it much more pallatable for potential customers.

  • My hunchback was correct! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @10:22PM (#5490729)
    If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.

    Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.

    What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.

    The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.

    These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.

    Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.

    Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.
    • Diesel was ruined in the United States by the notorious Oldsmobile 350 (5.7L) Diesel Engine.

      It came out in 1978 and was supposed to be the solution to all our energy problems. A huge Olds 98 with a diesel engine could get 25 city/30 highway mpg. (Compared to the gas 98: 17/22)

      Unfortunately, the diesel had a few problems:

      1) It was a cheap knock off of the gas Olds 350. However, diesel runs at much higher compression. The engine couldn't take it. There were cases of cylinder heads literally being blown off the engine by the high (22:1) compression.

      2) It didn't have the horse power that the gas engine had. It could cruise on the freeway once it got to speed, but couldn't get out of it's own way if it had to. They later came out with a 4.1L diesel V6 which was even worse.

      3) No one in the USA knows how to take care of a diesel. No one really knows how to fix them either. There are a bunch of little things that a diesel requires that a gas engine doesn't. Not expensive or troublesome, but still required. GM didn't really educate the public on this aspect.

      4)The U.S. taxes the hell out of diesel fuel. Diesel is less expensive than gasoline to produce, but after taxes, diesel costs more at the pump.

  • What??!! The car manufacturers LIED to us??! I can't believe it! You mean that technology we've had for years can reduce emissions just as much as undeveloped potential technology 5 to 10 years from now! Scandalous!

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