US Army Pursues Hydrogen Fuel Concepts 442
securitas writes "According to GlobeTechnology/AP, the US Army is excited about the potential of hydrogen-powered tanks. The interest is the result of a technology demonstration that took place at Auburn University in December. Scientists have invented a process that removes the carbon and sulfur from hydrocarbon fuels like oil and gasoline. Hydrogen-powered vehicles could go three times farther than diesel-powered counterparts. DoD officials say 'it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.' The new process could let them take advantage of the existing oil industry infrastructure. Auburn University scientists 'realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel' and 'took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.' The Auburn team is now pursuing military funding."
Oil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go. Notice the byproducts: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. Sound familiar? Aren't those a large part of the reason people have been whining about the need for alternative fuels?
The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily. (Try loading 40 tons of electricity on a truck.) We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process. The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen. So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.
Liberating hydrogen from oil is expedient in the short term, but it's stupid in the long term. Isn't short-term thinking how we messed up our atmosphere in the first place?
That said, I'm happy to see an outfit with the size and clout of the U.S. Army getting serious about hydrogen. They can drive development to the point that the consumption end is a going concern, whether the production end is well thought out or not. Once there's a sizable demand for hydrogen fuel, there'll be money enough for bright people to tune up the supply side.
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, one of the big obstacles to using hydrogen as a fuel is that it ISN'T very easily transportable. As a gas, you have to employ very high pressures that involve expensive tanks. Compress it all the way to a liquid and you've burned up so much energy that its no longer attractive as a more efficient source. Chemical storage (metal hydrides, etc) is being researched, but AFAIK, it isn't ready to be main-streamed.
We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process.
That's a great plan, except that the energy to do those things has to come from somewhere. It can't be hydrogen, because it would take more hydrogen than you are making to do it.
The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen.
Let's be clear about what we're talking about. I'm not sure how much hydrogen you are planning on making (total replacement of hydrocarbon fuels?) but you will have to build enough solar/wind/wave/hydro/whatever installations to nearly match the amount of energy being produced by hydrocarbons for whatever application you are interested in. The "nearly" shows up because hydrogen power IS generally more efficient than hydrocarbon based power. This is a nice theoretical solution, but practically it would be very expensive and difficult, even if it is possible.
So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.
A lot of people consider water vapor to be a green house gas.
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who knows anything understands that water vapor is indeed a greenhouse gas and contributes more to the natural greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide does.
However, the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is very close to its saturation value, so excess water vapor will precipitate out quickly.
The saturation vapor pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 1000 PSI, so excess carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere will not precipitate. It must be removed by other processes (e.g., photosynthesis), which run a lot more slowly. Current estimates of the residence time of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere are around 60 years.
Other than this, your criticisms of hydrogen as fuel is right on target. I would only add that nuclear power looks like a very good source of power for industrial-scale electrolysis. This still wouldn't address the question of transporting hydrogen, though.
Re:Oil? (Score:4, Informative)
Since there are no wells of molecular hydrogen anywhere on the planet, hydrogen will *always* be only a storage medium, *never* a direct energy source
Err, well unless you count nuclear fussion. I suppose that's a little ways off though!
But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go.
Have you got any other suggestions? There are only two widely available sources of hydrogen. The first is water, which is all well and good except that you only ever get out less energy than you put in (ie it's purely an energy transport mechanism, you still need a power plant to provide the electricity in the first place). The second widely available source of hydrogen is in hydrocarbons.
Of course, there are some advantages to getting power from hydrocarbons the fuel cell way instead of internal combustion engines. First off, the real big problem with current energy production is that burning hydrocarbons produces all kinds of sulpher dioxide, nitrogen monoxide/dioxide, etc. By separating out the hydrogen using a membrane you shouldn't get nearly as many of these emissions. Also, if the claim of 3x the efficiency is accurate than it would be a BIG bonus, though most numbers I've heard place the efficiency as being much lower. Finally, a fuel cell powered car would probably work better with regenerative breaking than what you get in current hybrid cars, since you would now just have an all-electrical system instead of a gas motor and an electrical motor. At the very least it should make things easier/cheaper than hybrids.
The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily
Err, actually it's not all that easy to ship hydrogen. It's a gas, and a VERY light gas at that. You really need to compress it a whole lot before you can get any meaningful quantity. You also then have the problem of shipping a lot of highly compressed and highly combustable gas. In short, it's not easy at all. Storing is extremely troublesome for the same reasons. Shipping and storing fossil fuels is MUCH easier.
The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen
I love wind, solar, wave, etc. energy as much as the enxt guy, but lets face it, they aren't anywhere near capable of providing us with our CURRENT energy needs, let alone the SIGNIFICANTLY higher energy needs if we started doing electrolytic converters for all of our cars!
Re:Oil? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Tanks? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a reason tanks run on diesel and not gasoline...
Re: Tanks? (Score:3, Insightful)
-B
Re: Tanks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Daniel
Re: Tanks? (Score:5, Informative)
And, oh yes, the bright searing flame you see in the picture? It's the paint. It was basically thermite. Powdered metal. The company wanted pretty silver shiny skin. One electrical arc, and WHOOMP - hydrogen gets the blame.
And fuel cells fueled by gasoline or diesel are in no way more dangerous than a straight IC design! As a matter of fact, since you get more MPG, you can have a smaller tank of what is essentially napalm.
Hydrogen is not "dangerous" in the sense that gasoline is. Gasoline is heavy, adhears to surfaces, ignites easily when vaporized, burns outward in a mushrooming effect, and also is every vehicle in America - and is dispensed from gas pumps like it is as safe as water!
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Nicely said.
Re: Tanks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, no. You need that shiny surface for thermal regulation, otherwise when the blimp gets warm, it goes wayyy up....
Re: Tanks? (Score:4, Interesting)
The designers were well aware of the dangers of Hydrogen gas and designed the airship to use Helium.
At the time the only source of Helium in large volumes was the United States. Already the US Government wasn't thrilled with the Nazi Government and blocked the exportation of Helium to Germany for use in Airships. So the owners used the only lifting gas that they had readily available, Hydrogen. BTW it had the unfortunate side effect of allowing them to increase the number of passengers on that final flight over what was originally designed.
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oil? (Score:2)
Just saying, it's not the military that came up with it. They are jsut waking up to what it implies about the logistics of refueling vehicles -- a factor of three improvement in range means fewe
Nuclear Alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
I could see the Navy building Nuclear Powered "Hydrogen Tankers", ships that could both store and provide Hydrogen Fuel. These ships could be moved to an operational zone and parked to produce all the Hydrogen fuel needed for an expeditionary force.
Re:Nuclear Alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
Off course, the other name for such a ship will be "target". Not only would an enemy dry up the fuelsupply for your landbased forces, but he would also be able to spread radiactive waste (if he gets a good hit) among your fleet.
Re:Nuclear Alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear Alternative (Score:2)
Re:Nuclear Alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
Off course the 'Hydrogen Tanker' will be well protected, but I'm an airforce guy. We're more conserned with how to take targets out than how to defend them. One of my favorite stunt when a naval officers points out that his ship has the capability to engave X number of targets at once is to ask what will happen if someone attacks with X+1 missiles... it's called 'swamping the defence' and has been a good tactic since man first started doing war.
I'm not saying a 'Hydrogen Tanker' is a bad idea - it will all
Re:Nuclear Alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
You can use a Nuclear Submarine Blueprint. Replace the missle bays with hydrogen tanks. Use the electricity from the engines for splitting the hydrogen from seawater while out at sea somewhere hidden. Come in near the coast to offload.
In order to make it harder to guess where the sub is while offloading run multiple temp pipelines into the water. The sub docks with a random one of these out at sea and pumps in the hydrogen to a land based fuel station. When you are done, the sub goe
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Informative)
No that is the usual way of getting hydrogen. The other way involves getting it from water but that requires a great deal of energy - in fact, the same amount of energy that you get back when you turn it back into water in the fuel cell (really a fair bit more due to inefficiencies).
This is the problem with many alternative energy sources - they all sound good but there are always downsides that don't get much press. People talk about hydrogen like it's magic energy for free - but you have to GET the hydrogen from somewhere, either from oil, in which case we're back were we started. Or from water which takes more energy to process than you get from the fuel cell. At that point you can simply think of fuel cells as a type of battery. It's a way to store energy which must be produced in some other way.
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Interesting)
The hidden key to this story is actually catalysis. Methinks that sooner than you'd expect, we're going to be doing just fine throwing grass clippings, old newspapers, orange peels, and most any old kind of organic residue into the hopper and then driving off, leaving a cloud of water vapor and a stash of nicely organized chemical elements, which will also turn out to have some interesting uses.
Re:Oil? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oil? (Score:3, Informative)
Likewise, you need to get energy from some source to drive the hydrogen production process. Hopefully you don't plan on getting that from fossil fuel sources, since they you h
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is an inescapable fact that is often overlooked by advocates of conventional fuel usage: There is a finite amount of fossil fuel on this planet. Once that's used up, that's it. We're screwed... BIG time. There's no getting it back without waiting a few million years for its users to all decompose back into oil. Now how long this oil is going to last us at the rate we are currently using it may be up for debate, but it is irrefutable that we are consuming it faster than it gets created, so eventually, however long from now, if we keep using it at the rate that we are, we *WILL* run out.
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the entire universe. Further, even though there is a finite amount of it on this planet as well, when you burn it, the exhaust is pure water vapour. No more dumping poisonous gasses into the atomosphere. Further, this water vapour will eventually fall back as rain, and the net result will be cleaner rain water as hydrogen fueled cars become more popular.
With the application of some amount of energy (yes, I know it isn't cheap), hydrogen can always be extracted from water (which, considering hydrogen combustion exhaust *IS* water, makes it infinitely renewable). It is the energy for this extraction process that would be the greatest contributing factor in determining how much an end consumer would pay for gasoline. I don't think any serious advodate of Hydrogen fuel would insist that this process would be for free. But because such extraction processes could be large scale and centralized, alternative energy sources such as geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, or even nuclear power could be employed to obtain the energy ncecessary to extract the water from the hydrogen (a process which, as a convenient byproduct, also produces pure Oxygen which can be collected or released immediately as seen fit). Stricter pollution control measures could reasonably be enforced at such centralized locations than might be also possible in mobile internal combustion engines, so again the negative impact that using such fuel would have on the environment could be minimized.
Would worldwide adoption of Hydrogen fuel spell an end for the oil companies that have invested so much in their current industry? Not at all. Why couldn't current oil companies instead choose to run the plants that extract hydrogen from water for shipping to fuel pumping stations? That way, they would still get the same slice of the pie that they were always getting. Oh, their monopoly may be cut into a bit, but they currently have the resources at their disposal to implement such processes on a scale that would, in general, be likely to be cleaner and more efficient than the processes that might be employed by those with lesser capital to start out with. Further, if they wait until after there isn't enough oil to go around before starting this, their income will have already taken a hit and they simply won't have the same resources that they do now.
Also, there will always be a demand for oil, even if it is not used as a fuel. Oil is employed in many different manufacturing processes, not to mention also used as lubrication. Oil pumps won't be useless in such a world, they just wouldn't need to be as plentiful.
Re:Oil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can be done with gasoline, too, of course. When car manufacturers go on about "fuel cells", they are not talking about hydrogen tanks. They want to use plain old gas out of a plain old gas station.
Makes sense to the oil companies as well.
Not quite a perfect process, emissions wise, but at least you get three times the miles per gallon, and fewer impurities are s
Re:Oil? (Score:2)
Are you talking about a preprocessing, or dynamic processing of the fuel in the car?
Re:Oil? (Score:5, Informative)
The process actually has many advantages for the Military and for civilians. But first people have to quit viewing hydrogen as a fuel and see it more like a battery that they charge up. It is not a Energy Source. It is an Energy Storage Media.
Working on such research myself for the USAF *yes military* I have learned a lot about what is going on. The process and demand for such changes is not exactly like what the media tend to report.
The reason we burn gasoline etc is to provide the Heat Catalyzed Hydrogen for conversion to Steam when reacted with Oxygen. While the carbon provides some energy it is really for running a Steam Engine. This cycle is limited thermally to about 38% efficient of the original energy in the steam. This is functionally further limited by other factors leaving current petrol engines about 25% to 28% efficient thermally.
The process for Cracking Hydrogen from fuel uses about 25% of the gross energy entering the process. Then the process of running a fuel cell drive eats another 15% (more or less) This leaves a potential thermal efficiency of a drive train at something close to 60%! This is more than double the current efficiency. Curiously this is not the military reason for doing this. It is but one fairly lessor factor. The military reasons for doing this have to do with issues of "Readiness" and "Dual Use."
If you have a tank that runs this way and you have no longer use for the tank if it runs on standard engines you have a very expensive item to leave just sitting around doing nothing. But if you drive the tank using Hydrogen and produce Electric energy to drive it, the tank can just plug in and become a "Generator" for many uses after battle is done. The savings to the military here by going to such systems is about a 4 to 1 ratio in machinery that they don't have to haul around. This coupled with increased milage etc makes the process very attractive
In Iraq this would have allowed us to just "Plug In" and have the electrical grid up and running. But this is hardly all. There are very big issues here on the weight of drive trains and also in issues such as stealth. Current engines would allow an enemy to hear the Soldiers coming for many miles.(often 20 or more miles) This system is very quiet.
This will spin off into civilian use. The technology is going to do many things. It will make cars which are profoundly less noisy. The technology also has pollution control issues. It is essentially a clean burn for the fuel.
There are other issues here that many people could hardly imagine. The storage of Hydrogen as a liquified gas, or compressed gas is essentially impossible for use in normal conditions. The losses of Hydrogen alone would kill the use. The natural solution is to store the Hydrogen as a Hydride. Much experimentation has been done with Hydrides. All solutions come back to the natural solution that Carbon Hydrides and essentially about 6 to 20 carbon Alcane chains (Gasoline Jet fuel etc) are just about the optimal solution.
What is going to develop will probably be that Gasoline or similar fuel will be made using either Coal for the Carbon or by Hydration of poor quality vegitable oils or vegitable mass like Hydrilla or Algea. This will provide the store for the Hydrogen that may in fact be made from the same process fairly directly. This can be SOLAR in energy source.
There are other features here that are most desirable. This provides a stable store which works with current technology. It is energy optimal. It is fairly clean and allows the addition of regenerative braking and other mechanisms.
This is more or less what is going on. Sorry for those who thought that gasoline was going away, it looks as though it is here to stay for a long time to come. Fuel Reformers (Crackers for Hydrogen) will just make you have a 50 Kg Primary Energy Converter insted of a 500 Kg one. You will no longer have brakes or a transmission. Your controls will be as simple as computer joysticks. The
Re:Oil? (Score:3, Informative)
1. How do we get hydrogen in the first place (without wasting energy)?
2.If our cars are hydrogen-powered, how do we distribute the hydrogen to them without rebuilding our infrastructure?
3. How do we store hydrogen in a way that doesn't take up a lot of space or weigh a lot.
How well the Auburn students' solution can addr
Hindenburg (Score:5, Funny)
Cheers,
rob.
Re:Hindenburg (Score:3, Funny)
"This is Wolf Blitzer reporting from the 1st Cavalry Divi...Oh the humanity!"
Re:Hindenburg (Score:3, Insightful)
If it sounds dangerous for an average car, it's probably even more so for tanks, that may be hit by any kind of nasty projectile while in battle. And if the tank stores the stuff as hydrates, or has a lot of shielding to protect the compressed gas area, that's as much less ordnanc
Re:Hindenburg (Score:3, Informative)
hmmm... i dunno (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely, the answer has to lie in getting the hydrogen from water - we just need a massive breakthrough in solar panel technology.
Re:hmmm... i dunno (Score:2)
Re:hmmm... i dunno (Score:2)
Re:hmmm... i dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
There doesn't need to be a breakthrough because that has already happened. Stan Ovshinsky, pioneer of disordered materials, has developed a thin-film solar technology [ovonic.com] that is competitive with grid-supplied fossil fuel electricity. Now, he believes that they can achieve this feat with 100MW of production economy so they aren't quite there yet (they currently run a 30MW machine).
They just partnered [txohydrogen.com] with HaveBlue to develop a fuel cell hydrogen sailboat [haveblue.com] with solid hydrogen storage. The sailboats sit in the harbor most of the time so they are perfect vessels to soak up the sun and convert it to hydrogen.
Water is the best battery. We just need an affordable fuel cell to convert it back into electricity. Stan is working [ovonic.com] on that too.
Re:hmmm... i dunno (Score:3, Informative)
So, let's take a near best-case scenario of putting solar panels on the equator, getting full-intensity (ie noon hour) sun for 12 hours a day, we're still talking about only being able to provide power to 500 people per km^2. For the United State's 270 million people, that works out to 540,000km^2, or about halfway between the siz
Not just tanks (Score:3, Troll)
Personally, I think that best solution is a reduction in military and government spending on fuel, along with everything else. After all, the government is the greatest polluter on the planet.
Re:Not just tanks (Score:2)
Pollution is highly profitable for those who hold the levers of power. I've not yet seen a single example of people voluntarily stopping a profitable activity.
So in this case the best solution is not going to happen. If the tanks don't burn the oil, the SUVs will. When the oil has almost gone, we will be left scrabbling for the few remaining drops. Until then it will be burnt at maximum possible speed.
Incidentally, did anyone els
Re:Not just tanks (Score:2)
Improbable, I think the people in the photos are just really small.
forty bucks? (Score:2)
Considering the war in Iraq cost the US military $1bn per week, I'd say that, even considering that one single tank guzzle more gas that a whole lot of SUV, they're not too worried about that, unless they start to run tank grand prix in the deset every day.
Good luck finding fund to justify that saving
Re:forty bucks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:forty bucks? (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! If we just had a trillion tanks, we could save enough to pay off the national debt!
This is a great first step! (Score:5, Informative)
The article describes the technology as being "a four or a five" on a scale where 10 is production-level, so the whole thing is, to an extent, still vapourware. BUT, the transition path to hydrogren is so advantageous, I wouldn't be surprised if we were to see production examples of fuel-cell diesel trucks (apparently the tech works better with diesel...) in a few years domestically. First a transition for trucks, then a gradual increase in diesel/hydrogen fuel availability for the rest of America's car fleet, and finally a total switch to hydrogen tech. All without having to significantly rework the fossil fuel distribution network. This is the stuff of the future and I, for one, look forwards to it eagerly.
Re:This is a great first step! (Score:2)
LOL
And so, how does this help the planet? (Score:2)
Can anyone else see the logic flaw here?
Hydrogen fuel was being touted as a replacement fuel which would mean that not only did we not need to use up the fossil fuel reserve but also that the polutants produced would be just water vapour in stead of the longer lived greenhouse gases of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The idea being that you'd generate the hydrogen using some renewable energy resource, hence not merely moving the po
Great! (Score:5, Informative)
Hang on... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hang on... (Score:2)
Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
It really costs that much? Seems a hell of a lot to me. How many gallons does an oil tanker hold? Let's me guess at 20,000. If so, then to drive an oil tanker from Kuwait to Badhdad is costing $800,000!!
I guess these must be the prices that Haliburton etc. are charging. The war in Iraq looks like a damn efficient means to move money from the American taxer into the hands of friends of those in power in the USA. Go Bush!
Re:Costs (Score:2)
Re:Costs (Score:2)
Sure, that's going to make it more expensive. But there has to be a reasonable limit to costs. $800,000 to drive an oil tanker about 400 miles - is a cost of $2,000 a mile reasonable, even given the circumstances? I don't think so.
Re:Costs (Score:2)
You're forgetting that when that gallon of oil set out from Kuwait, the entire Iraqi army was trying to stop it from going to Baghdad. When you even out the cost of changing the regime of an entire country, that's really not that expensive.
Still, can't help wondering if the US military's next project will be seeing how much they can make it cost to transport coal to Newcastle...
Re:Costs (Score:2)
But that's not a logical approach. The cost of transportation should be exactly that, otherwise it does not make any sense that the US army is excited about hydrogen fuel concepts because of the cost of transporting oil from Kuwait to Bagdad.
Re:Costs of moving fuel over land w/shooting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Costs (Score:2)
I'd guess that is the cost for actually getting the fuel there - including escorting it with armoured vehicles, patrolling above with helicopter gunships, etc etc, salaries for the bureaucrats keeping track of it, cost of labour at both ends for loading and unloading, etc etc etc.
Fighting a modern war is not cheap, and the winner is almost always the one that
Re:Costs - NOT FLAIMBAIT (Score:2)
The comment itself brings nothing relevant to the conversations, as much as you'd like to think it does. What on earth does the cost of moving oil have to do with the Army's research into a new type of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Second, all you are really doing is taking a quote from the blurb, spewing some crap about the possible cost of moving an oil tanker from kuwait to Baghdad, which is landlocked anyway, and using that to bash Pres. Bush for Haliburton being the
Re:Costs (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone was going to pay me $800,000 each truck to get trucks from Kuwait to Bagdad, I'd jump at the chance.
I wouldn't do it myself. That would just be dumb. Locals would be a) much cheaper and b) a lot more likely to get through, because they understand the local conditions, can speak the language, know the roads, local tribes, risks etc. I would pay the driver half at the start of the journey and half on delivery, this woul
Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:4, Interesting)
The drive from Kuwait to Baghdad is approximately 400 miles. This means a truck can do at least one round trip between Kuwait and Baghdad per day.
That means that over the course of a year, this one truck with a driver that is paid, say, $50,000 a year, can haul 1,825,000 gallons of gas for a price of approximately $200,000 ($120,000 for the truck, $50,000 for the driver, and say $30,000 for incidentals... fuel, windshield wipers, those mud flap things with the pictures of naked woman on them... whatever.)
That works out to about $.10 per gallon.
The Pentagon is paying $40 per gallon.
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:3, Interesting)
(ok, even then it doesn't add up to $40/gallon. How can I become a Pentagon supplier?)
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus the losses you incur when the guerillas succeed. I reckon a lot of the cost would be in air cover for the fuel convoys. Flying planes and helicopters not only costs large amounts of fuel, it also costs a lot in aircraft maintenance. That's before you consider the loss of any multi-million dollar a
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:2)
1. Carry the fuel
2. Protect the vehicle carrying the fuel
3. Carry fuel to the vehicles protecting the vehicle carrying the fuel
4. Protect the vehicles in point 3
5. Ad infinitum.
So, once you've worked out a realistic base-rate per m
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:2)
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:3, Interesting)
If the truck carries 5000 gallons then the journey of 400 miles is costing 200,000 dollars, or about $500 a mile. And I believe that is a relatively small oil transporter, they come much bigger.
Of course, it's going to cost more in times of war, but what is reasonable? $40 a gallon sounds way off the scale to me.
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:2)
If the US army has tankfulls of hydrogen roaming around, its hard to see why anybody would bother making weapons of mass destruction!
Re:Hydrogen isn't the answer (Score:2)
Who the hell would insure a load like that? Worse - who'd PAY for it?
- "Yeah, we'd like to transport 5,000 gallons of highly flammable materials through hostile territory, where people are attacking us on a daily basis. How much would that cost?"
- "How about a million bucks per mile?"
Insurance should be called "incase" because you have it "in case shit happens". When transporting flammable materials through hostile territory it's not a matter of if and when, but si
Here's some more info (Score:4, Interesting)
Love them or hate them... (Score:5, Interesting)
Promising Technology (Score:2)
Another advantage is that it works off of less refined fuels, like jet fuel (i.e., kerosene) and diesel, instead of high-octane gasoline; these fuels are cheaper than gas, more abundant, and a lot safer to handle.
And
They figured out hydrogens in hydrocarbons?? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, theres no fooling with these guys. Those sharp megawatt intelligences are really on the ball, I mean its only been over a hundred years since
most chemists realised the very same thing and even put "hydro" in the name of hydrocarbon as clue.
The stupidity lies in the article, not Auburn U (Score:2, Insightful)
makes it sound like combustion is a non-chemical process. Combustion is, of course, a chemical process: reaction with oxygen. In the case of fuel cells, the hydrogen is allowed to react with atmospheric oxygen (or another oxidizer) in a controlled fashion. So combustion is a very apt description of a fuel cell reaction.
Also, the sentence
decent transitional solution (Score:2)
I always thought that if you could convince the military of real savings you will get your new technology developed.. but saying your tanks can fight longer, requiring less resources, with relatively slight modifications probably is the ke
Re:decent transitional solution (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, now there's a fuel solution they hadn't considered. Did you have some sort of hot-air solution in mind, or are we talking about extracting all of his hydrogen?
Re:decent transitional solution (Score:2)
Great explosive potential here (Score:2)
Re:Great explosive potential here (Score:4, Informative)
Then again, hollywood often makes things "more exciting" than physical reality. I've seen lots of cars "blow up" in the movies. But for all the car fires I've seen, I've never seen a car explode. Or even heard of one exploding. Except in the movies and Grand Theft Auto.
Remember, most of Hollywood is based on entertainment, not science.
This is not news (Score:4, Informative)
If this team has invented a new type of reformer, great, but as it stands the article is a joke.
Re:This is not news (Score:3, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. What's news about this, other than that the military are all of a sudden interested in fuel economy? A clean and compact/cheap reformer has been the holy grail of fuel cells for quite a while, I don't see anything Auburn has done to change that. Perhaps they just had the brilliant insight that there's hydrogen in them thar fossil fuels?
Think long term (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Oil from sources that are not usable now. There are many areas that have high sulfur oil that would pollute if burned but could converted into usable non-polluting hydrogen.
2) Once you have a workable fuel cell that runs on hydrogen (with some oil-to- Hydrogen converter) you can fairly easily just switch over to your nice politically correct solar created hydrogen which will by then be much more economically viable and not just green welfare.
3) Even if you never got beyond a gasoline powered fuel cell, the emissions would still be FAR less (90+% less) than an internal combustion engine.
Cheap sulfur and carbon for all! (Score:5, Funny)
Green tanks (Score:5, Funny)
No, H2 actually has three times LESS energy (Score:3, Informative)
So, no, that tank won't go three times farther on H2 than on diesel. It will actually have only 1/3 the range.
As usual, distorted facts are reported on Slashdot as gospel.
Cost (Score:5, Informative)
They're using a catalytic converter to draw the hydrogen out of readily available, pre-processed fuel -- probably still in the form of hydrocarbons instead of pure hydrogen. This is cheap. Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.
From the article:
Re:Cost (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that you can use renewable power to separate the hydrogen from water. First you distill the water to purify it, then you electrolyse it to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. It's really not a complicated process. All you need is electricity, which is what the majority of "clean" and renewable energy sources deliver.
The whole point of "the hydrogen economy" is abandoning oil and its costly and politically risky i
Re:Dumb (Score:3, Informative)
What this method has created is a cheap (energy-wise, and apparently, money-wise too) way of producing hydrogen, which can then combine with oxygen in the energy-producing burning reaction to produce water.
Re:neat idea (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I have another NEATER idea : remove the C *and* the H from hydrocarbons, and you have vaccuum, so you can run a piston engine out of that vaccuum, and you keep your original hydrocarbon stuff at the same time, to start the process all over again.
FREE ENERGY!
Re:neat idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:neat idea (Score:2)
Re:neat idea (Score:2)
Speak for yourself, I burn diamonds in the BBQ myself, as the efficiency of the reaction is somewhat better than coal, so the meat takes less time to cook and is much tastier. And the flame is prettier too
Re:oil is the source? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Palestinians have nothing to do with fuel.
If invading Iraq were simply about attaining oil, we would have just dropped the sanctions. It would have been $200 billion cheaper and been faster to bring a lot more oil onto the world market (to lower oil prices). Which is not to say that Iraq isn't partially about protecting oil supplies, but it's not as direct as you seem to think.
Finally, it's not just "the Yanks" who have to deal with the problem that the world economy depends on
Re:oil is the source? (Score:2)
And France only cares about the French, Germany only about the Germans, Russia only about the Russians, etc. etc. etc. Nation states serve their own interests - welcome to the real world.
Seriously. It's a joke.
Make up your mind.
Re:What do they do with the CO2???? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well this is great . . i guess? (Score:2)
The question is why did you think hydrogen power would cut our dependence on fossil fuels? The hydrogen has to come from somewhere.
Hydrogen doesn't explode either (Score:2)
Re:Jet fuel is close to diesel?!? (Score:2)
There are in fact different grades of jetfuel. JP-4 is a relatively volatile, 'light' fuel, while JP-8 - which is very close to the civilian Jet-A1 - are basicly ordinary dieselfuel with a few additives. Then you got the more excotic types like JP-5 (used AFAIK by the SR-71) and RP-1 (basicly a superrefined JP-4 for use in rocketengines). So yes, jetfuel is quite close to diesel and also a long way from diesel - it all depends on what sort of jetfuel you're talking about.
Going ona tangent, here in Norway t
Re:Jet fuel is close to diesel?!? (Score:2)
Warning.... Check the rec.outdoors faq before you start pouring any chemicals in any tanks:
http://www.amelunxen.onlinehome.de/drofaq/kocher.h tml#ih3 [onlinehome.de]
( I can't find the english one anymore )
Re:Tanks run on diesel? (Score:2)
ONE major modern tank does so, the Abrams. Most others are diesel.