NASA Tests Hydrogen-Fueled BMW 420
Rio sends us word that NASA has completed an 8-week test of a fleet of BMW luxury sedans powered by liquid hydrogen at Kennedy Space Center. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. Its engine can burn gasoline or liquid hydrogen and can switch seamlessly between the two. From the article: "One hundred BMW Hydrogen 7s have been built, and 25 are used in test programs in the US. The cars have already covered more than 1.3 million miles in test programs around the globe."
How efficient are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're in the minority (Score:3, Interesting)
FTFA:The V12 cylinder engine delivers 260 hp; the top speed of the Hydrogen 7 is 143 mph and acceleration 0-60 mph is 9.2 sec.
I had a similar question: "What are the operating costs?"
But unfortunately for those of us who are more interested in efficiency are in the minority; so car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery.
I can care less how fast it can go o
Re:We're in the minority (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you do. You want it to be able to get above 60mph and do that in a reasonably small amount of time (say, less than 20 seconds?). Otherwise, you'll never be able to take it on the interstate or most roads due to the slow speed or bitched at at lights when the light turns green.
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"I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration."
Yes you do.
Is this an American thing or something. He says he can care less - implying that he must care some - and you agree with him but phrase it as if you don't. Surely the GP couldn't care less, because saying he could care less is a completely meaningless statement.
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<pedantic>Technically, the Space Shuttle obtains its MaxQ (maximum velocity inside the atmosphere) thanks to the high thrust-to-weight ratio of the two Solid Fuel Boosters (SRB). The Space Shuttle would go absolutely nowhere if it had to rely solely on the thrust from its LHOx engines.</pedantic>
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There are speed up lanes most people I see go slow in the speed up lane, then stop at the end of it. Then they try to merge. This is not in rush hour!
I do see you point though. I h
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Re:We're in the minority (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're in the minority (Score:4, Informative)
Having driven/ridden on the autobahn at speeds up to 165mph I can tell you the speed differential is not safe. Closing on a car with 80mph speed differential is crazy stupid, passing at that differential is asking for an early grave. Trying to judge if they've seen you are they going to stay in lane, reducing speed just in case. The only safe thing to do is roll off the throttle miles away and pass doing no more than 20mph more and then wind back on the throttle.
Now when the road is empty it's some of the best riding in Europe, hour after hour of very fast riding on immaculate road surfaces. Passing police bikes/cars and not having to worry. Stopping off in small villages for great food and beer. The only times have had anything remotely similar is riding through Nevada and Utah, but still you had to watch out for the revenue generators.
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Honestly...and sadly to you I guess...I really don't care. By the time the world explodes, or things are too bad pollution-wise, I'll be long dead, and far away from caring.
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Informative)
According TFA, 1 kg of H2 has roughly the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. The cost per kg is estimated at $3.50
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a) demand for natural gas skyrockets or
b) demand for electricity skyrockets
It will NOT go down...or at least, if it does it will be purely artificial and VERY short lived.
If we had natural gas in that kind of abundance, or electricity in that kind of abundance, we'd completely skip Hydrogen without question.
Turns out Hydrogen is merely an expensive battery.
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To liquefy 3.5 kg of gaseous hydrogen, one would need an additional 1.5 kg even with a 100% efficient isothermal compression process. If hydrogen takes off we'll have to build a network of steam pipes like the one that exploded in New York recently. Con Ed pumps its waste heat through those pipes to large customers who use it for cheaply heating large buildings like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 30% is too much overhead to ignore.
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Last I checked, most American schools teach how to convert. Usually around the same time you start to learn simple algebra equations with fractions.
For the rest of those, they can use Google for km to miles [google.com] and kilograms to pounds [google.com].
100 kilometers = 62.1371192 miles
3.6 kilograms = 7.93664144 pounds
Of course, that doesn't help much as I have no real reference o
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The important issue here is reducing CO2 to stop the environmental damage we're doing, not making travel cheaper to the end-user.
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If the hydrogen plant is supplied by a coal or natural gas plant, there may be little or no reduction in the net CO2 emission throughout production.
As to the supply chain, if the hydrogen car is inefficient, the trucks that deliver the hydrogen (probably burning diesel) will need to make more trips to maintain the same demand as gasoline, increasing the net CO2 per kg.
D
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. It increases global warming.
Oh wait, are you one of those die-hard Americans who refuse to believe that global warming is caused by human activity because it means you'd have to take responsibility to do something?
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not an expert on H2 refining, but the methods I know either create quite nasty and poisonous waste products or need incredible amounts of power. So unless we got some very clean and efficient way to generate power to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one. And unless I didn't sleep through physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells me that this better be some really, really clean way of generating H2.
It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.
Now, it might be more efficient if you convert energy large scale than in the small scale of a combustion engine. But the question remains: Where do we get clean H2? H2 isn't available naturally on earth. It has to be refined out of molecules containing it. Water would offer itself, being quite abundant and cheap, and all that's required to get H2 out of water is electricity. Which gets us back to the question, how do we get clean electricity?
Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.
The 2nd Law says nothing about how efficient a process is, only that it will not be 100%.
A power plant is more efficient than an automobile ICE. Even if both are burning hydrocarbons dug up from the ground, the power plant will be more efficient and produce less pollution largely due to the scale. It's much easier to add expensive and heavy scrubbers to a coal plant smoke stack than to the exhaust system of a car. It's easier to make an efficient engine when the weight of the engine is not a concern.
So your 95% efficient electric engine times a 40% efficient coal plant is better than your 35% efficient ICE with much better emissions controls to boot. And that's using coal, which I'm certainly not a fan of.
Which leads me to the big advantage of electricity-based transportation (whether it's electric batteries or electrically produced hydrogen from water) which is that once you have decoupled power generation from transportation, when you bring online new environmentally friendly power plants you can use this new source seamlessly with no disruption to the transportation infrastructure. Already we're producing far more "green" electricity in this country than we are using "clean" transportation, and this has happened without you even having to be aware when you flick the light switch. We should be so lucky as to be able to do the same with transportation.
Basically what I'm saying is that electric/hydrogen power has efficiency and environmental advantages now, but also has the potential for vast improvements in the future and that's even if you keep the exact same car!
Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.
If you're going to look at the environmental cost of solar power, then you should include the environmental cost of acquiring oil. Adding every cost associated with ICE-based cars or coal power plants certainly do not make them look better compared to solar power.
And what's wrong with wind power again? It's not bird deaths, those were never any more than city office buildings produce, and new designs that discourage nesting on the turbines has put it in the noise.
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Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Funny)
> to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one.
A man.
Some water.
A very, very sharp axe.
(And yes, it's patented, so no stealing my idea, you insensitive clods.)
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When myself and a buddy of mine did a research project on the production of CO2, NOx, SOx, and particulate matter of various H2 production methods using a bunch of DOE data, and if my memory serves me correctly we found that using H2 fuel reduced CO2 emissions by about 15% from the most efficient current form of H2 production (Coal Gassification) as the power transfer through the H2 cells was more efficient that burning gas and the gassification process is more efficient than burning fossil
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Could you specify how much is "a horrible amount of" please? From what I have known, they are much cleaner than a horse or a donkey. Also the efficiency [wikipedia.org] of commercial solar power cells are much higher than that [www.upei.ca] of the grass or trees.
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Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Allow me the shamelessy crib some info from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle [wikipedia.org]
Political considerations
Most all of today's hydrogen is produced using fossil energy resources.[20] While some advocate hydrogen produced from non-fossil resources, there could be public resistance or technological barriers to the implementation of such metho
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The reductions in C02 must happen very soon. Very soon as in human time not planet time. This vehicle will make a zero impact on C02 pollution because it can not be afforded by 90% of the population. hybrids that will slow down C02 production can not be afforded by 85% of the population and high efficiency small cars are not being produced and marketed. The Smart is FINALLY making it to the USA but at a price that makes it unaffordable. It needs to be sold at $9000.00US or less to mak
"clean to get"? Huh? (Score:2)
Hydrogen may be clean to use and get
Uh...who told you it's clean to get? The only "clean" method is electrolysis, and that requires massive amounts of electricity, which over 1/3rd in the US comes from coal. Pretty much ALL of it comes from coal in China.
The only other source is natural gas. Guess what? Gotta strip the carbon off the hydrogen somehow, and the catalysts are not exactly eco-friendly or reuseable. It's a great way to sell more natural gas, though- which is why Bush is so thrilled wit
Re:"clean to get"? Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"OH BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE" you say. Who cares? Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun.
Nuclear is the source solution to most of our energy problems. If the general public was not so misinformed and paranoid about it, and did not have so much of a "not in my backyard" syndrome, we'd be much better off right now.
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Re:"clean to get"? Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
GOOD LORD! You want to fling Nuclear Waste into the SUN??? Have you tested this? What if it generates a Teenage Mutant Ninja Sun?!?!?!?
I like Pizza, but COME ON!
And to the other guy that wants to fling it at our intergalactic neighbors, well, you get to be the one who explains it to them when they come a-knocking!
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I don't know jack about the chemistry of the process to strip H2 off CH4, but if the catalysts aren't reusable, doesn't that mean they're not catalysts? I thought the definition of catalyst was a substance that increases the yield or speed of a reaction without itself being consumed or changed by the process.
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The advantage comes as large scale production of "clean" energy (ie. wind/solar/tidal) is developed. It is hardly practical to install solar panels on the roof of your car, but a large solar plant in the middle of the desert could easily produc
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On the other hand, if the cost and environmental impact of producing electricity could be reduced by 90% that might not be such a bad deal.
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Its big advantages would be very little polution in the place where the car really runs (you won't have smog in big cities, only fog).
Once the fusion reactors start to produce energy, you could produce hydrogen in a somewhat cheaper way. It might not be as efficient as storing electricity in batteries, but it has some other advantages (like not using rare materials for battery/fuel cell).
You could have your flying car with a hydrogen based e
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The really sad news is that the BMW is also planned to be the replace for the shuttle fleet when it is retired in 2010.
Re:How efficient are they? (Score:5, Funny)
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*boggle* (Score:4, Funny)
What the heck does smoked whitefish have to do with this story? Or am I missing something?
Re:*boggle* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*boggle* (Score:5, Informative)
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And honestly, NO2 would probably work almost as well, with the drawback that it might produce some sort of ammonia. (10 years since chemistry classes, so, no, I don't know the formulas and outcomes of such a reaction.)
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That's my guess, anyway. But then, they say if you have to explain a joke it wasn't really funny in the first place. Maybe it would have worked if the car was bagel shaped.
emissions (Score:5, Funny)
In that case, we should all be driving space shuttles to work.
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Re:emissions (Score:5, Informative)
So the reductions in CO2 rather depend on whether it's more efficient or less polluting to electrolyse water using energy from power stations some of which burn oil, store the hydrogen and burn it than it is to refine oil, store it and burn it.
The emissions at the car may be reduced by 90% but the total emissions will be similar.
worse than that (Score:2)
Re:emissions (Score:4, Informative)
While cool I don't expect to see LH2 cars any time soon.
Re:emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, action movies are vindicated (Score:5, Funny)
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I remember watching a video of the two types of cars burning. The gasoline one didn't make it at all, while the hydrogen one just shot flame for a few seco
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Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ??? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, where did the other 10% come from?
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Think of what this means:
- No carbs. No intake. They can run underwater!
- No turbo. Just pour in more LOX
- Reverse thrusters for easy braking... AND you can fry the guy who pulled out in front of you with your rocket wash.
- Cold drinks
- No more A/C
Downsides? Strip mining Antarctic ice.Re: (Score:2)
Expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
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You do realize this is made by BMW, right? Most of their cars are already over 40k and even their cheaper ones can approach $40k once you add-in a few options.
In any case, I don't think that's really the point. I'm sure this car is just a concept car, proving that it's possible. Developing cars like this gives them good press and if hydrogen cars begin to make sense economically then they've got a headstart on working with
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http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/overview.aspx?ye ar=2007&make=BMW&model=7-Series [msn.com]
This is actually a smart way to do this. It will be expensive to manufacture new technology like this, so start with the sector of the market that is u
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Hydrogen Electric? (Score:2)
at least that was an argument made in the Who Killed the Electric car movie, more or less. They also implied the thing was like 40 years away from being available. Since I gather it will be disected on here anyway, just wondered how thin it would be sliced, as it were.
err that was supposed to be Hydrogen > Electric (Score:2)
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Solution to Global Warming! (Score:5, Funny)
If this remarkable fuel powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, then simply send up more space shuttles! Duh!
If we send up a shuttle per year, we can pollute as much as we like! The plants will take care of the other 10%!
Internal Combustion! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention i rather like my rough loud piston engine... sometimes. Granted, I will be weined off and eventually learn to like the quiet boring (but REALLY high torque) electric motor.
It was weird enought driving the company hybrid with CVT transmission, no shift points and odd engine RPM sequences makes driving less-than-intuitive. I find myself having to look at the speedometer far more with that than any other car.
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Of course, it's also currently the most viable option, as fuel cell systems are about ten times as expensive, but until we find a way to make the fuel cheap enough, and without emitting even more CO2, they're both moot.
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I think you're very corrent in finding a cheap/less-CO2 producing fuel though... I've seen quite a shift to propane in Canada, I wish this would be more popular in the US. It seems a decent interim fuel as almost all cars can run on it, and they burn cleaner and last longer.
i'm all for new tech (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, lets say you're an astronaut and your car's in the shop, but you really need to drive cross country to hunt down the new girlfriend of your ex-lover - one of these would be ideal.
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How do they get the hydrogen? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, you're presumably using rather a lot of oil, coal or natural gas, in order to make these things run. Is that actually helping our environment at all? Or
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Seriously though, I think the theory is that once cars can burn something environmentally friendly like hydrogen (burning it is clean), and the infrastructure to make/transport it is in place, then its almost trivial to later switch between making the hydrogen using coal or whatever vs some better (but currently more expensive) method. Plus, hopefully centralizing the pollution ma
Checking the facts... (Score:3, Insightful)
And last I checked, your average power station, producing hundreds of mega watts, is actually substantially less efficient than a (relatively) small petrol engine.
You checked wrong. Your standard automotive engine is around 20% efficient[1]. Fossil fuel plants vary based upon their design but typically are in 35-40% efficient range[2]. In addition, power stations will have better pollution controls than an automobile.
References:
The solution we need to be working towards is more nuclear for the power generation and hydrogen generated from electrolysis
Fuel Costs (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect with all the research into ethanol, and the availability of dual fuel ethanal/gas cars, ethanol will get there first. I have certainly read/heard of crunchy rich enviromental types who already use et
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eh?
BMW made the cars and the hydrogen systems. B M W You know, that car company from another country?
All NASA has to do with this story is some 'testing' - you know...get in, turn the key, drive around in circles, smile for the cameras, grab some stickers and promo sheets...could have been the Girl Scouts.
The "Real" Emissions (Score:2, Insightful)
Still not impressed (Score:2)
Still the same freak niche as poultry farms running vehicles on chicken crap methane or neo-hippies burning McDonald's grease. Maybe even less efficient since hydrogen isn't so much a fuel as energy storage?
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Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Come on.
What a joke.
Inside the box (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you get the feeling that manufacturers are stumbling around in the dark a bit when it comes to replacing the 'classic' automobile? "Gosh, Juergen... let's run our century old internal combustion engine on a new fuel! We should make it unnecessarily large and capable of blinding (and unnecessary) performance! Ausgezeichnet!!" and off they go to spend millions on an idea that isn't sensible in the grand scheme of things. It would be far better to rethink the automobile altogether. It's possible to design something very small and lightweight - like the www.twike.com - except with the benefit of hundreds of millions of euros design and research. A true "personal" vehicle would be far easier to propel with electricity or extremely small internal combustion engines. It would also require significantly less fossil fuel to manufacture (because we can't make plastic out of hydrogen...)
I can hear the naysayers now: "But it'd get squashed by a Hummer." or, "I need a high performance car." But the reality is that *if* scientists are right and we've reached Peak Oil, fuel is going to get incredibly expensive and shortages will become a regular occurrence. Once that happens, companies will start to aggressively compete to create a solution and the car will evolve into something that fits the new reality of a fossil fuel depleted world.
I don't think adapting existing designs t hydrogen is the answer for one moment - the infrastructure would cost billions, the technology would cost billions, and it doesn't solve the root problems: 1. Our transportation devices are wasteful and 2. We're turning a blind eye to the benefits of mass transportation, and 3. Planned obsolescence has trained generations of vehicle purchasers to devalue six or seven year old cars as "old" and replace them unnecessarily.Solution to the H2 problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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So we all either drown or asphyxiate! Yay!
Huh? (Score:2)
And exactly how do they store the liquid hydrogen? Did they use up all the luxury trunk space with a vacuum-lined flask? That would explain why they chose a luxury car-- the other ones didn't have the room.
BTW how many miles can one go on a tankful of that stuff? It's mighty light,e ven in liquid form, so there's not a whole lot of energy in a standard car tankful.
Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly right now I have not seen any affordable technologies that can eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels for cars (though electric cars are coming down). We can't grow enough ethanol to fill our tanks (over 20% of all corn in the US goes to making ethanol, and the national average of ethanol use in fuel is about 3%).
Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a fuel. It still is not that practical as a fuel since it requires refrigerating it to a very low temperature or compressing it to a very high pressure (both of which require a fair amount of energy to do). And hydrogen loves to leak. It will seep through the smallest holes and has a habit of making metal brittle.
-Aaron
90% less CO2 emission, eh? (Score:2)
That statement should really be, "only 20% more CO2 emissions that a normal car", or "only x grams of nuclear waste produced per mile." There's no way, unless the H2 was produced via nuclear-produced electricity, that the car really produces less CO2 than burning gasoline. We only have 2 ways of making H2 right now. Electrolysis and essentially burning natural gas. Burning natural gas (due to the relatively l
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A single engine burning fossil fuels, multiplied by thousands of cars...
Or a single power plant burning fossil fuels, powering thousands of cars.
Guess which produces less emissions?
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Not backing hydrogen yet (Score:2, Insightful)
BMW has lots of experience (Score:2)
NOT "same fuel that powers the space shuttle" (Score:3)
Remember the Hindenburg disaster? It was a hydrogen filled envelope that caught fire but the envelope was covered with guess what? Rubber and aluminum powder or "rocket fuel". All those flames and smoke you saw where the solid rocket fuel burning.
In the case of both the shuttle and the Hindenburg the hydrogen combustion was a minority of what was going on and in both cases mostly invisible o2/h2 combustion leaves no big visible fire ball and no smoke.
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Where I live it's already that much and still rising. H2 at equivalent prices would be a massive success.