|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
C M B
Franchise Player
Joined: 15 Nov 2006
Posts: 19864
Location: Prarie & Manchester, high above the western sideline
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
BigBallerBrand
Star Player
Joined: 23 Dec 2008
Posts: 5790
Location: LA
|
 Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
probably wont hit US util 2016, and won't hit mass production several years after that. no need to sell your Tesla shares folks!
although...im pretty excited about this. cant wait until we end our reliance on oil
_________________
Billions Billions Billions |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mhan00
Retired Number
Joined: 13 Apr 2001
Posts: 32059
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 10:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I'm pretty lukewarm on fuel cells. There's almost no stations, even here in CA, and after using my Leaf for a few months, I have a hard time seeing myself being willing to deal with pumping gas (or the hydrogen equivalent) again, especially when I'd have to seek out the rare hydrogen station. So much more convenient to wake up every day to a "full tank".
Glad to hear they're finally getting hydrogen off the ground, though. It was one of those always "five year away" technologies. Big questions will be the cost of the vehicle, cost of the fuel (very few people would switch if hydrogen was equivalent to gas), and of course where the infrastructure for transportation, storage, and delivery methods will come from and who pays for it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Reflexx
Franchise Player
Joined: 25 Jun 2005
Posts: 11163
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I wonder if we'll see hydrogen-electric hybrids. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mhan00
Retired Number
Joined: 13 Apr 2001
Posts: 32059
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:34 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Reflexx wrote: | | I wonder if we'll see hydrogen-electric hybrids. |
Pretty sure all hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are "hybrids". The hydrogen is used to generate electricity which charges the battery which powers the car. Another reason I'm lukewarm on fuel cells. You need to use electricity to create hydrogen which is then later used to generate electricity. You lose a lot of power that way, it's wasteful and inefficient, barring a pie in the sky insane hydrolysis technology that captures virtually everything with no waste. That's not even counting the energy needed to transport or store the hydrogen.
Seems far simpler to just use electricity to charge the battery directly. As a bonus, the infrastructure largely exists already since we already have electrical grids built out everywhere. For longer car trips it's an issue, but it would be an issue for hydrogen too. It would take hundreds of millions, maybe billions to build infrastructure for hydrogen that would be useful. But there's no reason for anybody besides maybe the government bullied by lobbyists to invest because there is no demand, and there will be no demand until there is infrastructure. Just hard to see how hydrogen becomes truly viable until we actually do start to run out of oil and big oil makes their move to start converting their stuff to carry hydrogen. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
DeeAgeaux
Star Player
Joined: 11 Apr 2009
Posts: 1652
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
The article is just plain wrong on one point of fact.
Toyota claims 500 kilometers on the Japanese government cycle or 310 miles. In EPA terms that means roughly the same as the Tesla 85 kWh 265 miles.
From the Horse's Mouth itself, Toyota Global Site
http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/environmental_technology/fuelcell_vehicle/
The car will be Camry sized on the outside and Prius 4 seater sized on the inside.
0-60 mph between 11-13 seconds. Various reports have different numbers.
Currently a kg of hydrogen cost between $12-$13 in CA and gets you about 50-60 miles. That is if it is derived from natural gas and is almost as polluting as refining and burning gasoline in a conventional engine. If hydrogen is derived from water it will get much much more expensive. And you can't fill your tank overnight at home while you sleep.
Last year Toyota said the price would be $99k to START. Then Toyota heard the massive negative feedback over the net. Now there is talk of a price as low as $40k MSRP. That is Toyota taking a huge loss per unit. They hope to sell 1000 per year in the USA(only CA to start) for the first five years. This will probably qualify for Federal and State subsidies too. It looks like Toyota will not be as stupid in pricing the FCV as GM was with the Cadillac ELR.
If I see anyone paying over $63K for one of these Toyotas when they could have purchased a Tesla instead I will personally punch them in the face.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
revgen
Franchise Player
Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 10220
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
| DeeAgeaux wrote: | | Currently a kg of hydrogen cost between $12-$13 in CA and gets you about 50-60 miles. That is if it is derived from natural gas and is almost as polluting as refining and burning gasoline in a conventional engine. If hydrogen is derived from water it will get much much more expensive. And you can't fill your tank overnight at home while you sleep. |
Here's a little article from a few years back about using bacteria to release hydrogen from water. An organic process of creating the hydrogen could bring costs down.
| Quote: | Bacteria Make Hydrogen Fuel From Water
By Ars Technica
09.21.11 |
10:45 am |
Most of the renewable energy sources that are under consideration involve an obvious source of energy — light, heat, or motion. But this is the second time this year there has been a paper that has focused on a less obvious source: the potential difference between fresh river water and the salty oceans it flows into. But this paper doesn’t simply use the difference to produce some electricity; instead, it adds bacteria to the process and takes out a portable fuel: hydrogen.
The process is still fundamentally electrochemical. Sea water and fresh water are placed on opposite sides of a membrane that allows ions through, but prevents the passage of water molecules. The ions will move to the fresh water to balance osmotic forces, which will create a charge difference that can be harvested for various purposes. The voltage produced in a single one of these cells is small, but the source of the power is essentially unlimited and is available 24 hours a day.
The small voltage per cell, however, makes this an impractical method of producing hydrogen by splitting water. It’s possible to reach the requisite voltages if enough of these cells are placed in series, but this requires dozens of them, and so many membranes that the cost of this sort of apparatus is prohibitive.
That’s where the bacteria come in. When given a source of organic material, the bacteria will harvest its electrons by oxidizing the carbon and convert their energy into the cell’s main power supply, ATP. But they have to put those electrons somewhere. If they lack a convenient electron acceptor, they’ll use an inconvenient one, even if it happens to be outside the cell (this is the principle behind the uranium-munching bacteria we discussed recently). Hook the bacteria up to an electrode, and they’ll push their electrons into that.
This also provides a relatively low-voltage source of electricity, again too low to power the splitting of water on its own. People have gotten bacteria-powered hydrogen production to work, but only by applying an additional source of voltage.
So, the authors went ahead and merged the two. Five fresh/salt water exchange cells were placed in series, with the final anode being used to host bacteria. This small set of cells on its own isn’t even sufficient to produce usable current. But when directly linked to the bacterial system, it gave them a sufficient boost to liberate hydrogen, so long as they were supplied with organic matter (in their experiments, the authors used acetate). Increasing the flow of water through the cells boosted the production rate, and hydrogen continued to be released until the acetate was exhausted.
The efficiency was rather impressive. At slower flow rates, the total energy content of the hydrogen was 36 percent of the energy input into the system in the form of acetate. At this flow rate, about 85 percent of the energy stored in the hydrogen came from the salt-fresh water difference. The bacteria took the remainder of the energy from the acetate, using it for their continued survival and growth. Pumping water through the system only accounted for about one percent of the energy cost.
The bad news is that this highly efficient system requires an expensive, platinum-based cathode. The authors showed that it’s possible to use a cheaper, Molybdenum-based cathode, but efficiencies dropped. The authors suggest that it might be possible to find a cheap material that works well with this system but, as of their publication, they’ve not identified one.
Some of you are probably wondering whether we’ve got a cheap renewable source of acetate. Fortunately, we don’t need one. Acetate provided a convenient way of measuring the amount of energy input into the system, but bacteria can be remarkably unfussy about the source of their organic fuel. As the authors point out, farm waste and human waste could work just as well, given the right bacterial species. In short, we could potentially hook these systems up to a sewer pipe and come out with hydrogen at the other end. |
http://www.wired.com/2011/09/bacteria-water-hydrogen-fuel/
_________________
I Recommend VLC Player: http://www.videolan.org/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
tlim
Star Player
Joined: 26 Jun 2002
Posts: 6649
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:52 am Post subject: |
|
|
The technology really for fuel cells _still_ about 20 years away for me to actually want to buy one. (One of my neighbors was a VP over at SCE who did a lot of research into this field. Just recently retired.)
1) Fuel cells still use rare earth metals that cost an arm and a leg.
2) Fuel cell MTTF is ridiculously short. I'd be shocked if they got that number up to even 1000 cycles before it started to fail. The ones tested got maybe 100 cycles for them.
3) Water. Bacteria from water is tough to get at large scale, and even here, talks about how expensive it is, again, due to rare earth metals.
Those are seriously TOUGH problems to get over. Lithium Ion batteries currently still the best bet and improved efficiencies will be interesting. Could get another 50% improvement within 5 years or so, but we will see. Getting the efficiencies are great, but manufacturing it has always been the difficulty. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
DeeAgeaux
Star Player
Joined: 11 Apr 2009
Posts: 1652
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| revgen wrote: | | DeeAgeaux wrote: | | Currently a kg of hydrogen cost between $12-$13 in CA and gets you about 50-60 miles. That is if it is derived from natural gas and is almost as polluting as refining and burning gasoline in a conventional engine. If hydrogen is derived from water it will get much much more expensive. And you can't fill your tank overnight at home while you sleep. |
Here's a little article from a few years back about using bacteria to release hydrogen from water. An organic process of creating the hydrogen could bring costs down.
| Quote: | | Bacteria Make Hydrogen Fuel From Water |
|
One day Teslas could be powered by super efficient solar panels where the energy is stored in super batteries for long range and super capacitors for short burst of acceleration. This combo could power industrial society some day.
This is more likely than industrial scale bacteria making hydrogen from water.
Maybe even cold fusion is more likely.
When regulators are making concrete plans for a post oil transportation system and eventually a post fossil fuel transportation system they need to make concrete plans based on current technology and likely technology coming online. Not fantastical dreams based a research paper |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
