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Can anyone explain how (or not) a solar panel on a car
could continually re-charge a battery as the car is driven?
Basically, I don't think it would. I think while the vehicle is moving the controller would direct any electricity from the solar panel to the drivetrain load, rather than to the charging circuit.
But since this thread is about hydrogen powered vehicles, I'll just say I haven't seen any indication they have any plans to incorporate solar cells at this time.
It numbs my mind, probably more than ANYTHING else, that hydrogen technology lags behind so far. Just shows the insidious power of BIG OIL and it's industrial allies. By now we should be running on WATER through a series of energy transformation. Instead we are right here giving props to the Priuis P.O.S.
WE are truly " the worst generation."
Ummm speak for yourself when you refer to being the worst generation, and BTW, the conspiracy forum is here:
I would be far more likely to buy a Hydrogen powered car than the plugin electric, once the fuel infrastructure is in place. Unfortunately, by then I'll probably be too old to drive.
I believe we will start seeing current fuel stations being modified this coming year. we have no choice...the demand for these will continue to go up
I always get a chuckle over this. People get all nervous about hydrogen because of that accident yet they completely ignore any videos they see of the results of car fires or what happens when a plane crashes and the fuel ignites.
Yet they are comfortable (more or less) driving/riding in a gasoline powered car and flying in airplanes.
Hydrogen is far safer than gasoline. All of the people burned on the Hindenburg had been splashed with diesel fuel, used to run the engines.
Hydrogen is far safer than gasoline. All of the people burned on the Hindenburg had been splashed with diesel fuel, used to run the engines.
Even if that's true... I don't know either way... that isn't the issue. The Hindenberg was a huge rubberized gas bag, with many tiny leaks, filled at low pressure with a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen-bearing air, and therefore it was extremely flammable. Explosively flammable. Not to mention, much of the structural metal used was lightweight magnesium, which once ignited in the presence of oxygen, burns very intensely. The Zeppelins were, from the very outset, flying bombs. And all it took, literally, was a spark of static electricity from the mooring mast to start the combustion of the hydrogen/oxygen mixture.
Pressurized pure hydrogen in a high strength tank, as fuel cell cars use, is an entirely different matter. Without oxygen mixed in, hydrogen is not flammable. That's why production of hydrogen is already a $100 billion a year business in the US, without us having "Hindenbergs" happening everywhere.
A major challenge with hydrogen as a fuel is the refueling infrastructure. It is very difficult to pipeline hydrogen because its molecular size make leaks a huge issue.
Is there any possibility of retrofitting current gasoline and diesel engines to run on hydrogen? In particular, could engines from the muscle-car era run on H2?
Fuel cell technology also has one more thing going for it... there's already a lot of experience with it over a long period of time, as fuel cells have been successfully employed to run all kinds of different military equipment, as well as in industrial forklifts and robots, where the absence of toxic exhaust allows great flexibility in deployment. It's only the use in production passenger vehicles that is novel.
Since the US Military complex is the biggest polluter in the world, I'd like to see what they have transitioned to fuel cell tech first, before they market this to us. For example, tanks, ships, the global police forces being enacted. Let's see them use this technology first, then I'd be willing to consider it. Maybe this would be a step towards a more peaceful planet. Lead by example, so to speak.
Can you show me how the military is utilizing this tech now?
Since the US Military complex is the biggest polluter in the world, I'd like to see what they have transitioned to fuel cell tech first, before they market this to us.
For example, tanks, ships, the global police forces being enacted. Let's see them use this technology first, then I'd be willing to consider it. Maybe this would be a step towards a more peaceful planet. Lead by example, so to speak.
Can you show me how the military is utilizing this tech now?
Is there any possibility of retrofitting current gasoline and diesel engines to run on hydrogen? In particular, could engines from the muscle-car era run on H2?
It's possible, yes, and it has been done, but it is just not very practical. With all the obvious advantages hydrogen has as a fuel... the most obvious being that hydrogen burns clean, with no nasty byproducts at all... hydrogen has not been widely used as a fuel before now because it is not very energy-dense, compared with, say, gasoline.*
In round numbers, 1 kilogram of hydrogen = 1 gallon of gasoline, which weighs 2.83 kilos, so it seems like it has the energy advantage until you realize that at normal atmospheric pressure and temperature that single kilo of hydrogen gas occupies something like 16 cubic YARDS of volume. That's the size of some popup camper trailers.
The most obvious successful application of hydrogen as fuel in our era is its use in huge rockets to lift giant payloads into space, but that is achieved using far denser liquid hydrogen, which is expensive to produce and intensely cold and it requires very special handling at every step of the way.
And truth be known, reciprocating internal combustion engines are very wasteful of the fuel energy they consume, doing the desired work (motivating) with only a small fraction of that energy, while turning perhaps 85% of it into unwanted heat, which merely dissipates into the air.
So in order for hydrogen to finally become practical as a fuel for motor vehicles... as it now seems to be doing... several different technologies had to come together: fuel cells, which are inherently twice as energy efficient as ICEs; materials advances that allow gases to be stored at high pressure; advanced electric motor technology that allows wider power ranges at lower current draws; and computerized controls that integrate it all together. And over the next couple of years, we'll be seeing production vehicles which use hydrogen fuel hit the market from at least a half dozen major manufacturers.
*One of the ironies of the difficulties we face on a global scale due to the burning of gasoline in ICE vehicles, is that early "horseless carriages," which initially ran on a very wide range of fuels, settled on the use of gasoline as a standard fuel largely because it was so readily available as a cheap and mostly unwanted byproduct of the production of kerosene.
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