Battery efficiency is improving faster than fuel cells

That's what I pretty much expect.

Battery technology is going to improve dramatically with gas/electric hybrids. Batteries will become lighter, last longer, hold more, etc to meet the performance demands.

I think photovoltaic technology is going to improve as well for home and commercial use. No, that won't help charge the car at night if cars go plug in, but it will run the house during the day so you only need the power company at night.

Rates won't go down because the companies need their profits. That's why people will go photovoltaic. They'll be paying the same for less.

And all of this will benefit those that have the money to install photovoltaic, buy the cars, etc.

You know what I'd like? To be able to charge one set of batteries during the day while I'm driving, then switch them out and the next day recharge the batteries the car used the cay before. Sorta like my cordless drill, I charge one battery while I'm using the other. No, I know it's not practical right now, but that's what I'd like to do. And who know? Maybe someday there will be a technology that allows me to switch out my car batteries like I do my cordless drill. That way those photovoltaic panels will really do me some good. (When I can afford to buy some.)

 

You will be able to charge your car from the batteries that you charge at home during the day. No need to swap the batteries. just a simple plug from one to the other. Losses should be reduced by nanotechnology construction methods.

 

You're right. Battery technology has exploded in the last 5 years. More so now that companies can utilize their most efficient mfr methods by manufacturing lots of cells and making bigger batteries. Older technologies that had been given up as too difficult will begin bubble up again. Gee like hybrid cars.

Unfortunately they can't manufacturer enough photovoltaic cells to get them to come down cheaply. Heck I'm thinking of putting some on my garage because of the tax credits and breaks you get. I especially like the idea selling my excess to power companies. They are beginning to try nanotechnology on photovoltaic which makes me think this too will suddenlty accelerate in tech advancement.

 

Look Hydrogen is still the "Fuel" of the future.

All of you (people willing to make the leap and by a Prius) should be used to and discount the industry and scientific "It can't be done" or "that is decades away"

Examples:
1. 1970 to now, cars are heavier, more complex, have more power, get better gas mileage, and specifically (a thing the auto industry said was impossible) are or can be nearly pollution free. Especially compared to a 1970.

2. It is "impossible" for our industry to allow a cell phone user to switch companies and keep their number. ONE month after the law took effect the process was "nearly" flawless and took less than two days.

3. Aluminum used to be more valuable than GOLD, that is why it capped the Washington Monument, Now we routinely throw away aluminum by the ton, and use it to hold our beverages. Imagine a pop can made of gold?

Throw out some other "impossible" that are routinely made possible by the inventiveness of humans and Americans.

 

Boy am I glad you brought THAT up!

Currently, hydrogen is the "feel good" science-fictiony promise that doesn't deliver squat.

Your example of the current favored method of "creating" hydrogen with a fuel cell and natural gas: the net is MORE energy use, not less. A company is much better off refining an ICE or an ICE hybrid to run off natural gas.

Indeed, there are many microturbines, such as Capstone, and specially modified ICE from companies like Caterpillar and Wakesha Engine that operate very efficiently from natural gas.

Also, there has been very unclear explanation of how the hydrogen will be stored in a vehicle. A lot of folks imagine a high pressure tank, but that is incredibly inefficient.

As an example, 1 U.S. gallon of regular unleaded has around 131 MJ (Mega Joule) of energy, and this is approximately equivalent to 1 KG of hydrogen.

A standard pressure cylinder you might find in a lab or a welding shop has around 2,200 psi. One kg of hydrogen in such a cylinder will occupy 91.2 litres (1.6 MJ/L). The same energy content is in 8.2 litres - around 2.2 US gallons - of gasoline.

Just increasing the pressure doesn't automatically give you linear increases in storage, as at higher pressures there is large deviation from "ideal gas" laws. The Beattie-Bridge equation illustrates this, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to edit the equation with this editor!

At 10,000psi, the hydrogen gas density is only 2/3 that of the "ideal" gas. As 10,000psi, 1 kg of hydrogen occupies 27 litres and contains 5.3 MJ/L. Remember that 1 U.S. gallon of regular unleaded contains 131 MJ/L.

At 20,000psi, the hydrogen gas density is only 1/2 that of an "ideal" gas. I shudder to think of a 20,000psi cylinder in my car. If the fitting blew off, would the car take off like a rocket?

There is always liquid storage, as 1 kg of hydrogen occupies 14 litres and has 10 MJ/L. But hydrogen will readily vaporize at -253 C, so you have to do cryostorage. Cryostorage is tricky at best.

Another approach is storing hydrogen as a solid. It takes incredible pressure and low temps to turn hydrogen solid. However you can bind it as a solid hydride. The most common is a metal hydride LaNi5H6 (Lanthanum Nickle Hydride).

LaNi5H6 will dehydride and rehydride within 10 mins and even better can release hydrogen near room temperature at modest pressures. Unfortunately, the hydrogen content of LaNi5H6 is only 1.4%: to store 5kg of hydrogen would require 360 kg of LaNi5H6.

I'm sure with time we can figure out a reliable and relatively inexpensive means to derive hydrogen, eg fusion of some sort. In the meantime I absolutely agree that battery storage - or call it "energy storage" - will become far more advanced than currently envisioned hydrogen generation.

I think folks are somewhat off in left field if they expect to generate hydrogen as a gas to burn in an ICE. Work with PEM's (Proton Exchange Membrane) would make it more efficient to directly convert to electricity to run an electric motor.

And Ray is bang-on about the future of nanotech and energy storage. By developing a complex, densely packed structure as nanotech, who knows what the upper limits of energy density will be?

 

It took several major revolutions in the field of semiconductors, materials science, software engineering, lubrication technology, etc, to make that happen. It wasn't easy at all.

1970: car motors were mostly built from scratch, including hand grinding cylinders and loose-fitting rings to pistons. No deck plates used here. Rings were low-tension and allowed a lot of blowby. If you got 60,000 miles out of a motor, you did good. Which was fine as motors were cheap back then compared to the price of the car.

More and more ignition systems had a transistor switching system to saturate the ignition coil (Eg the Mopar "box") but a lot were still points.
The ignition advance was vacuum for most passenger vehicles and mechanical weights for high performance.

Everybody used carburettors, especially those way over-rich Holley's that belched raw gas. There were some mechanical fuel injection like Hilborn that weren't much better. The carb needed a choke for cold start and run, tended to vapor lock when hot, and the gas was allowed to vaporize out the vents.

Most of the lubricants back then had poor frictional characteristics, so there was a lot of internal friction to overcome. People also had to go through elaborate steps to start a car below 0 F, sometimes resorting to making a fire under the oil pan.

Now: Motors are created using fully automated steps, on CNC equipment. The engine assembly is theoretically repetitive over hundreds of thousands if not millions of units. Cylinders are precisely finished with deck plates to ensure proper finish angle.

Pistons fit tighter due to the use of hypereutectic materials. The rings are precoated to reduce friction, control blowby usually down to 0%, and last much longer. We now expect a motor to last at least 100,000 miles.

Thanks to IC's with densities in the millions of transistors, all on a chunk of semiconductor the size of your fingernail, you can control port fuel injection and per-cylinder ignition coils. Air intake temp, coolant temp, crank angle, cam angle, variable cam phasing, O2 sensors, etc, all precisely control the amount of fuel burned.

I think the next step is per-cylinder O2 monitoring and per-cylinder valve control. Imagine the increase in efficiency and power if each cylinder is individually controlled.

With digital technology like TDMA, the many flavors of CDMA, and GSM, it was always possible to retain the MIN. Understandably, the cell phone operators wanted to lock in their Golden Teat, the cell phone user, so they claimed it was impossible to retain MIN's.

Things like GTT (Global Title Translator) databases easily allow this, as the GTT also easily allowed automated billing, a very essential component to the cell phone operator. Since it's all digital, the header frame of the data contains all the essential information anyway.

If it makes you feel any better, the giant monopolistic Bell Canada up here claimed as late as 1999 that it was impossible to allow competitive long distance companies access to their network, and it was also impossible to retain your number. They were encouraged by the scandal-plagued Liberal Party Of Canada.

For all we know, somebody has figured out cold fusion right now with Grape Nuts and Chiclits, though more than likely they'll accidently vaporize Chicago testing it.

I think whenever an "impossible" situation is thrust upon us, we tend to dream up unique solutions. We need "Left Field" thinkers who ignore Mainstream and Clean Sheet their approach.

For example, create a tax on CO2 emissions such that a Chevy Suburban would face an extra $18,000 in excise taxes. GM would either stop making it or figure out a way to get 32 MPG highway pronto.

 

I'm stunned by your flurry of non sequiturs. I say we just forego hybrid cars in favor of Star Trek-esque matter-energy conversion devices. Hey, if it's possible to keep your phone number, anything is possible.

 

I thought that fuel cells would be a long way off but not that long. Thanks Jay for the info on it. I knew the infastructure was a problem, but seeing a few on TV shows running around I thought it was closer to production. I will have to check it out more on the net. I always thought it was coming after the hybrids. But with more and more hybrids coming out I see that these are the cars of the future right now. Toyota has done a good job getting them out and having the technology first. Guess I will have to bone up more so as not be left behind in the workings of the hybrids. Never know to much I say, :lol:

 

Howdy,

In the eighties solar panels where definitely the BIG thing! There were substantial increases in effectiveness and a dropping in cost per amp. The future looked very good for many applications (mostly due to the civilian use of technology developed in the space program). In the sailing world we were seeing boats with 100% solar supported power systems (excepting propulsion)

Then, congress decided to help and created substantial tax benefits for solar research.

The petrochemical companies (think ARCO) bought all of the small solar developers and the technology simply became another tax heaven for a few big companies; very little has happened since then in solar…

 

Tom:

Yet another good reason why Congress should have framed the subsidy (Tax benefit) such that only University engineering schools and small start-ups were eligible for the subsidies.

Leave it to politicians, either accidently due to their ignorance (Probable) or on purpose to get kickbacks (Much more probable), to give one more unnecessary tax writeoff to giant legal entities.

Jay

 

Some tax breaks are pointed at installers here in NY. They get a kickback depending on the size of the system installed as well as the homeowners and businesses.

 

I'd recommend you take a look at a detailed article Scientific American published last year, investigating how well -- or poorly -- hydrogen fuel cells would work.

They took a lot of different scenarios, and looked at the total cost for a hydrogen fuel economy for automobiles.

Summary: unless someone comes up with a way to extract hydrogen that's much less expensive (or, if you live in Iceland ), it doesn't look promising.

(On the other hand, hydrogen fuel cell power for handheld devices looks very promising.)
[hr:3a0df0130e]
I absolutely agree with you about the innovative capabilities of mankind, and our ability to pull a rabbit out of our technological hat. I'm just saying that hydrogen fuel cells don't look like a good candidate for being the rabbit that will do the trick -- or at least, won't be the best rabbit.

The batteries-enhanced-with-nanotecnology, though, are looking like just such a rabbit.

[I would end on a note that I think it's very, very bad planning to start doing something with dangerous side effects, under the principle "well, someone will figure out a way to fix it in the future." That way lies disaster.]

 

Maybe not as far as the market place yet, but big things have been happening for solar in the labs. Here are just the recent developments I've heard about:

1) Ultrathin flexible plastic based PV cells
2) Spray-paint PV material (yes, really!)
3) 50% efficient PV cells based on indium gallium nitride (best with silicon is about 20%)
4) Solar (heat) derived electricity cheaper than coal, thanks to use of stirling cycle engine.
5) Infra-red harnessing PV - could be used anywhere with excess heat (engine bay, exhaust?)

 

Remember I said Hydrogen is the "Fuel" of the future, notice the quotes.
This does not mean that it a "replacement" for gasoline on a one to one
basis.

THink more in the line of the Hybrid that is the base of this whole site.

A combination of technologies that attempt to minimize and compensate for
weaknesses in each technologies.

Hydrogen in combination with a Hybrid or Trihybrid technology; hydrogen, battery, solar, regenerative breaking, etc....

Also, yes I type in semi-incomplete thoughts,,,

Also, Also, if you think hydrogen is a pipe dream just do a calculation on the amount of land that would have to be cleared to provide room for bio-fuel or wind power that would be sufficient to replace just gasoline, let alone ALL fuel oil consumption.

Other issues to think of...
Is there enough wind to even power that many windmills..
what affect will all those windmills have on global wind currents????
Bio-Fuel does bubkiss for emissions,
Environmentalists and NIMBY'S already make it impossible to build power stations, heck NIMBY'S don't even want people to have housing. (as long as they have theirs)

and the only legitimate drawback to Hydrogen right now is production energy costs. Nothing a genius and the right incentive couldn't solve!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate\";p=\"89846)</div>

Where is all this energy to make the hydrogen going to come from? Burning oil or coal or splitting natural gas - not good. Making it from renewable electricity makes no sense either because plug-in hybrids go 4-5x as far on the same amount of electrical energy as a hydrogen car.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate\";p=\"89846)</div>

It's more the laws of physics that would need to be bent. Hydrogen needs to be electrolysed, compressed and then burnt in a fuel cell, losing vast amounts of energy at each stage - end of.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate\";p=\"89846)</div>

This calculation has already been done by the US department of energy Aquatic Species Program, who tried pilot plants growing and converting algae into biodiesel in the mid-nineties. They were getting 10,000 gallons of oil per acre per year, and concluded:

"We found that at NREL's yield rates, 15,000 square miles (3.85 million hectares) of algae ponds would be needed to replace ALL petroleum transportation fuels with biodiesel"

The prefered site was the Sonora desert, where the project would take up only a small proportion of the desert's area, yet provide all US oil requirements. Projected cost of the oil was estimated to be roughly twice that of fossil- (petroleum) based oil - about $2.50 per gallon. At the time it looked like the price of oil was steady if not falling slightly, so your far sighted government axed the project.

Today, private investors are starting similar projects again, with the clear aim of making bio-based oil at a price less than that of fossil fuel.

And as for the wind thing, remember that most of the windmills you see on the hills today are only about 1 megawatt. The new ones are up to 10 megawatts. One farm of 100 turbines = 1 gigawatt = the same output of a big coal or nuclear power station, so yes, there is a lot of power available in the wind.