I’ve researched to try to answer my own question and came up with similar numbers.
Current internal combustion about 20%, gas to fuel with on board reformulaters expected near term at 30% and expecting 40% in a few years more. Your 70% improvement is right in the middle.
So a 25 to 50% reduction in oil usage which is close to the amount that we import. But not much better than hybrid technology for that goal. Lots better on the global warming and pollution fronts though.
I’d like to echo E-Sabbath in pointing out that this is a ridiculous idea for a sustained fuel system. I actually read that article in Mother Jones (to which I have a mystery subscription, thanks to the magazine faeries), but was forced to stop reading that particular article because I started laughing so hard that I choked on my food. Find just about any engineer and ask what he or she thinks of such things.
Cite? That I disagree with your figures at all, it’s just that I made a similar statement and sailor took umbrage at it, and I was unable to find a cite backing this up.
certainly, here is a simple mention of the 25% figure, but it doesn’t give an exact breakdown. Here’s another from Ford that says It can reach an overall efficiency of 38 percent, which is approximately 25 percent better than a gasoline engine." which means that IC engines are about 29 %, but also doesn’t break down the loss. And just to throw in two more, this site](http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm?storyid=150[/url) and this site also give the 25% figure. The 25 % figure is the most common I’ve seen. I was unable to find anything that breaks it down more than that so I am unsure how the loss due to heat compares to the loss due to incomplete combustion.
As for the 60% for fuel cells, here’s a list of the various efficiencies for different types of fuel cells.
I hope that’s what you needed. I had thought about providing cites in my earlier post, but decided against it because I was cobbling it all together from so many sources that all the links would have just made it confusing.
Thanks. Now if sailor will stop by the thread (I’ve bumped it) and post a comment.
Tuckerfan, your thread is not in a forum that I moderate, but nonetheless I would suggest starting a new thread instead of repeatedly bumping an old thread. Read the “guidelines on posting” FAQ in ATMB.
Well, Arnold, the main thrust of the OP in the thread hasn’t been answered, and since the issues which Monkey is discussing directly related to matters raised in that thread, it seemed logical to me to bump that one, than to start one entitled “Nyah, nyah, nyah! Sailor, I’ve finally found a cite that supports my position!” (or something similar). I’ve started new threads in requests for information which was related to answering the questions in that thread, and have only bumped that thread when I’ve discovered a bit of information which directly related to the question raised by the OP or in the ensuing discussion. I’m continuing my search for an answer to the question raised by the OP (mainly because it’ll help me with a project I’m working on) and am bumping it as I find out answers. So far, Manny and the others haven’t said “No more.” to these bumps.
I have debated about bumping the thread, but since there’s not been a definite answer to the OP as of yet, and it’s doubtful that there’d be much interest outside of the thread, I’ve only started new threads when I’ve had questions about something about information my research has turned up. This is one of the gray areas, I think, of the Board rules. (And I certainly didn’t bump the thread with a “Look here, sailor, you’re a twit, and I was right!” comment.) After all, the OP hasn’t been answered (not even close, IMHO), and I am trying to provide information which answers the question, and since many of the folks who participated in the thread are more knowledgeable about some of the matters being discussed than I, this seemed to be the best thing for me to do.
Wouldn’t the fact that coal could be used to produce hydrogen make any importation of oil unnecessary even if the quoted efficiencies were the same as internal combustion engines now?
Tuckerfan, let me quote from the ATMB FAQ thread, since I don’t know if you took the trouble to read it.
Indeed, but have you taken the time to read the thread I’ve bumped? (I don’t blame you if you haven’t. It is four pages long.) The discussion relates to if steam powered cars could be made more efficient than an internal combustion car, and so far, no one has been able to pin down an answer. However, I have found clues which certainly point to an answer to that question. What you’re suggesting is that I start a new thread every time I stumble across a significant piece of information (which is when I bump the thread) that holds a clue to the eventual answer, and then link to that original thread (and cross-link to the other threads that I’ve subsequently started announcing I’ve found a clue to the answer), even though some of the participants in the original thread might not see that information (because it’d probably sink like a stone in MPSIMS), whereas if I bump the thread, they’ll get an e-mail telling them something new’s developed. They can then shoot down, confirm, or ignore what I’ve posted. Whereas, if I start a new thread and link it to all the related threads, we run the risk of people interested in the discussion missing it, along with newbies who might have an answer, and who weren’t around the first time, not seeing it, and someone bumping not only the original thread, but all of the subsequent threads as well.
Arnold, the answer to the OP is important to me, as I’m attempting to build a steam powered car, and before I invest the $25,000 + in the project that it’s going to require (I’ve already spent 10 years of my life doing some of the research), I’d like some definate answers. And I am not limiting my posts on the subject to that thread. (Indeed, much of my research is being conducted off board.) I am only posting to that thread when I have an answer to something raised in the thread. Indeed, as the project gets from the design phase to the working phase, I’m going to be starting a lot of related threads, and not bumping that one. Ideally, I would have bumped that thread only once, when I had the answer, but, if you’ve read that thread (and the others that I linked to in my previous comment), you’ll see that there’s no simple “Yes” or “No” answer, and a lot of misconceptions (by all posters) in that thread.
Uzi,
The issue was the comment that FC vehicles will use gasoline as a source for hydrogen and therefore will not decrease our reliance on foreign oil. The answer is that because of greater “well to wheel efficency” gas powered FC vehicles would just about wean us from foreign oil dependency while delivering positive environmental effects (presuming that leakage of hydrogen can be minimized). Even without other sources for hydrogen (methane, coal, hydrolysis using electricity generated by renewables such as wind farms, hydroelectric and tidal power, etc)
That is what I am suggesting, yes.
One thing we should keep in mind is that we haven’t settled on a specific technology for hydrogen use. If we eventually settle on vehicles that use internal combustion of hydrogen or fuel cells and do not have on board processors, then we could use coal as a hydrogen source for those vehicles. This would need a whole new infrastructure to move that hydrogen from the processing facilities to the service station. In this scenario you’d hook a hydrogen line into your car.
What we may be more likely to see, however, are cars with on board gasoline processors. No additional infrastructure would be needed as you’d still be filling it with the gasoline we have now. Of course, if we use this system coal wouldn’t be an option.
Ummm…guys? Keep in mind that there isn’t that much hydrogen in coal. By mass, it ranges from 3% to a high of 5% for maybe 90% of all coal - typically, assume 4%. Compared to 25% by mass for methane.
By volume, I would have no easy figures.
That’s one of the reasons I didn’t try to figure out the extraction efficiency earlier. But, seeing as I think you might know this, what is the chief alkane in coal? It’s got to be much bigger than say, decane, right? The larger the carbon chain, the more the hydrogen ration is going to go down, but we have shitloads of coal so I’m curious as to what’s in it.
Los Alamos is claiming a 50% energy efficieny in coal -> H2 -> to fuel cell electrical output, so obviously coal could easily be used. Well, maybe not easily, but I think it could still be an important part of a hydrogen system.
Well I suppose someone named Anthracite should know coal!
BTW, Monkey, I never said thank you for the research you did to answer my question. Very rude of me. Thanks!
I would think that coal would be used to generate the electricity to drive the hydrolysis to produce the hydrogen … not the most environmentally freidly option but one that at least puts the pollution out of concentrated urban centers.
Another BTW to ianthewalrus - the engineers in England are not laughing. England is betting big on sustainables like wind farms and tidal power to provide a lion’s share of their electricity in coming decades and meet or exceed Kyoto guidelines.
Though if I had read that Los Alamos site first I would know that they are talking about something different.
You can also combine hydrogen with hydrogen and produce things like deterium, tritium and helium, some high speed particals and a shit load of energy. Now if I can only remember where I put that flux capacator.
Tidal power? ::whistles:: Those things sound nice, but are usually an environmental nightmare. Fish kills and invertebrate kills seriously affect the local food change and altering the circulation pattern of the coast can produce possible flooding of nearby areas or dry up headponds. Shit, the damn things can even alter local weather patterns. Any proposed tidal plant is going to have a huge NIMBY* problem.
That said, if I remember my British geography right, they may have sites where it could work. Their coastline isn’t the barrier islands I’m used to on North America’s Atalantic coast - which means far fewer estuaries and far fewer coastal wetlands. I suppose you could site 'em outside of Dover without too much trouble.
Two other things: DSeid, thanks for the thank you. Anthracite, I hope my earlier post didn’t sound confrontational. I figure you know about coal and I was hoping you would post more on the subject. Shoot, you said you work with energy alternatives. I just want to pick your brain.
*may be unnecessary, but just in case, “NIMBY” is an acronym meaning “not in my back yard”. It’s common to see it in environmental discussions, even to the point of it showing up in EPA documents
Coal is typically referred to as a “structure” due to the huge chains and matrices of hydrocarbons in it. In class, I sum it up by saying it’s like “drawing the chemical formula for a tree”, which isn’t exactly correct, but then I’m not testing anyone on it…
There really is no good way to characterize “coal” in that fashion. Of the more than 2400 detailed analyses that I have, no two are the same. And thus coals are almost always only classifed by their ultimate, proximate, mineral, maceral, and bulk physical properties. Now, you can use infrared Fourier tranform methods to give some qualitative measures of the proportions of hydroxyls, aliphatic and hydroaromatic hydrogen, aromatic hydrogen, aliphatic carbon and aromatic carbon. But this varies significantly from mine to mine, seam to seam, and within the same worked seam - from day to day. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything with it, or char pyrolisis and gasification people would have fits trying to predict performance, but it does mean that from a chemical standpoint it’s hard to work out what exactly you’ll get.
To summarize - you can find all sorts of chemical analyses of coals, and find some scattered about the web here and there even, where the coal is broken down into hydrocarbon constituents. But they vary so much, it’s really too difficult for someone like me outside of a lab to say more.