who thinks hydrogen fuelled F1 cars are a good idea ( petrol replaced with hydrogen, not hydrogen fuel cells ), in my thinking they are clean burning, easily obtainable from the electrolisation of water and actually boost engine power !, i know they require upgraded engine parts and a hydrogen fuel tank, but i think if F1 wants to go truly "green" without losing all of that beastly engine noise, they must ditch the oil and hitch up the H2.
Also H2 can be pressurised inside the fuel tank to last longer but only as a gas. could some sort of refrigiration system be used to cool down the hydrogen and allow it to be stored at lower temperatures and thus be able to be compressed longer and last longer, maybe even cooled into a liquid ?
autogyro wrote:Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is a white elephant being promoted by the oil companies.
im sorry, i dont understand how it is a "white elephant" as it has many benefits, i know it may not have as much future performance potential as battery technology but in order to keep the engine noise and rawness of F1 without polluting İ cannot see any other sustainable way.
Are you talking about combusting hydrogen in a typical ICE engine, or using a Hydrogen fuel cell? In the case of the former, what benefit would that provide over conventional petrol (apart from the cleaner burn).
Please don't tell me that you could also produce the Hydrogen locally at every venue using solar panels and electrolysis. If your true concern is pollution and increased efficiency, better start having a good look at what they are doing in FormulaE. To my knowledge, batteries, condensators and flywheels are the most effective way of storing portable electric energy today, not Hydrogen.
BMW pushed the hydrogen idea quite far but they too also gave it up for electric engines.
But i would agree with the OP, burning hydrogen instead of going full electric is my choice any day of the week.
(assuming they are not allowed to use gasoline for example)
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"
Hydrogen is a fuel for brute force and ignorance space rocket engines.
The only reason hydrogen fuel cells were developed was because they had lots of hydrogen in space rockets so it was convenient.
Now try it on the real world.
Burning it or using it to convert to electricity for ground vehicles is just as bad as refining oil whichever way you do it.
On top of that you have to store it under pressure and cold.
Silly idea.
Hydrogen is not a substance that you can just pass around in whatever container is convenient. It does not liquify without cryogenic conditions, and is only storable at room temperature when under extreme pressure- which requires a heavy and bulky cylinder for a rather limited storage capacity. It also is known to weaken any container used to store it, attacking both metals and ceramics by embrittlement processes as well as escaping from materials you normally think of as non-porous.
Solutions to this problem usually rely on storing the hydrogen in a chemically combined form and only releasing it as needed. Unfortunately most of these solutions are nowhere near as efficient as bulk hydrogen promises to be, or introduce hazards of their own such as dangerous reactions or toxic materials.
The second problem is supply.
Current hydrogen supplies are obtained by stripping it from fossil fuels, from acid-metal reactions as used to produce small amounts of hydrogen for chemistry lab purposes, or from byproducts of other processes- such as thermal cracking in a nuclear reactor where hydrogen and oxygen is periodically flushed out of the coolant flow and recombined for safety reasons.
Electrolysis is not efficient at all. The amount of energy required to make it work right is far beyond how much energy you get back by burning the hydrogen or using it in a fuel cell. And the current electrical grid in most areas of the world simply would not be able to withstand the additional loading of large scale electrolysis, not without the construction of fleets of nuclear power plants to provide the necessary base load energy. Sorry, wind and solar are not even going to be considered by me- their output is too irregular, and too weak to keep up with humanity's demand for energy unless there is a drastic boost in efficiency at every level.
Spain is doing rather well with solar power and Germany has a fairly good wind power set up.
I agree these two cannot meet anywhere near the worlds total energy needs.
Wave and tidal can though if there is sufficient investment and in the case of Britain's Severn and Wash Estuaries we deal with the silly dicky bird watchers and other do gooders.
Electric vehicles will be the future of that I am certain.
It does not matter what source the energy comes from because electric vehicles will centralise the energy production and increase the efficiency far above obsolete mobile fossil fuel use.
When distribution and use of electric power is develop a little further there will be no need for on board batteries in most applications and the performance of electric racing cars will then be far higher than any IC powered vehicle.
Suggestions for any other on board form of energy to operate land vehicles are simply red herrings put about by oil companies to chain the naive public to 19th century technology.
F1 will decline and be replaced over the next few decades.
I am sure you do not want me to go into the real reasons why we have not had a world system of electric road vehicles for the last 100 years do you.
It has nothing to do with technology of course.
I am sure you do not want me to go into the real reasons why we have not had a world system of electric road vehicles for the last 100 years do you.
I love a good conspiracy theory!
Some of them are even true, like the fact that General Motors bought up the entire Los Angeles public transportation system almost 100 years ago and shut it down in order to sell more cars........
Some men go crazy; some men go slow. Some men go just where they want; some men never go.
