The trouble with today's cars is that they still put out a lot of pollution, and use up fossil fuels. One day, we have to run out of fossil fuels. People have been talking about running cars on water for ages. Unfortunately, most of the time, these people are crackpots. But there is a certain amount of truth in what they say.

Now I know that trying to predict the future is hard, but I reckon that an electric car, powered by a fuel cell running on hydrogen, could be a goer! If you remember back to your chemistry classes at school, water is H2O. In other words, a molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen. If you use energy, and pass electricity through water, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. And you can run this reaction backwards, and combine hydrogen and oxygen to give you water and energy. (In fact, the word, "hydrogen", means "maker of water" in the original Greek language.)

There are two main ways that you can burn hydrogen with oxygen, to give you water, and energy.

The first way is that you can burn hydrogen in a modified car engine. Two companies, BMW and Mazda, are working on this. The engine works fine, but with about 20% less power - which is pretty reasonable, considering that we have been working on the petrol engine for a century or so. When you burn hydrogen in an engine, you get mostly water coming out of the tailpipe. You also get small amounts of oxides of nitrogen (from the nitrogen in the air), and even smaller amount of hydrocarbons (from traces of the lubricants in the combustion chambers of the engine). Even so, a hydrogen-powered car is much less polluting than a petrol-powered car. Of course, you use a normal gearbox and diff.

The second way to use hydrogen to run your car is in an electric car. Mercedes-Benz have been using a strange device called a fuel cell, which has been around since 1839.

A fuel cell is very similar to a battery. Both a fuel cell and a battery turn a chemical reaction into electrical energy. But a battery is sealed, and when the "goodness" in the chemicals is used up, the battery is flat. A fuel cell is like a battery, but with one important different difference - you can pump in the chemicals indefinitely. Fuel cells take in hydrogen and oxygen, and give off pure drinking water, and electricity. You use the electricity to run electric motors.

Fuel cells are up to 80% efficient. They will get two or three times more energy out of hydrogen, than will a modified car engine. This is because the internal combustion engine has a stage where you generate a lot of heat - and this is where a lot of energy is wasted, and where the efficiency goes right down.

The real problem with today's electric cars is that our battery technology is pathetic. The battery pack in today's best electric car, the EV-1, gives great acceleration, but a range of less than 100 kilometres. But if you use a fuel cell instead of a battery, you suddenly get an electric car with very low pollution, and good range and performance.

There are two main ways to store hydrogen in your car-of-the-future. First, you can squash it and turn it into a liquid - but the container has to be very strong and heavy, and you have to insulate it to keep it at a temperature of about 260oC below zero.

The second way is to shove the gas into a metal, such as magnesium, and it will squash into the spaces between the magnesium atoms. It sounds unbelievable, but you can actually store more hydrogen inside a metal, than you can as a liquid. Nelly Rodriguez and her fellow scientists at Northeastern University in Boston claim that they can do even better. They used incredibly thin sheets of graphite only one third of a billionth of a metre apart, and they reckon that they can store 30 litres of hydrogen on a single gram of graphite, which works out to an amazing 8,000 kilometres per tank, with your hydrogen-powered car.

Either way, you can fill your tank in under three minutes - which is not much different from filling up with petrol.

One problem with hydrogen is the bad public relations angle - most of us have heard of hydrogen bombs, and seen the dramatic footage of the hydrogen-filled Hindenberg airship exploding in 1937. But hydrogen can be stored safely - in a series of tests on a tank of liquid hydrogen, BMW played flames at 900oC on it for 70 minutes, punched holes into it, and even squashed it until it broke. Sometimes the hydrogen leaked out, and sometimes it caught alight, but it never exploded.

At the moment, in the USA alone, there's about $200 billion invested in shifting and storing petrol, and it would take an enormous effort to start dealing with hydrogen.

It's a darn shame, but we probably won't get a hydrogen energy economy in the near future - but we might further down the line, as we begin to run out of fossil fuels.

i think that it would take gov't mandates and requirements to make people change over, mostly due to the cost of change.

Wouldn't it cost the same for a full tank? Great for emissions, but if the savings aren't great, I'll stick with good old petrol. :D

i couldnt care any less about emissions...what i care about is the absurd fuel prices.

I know that we are going to have to find a way to phase out oil use over the next 50 years. i don't think anyone is going to be forced to buy a new are, but shortly i think that all new car options will be (clean) options. I think we are just going to have to come to tirms with the idea that we are going to see the death of the high horsepower machines.

hmm..im afraid that i dont agree. considering the fact that right now even your 4 cylinder performance cars are putting out near 300hp, and the V8s, such as the new GTO, Vette, Stang, and the Dodge Hemi cars are all putting out 350+, i think that those companies surely are preparing for any type of alternative fuel, and in doing so, are also working on performance cars which use that alternative fuel

Hydrogen fuel...........sounds expensive.
What about methanol? USHRA Monster trucks run pretty good on methanol. Engines running cooler sounds good but alcohol does attract moisture and the fuel system problems need to be dealt with. Clean buring and renewable.....plus farmers making money is too cool.

i used to be on a pit crew for a circle track car, and they ran an alcohol engine...i do see more and mroe alcohol injected cars at the track...

I think its a good idea but for now the cost to have them on the road will cost an arm and a leg

Interesting reading. You know, I personally know of several cars that convert tap water and now run on 100% hydrogen. Sure, they don't have quite as much power but who cares when gas is $3 bucks a gallon. And pollution? Yeah, there's none. But before anybody gets all reved up about running your car on tap water (yes it does work) and saving the world, I've been researching this for quite some time and have come to some unhappy conclusions. It's all wrapped around money. First, the oil companies won't allow 100% hydrogen cars to evolve because it would bankrupt them. ie: you don't need gas, they go broke. (Also, hydrogen has many other uses, heating your home, power generation, etc. Oil companies have great stock in these as well.) 2nd, the economy. If the oil companies go TU, there goes the economy. Millions of workers laid off. Nobody to pay taxes, you do the math.

Sad, I'm a great fan of hydrogen and think if handled right it could indeed be mankinds power answer for the next thousand years or so. Maybe longer. However, the money grubbers aren't going to allow (yes I said allow.) us to have control over our lives because quite frankly, they like having the power. (and the money) And sadly, I don't believe we can take that power back from them. That... would take a revolution. Hmmm, didn't we do that once?

Just my opinion,

Brad

I think you could take the power back, but it will not happen all at once (and that's what's expected). If I could reliably run a car on water (not like the old steam engines), I'd do it.......sometimes :), but we need people to invest in the technology. Oil companies will try to stop it, but true progress can not be stopped forever. The higher gas prices get, the more they push people to explore alternative sources of power.....but that's just my two cents.

....3 dollars a gallon is still cheap compared to prices in other countries.....[sm=smiley5.gif]

:)Absolutely! It's just going to take a concerted effort and a little education. Like us talking about it here. People will find out that there are alternatives. Good, well proven ones. And maybe the oil companies will see that they don't have to lose all their power either. Hey, they've got all the money so why not let them do a major portion of the research and development. Then, maybe over a 20/30 year we get our country switched over to hydrogen and the oil companies can convert over to being the big hydrogen suppliers for cars, trains, aircraft, busses, etc. That way they won't lose all the power they so desperately want, people don't lose all their jobs and we still get the benefits of hydrogen. I know that still leaves them in control but hey, it'd be better then nothing.

So what do you think?

an oil company will NEVER try to help the effort to do away with the gasoline combustion engine...for the same reason that there will never be a cure for cancer, because too many greedy ass doctors make millions a year off of cancer, so why would they WANT to cure it?

:eek:Yeah Patrick, I fear you're right. They won't do it voluntarily so like you said, it'll probably have to be a Gov't mandate or something. (so let's get on with it!!!) Too bad it always seems to come down to that. Forcing people (corporations, whatever) to do the right thing. But I guess that's what greed does huh. And sad too because it doesn't have to be that way. If they would even just start the ball rolling they would come out looking like Superman you know. The saviors of the world!!! (OK, maybe just the good guys) Oh well, I don't suppose I'll hold my breath. Better to just keep working on converting my little truck to hydrogen. :D

i was told that there is a company in California that has already developed a very high performance hydrogen based car...it was my understanding that either steve saleen or carroll shelby let them use his name on it...and it made something like 400whp, and run in the 11 or 12 second range...there are evidently quite a few "hydrogen fueling stations" nationwide already...

Great! I'll have to look into that. Hope this is the beginning. And you know... I always liked Shelbys!
400 hp, yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think that hydrogen cars need to be brought about sooner than they're being allowed to be. The reasoning behind this is simple:

1) Hydrogen cars have been proven to put out bare trace ammounts if not none in harmful emissions, and if we start pushing for them to be put out now, we can reverse the damage we're doing to our atmosphere AND planet sooner.

2) The oil companies have been cracking down on putting out hydrogen cars because it would put them out of business and, in fact, it's been rumored that some people have been killed over it. The oil companies are the most greedy, power-mongering organizations in existence simply because they have control over the world. Since we are totally dependent on them putting out oil & gas, they have that control. They have us in their vice-grips, and they can chose to raise gas prices, REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH IN PROFITS THEY STILL GET. One example is how they used Hurricanes Katrina & Rita as excuses to raise the prices to the levels they're at now, and will continue to try to find excuses to raise prices. They're currently making record profits right now by squeezing us more for our hard earned dollars that we cannot afford. THEY however can afford to keep prices low considering how much they make as well as how much they bank. One thing that's been speculated is that the oil companies themselves are trying to make it more expensive for hydrogen powered cars to be manufactured, as well as them slowing down the process of researching the technology for hydrogen powered cars. If we started pushing for hydrogen cars NOW we'd be able to bring them down to the level they need to be. All we'd need them for is lubrication.

3) Some research has been done from what I've read that hydrogen cars may also produce trace ammounts of ozone as a byproduct of the combustion of the hydrogen. If this is in fact a true possiblity then we may be able to repair even the ozone itself, and reverse the effect of the polar ice caps melting, considering the huge hole in the ozone that is currently floating above parts of Antartica.

4) Pushing out hydrogen fuels will help out with fuel costs dramatically. There's been cars converted to run off of tap water that costs $.05 a gallon and purified water that's about $.30 a gallon. Compared to fuel costs today being $2.65 & up to $3.00 a gallon, that's exponential savings. If people started working together to try and speed up the process of researching & developing & producing hydrogen fueled cars, or pushing conversion kits that'll pay for themselves in fuel savings, we could see dramatic changes in our world sooner than we think. Hopeully in our lifetimes.

5) Pushing the development of hydrogen fueled cars & conversion kits will not only save people money, but could also help to create more jobs in our country. If we start moving forward on this we could see jobs opening up for plants that process hydrogen for storage & transport for hydrogen fueling stations, & then for those to build & maintain the fueling stations, and then for the new factories that will build the cars, and for the factories that build the conversion kits....the list can go on and on. Not to mention the fact that pushing for hydrogen will also unlock new areas of technology that we could see coming sooner than most would think. Imagine hydrogen powered planes, or even the concept of hydrogen fusion generators for space shuttles or space stations, or even transports that could carry us to other planets in our solar system. I know that this all sounds like science fiction, but the contept for all of this is more realistic than most think. I myself have come up with my own idea of a possible nearly endless supply of energy that is all based around a groundbreaking fuel......water. Water is the most important thing for life to funtion....and soon....if people become more aware of the concepts & possibilities, it could lead to a new geration for our planet to come.

Thats all I have to say.

very well put, joe, but like the president or not, with someone in the white house who's hand is in the pocket of the oil industry, it will never happen.

Agree with you completly Joe. Remember, yesterdays' science fiction is todays reality. With Orville and Wilbur Wright, some people thought, "Fly like a bird!?! ha, ha, ha, ha..." Now we have things like the SST" Go to the moon they said... etc. Unfortunately, I also agree with Patrick. Until we get someone/someones in Govt. that are on our side... lots a luck. So, don't let this be all you have to say about it. Keep on pushing when ever, where ever you can. If nothing else, convert your own car!

The president of own united states unfortunately is a powerful man, and when hurricane katrina hit he took it too far and suspended the jones act, which basically says that oil (as well as other products) has to brought in by americans, but since our economy heavily relies on the price of a barrel, he lined his pockets and "solved" a crisis at the same time. what people fail to realize that he has yet to fully re-instate this policy and american companies are losing out and that is why oil prices are still high. I'm down for a revolution.


go hydrogen.

but there is little that we an do.."one mans word" doesnt go as far as it used to...

I think It will not success... Its better to make free air vehicles... that is one way for air in & compressor... next to engine...