Ktulu

Okay guys, I realize this is probably a stupid question, but I couldn't find an answer anywhere...this isn't something I would do, I was just curious. Take it easy on me...

I know hydrogen internal combustion engines have been made, but I always thought they were very different than gas-powered engines, until I saw that Ford just made a concept truck that can run on both hydrogen and gas.

So my question is would it be possible to convert the Mustang's engine to hydrogen, if, say 20 years from now, hydrogen is cheap and plentiful and gas is horribly expensive? Or would it involve ripping out the whole engine and replacing it? I know such a move probably wouldn't ever be practical, but a few friends and I were sitting around talking about it, and it made me curious. How much difference is there between a gas and hydrogen powered internal combustion engine, anyway? What would the the loss in power?

I didn't really know where to post this, so feel free to move it.

freyke

Drop the tree, and walk backwards towards me with your hands on your head...

You're from California aren't you?
.

Ktulu

Like I said, it was just a curious question. I know absolutely nothing about about hydrogen engines, and I would like to know more.

I don't want one, or hate gasoline, or anything else. There's just something new out there that I hear quite a bit about in the news, and I'd like to understand more about it.

I am certainly not a tree-hugger. Would I drive a mustang GT if I was?

freyke

Just kidding....

You're right in some sense... we need to weene ourselves off the Dino juice... Hydrogen engined are still internal combustion and not that all removed from the gasoline burners we drive.....

eventuallty, this is were/what we'll all be driving in the near future... to heck w/OPEC...

MilStang

Unfortunately I do not know enough to tell you about the hydrogen engine. I did read at one time that Carroll Shelby has some of his continuation Cobra's that are hydrogen powered. Sounded interesting but it was still very expensive.

thestoogeo

I'd buy a hydrogen combustion car in a heart beat if it provides equal or more power and has the sounds I have grown to love. BMW has some sweet development for dual fuels as well.

Jon

dustindu4

Hydrogen is not the answer to a clean environment. It takes burning coal to make hydrogen and the process from beginning to end is 10% efficient. The end result is more pollutants.

The future of our energy needs is ethanol. Our gas already has ethanol in it. Ethanol = grain alcohol. A lot of cars on the road today can run right on pure ethanol. Cars that can't run on it only need their fuel lines swapped out because ethanol is more corrosive than gas. Basically all the unused farm land in the US can grow hay, potatoes, sugar cane whatever and be converted into ethanol in giant grain alcohol stills basically. Did I mention zero emissions? The technology is here, it would just take trillions to convert our infrasturcture from gas pumps and transport to ethanol.

Stang281

You've been watching the State of the Union Address, haven't you?



Kidding aside, as far as I know, hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline and the only emission is water.

kevinb120

You are correct, and its a renewable resource. They say its too expensive but if we no longer subsidized this farmland and the economy of scale will make it feesable, IF you can find a politician that will nurse themselves off of oil money for thier election campaign. We could easilly fix EVERY issue if all of our 'leaders' weren't completely bought and paid for long before the election is over.

MilStang

I agree with both you and Dustindu4 on this. We could help out U.S. farmers that have such a hard time making ends meet and reduce our foreign dependency as well.

That said, I have no idea how much it would cost to set up the required infrastructure but I would like to see us start moving to some alternative.

1200custom

Isn't gasoline in some parts of the country mixed with ethanol ?

66stang351

The problems with hydrogen are many here are just a few. Very hard to produce, production causes a lot of pollution, very hard to contain, depends on fossil fuels. :notnice:

GT98

They had an article in Popular Mechanics about alterntive fuels and there isn't enough farmible land in the whole world to replace Fossel fuels. I doubt that with all the farm land in the US, that we would be able to even drop 5-10% of our imports of oil if we serious about using grain-based fuels.

slammer223

More and more farmland is being turned into 5 acre "urban sprawl" plots with lots of grass to keep mowed and no other use. Cheap, clean production of hydrogen has been a quest for years, the person or company who discovers how will be richer than bill gates.

silverGTvert

I may be wrong here but hydrogen cars are not internal combustable. They run off a fuel cell in which the hydrogen is pushed through and seperated. The result becomes water and electricity. The electricity is the used to power electric motors which are mounted on the wheels and thus eliminated the drivetrain.

The problem with Hydrogen is as Dustin pointed out, it is expensive and very poluting to produce. Coal and nuclear power are currently the easiest way to get it. We all know how bad coal is for the enviorment and with few nuclear power plants out there we wont be getting hydrogen in quantities needed anytime soon.

Now there also might be the hybrid gas/hydrogen cars out there but I have no clue about those.

Jamie

Actually as much as old Bush would like everyone to believe that Ethanol is the saviour of the US there are many studies that point out that currently Ethanol is horribly inefficient. It requires in the neighbourhood of 6 units of energy to produce one unit of energy to make Ethanol.

Check out this article about it:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/...50329132436.htm

Hydrogen is a much better fuel than Ethanol and though it has some issues with storage (big explosive container strapped to your vehicle ) and current methods of producing it are expensive and waste more energy than they produce. But there are lost of cool projects that are in the works to create production methods that use biological methods to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using algae. There are also methods using Solar Hydrogen Production by Electrolysis that could work out.

If you are interested here are some cool articles about this stuff:

http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/proj_pr..._delivery.html

Galaxie

BMW did develop a hydrogen powered vehicle that ran on an internal combution engine. One major drawback is you have a pressurized tank of hydrogen in the car. Imagine the theatrics if there was an accident and the tank ruptured.

In terms of ethanol, even if North America went to a 20% ethanol blend, that would be roughly 15% less oil consumed.

holeshot

One time I drank a lot of grain alcohol.

I wonder if a car can run off of Everclear?

RRRoamer

Jamie,

Don't necessarily believe everything you read. That article is already coming under heavy fire. They based a LOT of assumes on production efficencies based on very old technology efficencies (1800s!). Other scientist have reevaluated it based on modern production efficiencies and it DOES come out positive. It is even more positive if you look at grainy veggies (grass, straw, trees...) instead of things like corn or potatoes.

Hydrogen has two major issues that will be VERY hard to get around: 1) Low energy/volume ratio. While it has the highest energy/weight of any chemical fuel, it is so light that the volume required to store it is insane. They even looked at hydrogen metalic "slushes" at super high pressures and super cold temps to increase the density to the point it would work. The method had obious issues. 2) Hydrogen gas is INCREADIBLY dangerous to use! It is the most combustible gas known to man (as far as I know right now) that isn't a phyoric. Which means that the hydrogen storage tanks have to be built like nuclear materials transporter. And that is REALLY heavy. Otherwise, any serious accident would have cars going up like Roman Candels. Not good.

There are a lot of other issues with hydrogen (ever hear the term "hydrogen brittlement" ?). The only way we will be able to produce enough hydrogen reliably is via nuclear power. Personally, I'm all for it, but a lot of other people simply freak out when they hear the tern "nuclear". Remember the NMRI? Oh wait. The dropped the "N" (Nuclear) from the "MRI" (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) because people didn't like the association with nuclear, even though it was only refering to the nucleous of an atom!

And no, wind and solar energy CAN'T replace the requirement for nuclear for this. Why? If you need 100MW of avaliable power to do the job, then you have to have 100MW of AVAILABLE power at all times. And you can't EVERY garrantee that you will have wind or sunshine. And if you do, the you have this big nuke plant sitting idle. That's a great way to save money...

Oh, and finally someone mentioned ethanol and "zero polution" in the same sentence. Riiiiigggghhhhhtttt. It just another hydrocarbon. You burn it, you make water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and a whole host of other things that already come out of our tail pipes. Hydrogen IS much better in this regard.

FourLights

They are in the process of developing a solid state hydrogen storage solution that would eliminate the high combustability problem, although I have seen tests that show that hydrogen is actually safer than gasoline if it were to be breached.

There are also other sources for hydrogen, Iceland wants to become the first country to use hydrogen exclusively as they have an abundant underground source. There is also water power, China has a hydro-electric plant that produces the equivalent of 14 nuclear power plants.

I wouldn't give up on hydrogen just yet. Our biggest roadblock is the oil-slaves in Washington.
:angry: