Poll: Hydrogen Feul Cells Vs The Combustion engine.

[captainwillies]

sup escapist.

Now taking the environment out of the equation which do you think is better. HOLD ON. don't just mindlessly click the poll i wanna hear your reason for why you think your choice is more safer, efficent, faster, better, longer lasting.

Trivia: I would like to point out that while hyrdogen explodes much easier than oil many people forget hydrogen is lighter than air. meaning when it lights "up" it goes up and stays up. it doesn't spread like normal oil fires it just makes a thin pillar of flame extended from your bonet until its finally empty and burns out.

if anyone can find a vid were someone does that experiment would be awesome.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

I'm not sold on hydrogen. To me, it's just a battery that's less convenient to recharge.

Though, I guess water is cleaner to dispose of than a worn out lithium polymer battery. Nope, I just checked. Lithium ion batteries are environmentally friendly. Bring on more efficient solar power.

 

[Jovlo]

The problem with hydrogen is how to store it in large quantities. That and it takes quite some energy to create.
Combustion engines aren't the answer either, unless we use plant based oil or bio-ethanol.
Anyways, it will be years before anything will change. And we still need quite some research.

Just written a paper about biofuels, which I have to go present in half an hour... Better get going.

 

[ffxfriek]

Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, it might not live up to the standards of the petrol engine just yet but its getting there. Keep in mind that no matter your feelings on petrol, hydrogen, or hybrid cars we will run out of fossil fuels eventually so a solution better come out now instead of racing to get one later.

seconded

 

[captainwillies]

and it takes quite some energy to create.

not really there are plenty of online conversion kit tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXU4BghoTlk

 

[BlueTimberwolf]

The primary problem with hydrogen is how to store it. Diatomic hydrogen is so small that most other materials we might use to create a vessel to store it in will be too porous to hold the gas.

The second problem is that energy is required to produce hydrogen gas and if hydrogen gas production goes into high swing where is all the extra energy required to support this industry going to come from?

 

[BlueTimberwolf]

and it takes quite some energy to create.

not really there are plenty of online conversion kit tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXU4BghoTlk

It is a lie.

Or to be fairer it is a poor understanding of energy conservation laws.

Energy in = energy out

Energy in is from the car battery

Energy out is potential energy from the hydrogen gas and oxygen gas and heat from the conversation.

The heat produced is an inefficiency and as such the user will get poorer mileage not better.

 

[TZer0]

What people need to understand is the fact that hydrogen is an energy-carrier, you need energy to free it from say... water so that it becomes usable.

 

[Doug]

At the moment, hydrogen doesn't work well enough to be even as 'green' as petrol cars.

"But Doug" I hear you cry, "Why?"

And to that respond with "The cheapest way to make hydrogen, which costs about x4 more than petrol, is to burn hydro-carbons - AKA Petrol/Coal/Oil/Gas"

On an interesting aside, its ironic that everyone is against nuclear power when the most radiactive building to be decommissioned in the UK was a coal-powered one. Oooo, the irony!

 

[MmmFiber]

Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, it might not live up to the standards of the petrol engine just yet but its getting there. Keep in mind that no matter your feelings on petrol, hydrogen, or hybrid cars we will run out of fossil fuels eventually so a solution better come out now instead of racing to get one later.

seconded

Ding, Ding!

 

[-IT-]

At the moment, hydrogen doesn't work well enough to be even as 'green' as petrol cars.

"But Doug" I hear you cry, "Why?"

And to that respond with "The cheapest way to make hydrogen, which costs about x4 more than petrol, is to burn hydro-carbons - AKA Petrol/Coal/Oil/Gas"

This.

At the moment I'll have to go with combustion engines, they are getting cleaner and more efficient. And by the time fossil fuels run out, electric cars will probably been perfected and widely used by the public.

 

[mulder71]

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/


Honda FTW

 

[Sevre]

I reckon the fuel cell is going to take the world by storm soon.

 

[BlueTimberwolf]

and it takes quite some energy to create.

not really there are plenty of online conversion kit tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXU4BghoTlk

It is a lie.

Or to be fairer it is a poor understanding of energy conservation laws.

Energy in = energy out

Energy in is from the car battery

Energy out is potential energy from the hydrogen gas and oxygen gas and heat from the conversation.

The heat produced is an inefficiency and as such the user will get poorer mileage not better.

Unless I miss-understand you, you also have a skewed understanding. Kinetic energy in =/= Potential energy out. Heat energy does not turn into potential energy. Potential energy does not count as energy out. Unless you are saying the product of the exercise is to create stored energy.

The point was made in the video that stored energy was made by hydrolysis of water by the car battery, so yes the product of the exercise is to create stored energy in the form of chemical potential energy. (Using stored energy to make stored energy lol)

However what was implied in the video is that the energy used to create the hydrogen gas would be less than the energy produced from the hydrogen?s combustion. What I stated is that this is wrong and in fact it was the complete opposite.

Also I?m not entirely certain what you mean by =/= but I?m assuming it means proportionally.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

Hydrogen is a completely inefficient form of fuel since you will need a lot of energy to electrolyse the water you make it from and because it is a highly combustable gas. At the moment nothing simply beats the regular combustion engine. Electric also have their advantages, of course, but since electricity is mainly generated using fossil fuels and nuclear power they aren't that friendly for the enviroment as well.

 

[fix-the-spade]

The problem with hydrogen is how to store it in large quantities. That and it takes quite some energy to create.

That's relative.

It's not exactly simple to float a giant mechanical platform out into the ocean, attach it to the sea floor then drill hundreds (or thousands) of feet into the sea bed for the sake of some crude oil.

I think in the next 100 years or so fuel cells will take over from internal combustion engines, simply because the cost of extracting hydrogen will drop and the cost of finding then extracting oil will become increasingly expensive.
It will probably get a lot more efficient over time as well, you only have to see how a small car has gone from being able to deliver 30-35mpg in the 1980's to some cars managing close to 100mpg now, engineers are good at making things better when it's in their interests to do so.

 

[90068]

Also I?m not entirely certain what you mean by =/= but I?m assuming it means proportionally.

=/= means unequal. There's no unequal sign (looks like an equals sign with a dash through it) at least, I haven't found a font that has it