fuel cells

What no more INFERNAL CONSUMPTION ENGENS.

From what I have heard they want to have hydrogen fuel cell car’s available by 2015.

Like any new fuel source be it hybrid gas/electric, hydrogen cell, solid fuel cell, the spent cell still leaves behind some potent sh*t that you have to dispose of or store for umpteen years.

That’s from my understanding and what I have heard correct me if I am wrong.

No synthetic chemical (man made energy) will be 100% clean there is always a wast product.

That’s the spirit you’ve always got to look at the negatives and not the positives

Oh yeah I am sure the government will find a way to tax us as for it well.

Fuel cells arent really new they were used in the apollo space missions.

The main problem is that Hydrogen requires a great deal of electricity to produce and in most of Australia this means burning more coal, for now anyway.

we will have to go nuc sooner or later....solar and wind is just too expensivenad dependent on sun and wind...
coal, gas and oil is contributing to hothouse gases

Nuc is cleanest of all except for waste....we could always export it to tasy or NZ hehehe
no offence meant for you tassies out there

The most promising fuel cells for near term transportation are the Ethanol fuel cell and Methanol fuel cell. Both ethanol and methanol can be produced from material which is grown and they are liquids which can be handled using the current fuel distribution system and could be introduced gradually. A hydrogen fuel cells , although more efficient in theory, requires a completely new type of distribution.
There is quite a bit of information about this subjuct just waiting for your search.

Phil I

Hi Pete,

There certainly is a lot of work being done on fuel cells. The CFCL fuel cells are aimed at gensets, etc and not vehicle based application.

Vehicles require fuel cells that operate on hydrogen. One of the biggest issues facing wide spread introduction is the logistics of hydrogen supply. Iceland has been the first country to move to a hydrogen economy. An internet search on "hydrogen economy" will provide you with plenty of reading material.

As well as work on fuel cells, there is also a lot of work on reformer technology whereby Hydrogen is produced by reforming gasoline. Giving the existing infrastructure this is considered to be a more near term solution to introduction of fuel cell vehicles.

There has been a lot of discussion on the application of this technology in the near term, however most people we are doing business with consider this won't occur until ~ 2025.

A very intersisting topic none the less. Happy researching.

Regards,
Hugh

Exploder,
I work in the field, and have some modest background. Once you have pure hydrogen, then a fuel cell running on hydrogen will exhaust pure water only (the hydrogen combines with oxygen in the fuel cell, and good ol' H2O results). The astronauts actually drank the water exhausted from the fuel cells after they had generated the power for the spacecraft.
The problem is in how you get the hydrogen in the first place. There are two routes
- you can get it from refining hydrocarbons (crude oil or alcohols), and this produces carbon dioxide. A fuel cell running on methanol or ethanol does this and exhausts carbon dioxide as well as water.
- you can get it from the electolysis of water (splitting the hydrogen and oxygen using electricity). You need an energy source to do this- a power station is needed (in Australia, a coal fired device. Overseas, could be a nuclear one).

A better way to think of hydrogen is as the "energy reticulation system", a bit like electricity. The problem is in how to make the hydrogen (or electricity) in an environmentally friendly manner, rather than in the nature of hydrogen itself.
Hope this allows you to get a better handle on the idea.

Hmmm, sounds like once again as it happened ~150 years ago we're going to miss the boat on renewable and green energy.

DIESEL PEOPLE - the original design was based on - vegetable oil. As biodiesel has proved around the world, minimal alteration is required on current engines and if car companies weren't so hung up on petrol/electric/hybrid/fuel cells (controlling interest?) diesel technology could advance further.

Biodiesel has nealy ZERO net carbon production which is FAR less than using fossil fuel generated electricity to rechage electric cars or produce hydrogen. Other emissions are less as well with minimal toxicity. Also remember these results have been obtained with unmodified conventional diesl engines, with development there is no reason engines couldn't be made to produce fewer emissions. Remember the vast majority of engine efficincy and emission reduction research has been conducted on petrol engines as a result of oil company interests in the automotive industry - petrol engines being less efficient mean that consumers will buy more fuel for greater profit.

Nudenut, Yes, there are lots of ways to synthesize hydrogen. It's just an issue of the cost (money AND energy) needed to obtain the raw materials for the synthesis reaction. If you want a modest amount of hydrogen to use as a chemical reagent, then no problem. But if you need enough to run all the world's cars, then you need a serious, cheap energy source to make it.
Longer term, fusion nuclear power (joining two hydrogen atoms to make a helium atom) is the best that can be envisaged. That's what powers hydrogen bombs and the sun. No one appears to be getting there fast- the best guess is "maybe in 30 years time". Mind you, that was the guess about 30 years ago.
As an interim measure, the best technology we have at present is fission (uranium, etc) nuclear power. Large energy density, no greenhouse emissions, proven technology, no pollutants in the normal course of operation, BUT- does produce spent fuel rods which are a bugger to get rid of, and can produce BIG weapons, and accidents are a real bad thing.
An interim may be Thorium power fission nuclear power. You can't get weapons grade uranium from a thorium station, so you solve one of the problems. No one has built a commercial size one yet. Just mention "nuclear" and you get crash-tackled by the regulatory authorities and the neighbours.

I'll voice an opinion on biodiesel too, but need to go read the post again.

Western Mudrat, I went to a talk about biodiesel a couple of years ago. The guy was a strong supporter, and showed pics of enormous fields of rapeseed in Europe, with a very modern looking biodiesel plant located in the middle. The diesel works fine in engines, and is a nice renewable source of transport fuel. There was one issue though. The process of farming the land, watering, fertilising and otherwise growing the crop, harvesting it, getting it to the plant (next door) and processing it was net energy-negative. This meant that they used more fuel than they actually ended up with in the end. Guess where the extra fuel came from to make all this happen ? Yep, from good ol' crude oil.
Just compare the effort needed to carefully nurture a plant to grow seeds which liberate a few drops of precious oil which you (and thousands of others) are going to need 140 litres of to fill the tank, versus what we can do now- poke a hole in the ground and suck out thousands of tonnes per day.
Don't get me wrong. One day, crude oil will be too expensive to run our cars on, and one of the "others" (ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen from whatever) will be cheaper, and will take over. However, cheap affordable motoring like what we now all enjoy will have long ago disappeared. We will never run out of crude oil. It will just be too expensive to use the way we use it now. The time will come when it is just used for plastics manufacture and other such things.
Perhaps I should admit my vested interest here- I actually work in the oil refining game. Nevertheless, I'd love to fine a clean, cheap, renewable fuel to run the Prado on. We don't have any vested interests. We are just as interested inhaving a future for our kids. It's just that crude oil is currently the cheapest way to do it.