Hydrogen Powered Cars

[Pooeypants]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (tman_ndsu08,)
Hey...i live in Fargo...i know how windy it gets around here.

But it's not THAT windy everywhere.

Also...there is a difference in building 4 small wind-mills for your home and building BIG windmills for millions of homes.

The HARDEST thing about solar and wind is that you have to store the extra energy because you can never guaranty when it will be windy or sunny. Battery technology is pathetic and far too expensive to store energy on a large scale.

I'm telling you..... matter/anti-matter reaction is what we need to put all our chips on.

100% efficient and the mass/energy ratio is ... well... E=mc^2.... c is 3(10^8) and M is in grams....you get the idea.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
Correction, the units used are standard units meaning "m" is in kilograms.

Antimatter still costs too much to produce in even picogram proportions, also, can you imagine the problems we'd have if the magnetic containment field was lost even temporary?...

[Pooeypants]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (makeshiftpatriot,)

Its definitely all about fusion power. I mean, if you get a bunch of seawater, strip the hydrogen and heat it up really hot, you get a bunch of energy and helium. thats pretty damn cool.

also about wind... If you use wind farms in fargo, or whereever else it's windy, you can produce hydrogen in fargo too. then you can ship the hydrogen to where its not so windy and there are tons of people driving cars. Hydrogen is a clean fuel, but it's not an energy source. People get this confused.
B<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
Current tokamaks require heating up to 100 million Kelvin, more than 6 times hotter than the core of our Sol, I call that really, really, really, really, really, rea...hot.
I've heard they've broken even with energy input = output with latest generators, but until we can sustain controlled fusion for longer than 1 second...dream on. :(

[tman_ndsu08]

fusion is shit compared to anti-matter.

Yes it is still far too expensive to use, but once it becomes cheaper to make...you get (more/less) free energy.

Again, however, the problem is storing all that energy. Unless...you have a continuous reaction, or something like that.

Anyway...

[Pooeypants]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (tman_ndsu08,)
fusion is shit compared to anti-matter.

Yes it is still far too expensive to use, but once it becomes cheaper to make...you get (more/less) free energy.

Again, however, the problem is storing all that energy. Unless...you have a continuous reaction, or something like that.

Anyway...<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
You can store antimatter in a magnetic field, I was talking about if the containment failed...relatively to fusion you'd be on big shit if that happened.

[tman_ndsu08]

I was talking about storing the energy...

there would be no need to store the antimater...just react it as soon as you created it.

The problem is storing all the energy produced.


I guess if you build the M/AM reactor in the same style as as a traditional nuclear reactor and just use the reaction to heat water to turn a turbine...you would need an extremely small amount of AM to heat the water. Perhaps this is better...but i was hoping the could just store all the energy created by the reaction directly.

[mlingley]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (tman_ndsu08,)
The HARDEST thing about solar and wind is that you have to store the extra energy because you can never guaranty when it will be windy or sunny. Battery technology is pathetic and far too expensive to store energy on a large scale.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Hydorgen is your battery. Take water use electricity make hydrogen. When you need the electricity take hydrogen make water.

It isn't like wind and solar are going to be the only source of electricity available. I know at my grandparents house the excess energy goes onto the grid and they get paid for it.

The biggest difference is this anti-matter stuff your talking about is years away and going to cost billions of dollars. Wind and Solar are available TODAY and cost a fraction of that.

[Edge]

I recall stopping at a wind turbine generater manufacturer in Norman, OK. Right on the airport. The name of the place was Bergey Windpower. Find them here http://www.bergey.com/. They have a cool map for wind power averages; even by state. I had a small piece of land in very rural TN and looking to build on it. I stopped in to get info on putting up a wind power generator for my power. I was told then that even OK was marginal for wind power. And it is the 8th most favorable state for wind power. He suggested that I put up a wind anemometer and make sure I had enough wind to power the darn thing. There wasn't enough power, I bought a generator instead. I like wind power and wish is was more economical. But it isn't. Even the utilities have to surcharge for those in TX and OK who want to buy their electricity from wind.

As part of an energy system, wind makes sense. Hell, if I lived in OK, WY, or MT on the plains I'd put up my own system. But since I now live in the city in a state with no wind.. not so good. Same think with solar. When I lived in the southwest US, I was more than happy with my passive solar design and my active solar heating. But for some reason they don't work so well when I lived in TN with 250+ days of clouds.

I like both wind and solar as a components of systems that fulfill the energy needs of the US. But I think that holding them up as a panecea to the oil reserve issue is a bit unrealistic.

And Mligley: you are right, especially with a fuel cell; the hydrogen is your battery.

[mlingley]

"Estimates of the electricity that could potentially be generated by wind power and of the land area available for wind energy have been calculated for the contiguous United States. The estimates are based on published wind resource data and exclude windy lands that are not suitable for development as a result of environmental and land-use considerations. Despite these exclusions, the potential electric power from wind energy is surprisingly large. Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States. Technology under development today will be capable of producing electricity economically from good wind sites in many regions of the country."
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html

[castille]

Pfft, just walk.

[Samildanach]

And where do you plan to get all this antimatter? Antimatter as far as I know is the most expensive substance on the planet because its so hard to produce.....Sure it produces a lot of energy but you have to produce it. what ~I want to know is why you are all waffling on about wind generators when you could be talking about wave generators. Three quarters of the planet is water. That water is ALWAYS moving. Find an area of ocean and dump five hundred square miles of wave generators in there and see how much it produces day in day out. If you want free energy thats the way to do it.

[Samildanach]

And where do you plan to get all this antimatter? Antimatter as far as I know is the most expensive substance on the planet because its so hard to produce.....Sure it produces a lot of energy but you have to produce it. what ~I want to know is why you are all waffling on about wind generators when you could be talking about wave generators. Three quarters of the planet is water. That water is ALWAYS moving. Find an area of ocean and dump five hundred square miles of wave generators in there and see how much it produces day in day out. If you want free energy thats the way to do it.

[Pooeypants]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (tman_ndsu08,)
I was talking about storing the energy...

there would be no need to store the antimater...just react it as soon as you created it.

The problem is storing all the energy produced.


I guess if you build the M/AM reactor in the same style as as a traditional nuclear reactor and just use the reaction to heat water to turn a turbine...you would need an extremely small amount of AM to heat the water. Perhaps this is better...but i was hoping the could just store all the energy created by the reaction directly.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
Don't run before you can walk, currently we need several billion fold of energy input over the amount of antimatter/energy created, it's no where near as feasible as nuclear fusion. Infact, I doubt we can ever get a higher output than input unless we use a renewable source to create the antimatter, in which case, why use energy to create antimatter when you're introducing another pathway of entropy increase in a different system?

[Pooeypants]

Hmm, Desktop fusion...

[Comrade]

Try this. Think outside the box.
Who says we have to get fuel for H2 cars the same way we get them for gas cars (from pumping stations)?
Just because that is what people are used to?
Just think about it, maybe come up with some ideas.

[Samildanach]

Ha ha maybe you are on to something there. Lets combine all the technologies. A car with hundreds of nanotech scale wind powered generators on top to create electricity. Fill it up with water use the electricity from the wind generator to split the water into h2 and o2 compress the h2 to run the car.

[mlingley]

Yeah.. you don't need a fueling station, except if you are on a long trip. For the average commuter you could make your own hydrogen in your garage at home.

[tman_ndsu08]

h2 is extremely combustable. i don't see how anything other than a refueling station would be safe.

[mlingley]

ARe you kidding me? Yeah h2 is extremely combustable.. so is oxygen.
It's not like your going to get h2 wafting through the air... you could plug your car in and make the hydrogen from water.. it'd go right into the tank... how is that unsafe?? It's the same thing as if you filled up at a station.

[Pooeypants]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (mlingley,)
ARe you kidding me? Yeah h2 is extremely combustable.. so is oxygen.
It's not like your going to get h2 wafting through the air... you could plug your car in and make the hydrogen from water.. it'd go right into the tank... how is that unsafe?? It's the same thing as if you filled up at a station.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
You don't have a massive fuel tank in your garage do you?

[mlingley]

The fuel tank is in the car..