Future of Engineering

Where do you get the hydrogen?
 

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the air around us.
 

You burn petrol to produce electricity, and then you split some water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. It's really quite simple.
Honda clearly had "Clarity" when it came to thought here. (hehe)
 

Also paranoidxandr0id is correct, if you exclude Nitrogen and Oxygen and, I think, CO2 and Argon.
 

... yes, and helium and methane and crypton, and water vapor, of course. In fact, there's about 0.000055 per cent hydrogen in the atmosphere.
 

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the *universe* but not in the air around us. Our atmosphere is approx. 79% nitrogen.
 

Hydrogen comes from water... GEEZ H2O that means 2 hydrogen, 1 oxygen. the reaction takes place when you put the two together with a catalsyst and the byproduct is a violent reaction + salt water.
 

ejes:

It produces a violent reaction (A rapid exothermic reaction) and WATER - not salt water. There is no Sodium or Chlorine involved in the reaction.

But, in this case, the "violent" reaction" doesn't occur: This system produces electricity with a hydrogen fuel cell - a fairly old technology that is only now becoming affordable for the common person to own.

A fuel cell is simply a box - feed hydrogen in one side, air into another, water drips out a third side, and the electrical terminals are on the 4th.

Christopher: I can't speak for the rest of the world, but here in the states, aside from portable and/or emergency generators, petroleum is rarely used to produce electricity. The primary sources of electrical power are Coal (about 70%), Nuclear (about 20%), and falling water (5%) The remainder is supplied through natural gas and various alternative sources.

Even with the loss of efficiency, burning coal is cheaper than burning petroleum products, and there is no shortage of coal in the states. The abundant (therefore cheap) coal reserves are one the the chief reasons why solar and wind power has not replaced fossil fuels, and why battery research continues to lag.

You want solar and wind power? You want cheap transportation? Drive up the cost of coal, because the initial cost of the alternatives is much higher than that of coal.
 

hydrogen cars are inefficient and pollute more than deisel, getting hydrogen from water takes more energy (from burning fossil fuels) than is gained from the hydrogen...

also, if it crashes there could be a huge explosion :P

ps, global warming is BS :)
 

Cephalis is correct to ask. To make hyrogen you need energy. More energy than you get from burning it. Water can be 'cracked' to produce hydrogen and oxygen using electricity but you need electricity.
You don't need a catalyst to recombine hydrogen and oxygen, nor is salt a by-product.
 

The problem with hydrogen cars? There is a ton of pollution created when you extract the hydrogen from water. So, while it has clean emissions when it's used in cars, it still produces about the same amount of pollution and fossil fuel cars, just not the same way. So hydrogen isn't really a great replacement for gasoline.
 

The pollution from creating the hydrogen only comes from the coal or other fossil fuels being burned to create the energy to cause the water-splitting reaction. If you use a clean fuel source for that, then hydrogen is pollution free, including it's production. That means that wind power, solar power, or moving water power should be used. (Nuclear works too, but has its own share of problems. Personally, I'm pro-nuclear but I see the point of its opponents.) The problem is that whatever non-fossil energy is used to create the hydrogen is energy diverted from some other power need, which will then be filled by a polluting energy source. So, even if you use a windmill to make your hydrogen, you still get coal pollution from wherever that windmill power would have otherwise gone. The only solution is to move entirely to non-polluting energy sources for ALL our needs. Which we could do if we could stop spending money on pointless wars and pour all that cash into redesigning our energy infrastructure. Yeah. Like that's going to happen.
 

Hydrogen can be obtained from many sources other than water. For example, gasification of organic material (wood chips, switchgrass, wastepaper, etc.) or hydrocarbons produces hydrogen along with several other chemicals. In fact, the gasification process can even be used to produce cleaner-burning syndiesel which can be used in any diesel engine. Really, syndiesel and hydrogen work equally well as energy carriers, but the infrastructure for the former already exists.
 

You wont be getting the hydrogen from water because it would be inefficient. The hydrogen would be mass produced in a factory where it can be done cheaply or at least practically. You would get hydrogen from a filling station. I was watching a discovery channel thing on this. If you just stored hydrogen in a big tank it has the chance to explode if in a crash There are some people working on a way to confine the hydrogen in a cell along with some kind of grit material so hydrogen can be stored at lower levels and with more stability.
 

Instead of dripping the water out the tail-pipe would it not be better to store the water for, say use on the garden, or the way things are going, drinking?
 

You don't get something for nothing. As others have pointed out, the energy used by the car is produced at an expense. Here's the good part: the 'expense' is less than the expense of gasoline or diesel - not just dollars and cents, but to the environment - at least for now.
Coal is a pollution concern, but the amount of coal needed to produce the electricity needed to produce the Hydrogen to power the car creates far less pollution than the same amount of conventional fuels. Of course, solar, hydro and wind power have little to no pollutive effect on the environment but the cost for these technologies - as of right now - are prohibitively high. There is very promising technology research going on in these areas (particularly in the area of solar power) that could reduce their cost to the same as or less than coal.
For now, this is a great step forward. If more of these kinds of cars are produced, it will create a demand for better, more efficient technology.
 

It is true that the hydrogen cars are very inefficient, but if you can afford them then they definitely are a potential source of new transportation methods. However, why would you want to pay that much for a slower and less efficient car? Also, it is correct that the entire process to make and power the hydrogen cars requires more energy from outside sources(petroleum, coal, etc.) just to make them and get the hydrogen to the stations. So essentially you are paying other people to drive cars running on gas so you can get some sweet sweet hydrogen. :). Lastly, while I strongly agree with Jon about this nonsense about global warming (the global temperatures have been cooling for about 10 years, and this year has seen some enormous drops in temperature!), but if you are a proponent of global warming and believe CO2 is the devil's child, then just remember that H2O retains much more heat than does CO2. Haha also, for your green movement, remember that the more CO2 there is in the environment, the more exponential the plant growth, because CO2 is what plants use to make their food. I just hope nuclear power will be accepted in the states. And also cool idea, somewhat "exotic" and useless, but cool idea from honda for the car.
 

logan, to bad it's not CO2 coming out of your engine then huh? that would be carbon dioxide, that is what you exhale from your lungs. carbon monoxide(remember mono=1) or CO, is much different, infact it kills you or causes major brain damage with too much exposure. CO does slowly convert to CO2 naturally in the earths atmosphere but it does not happen at the rate we are producing it. i'm sure you've read something like "it would take several hundred years for the atmosphere to return to it's normal state if we stopped pollution now." yeah, it's that slow. normally CO comes from volcanic activity and that's not that much. global warming IS FACT, and any religios person will say, "i still dont believe it even though it's FACT". it does not mean we will be living in 200 degree weather someday, it just means the climate around us will change and we will have a larger amount of UV exposure.
 

whoa now, i gotta step in here about the climate change issue. global warming is no longer even debated at the scientific level, and the only reason somebody can "not believe" in it is ignorance. i don't know where you get your data about global cooling over the past ten years, but it is very wrong. the global average temperature has seen general exponential growth over the past century, and the past decade is no exception.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record, http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh%2Bsh/index.html)

While it is true that water vapor does indeed trap much more heat than carbon dioxide, one must understand that water vapor spends about four days in the atmosphere once it is emitted, while carbon dioxide can spend anywhere from tens to hundreds of years up there, depending on precipitation.

Additionally, the claim that more CO2 => more plants is a common fallacy. The way it actually works is more plants => less CO2. Just because there is an increased supply of CO2 in the air does not at all mean that more plants will be there to consume it.

And yes, nuclear power would be pretty neat, but there are still some pretty valid questions about what to do with all that waste. I personally think that Yucca Mountain is our best bet at present, but I'm sure there's a better solution than "bury it!"
 

hoppin' in again here to address eric's comment... hydrocarbon combustion like what occurs in your car's engine does produce CO instead of CO2; however, all cars on the road today pass their exhaust through a catalytic converter which converts the CO into CO2. So yes, it is CO2 coming out of cars.

Also, global warming has nothing to do with UV exposure. Warming occurs in the troposphere, whereas UV filtration happens at the ozone layer, which is in the stratosphere. Or mesosphere. I can't remember. Anyway, the ozone is depleted by emitting chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere which are broken up sunlight, releasing chlorine atoms which bind to the ozone. global warming is CO2, not CFCs.
 

First of all I would just like to say, Sweet car. Now that I've gotten that off of my chest, I can delve into this eco-chemistry conversation. You've made the point about electrolysis quite clear on how to obtain Hydrogen. I would just like to add the statement that while hydrocarbons are much more plentiful in Hydrogen, think back to your basic chemistry class. Burning a hydrocarbon gives the byproduct of CO2 and water in X amount of quantities as the initial formula has. Take Gasoline, which is a hydrocarbon, believe it or not, and while varies from 5-10 carbon atoms in a molecule, for this example I'm going to use 8, just for average sake. If you burn this, you will have the following chemical equation:
C8H18 + 17(O2)--> 8(CO2) + 9(H20)
So guess what? Water emission isn't anything new. Also, if you're going to burn Hydrocarbons for a copious amount of Hydrogen, you're releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide, along with your precious Hydrogen. It would be no better than our production of CO2 emissions from motor-vehicles. I agree to some extent with the former comments, with respect to the production of electricity to free the hydrogen from water. Solar energy is, in my own personal opinion, the most untapped form of energy that we have available. The Sun isn't going to run out anytime soon. It's more likely that Humans will die out before the Sun's Middle-Age, so to speak, come to an end. I think that future engineers will be able to produce cars with a solar panel atop the vehicle and create a machine that Won't be able to last as long as it's fuel source does. Think about it. If you can create a car that not only produces water, but recycles that water back into hydrogen and reuses it to power itself: imagine how long it would take for the amount of wasted energy to finally deplete your fuel supply. The only byproduct then, would be oxygen. It obviously wouldn't last forever because of the tiny amounts of wasted Hydrogen that form water through entropic situations, but the fuel would last much longer than the actual car would. Let me stop there and venture into the Global Warming comments. Yes, the World is warming. Yes, man effects it. No, man didn't cause it. No, man cannot stop, nor reverse the effects. This has happened before. The earth warms and cools. What do you think the seasons are all about? Summer is a local case of global warming each year. What do you people think the ice ages were all about? The earth cooled to create an equilibrium with the temperature from the prior rises in temperature. If you've ever taken a look at geological climate from a millennial view, you would see a an almost Pythagorean function of warming and cooling cycles. Sure the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases we produce don't help the rise in temperature, but even if we stopped all production of greenhouse gases, and erased all green house gases from the last say half a century, the Earth would still warm itself. It's what it does. It is complete ignorance to believe that we are solely responsible for the warming of the Earth.
 

Make hydrogen from aluminum easily and safely to run your car.

http://www.instructables.com/id/SODA-CAN-HYDROGEN-GENERATOR/
 

Edit on my chemical equation
2(C8H18) + 50(O2)-->16(CO2) + 18(H2O)
 

Catalytic converters burn off nitrates of oxygen. They do not convert CO to CO2.
 

While it is true that CCs reduce oxygen nitrates to nitrogen and oxygen, they also oxidize carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, as well as hydrocarbons (unburned gasoline) into carbon dioxide and water.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/catalytic-converter.htm