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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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kangnamdragon
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Location: Kangnam, Seoul, Korea
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 Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 4:44 am Post subject: |
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| Then they should make more. |
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katydid
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
Location: Here kitty kitty kitty...
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| If EVER there was a car that should have a hybrid version, it's an SUV. Back in the States, I was looking at those kinds of cars. I think at the time, only Honda was making one, the Prius. It's a really good idea that I hope latches on. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| This is very important to US national security. |
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kangnamdragon
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Location: Kangnam, Seoul, Korea
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| We need to drill in Alaska too. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 6:08 am Post subject: |
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Something I agree with Joo on! This is definately important to national security. Joo, have you read about Iceland switching over to a 100% hydrogen economy? If that works out it should happen in other countries as well.
Baby steps... |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 6:09 am Post subject: |
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| you have a link for Iceland and hydrogen? |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Brian O'Brien wrote: |
In the May issue of Scientific American, there's a good article on the hydrogen economy. According to the article, using hydrogen as fuel for transportation purposes may actually increase air pollution. Hydrogen does not exist freely in nature and producing it depends on current energy sources. It takes a lot more energy to produce hydrogen than it does to extract oil and refine it. Also, hydrogen is extremely difficult and somewhat dangerous to transport and store.
The article states that hydrogen may be impractical for use in cars, but that it may be practical for powering cell phones, laptop computers, and even homes. An economy that used hydrogen to power homes and hybrid vehicles for transportation would be cleaner and maybe even energy self-sufficient.
Here in the States, I've seen a whole lot of hybrid cars on the road lately, mainly the Toyota Prius. My neighbor just bought one. Of course, I see just as many Cadillac Escalades and Hummers on the road too. I think the people who are buying hybrids are doing so for political and environmental reasons and not because it makes economic sense to purchase one. Most people will not make up the extra cost they paid for a hybrid in savings on gasoline over the lifetime of their car. But maybe in the next few years, the cost of hybrids will come down to the same level as cars with regular combustion engines, and then hybrids will begin to replace the cars on the road now, and when that happens the US might end up being energy self-sufficient with a lot less air pollution. Either that or the price of gas will get so high that it will make economic sense to buy a hybrid. Yesterday, I paid $2.19 a gallon and I was thinking seriously about those new Ford Escapes. |
You can get Hydrogen from water, and there are ways to use wind or solar power, to get it from water.
Clean coal could come into play here too. And the US and Canada have lots of oil from shale. I heard that there is more oil in shale and tar than there is in Saudi Arabia
also Hybrids + Hydrogen + solar+ other forms could alltogether with what was mentioned could really help the US and really re-set the global chess board. In the US would be a lot better off and her enemies would be worse off.
And world wide people will buy this technolgy that means the US will get the money and her enemies won't. and wouldn't that be great
Alternative energy is part of the war on terror and a way to for the US to gain a major advantage over her enemies. |
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ryleeys
Joined: 22 Dec 2003
Location: Columbia, MD
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 2:12 am Post subject: |
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No dice, not until they make a hybrid SUV with more than 250 hp and an equal amount of torque.
Not trading power for an extra 5mpg, not worth it.
God my Chevy Trailblazer is a monster of a vehicle. You FEEL the power when you drive that thing. I-6 is a godsend for engine design. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 6:03 am Post subject: |
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No dice...but would that still apply if the price of oil were to double? Apparently hybrid sales have really jumped since last month when gas prices started to soar.
Actually it's possible to turn one's car into a hydrogen-powered one right now; costs a few thousand dollars. The hydrogen can be created by a portable generator that you plug in at night, and in the morning you have hydrogen to put in the tank. I believe it was BMW that made that, but I'm not sure...
The good thing about hydrogen is that you can drive your SUV without any guilt at all. Just make sure that the electricity used to create it is from a clean source. |
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krats1976
Joined: 14 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 6:29 am Post subject: |
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This is really cool stuff. I have to do some more research to see how these are gonna work out in Alaska's climate, but I'm hoping to buy hybrid when I get back to the States (whenever that is). Hopefully by then they'll have a decent SUV out. I'd go for a compact car, but I have this tendency to move cross country and an SUV would be mighty handy.  |
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Dan
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Sunny Glendale, CA
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:19 am Post subject: |
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| Gas prices are rising because oil companies are charging more based on reports of shortage of oil. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:23 am Post subject: |
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| Would a temporary shortage of oil be a good thing? Let's say prices go up another 50-100% for about a year, starting tomorrow. What would happen? |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 8:45 am Post subject: |
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| JOO wrote: |
| You can get Hydrogen from water, and there are ways to use wind or solar power, to get it from water. |
The problem may be in the actual efficiency of the present means of conversion of hydrogen not in the cleanliness of the actual process.
From the article cited by Brian O'Brien:
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The first part of the well-to-wheels determination is what engineers call "well to tank": what it takes to make and deliver a fuel. When natural gas is cracked for hydrogen, about 40 percent of the original energy potential is lost in the transfer, according to the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Using electricity from the grid to make hydrogen by electrolysis of water causes a loss of 78 percent. (Despite the lower efficiency of electrolysis, it is likely to predominate in the early stages of a hydrogen economy because it is convenient--producing the hydrogen where it is needed and thus avoiding shipping problems.) In contrast, pumping a gallon of oil out of the ground, taking it to a refinery, turning it into gasoline and getting that petrol to a filling station loses about 21 percent of the energy potential. Producing natural gas and compressing it in a tank loses only about 15 percent.
The second part of the total energy analysis is "tank to wheels," or the fraction of the energy value in the vehicle's tank that actually ends up driving the wheels. For the conventional gasoline internal-combustion engine, 85 percent of the energy in the gasoline tank is lost; thus, the whole system, well to tank combined with tank to wheels, accounts for a total loss of 88 percent.
The fuel cell converts about 37 percent of the hydrogen's energy value to power for the wheels. The total loss, well to wheels, is about 78 percent if the hydrogen comes from steam-reformed natural gas. If the source of the hydrogen is electrolysis from coal, the loss from the well (a mine, actually) to tank is 78 percent; after that hydrogen runs through a fuel cell, it loses another 43 percent, with the total loss reaching 92 percent.
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Then there is the acutal shipping of the material:
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Hydrogen from wind, for example, is competitive with gasoline when wind power costs three cents a kilowatt-hour, says Carman of the DOE. That occurs where winds blow steadily. "Where I might get three-cent wind tends to be in places where people don't live," he notes. In the U.S., such winds exist in a belt running from Montana and the Dakotas to Texas. The electric power they produce would have a long way to go to reach the end users--with energy losses throughout the grid along the way. "You can't get the electrons out of the Dakotas because of transmission constraints," Garman points out. "Maybe a hydrogen pipeline could get the tremendous wind resource carried to Chicago," the nearest motor-fuel market.
That is, if such a pipeline were even practical to build. Given hydrogen's low density, it is far harder to deliver than, for instance, natural gas. To move large volumes of any gas requires compressing it, or else the pipeline has to have a diameter similar to that of an airplane fuselage. Compression takes work, and that drains still more energy from the total production process. Even in this instance, managing hydrogen is trickier than dealing with other fuel gases. Hydrogen compressed to about 790 atmospheres has less than a third of the energy of the methane in natural gas at the same pressure, points out a recent study by three European researchers, Ulf Bossel, Baldur Eliasson and Gordon Taylor.
A related problem is that a truck that could deliver 2,400 kilos of natural gas to a user would yield only 288 kilos of hydrogen pressurized to the same level, Bossel and his colleagues find. Put another way, it would take about 15 trucks to deliver the hydrogen needed to power the same number of cars that could be served by a single gasoline tanker. Switch to liquid hydrogen, and it would take only about three trucks to equal the one gasoline tanker, but hydrogen requires substantially more effort to liquefy. Shipping the hydrogen as methanol that could be reformed onboard the vehicle would ease transport, but again, the added transition has an energy penalty. These facts argue for using the hydrogen where it is produced, which may be distant from the major motor-fuel markets. |
Source: Questions about a Hydrogen Economy , By: Wald, Matthew L., Scientific American, 00368733, May2004, Vol. 290, Issue 5
It is definitely the way to go, just right now it is so expensive to produce.
| JOO wrote: |
| And world wide people will buy this technolgy that means the US will get the money and her enemies won't. and wouldn't that be great |
Sorry Joo, the US may not be doing all that it could be in order to strengthen the Mother Land ....
| Quote: |
Experts: U.S. May Be Losing Fuel Cell Race
LATHAM, N.Y., Apr 18, 2004 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The United States could fall behind in using fuel cells because it already has an extensive infrastructure for other energy sources and spends fewer government dollars on alternatives, industry officials and analysts said.
Countries like China and India, which have rapidly expanding economies but not large-scale electricity distribution networks, could eclipse U.S. efforts to adopt what is called the "hydrogen economy," free of dependence on fossil fuels for electricity and transportation.
"It's a little too early to tell on the U.S.," said Roger Saillant, chief executive officer of fuel cell developer Plug Power, based in Latham, outside Albany. "There is a risk we're becoming a laggard."
China and India both have ample supplies of coal gas or other fuels to take hydrogen from, making the use of fuel cells easier. Japan, which faces high energy demands and steep oil prices, may also be among the first to embrace the technology, industry observers say.
The international climate treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, required industrial nations to reduce by 2012 greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming to levels below what they were in 1990. The U.S. did not ratify the treaty.
The United States is spending about $200 million this year on hydrogen research, compared to $260 million in Japan, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Canada is spending $400 million, while the European Union is investing 2 billion euro ($2.43 billion) over the next several years.
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Because of the problems that are associated with the transport of Hydrogen, as well as the safety issues that are involved with a gas that is so volatile, there may be more success with on site production, but this could lead to a inconvenient separtation of the cars from the "pumps".
| Quote: |
General Motors has estimated it would cost $11.7 billion to build 6,500 hydrogen fuel stations in 100 U.S. metropolitan areas and 5,200 more on national highways.
"It is a very complicated effort with many facets," Garman said. "But if the
motor vehicle industry develops a fuel cell car consumers want to buy, the
infrastructure will be there. It's very achievable." |
Source:Experts: U.S. May Be Losing Fuel Cell Race , Business CustomWire, Apr 18, 2004 |
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