Hydrogen Fuel Cells Hit the Road

[NewBie]

Yeah, that one tank shown would be good for about ten miles in a vehicle like the Hummer. Somebody on one of my lists calculated that at the current cost of H2 (about $6 per gge) it would cost over $900 to drive an H2 Hummer the length of CA.


Sorry - the biggest trouble I've heard is the *storage* of the two fuels. (we'll call them both fuel for convenience, 'K?) You aren't likely going to store H2 and CNG in the same tanks for various reasons. I'm not booked up on this stuff though, so you should have stopped listening to me a paragraph back. We've had some dual-fuel vehicles, but they didn't work so well on either fuel IIRC.

Just imagine the truely massive array of batteries, and the weight you'd have to haul up and down mountains, if you tried to do EV for the length of California, especially if you were running the heater, using the wipers, had the headlights on, and listened to the radio...

Especially something that was as large and non aerodynamic like a Hummer...

 

[Darell]

Originally Posted by NewBie
I dunno Darell.
EV is far from perfect still.

Jeepers! Ya think? I believe that the last four times you said this, I stipulated that EVs are not perfect. How many more times should we go there? Gasoline vehicles and Fuel Cell vehicles - on the other hand - are, of course, perfect. Gotcha. Do we really have to go through all of this again? Got anything new? Got anything better than our current options? Ya happy with our oil imports? Yes, even the folks up there in Oregon use oil that is imported. Yikes. I'd hate to think that even YOUR state is contributing to our country's demise.

Also, California has a bad electricity shortage already.

If this is true, then lets stop making gasoline. Gasoline cars use more electricity than Electric Cars. Should I put that one in bold? Does it change your thinking? Removing gasoline distillation from our country, and instead using that electricity to charge batteries will net us an INCREASE in available electricity. Never mind that most of the EV charging will be done at night. Electricity is easy to make and distribute. We can fix any "shortage" problem and distribution problem without reinventing the wheel. We just need proper policy and money.

The US has a REALLY bad oil shortage already. Should we maybe worry about that? Does it make more sense to import more oil to keep us rolling, or make more electricity? Which is easier? Cheaper? More practical?

Show me something new Jar. A suggestion of what we should be doing instead of happily consuming our supply of cheap imported oil as if it will never end. The same tired arguments against EVs without a single suggestion of what we SHOULD be doing just isn't fun any more.

And I skipped alot of additional issues with EV...

Be great to see one new one for a change. So far this is all the old stuff we've been over before. Should we talk about the whole scary worn-out tire thing again? Want to talk about issues with FCV's (much closer to the topic of this thread?)

You're great at pushing my buttons. Is there any way you can redirect that energy into some sort of constructive criticism? A suggestion for something better than what we've got?

-= Darell =-
http://darelldd.com/ev

 

[Darell]

Quote - NewBie -
Just imagine the truely massive array of batteries, and the weight you'd have to haul up and down mountains, if you tried to do EV for the length of California, especially if you were running the heater, using the wipers, had the headlights on, and listened to the radio...

Especially something that was as large and non aerodynamic like a Hummer...

--------------
Are you kidding me? What became of all your internet research? ... if you're even concerned about the power to run the wipers, heater and the radio, then you've missed the boat completely. Those items are so insignificant that they can be discounted completely. And the mountains?! Neat. You get much of your energy back when you go back down the other side. Any other automotive technology besides electric propulsion that can accomplish that?

As for the last comment above - Who in their right mind would attempt to do anything with a Hummer?! That's a big part of the point here! You don't put wings on a pig and expect it to fly. Making a Hummer "green" is as silly as squandering electricity on FCVs instead of BEVs.

EVs have been driven the length of CA. They have been driven across the country. They don't do it on one charge, just like the Hummer (ANY FCV!) would need to be refilled MANY many times along the way. With fast-charge stations along the way (we could have one every ten miles of every highway in CA for the price of a SINGLE H2 filling station) then this becomes a no-brainer. The only time a FCV of any discription has driven the length of CA is with a tanker truck of H2 in the procession. Great comparison. Even after all that, EVs don't need to be long-distance vehicles to be viable, practical, and the best personal vehicle for the job of commuting.

Can I infer that you think an H2 Hummer is a good idea? A good way to solve our energy problems? You've decided that it is valid to support H2 as an energy carrier, and Hummers... while still implying that you're worried about our energy shortfalls? Hello? Is this thing on?

Here I am. I drive an electric car for the vast majority of my automotive miles. I make my own power for it. You seem to expend all your energy finding out what's wrong with what I'm doing. How it won't work for anybody else. Why? What's the threat? Isn't one of your goals to get CA to stop polluting so much? Isn't this one of the ways to accomplish that goal? What's the need to crap all over it?

Jar - I just don't get it man. Show me something that inspires me. Something that shows you care about this country. About the world. So far all I get is what's wrong with everything I say. Show me what we *should* be doing, and why. Not what we shouldn't be doing.

Give it a shot. You may be good at it.

 

[Darell]

Double post.

 

[BB]

Nahnnn...
it's always griped me that small desiels are available in all sorts of models and configs in Europe VS here in US. only a few select small desiel models are available.

Well, current production Diesel powered cars generate 10 to 100 times more pollution than current production gasoline/petrol powered cars...

That is why there are no Diesel powered new cars in California at this time. Changing to low sulfur Diesel may make it easier for some of the new technologies (such as particulate traps) to work in the future.

-Bill

 

[Darell]

Depends a lot on what pollution you count, and how far upstream in the cycle you travel.

Substitute biodiesel for dinodiesel and see if it sounds any better.

The concept of "pollution" is not an easy one to pin down and quantify.

 

[BB]

It was pretty easy to quantify tail pipe emissions by multiple government agencies... Diesel car Engines running on Diesel fuel produce high amounts of pollution wrt gasoline powered cars...

Is Diesel fuel production less hazardous to the environment than gasoline production... I don't know--but I will argue that gasoline, because of MTBE (and oxygenated fuels, like methonal, in general) is a disaster for our environment. MTBE has been found to massively increase the spread and contamination by gasoline plumes and mixing with water (my brother is making a very good living helping to identify these new plumes). And Methanol goes directly into our water table as a deadly poison.

MTBE and oxygenated fuels where supposed to help reduce tail pipe emissions... In this case, there appears to be very little (if any) evidence of cleaner burning engines but huge amounts of evidence of destruction of drinking water sources and air pollution (from evaporation of MTBE and spills of methanol).

Will BioDiesel be as clean as gasoline (tail pipe) as car engines... Possibly, and maybe likely... Is BioDiesel itself pretty close to a 100% safe and ideal fuel itself--yep..

However, we have a chicken and egg question. If we don't have diesel cars, we can't run biodiesel. If we don't currently have enough biodeisel, then we cannot justify diesel cars?

Do we increase (tail pipe) pollution by allowing more diesel powered vehicles so that, some time, in the future we will have something that will burn biodiesel?

I am not arguing biodiesel is not a good option... I was just stating (what I thought was obvious) that there was a reason why we do not see any Diesel powered new cars in California (because of California state government regulations)...

-Bill

 

[gadget_lover]

Darell said.....
And the mountains?! Neat. You get much of your energy back when you go back down the other side. Any other automotive technology besides electric propulsion that can accomplish that?

While I agree with this in principle, the fact remains that going uphill takes a lot more power than traveling on level ground. A trip from San Francisco to Reno, for instance, includes a climb of more than 7,000 feet. You don't get the energy back till you drive from Reno to SF. That's likely to be on a different day.

That's of no concern, I suppose, when simply going over coastal hills and such, where you drive 5 miles uphill and 5 miles downhill within 15 minutes.

What's the RAV4 EV's power consumption (kwh per mile, if possible) when pulling grades at freeway speeds? Say, a 2% grade like going to el dorado county on US 50? How about the steeper ones? There are some 5 mile stretches of 5% or so on the way to reno, IIRC.

This pertains to FCV too, since they have a low output that's accumulated in the battery. If the car uses more than the stack can provide, it will not be able to handle trips to Reno and the like without a sizable battery pack..

Daniel

 

[Darell]

Obviously going up hill uses more power and reduces range. Same with any vehicle, and by the same (relative) amounts. There's no magic bullet for shoving a mass up a hill. When I'm going up hill in the Rav, I likely use about the same amount of energy as a Hummer going down a slight grade. With the wind.

My point, of course is that when you DO go back down the hill (and what goes up MUST come down eventually!) at least you can reclaim some of that otherwise wasted power - when you have electric propulsion and a battery storage system. Same with braking at ANY time. Liquid fueled vehicles don't have a chance in this area. FCV is dubious at best.

 

[idleprocess]

Say, I was just driving along said grades on US 50 a few weeks ago...

About all you can do in an ICE vehicle going down steep slopes is coast (assuming you have a manual transmission) and engine brake. It takes less energy for an ICE to go downhill than up, but you recapture nothing and still have to burn gas with the engine idling.

NewBie:
Do you really think that headlights, radio, and windshield wipers are a signifigant load versus moving the vehicle? Do you worry about what effect using those will have on your fuel economy in a gas car? I think we both know that nothing is free - load a battery pack or load the alternator... both mean less energy to the wheels. An EV's motor consumes kilowatts; the combined load of headlights, radio, and wipers will tend to be <300 watts - with headlights/brake lights/signal lights being > 200W.

Heat is a bit different - it's "free" in a gas car since you just direct waste heat from the engine. Many EV's do have to generate heat. Air conditioning isn't - it's a big mechanical load for both gas cars and EVs and has a noticable effect on range for both.

 

[idleprocess]

Cells have a limited number of charge/discharge cycles, and Li-Ion have a well kept secret, that even when not in use, they will only last 2-3 years, typically.

In a EV vehicle, you are seriously cycling the cells.

You must have missed the news about the new lithium-ion cells with nearly zero degradation after 500 cycles. I hear that they don't spontaneously expire after those 2-3 years either.

So, what happens when you need to replace the cells, in 2 or three years?

It is the major cost of the vehicle.

Longer-lasting cells will help solve that problem along with the economy of scale that the automakers can build when they start making something in large numbers.

Also, California has a bad electricity shortage already. Imagine millions of cars pulling power off the grid. Plus you have to burn stuff to make the electricity (much of which california already imports, alot of it comes from burning coal), harm the environment and little fishies with hydroelectric, or somehow get the democrats to let you build Nuke plants (environmentalists again).

...and the Northwest has benefited tremendously from those massive dams on the Columbia that those Democrats you're so fond of pushed through with awful programs like the WPA and BPA during the Great Depression.

Power is going to have to get a great deal more expensive before it makes sense to build more nuclear plants.

Again - BEV users simply displace energy from the refinery. They might consume a bit more power at their residence or place of work, but they're typically wired to handle that kind of load anyway.

You live in an extremely sunny place, compared to most the folks in the US, so they don't really have the same options of covering their house with solar cells, and also don't want to lower their quality of life by having to line dry clothes, skip the use of the TV during prime power periods, and enjoy their A/C too much. So, that isn't a very practical option either.

I live in an extremely sunny place - like most folks in the southern US. If there were some more investments in wind and solar power, the southern US would probably be able to generate electricity during >75% of all daylight hours - and probably a large percentage of night hours... the wind seems to be blowing all the time on the plains states. Same goes for coastal areas.

Solve the practical aspects, generating the electricity, charging points, battery life/cost, get the EV vehicle range out to at least 350 miles between charges, while running the heater/headlights/wipers/and radio at the same time, and add all the additional power lines needed to carry that incredible level of electricity that would be needed.

Then EV might be practical at that point.

And I skipped alot of additional issues with EV...

It all sounds doable to me... unlike the distant mythical never-never land of hydrogen fuel cells.

There are plenty of vehicles on the road with ranges under 300 miles, so a 200+ mile range would be a good ideal for a commuter car.

Investment in the power infrastructure for BEVs would be a small fraction of the investment required for a new hydrogen infrastructure.

 

[Brock]

About all you can do in an ICE vehicle going down steep slopes is coast (assuming you have a manual transmission) and engine brake. It takes less energy for an ICE to go downhill than up, but you recapture nothing and still have to burn gas with the engine idling.

Ahhh not true with TDI's, with the diesel TDI's when in gear and no throttle is applied there is no, none, nada, fuel injected in to the engine. Running VAG com, an OBD2 scanner, in a gasser VW is consumes about .4L / hr at idle a TDI consumes about .25L / hr. Rolling in gear with no throttle depressed the TDI is .0L / hr and the gasser is still .4L / hr.

Some of the really high mileage TDI'ers use this a lot when slowing down, constantly downshifting. One such recent trip netted Ernie Rogers 68mpg over 1300 miles on one tank. You can find out more about that http://forums.tdiclub.com/showflat....1093940&Words=&topic=&Search=true#Post1094863

 

[ikendu]

BB wrote:

...current production Diesel powered cars generate10 to 100 times more pollution than current production gasoline/petrol powered cars...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ikendu writes:

Actually, the 2005 epa ratings for the same size vehicle (the one I looked up was the VW New Beetle; gas vs. diesel) show NOx 25 times higher for diesel but CO and CO2 4-4.5x higher than diesel or biodiesel (reduces CO2 by 78%).

http://www.itsgood4.us/images/Gas vs Diesel emissions.JPG

So...a lot depends on what you regard as a pollutant. The EPA ignores CO2.

NOx by itself will decay into harmless nitrogen and oxygen unless it is confined in an area of unburned hydrocarbons. If it is confined, it will combine with those unburned hydrocarbons into "Smog". CARB (California Air Resources Board) has determined that a huge source of unburned hydrocarbons comes from the fueling of the highly volatile fuel... gasoline. Biodiesel volatizes at a temperate 345 F higher than gasoline.

So...way less unburned hydrocarbons from fueling with biodiesel (or petroleum diesel for that matter) might just mean that if we were on that fuel, there'd be way less resultant smog, even with higher levesl of NOx.

The good news for diesel fans is the new Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) that will be required in the U.S. starting next year. That will allow diesel NOx cleanup controls that will result in ALL levels of pollutants for diesels that will be lower than gasoline cars.

 

[idleprocess]

Didn't know that about diesel engines.

Engine braking is the only sensible way to maintain safe speed when going downhill - unless the risk of total brake system failure doesn't bother you and you like buying new brake pads/shoes/discs/drums on a regular basis. I try to engine brake whenever possible driving around town, but it's too slow for any stop you don't see coming way in advance and often only good for shedding ~33% of your velocity. It's usually a great way to drop to a lower speed limit - assuming you don't have any police officers lurking around, looking to meet their speeding ticket quota...

 

[gadget_lover]

Obviously going up hill uses more power and reduces range. Same with any vehicle, and by the same (relative) amounts. There's no magic bullet for shoving a mass up a hill. When I'm going up hill in the Rav, I likely use about the same amount of energy as a Hummer going down a slight grade. With the wind.

My point, of course is that when you DO go back down the hill (and what goes up MUST come down eventually!) at least you can reclaim some of that otherwise wasted power - when you have electric propulsion and a battery storage system. Same with braking at ANY time. Liquid fueled vehicles don't have a chance in this area. FCV is dubious at best.

I'm pretty sure Darell made the trip up US 50 to Pollock pines from davis. According to mapqust that's about 70.1 miles. The resort is at 3,900 feet per their web site. Davis is near sea level, 50 feet above it according to one web site. That makes it almost 4000 feet in 70 miles, or a bit over a 1% grade on average.

What I'd like to know is the Rav4 EV's SOC when Darell got to the ranch. Was there a comfortable margin?

Daniel

 

[idleprocess]

Darrell opted not to take his RAV4EV because appropriate outlets allegedly weren't available for charging (this didn't turn out to be the case - the "cabins" were powered with typical 50A/220V RV plugs).

 

[Darell]

I was pretty bummed about that, actually. Lots of folks there who wanted to see the car. I'd have taken it for certain if I knew there'd be power - but was told there most definitely was NOT.

I see no problem in taking that trip, and plan to do it somewhat soon. All of your distance and elevation assumptions are on target. My best guess is that I'd have about 20% SOC left when I arrive. There is a public charger in Placerville (a couple thousand feet below Pollock pines, and 10 miles West) - so there's really no scary situation going on. I just opted out because I had my whole family with me, and rain was expected and nobody had visited that charging site in forever, so there was no way of being assured it was working. It was working, and is a REALLY nice facility.

The trip home will likely leave me with well over 50% SOC.

I should have sucked it up and taken the risk, but I'm getting to be a sissy in my old age.

 

[gadget_lover]

Thanks Darell. It sounds like the efficiencies up-hill are similar to any small car. The difference, of course, comes when you recapture a lot of that on the way downhill.

When I drive that route in my Prius, the milage suffers going up (though I can't remember the exact figures) and is near 100MPG on the way down. My figures get skewed because I have an extra 100 miles to travel before I get to the foothills, so I start into the foothils with 100 miles on the tank at 55 MPG or so. Round trip to Tahoe and back is usually in the high 40s

But now I'm way off topic. If the Rav4 will have 20% SOC after that climb, the FCV will not be able to make the trip at all. The constant climb will deplete the batery and leave you with just the fuel cell to power it up the hill. I take that back. You just have to park for a while every hour.

I think we should all kick in and pay for Darell's gas so he can make that trip to Ghost Mountain as a scientific measurement of the car's efficiency. I'll even pay half of it. What's that cost, Darell? Oh! Yeah! It's free because of his solar setup.



Daniel

 

[jtr1962]

There's an easier way to figure out the extra energy to go uphill and not be concerned about gradients. Remember that old potential energy equation from junior high school? E = mgh. Let's assume that the Rav4 has a mass of 2000 kg (~4400 lbs). h = 3900 feet = 1190 meters. We get E = 2000x9.81x1100 = 21,582,200 joules. 1 kW-hr = 3,600,000 joules so this is 5.995 kW-hrs, or rough 20% of the battery pack's capacity. Figure the energy you would need to go the distance on level terrain and just add 6 kW-hr to it. It doesn't seem like it would be that big a deal, and you could recover a good deal of it (50% ?) on the way down.

 

[gadget_lover]

Well, with JTR's explanation we really need Darell to make a test run!



Daniel