Cromax

Whoa, I'd never seen that before! That's massive!!!

globi

Electricity is cheap but electric cars are not cheap.

And gasoline is still too cheap to justify more efficient alternatives:
Assuming a sportscar gets 20 mpg and there's an efficient version of the exact same sportscar but making 40 mpg (same performance). If the 40 mpg model would only cost $10'000 more, it would hardly be sellable. At 20'000 miles a year a customer can only save $1500 per year on gas at $3 per gallon.

chetrickerman

i suggest you all watch modern marvels on the history channel. it is on hydrogen cars and the humans on the environment

nmarz77

lol....I've been watching them and meaning to bring it up on here.

chetrickerman

tonight was prime for this discussion

nmarz77

Yeah it was. I'm sure those episodes would quiet a few mouths on here.

chetrickerman

yes, but then they would also open up more

ttrx7pete

Great video. Another application of the rotary engine! Albeit a different style, but nonetheless the same concept.

Looks promising. Big Oil would hate those cars.

champi0n

iTrader: (1)

Full electric cars probably won't happen... who wants to charge the car for like 6-8 hours when they need to be somewhere now? or what if u run outa juice mid trip? Plus electricity to charge them will continue to rise and then whats the point. Over the last 2 years our provincial power has increased more then %40 in cost. (It will keep going up).

Hybrid cars have better potential, but as someone mentioned it's still more expensive to produce electric engines/battery combo.

Filling stations are the only way to go with alternative fuels

Alternative combustion fuels would be more feasible on a cost and consumer standpoint. Hybrid combustion engines (Like the hydrogen/fuel rx8 hybrid) are IMO the best way to go considering the infrastructure already in place with gasoline and the growing infrastructure of hydrogen.

The rotary engine is best suited for hydrogen combustion which is great.

BUT when it comes down to it the only way for these things to happen anytime soon is for everyone in the world to stop purchasing gasoline or have a few thousand people go around blowing up gas stations in protest.... cost everyone too much money and force them to do alternative fuels.

j_tso

Or just wait. Gasoline will become more expensive anyway. But I predict there will be a panic because there are too many idiots.

chetrickerman

yup, then everyone will go buy hydrogen or whatever cars, and i will be happy with my low priced gasoline. supply and demand

HD-Paschke

Remember, in the USA not one single relevant functioning internal combustion engine has been invented! Rotarygod and now knowing why!
Americans and Rotorygod have no idea about thermodynamics!

With a faster burning fuel, is the thermal efficiency higher.
Isometric is efficenter as isobaric!
Ignition adavance is need for slow burning fuels, because of the ignitions delay. Peak pressure should with gasoline around ~4°TDC!
More advnce reduces the effective compression this lowered the thermal efficiency
Propane or CNG in a Otto-Cycle need a higher compressions ratio!
Why? This are crappy slow burning fueles!

Wrong! P= 2*Pi*n*M!!! A diesel engine must do 4000 revolution per minute and twice the torque produce as a gasoline engine at 8000 rpm for the same power!
For more torque need you more force F and force F caused more material, more mechanical stress, therfore bigger cross sections, bigger bearings and this all caused more weight!!! The R10 has a displacment of 5,5l and use turbocharging and produce only 650PS. Rember the the 26B has only a camber volumen of 2,6 l, produce 700PS and was natural aspirated! Energy content Diesel 35,3 MJ/L and Gasoline 32 MJ/L! The fuel consumption of a R10 is only 10% lower as a gasoline engine caused by the higher calorific value of diesel fuel!!! Is the calorific value normalized the consumption of Audi R10 equal with the Audi R8. The main advantage of the R10 less fuel stops. The efficiency of a Diesel engine decrease with rising revs! 6000Rpm with a diesel is hopless nonsens!!!

Gasoline produce 2,4kg/l CO2 and diesel 2,7kg/l CO2!
Hydrogen 0,00000 kg/l CO2!
25% of the hydrogen world production is needed for the gasoline and diesel production!

globi

HD Paschke,

Do you by chance have any data regarding the flame propagation speed of the different fuels? (diesel, gasoline, propane, cng and hydrogen).

Regarding your energy yield graph per area: If you were to use the electricity produced to power an electric car vs. producing hydrogen to power a hydrogen car, you would need even less area. Also, oil from algae has a much better energy yield per area than oil from soybeans and the like - admitably, still less than PV and wind.

globi

Btw, are you somehow related to Hanns-Dieter Paschke - or why do you use his name?
http://www.google.com/patents?q=pasc...Search+Patents

davefzr

You know everyone is awaiting a response, so i'll go ahead and bump it.

sosonic

Hydrogen = crap.

Anybody with any concern with protecting the environment, saving fuel, making a convenient "green car", etc.... would go hybrid electric or electric.

How in the hell can you beat just plugging your car into an electric outlet at your home or work? Furthermore there is quick charge technology out for electric cars, so you are talking 30 to 45 minutes to get 50% or greater charge. Something you can do AT HOME, by the way. The range of electric cars are hitting 200 miles and beyond. You can also use solar cell technology to help charge the batteries as well. You can keep extending their range. There are electric cars doing 0-60 in under 5 seconds, but you can do hybrid electric too and just use electrical power in traffic.

The researches that wasted time and money on the Hydrogen RX-8, could have made an hybrid electric or electric assisted turbo version of the RX-8 with 275HP, saved gas, and burned cleaner.

Hydrogen = expensive, no refueling stations, limited storage capacity and travel range, still f*cks up the environment as the plan is to use fossil fuel based plants to make the hydrogen, etc....

Oil companies like hydrogen and there are several customer UNfriendly reasons for this.

Thumbs down to the Hydrogen RX-8

j_tso

However, the countries that are in hydrogen development don't use fossil fuel power.

chetrickerman

yes but the US, the biggest oil consumer. wants to make hydrogen from natural gas, a fossil fuel

edfred

Can you imagine how much effort it is to replace ALL cars to electricity ?
I don't think so! Hydrogen has the advantage, that a common combustion otto engine can be modified in that way to run with hydrogen. Show me the same with electricitiy. all you have to do is a gas injector, the tank, and the lane between.
Power will be 50% less then with common fuel, but it will run. Thats the point.

Hydrogen from natural gas is not the only way to get it. Its a gas at the conversion of bio mass to waste, or you can split it with electricity out of the water. Even some bacteria can help to get it.

maybe electricity will be better ... maybe. But the world isn't a clear, white shining piece of paper! Even .. how would you like to store the electric power ? A recharable batterie gets poor at low temperatures and recharge /operatin times are still too long at the current technology.

I think hydrogen will be the intermediate and long time kind of fuel to current and future cars.

HD-Paschke

A Audi NSU H2-Wankel with port blowing H2 reached 1976 already 41% efficiency.
That rose to 51% in 1991.
A Renesis H2 has a greater efficiency as port blowing engine.

The highest electrical efficiency of a H2-fuelcell is ~60% in Idling!
ηges = ηth · ηele · ηu
ηges = 0.8296 (U · ηu) /1,23 V
combustion efficiency ηu

A fuelcell is a stupid idea against a H2 Wankel!

At Morning the Ballard minute's silence to heat on the fuel cell.
When the temperature drops below zero degrees then the fuelcell must be heated or they will be destroyed by ice.
Also emptied the tank in winter, without the car even moved a feet.

A electric car ist the most stupid idea regarding to efficiency.
Power plant maximal 60% efficiency with natural gas GUD, coal-fired power station 45%. Than transformtion loss and transport loss. The batterie lader has loss, the batterie has loss, the converter has loss, e-motor has loss. etc..
Then more than ten times more power plants are required!


Experience with Wankel since 1954!

chetrickerman

good write up

zoom44

no but he does run this site

http://www.der-wankelmotor.de

which many of us have drawn info from over the years. the math available at

http://www.der-wankelmotor.de/Techni...iklexikon.html is extremely helpful in understanding how they have changed the internal dimensions without changing them much externally

and one of the few places (and perhaps only legitimate on line source) where you can still find pics of the Rolls Royce diesel 2 step compression unit that used one rotor to pre-compress the fuel/air mixture into a smaller rotor that compressed it the rest of the way for combustion - one of my particular favorites. i still think that shows promise.

http://www.der-wankelmotor.de/Motore...lls-royce.html

babelfish this site when you have a chance

EdwardsB

Didn't know that they did this really cool...I do know that a researcher here a working on ways to burn salt water using radio waves, producing hydrogen that burned.

http://www.psucollegian.com/archive/...er_energy.aspx

BTW did you go to psu, zoom?

zoom44

well i have been TO PSU. with adult beverages in hand. never went there...

champi0n

iTrader: (1)

You can beat it by shoving a hydrogen re-fueling nozzle into your tank for a few minutes and get 100% capacity. Hydrogen cars can get 200+ miles (it just so happens the rx-8 hydrogen has a SMALL *alternate* tank getting 100miles)

Electricity is expensive, batteries are expensive and heavy (sure they're lighter now a days, but yes they're still heavy as ****).

So what if its rainy and cloudy? solar panels are expensive. Same hybrid technology can be applied to hydrogen/gasoline and will be less expensive.

electric assisted turbo takes too much power to produce power. It doesn't work.

an electric hybrid would be too expensive, no one would buy it. Waste of money considering hydrogen hybrid is cheaper to produce.

cleaner, maybe slightly... but mass market wise if people were offered hydrogen vs electric, they'd choose hydrogen due to initial cost. They can convert their car cheaper then if thye had to buy a new one that didnt come in the design they liked.

Hydrogen doesnt require fossil fuels to be created. Refueling stations would go up quickly and easily if there were enough people driving alternative fuel cars... but everyone is making too much off of regular gasoline/oil to jump on the "hey lets promote alternative fuels and make less money" wagon.

Dont fight it, hydrogen is the way of the future.