gards

Still trying to figure out their mileage quote but the rest of the story is pretty cool.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060215/...da_hydrogen_dc

Labop

sweet. it's nice to see something that was a concept car pipe dream turn into the reality of a quasi-produciton car. Even if it's only for testing/proof of concept purposes.

That puts it at 403 miles for both tanks. Compared to just a gas RX-8, we would need to get 28 MPG out of 14 gal (roughly how much I put in each time). That's a pretty good improvement, I usually get 17 MPG city and 21 MPG highway. But, I would have expected more mileage out of the hydrogen cell. Guess it's pretty small.

bd32322

interesting article ..

however I dont know what the big deal about hydrogen is. It puts more carbon into the atmosphere to produce hydrogen than to use gasoline - unless nuclear energy is used to generate it. Then theres the problem of transportation and maintenance - all of which takes more energy and that energy is going to come from either fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is much better here but there are long term wastes.

Instead people should look at what the race cars use - methanol/ethanol. Bacteria can break down trash into alcohol. Although burning alcohol produces carbon - this carbon belongs to the carbon cycle (from plants, trash etc) - so we are not contributing extra carbon to our ecosystem. We are essentially recycling. As opposed to burning gasoline - where we are releasing carbon formed millions of years ago into the ecosystem.

- Bodi

Go48

It's good to see them testing an hydrogen-powered vehicle, but unless an economical method for hydrogen production can be found, it likely will never replace, or even supplement, petroleum as the primary source of energy for the automobile. The process for producing hydrogen has been an electrolosis process that consumes lots of electical energy. That electrical energy is in large measure produced using petroleum (including natural gas here) so there is no economical gain to be realized in using a petroleum product to produce another energy product when the petroleum product can be used directly in the automobile.

On the soapbox: Hopefully, the "country" will wake up and demand the development of alternate and more economical methods, such as nuclear energy, for producing hydrogen. Off the soapbox.

zoom44

steam shifting doesnt release carbon into the atmosphere
http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogena...fs/32405a7.pdf

is just one article

changing world tech http://www.changingworldtech.com/ has another way to reform garbage in to hydrogen and useful compunds etc

bd32322

Your first article assumes you have steam (not only that but steam heated to 850 Celsius). How do you produce steam? You have to burn fossil fuels or nuclear energy. You cannot say - burn hydrogen because that will be a circular argument.

Yes there are many reactions that will give you hydrogen without releasing carbon but at what cost?

The second link you sent didnt really describe any details (maybe I missed a page or something). It does talk about decomposing garbage using bacteria. Most bacteria will produce alcohol or methane. Some bacteria do produce hydrogen directly. I am not aware of the yields/costs as a result of using bacteria for hydrogen - it will however be greater than the cost of alcohol (because of storage, transportation etc).

Bodi

Blue87Sport

CNN carried the same Reuters' story at http://www.cnn.com/2006/AUTOS/02/15/...eut/index.html but seems to be missing a digit on the gas mileage claims. They quote 41 miles instead of 341. I'm guessing they've actually driven an RX-8 and know the crappy gas mileage.

Also the article states: "A rotary engine is suitable for hydrogen fuel because the separate chambers for fuel intake, combustion and exhaust significantly reduce the danger of the fuel's backfiring compared with a conventional recipro engine." Somebody needs to brush up on their wankelology. I guess since the rotor has three faces, they have assigned each one to a different part of the combustion cycle.

At least Mazda should get some good press coverage as a progressive car company.

zoom44

using wind hydro or solar produced electricity.

NoTears316

I'd consider buying a coal burning RX8. That would be killer! Have a big smoke stack on the top of the hood like a big scoop.

Blue87Sport

More details can be found at http://www.mazda.com/publicity/release/200602/0215.html

So roughly a 29 gal., 5000 psi hydrogen tank yielding 50 mile cruising range.

Besides the additional tank and plumbing and presumably ECU programming, I wonder what other changes are needed? Could this be made into a retrofit kit to mod an existing RX-8?

ACRX8

This will not happen soon so keep revving the Rotary and watch the fuel gauge drop.

Go48

Those are nice academic questions because you first need refueling stations fairly close together. So you can make all the mods you want to an RX-8, but if you can't get the hydrogen fuel....

Anyway, this ain't gonna happen during the useful life of the RX-8 so any such mods would be for naught. As ACRX8 says, fill 'er up with 91 octane and go.

bd32322

that stuff wont come close to producing energy for steam at 850 C on a commercial scale - otherwise we will all be living off solar energy and wind energy and hydroelectricity.

- Bodi

PS - Solar Cell efficieny is around 15-18%.

bd32322

also we could stick a turbine on top of the 8 .. we use a gas engine to get us upto speed and then the turbine rotates and produces electricity for the electric motor. When we slow down again we gas it up :-)

This will never work ofcourse.

Bodi

zoom44

http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=1806
http://home.nestor.minsk.by/build/ne...6/02/1510.html

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage4553.html

Blue87Sport

I'm not so sure. I commute less than 50 miles a day, as do a lot of people. There are currently several cities that offer free recharging stations for electric vehicles. I could easily imagine that pilot projects offering hydrogen refueling will exist in the next 20 years (my estimation of the useful life of my RX-8). I agree that it isn't practical for long trips but for people with average commutes, why not? Especially if the hydrogen fuel was subsidized or even free. Would you be willing to fill your hydrogen tank every other day if that meant you only filled your gas tank every other month? And got a tax incentive? And helped the environment? And not have to worry about carbon build-up on your engine seals.

So it won't be mainstream but I bet it will exist in places.

zoom44

hydrogen refueling stations already exist in several cities around the world- the least of which is the one Mazda built for refueling the Hydrogen RX-8s

http://www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com/in...ub&tid=1&pid=2

vancover 1999

saturn

Haha, that is a freakin great idea. Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-CHOOO-CHOOOO! Look at that RX-8 fly!

bd32322

No ones arguing that other sourves of renewable energy do not exist. Whats the most efficient? Also will industry take it up to provide cheap hydrogen? Most of solar energy stuff will not work in many geographic areas - no industry is going to sit around and pay its workers when not getting enough sun.

Bacteria are much more efficient at creating alcohol than any solar cell. Plus they get rid of the waste and do not create huge explosive tanks.

Articles 1 and 2: 13% efficiency.

Article 3: Talks about some nerdy process - but does not mention anything about how efficient it is to make the hydrogen.

The whole point is efficiency and a practical way of making hydrogen. The only way to do so is to use some unlimited source like solar or wind. But those are not practical for industry. Solar is out unless you are in the desert. Same with wind. And I have no info on the process in the third article. Only way hydrogen is produced on a mass scale is fossil fuels now.

I have a feeling that you are just googling and throwing websites at me.

Bodi

saturn

If I hear or see one more argument over whether hydrogen will ever be used as a source of fuel on a large scale I'm going to crap my pants -- oh wait, too late.

Anywho, hydrogen burns inside the RX-8 hybrid. This isn't the future for hydrogen. It's just not all that efficient. Hydrogen will be used for fuel cells (already being done on smaller scale) for things like laptops and other mobile devices. Eventually this technology will be used in cars (and anything else that uses electricity) to some extent to power the electrical-assist features of future hybrids (anything from an electric turbo to an electric assist motor). Methanol fuel cells are also a possibility, but they have even more technological constraints than hydrogen based ones (right now).

Biofuels will undoubtedly take over in the shorter term for combustion engines and places like houses. But you can't power your laptop by burning some ethanol. Fuel cells are going to be a reality. If hydrogen is the best candidate for them it doesn't matter if it takes 6 nuclear power plants to get it -- it will happen. The ironic part is that they may burn biofuels to power hydrogen harvesting plants. It doesn't matter how inefficient it is because there's no competition against fuel cells for many applications. Lithium batteries are the pinnacle of electrochemical based batteries and they just aren't good enough (memory issues, current leakage, capacity per unit space, etc).

So in the end, it's not either or. It's both.

Blue87Sport

Best arguments for a Hydrogen powered RX-8:

1. It doesn't flood*
2. No more arguments about Octane grades

* Minor flooding causes the engine to float in the engine bay. Severe flooding is addressed by the "Hindenburg procedure".

bd32322

You are talking about battery technology vs. fuel cell. We were talking about the fuel itself. Specifically, we were talking about hydrogen as a fuel.

Just because the fuel cell is efficient does not make the whole process efficient. When they say a fuel cell is very efficient, it means that the process of creating electricity using catalysts and the fuel is efficient. It does not take into account the problem of generating that fuel.

The problem with hydrogen is that it is not naturally occuring - unlike ethanol which you can naturally produce from waste. You have to waste tons of energy to create hydrogen. And current solar and wind technologies are too expensive for creating hydrogen on a mass scale. Bacteria decomposition will work.

The things going for hydrogen production are:
1. Produce from methane - natural gas (around 80% efficiency), producing from water is expensive and uses more energy.

2. Produce from bacteria and trash - dont know how efficient it is - but those little critters know what they are doing.

3. Big thing is that pollution is localized to hydrogen producing plants - which can then inject the CO2 into gas mines - basically as you pump out natural gas you pump in CO2 or some advanced means of breaking down CO2.

Bodi

Bastage

iTrader: (1)

http://www.iter.org

RX8_GT

Check out the latest Popular Science magazine - BMW is working on a gasoline/steam hybrid - the steam generated from waste heat in the exhaust / cooling system.

Lets' see ..... Waste Heat ....Wankel ------ Great Duo

Use the waste heat of the Rotary -!!!!

RX8_GT

Not up on web site yet - unfortunately