Hydrogen-based Rotary Engine? 349
Seabird99 writes: "I came across this article at one of my car related forums and thought that I'd pass it on here. I have always been intrigued by "alternative" technologies where they relate to artificial locomotion." For some reason Slashdot gets a lot of submissions of wacko energy concepts - power from nothing, power from sand, power from a black box, engines that get 500 miles to the gallon... Perhaps this is more of the same, but at least it's an interesting write-up.
New "drivetrain" setup (Score:3, Insightful)
Would automakers be for it? Most likely not. They make a substantial amount of money from repairs and maintenance. And to think of the outrage from auto-repair shops, cutting their business as well.
It's an excellent idea - less weight, much better fuel, fewer moving parts, etc. But there's a lot of opposition ahead.
Re:Next Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Tom.
Re:Next Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
We need hydrogen (or fuel cells, or whatever) and a good primary source of energy like fusion power (still a sliding 10-20 years away), otherwise we'll still be burning dead dinosaurs to make the hydrogen.
The technical problems of storage and dispensing will be solved when we're willing to spend as much on it as we do on the petrolium industry.
Wacko Energy (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it's so odd the
Personally I've always associated the term 'Nerd' with all things mathematical and scientific. I think 'Geek' for all things computer and electrical (You can't even spell 'Geek' without EE.)
Well.. if you read the article (Score:4, Insightful)
Revolutions in design have rarely come out of corporations... considering this site is supposed to be Linux based, I thought I would see more support for anyone trying to solve the energy crisis outside of the regular channels, since it's highly unlikely it will come from the gas companies anytime soon.
Re:Next Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just dig a gasoline well either, what's your point? Even natural gas requires refining to remove impurities and other trace gases. With very few exceptions, you're going to have to do some work to get the energy in a form that's usable to you.
Obviously you didn't... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not the H2, it's the *simplicity*! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that everyone is completely missing the point of this new (and unproven as of yet) engine. The thing that makes it unique is NOT that the guy can theoretically run it on hydrogen and oxygen produced by electrolysing water. What makes it unique is the sheer simplicity of the engine.
As geeks and programmers, we all love to see someone come up with a truly elegant solution to a programming problem. When someone takes years of kludges and condenses them down into a few lines of clear, concise code, it is not only a thing of beauty and mastery, it is something to be desired.
What should strike people about this engine is that this somewhat eccentric but proven inventor has come up with a replacement module for that hideously kludgey block of code called the internal combustion engine. If pistons and rods and camshafts and all can be replaced with such a simple construct, isn't that a good idea? Now, of course, I'll stay in the "show me the code" mode until I actually see a working prototype, but if these guys think they can hash it out, I say more power to them.
Quite a Range! (Score:2, Insightful)
So, is the guy a real inventor, or a hopeless crackpot dreamer, or somewhere inbetween?
Re:Next Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Making hydrogen is a physics problem: Energy out = energy in - losses. (By using fossil fuels, we are cheating the physics problem by using stored solar power, but it'll run out someday.)
Re:Next Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
[..] otherwise we'll still be burning dead dinosaurs to make the hydrogen.
This isn't as bad as it sounds. Power plants can operate at much higher temperatures than automobile engines, and can therefore achieve much better efficiency. Not only that, but the combustion is more complete, and much more elaborate pollution-control measures can be used.
In short, if you make a power plant that would produced energy to drive a thousand cars, it would burn less fuel than those thousand cars would burn individually.
Methonol BAD / Methanol GOOD??? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, a lot of articles have been popping up in New Scientist essentially calling Methanol a demon fuel. It takes more energy to produce than it generates. By the time you use fertilizers, transport the stuff to the processing plant, run the plant, transport it to the pumps you've used more of the stuff than you can produce!
This sounds like Oil industry propoganda, but its getting a lot of column inches! anyone know anything?????
This is not a panacea! (Score:1, Insightful)
1. They create urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is pushing housing and farms further out, encroaching on ever more natural bushland. Urban sprawl fosters social isolation and makes other more benign transport options less feasible.
2. The car culture necessitates the need for ever more and wider roads and parking facilities. Roads are ugly, parking lots are ugly, they consume valuable public space. Ultimately car culture results in dull cities that are designed for cars and not people.
3. Even with a fandangled engine, to manufacture, maintain and run a car will consume vast amounts of resources. The engine described in this article will require a relatively large solar array complemented of course by a large battery bank.
4. Cars, whether using the latest in engine technology or not, create traffic problems resulting often in no-one going anywhere fast. These traffic problems restrict the free flow of bicycles, buses and other more benign forms of transport.
5. Cars kill around 1 million people every year worldwide.
6. Our obsession with cars in the developed world is setting an example for the developing world to follow. Unfortunately many in the third world aspire to our model of 'development'. We need to provide examples of sustainable alternatives to car culture for other countries to follow.
We must realise that the car culture is an environmental and social disaster even if the McMaster engine was to enter into mass production.
Re:My conspiracy theory... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
whatever, but that bottle of water required EXTERNAL energy to raise it to that potential. And that external energy is the entire point. It had to come from somewhere, it's not free.
Note that the low pressure (30K feet)/high temperature (99 degrees C) are to boil water, which changes state from liquid to gas. It does not break the molecular bonds to separate into hydrogen & oxygen. The gas is still water molecules - H2O, not H2 and O2 molecules.
But the main point is correct - it takes an energy input to get the hydrogen that you then use in whatever reaction you're using to create your new energy. Hydrogen is a transmission and storage medium, not an energy source. Note that some companies are getting the hydrogen from gasoline or methanol, using the previously-stored solar energy.
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Re:McMaster Motor site (Score:3, Insightful)