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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Electric Cars [message #189566 is a reply to message #189565] Sat, 11 February 2006 21:00 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Apache is currently offline  Apache
Messages: 185
Registered: February 2003
Location: Fort McMurray, AB, Ca
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Personally, being a rabid car fan, I think that hydrogen is totally the wrong direction to be taking. It requires massive rebuilding of infastructure, and is actually VERY dangerous too. Hydrogen gas is extremely explosive, and I definitely wouldn't want to be sitting on a tank of it!

The right course of action they need to take is ethanol, and bio-diesel.

Ethanol is very easy to produce, and runs just as well as gasoline does. The only infastructure, and engine changes required to run ethanol is to replace aluminum fuel rails with stainless steel, injectors with ethanol compliant versions, rubber fuel lines with Teflon inside coated rubber lines, and a stainless steel fuel tank.

The only reasons for these changes is becuase being an alcohol, Ethanol is corrosive, and will eat through aluminum, rubber, and plastics.

With these changes, a guy can run 100% ethanol on any current V8 gasoline engine. Ethanol burns extremely clean, producing basically no CO, nor oxides. Infact, Ethanol is the fuel of choice for top fuel dragsters. Ethanol is a high octane fuel, which would allow automakers to make very high performance engines, and still get better emissions than current engines do.

It'd be very cheap to switch all vehicles over to ethanol, as compared to switching to hydrogen, it'd also provide farmers with work, and wean North America off of it's oil additction.

Infact, much of Brazil already runs ethanol vehicles!

Bio-diesel is also another very good fuel to use. It can be run in any mechanically injected diesel engine with no modifications to the engine, or in any electronically injected diesel engine with very minor sensor / chip changes. Again, a far cleaner burning fuel than petro diesel, and it is produced from waste oil, or fresh clean oil too. It'd give all the restaurants something to do with their grease, again give the farmers something to grow, and again, just as importantly, wean North America off petrol oil.

There is absolutely no reason why we need to be running oil, or spending billions trying to get Hydrogen working. We've got tried and true solutions right now, that could be cheaply, and easily implemented to replace petrol fuels.

Oh, and did I mention just how CHEAP ethanol and biodiesel would be if they were mass produced? I'm talking like .15 cents a gallon of home made biodiesel cheap Wink

And yes, I know all this works cause I run a bio-diesel rig myself. Its an old Chevy 6.2 diesel with a 6.5 turbo slapped on it. Run it on bio-diesel made from Canola that local farmers give to me for free (go ask for a truck box full from every farmer in the area, and you can wind up with a LOT of canola, lol) and yeah, she may smell a bit like McDonalds, but the truck runs just as well if not better than it did on dino oil, and is very cheap.

Only dissadvantage to these fuels is in cold weather situations such as here in Canada, below -10C, neither Ethanol, or Bio-Diesel remain in a liquid form, and gel up. I imagine some minor reasearch could easily turn up an additive to keep that from happening though Smile



- Russell
 
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