Re: Water powered cars exist!

In article <JFHyyA.723@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, tdscanuck_nospam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...
>
>
>"Gogarty" <Gogarty@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Electric vehicles were in wide use in the early 20th Century, mostly
for
>> commercial vans. Then as now the batteries take up too much space,
weight 
>> too
>> much and are too short-lived for the elctric vehicle to be a viable
>> alternative to the internal combusion engine.
>
>Battery technology (and motor technology, and ESC technology, and pretty 
>much everything else) has advanced just a little bit since th early 20th 
>century.
>
>> The thermodynamics are unyielding.
>
>Good thing that battery and fuel cells aren't thermodynamic cycles.

Whatever. My physical chemistry, et al, is a bit rusty. But the bottom
line  
is yu cannot get out as much energy as you put in.
>
>> The hydrogen vehicle is an internal combustion driven vehicle. It
>> is not economic in any real world contest because the fuel costs too
much 
>> to
>> produce, too much to trans****t and too much to store.
>
>You forgot the all im****tant "now".  Petroleum distillates in volume were

>ferociously expensive when they first came out.  Economies of scale is an

>amazing thing.

No, I did not forget the "now." Petroleum distillates may have been
expensive 
at one time but it did not take long for the pertroleum industry to kill
the 
whale oil industry. Petroleum and natural gas burn straight out of the 
ground, no processing required. It isn't even a mining operation as oil
shale 
and tar sands are. Economies of scale can only increase efficiency but not

overcome the physics. Steam****ps no longer exist despite the very high 
efficiency of modern supercritical power plants. They are all diesel now. 
Nuclear power is horrendously inefficient. It only works because the fuel
is 
so cheap. Fuel cells and batteries and solar cells and wind power all hav
e 
their places in special applications. But they can't compete in the mass 
markets or in the trans****ation markets.
>
>> A gallon of gasoline or
>> diesel or peanut oil weighs 7 to 8 pounds, for the sake of argument. It

>> will
>> get you twenty miles in a heavy vehicle, these days over forty in a
well
>> designed one. To get the same range with hydrogen you have to carry the

>> same
>> weight of fuel. How much pressure does it take to compress seven pounds
of
>> hydrogen into the space of one gallon?
>
>None, if you make it cold enough.

Uhhhmmm -- the boiling point of hydrogen is -252 C. What do you suppose it

would cost to keep a tank of liquid hydrogen in your car? Pressurized 
hydrogen can be trans****ted. Liquid hydrogen is not accepted by common 
carriers.
>
>> You sure you want to be riding around with that bomb at your back?
>
>You have no idea how dangerous gasoline vapours are, do you?

Oh, but I do. You can't look into a gasoline tank with a lighted match. I
was 
11 when I tried that. Gasoline va****s are indeed far more dangerous than 
hydrogen simply because of the energy content in the same volume of va****s

and because gasoline va****s are heavier than air. Hydrogen goes "whoosh"
and 
will singe your eyebrows. Gasoline goes "boom" and will throw you across
the 
street while setting fire to everything in the vicinity. But gasoline is 
liquid at STP. Hydrogen is not.
>
>Tom. 
>