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Author Topic: The future of electric Vehicles.  (Read 60995 times)

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #195 on: May 16, 2018, 03:50:31 PM »
The reason for reducing the gas burner holes is that hydrogen burns so much hotter than LP/methane that when adapting a gas cooking burner, you need less holes if operating at the same regulated pressure and with a standard lp/methane jet and metering valve regulating gas flow.  The stainless steel wool promotes mixing and as a catalytic surface helps reduce the flame temperatures and has the advantage of letting you see the flame.  Sufficient air mixing is at the stainless steel wool, premixing just creates an explosive mix so is avoided.  I found the information on the use of stainless steel wool somewhere on the web; I did not develop this myself, only experimented with it as an option for my off grid home.  I thought that variable gas rate generation under modest pressure to avoid pumping and storage was possible by raising/lowering the scrap aluminum into the lye bath or by controlling lye-water pumping rate, spraying the lye over the scrap aluminum. 

Various schemes have been proven for hydrogen generation via aluminum, including a water filled, aluminum wire feed against a rotating aluminum drum with electrical current applied to the wire. The drum speed and wire feed rate control the gas generation rate. One inventor used this successfully for an aluminum-hydrogen driven car.

Aluminum in lye water does NOT generate oxygen, which makes it an appealing hydrogen source.  Just make sure that you let it run to purge any air in your generation tank- the first gas you get will have enough air in it to be explosive.  An be prepared to deal with the rapidly heating lye water/aluminum solution...it will get very hot and will melt plastic unless you provide cooling. (You can imagine how I learned that lesson.)

The hydrogen car fantasy- that only water drips from the tailpipe, is only just that. The NOx problem is still there, when burning air.  If you burned brown's gas (with oxygen, not air) then it would be true.




ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #196 on: May 17, 2018, 12:03:45 AM »
Don`t remember the guys name but he had a solar setup producing hydrogen which he safely stored in tanks filled with Lithium 6 deutoride. The tanks would release the hydrogen on demand when heated with an electric element.

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #197 on: May 17, 2018, 03:55:16 PM »
Politicans will say anything to obtain votes at the next election . The electorate tends to have  a very short memory.

mike90045

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #198 on: May 18, 2018, 05:56:39 AM »
just wondering what the end-end efficiency of using refined aluminum wire and lye to generate hydrogen.
 Aluminum smelting is pretty power intensive, maybe it's useful as a "battery" but the cost is going to be pretty high.

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #199 on: May 18, 2018, 03:30:37 PM »
Both aluminum and other metals made by the Hall-Héroult process or electrolysis have been proposed as a means of energy storage. The efficiency is sub 50%...but storage is long term stable, and energy volumetric density is high. Alas, the aluminum smelting process generates a lot of "perfluorocarbons gases which are strong greenhouse gases with a long lifetime", and the hydrogen fluorides "tend to be very toxic to vegetation around the plants" (wikipedia).  So I doubt we'll see a shift to an aluminum based energy economy.

Synthetic propane (DME- dimethyl ether) is already being used around the world and may be produced via biomass and recently demonstrated biosynthesis via modified bacteria.  I like this possible solution for a renewable home/transport fuel as propane is a well proven fuel with a fairly clean exhaust.


tiger

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #200 on: May 19, 2018, 03:40:10 AM »
Some thing else to consider is the Vanadium flow batteries coming on line. Invented or made somewhat practical in OZ by a college student She developed a battery that stores the energy in the electrolyte and its capacity is determined by the amount of electrolyte one can store. They are practical so far only for stationary applications as large amounts of electrolyte are required. Several versions of electrolyte work including common sulfuric acid types. Many company's working on it, 1 in my neck of the woods, UNI Energy Technologys of Mulkilteo WA. USA.
There are several prototypes over 1 megawatts in operation.
Metro 12/2 ST 10 KW

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #201 on: May 19, 2018, 05:33:39 PM »
Nice experimental setup, Glort. 
I agree with your assessment that the start was slow due to oxides on the aluminum surface.  I used crumpled aluminum foil for my testing in a 5 gallon sealed lid pail as reactor vessal, which got a reaction going well in just a few minutes and had a good gas generation rate.  I used a bulkhead hose barb in the sealed lid and 1/2" outlet hose, and put it in a larger water filled trough for cooling.  I filled 30 gallon plastic trash bags with the gas.  Some became weather balloons.  I lit some off with a torch.

My original intention was for gas on demand, only enough to use directly for cooking. My limited testing showed that was possible with a modest sized generating vessel..perhaps 20 gallons for a gas oven.  The lye solution seemed to last pretty well but I didn't get very far on evaluation since burning lab grade hydrogen in air created NOx which was a project killer for me.

Aluminum plates can be used for electrolysis of water but you'd have to collect the oxygen separately...I think that would be the downside of trying to accelerate the process with an electrical current boost, as you were proposing...I think you will get oxygen in that case.

Thanks, Tiger for reminding us on the flow type battery progress.  The one commercial product for the US home power market went out of business last year...not enough market yet, and quite costly.  I didn't realize there were 1-4 GW grid connected systems like that in operation now around the world, with 1-4 day storage capability.








BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #202 on: May 20, 2018, 04:27:13 PM »
Having done the full CS conversion to spark/propane for my neighbor, I can tell you with confidence that for a full conversion what you need is a gas carb like the Impco CA-110. It has a huge diaphram that can cope with the intermittent intake gulping of the CS.  Likewise, the regulator is critical and you must use the Garret/Impco regulator with the very large diaphram for the same reason. 

High speed engines are much cheaper to convert and the IMPCO carbs are much more common and thus cheaper for those. 

I know nothing about specific hydrogen engine conversion issues; I never go that far.

For hydrogen as a supplemental fuel there is a good chance hydrogen can be just jetted directly into the intake manifold of a diesel engine per CarlB's natural gas setup.  A diesel can run 85% NG, but only 20-25% LP.  I'll bet someone has tried adding hydrogen gas to a diesel.




ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #203 on: May 23, 2018, 07:32:57 AM »
Hey Glort, further to your rant about SA running back up generators, I came across this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362762/The-dirty-secret-Britains-power-madness-Polluting-diesel-generators-built-secret-foreign-companies-kick-theres-wind-turbines--insane-true-eco-scandals.html

Makes the SA government look like amateurs at wasting money.

Bob

mikenash

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #204 on: May 23, 2018, 08:08:27 AM »
We were talking earlier about the amount of electrical energy it would take to turn a national fleet of internal combustion engined vehicles (or maybe most of that fleet) to zero-emission vehicles (I guess right now that's pedals or electricity)

Nationally, we have a formal goal of Zero Emissions by 2050.  Maybe that's realistic?  Maybe it's half realistic?  Maybe its govt bullshit? - you choose

But what interested me about it was the estimate of how much electrical energy we would need.  Best guess is "twice as much".  So that's one thing to think about it.  As a nation we could do that fairly easily if the political will & consensus was there to build more hydro and more windmills - those are a couple of big "ifs" though.

More interesting, at least IMHO, is contingency planning for events like a "dry year" (most of our generation is hydro, and if the lakes get too low . . .).  The 15% of our national generation that is non-renewable is gas/diesel/coal and they are our back-ups if the lakes are low

So along with issues around simple volume of demand; we have issues around security of supply

I'm an unashamed fan of EVs but I'm not naive or head-in-the-sand about the issues

I think we have interesting times ahead

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #205 on: May 23, 2018, 09:00:50 AM »
Interesting times and big challenges. I notice that the Australian government has ordered 20 Hyundai hydrogen fuel cell cars, for experimental purposes. There is presently only one hydrogen fuel pump in Australia so how they plan to fuel these vehicles is a mystery. I believe they have a range of around 800 km, so comparable with many gasoline vehicles. They can be refueled in about ten minutes which is bearable, plug in the fuel line, go get a coffee, pay and drive away.

I suspect that these vehicles will be very popular if people can generate hydrogen from solar and safely store it. I have reservations about home hydrogen storage in Australia due to the constant threat of bush fires. God help our firemen.

Bob

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #206 on: May 23, 2018, 09:10:54 AM »
Hey Glort, no shortage of evidence to suggest we are all being taken down a blind alley at enormous expense to consumers and industry. The problem is that half the world has signed up to carbon emissions targets that are unrealistic. I believe that as oil starts to run out and prices start to rise dramatically, other energy solutions will become economically viable and common place.

As for flying cars, heaven forbid! Most of the idiots that learned to drive on an X Box can`t manage to control a vehicle in two dimensions please don`t introduce a third.

Bob 

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #207 on: May 23, 2018, 04:12:16 PM »
Carbon taxes are/were an attempt to harness the amazing greed-power of capitalism towards generating solutions to the mess we're handing our great grand children.  Alas, legislation crafted by lawyers often creates windfalls for opportunists which don't solve anything.   

After more reading I think that the mass production of lots of modular 100MW LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium) fission reactors would buy us the 1000 years we need and let us us our stockpiles of thorium waste from rare earth mining while generating very little radioactive waste. The air cooled version would be a huge help for those regions like the SW US which are drying up.  It's about the only thing I've seen that is a proven design, that could actually provide the HUGE amount of cheap power we need to replace fossil fuels.  The data from Germany convinced me; their massive PV program didn't even offset their puny population growth; their total fossil fuel use has increased while electricity costs have doubled.

The only proven renewable (besides hydro) that is well suited to self storage of energy is the solar- molten salt system. Typically that's only storage of a day or two .  I doubt it could compete economically with a Thorium plant, but they probably would make sense for the desert SW US where air conditioning loads dominate and diminish on the rare cloudy days.

We have a fundamental problem in that our elected decision makers are mostly lawyers and don't have the technical background to make good decisions in this highly technical area. For technical decisions they are on the left hand side of the Dunning-Kruger curve; they know nearly nothing but think they do.  So they revert to decisions based on which corporations contribute the most to their campaign and what their polling experts think will get them re-elected.

Interesting times ahead; on that we can all agree.




AdeV

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #208 on: May 23, 2018, 09:02:07 PM »
Since we're talking about electric vehicles... (I assume?), I rather like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjOY4JBmy4

Hmm. I've got an old (35 years old) Ford Granada estate (station wagon, for you Yankees :D, not sure about you Aussies, erm, covered Ute maybe?) , like this, only mine is in Jewish Racing Gold:



(a note on scale: This is about half the size of an equivalent age US "full size" car  :laugh:)

I reckon I could get a stack of batteries in that, a couple of 120bhp motors would give it 75% more power than the asthmatic 2.8 litre V6 it has now (I was going to stick a 400bhp V8 in it... but actually I kind of like the retro-electric idea).
Cheers!
Ade.
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1x Lister CS Start-o-Matic (complete, runs)
0x Lister JP4 :( - Sold to go in a canal boat.

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #209 on: May 24, 2018, 01:25:10 AM »
All you need is a Chevy Volt, Glort.  That's right, the Volt.  You get the 40 mile (64 KM) 100% EV range you really need, and the unlimited petrol range after that.  Charge the battery on your home PV most of the time and use nothing but battery for 90% of your driving. Because of your great work on your bargain PV system, you'll likely be one of the few who really does save money via EV.