OK, now I know why it's BMW that is going after Hydrogen powered ICE engines as the new, new solution to a carbon free transportation fleet  The engine type they are talking about is the horizontally opposed configuration, which BMW uses in its motorcycles.  I had one back in the 70s, a horizontally opposed twin, air cooled in those years, the BMW R100RT.



There is nothing special about this engine design that makes it better for hydrogen than the in-line configuration.  It's advantage in motorcycles is it has less vibration and gives you a smoother ride.  However BMW long experience playing with this engine using different size cylinders to generate power probably gave them an idea on what would work best with hydrogen as the fuel.  So they probably took some of their older engines and tested them and found a good one to use,

Far as hydrogen being a "new" fuel just discovered, that's ridiculous.  The only thing new is that as it has become cheaper to generate electricity with renewables, it's coming closer to the cost of using fossil fuels as they get more expensive.

This IS a means of powering even big rigs without carbon, as long as the juice is generated by wind/solar/hydro/nuke.  You also can rapidly refill the tanks.  So where is the problem?

It's the fact hydrogen is a gas, and to have enough of it on board your vehicle it either has to be highly compressed or in liquid form, which takes temps close to Absolute Zero.  The 2nd method is impractical for small vehicles like cars.

The 1st method is practical, but a compressed hydrogen tank in a car accident is a freaking nightmare waiting to happen.  When the valve breaks off, the tank blows out like a missile, the gas all mixes with air and POW, hollywood style explosions on the freeway.  How they figure to deal with this little safety problem I have no idea.

The other problem is the infrastructure of filling stations and big compressed hydrogen tanks at every convenience store to have a supply on hand to sell to the happy motoristas.  Then the big compressed gas supply trucks, and finally tankers with super cooled hydrogen moving around as well.  All of the have to be built.  We have LNG tanks that could be adapted, but not enough of them to handle a whole fleet of cars and trucks powered this way.  It will take a while to manufacture all that and get it in place.

Will this fit into the mix to keep the techno-futurist dream alive?  It's conceivable, but time is short I think to get it done.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/hydrogen-engine-united-states/1088/

The engine that is turning the United States upside down: it is 80 years old and runs on a fuel that we have just invented

RE

Here's today's entry for new battery tech.  Quick charge sodium.

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-sodium-battery-capable-rapid-seconds.html

Researchers develop sodium battery capable of rapid charging in just a few seconds

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 19, 2024, 02:27 PMOK, now I know why it's BMW that is going after Hydrogen powered ICE engines as the new, new solution to a carbon free transportation fleet  The engine type they are talking about is the horizontally opposed configuration, which BMW uses in its motorcycles.  I had one back in the 70s, a horizontally opposed twin, air cooled in those years, the BMW R100RT.



RE

Had mine in this decade. Loved the thing. Sold it right as Covid arrived.

Basically, this is Iron Man Tony Stark's "Repulsor Technology" that allows him to fly around in his suit and knock bad guys across the room by facing his palm toward them.  The suit carries no fuel for rocket motors or compressed gasses, it just is powered by a miniature "arc reactor" that produces gigawatts of energy, presumably electromagnetic.

This is all bad sci-fi of course,nothing remotely like it exists...UNTIL NOW!  At least according to Dr. Charles Buhler, a seasoned NASA engineer and co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies.  If it works at all, my guess is it somehow interacts with earth's magnetic field to generate propulsion.  If that is the case, it wouldn't work in interstellar or even interplanetary space, which is the primary thing such a holy grail type of propulsion system would be useful for.

Basically it's the anti-gravity force used as a contrivance in practically every sci-fi movie that has everything from small "land speeders" to massive spaceships that magically float up off the ground without using the action-reaction principle of Newton's 2nd Law.  It's right up there with Time Travel as a sci-fi staple that has zero basis in physics to justify it, yet just recently also some physicist claimed to have shown time travel to be possible also.

Desperation makes even really smart people grab hold of any glimmer they can see of hopium.  Really smart theretical physicists find their glimmers in the wildest sci fi they read as kids, and try to make it true.  So far, no.  But who kknows, maybe this time, right?

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-defies-laws-of-physics

NASA veteran's propellantless propulsion drive defies laws of physics

RE

QuoteNASA veteran's propellantless propulsion drive defies laws of physics

This is the second article in a row on 'tech' you found which does not describe the physical principles underlying what is being talked about.

A long time ago I realized everything people do involves 'burning' of something.  Modern civilization is only a hundred different ways to make fire.  Burning is energy extraction, I have a broad definition.  Changing a small about of rest energy into motion one way or another.  Harnessing the heat release from  E = MC^2.

Everything we do is uses electromagnetic energy on the atomic scale.  A thousand different ways to do it disguises that any underlying tech is always brain dead simple.  Fancy and different behavior emerges on a macro scale, but reduce whatever it is down to basics, and simple processes are revealed.  But hopium tech articles never talk about any underlying physical principles involved.  It would destroy the bullshit.

New car engines that blow away the performance of everything we have are published every few years.  But how much can you improve expanding gasses in a metal tube against a piston really?  Car engine articles always use a hat trick of some kind to get around the fact that that all you do is expand gasses in a metal tube.

The Carnot cycle describes the maximum possible performance of expanding gasses in a metal tube no matter what engine you are talking about.  Steam, Diesel, Gasoline, or Sterling engines which use expanding air.  All these engines expand gas in a metal tube against a piston resulting from something being burned.  None of these engines can do magic.  The Carnot cycle puts hard limits on  what can be done.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.  A robot can dance.  A robot can walk.  But all that happens is electric motors move things.  Electric current in magnetic fields making a force.  Ask how any robot works and 'electric current in a magnetic field creating a force' describes the basic principle.

My point is that the principles behind all modern tech are simple, not mysterious, easily understood, and there are not so many principles to understand.  Tech is related to art.  Engineers are artists who use the physical properties of the universe as their color palette.  Scientists discover the principles, and when they are not discovering they teach to others.  The discovering part of the job can turn into into mental masturbation and discovering new stuff is hard work.  Consequently teaching has to be part of the job.  Peak oil in America was in the 70's.  Peak scientific discovery of new physical principles was in the 1700's.  Teaching has to be part of the job of scientists or the process of discovering can turn into a process of useless eating.

From this to this. 

  ====>   

Both are pigments on a surface.  The sailboat is 'more' because we make it so.  But on the atomic level all we have are collections of atoms on a pallet, that are transferred to a canvas.

What is the underlying principle of repulsor tech.  What new color is on the palette?  Current through wires in a magnetic field?  Spinning wheels that go round and round? Love potion number nine?  Kinky sex with Robert Downey Jr?  What is it?  Where is the secret sauce.

Inquiring minds want to know so bad, that I think someone who would write an article without describing the underlying physics is an asshole.

Hopium must pay well.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 24, 2024, 11:26 AMWhat is the underlying principle of repulsor tech.  What new color is on the palette?  Current through wires in a magnetic field?  Spinning wheels that go round and round? Love potion number nine?  Kinky sex with Robert Downey Jr?  What is it?  Where is the secret sauce.

Inquiring minds want to know so bad, that I think someone who would write an article without describing the underlying physics is an asshole.

Hopium must pay well.

Here's your answer.

https://hackaday.com/2024/04/25/the-myth-of-propellantless-space-propulsion-refuses-to-die/

The Myth Of Propellantless Space Propulsion Refuses To Die

RE

QuoteMeanwhile True Believers flock to the 'Alt Propulsion Engineering Conference' (APEC), as no self-respecting conference or scientific paper will accept such wishful claims.

The after party could be freaky.

Looks like the competition for ICE Hydrogen as the power source savior is heating up.  This is actually the 3rd different design I have seen reported.  The article also says the engine can burn either hydrogen or gas, whichever is available.  That's a new claim.

IF enough solar/wind/hydro/geothermal/tidal/nuke power is brought online, even without full grid connection and IF all the infrastructure for clean hydrogen production, storage and distribution is built,  this would enable our current level of technological lifestyle to go on.  Hydrogen packs enough energy to run the big fast SUVs, the Jet planes and the container ships.  It can heat all the homes and use the same NG pipelines currently in existence.  About the only problem it doesn't solve is all the juice necessary for the AI and Data Centers, but if they have their own dedicated generators that run on hydrogen, it solves that problem too.

The main problems I see are with the economics, the resources to build all the infrastructure and the time available to get all this done.  The technology though is straightforward and not sci-fi hopium so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/new-massive-hydrogen-engine/1333/

This is the new massive hydrogen engine: 3-liter internal combustion engine for more than just cars

RE

Yet ANOTHER ICE design for hydrogen from AVL, an Austrian auto tech company.  Interesting how all these companies are coming forward at the same time with their designs.  Obviously, they have all been working on them for a while, one of them (I think BMW) was ready to put it into production and announced it, then everybody else comes flying out from behind the cloak & dagger world of the design boards of industrial manufacturers to capitalize on the hype and not get left behind as Venture Capitalists start sprinkling out cash for further development of their favorite model.  BMW being one of the biggest and arguably technologically the best automotive engineering companies in the world doesn't need money from venture capitalists, but I'm sure AVL could use some extra Euros to try and compete with them.

In AVLs case they're talking 400HP as opposed to around 150 HP in the last one, which puts it right up there with the Muscle Cars of the 1960s like the legendary Oldsmobile 442.



Nobody fucking needs 442 HP for a car to drive to work or go shopping or even a vacation, the only reason for this kind of power in an engine is either for a racing car or for a semi that has to pull 20 ton loads.  That is usually done with diesel engines which are big, heavy and very robust because there is a lot of strain on all the parts of the engine and they have to last about 1M miles of use to get your money's worth out of them.  Reading between the lines a bit, AVLs engine is lightweight and uses aluminum and titanium instead of steel, so how well this engine would stand up to dragging 20 tons of beer over the Rocky mountains every day from the Coors bottling plant is an open question.  The article speculates its use in motor racing, but unless there is a consumer application also, auto racing by itself doesn't justify tooling up to build these engines.

The big question therefore is the economic one, how much will one of these engines COST when mass produced for a consumer level car, presumably at a somewhat scaled down HP rating?  All of the designs sound significantly more complex than a standard ICE gas model, and even more still than a diesel which doesn't even need spark plugs.  More strokes, higher compression ratio, higher temperatures, computer control of fuel injection,  plus having to store the fuel as a compressed gas all will drive the price tag up pretty high I imagine.  If you consider how long it has taken them to bring EVs to market at a semi-affordable price, it's hard to imagine that say even BMW could have a consumer level car rolling off the production line in Stuttgart in less than a decade.  They're also not going to start building them until the green hydrogen is being produced in greater volume at a lower price, which also will take a few more years to occur.  Timing is a big issue here, as well as in which direction the development money and the engineers are directed by the money men.  So much money and time has already been spent developing EVs as the solution to the transportation problem that they're not going to abandon that idea, which means the money and brainpower wil be divided between the two methods, which while not mutually exclusive do require differentt types of infrastructure and supply chains be developed.

So, bottom line here is that although technically Hydrogen powered ICE vehicles provide a plausible solution to maintaining the transportation systems of our modern techno-civilization without carbon and in a renewable fashion, practically it doesn't seem likely to succeed.  Just have to see how it develops though.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/400-hp-hydrogen-engine-water/1118/

The latest 400 hp water engine: better than all hydrogen and the end of electricity

RE

QuoteAlthough technically Hydrogen powered ICE vehicles provide a plausible solution to maintaining the transportation systems of our modern techno-civilization without carbon and in a renewable fashion, practically it doesn't seem likely to succeed.

Just like an electric car.  Take a water car and park it on the black asphalt of an out of business mini-mall.  Draw a chalk line around it.  Park a Tesla next to it and do the same thing.  You have just drawn a circle that defines zero emissions for both cars.  Hell draw one big circle around both of them. 

Now bow to the north, south, east, and west chanting.  Carbon free cars.  Do a tap dance.  Sing a happy song.

Enjoy yourself, and be like the half million Tesla fools who think they are saving the planet.  But do not think too deeply about this.  If you do you might harsh your mellow.  Do not think that drawing circles on a sphere enclose two areas not one.  The area inside the circle is finite.  And it is carbon free.  The area outside the circle is also finite.  That area is the rest of the planet, and no more than that.  That area is not carbon free.  That area has to supply the hydrogen.

As of 2022, more than 95% of global hydrogen production is sourced from fossil gas and coal.  Considering energy losses converting fossil fuels into hydrogen, a water car may wind up being the dirtiest car of all.

Where are you going to get the hydrogen.


You might as well be walking on the sun. 

'So don't delay, act now, supplies are running out
'Allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive
'And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow
'But if the offer's shunned
'You might as well be walkin on the sun

'You might as well be driving a fossil car

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 27, 2024, 10:42 AMWhere are you going to get the hydrogen.

The idea is to source it all by hydrolyzing water utilizing electricity sourced from Wind, Hydro yadda yadda.  Of course as of right now, only about 5% of hydrogen is sourced that way, it's currently too expensive.  The projection is that as more renewables are built, the cost of this electricity will drop and the carbon free hydrogen will be competitively priced.  Given they probably can't hook up all the Solar farms to the grid, they might as well use the juice to make hydrogen.



RE

QuoteThe projection is that as more renewables are built, the cost of this electricity will drop and the carbon free hydrogen will be competitively priced.

Yes, if you build it they will come.

Only in your dreams.  You can have a whole field of dreams.  And that is all you will have.

If their were any truth to 'build it and they will come' we would have ten thousand members by now.  We do not.  In America there are many delusions to choose from.

Pick one and you will be fine.  But you have to stick to it. If you don't you might see more than you will like.

Competitively priced.  How is 'the market' going to do that in a world of diminishing resources and ever more people? 

The American system is a system where all decisions are made by piles of money.  This means nobody is in charge to set a direction.  But never mind that, I just realized a bigger flaw.

In the American system competitively priced hydrogen would have to be done efficiently, and the only way this can be done, if it can be done, is by an entity which builds billion dollar factories.  Any plant that produces 'cheap' hydrogen in America can not be a mom and pop operation, or be an operatione owned by the commons.  Hydrogen will come from a monopoly supplier, and there will be no market to make the price competitive.  We got the Musk.  We got the Bezos.  We got the Gates.  A fucking trifecta.

Who will be the hydrogen billionaire.  I can hardly wait.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 27, 2024, 11:49 AMYes, if you build it they will come.

Only in your dreams.  You can have a whole field of dreams.  And that is all you will have.  If their were any truth to 'build it and they will come' we would have ten thousand members by now.  We do not.  In America there are many delusions to choose from.

Indeed, but of the plethora of delusions out there, unlike Fusion power or 1000s of thorium salt micro nukes or drilling 5 kilometer deep wells to heat water through geothermal energy, this delusion is actually plausible.  The tech is already proven, the solar and wind farms are being built and hydrogen is portable enough and packs enough energy into tanks that will fit on cars and planes to run their engines.  It doesn't have huge environmental issues with mining or battery manufacture, and the only gas it expels after combustion is water vapor.  You can't get any cleaner.

Do I expect it to be built up to the scale necessary to replace FFs in the time left before those supplies become uneconomic to keep being extracted or we have so much climate related problems with food production that social breakdown will collapse the system first?  No, probably not.  However, unlike all the other delusions I read about every day since every scientist and engineer out there if fishing for a solution, I find this one to be the most plausible.  Plausibility doesn't make it economic though, and they have a long way to go to demonstrate that before they could even begin to try and scale it up as a civilization wide solution. #1 on that hit parade is cutting the current cost of carbon free hydrgen production about in half, then producing a prototype car that would sell at say $30K or so.  We'll see if they even get that far before SHTF Day arrives.

RE

Simon Michaux has talked about burning iron powder.

My father talked about using powdered iron to power a car fifty years ago.  He knew powdered iron has high energy potential by volume.  My father made it clear to me there is a difference between an energy source and a transport mechanism.  At least nine of ten people do not know there is a difference.  I am being kind.

Using hydrogen in airplanes is just plain nuts.  The tanks to hold the hydrogen take up most of the interior space.  Every hydrogen powered airplane would be equal to a mini nuke, and they would explode.  How are you going to get people to fly on flying bombs?  There is an advantage here regarding car accidents at intersections.  The explosion from a crash will be strong enough to clear the intersection.

If the crater is not too deep cars will be able to use the intersection right away.  They will not need police and tow trucks to clear wreckage.  The wreckage clears from the intersection immediately from the blast, and visibility is improved since everything next to the intersection is taken out as well.  Buildings people plants dogs, everything.  But the explosion is clean.  No toxic residue except from what gets destroyed.   I have to admit hydrogen has potential positive benefits.

But regardless of positive benefits, hydrogen is only a transport mechanism.  Hydrogen is not a source of energy.  You can't mine hydrogen.  If you could mine hydrogen it would be a source of energy.  One way or another all hydrogen must be produced, and that always takes more energy than you get from using the hydrogen.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 27, 2024, 12:49 PMBut regardless of positive benefits, hydrogen is only a transport mechanism.  Hydrogen is not a source of energy.  You can't mine hydrogen.  If you could mine hydrogen it would be a source of energy.  One way or another all hydrogen must be produced, and that always takes more energy than you get from using the hydrogen.

Iron powder is also just a transport mechanism.  You can't mine it, it's not found in ore in reduced form. It's already been oxidized.  You have to put energy in by smelting the iron to get it as an element, then gring it to a powder.  When you oxidize the powder, you get the energy back from the smelting process.  There is some loss of course.

The oxidized form Hydrogen is found in nature is Water, the chemical name for it is Hydrogen Hydroxide.  When you reduce it, yu get Hydrogen and Oxygen in their elemental form.  Burn the hydrogen in the presence of oxygen, you get the energy back you put in to reduce it, just like with using iron.

Fossil Fuels are also a transport mechanism, using Carbon as the element that goes through the oxidation-reduction process.  The difference is with FFs the reduction was done over millions of years under high pressure and heat underground after the life process which left it in a partially reduced state.  You oxidize it when you burn it to get CO².  It's not a source of energy either, that came from the Sun and the geological processes.

Iron isn't good as a transport fuel because both as an element and combined with oxygen it's a solid.  You need your fuel to be a gas after the combustion in order to do work in a combustion engine.  The gas expands and pushes he pistons.  Or in the case of a Jet engine, the expanding gas directly powers the vehicle.

All planes are flying bombs, jet fuel is highly volatile and if a fuel line ruptures it goes BOOM.  If hydrogen escapes its pressurized containment system, it goes boom also.  Same with natural gas.  Cars run on NG or H that get in accidents will probably go boom too.  Clearly the engineers building these devices believe they can make them safe and reliable enough not to go boom too often.  On a society level, we're willing to accept a certain percentage of death from high speed travel, car accidents kill more people every year than heart disease or cancer.  Air travel is pretty safe overall by comparison.

According to the articles I have read thus far, they seem to suggest enough hydrogen fuel can be carried aboard a plane to fly it the necessary distances.  Running a prop engine plane they definitely could.  Range might not be quite as much as FFs, but I think the NY-London route would be feasible.  Non-stop NY-Beijing or London-Sydney is probably out.

Anyhow, it's way cleaner overall than batteries and electricity, and for propulsion works better too.  So I still consider it plausible.

RE