Fuel economy help

Just saw an article by AP. It seems that Auburn University has made a breakthrough
in fuel cell research. They now have a practical way of catalytically separating
the hydrogen from the carbon and sulphur in conventional fuels such as diesel.
When used in a vehicle equipped with a fuel cell, fuel consumption is about one-
third of what the same vehicle uses with a diesel engine. Since one of the major
problems the military faces is supplying their toys with gas in a combat area,
the military is *very* interested, and development sponsored by the military
tends to produce results somewhat more rapidly than other. For one thing, the
Army doesn't pay much attention to companies with vested interest in keeping
mileage low.

It will be interesting to see how this can be adapted to aircraft.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:
Just saw an article by AP. It seems that Auburn University has made
a breakthrough in fuel cell research. They now have a practical way
of catalytically separating the hydrogen from the carbon and sulphur
in conventional fuels such as diesel.

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM
(remove pants to reply by email)

"Dan Luke" wrote in message ...
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:
Just saw an article by AP. It seems that Auburn University has made
a breakthrough in fuel cell research. They now have a practical way
of catalytically separating the hydrogen from the carbon and sulphur
in conventional fuels such as diesel.

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?

Add some potassium nitrate and make gunpowder?

Great,

Just what we need now.

"Next on the CBS Evening News...We told you that they were unsecure, we told
you that they don't screen their passengers of baggage. Now, they even
produce their own explosives as they fly toward your home town!"


Ron Natalie wrote in message
. ..

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:
Just saw an article by AP. It seems that Auburn University has made
a breakthrough in fuel cell research. They now have a practical way
of catalytically separating the hydrogen from the carbon and sulphur
in conventional fuels such as diesel.

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?

Add some potassium nitrate and make gunpowder?

Dan Luke wrote:

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?

I wondered that myself. They said the carbon is in the form of CO2 and CO, so I
expect that that's just exhausted. Perhaps the sulphur is SO2 and also exhausted.
We can hope not, but, if so, it's no worse than what's exhausted when the fuel s
burned.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

G.R. Patterson III wrote:


Dan Luke wrote:

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?

I wondered that myself. They said the carbon is in the form of CO2 and CO, so I
expect that that's just exhausted. Perhaps the sulphur is SO2 and also exhausted.
We can hope not, but, if so, it's no worse than what's exhausted when the fuel s
burned.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

True, but at least you get the energy out of your engine when you burn the
carbon and the sulphur.

Makes one wonder what the overall efficiency is versus just burning the
diesel.

One problem with hydrogen engines no one seems to want to talk about is the
fact that hydrogen burns hot. If you get your oxygen from the atmosphere,
there is also a lot of nitrogen in there. Hot engines and nitrogen produce
oxides of nitrogen which are a major constiuent of smog.

There seems to be a big fly in the ointment for all the wonderous alternative
energy sources:

Alcohol: takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get out of burning
a gallon.

Wind: gets you sued into the ground as in Altamont Pass and most of England
for killing tweety.

Geothermal: clogs up the pipes with all the nasty crap that comes out and
takes heroic efforts to keep that junk out of the atmosphere.

Nuclear: where do I begin to enumerate the technical and social problems
with nuclear plants?

Solar: expensive and cloud cover, what cloud cover?

Where is Scotty and a batch of dilithium crystals when we really need
them?

--
Jim Pennino

Remove -spam-sux to reply.

By george, I think you've got it!!!

Another problem with the "hydrogen economy" is leakage. Since H2 is the
smallest molecule, it will always leak in significant quantities from
anything but the most expensive, most precisely engineered and manufactured
systems. H2 diffuses into the atmosphere very quickly, and is also the
lightest molecule. Too bad about the ozone layer... But hey, skin cancer is
preferable to other forms, right?

Not to mention fuel cell "stacks" are very heavy. Most of the fuel cell
stuff I see are nothing more than "stunts" to attract ignorant investors or
congressional earmarks. Fuel cells do have some wonderful applications on
the low and high ends of the spectrum, but I really don't see them as
"everyone's favorite power source". We need some major revolutions in
materials science for that to happen.

Not sure I agree about the nuclear angle. Fluidized bed reactors are really
quite efficient and not able to "Chernobyl". Nuclear power has been around
for decades, and if properly monitored by the NRC, not that bad. I grew up
next to Big Rock (since decommissioned). Now my home town has to deal with a
dirty coal-fired plant. I would have preferred the Nuke plant myself...
Waste will be a problem, but better in WIPP than in the atmosphere!



wrote in message
...
G.R. Patterson III wrote:


Dan Luke wrote:

Interesting. What happens to the leftover carbon & sulphur?

I wondered that myself. They said the carbon is in the form of CO2 and
CO, so I
expect that that's just exhausted. Perhaps the sulphur is SO2 and also
exhausted.
We can hope not, but, if so, it's no worse than what's exhausted when
the fuel s
burned.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually
said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

True, but at least you get the energy out of your engine when you burn the
carbon and the sulphur.

Makes one wonder what the overall efficiency is versus just burning the
diesel.

One problem with hydrogen engines no one seems to want to talk about is
the
fact that hydrogen burns hot. If you get your oxygen from the atmosphere,
there is also a lot of nitrogen in there. Hot engines and nitrogen produce
oxides of nitrogen which are a major constiuent of smog.

There seems to be a big fly in the ointment for all the wonderous
alternative
energy sources:

Alcohol: takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get out of burning
a gallon.

Wind: gets you sued into the ground as in Altamont Pass and most of
England
for killing tweety.

Geothermal: clogs up the pipes with all the nasty crap that comes out and
takes heroic efforts to keep that junk out of the atmosphere.

Nuclear: where do I begin to enumerate the technical and social problems
with nuclear plants?

Solar: expensive and cloud cover, what cloud cover?

Where is Scotty and a batch of dilithium crystals when we really need
them?

--
Jim Pennino

Remove -spam-sux to reply.

wrote:

Makes one wonder what the overall efficiency is versus just burning the
diesel.

If you go back and read my post, you'll see that the vehicles travel three times
as far on a tank of fuel as they do with a conventional engine. That's what "fuel
consumption is about one-third of what the same vehicle uses with a diesel engine"
means.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

wrote:

One problem with hydrogen engines no one seems to want to talk about is the
fact that hydrogen burns hot.

The hydrogen is not burned in a fuel cell.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

G.R. Patterson III wrote:


wrote:

Makes one wonder what the overall efficiency is versus just burning the
diesel.

If you go back and read my post, you'll see that the vehicles travel three times
as far on a tank of fuel as they do with a conventional engine. That's what "fuel
consumption is about one-third of what the same vehicle uses with a diesel engine"
means.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

I found the AP story and the whole thing smells of inept reporting.

From the story:

"Fuel cell technology takes a regular fuel and pulls off its hydrogen
molecules, which are stored as gas. The electrons from the hydrogen then
power a battery."

So what have they really built here, a true fuel cell that runs on diesel
or a hydrogen generator that feeds a hydrogen fuel cell? My guess is that
it is a hydrogen generator.

From the story:

"For example, the Stryker infantry transports use a hybrid engine that runs
on fuel cell power or combusted fuel."

So is this a conventional engine that runs on either diesel or hydrogen or
is it a diesel engine supplemented with an electric motor?

From the story:

"But with a fuel cell, a truck with a given amount of diesel can run three
times the usual distance,..."

This one is really hard to swallow.

To triple the efficiency, keeping engine power output equal, means the
original engine/fuel combination has to have an efficiency of less than
33%.

Conventional diesel engines are already much better then that while
fuel cell efficiencies are stuggling to get much better than 50%.

It is also hard to see how you are going to get 3 times the energy out
of a fuel when you throw away a portion of the potential energy, i.e.
the carbon.

I think the AP guy that did this report got his training at CBS news.

In an attempt to find some real facts, I found the following:

www.dtic.mil mentions an Army hybrid electric vehicle project that
"will integrate a proton exchange membrane fuel cell with a fuel reformer
that can reform JP-8 fuel...".

Unfortunately there are few details.

A search of the Auburn site has lots of stuff about fuel cells to replace
battery systems but nothing that seems to relate to the breathless AP
story.

So unless someone here has an "in" at the Anniston Army Depot or Auburn,
I guess we have to wait for a competent reporter.

--
Jim Pennino

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