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Post by bancroft on Jul 5, 2023 19:15:36 GMT
JCB now fine tuning the hydrogen combustion engines they using, same size as diesel engines and performance very close yet quieter. I post it here as we do not really have a science thread unless I have missed it. Some fine tuning to be done before commercial roll-out and regulatory too, yet a game changer beckons. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_qAta3Gk8 |
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Post by jonksy on Jul 5, 2023 19:32:55 GMT
JCB now fine tuning the hydrogen combustion engines they using, same size as diesel engines and performance very close yet quieter. I post it here as we do not really have a science thread unless I have missed it. Some fine tuning to be done before commercial roll-out and regulatory too, yet a game changer beckons. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_qAta3Gk8
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Post by Vinny on Jul 5, 2023 19:49:20 GMT
Far better aren't they?
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Post by bancroft on Jul 5, 2023 20:53:08 GMT
Lets hope established industries do not try and stop this, Vinny was it you that posted something similar some time ago about Toyota doing something similar?
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Post by Vinny on Jul 5, 2023 21:06:44 GMT
I did, and I absolutely think hydrogen is the way to go.
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Post by steppenwolf on Jul 6, 2023 7:02:15 GMT
If they really have solved the NOx problems that plague hydrogen combustion (because of the very high temperatures of combustion) then that's a bit of a breakthrough. I'll believe that when they demonstrate that the production engines produce no NOx.
The other problem is that hydrogen is expensive to produce - either green or blue - and demands a lot of energy. And you only get a fraction of that energy back when you burn it. Most is lost in heat. The real beauty of oil is that little energy is required to produce petrol. All the potential energy in the oil was put there by the Sun thousands of years ago and that's free, clean energy.
The only "problem" with fossil fuels is that they release CO2 when burned. But CO2 is a natural consistent of air and is vital for plant growth. And there's no proof that CO2 causes warming in the Earth's system. It all seems a lot of trouble to go to try to bring about very small reductions in CO2 which will almost certainly make no difference whatsoever.
Of course hydrogen does have the advantage that it provides a very cheap way of storing electricity - far cheaper than batteries - which may well be a game changer.
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Post by johnofgwent on Jul 6, 2023 9:50:16 GMT
The last post beat me to saying it
As i have pointed out, i was working in the field of mechanical engineering and energy studies, getting paid to research hiw to use solar power, forty five years ago
The problem with hydrogen as a fuel in a combustion engine is the noxious by products of the high temperature combustion. It is NOT as James wossisname from Tomorrow’s world pretended all those years ago, the case that all you get is water.
Hence the interest in hydrogen fuel cells as a means to power EVs
Personally, i’m a great believer in the way forward NOT being huge batteries and thousands of child slave labour miners mining the rare earths to carry huge weights around but a fuel cell with a fraction of the volume of catalytic metals to catalyse hydrogen.
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Post by Vinny on Jul 6, 2023 11:52:39 GMT
You can make methanol with hydrogen CO2 and water. From there it's not difficult to make petrol. But that's a closed cycle and doesn't add to net CO2.
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Post by bancroft on Jul 6, 2023 12:15:04 GMT
Looking around US regulators have previously stopped this on the NOx issue, can't tell from JCB if they have overcome yet did not hear them talk to it. Here is a link to the Royal Society of Chemistry paper on this issue pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ea/d1ea00037c |
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Post by steppenwolf on Jul 6, 2023 12:54:46 GMT
Looking around US regulators have previously stopped this on the NOx issue, can't tell from JCB if they have overcome yet did not hear them talk to it. It's actually on the video you linked. JCB said that they'd solved the NOx issue by running the engines very lean to lower the temperature of combustion. That's plainly what needs to be done (lowering the temperature of combustion anyway) but in my experience running engines leaner makes engines run much hotter. It saves fuel but.... However whether JCB really HAVE solved the issue is open to doubt. Remember that VW claimed to have solved the NOx issue in their diesel engines until their cars were independently tested. In fact the cost of litigation for this has cost about 30 billion euros. This is the kind of money that even governments have trouble with. Yet VW-Audi are still trading. But it's almost certainly with help from the German government - that the EU are turning a blind eye to. |
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Post by steppenwolf on Jul 6, 2023 13:21:50 GMT
You can make methanol with hydrogen CO2 and water. From there it's not difficult to make petrol. But that's a closed cycle and doesn't add to net CO2. Oh dear. You have some very fundamental misunderstandings about what this is all about. I'll try to explain the basics. You can now make almost any chemical you want from its individual components but it may take a lot of energy. So you can make petrol as you say but it will take energy to do it because of the potential energy of the molecule that you are creating - and petrol has a very high energy density so it costs a lot of energy to make it. The beauty of fossil fuels is that all the energy was provided by the Sun and plants. So you can make petrol but you will get back about 30% of the energy you use in making it when you burn it. Which isn't sensible. Whether it "adds to net CO2" depends on how you generate the energy to make it. But it will still not make sense in the current environment even if you use all "renewables". As I said it makes little sense to pay the costs of generating hydrogen and then putting it through a combustion engine - and getting 30% of the energy back. It's far more sensible to put it through a hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) and get over 50% of the energy back. And an HFC generator REALLY does only emit water. What's more it actually cleans the air as it runs. Basically hydrogen combustion is just another niche market - like BEVs. |
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