[constant thinker]

Does anyone know of any groups investigating the potential of a hydrogen combustion engine? Or even any news or articles on them.

I think they are a good idea. With a little modification of gasoline internal combustion engines I think internal H₂ combustion engines could work.

[enahs]

There might be a few.

Two problems.
It currently requires more energy to produce the Hydrogen then you get out of it from combustion.

The other thing, and why I am against hydrogen based cars. Is it is really dangerous. People do not do proper maintenance on there cars, it is a fact of life. That is highly dangerous with hydrogen.

Another thing that people do not realize is that, not all gases cool with expansion; Hydrogen being one of them. Given the proper conditions, even if there is no spark or ignition source, a leak in a compressed tank of hydrogen can produce considerable heat and can (and has many times) lead to explosions.
For more information on this, look up in a book or the internet about the Joule-Thompson Experiment as a good starting point.

In short, due to the science and nature of hydrogen and the improper regular maintenance, using hydrogen on a large scale for cars = crazy dangerous traveling explosives!

Pretty please no hydrogen cars for the masses!

[BlueTheCow]

Hindenburg, anyone?

It might be worth looking into hydrogen combustion engines for government vehicles and/or public transportation, but I'd say the general populace is about as ready for hydrogen cars as they are for flying cars.

Just today as I was driving a few miles to Taco Bell to get a bite to eat, I passed a 4-car accident on a 40mph speed limit semi-suburban street. The cars were all smashed up. As I was driving back from Taco Bell, I saw a person on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance, presumably someone who was in one of the smashed up cars. I don't know why/how it happened, but in my experience, car accidents are usually caused by human error (rather, human stupidity).

Some fool decides to go a lil faster than the speed limit, and then a lil faster, and then a lil faster, until he is 20mph above the speed limit, realizes this, and thinks it's not TOO fast. Just a lil fast. Then crash. Turns out, he was going a bit too fast for himself and the people around him; neither he, nor the people around him were able to react quick enough to avoid collision.
Another fool drives the same car for a long time. Two years gone. Not too long. The tires look a bit bald. He'll change em when he gets a chance. The economy is a bit in the crapper, maybe he'll procrastinate until things get better. Should be fine until then.
Pop! Off goes one of the tires. The wheel clunks down and scrapes the road. He loses control of the vehicle. Kapoosh. Into oncoming 50mph traffic. 100mph collision. Ouch.
Another fool drives a big SUV. She's in a bit of a hurry. Gotta get to the nail salon, or she'll miss her appointment. Driving 55mph on the interstate feeder (the little road outside of the freeway that has entrances to the freeway, and has intersection stoplights, etc.), she sees the light turning yellow. Speeds up. The light turns red. She speeds up more. She'll make it. There's no one in the intersection. She can quickly go through. Besides, it would make lots of screeching noises and make a scene if she stopped now. Shvoosh. Through the intersection. Not all the way through. She squishes a lil car driving perpendicularly to her through the intersection, makes it spin all around (totals it). Oops, guess she didn't see that lil car soon enough.

Those are just hypothetical situations (except one, guess which). And, luckily, I think the accident I saw today was minor; the person on the stretcher didn't appear to be fatally injured (at least from my glance).

Frankly, people are stupid. People are emotional. People are dangerously optimistic. People are badly trained.

Giving them more dangerous tools and then telling them to be careful because they are more dangerous... it doesn't quite work too well. Personally, I think a lot of people who drive in my city shouldn't be allowed to. With more dangerous tools, the number of people who should be allowed to use them goes down. Unfortunately, the number of people who do use them remains the same. Most people are not qualified to maintain and operate a flying car. Similarly, I don't think most people would be qualified to operate and maintain a hydrogen car, within a few years of technological advance (eventually of course it could theoretically become more regulated and structured and the dangers could be brought down by the simple creation of better operational and maintenance systems; that of course, may or may not happen at all). As for training them to be qualified, many are not qualified to become qualified. Out of the ones that are, many will not be trained properly or will not receive training at all. (In the car accident situation above, the one that I said actually happened, the liable person didn't have a license to operate a motor vehicle at all; any training received by that person was unprofessional at best, inexistent at worst.)

In any case, my country is a capitalist one. My country is the United States of America. My country is stupid, greedy, and often acts without emotion. If it comes to it, a cost-benefit-risk analysis (or something like that) will be made; the value of the lives that will be inevitably terminated by such machines (and also the medical costs for those that survive) will be weighed against the value of the usage of the machines. If the value of the usage of such machines is greater... the machines will be used.

Granted of course, the value of an organism can be varied even when examining an individual; it can be increased, for example, simply by valuing it more. That is, part of the value of an organism is subjective, emotional. The value of an organism to the weighing party can be changed, thus changing the balance. In this way, we use emotions to tip the scales in favor of the organisms' continued existence. I find that images help with this.
Hindenburg, anyone?


[Note, the attributes with which I describe my country are just a few of the attributes; it is not all bad, but these are just the vices relevant to the thread.]

[Also, I was originally only going to do a two word post, the link to the wiki on hinden... but somewhere along the line I got carried away. Sorry about that; personally, I'd like to see the use of all sorts of power storage being used, and the most efficient ones to become dominant; unfortunately, I fear for the victims of such socio-technological progression. Many of them will be innocent enough to not deserve such punishment.
Then again, as from an analytical/calculating (emotionless) point of view, the sacrifice would probably be worth it.]

[Yggdrasil]

Would storage of hydrogen in the solid state (i.e. as metal hydrides or complexed with some nanomaterial) be safer than carrying around a pressurized tank of hydrogen?  Although its not clear whether this technology will be feasible yet, it solves some of the major problems of hydrogen storage, including allowing cars to store enough hydrogen to drive similar distances between fill ups as gasoline engines.

Also, on the subject of hydrogen internal combustion engines, I believe some car manufacturers have already created some working prototypes (http://www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov/vehicles/ice.htm).  However, I agree with Enahs that hydrogen ICE is not a good idea they are less efficient than hydrogen fuel cell cars and this decreased efficiency likely is not enough to offset the environmental and economic costs of producing hydrogen.

[constant thinker]

It currently requires more energy to produce the Hydrogen then you get out of it from combustion.

That part I know, but who knows with future technology.

Ok, I concede. You're right about the driving bomb too, mainly from the point of maintenance. America isn't really ready for hydrogen, but it needs something

I just actually want a hydrogen burning engine for myself, just for shits and giggles basically. Play around with it see what kind of performance you get from a hydrogen burning engine. I figure you can probably cram a lot of hydrogen into a combustion chamber since I'm fairly sure it acts like most substances and condenses as it cools. Plus you could run the cold fuel through the intake manifold and/or tubes to cool incoming air. Most of this is just from a hypothetical/for fun point of view.

Thanks for responding though, and thanks for the link Yggdrasil, I'll check it out.

[enahs]

I just actually want a hydrogen burning engine for myself, just for shits and giggles basically.

If you have an old car running off of a carburetor you can pretty much just hook a tank of hydrogen directly into the fuel input line. I and some friends have actually done that before. You just have to tweak the fuel-air ratio.

The group I did it with, one was a certified mechanic, one has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Even with a bunch of safety precautions, we still produced a mini explosion under the hood.
It is dangerous stuff.


But it was fun, and really easy actually.

[BlueTheCow]

Ok, I concede. You're right about the driving bomb too, mainly from the point of maintenance. America isn't really ready for hydrogen, but it needs something

I just actually want a hydrogen burning engine for myself, just for shits and giggles basically. Play around with it see what kind of performance you get from a hydrogen burning engine. I figure you can probably cram a lot of hydrogen into a combustion chamber since I'm fairly sure it acts like most substances and condenses as it cools. Plus you could run the cold fuel through the intake manifold and/or tubes to cool incoming air. Most of this is just from a hypothetical/for fun point of view.

Hm. I'm sorry about my post. I didn't mean to flame/etc. Sometimes I get carried away when I'm writing and some of my posts tend to end up being more extremist than I actually am. The main thing I was trying to say was that this probably isn't the best solution to the fossil fuel problem, and I wanted to discourage trying to get the general populace to use these as I do believe it would be putting the people at unnecessary risk (not that I'm delusional enough to think that some guy posting on a forum is going to kill a bunch of people; the point is to voice our thoughts, even if they aren't heard all that loudly).

However, I do really encourage this kind of activity for "shits and giggles". The knowledge and experience you gain (not to mention the fun/joy you'll have coming up with ways to implement such ideas) will inevitably lead to a better individual (that means, it'll make you a better person, believe it or not ), and, more importantly, when individuals better themselves in this way, it leads to a more productive and enlightened society.

So, don't be discouraged by silly people like me! Take heart! Throw together a hydrogen engine, slap it in a cheap body, and revel in the technological power as you roll down your driveway! Just make sure you post pictures ( ) and as always, exercise due caution (you can recreate the engine; you can't recreate your *insert important body part here [brain, manlihood, eyes, etc]* yet).

It might actually be worth looking into doing this with a motorcycle. Would probably cost less (if you get a small 2k-10k USD one), you'd get better efficiency (distance/fuel used), and personally I think it would be pretty badass to have a hydrogen powered motorcycle rollin down a busy street. Paint it black, put on a cape, and cackle at all the 20th century fools in their hydrocarbon motor transports! Science rolls in style. (Maybe no cape; it might choke you if it snags your neck.)
[Edit: Now that I think about it, the motorcycle thing is probably a bad idea; if there's an explosion, it's between your legs...]

Good luck matey. I support you. And really, please do post about your project if you decide to do some really cool stuff yourself. That's what this forum is for, isn't it? No? Oh well. Post anyway.


[Whoops... yet another unnecessarily large post... sorry guys.
Oh, and in my defense, I'm not so self-important as this post makes me seem... it's like I said: I get carried away.]

[tasmodevil44]

You get far less energy and power out of a hydrogen combustion engine than the electrical power that went into electrolysis of water to make it.This is an incredible waste of hydrogen.But if they could perfect an engineless,transmissionless fuel cell(that's not too big and bulky like fuel cells are now)car that delivers electric power directly to something like a small but powerful,lightweght,neodymium magnet motor...that would probably be a better way to go.Or the new gallium/aluminum fuel producing hydrigen on demand upon contact with water.