Think about it... (archive)

The energy required to break the hydrogen-oxygen bond (water as fuel) is currently more than would be obtained from the 'combustion' of the hydrogen. So there would be hydrogen 'gas stations'? The infrastructure would be interesting as gasoline only needs a container to hold it, but I challenge you to find any container to hold hydrogen for any long period of time (hint: whip out your periodic table and tell me what is smaller than hydrogen - besides helium). I would suspect a magnetic field would contain the hydrogen just fine but that would take - surprise - ENERGY. Otherwise that hydrogen would pour through any 'solid' container like a sieve.

Then again, I'm probably making all this stuff up. I'm sure if you look hard, Chad, you will find lots of hydrogen tanks at your local Shell station...Sheesh!

Dave

This may be old news, but I was watching Speedvision this eveneing and they had a feature on Hydrogen-powered cars. They said BMW was the only car manufacturer currently ready to produce such cars, and within 5 years the gas stations would be equiped to service them. BMW seemed to be launching a Europe-wide marketing initiative with 7 Series cars acting as billboards.

Are any of you engineer types familiar with this technology? I'm mostly curious as to what this means for motorsports and enthusiasts like us in terms of performance. Could hydrogen cars produce the power that petrol cars do?

Follow Ups:

I've thought about it... Lobo 08:19 2/20/2001 (0)

[ Follow Ups ] [ Z3 Message Board ] [ Msg. Board FAQ ]

Questions, comments, or problems, please visit the Roadfly help desk.