Switching to hydrogen....

[Kohburn]

i preffer the electric car with a backup "range extender" gas powered generator.

like the chevy volt

http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-reasons-f ... operation/

[The Dark Side of Will]

The Volt is a series hybrid, right? The engine just charges the battery?

Suck for efficiency.

[lucky]

You'll never make enough H2/O2 to fuel even the smallest engine. Plus where's the energy coming from? Electrolysis sucks for efficiency. It also sucks to make work correctly due to nasty issues with electrode corrosion. I once made enough hydrogen/oxygen mix to fuel a tiny torch for a 10 or 15 seconds - after 15 minutes of pumping 12V though several square feet of electrode area, separated by a couple thicknesses of paper towel (they were oxidized to uselessness afterwards)...Try hooking your car battery charger to two electrodes of reasonable size, and dropping them into water. If you're really impatient, add something to increase the conductivity of the water. You'll probably give up on the idea. With tap water, you need massive amounts of electrode surface area.

With noble metal plated electrodes, you could possibly sandwitch a porous material and the two electrodes, and roll it up to make a reasonably sized cell, and feed it water with like, sodium hydroxide or something to bring the conductivity waaaay up so you can flow enough current to make a decent amount of output. It'll output mixed O2/H2 gas at a stoich mix.

Well for starters I never said RUN an engine off of it. I said use less gas. Second, it's been ten years since I took Chemlab 101, but adding something to the water is not only for impatience, it's for chemical efficiency. Tap water is not even a question due to all the imperfections in it (heavy metals in the water make your electrodes corrode faster). I'd say distilled water with Sulfuric Acid would be the way to go.
I'm talking about doing it smartly, but cheaply.
Basic rundown of what I'm thinking...
Start with a plastic tank (fuel cell or the like) add a divider inside to cut the tank in half, but stop about an inch from the bottom of the tank. Now coat the inside with pourable ceramic gas tank coating (for strength, acid resistance, and insulation). I'm thinking a grid of thin plates for the cathode and just a bar for the anode. Wikipedia suggests stainless or platinum for electrode life, but IIRC Zinc for the cathode and Copper for the anode is more efficient chemically than stainless and much cheaper than platinum (even if they need to be replaced periodically). Creating an airtight seal around the lid of the tank, while still being able to remove it for electrode maintenance is critical. Separating the electrodes with the divider eliminates the need to separate the H2 and O2. The hydrogen will collect at the anode, so just a hose barb over that side of the tank will be sufficient for collection purposes. Another barb over the cathode for venting O2 to the exterior of the vehicle will be sufficient to prevent pressure build up (or also vacuum it to the intake for increased efficiency).
Now as far as electrical input.... a high output junkyard alternator added to your engine for the sole purpose of feeding the reaction should be sufficient. Yes you'll lose a couple HP due to parasitic drain, but theoretically what could the gains be (either power or fuel efficiency)?

[The Dark Side of Will]

Gains will be negative. The total system efficiency is less than 1.

Water is a very stable molecule. You have to put a lot of energy into it in order to break it apart. Where does that energy come from? Your engine.

So you're taking output from your engine through an alternator with an efficiency less than one to an electrolysis cell with an efficiency less than one and piping the output of that back to an engine with an efficiency less than one. What you're talking about is just a big stacking of inefficiencies. It will waste power.

[lucky]

I don't understand half the stuff you post in Tech, Will, so I'll take your word for it. I'm just thinking out loud anyway, if you noticed I was the first one who said it probably wouldn't work.

[Nashco]

The Volt is a series hybrid, right? The engine just charges the battery?

Suck for efficiency.

Yes, suck for efficiency if you're running the gas engine constantly. However, if you're using it as a daily driver, the idea is that the gas engine is basically a backup (range extender) for the batteries. For your commute to work and back you'll be running primarily on batteries, since it's a plug in hybrid, and in theory you could drive for weeks without the gas engine starting up. In that sense, it's very efficient, as the power plantbattery:motor:wheels efficiency is much greater than the oil well:gas pump:gas tank:engine:wheels efficiency. For many people, it will be significantly more efficient...my commute to work is 6 miles round trip, add a trip to the grocery store, movie store, soccer game, etc. and I would still not have the engine ever start up. Plug in at night and avoid having to run the engine at all.

The engine is put in place purely to offer the flexibility of a gas engine to consumers who demand it (aka most Americans). Very few people are willing to deal with waiting for a recharge in order to continue moving, so even if the car has a 300 mile range people will still gripe if it takes 2 hours to recharge instead of 15 minutes to refuel, understandably. The series hybrid enables the consumer to have the optimal balance of comprises for something like the Volt, IMO. While parallel could be an option that would improve efficiency slightly, it has a whole bunch of added complexities like more hardware, less flexible packaging, less flexible engine, etc. that would increase design time and cost while reducing the ability to transfer the powertrain to multiple chassis. IMO, GM is going down the right path in order to get a new product (new, as in, nobody has done it yet as well as new to them) to market in a crazy-short time period (2010 release).

As a gearhead, I also like the series setup because it'll be easier to modify. You can do fun things like pull the engine and add a whole bunch more lithium batteries for a long range EV, or swap the gas burning generator out for whatever suits your fancy like a diesel, fuel cell, turbine, etc. If it were parallel, that kind of fiddling would be far more challenging. Being able to pull the gas engine and still have a powerful motor is something you can't do with the current hybrids on the market (Toyota, Honda, etc.), so even when they add bigger battery packs for plug-ins, they still can't just utilize the electric motor for higher speed stuff, they are stuck with the engine unless they completely start from scratch on the powertrain design. With the Volt, pull the XXX hp gas engine and you still have the same performance potential, you just shed a few hundred pounds of engine weight and make room for something new. :thumbleft:

Bryce

[The Dark Side of Will]

I don't understand half the stuff you post in Tech, Will, so I'll take your word for it.

You know that's as good as asking for an excruciatingly detailed explanation, right?

[The Dark Side of Will]

The Volt is a series hybrid, right? The engine just charges the battery?

Suck for efficiency.

Yes, suck for efficiency ...
Bryce

I understand the concept, but I don't think that a parallel hybrid would be much more difficult to execute and not have any of the characteristics you mention, as long as it was imagined correctly to begin with.

After all, there's nothing preventing a parallel hybrid from running a big motor to accelerate the car and get it up hills, along with a tiny engine to push it down the highway straight and level.

[lucky]

I don't understand half the stuff you post in Tech, Will, so I'll take your word for it.

You know that's as good as asking for an excruciatingly detailed explanation, right?

I understand what you said in this post. Thank you though.

[Kohburn]

The Volt is a series hybrid, right? The engine just charges the battery?

Suck for efficiency.

Yes, suck for efficiency ...
Bryce

I understand the concept, but I don't think that a parallel hybrid would be much more difficult to execute and not have any of the characteristics you mention, as long as it was imagined correctly to begin with.

After all, there's nothing preventing a parallel hybrid from running a big motor to accelerate the car and get it up hills, along with a tiny engine to push it down the highway straight and level.

it is - the cost to convert a prius so it can be plugged in is 8000$ according to my friend who has one and has looked into it.

for tha majority of people who commute to work a series setup is ideal as the only time they will use the gas engine is on a longer trip, maybe 5% of the time they spend driving.

on the volt it turns onthe engine when the battery life reaches 30% - so the plug in charge of 70% battery life gets 40 miles range without the engine ever using a sip of gas. the cost to recharge is 0.60 to 1.40 depending on your area and power cost. my daily round drip is about 28 miles. so driving one of these systems would cost me less than 1/3 what it costs me to ride my motorcycle every day.

[The Dark Side of Will]

But a *well designed* parallel hybrid would accomplish the same thing, but make better use of fuel when the engine is running.

[Kohburn]

well i guess you are just going to have to top gm and toyota

series setup also allows the engine to run at the rpm of peak efficiency. unlike when it is being used for direct power (since nobody seems to want to use a CVT the right way) heck they could use a micro turbine to power the generator.

the real answer would be to get tony stark to give us some glowing ring things to power the cars.

[Series8217]

the real answer would be to get tony stark to give us some glowing ring things to power the cars.

:notworthy:
1.5 gigajoules/sec, was it?

[The Dark Side of Will]

IE, greater than 1.21 Gigawatts.

[Starlite528]

IE, greater than 1.21 Gigawatts.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bnqtXOi1iaY

[lucky]

back on topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N675mHss_uQ

[p8ntman442]

Why dont we just start working more from home and using Nuclear energy.

[Kohburn]

Why dont we just start working more from home and using Nuclear energy.

because that would make sense

[The Dark Side of Will]

If we break ground on 1600 nuclear power plants tomorrow, we can have them online next week and the problem will be halfway solved...

[Kohburn]

we could also mandate that any "new" construction had to include the addition of solar power sources to the roof.

it would prevent new construction from adding to the load and possibly start reducing the load on existing power plants.