On Apr 23, 2015, at 3:19 PM, Robert Bruninga via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote:
> You should also watch Toyota’s new video which says the car can run on Elon > Musk’s “bull$$it ”comments and show how they can take cow manure, and > process it to hydrogen.. all they have to do is add “steam and heat”. I made as far as when he got to the refinery and said that they collect methane and then do shit to it. Um...why not just use that methane as is? I mean, we already do -- every vehicle with a "CNG" or "LNG" sticker on it is burning methane. Anything further they do to the methane, by definition, will result in a loss of system efficiency. At some point, the hydrocarbons are going to have to get oxidized. Your best bet is to do that with the minimum amount of prior processing and in the most efficient oxidizer you can get. In this case, that would mean using the methane to power a utility-scale turbine and charging the grid and EVs with the resulting electricity. A close second would be using it for hybrid ICE / electric rail locomotives. It _might_ be the case that burning the methane in a gasoline-style vehicle engine is more efficient than the electric generation to EV route...but more likely not. What's guaranteed is that converting the methane to H2, compressing it, and using it to generate electricity in a small fuel cell to power an electric motor...is going to be horribly inefficient. For it to make sense at all, there's going to have to be something inherently superior about the fuel cell engine as opposed to a comparable four-stroke methane-powered ICE such that you'd choose the fuel cell on its merits alone...and I'm hard pressed to think of anything overwhelming. I'm sure there're niche situations where fuel cells make all kinds of sense, but that niche isn't to be found on the highways of the developed world. b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150423/6f187b5f/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
