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The Promise of Hydrogen
With the world’s fossil fuel reserves running low, it’s becoming painfully clear to many that our reliance on age old fuel source is going to have to change. There have been many alternatives suggested, but none seem to rival the ease and convenience that burning fossil fuel provides, minus the polluting by products. It’s not a matter of changing used auto parts with new ones as the problem stems from the fact that the internal combustion engine is not perfect. In the process of burning the gasoline, it also produces, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburned hydrocarbons: all of which contribute to global warming whose effects we’re feeling in the recent aberrant weather changes. Indeed the internal combustion engine has undergone a lot of changes since its inception, but many of these improvements only ease the emissions, not eliminating them altogether. With the sheer volume of cars around the world, these emission reduction devices do little to curb the release of toxic gases into our atmosphere. One of the most promising proposals is that of hydrogen power. While hydrogen is hard to attain in its natural form, the power this gas can generate is tremendous. One of its suggested applications is in a fuel cell vehicle. In such a vehicle, hydrogen and oxygen are fused through a membrane to create water. This fusion generates energy which is used to power the car. While fuel-cell vehicles may hold long-term promise, the reality is that they are years away from mass production. Critics cite the high cost of fuel-cell stacks, hydrogen fuel mass-production issues, and general fueling problems as key stumbling blocks. For one, hydrogen is a bulky gas. It is volatile and is not nearly as easy to work with as gasoline. Compressing the gas requires energy, and compressed hydrogen contains far less energy than the same volume of gasoline. Second is the widespread distribution of hydrogen. It has to be readily available, much like gasoline is in stations, for consumers to adopt hydrogen vehicles. Fortunately, there’s one development that could bridge the gap between internal combustion vehicles and pure hydrogen vehicles. That is one with a hydrogen-boosted gasoline engine. In this car, a small amount of hydrogen made on-board by the reformer (a device that extracts hydrogen from gasoline) is added to the normal intake air and gasoline mixture. They’re a rich source of hydrogen because oil and natural gas contain hydrocarbons -- molecules consisting of hydrogen and carbon. With a fuel processor or reformer, you can split the hydrogen off the carbon in a hydrocarbon relatively easily and then use the hydrogen. You discard the leftover carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This greatly improves overall combustion quality by allowing nearly twice as much air for a given amount of fuel introduced into the combustion chamber. This is more energy efficient because it saves energy by reducing the amount of engine pumping needed. Fuel efficiency is also gained through the use of higher engine compression ratios made possible by the hydrogen-rich charge characteristics. Finally, hydrogen-boosted gasoline engines require neither NOx or particulate control filters and require only a low cost oxidation catalyst to control small amounts of exhaust (unburned hydrocarbons) formed mostly during engine start-up and early warm up. Best of all, the hydrogen-boost system is effectively a bolt-on technology that can be added to an existing vehicle's engine compartment. In the future, you can purchase this just like you would normal auto parts and bolt them onto your current gasoline dependent vehicle. Currently, this system is still under the testing and development phase, but it won’t be long before it will be readily available in the market. Cars like the BMW Hydrogen 7 series and the Honda Hydrogen Accord are already being tested on public roads. The hydrogen future is closer than you think. Perhaps your next vehicle purchase might even be a hydrogen car.
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Contributor's Note
This article is an original article from Auto Parts Place. For more interesting articles please visit our blog.
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Hydrogel Fuel Research
| Hydrogen Basics
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Boy, I can't wait to see the BMW Hydrogen 7 series and the Honda Hydrogen Accord in action.
very nice article!
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February, 2012
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