just thinking of the future of rotaries and all... with the hydrogen rx8 being used in europe now ( i believe) , and if fossil fuels no longer get used...could you see it happening? hydrogen powerd FD's?

 

prob, if they stop making gas, and go with that, they will have to have something to convert all cars, and thanks to the japanese testing it on an 8, the 7 shouldnt be to much different

 

My specialist told me that according to an article he read, rotaries are much more predisposed for hydrogen than a normal piston engine.

Hope this is so.

 

I don't know if it could be run turbocharged, but in theory using hydrogen is possible.

Will you ever see a kit to run an FD with hydrogen?: NO.

Dave

 

sure you could. anyone with enough money can make anything happen. the major thing is getting hydrogen fuel fill stations out. and in california mr. arnold already has that in the works

 

I gave some parts to a student at MTSU who said he was building a 13 b to run on hydrogen , second gen I think . Never to hear from him again .

 

IIRC, Mazda already has a prototype rotary/hydrogen car built. And yes rotaries are more predisposed to running on hydrogen. But, this world is a long way off from adopting that technology.

 

I have a major problem with the whole hydrogen thing...not because it's not a good fuel, but because it's marketed to people as being "green" and people are tricked into thinking that it doesn't pollute and is completely safe to the environment. Completely not true...all it does is takes the pollution and puts it out of sight of the consumer so they can feel better about themselves. Hydrogen is made by splitting up water molecules...and guess what? It takes energy to do that...so the same amount of fuel is used and the same amount (if not more) pollution is made in the production of hydrogen as is produced with all of the gas powered cars running around. It's just a feel-good tree-hugger thing, and people are falling for it

 

Just like Ethanol.
It takes 1.1 gallon of gas to make 1 gallon of ethanol.
All it has done is made the farmer's rich and driven up the cost of food like crazy.
What a deal!

 

Plus at temps in the mid to high 90's it produces toxic fumes, far worse than gasoline.

 

exactly! what a crock!

 

are we talking hydrogen combustion modification or fuel cells? because if it is fuel cells, splitting of h2o occurs within the vehicle and is VERY GREEN. the only thing that comes out of your tail pipe is WATER

 

Don't you mean that the H2 and O2 are COMBINED in the car?

you're severly misinformed if you think that H20 is split in the car. Splitting H20 does NOT happen in the car. Right now, as it was stated above, getting Hydrogen for use in vehicles is VERY energy intensive. Proposals that companies have made for how to get Hydrogen vary from using a mixture of water, a catalyst, and what amounts to a household abrasive cleaner (sodium borohydride), and you can get hydrogen out of that (link below)

http://www.h2fc.com/industry/infra/storage.shtml

Look under "chemical hydrides" at Powerball.

Another way to get hydrogen is to extract it from gasoline/LP/CNG. While these are less expensive to do than electrolysis, you do still get some Carbon in the fuel.


As for the above statements that Rotaries have a predisposition to running Hydrogen, there is some basis to this arguement. Hydrogen burns at very, very high temperatures, much higher than either a gasoline powered Piston or Rotary engine. Piston engines must use very very expensive materials in the valves to combat burning/melting/warping them. This is one of the main reasons why a Hydrogen burning Rotary is likely to come out before a Hydrogen burning Piston engine. There is very little that you have to do to a Rotary to have it ready to burn Hydrogen. You need to seal the path between the Hydrogen tank and the combustion chamber (because of the fact that Hydrogen is lighter than air) and give the Hydrogen a source of Oxygen, add spark, and voila, you have the potential to have a running engine.

The main problem with running a ICE on Hydrogen and Oxygen alone is the energy density of Hydrogen is EXTREMELY low. If you think E85 has a low energy density, you havn't ever looked at Hydrogen. The "prototype" H-RX-8 had something like 45hp running on Hydrogen. This right here is the biggest drawback of running pure Hydrogen in any ICE, the complete lack of power. Probably the (IMHO) best solution for it currently was proposed at a competetion that I did my four years in High School, which was sponsered by Daimler Chrysler. One of the teams in our region realized this very problem and their solution was to run a 1.3L Rotary on Hydrogen and have it driving a generator, which in turn ran hub-mounted electric motors. This, combined with some Lithium Polymer batteries or some high capacity carbon capacitors, would give great performance, rediculous fuel economy, and almost zero emissions.

 

Hydrogen is green if the electricity is produced from non carbon fuel sources such as;
-hydro electric
-solar
-wind
-tidal

Hydrogen storage and distribution are problematic.

Some technology used with Natural gas has potential for Hydrogen. There are home systems that take houshold natural gas and compress it for filling a vehicle at home. Such as system could be used with solar pannels to generate, compress and fill your tank at home with Hydrogen.

That would give you a solar powered rotary engine using hydrogen.

 

^ Dont forget about Geothermal... But you are on the right track.

A lot of people are misinformed when they talk about anything science related. They make rash assumtions and offer inconclusive results. DO YOUR RESEARCH before you talk out of your ***.


-Ben

 

Great post! I completely agree. Car companies wouldnt be investing so much money in this if i wasnt clean.

Secondly, the only draw back to Hydrogen at the moment is the total lack of infastructure. At the moment Hydrogen is extraxcted through electrolysis, a procedure that uses natural gas and coal to seperate the particles. It is slow and expensive and it uses fossil fuels.

Hopefully in the not to distant future, technology to produce, store, and transport hydrogen power at a reasonable cost will be a lot cheaper and easier to allow for large quanitities to be harvested.

Hydrogen is apart from Carbon, one of the Major building blocks to everything!

In the future, if fuel was no longer used, i would happily transplant a new Hydrogen engine into my FD!