Apr 21 2008

Got H? Liquid please, it’s for my 7.

Published by Marc Thibault at 8:14 am under Energy, Green News

Speaking of car, how about BMW’s new “7 hydrogen”?
The car is being delivered to 100 celebrities. It uses hydrogen, a gas that is present naturally but is highly volatile, meaning a) it requires an industrial process to produce it or capture it and b) it needs to be refrigerated to extremely low temperatures (minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit) to be kept in its liquid form (unless it is used right away after it has been captured).

To give drivers the “ultimate machine” feeling, the engine is powered by 12 cylinders and 260 horsepower. It’ll run on both gasoline and hydrogen but with very different results: 17 miles/g for gasoline and … 4.7 miles/ gallon for hydrogen. “The process of cooling the storage facility down to such a low temperature alone uses up to one-third of the energy contained in one fuel tank.” Says German magazine Spiegel. All these factors make hydrogen gas propelled vehicles awfully inefficient and definitely not environmentally sound – unless you do it yourself.
Still, hydrogen is much less CO2 intensive than gasoline and might have a future in the form of fuel cells. However, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy believe forcing the transition to a hydrogen-based economy within the next three to four decades is “not an ecologically sound” idea.

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