Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Fuel cell technology

And fuel.inj could not be more wrong. hydrogen in cars is used to produce leccy so the car sounds just like a Dyson, unless the manufacturer installs an IC soundtrack in the audio.

I heard many years ago that someone had invented or designed a plastic internal combustion engine,
a piston & cylinder design that was powered by tap water and the Government had paid out a great sum
of money to scrap and burry the project.

Anyone else heard of such a story ?

By the way my old man ran an Austin 7 with a drip feed bottle of water into the side draft carb on long runs
It was suggested he could get 70mpg only feeding in once the engine was at full working temp and on a
long run.

My guess (and everyone from the bloke down the pub to Elon Musk is guessing to some extent) is that we'll see a mix of technologies in their appropriate niches ...... the batteries required to hammer a 40 ton artic from London to Inverness overnight have yet to be invented (and may be decades away or never) ..... probably AI organised electrified railways constantly looking at the available power on the grid from renewables and nuclear (hopefully sometime fusion rather than fission) shuffling driverless trains to optimise miles vs available power ..... fuel cell trucks to distribute from rail depots and electric rail and buses plus battery electric city cars and scooters for urban transit.

As Howard says ... energy use reduction will play as big a part as generation both in terms of low energy tech and lifestyle and social changes.

K

Agreed. It's interesting to note BTW that the widespread switch to LED lighting is considered by many energy market analysts to be a major contributor to the current low wholesale price of electricity - which in itself is a major issue for proponents of nuclear power.

The costs of building nuclear power stations (at least, to current designs) is so high that EDF had to get a guarantee of being paid something like £90/MWh for the power that Hinckley Point generates when(if) it ever comes on stream. The current wholesale price is around the £25 mark. This is currently primarily driven (apart from the reduction of consumption previously noted) by the wholesale price of gas, but the costs of offshore wind are dropping so fast that it will probably be cheaper than gas within the next few years.

Yep .... plenty of issues with nuclear including environmental and political considerations (hence my wistful desire to see the fusion issue cracked) .... however if CO2 reduction is your Holy Grail then, whether wind power is offshore (yes please!) or onshore (no thanks!!), then we either need storage capable of running UK demand for days on end (currently sci-fi territory) or some CO2 free backup baseload generation....which leaves carbon capture or nuclear.

K

I think that the need for variety of power sources for different purposes rings very true.

It is perhaps ironic though that the goods distribution methodology mentioned takes one back to the late 1940s and 1950s when the British Transport Commission and British Railways, in particular, were evaluating a wide variety of motive power sources in respect of national and local goods distrubution. This saw the adoption of electric vehicles such as the Helecs articulated truck which played a part in this (a collaboration with Jensen MotorsI believe) although the gradual rise of the conveyance of goods to the road network gradually saw the demise of such local distribution. Interesting to note that even as late as nationalisation there were still more than 10,000 horses being used for such purposes although this had reduced from nearly 30,000 over a thirty year period. Perhaps there is a future for horses? - Oh, sorry I had overlooked the methane problem!

At the moment a good deal of hydrogen is produced as a by product of other processes. I think the eventual aim is to use so-called "green hydrogen" which would be produced using the standby capacity of renewable energy sources, hydro, wind, solar, wave, geothermal, etc.

You can add that to "perpetual motion" and "cold fusion" in your list of daft mostly american stories.

Never heard of the Polimotor then Howard?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_automotive_engine

Current materials technology makes this viable

http://polimotor.com/

Water Injection in engines has been around for a long time. No as a power source but to allow higher performance to be extracted prior to pre-detonation? It acts as a coolant to allow higher temperatures to be used during the power cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFztpnQuPA - Recent

There is even a section on it in the RR Merlin Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Merlin

I have not met anyone nuts enough to try it on a car but do know a few loons who have done nitros. I figure it makes the world safer for the rest of us if we watch what goes wrong with the sticky-bit-of-the-envelope club first!