world's first ethanol powered fuel cell vehicle achieves 6,491 mpg.

[JohnWxy]

using ethanol and a reformer to supply hydrogen for the fuel cell makes more sense than working with compressed hydrogen gas.



http://www.acta-nanotech.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=131&Itemid=66


Acta Nanotech supplied fuel cell components to power the world's first fuel cell demonstrator vehicle that was fuelled directly by bio-ethanol. The components were delivered to a team from the German Hochschule Offenburg (University of Applied Sciences) which demonstrated the direct ethanol fuel cell vehicle at the Shell Eco-Marathon race, held in France on 13 May 2007.

The vehicle was originally designed to work on a hydrogen fuel cell and came in second out of eight in the fuel cell category under this configuration, achieving a mileage of 2716 kilometres(6,491 miles per gallon).

[thereismore]

1. 2716 km per liter. nt

[louis-t]

2. Per litre or gallon, doesn't matter.

Big Oil would never let anything like that get to market.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. No kidding...

...and they've already started to muddy the waters of debate with all this talk about how "hydrogen" is the best alternative.

What they won't tell you is that by making hydrogen an "energy source" they will in essence be welcoming the privatization of water.

And if you believe the lie about how using corn for ethanol is behind all the starving people in the world, then it should really bother you when they actually start preventing people from drinking water because some "energy" (read: former oil) corporation "owns" the rights to it.

Using corn for energy does not take food from people, politics does. If anything, using corn to feed cattle takes food from people.

[RC]

5. I take it you are a city slicker and your food comes from the grocery store?

Your next to the last sentence is pure poppycock. Corn is a food crop. Growing corn takes farm land. There can only be one crop at a time on a given piece of land. You can't grow wheat, oats, barley, clover, soybeans, canola or anything else in corn field. If something other than corn was planted, then it would not be a corn field.

Also keep in mind that corn is water and fertilizer intensive. It is not an efficient crop to grow.

So when corn is grown for ethanol, it does indeed take food from people - and lots of energy from oil to grow and harvest.


On edit: So what is the difference to the food supply if the corn is fed to cattle or made into ethanol? At least cattle can be eaten.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Cattle

Cattle are more water and fuel intensive than corn.

The problem with the "don't use corn for fuel" argument is that it is stuck in the "prototype is the best version" belief.

Do you remember when they first made computers?

Remember how big they were?

Have you taken a look at a new, modern version?

Over time, everything evolves, except maybe intelligent design proponents. (Actually they do too; they used to be creationists.)

Admittedly, while the current process of making ethanol is currently not the best, I am a firm believer that we will find the best way to do it. I just hope we remember the lessons of the dust bowl and the 1970's gas crisis, Enron, etc.

And yes, I am a city slicker. However, my food does not come from the grocery store, per se. I am what you might call a "preservatarian" not so much a vegetarian who does not eat meat, but more like a person who eats preservatives (non-foods).

Also, as a city slicker I am aware of places outside my own god-for-saken hell hole of a town in which I currently live, Los Angeles. I am aware of places like Brazil, for instance. Where, apparently, they are already on their way to making E85 v2.0 (out of sugarcane-based ethanol, I believe).

So, while the rest of the world develops better and more efficient ways of doing things, we in America avoid trying alternative energies because of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2C_uncertainty_and_doubt">muddied debate created by oil companies.

If oil companies ran computers the way they run energy, computers would still be the size of small houses and only the rich could afford them. Thank goodness the space program needed something small, otherwise Bill Gates would have had to stay in college.

[louis-t]

7. There are a lot of reasons for food shortages and rising prices.

China and India are buying more corn and wheat, drought in major farming countries, rising price of fuel and fertilizer are but a few. I have yet to see where ethanol production or use has skyrocketed. I don't see E85 pumps at every station. I don't see huge tanks or tanker trucks full of ethanol. Sure, every action has an equal and opposire reaction, but there's more at work here than just corn for ethanol.

I'm confused about your statement re: water. Water is the byproduct of using hydrogen for fuel, not the other way around.

[ColbertWatcher]

9. Making hydrogen.

http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/echem/fuel_cell/fuel_cell.html">Here is a webtube that shows how to make hydrogen in your kitchen. It uses a common process called "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis">electrolysis".

To make the hydrogen, you take the water and separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and then use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_cell">hydrogen for the fuel cell.

The main ingredient, of course, is water. There are other compounds which can be used, however, but none more abundant and cheap.

Perfect for exploitation by the fat and lazy and greedy energy (read:oil) corporations. With no real knowledge of how hydrogen is made and the possible consequences of relying on this type of energy, the general public will simply follow the advertising that tells them how good hydrogen fuel is.

When it's not.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. But the amount of water needed to make the hydrogen is small; is the energy that limits it

Consider: hydrogen (for combustion/fuel cell use) has an energy density of 143 MJ/kg; gasoline 47 MJ/kg (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density). Hydrogen's atomic weight is 1, and oxygen 16, so 2/18 = 1/9 of the weight of water becomes hydrogen when electrolysed. So 1kg of hydrogen, giving 143 MJ, is equivalent to 143/9 = 16 MJ for every kg of water processed. Efficiency from production to wheel of fuel cells and ICEs may be roughly equivalent - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#In_practice . So, roughly, you need 47/16 = 3 times the weight of water, compared with the weight of gasoline.

That's not much - US usage of gasoline per day is about 400 million gallons per day - 1.3 gallons per person. Average US domestic water use is 65-78 gallons per person. So the extra water usage of 4 gallons per person would be a blip. And that's not considering the commercial use of water - farming, industry.

The thing about electrolysis is where you get the energy for it from. The supply of water for it is easy.

[wtmusic]

21. Efficiency from production to wheel of fuel cells

and ICEs may be roughly equivalent only when considered on the basis of mass.

On the basis of volume, which is the limiting factor in most fuel-cell vehicles, compressed hydrogen has about 1/5 the energy of gasoline (5.6 MJ/L vs 34.6 MJ/L).

[losthills]

13. Using corn for energy takes food from people.

[Callisto32]

14. Some Quick Math

I found some numbers on corn yield/acre in the US and went with the highest reported.

1 acre of corn=138 bu.
1 bu of corn=~2.8 gal. ethanol

So, 1 acre of corn= ~386 gal. ethanol

Assuming a 14 gal. tank that gives you about 27 full tanks of fuel/acre of corn.

Field corn is about 2400 calories per pound, and 56 pounds per bushel. At 138 bu/acre that gives you 18,547,200 calories per acre of field corn. That is enough, assuming 2000 calories a day, every day, for you to feed about 25 people for one year/acre of corn.

Ethanol=84,400 BTU/gal
Gasoline=115,000 BTU/gal

I'm not an engineer or physicist, but I think that would indicate that the ethanol would provide less mileage than gasoline. However, I will assume a 1:1 for mileage.

Assuming 32mpg, a 14 gal tank of ethanol would provide 448 miles of travel, while the same amount of corn would be enough to provide the caloric requirements of an adult for about one year.


There are the numbers, do with them what you will. Any errors are simply mistakes on my part and are not intended to mislead.

Peace,

Zane

[JohnWxy]

16. In a high compression engine ethanol will give better mileage than gas (in a lower compression engin

I'm afraid it's not as simple as comparing heat content of ethanol and gasoline. Ethanol's octane rating is 113-115, while high test gasoline'sis 92-93. Ethanol can be used at much higher combustion chamber pressures giving better performance than gasoline in a lower compression engine.

but there is more. MIT researchers designed an ethanol direct injection engine which gets 25% to 30% better fuel economy than a gasoline powered car of equal power. They use turbo-charging to get a lot more power per cubic inch enabling downsizing the engine by about half - thus less fuel consumption. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. The engine only uses about 5% ethanol and 95% gasoline. I guess that would mean you would be getting about 20 times the mpg for ethanol at a 85%- 100% mixture. At any rate you are getting many more miles per gallon of ethanol actually consumed.

Ford was impressed enough with this engine to go into business with the MIT researchers (one is a phycisist). They are shooting for mass production by 2011. They are figuring the cost to be an additional $1,000 for this engine (sure beats a hybrid, doesn't it).


http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/10/startup_working.html

MIT scientists and engineers earlier this year founded a company—Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS)—to commercialize their work on direct-injection ethanol boosting combined with aggressive turbocharging in a gasoline engine. (Earlier post.) The result is a gasoline engine with the fuel efficiency of current hybrids or turbodiesels—up to 30% better than a conventional gasoline engine—but at lower cost.

EBS has a collaborative R&D agreement with Ford, and anticipates engine tests in 2007 with subsequent licensing to Ford and other automakers. If all goes as expected, vehicles with the new engine could be on the road by 2011.

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(more)

[Callisto32]

17. Thanks

I based my assumptions on my low end estimates of performance with gasoline in my 1990 VW Jetta and assumed 1:1. Like I said, NOT an engineer :D. My point was simply to say we can get this much food, or this much ethanol from a given amount of land used go grow corn. I know what can be done with the food, but certainly NOT all the potential of ethanol as a fuel. Thanks for the clarification about octane ratings and just to make sure that I understand what is going on here, does this basically mean that with each combustion, more of the ethanol will be converted to usable energy than the gasoline?

Thanks,

Zane

[JohnWxy]

18. It's just that Ethanol doesn't pre-ignite under higher pressures than gasoline.

for my part I'm not a chemist so I have to guess that the bonds between the atoms in an ethanol molecule are stronger than those of a molecule of gasoline which enable it to not pre-ignite (exlode) but rather give a continuous burn under higher pressure.(keep in mind, gasoline is a term referring to a mixture of chemicals since there are additives to gasoline (to increase octane rating - to eliminate knock or pre-ignition)).

Ethanol does though, give a more complete (and therefor cleaner combustion) because it contains Oxygen in each molecule while gasoline does not. So I guess you could say "more of the ethanol" is used to produce the energy released in the combustion process. there is much less incomplete combustion by-products remaining when ethanol is burned than when gasoline is burned.


Ethanol chemical formula:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol

It is a straight-chain alcohol, and its molecular formula is C2H5OH. An alternative notation is CH3-CH2-OH, which indicates that the carbon of a methyl group (CH3-) is attached to the carbon of a methylene group (-CH2-), which is attached to the oxygen of a hydroxyl group (-OH).


gasoline chemical formula: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-04/987004809.Ch.r.html

"First, gasoline is not a simple chemical compound like water or ethanol. It is a mixture of hundreds of different compounds. The reason for this is that gasoline is made from crude oil. Crude oil, or petroleum, is made up of thousands of different compounds, and the exact compounds present and their relative amounts differ depending on where the petroleum is produced. (For example, oil produced in West Texas differs remarkably from oil produced in the Middle East.) After the oil is produced (or taken out of the ground via oil wells), it is shipped to an oil refinery, where it is separated into different products, including gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel, among others."
~~
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"So, to sum up, gasoline is a complicated mixture of hydrocarbons boiling between 120 and 400 degrees F, with chemical formulas between C6H14 and C12H26, but a good "average" compound is C8H18. These react in an ideal situation to produce carbon dioxide and water, but in an actual automobile engine they also produce some amount of undesirable compounds including carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, and sulfur-containing compounds."
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sorry I was so slow getting to your question but I didn't see it until today.


I hope this helps.

[kristopher]

19. You forgot the energy costs of production and refining

Going with your numbers, of your 386 gal of ethanol per acre the net yield is about 75 gallons per acre; the rest must be reinvested into producing the next batch of ethanol. So in effect, systemically, you are going to need to produce a total of about 84 gallons of ethanol to take your 32mpg car 448 miles.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. I'm sure they would try to find ways to slow these technologies

down or eliminate them cuz after all, oil is SO MUCH EASIER to harvest. NOT.

[RC]

4. At what speed?

3 feet per minute?

How much weight was being moved?
3 pounds 6 oz?

Until these questions can be answered the mileage is meaningless

[louis-t]

8. Good point.

Remember those contests in the '80's to see who could get the most mileage out of a gallon? I remember seeing them push the cars part of the way.

[JohnWxy]

10. I'm gonna take a wild guess here and assume the car had a driver. That would probably take it over

3 lbs.

Of course this vehicle is a test-bed, nothing like a four person hauler. But that's how developments start. the article at the link provided places to look for more information for those willing to do more than ask others for answers.

"More information:
Shell Eco-Marathon competition: The 2007 European Shell Eco-marathon – efficiency at its best <*.pdf> - May 13, 2007.

Acta Nanotech: Practical fuel options for new fuel cell applications.

On last year's ethanol victory: Environment News Service: Ethanol Car Beats Fuel Cells to Win European Eco-marathon - May 22, 2006. "

[JohnWxy]

11. CORRECTION: the mileage figure applies to this vehicle as a straight hydrogen fuel cell.

they ran the same vehicle as a demonstration using ethanol as the source of hydrogen using a reformer to extract the hydrogen for the fuel cell. MY BAD! No mileage figures for the ethanol 'fueled'
configuration were provided. however the previous year a ethanol powered ICE engine vehicle beat several hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles.On last year's ethanol victory: Environment News Service: Ethanol Car Beats Fuel Cells to Win European Eco-marathon - May 22, 2006. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2006/2006-05-22-03.asp

from the article linked below:


"The vehicle was originally designed to work on a hydrogen fuel cell and came in second out of eight in the fuel cell category under this configuration, achieving a mileage of 2716 kilometres(6,491 miles per gallon). After the event, the team used the same vehicle to test the DAFC with ethanol"


As for it's size a picture is included with this article. it looks more like a low slung motorcycle (with two wheels in front?) but I'm sure all the vehicles in this challenge look nothing like the typical 4-door sedan.

http://biopact.com/2007/05/worlds-first-ethanol-powered-fuel-cell.html

[Zachstar]

20. I agree they need to atleast put it in a 4 person car that meets safety specs.

It needs to cost under 30k to make with Unions.

It needs to look halfway decent.

etc..