What type of propulsion will power our cars in twenty years time?

Solair

Joe 90 wrote: »

Rover did a lot of work on gas turbine cars in the '50s and '60s. They did in fact run at Le Mans. i read somewhere that the odd layout of the front suspension of the old Rover 2000 was to allow space for a future gas turbine powered version.

and there's the engine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xSt8aH7Ix8

LordSutch

Yeah, forgot about the gas turbine option.

AugustusMinimus

Graphene Supercapacitor

A supercapacitor which can hold more than a lithium-ion battery and which can fully charge from empty in a matter of minutes.

If companies can produce these on an industrial scale and for a cheap enough price, it will effectively wipe out the internal combustion engine. It will also wipe out the need for the hydrogen fuel cell.

More than this, adding some grapheme to a standard lithium-ion battery let's it hold up to 10 times more than a standard battery and it will charge much faster.

Bpmull

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

Graphene Supercapacitor

A supercapacitor which can hold more than a lithium-ion battery and which can fully charge from empty in a matter of minutes.

If companies can produce these on an industrial scale and for a cheap enough price, it will effectively wipe out the internal combustion engine. It will also wipe out the need for the hydrogen fuel cell.

More than this, adding some grapheme to a standard lithium-ion battery let's it hold up to 10 times more than a standard battery and it will charge much faster.

Read my above posts I suggested graphene earlier its an unbelievable substance which is 200 times stronger than steel and the most conductive material discovered so far. And it weighs less than a gram per metre squared.

Matt Simis

Graphene and other nano Carbon "structures" will change our world in a radical manner, though Im wondering about the cost still, currently $100cm/2.

Its not limited (infact not even targetting primarily) to batteries, for instance IBM already showed 10GHz Graphene semiconductors. And it can be used to make improved Solar Cells. And lots of other stuff.

PrzemoF

Matt Simis wrote: »

Graphene and other nano Carbon "structures" will change our world in a radical manner, though Im wondering about the cost still, currently $100cm/2.

The price is from 2009. Down to $10/cm2 (buy here if you want)

Idbatterim

reckon it will be petrol and diesel for another good while yet!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18017591
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/motors/2012/0926/1224324414097.html

Cookie_Monster

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

the massive list of disadvantage on wikipedia is probably is reasonable starting point of explanation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Disadvantages

In all fairness, the disadvantages could have been fairly sorted if funding had been kept flowing.

Another thing, you can't say that today's Nuclear technology has not got significant disadvantages can you ? surely not!

Like the waste, L.F.T.R emits less than 1% than today's reactors because it's much more efficient. And it's safe in 300 years compared to 10,000 for most of current reactor waste or a few hundred thousand for the worst waste.

You need huge expensive water cooling towers for current reactors that you don't need for L.F.T.R.

Probably the biggest disadvantage of all with current Nuclear technology is melt down.

L.F.T.R provides no possibility of melt down.

L.F.T.R needs much more research and funding, the benefits are too great to ignore.

Idbatterim

just imagine for a second that the countless billions had not been throw into wind "technology" for the last god knows how many years and instead this had been spent on developing and refining other forms of electricity generation, L.F.T.R etc, we could be years ahead in its advancement...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec

dr.fuzzenstein

I remember this very discussion from 20 years ago.
We'll still drive the same cars with the government shouting at us: "How DARE you drive cars (and heat your house)! Here's another tax you bastards!" with no viable alternative in sight, so you will have to drive an old diesel on chipfat and heat your house with turf and whatever else you can find in the forest, because every other fuel will have gone up tenfold with "green" (read: greed) taxes.
All the money the government should use to develop alternative energy will go into tax enforcement and people will go to jail for having a tank full of chipfat.
Remember, all those lovely, utopian visions of the future where everything is shiny and clean are bollocks.
Because it would be too much effort to change the existing racket and what they have going on now is simply too good at gutting people like kippers and no government on earth at any time in the past, present or future has ever given up a good racket without a major revolution and then you only get other criminals, thieves and liars (at best) who come up with brand new schemes to take people for everything they're worth.
That whole future where mankind works together for the benefit of everyone over personal greed is at least another few hundred thousand years off, right now we are primitive monkeys that only work for their own stash and screw everyone else.

We will never run out of energy, the earth has more than enough energy to see mankind through if he's still around in some form or another in 5 Billion years when the sun runs out of it's own fuel.

I'm sure that some day after we're long gone or the threat of depleted oil resources will see the development of Nuclear Fusion, until then it's going to be a mixture of technologies.

It amazes me to think that most people have no idea of the amount of power required to get us off fossil fuels (just Ireland alone ), people think of wind and solar for electricity production, but the energy required for transport alone is probably many more times our electricity needs, the amount of electricity required to replace transport alone just boggles the mind.

Sure Ireland can boast about one day in October 2011 40% of our electricity demand was met with wind alone during off peak hours on a very windy day etc, even if wind met 40% of our total electricity needs, that is absolutely nothing compared to Ireland's total energy needs.

Imagine electricity was to replace all our transport ? think about it for a few minutes, then think of the power required to make hydrogen ? , add to that our current electricity requirements.

That's a biblical amount of energy needed that currently only Nuclear can provide.

And if you think Nuclear is not needed then why did Ireland build an inter-connector to the U.K ? they say to send excess wind to the U.K ? that is BS the fact is we need a lot of energy and instead of doing it ourselves we do as we have always done, let someone else do it.

Now before people say I'm talking crap I will tell you something, the building I work in is due for some serious expansion, it's current power requirements are 14 Million Watts continuous, after expansion 100 Million Watts will be needed, the power will come from the new inter connector, if not for that it would not be possible. We instead ship millions of Euro's out and give it to the British.

Ireland's wind energy meets 14% of our needs, only 14% then take into account transport and heating needs currently mostly met with oil and gas,14% suddenly seems meaningless.

How many wind turbines will we need ? how many solar panels ? think of the destruction to the land and the concrete needed for that !!!!

Popoutman

20 years time, I think that the majority of new cars will still be internal combustion engines, running either Otto or Diesel cycles. Otto cycle engines I think will be moving more towards alcohols as the fuel of choice with the ease of a country growing its own fuel stock (sugar beet in .ie). Diesel engines will most likely still be running on diesel with a higher proportion running on plant oils if governments and fuel companies start larger-scale growing operations purely for fuel.

I do think that a lot of the cars that are 10 years old and older that are still running well now will be running in 20 years, as I'm expecting that a lot of the current crop of cars to become uneconomic to maintain with the reliance on electronics and much finer tolerances to run well.

There may be some unusual powerplants opening up some opportunities, to face new issues that weren't being thought of. I do see supercapacitors making electric powertrains more interesting, but the explosive release of energy that's possible in a crash with a bank of these installed will cause a few high-profile headlines. First-responders dealing with supercapacitor vehicles at accident scenes will have problems with those from their own safety.

I do not see hydrogen becoming mainstream, as there isn't the infrastructure either in place or planned to allow it to take off. We don't yet have the storage capability or technology to store a decent density of hydrogen, we don't have the efficient hydrogen generation plants, or the transport and distribution of the hydrogen itself. From an engineering viewpoint it's not efficient to create hydrogen gas, compress it for storage, transport it and burn it in an internal combustion engine. Much more elegant to create electricity, transport it via the grid we already have, and use in efficient electric motors in the vehicle. Main stumbling blocks are the local storage of charge in the car, and the speed of recharge.

RedorDead

Sleepy wrote: »

My money says that the major oil companies already have something up their sleeves. Some form of bio-fuel that will run in standard petrol/diesel engines that they're keeping under lock and key until peak oil hits.

This is happening already. VW group has signed a deal with Joule Corporation in the USA to supply renewable fuels for models from 2016.

Joule develop micro organisms that when added to seawater and sun create diesel and petrol. Its actually genius. See details here:

http://www.jouleunlimited.com/

Popoutman

I meant to add that I see a lot more true diesel-electrics or petrol-electrics, where the engine only recharges the electricity storage, and the electric motors are the only means of propulsion. Damn sight more efficient overall as the internal combustion engine can be run at max efficiency, the gearbox would be a lot smaller and lighter, and the characteristics of the electric motors (max torque at 0rpm) make for a more efficient and probably smoother driving experience.

Capt'n Midnight

corkgsxr wrote: »

Unless they make some major advance in electric it'll still be the minority. And I dont think they will.

no problem with electric apart from lack of a good battery technology.

Hydrogen will come on stream.

LOL
Hydrogen is difficult to store in a car.
The easiest way would be as an alcohol or hydrocarbon as in synthetic fuel
or may be stored as urea

gbee wrote: »

We could already be running nuclear engines that would not need refuelling for twenty years and in twenty years time we should have perfected the safe sealed fast breeder mini reactor that would or could run for hundreds of years.

lookup xenon poisoning. Reactors take time to ramp up and down. OR you could use a radioisotope battery, a lump of continuously red hot metal.

But the real kicker is that you need highly enriched material to achieve a critical mass in a small volume.

Joe 90 wrote: »

I remember, back about 1970 maybe a bit before, the Sunday Times asked a couple of car manufacturers what sort of car we would be driving at the turn of the 21st century. One of the manufacturers was Rover who plumped for a gas turbine car.

Mainly because Rover had a history of building gas turbines dating back to WWII

gas turbines, and steam turbines are most efficient in a relatively narrow range of speeds - this is why ships still use diesel engines - so if the were to be used efficiently in a car then it would have to be in a hybrid so the engine could power down when below optimal speed. Also a gas turbine has all the disadvantages of a turbocharger , letting it spin down and all that. In fact you might as well use a diesel hybrid.



Alternatively you change the infrastructure so electric cars have enough charging points that range isn't a problem. You could even have induction loop recharging at traffic lights (rfid to pay for it) or bottlenecks

Deleted User wrote: »

If the U.S military had not abandoned L.F.T.R or molten salt reactor back in the 70's we could have been driving on hydrogen years ago.

the Air Force had a working molten salt reactor back in '54 rather than being a technology of the future those first molten salt reactors will soon be out of living memory - there is no new nuclear technology waiting in the wings , only stuff that's been proposed in the 1940's and demonstrated in working reactors in the 50's (60's in the case of pebble bed) Even if there was a new nuclear technology it's not going to be commercialised for a generation

And even if it or the pebble bed (first proposed in '47) or thorium (that fuel cycle was announced in '46) worked to produce hydrogen cheaper than (water + sunlight / wind power) you still have the problem of what you are going to do with the hydrogen

Like electricity , hydrogen is easily generated and a wonderful way to deliver energy, and just like electricity the only really insurmountable problem is the extreme difficulty and inefficiency in storing the stuff.

Capt'n Midnight

Popoutman wrote: »

I meant to add that I see a lot more true diesel-electrics or petrol-electrics, where the engine only recharges the electricity storage, and the electric motors are the only means of propulsion. Damn sight more efficient overall as the internal combustion engine can be run at max efficiency, the gearbox would be a lot smaller and lighter, and the characteristics of the electric motors (max torque at 0rpm) make for a more efficient and probably smoother driving experience.

that's the way diesel submarines have been for a long time now. The US navy had that in WWII

would also free up a lot of space in the car, motors could be nearly inside the wheels , the engine/generator could be anywhere since no longer a need for mechanical linkages so the centre of gravity could be dropped right down.

corkgsxr

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

no problem with electric apart from lack of a good battery technology.

I agree. But its a pretty major problem.

Its like saying theres no problem with ice engines except we cant make the tank bigger than 10 litres.

September1

Popoutman wrote: »

I meant to add that I see a lot more true diesel-electrics or petrol-electrics, where the engine only recharges the electricity storage, and the electric motors are the only means of propulsion. Damn sight more efficient overall as the internal combustion engine can be run at max efficiency, the gearbox would be a lot smaller and lighter, and the characteristics of the electric motors (max torque at 0rpm) make for a more efficient and probably smoother driving experience.

They cost quite a lot of money, for example Opel Ampera is about 50k€ ex VRT and when driven in engine mode they are not that efficient. Indeed engine works in optimal conditions but losses of going mechnical -> electrical -> mechanical are there.

dr.fuzzenstein

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Like electricity , hydrogen is easily generated and a wonderful way to deliver energy, and just like electricity the only really insurmountable problem is the extreme difficulty and inefficiency in storing the stuff.

I'm sorry, shouldn't that read "unlike electricity, hydrogen is easy to store, but the difficulty lies in producing enough of it from renewable energy, since traditional methods use a lot of energy and are inefficient"?

Capt'n Midnight

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I'm sorry, shouldn't that read "unlike electricity, hydrogen is easy to store, but the difficulty lies in producing enough of it from renewable energy, since traditional methods use a lot of energy and are inefficient"?

no it should not.

if you disagree please explain how to store the energy equivalent of a tank of petrol as hydrogen including any and all conversion losses and comment on temperature (pressurisation etc.) and volume

most of the detractors of wind power harp on about intermittancy , if hydrogen was easy to store then this would be a non-issue as an existing combined cycle gas turbine power station can recover ~60% of the energy in a fuel

dr.fuzzenstein

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

no it should not.

if you disagree please explain how to store the energy equivalent of a tank of petrol as hydrogen including any and all conversion losses and comment on temperature (pressurisation etc.) and volume

most of the detractors of wind power harp on about intermittancy , if hydrogen was easy to store then this would be a non-issue as an existing combined cycle gas turbine power station can recover ~60% of the energy in a fuel

Hydrogen can be stored in a pressurised container, no more complicated that LPG. I am not talking about energy density or efficiency here, but simply storage.
Electricity gets stored in these nifty devices called "batteries", they take a long time to charge, are quite heavy, deteriorate over time and don't store a lot of it. And once charged, will slowly lose that charge over time.
And if you need a new one, your car will be a financial write-off.
That is why electric vehicles are slow and have a limited range and then need to be charged for a minimum of half an hour, if a fast charger is available, or overnight if not.
In fact, the single biggest challenge facing electric vehicles are exactly those limitations, as opposed to liquid or gas-based fuel systems.

September1

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Hydrogen can be stored in a pressurised container, no more complicated that LPG. I am not talking about energy density or efficiency here, but simply storage.

Molecule size of hydrogen makes many materials unsuitable, not to mention that to keep decent energy density you need way bigger pressure than LPG.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Electricity gets stored in these nifty devices called "batteries", they take a long time to charge, are quite heavy, deteriorate over time and don't store a lot of it. And once charged, will slowly lose that charge over time.

Actually tanks also experience fatigue and deteriorate over time. On one hand they are cheaper and slower to die, on other hand dead batteries are less problem than cracked high pressure containers.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

In fact, the single biggest challenge facing electric vehicles are exactly those limitations, as opposed to liquid or gas-based fuel systems.

Yes, but hydrogen as it is now has own challenges - there are intermittent steps that can be taken like NG powered cars that are easier to implement and are already made and sold.

Capt'n Midnight

hydrogen is the lightest substance known so you will need BIG tanks
it's also the leakiest gas , and most metals will suffer from hydrogen embrittlement

it takes so much energy to pressurise it that it's simplier to do electrolysis of water under pressure rather than try and compress the H2 you get elsewhere

liquid hydrogen is an even bigger engineering challenge


most hydrogen is made from natural gas, and if you start from natural gas then it's a no brainer to convert it to methanol as used by IndyCar since 1965

Hydrogen is NOT an energy source.
It's a way of storing and transporting Energy.
Yes it can be used in fuel cells, but so can methanol.

NASA like hydrogen because one of the byproducts is water , which is handy to have on the ISS because it's essential for life and you can recycle it with enough solar panels



BTW Hydrogen is not some mysterious fuel waiting to be discovered - the first hydrogen powered car ran in 1807 and it used electric ignition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rivaz_engine

dr.fuzzenstein

September1 wrote: »

Yes, but hydrogen as it is now has own challenges - there are intermittent steps that can be taken like NG powered cars that are easier to implement and are already made and sold.

I do agree with that, at any rate.;)

Capt'n Midnight

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I do agree with that, at any rate.;)

the problem with that was a covering of thermite , and most people survived that disaster

dr.fuzzenstein

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

the problem with that was a covering of thermite , and most people survived that disaster

Yes, opposed to a plane crashing, most people had time to jump out and run away.

Capt'n Midnight

maybe we'll be using six stroke engines

the extra two are when you inject water into the hot cylinder and you get power from the steam also means you can save on radiator stuff too

ofcork

I dont know what about electric cars like trams years ago whereby the car might have a connecter underneath and you would have points along the road where it would pick up charge without stopping.

Matt Simis

Helium is "leakier" than Hydrogen..


But to the point of the thread, surely as touched on above, a multi-fuel gas turbine with its efficient though power band limited sweet spot, setup to constantly charge/run a high performance electric motor is the best "convergence" of the energy rich liquid fuels with efficient electric motors?

Not my idea, seen it floated around but its just about achievable and scalable with near term tech. Total fuel independence (they burn anything, green fuels, cheap fuels or waste fuels/oils), no laggy power delivery (as you run off the Electric drivetrain) and extreme range and performance (no need for huge battery banks, massive instant power delivery to electric motor).

Then as batteries get slowly better it simply means more time driven with no emissions at all till the turbine kicks in.

Capt'n Midnight

Matt Simis wrote: »

Helium is "leakier" than Hydrogen..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium

Because of helium's relatively low molar (atomic) mass, its thermal conductivity, specific heat, and sound speed in the gas phase are all greater than any other gas except hydrogen. For similar reasons, and also due to the small size of helium atoms, helium's diffusion rate through solids is three times that of air and around 65% that of hydrogen.