My First Link!!! I'm so proud. Although, it did say "...France Surrenders" after the title. Mods must have edited.

What gives Drew?

Well this would explain why Bush pronounced support for this technology last year....

Although, it did say "...France Surrenders" after the title. Mods must have edited.

"France surrenders" is about as old and busted as "old and busted." And trust me, I'm sure no mod did anything to your headline. (An admin, on the other hand....) Congrats on the first link though.

There's always been the belief that the oil companies held all the patents to such technology and that was why we weren't seeing them. I'm surprised this came out during the Halliburton Presidency.

Ahh, the military. Where all of our REAL technological advancements take shape.

Fark NASA.

Way to post completely irrelevant propoganda Ass_Master!

The Bush Administration is obviously in cahoots with Halliburton on this "Fuel Cell" business.

Where Can I buy one, my microwave gun needs a mobile power supply. (Fun to fry electronics, burnt out the microwave generator though, need to build a new one)

I will be invincable until the military developes tin foil armor.

/laughes with an evil look

"Key provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire next year".. ..."The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule."

Wow! So, um, who believes me now that renewable energy is smarter?

In December, they held a demonstration. They took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.

Leave it to the U.S. to figure out a way to keep ourselves dependent on foreign oil while using fuel cells.

What would they do with the sulfur, co2 and co? Isn't the point of a fuel cell to help the enviornment by reducing toxic emissions to 0? Maybe I am missing something.

Good idea.

Whatever drives the technology, and gets us away from oil.

40 freaking dollars a gallon?!?!?!

too bad it will never happen

because bush's campaign contributors would loose profits on oil

What would they do with the sulfur, co2 and co? Isn't the point of a fuel cell to help the enviornment by reducing toxic emissions to 0? Maybe I am missing something.

they make a big pile of sulfur, a big pile of carbon, and the left over O3 goes to fix the hole in the ozone layer

this is a good thing, gee, I remember back in the day, clouds of soot laden smoke, pouring out of the stack of my deuce and a half, compounded by thousands of other tanks and trucks and armored cars and rigs of every size pouring out tons of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere we are supposed to be protecting from the powers of the axis of evil. Just another military contract, more taxes, and the friggen things'll be made by the Taiwanese benefitting no U.S. citizens... onward, NAFTA!!!!

Weaver95:
There are plenty of ways of storing hydrogen in a safe manner that can be used in a car. There have been numerous threads about using hydrogen as a fuel source it does seam as a rather safe alternative. Sorry I don't have any facts or links on me, but form the forums I've read it can be safer to use the gasoline if stored properly.

Nice that some money is being given to research into alternative energy sources, finally.

Too bad that it only happens when there's potential to kill people with it.

shouldn't this be an [IRONIC] tag? har har...

Weaver95

isn't hydrogen kinda explosive?

It is less dangerous than 100 octane jet fuel that M1A1's use in their turbines. H2 also workes better in hot enviornments too because 100 Octane evaporates so quickly and at cold temps because it is natualy a gas. Only danger is he cylinder itself exploding.

War Eagle

Defense officials have determined it costs about $40 to move one gallon of diesel fuel from Kuwait to Baghdad.

Cheney gotta get his.

"it can be safer to use the gasoline if stored properly"

Even if it gets hit by enemy fire? I'd have to see some serious testing to be sure of that

look, dude, if hydrogen was THAT super explosive, it wouldn't be available in high school science labs, running through a steel valve on a countertop with a plastic hose. It just isn't very good for making balloons, but it is just as safe as a propane tank outside your house, hooked up to your gas grill.

War Eagle indeed

Where are all the Fark experts who said this technology was impossible a year ago?

hmmm.....

I'm just suprized they haven't found a way to make a deuterium based fuel cell, after all, it's the Army.

And here I thought they were going to change the rations...

Umm, unless I'm reading this wrong, we're still using oil to get the energy with these things. What its doing is putting a little refinary on everyone's car to convert the gasoline into hydrogen and the other fun by products. It says the system is 3 times more efficient than just burning the fuel.

I just want to know when we can get a fuel cell that puts out the same power as a diesel engine, and how long the catalyst lasts/how expencive it is.

It also still produces the same emissions, carbon dioxide, hopefully less carbon monoxide, since it isn't running as hot. Actually it would eliminate NOx at least, so its got that going for it. (Actually I have no idea if it will, but I assume it isn't going to be as hot as a combustion engine to get the nitrogen to start reacting) But I don't see it getting rid of the sulfur oxides either.

Its a step in the right direction. More efficient than current engines. But this isn't the great solution to the energy crisis I'm hoping to see eventually.

I'm just glad that this news coming out of Auburn doesn't involve our bumbling former (by four days) president, the Board of Trustees who wouldn't mind if the University were converted into a football training camp, or some frat brothers doing something stupid like painting their faces or stuffing each other's furniture with animal carcasses. War Eagle!

/Promises that underneath it all, there's a decent university here.

JUST DON'T STORE YOUR HYDROGEN GAS WITHOUT A GROUNDING WIRE DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH. If the Hindenburg was filled with propane or acetylene, it would have been a bigger explosion.

MSD:
That should be "then" not "the, but I was talking about civilian applications not military. Most people in the future shouldn't worry about having their hydrogen container shot at, well most people.

Or try filling it with helium instead.

ALL fuels are explosive and flammable (inflammable too). They would be worthless otherwise. What I want to know is when we will REALLY see something like this commercially avaialble. For decades I've been hearing all these great ideas, but nothing real ever materializes.

See, the funny thing is, is that the auto manufacturers want to keep people dumb about how a car works, and make it so imposibly complex, no home mechanic could fix the solid-state parts, creating built-in obsolescence for needed spare parts. This is why they make a fuel cell design, for profit. I can go out to just about any farm junkyard and find natural gas regulators that will fit in the place of a common carburetor on a Case tractor, and retrofit a propane tank onto the friggen thing, and make the booger run on compressed hydrogen gas, same as propane or CNG, it just needs a different orifisc opening size in the burner jet.

be careful relighting your pilot light in your furnace kids, and look up in there at the gas regulator and the burner assembly.... alternative fuel carburetion for your own car, ready made.

Ok, I won't contest to know anything about cars, but fuel cells are different than simply burning the hydrogen. Cars right now use the explosive force to mechanically drive the pistons to turn the wheels on the car. Fuel cells will, if I remember correctly, act more like a battery. They oxidize the hydrogen and get the energy as electricity. I would think that a fuel cell powered car would require an electric motor to run.

the reason all these new technologies are always years away is because no one wants to spend the money to make alternative energy viable. People will give millions to enviromental groups to whine piss and moan like little biatches because exxon isn't working fast enough on alternative fuel. But they absolutely refuse to spend a dime on developing a new power source themselves.

Imagine if steve jobs and bill gates had been complaining that IBM wasn't working fast enough on personal computers? Instead they did it themselves and made vast mountains of money.

see, you will have to buy a completely new machine, which is basically a GOLF CART. With a propane regulator, you keep your current car, and retrofit the new component to the existing engine. Personally, I'd rather pay $69.95 for a kit rather than $28,000.00 for a new machine.

I don't think the article is accurate. Hydrogen does not have anywhere near the energy potential of gasoline, and is considered an energy carrier not an energy source. It's not the answer. We need something else.
C'mon, think!

And if the oil companies choose the safe path I say go for it this is a free country after all.

If you can invent a better power source for the world then do it this is a free country after all.

memphomaniac, hydrogen has like 15 times the btu rating per pound than gasoline.

I agree with you goflight. I'm hardly a proponent of fuel cells at the moment. I'm just saying that the refit, while making it possible to run vehicles on different fuel sources, probably aren't going to get the efficiency that the fuel cells do. But efficient and practical are hardly the same thing.



Hey why don't we start harvesting the methane produced by landfills and convert cars to run off of that? Cows too! Think of how much they are said to fart! Its a renewable resource! i'mjustsayin