Some of you may recall a discussion we were having back in March of this year in which I pointed out some of the impracticalities regarding the use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel.
There is an article in the automotive section of today's Washington Times that demonstrates this.
BMW has built a bi-fuel car that can run on either gasoline of liquid hydrogen. The thing I found to be most interesting (apart from the precipitous loss of power) is that the car has two tanks, a 16.3 gallon tank for the gasoline and a 45 gallon tank for the hydrogen.
The car will travel 310 miles on the gasoline, but only 125 miles on the hydrogen.
Doing the math, that's 19 miles per gallon using gasoline, but only 2.8 miles per gallon using hydrogen.
That's because hydrogen contains considerably less energy than an equivalent amount of gasoline. And there is no environmental advantage using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Also, hydrogen is very expensive.
There is an article in the automotive section of today's Washington Times that demonstrates this.
BMW has built a bi-fuel car that can run on either gasoline of liquid hydrogen. The thing I found to be most interesting (apart from the precipitous loss of power) is that the car has two tanks, a 16.3 gallon tank for the gasoline and a 45 gallon tank for the hydrogen.
The car will travel 310 miles on the gasoline, but only 125 miles on the hydrogen.
Doing the math, that's 19 miles per gallon using gasoline, but only 2.8 miles per gallon using hydrogen.
That's because hydrogen contains considerably less energy than an equivalent amount of gasoline. And there is no environmental advantage using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Also, hydrogen is very expensive.
Comment