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Hello Ole Friend,
Combustion engines have always worried me. They work by burning a fuel (be it wood, coal, petrol, diesel or hydrogen) with oxygen thus removing from the air the very element that we need to breathe for our survival. It always seems like we are lemmings rushing towards the cliff of our own destruction. That is why I prefer renewables that don't consume oxygen but I appreciate that making the metals needed for the wind turbines, solar cells, water pumps etc also consumes oxygen - at least until we can use renewables to heat our furnaces.This Loco is not powered by burning Hydrogen in an engine it is a chemical reaction between Hydrogen And oxygen which produces Electric current with the exhaust being 100% pure water
As much as it pains me to quote wikipedia, I assume you are referring to this:This Loco is not powered by burning Hydrogen in an engine it is a chemical reaction between Hydrogen And oxygen which produces Electric current with the exhaust being 100% pure water
Note the process only returns 30% of the electricity needed to produce the hydrogen for the fuel cell. Fuel cells are hardly new technology. The space program in the USA used them to produce power the Gemini and Apollo missions. They fell out of favor when one blew up during the Apollo 13 mission almost killing the crew.A key technology of a typical hydrogen propulsion system is the fuel cell. This device converts the chemical energy contained within the hydrogen in order to generate electricity, as well as water and heat.[10] As such, a fuel cell would operate in a manner that is essentially inverse to the electrolysis process used to create the fuel; consuming pure hydrogen to produce electricity rather than consuming electrical energy to produce hydrogen, albeit incurring some level of energy losses in the exchange.[10] Reportedly, the efficiency of converting electricity to hydrogen and back again is just beneath 30 per cent, roughly similar to contemporary diesel engines but less than conventional electric traction using overhead catenary wires. The electricity produced by the onboard fuel cell would be fed into a motor to propel the train.[10] Overhead wire electrification costs are around EUR 2m/km, so electrification is not a cost-efficient solution for routes with low traffic, and battery and hydrail solutions may be alternatives.[
Dried animal dung worked for a very long time but I guess according to Saint Greta they produce too much CO2.at least until we can use renewables to heat our furnaces.
If i understood physics/chemistry in this way it would bother me too, but fortunately for us that isn't how it works.Combustion engines have always worried me. They work by burning a fuel (be it wood, coal, petrol, diesel or hydrogen) with oxygen thus removing from the air the very element that we need to breathe for our survival. It always seems like we are lemmings rushing towards the cliff of our own destruction. That is why I prefer renewables that don't consume oxygen but I appreciate that making the metals needed for the wind turbines, solar cells, water pumps etc also consumes oxygen - at least until we can use renewables to heat our furnaces.
My idle thoughts.
Huh? My science degree included chemistry (not my favourite subject I must admit) but the definition of combustion has always been "the rapid chemical combination of a substance with oxygen, involving the production of heat and light." Combining with oxygen involves removing it from (most commonly) the air around us - the same oxygen we breathe. In the majority of cheap combustion processes (i.e. the ones we most commonly use) the oxygen is returned as a variety of different chemicals gases (CO, CO2, NO2, etc) most of them toxic. So we are replacing a life giving gas with poisons - hence my Lemming analogy.If i understood physics/chemistry in this way it would bother me too, but fortunately for us that isn't how it works.