BMW: High on Hydrogen

[3113]

BMW officially announces the BMW Hydrogen 7

Closely following a sighting of a Hydrogen-powered 7 series during testing, BMW officially announced the Hydrogen 7 today. The car is touted as the first hydrogen-drive luxury performance automobile for everyday use. The BMW Hydrogen 7 will be built in a limited series, and sold to select customers in the U.S. and overseas in 2007. The engine in the Hydrogen 7, a derivative of the 7 series 12 cylinder engine, is capable of running on gasoline or hydrogen, and produces 260 hp. The car will accelerate from 0 to 62.1 mpg in 9.5 seconds. The ability to run on both gasoline and hydrogen gives the Hydrogen 7 a range of more than 400 miles. The high tech hydrogen storage tank has a capacity of approximately 17.6 lb of liquid hydrogen, giving the Hydrogen 7 a cruising range in hydrogen mode upwards of 125 miles. The gasoline mode accounts for an additional 300 miles of cruising range. The driver is the one who decides which fuel to use, with a smooth transition between both operating modes, since the engine power and torque remain identical regardless of the fuel used.

Hydrogen technology dramatically reduces emissions generated by personal transport and, in particular, minimizes the emission of CO2. Running in the hydrogen mode, the BMW Hydrogen 7 essentially emits nothing but vapor. And, unlike fossil fuels and traditional gasoline, hydrogen is available in virtually infinite supply. With the BMW Hydrogen 7, the BMW Group is laying down a marker for sustainable mobility. This car will play a pioneering role in driving forward hydrogen technologies. BMW has gained an excellent reputation for significantly reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by using ultra efficient, yet very dynamic gasoline engines. Together with clean performance diesel cars and the technologically advanced hybrid systems currently under development within the BMW EfficientDynamics project, the BMW Group has a clear strategy for sustainable mobility with hydrogen as the ultimate solution.

The BMW Hydrogen 7 is a four-seater with the two passengers at the rear enjoying the same high standard of comfort in the world's first hydrogen car developed for everyday use as in one of BMW's "regular" luxury performance vehicles. The BMW Hydrogen 7 comes with an unusually wide range of standard features. In addition to the high level of equipment featured from the start in the BMW 760i, the BMW Hydrogen 7 comes inter alia with climate comfort composite glazing, BMW's high-end automatic air conditioning, auxiliary heating, electric seat heating for the driver, front passenger and rear seats, lumbar supports, electric seat adjustment with memory function on the front seats, ISOFIX child seat fastenings, Park Distance Control, a rain sensor, exterior and interior mirrors with automatic anti-dazzle, Soft Close Automatic for the doors and a headlight assistant. A complete entertainment a nd communication package adds to the comfort a BMW 7 Series can provide.

So...how and where do you "fill 'er up?"

 

[past_perfect]

You have this tool from the EIA - i just did a quick search in L.A. and found 15 available stations.

Alternative Fuel Station Locator

Edit to add: Another quick search by state revealed that you are pretty fucked if you live elsewhere.

 

[trysail]

We do understand that fueling an automobile with hydrogen causes more pollution than fueling it with gasoline- don't we?

The media and politicians (who are, on the whole, hopeless) and an innumerate and scientifically uninformed public are (apparently) ignorant of the laws of thermodynamics. Where do they think the hydrogen comes from?

 

[JPMMURPHY]

Sorry. 3113's post concerning suicide comes to mind. Some poor befuddled sod sitting in his garage waiting for... only to discover he forgot to switch from H to gasoline before lowering the garage door.

 

[R. Richard]

It appears that there are currently only two public hydrogen filling stations in CA, One in AZ and none in NV. It would appear that the use of hydrogen in your BMW is still some time off.

 

[neonlyte]

So...how and where do you "fill 'er up?"

You don't. BMW fills you up. When this model was announced last year BMW informed customers their car would be fuelled by a specialist mobile fuelling station. The car apparently phones BMW when it is running low on fuel and the mobile unit schedules to meet you somewhere. I can't quite work out how many miles this arrangements deducts from a bucket of hydrogen.

 

[Stella_Omega]

We do understand that fueling an automobile with hydrogen causes more pollution than fueling it with gasoline- don't we?

The media and politicians (who are, on the whole, hopeless) and an innumerate and scientifically uninformed public are (apparently) ignorant of the laws of thermodynamics. Where do they think the hydrogen comes from?


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Actually, I don't know-- And a quick google search didn't tell me. Would you explain more- maybe in plain print?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Gasoline is dangerously explosive in a closed container. Hydrogen is far worse. I'd have to look at this carefully before I'd even concider a H2 vehicle.

 

[3113]

We do understand that fueling an automobile with hydrogen causes more pollution than fueling it with gasoline- don't we?

No. We don't. Please explain the science to me, and DO make sure you get it from a SCIENCE magazine, because if it's bad science from some kind of bias, pro-gas, anti-alternative-energy magazine your argument won't--if you'll excuse the pun--hold water. So DO make sure your science is factual and reputable.

Okay. Go ahead and enlighten us. What are the facts about creating liquid hydrogen take makes it more pollutive than gasoline? Because if the car emits water vapor, THAT won't be more pollutive. So creating the liquid hydrogen would have to be the culprit.

 

[3113]

It appears that there are currently only two public hydrogen filling stations in CA, One in AZ and none in NV. It would appear that the use of hydrogen in your BMW is still some time off.

Well, I don't imagine there'll be any of these cars on the road in great numbers right away. Like when the automobile itself first appeared on the scene to replaced the horse and buggy, you start off small with filling stations being rare. If the thing catches on...then the filling stations start to mushroom.

What *might* happen is that existing filling stations might start to sell alternative energy fuels of various kinds *if* enough alternative cars are on the road.

 

[trysail]

So creating the liquid hydrogen would have to be the culprit.

Your guess was right. There is no natural source of commercial quantities of hydrogen. The only way to get it (in commercial quantity) is to electrolyze water (H2O, of course). The electrolysis of water requires a large energy input (electricity, of course). Where does the electricity come from? Unless you're gonna use nukes to produce it, it requires the burning of fossil fuel (petroleum, natural gas, or coal). Oxydizing one fuel to produce another fuel that you subsequently oxydize, quite obviously, is bound to consume more energy than one reaction.

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

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think I remember that, now. And it was assumed that nuclear power was going to be safe-- unfortunately, the humans that design and build the facilities and occasionally attack those facilities-- they are unsafe.

 

[trysail]

Stella, darlin', I am scared to death that it's going to have to get very cold and very dark in this country before people figure out TANSTAAFL.

 

[3113]

The electrolysis of water requires a large energy input (electricity, of course). Where does the electricity come from?

Running water and dams? Wind farms?

 

[neonlyte]

Your guess was right. There is no natural source of commercial quantities of hydrogen. The only way to get it (in commercial quantity) is to electrolyze water (H2O, of course). The electrolysis of water requires a large energy input (electricity, of course). Where does the electricity come from? Unless you're gonna use nukes to produce it, it requires the burning of fossil fuel (petroleum, natural gas, or coal). Oxydizing one fuel to produce another fuel that you subsequently oxydize, quite obviously, is bound to consume more energy than one reaction.

Yes there is but not yet in commercial quanities. The US government is running trials on 'hydrogen farms' that use naturally occuring ocean organisms that make hydrogen - I can't remember from what but I don't think it was sea water. The research is to establish whether commercial hydrogen farms are a proposition.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Stella, darlin', I am scared to death that it's going to have to get very cold and very dark in this country before people figure out TANSTAAFL.

Such as that "free lunch" we've been chowing down on this whole time...

Even running water and wind farms require lunch money. To produce power in the sheer amount that we need, we honestly stand a chance of altering wind patterns, slowing down ocean currents, flattening rivers.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I did some research on this. Generally, the way the hydrogen Cell works is benign pellets are loaded into the cell. These pellets "sponge" up the hydrogen when is then released on demand to the engine. However, there is some confusion in the article which reads in part, "...capacity of approximately 17.6 lb of liquid hydrogen..." I'm not sure if this means there really is a tank of liquid hydrogen, which seem really dangerous, or if they are using a Hydrogen Cell.

I would be interesting to find out. If it has a liquid hydrogen tank, I doubt it will be allowed on the hiways in the U.S.

 

[trysail]

Running water and dams? Wind farms?

Please don't make me do more arithmetic. Gott in himmel!! I'm sorry, but I'm losing it. Go to:http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6848&contentId=7033471 or http://www.eia.doe.gov/

There, you can find the numbers. The salmon will be extinct if we build the dams of which you speak. Of course, Teddy Kennedy doesn't want wind farms in his precious Nantucket Sound. The ornithologists don't want 'em on mountain ridges. Look at how much energy is produced by the wind farm in the Altamont Pass (one of the world's largest), then compare that number to the energy consumed in the U.S. It's not even a drop in the bucket.

 

[only_more_so]

We do understand that fueling an automobile with hydrogen causes more pollution than fueling it with gasoline- don't we?

The media and politicians (who are, on the whole, hopeless) and an innumerate and scientifically uninformed public are (apparently) ignorant of the laws of thermodynamics. Where do they think the hydrogen comes from?

But the pollution doesn't happen at your car! That's the beauty of hydrogen power, you make the pollution someone else's problem. This is the same reason that California imports so much of it's electricity from other states. If it's generated out of state, then the Californians don't have to put up with the pollution.

Actually you could use nuclear power, geothermal, solar, wind, etc. to generate the hydrogen. Although it is still inefficient at best.

 

[3113]

Of course, Teddy Kennedy doesn't want wind farms in his precious Nantucket Sound.

I know, the Daily Show did a very funny sketch brutally taking Kennedy to task on that stance. Here's hoping Kennedy's defeated on this.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[Weird Harold]

Actually you could use nuclear power, geothermal, solar, wind, etc. to generate the hydrogen. Although it is still inefficient at best.

Inefficiency isn't necessarily a drawback to hydrogen production if the scale of production is sufficient to produce enough hydrogen to meet demand.

Using the electrical output of Hoover Dam to generate hydrogen from the Colorado river wouldn't make enough hydrogen to generate the amount of electricity used, but the hydrogen is much more versatile (and portable) than "Grid" electricity.

Using Hoover Dam's output to make Hydrogen isn't practical for a lot of reasons, but all of the methods you suggest (except nuclear) could be built into huge hydrogen generating rafts soaking up all of the wasted energy the sun beams down onto remote stretches of the oceans. Huge hydrogen filled and powered dirigbles could transport the hydrogen to shore (both in the lifting cells and pressure bottles as cargo.)

Each individual element of the generating rafts wouldn't have to be huge multi-megawatt installations, but could be millions of "bicycle generator" or "home generator" class units that each electrolize a few cubic centimeters of seawater each day... Perhaps someday nanotech will produce gazillions of hydrogen generators that each produce only a cubic micrometer of hydrogen each day for a total of a few trillion cubic meters of hydrogen each day.

Hydrogen generating rafts would be incredibly inefficient in absolute terms, but would operate essentially for free, using either some of the electical generating capacity for navigation and station keeping or using hydrogen fueled engines/fuel cells for that purpose. The net result is that SOME of the energy the sun beams down on remote stretches of oceans would reach civilization to help power it. As things stand now, none of that energy is being tapped which equates to an "efficiency" of zero percent.

(as a side note, I suspect that electrozing sea water on the kind of scale I envision would result in the recovery of a lot of metals dissolved in seawater and the rafts would attract large schools of fish into their shade, so evenually, the hydrogen rafs would produce much more profit than simple hydrogen sales.)

 

[Weird Harold]

What? Nobody wans to tell me how impractical hydrogen rafts would be?

 

[colddiesel]

Boom

Gasoline is dangerously explosive in a closed container. Hydrogen is far worse. I'd have to look at this carefully before I'd even concider a H2 vehicle.

I do not think that is correct because in either case the danger is when they leak or explode. In the case of a leak Hydrogen is safer because it dissipates quickly and rises -away from the source and to atmosphere. Alternatively Liguified Petroleum Gas is much heavier than air and leaking LPG flows downhill to accumulate in a 'pool' which will eventually find an ignition source. I think the resultant explosion is what industry people call a BLEVE which I think stands for boiling liquid explosive something or other. So LPG is the greater explosion risk even though Hydrogen can produce a decent fire.

I wouldn't like to be too dogmatic but my hunch is that hydrogen is the safer material. Any engineers care to comment??

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

What? Nobody wants to tell me how impractical hydrogen rafts would be?

Oops, given the magnitudes needed, there goes the fuel (sunlight) that feeds the plants that feed the plankton that are at the bottom of the ocean food chain.

As Trysail said, TANSTAAFL. The magnitudes of energy required by an industrial civilization are far greater than wind, water and sun can provide, even if expanded on a massive scale. Only concentrated sources like fossil fuels, nukes or possibly geothermal can provide those magnitudes.

Our societies will not accept having taken away the comforts, conveniences and expanded horizons that industrial civilization provides. Therefore, as fossil fuels are depleted we will turn to nukes (and geothermal). The political obstacles to that will be quickly dismanted when the population sees their comforts and conveniences disappearing.

The latest generations of nuke plant are incomparably safer and more efficient that the first two generations. With fuel reprocessing (also constrained in the US by politics) the quantity of waste is tiny (France's is stored in a space the size of a house trailer). With breeder reactors there will be sufficient fuel to sustain our way of life for tens of thousands of years, for every person on the planet.

As Trysail says, hydrogen is just a complicated, expensive and inefficient way of storing electricity that has been generated by some other fuel source -atoms, fossils, or "gravity" (dams). It may be "neato-keen" to certain engineer geeks, but it has no intrinsic advantage over batteries for almost all off-grid uses.

PS. Be patient and gentle, Trysail. There's no reason people should understand the realities of thermodynamics. Powerful interest groups benefit from widespread ignorance of energy fundamentals, and the media exploit that ignorance with articles like the one in the OP (and countless others).

I'm sometimes accused of being condescending here. I'm sorry if I come off that way in this post (and elsewhere). These are my sincere, informed views; they are scientifically sound, and I believe they are sociologically sound also.