re: hydrogen

[Joe Elliott <jee@domain.elided>]

At 5:04 PM -0500 2/27/02, alfa-digest wrote:
>Assuming this or some similar breakthrough were to happen: what would it be
>like to drive a hydrogen-powered Alfa? How would that work?  What kind of
>powerplant would the car need?  How would that affect drivability?  And
>assuming for a test of the fuel in use now the cost of the fuel were not an
>object, is there a working hydrogen fuel engine now?

That's the beauty of hydrogen as a fuel.  Conventional, 
designed-for-gasoline, internal combustion piston engines can run on 
hydrogen with little or no modification.  I started converting a 
lawnmower to run on hydrogen a few years ago, but never finished the 
project, and I forget what was involved.  Storing hydrogen on the 
walk-behind mower wouldn't have been practical though.  Of course the 
downside is that hydrogen really isn't an enery source, so much as it 
is a means of storing it.  Since there isn't hydrogen lying around to 
be mined anywhere, we have to produce it by splitting water.  And 
that takes electricity, which has to be generated....

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