My Pip Is Dynamite

[IanIanIanIan]

Apropos of nothing, did you know that the PiP Battery at 4.4kWh contains the same energy equivalent as 3.4 kilograms of TNT?

[Bibsy]

Just enough to blow the !Removed! doors off then.

[Cyker]

Are you sure?? That doesn't sound right...

[timberwolf]

From Google, "Convert KWh to Joules" supplied the following

1 KWh = 3,600,000 Joules

From the above we can work out the Joules of energy stored in 4.4 KWh battery:

4.4 KWh = 4.4 * 3,600,000 = 15840000 Joules

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

1 gram of TNT = 4184 Joules

(apparently 4184 Joules is roughly equivalent to the energy stored in some types of NiCAD AA Battery http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.html).

15840000 / 4184 Joules = 3785.851 grams of TNT or 3.785 Kg of TNT.

Maybe people should treat batteries and petrol with a little more respect?

[Cyker]

No kidding! According to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Comparison_with_other_fuels

petrol and diesel have over 10 times the energy content of TNT!

And hydrogen has over 30 times the energy!

Well that's another good reason why we don't run our cars on TNT I suppose...

But clearly Battery tech has a looong way to go - That 4.4kWh Battery weighs, what, 50kg? Vs the 3-and-a-bit kg for TNT or ~300g for petrol/diesel :(
I wonder how many kWh you need to get 600 miles of range and how much would the Battery for that weigh

I can see why motor companies are looking at hydrogen fuel cells again!

[timberwolf]

Yes, amazing stuff, convenient, stable, relatively hard to ignite the liquid - just a shame that we are running out of it, and they have been saying that for as long as I can remember!

Has someone discovered a cheap, efficient way to make Hydrogen, if not I can't see it being the fuel of the future?

[Cyker]

Hydrogen is terrible if you think of it as a fuel but if you think of it as energy storage like a Battery then it makes more sense.

The least wasteful way so far is using renewable energy sources, e.g. solar, wind etc., and electrolysis to extract it from the atmosphere; It's far more wasteful to use nuclear and fossil fuels to generate hydrogen.

If someone can find a catalyst to extract it then they will be rich!

If we ever put aside out differences and start expanding into space tho' it'll be less of a problem as we can setup an entire new industry extracting it from gas giants like jupiter and saturn, or maybe even the sun! Alas I doubt we'll see that during any of our lifetimes...

There is a lot of exploration into fuel tech tho; For instance, there is that thing in one of James May's documentaries that can create diesel using the sun and atmospheric CO2 (The main problem is it has quite a low yield and requires quite strong sunlight to work), and another one that makes it using garbage and bacteria.

Then there's all the biodiesel stuff...

[timberwolf]

I imagine one would go to a gas station and refill the hydrogen tank, to me that would be similar to going to a petrol station today, therefore I think of it as fuel. I find it hard to think of the manufacturing of Hydrogen as being equivalent to recharging a Battery.

[Cyker]

I just mean if you imagine that instead of charging up a prius with electricity, you can charge your fuel cell (Or whatever) with hydrogen, then the ridiculous amount of energy it takes to extract hydrogen seems less bad.

It'll be interesting from a safety point of view too as hydrogen is really tiny and actually leaks through most materials unless they are made very thick!

Personally, I don't want to ever have to attach a hose to my car to fill it with hydrogen! We've seen enough idiots set off petrol vapour fires in fuel stations; It would be much easier and much worse with hydrogen! They may be able to fool-proof it, but you know the saying about god making a better fool

My ideal world scenario would be to have sealed pre-filled and standardised fuel-cell modules, maybe about the size of a briefcase or something, and they are just swapped out with fresh ones, with more energy demanding vehicles just taking more of them?

That brings its own set of issues too (Like where to store all these modules!) but at least the chance of exploding death will be a lot less!