Showing posts with label Hydrogen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hydrogen. Show all posts

Monday, March 03, 2008

The Hindenburg redux!

I'm sure they didn't use any shellac in this one, right? Right?

Photobucket

A "zero-emission" sports car with a top speed of nearly 100mph is set to be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.

The hydrogen-powered Lifecar, based on the design of the Morgan Aero-8 roadster, produces little noise and only water vapour from its exhaust.

The lightweight model packs advanced fuel cells and an energy storage system that gives the car a range of 250 miles (400km) per tank of hydrogen.

It has been developed by a consortium of UK companies and universities.

"Figures suggest the car should be capable of doing 0-60 [miles per hour] in about seven seconds," Matthew Parkin of classic sports car manufacturer Morgan told BBC News.

[snip]

"The basic concept was to build an entertaining and fun sports car that would act as a showcase for the technology and would deliver 150 miles to the gallon," said Mr Parkin.

"Everything else has tumbled out from that."

The car is powered by a bank of lightweight hydrogen fuel-cells developed by UK defence firm Qinetiq.

"If you took a typical internal combustion engine and replaced it with a fuel cell, the fuel cell would be very large," explained Ian Whiting of Qinetiq. "That's not an efficient way to do things."

The fuel cells in the Lifecar produce about 22 kilowatts - roughly one fifth of the amount of power of a typical combustion engine.

"With that we can provide all of the cruise capability we need to," he said.

When the car needs to accelerate or climb a hill it draws extra power from a bank of ultra-capacitors aligned down the centre of the car.

First I want to see how it handles a crash ... Then I want it in black.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Shades of the Hindenburg

Gansu, China (AHN) - At least 60 students were accidentally injured when hundreds of balloons exploded at a school in China's northwest Gansu province, report said Monday. The incident happened in the provincial capital, Lanzhou, at the school's opening ceremony of a sports event. Dozens of students suffered burns when almost 1,500 small balloons filled with hydrogen, caught fire and suddenly exploded.
Helium wasn't available, I take it?

Update: an example of the type of explosion you'd get from just one balloon.