Another good reason to stay out of Calif.

One of the neat Cummins things that's currently in development, I only saw blueprints for it, but they're looking at doing an EV propulsion, hydrogen generator where the engine is normally, then a hydrogen storage behind the cab where a sleeper would go.

Super neat on paper, would love to see it executed in real life conditions, I have a feeling it won't work as well as designed. One of the engineers called it an engineering nightmare because they're mixing EV propulsion, with on vehicle hydrogen electric generation.

Talking about hydrogen got me to thinking about the Hindenburg, the **** German Air Ship disaster in 1937.

But today used in a vehicle it would be compressed. Like CNG and Propane is.
What is the BTU and Octane of hydrogen compared to the 2 other fuels?
I know Propane is 110 octane, but lower BTU than gasoline.
I had two different trucks that used propane.
Use to pay $0.16 a gallon for it back around 73.


Edit:
N a z i is another bad word.

Goat

Old Goat said:

Talking about hydrogen got me to thinking about the Hindenburg, the **** German Air Ship disaster in 1937.

But today used in a vehicle it would be comp
N a z i is another bad word.

Goat

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The Hindenburg was designed for helium but there was a shortage and they needed the propaganda airship flying, so it was filled with hydrogen instead. so, you can't blame hydrogen for being misused. that's like blaming propane for a fire from the being stored in Ziploc bags

And... the word "spooky" without the "y" is in "bad" word list too. i tried to say "sp00k horses" and it got censored. because the word is an archaic American racial slur from 80 years ago (that nobody uses anymore). I'll try again: ***** horses (edit: yep)

Nero said:

One of the neat Cummins things that's currently in development, I only saw blueprints for it, but they're looking at doing an EV propulsion, hydrogen generator where the engine is normally, then a hydrogen storage behind the cab where a sleeper would go.

Super neat on paper, would love to see it executed in real life conditions, I have a feeling it won't work as well as designed. One of the engineers called it an engineering nightmare because they're mixing EV propulsion, with on vehicle hydrogen electric generation.

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I thought they were doing a diesel generator with a small 3 or 4 gallon fuel tank all mounted mid truck (no driveshaft since it would have EV motors). They estimated that the diesel generator would achieve significantly higher efficiency because it would run at a constant RPM which is one of the biggest drawbacks of an ICE - having to increase and decrease RPM constantly and instantly is wildly inefficient. I believe they suspected they could achieve around 50mpg effectively, or ~210 additional miles of range. Also, from how I understood it, since the ICE wouldnt be used for propulsion, it would bypass alot of emissions regulations. I dont see why they couldnt use propane or natural gas for the same purpose though and have a much cleaner and more efficient engine, maybe with some reduced range improvement as opposed to diesel.

I know UPS has been using natural gas and propane ICE for decades. The facility I worked at thru my 20s had a natural gas and propane fueling station for their fleets of local delivery trucks that ran on the stuff. When I talked to the drivers about it, they said you couldnt really tell the difference between the gas/diesel/NG/LP trucks, except that the range of the NG and LP trucks was less, especially in the winter. However, they could just fill em up right at the distribution building and it costs a fraction of what gas and diesel cost.

DaveBen said:

I moved to Mendocino County

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Ha. I did the same, part time in SoHum (Lost Coast)… usually towing something right past you on the 101 2x a month…

@ISPKI I haven't seen that yet. Would make sense to use a 2.8 or a 3.4 for that application though.

Something they've done for a while which seems to run well, is a natural gas 9 liter that all it does is run at one speed to run a generator, then uses electric propulsion. See them in a lot of gillig busses. Unsure of the range though.

But it sure is a sportsman's paradise...

Initial idea was for Hindenburg to use helium as a lifting gas because it is not flammable and with that the safest. But helium was relatively rare then and United States had the most of it. Because it was rare U.S. made a ban on the export of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927. Germans designed the airship to use it because they believed that they could convince the US government to license its export. That didn’t happen.

Also the U.S. had it`s own Blimp program going on at that time.
At Moffit Naval Air station north of San Jose on Hwy 101. There is 2 huge hangers that were built for these huge Blimps. Think one was named the Macon.
In around 1943 my Mom`s Cousin talked here into going with her to Moffit for a USO Dance there, that is where she met my Father.

From my experience with propane. I had a 60 gallon tank on the 67 1 1/2 ton truck which was my DD back in the 70`s.
We were hauling 2 horses and all our camp gear from Seal level (Santa Cruz) to the High Sierra up above Sonora, Ca., actually Dodge Ridge area as I remember. we were camping with the twain Hart Horse mens assn. trail ride for a week.

We get up to Sonora and the engine started to loose power at the higher altitude. Kept fiddling with the fuel mixture etc....
Propane just falls on its face at the higher altitude with less oxygen, had not ocured to me at the time.

I wonder how Hydrogen or CNG does at the higher altitudes?


Goat

Hamilton airfield ( san pablo bay ca) also had something to do with them once.
I thik they torched the hangers tho

Clb said:

You must be registered for see images attach

But it sure is a sportsman's paradise...

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Hey now, you got to remember that those things cause cancer in the state of California, just like everything in your wonderful state. But nowhere else…

KansasIDI said:

Hey now, you got to remember that those things cause cancer in the state of California, just like everything in your wonderful state. But nowhere else…

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more like: it's the only state that'll admit it

maybe growing massive amount of plants to help naturally consume the CO2 that we cant clean up 100%.

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If you want to grow more plants, you're going to need more CO2. We have barely enough in the atmosphere to keep plants growing. We'll all be living better when we get more atmospheric CO2.

Old Goat said:

Talking about hydrogen got me to thinking about the Hindenburg, the **** German Air Ship disaster in 1937.

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I did too. For some reason, I thought it was in the 1920's though.

nelstomlinson said:

If you want to grow more plants, you're going to need more CO2. We have barely enough in the atmosphere to keep plants growing. We'll all be living better when we get more atmospheric CO2.

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While I dont know if we barely have enough to keep plants growing, I do know that our planet has greened up significantly over the last 40 years. As the amount of CO2 went up the plants loved it. Many scientists said that due to "global Warming" the Sahara dessert would expand and more land would become barren, but the opposite has happened. More areas now support plant life.

My take on all of this "global warming" is the earth is fixing the high CO2 by growing billions more plants/trees to produce O2. Higher temperatures go along with this. The earth is self regulating to a point, but what is this point? Nobody knows this until we reach the domes day point...