Abe Hertzberg and a research team at the University of Washington in the late 1990s had come up with a new concept car that was green and could complement the electric cars. They call them the LN2000, which is powered by liquid nitrogen…
The LN2000 is, in fact, powered by vaporizing liquid nitrogen, while the overall operation is quite like that of a steam-driven engine. This extremely cold liquid nitrogen is warmed up and, as a result, undergoes a tremendous expansion to produce enough pressure to run an air motor. This process generates no pollutants, as the nitrogen expelled by the exhaust pipe is supplied back to the air, which is, in fact, composed of 78% nitrogen…
When compared to the electric car, several benefits are associated with the LN2000. It not only has the viability to offer a competitive range and performance to that of electrified vehicles but also at a relatively lesser price point and service time.
The fuel tank containing liquid nitrogen is equally massive, holding about 100 gallons, but it remains lighter and smaller than batteries employed in electric cars. The refueling of a liquid nitrogen car only requires a few minutes, as is seen in contrast to the charging of an electric car.
It’s an interesting concept. But really far from ready for prime time. And I have my doubts that it will ever be ready for prime time. For a few reasons:
As far as range goes, I suspect that there is a bunch of wishful thinking going on there. The pressure needed to maintain a good cadence of “moving metal” to power the wheels is substantial, and the pressure will go down as the nitrogen is depleted (that’s a rule of physics, not a design issue).
As far as efficiency goes, again, I have grave doubts that this can ever be more efficient than relatively inexpensive electric motors. That’s because of all the moving parts required, moving parts means friction, and friction means heat, and most heat generated while causing mobility is wasted. Even electric motors generate some heat that is usually wasted.
As far as maintainability goes, again, all those moving parts, and all the parts under extreme pressure are much more difficult to maintain than simple electric parts. Not only that, but for electric there are almost always fewer parts, and fewer generally means less can go wrong.
The article says they are limited to 22 mi/hr, so they have a VERY long way to go development-wise. Unless their target market is replacing golf carts (they mostly run on propane or on battery).
I really dislike when those who compete with EV technology have to stretch the truth in order to make some sort of point (maybe it’s to help them raise money?) Many competing technologies, including this one, often bring up the “slow charging” issue. But if you look at the totality of fueling a vehicle, you will quickly realize that it is a red herring, and mostly nonsense. I’ve explained it in many other threads here. For most EV owners, fueling an EV takes less than 15 seconds a day for 50-51 weeks a year, and a few tens of minutes 1-2 weeks a year. Over the course of a year, fueling an EV takes MUCH less time than fueling an ICE vehicle or a Hydrogen vehicle or a Nitrogen vehicle. Even when I had a good priced gas station catty corner to my office, it still took an 7 to 12 minute detour in the morning or in the afternoon to refuel, and that was once every single week. Sometimes twice if I drove a lot that week. And this is without even mentioning that various places still give you a little free fuel while at their establishment (grocery store, movie theater, top golf, some employers, etc) and parked in their parking lot. Though, I don’t expect that extra, unexpected, benefit to last very long as EVs become more popular, but it is still a side benefit that I haven’t seen with any other fueling technology.
Cost of fueling. The cost of using electricity to provide power to move is extremely efficient already today, and may marginally become even more efficient with improved technology. Meanwhile, all the other things used to produce power to move appear to be substantially less efficient, even if they can improve efficiency by 10 or 20% every few years, it’ll take decades to just catch up to using electricity (which may itself be improving over those decades).
I’m with you, and I’ve said the same things myself, BUT this is true if and only if you can charge where you normally park. If you have go to a specific location to charge and wait, then it becomes much more of a factor.
Where are people going to refuel? Do we need thousands and thousands LN stations to be built? Do they make it onsite (inefficiently) or do they produce it at a central site and truck it to LN stations? Or pipelines?
Getting electric chargers has been difficult enough and electricity is already (sort of) everywhere.
This goes in the too hard pile. Does everyone remember the air car. Just ran on compressed air. How did that work out?
Hydrogen engines. Now nitrogen. These are just vain attempts to divert attention from the BEV. People complain about inadequate electric charging infrastructure and say “this is better! Fill a hydrogen tank in just minutes!” without realizing there is zero infrastructure for hydrogen (or nitrogen). It solves NOTHING.
Looking at route planning in my ZDX to go from Austin to Wichita Falls is perhaps the worst case. It is a 280 mile trip, so really really stretching a single charge of 300 miles. So you have to charge at least once en route, and then when arrived before you head back. I have one route via I-35 with a recharge in Waco and Denton, but is a longer route than the normal 281 route and adds 50 minutes for charging alone. Once I get SuperCharger access I can do the normal and shorter route with 281, charging up in Hamilton. Then charge overnight at the hotel. That is acceptable.
It’s just as annoying when those who are fans of EV tech stretch the truth to make a point.
Fueling an EV in 15 seconds a day (not including vacations or longer trips), glosses over the fact that you are only counting the personal time and not the time the EV takes to charge. To get away with that 15 seconds requires you to charge your EV where you work or live, so that the EV can be connected to power for up to several hours. There are an awful lot of people who do not have access to that amenity.
The reason most people who own EVs actually spend that brief amount of their personal time attending to charging is because they DO have access to charging at their home or work. Those who do not have access are not buying EVs at this time. They are opting to stick to ICEs instead.
Can that dynamic change over time? Yes. But we’re never going to get to the point where the vast majority of people have such access. Many workers work out in the field at different places each day - or multiple locations daily. They will likely never have access at work. Those living in rented housing do not have control over access to charging where they live. They are dependent on landlords to provide that access, and without some sort of incentive, many never will.
Yes, that’s why I said “for most EV owners”, and did not say “for all EV owners”. If you live in a place that doesn’t have adequate ability to charge, then it is likely that an EV isn’t for you. At least not yet. But all ICE owners need to go somewhere to fill up, none of them have a gasoline pump in their garage, not even a slow pump. The same presumably applies to hydrogen and nitrogen, unless there are plans to somehow pump hydrogen or nitrogen to homes and apartment garages.
Hypothetically, some company might come up with a device that would allow people to make liquid nitrogen on their own. N2 is the largest part of the atmosphere. They already make home oxygen generators for breathing. Nitrogen shouldn’t be much more difficult. You do need to chill down the N2, so it condenses to a liquid (-321 F). Water vapor in the air is going to cause ice formation first, but there are ways of dealing with that.
But the whole process is going to take energy. Because of the thermodynamics, you will never get as much energy out of the process, than what is put into it. It will always be a thermodynamic loser. To tell the truth, batteries are thermodynamic losers, too. You have to put in around 120 kwh, in order to get 100 kwh out of a battery. TANSTAAFL.
Home hydrolysis units for making your own hydrogen from water would be a bigger challenge, IMO. Hydrogen is potentially more dangerous than nitrogen, as demonstrated in the old news reel about the zeppelin Hindenburg.
I don’t know that anyone in this thread claimed a vast majority.
But the nationwide average is just under 2/3rds of homes are single family homes. 2/3rds is a pretty large majority, at least in elections.
And more than 2/3rds of the population (and thus car owners and drivers) would seem to live in those homes since it stands to reason than more families of one would tend to rent apartments. So maybe close to 70% of adults live in single family homes.
The average number of cars per single family home is about 2 and only about 1 for apartment renters.
So maybe someone can do the math…maybe 75% of cars are parked in single family homes?
And at least some apartment renters have access to workplace charging.
So is more than 75% considered vast?
Of course, not every single family home will have the ability to add an L2 charger and the number vary regionally. (west coast is greater and northeast is lower, for example)
How many of these homes do you think will install a LN station?
How much energy goes into liquifying the nitrogen?
How much energy goes into keeping it cool?
Compare the cost of the infrastructure vs.the electric grid already in place.
Hard indeed!
Are the volumes comparable? I think cars would use much more nitrogen than humans oxygen.
To tell the truth Lithium-ion batteries are generally at least 95% efficient, meaning that 95% or more of the energy stored in the battery can be used. This is higher than lead acid batteries, which are typically only 80–85% efficient.
In nuclear power plants the reactor fuel generates 100 Mwh of heat to create steam, but the steam process only produces only 33 Mwh of electricity.
I’m sure there were similar thoughts in the early days of ICE. As more and more people get EVs, there will be pressures on work places, rental owners, apartment building owners, and the like to provide charging. Will it be there next year? No, but it may come fairly quickly since the electricity is already there.
Yes, it is indeed entirely possible. But it brings up the general problem of Hydrogen and Nitrogen. You could spend $10 of electricity to generate enough hydrogen or nitrogen to drive 50-80 miles … or you can spend $10 of electricity to charge a battery that can drive 250 miles. The net efficiency when using multiple conversions of energy from one form, or one storage form, to another, usually results in lower overall efficiency. Sometimes those energy penalties are accepted due to valid engineering reasons (almost anything related to space travel), but most of the time they are done for political reasons (ethanol, etc).
Exactly! (I should have read the whole thing before commenting above!)
Yep. But so far, batteries appear to be more efficient energy storage (for moving vehicle at least) than other clean alternatives. That was kind of surprising to me, but I suppose that once they were able to manage some of the heating/cooling issues, it may have been inevitable. I wonder how much of a jump the next battery technology will give us? Maybe solid state batteries will be both lighter and slightly more energy dense? But even if they aren’t, the increase in durability will likely be worth it in any case. I hope we see them in the real world soon!
As time goes by, it isn’t just single family homes anymore. I’ve seen new apartment complexes with chargers, and not just a token junky 2 charger station from chargepoint, but rather a whole section of reserved parking for tenants with EVs. And, surprisingly, many of the places like this can be found not in places where you would typically expect (like CA), but rather in the middle of Charlotte, NC … really, in North Carolina!!!
But as I advise anyone who asks me, if you don’t have a place to easily charge on a regular basis at standard electricity prices (or lower), then don’t get an EV yet. It will just end up being an expensive annoyance for you. One of my kids has access to free charging at work, so they bought a used EV 3 years ago, and over the entire 3 years only charged at home a handful of times, and just recently upgraded to a new and nicer EV a few weeks ago. But if you can’t charge at home overnight, or at work during the day, then most likely an EV isn’t the correct choice for you.
Not every SFH can add a good L2 charger (32 to 48A/240V), but almost all can add an L2 charger of some sort. The simplest solution is to simply shunt the dryer power source, so you get 20 to 24A/240V which is sufficient to charge the car overnight in almost all cases.
Those things aren’t too hard. You can move it by truck just like you would gasoline. And you can make it anywhere. It is easy to make, you could make it right at the filling station, or anywhere you have a parking lot. You don’t need to drill for oil and refine it and everything that goes along with that. Much simpler in that regard.
But the laws of thermodynamics have the final say. This will never pencil out economically. It will always be much more expensive than using the electricity directly and there is nothing anyone can do about that.
Sure.
But solar can already charge a car battery. So the important question is how much energy is lost producing the LN compared to how much is lost charging a battery (this is about 12%, typically with an L2 charger)
Wrong. That is for compressed nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen will continue to boil and replace that pressure. (This is a phase change just like water boiling.) It does require a source of heat to continue to boil. But its so cold, most air is fine. Just needs to circulate. And of course the heat exchanger will be covered with ice from water vapor condensing.