Richard Casady wrote:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:28:36 -0400, hk wrote:

several times I've heard about a "large tank of hydrogen under the chassis."

First place, the chassis is a thing of the past. Today there is just a
welded together steel box. There isn't room for any large tanks. Maybe
a bunch of small ones.

Casady

My car and many pickup trucks have a chassis, though you are essentially
correct. Too bad...frames are a good thing.

What's the differentiation between a large and a small tank of hydrogen
in this instance?

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On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:04:52 -0400, hk wrote:

My car and many pickup trucks have a chassis, though you are essentially
correct. Too bad...frames are a good thing.

I have a truck and a Lincoln Navigator and both have frames, but we
were discussing cars, I thought. There are no more cars with separate
frames that I know of.

What's the differentiation between a large and a small tank of hydrogen
in this instance?

I would call the usual size the welders use too large. The idea is to
avoid intruding into the passenger volumn too much and still have
reasonable ground clearance and center of gravity. It isn't actually a
show stopper, although enough range might be hard to get. High
pressure cylinders are very heavy for what they hold, and small
diameters are favored from a strength standpoint, while the big ones
that won't fit are possibly more efficient from a weight standpoint.

If you have a lot of hydrogen, the thing to do is use it to
hydrogenate Canadian tar sands so that you can get a reasonable yield
of gasoline or other light products. If you break a ring there are
vacant sites for a hydrogen and I would guess the stuff contains a lot
of rings. Canada has lots of the stuff and they are developing it as
fast as they can.

You can also use it to make hydrocarbon fuels from coal. The US has
enormous ammounts of coal.

Casady