Monday, November 26, 2007

India spearing into Space age with ISRO and TATA's Fuel cell car

TATA and ISRO tie up to propel INDIA in to the space age, this time its not the rockets but the automobile. Tata in alliance with ISRO is gearing up to bring out the prototype of hydrogen based CAR. This Car would run on hydrogen and the exhaust would be JUST water vapour. This is the reason why it has earned the title of "World's most Greenest car"

The technology behind hydrogen based:
Though burning hydrogen releases lot of energy , we are not doing this in the case of hydrogen [Fuel cell] based Cars. (we don't need a bomb behind our cars! do we?)

Making it work is as simple as combining Hydrogen with Oxygen to form water. Believe me this is what is done. During this process electricity is generated and this is used to propel your car.

Below is the ppt which I presented to my class during my engineering , back in 2005





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The technology sounds simple but practically its not that easy to achieve.There are few points to be considered before jumping to a conclusion.
  1. Do we have the required infrastructure to supply hydrogen as fuels to individuals.[Only NASA can afford hydrogen to run its Space expeditions]
  2. Safety. How safe we are? carrying highly flammable element very close to us
  3. The Cost of the system.

This initiative from TATA and ISRO is for prototyping. If you have plans of buying a car , and would want to wait for this prototype car, then i have some suggestions .You not wait for this, because as of now a Hydrogen based car would cost some where around $40,000 !!!




India with such bold initiatives is surely shining. Lets hope India would be the role model for all the 3rd world countries to embrace the new technology and bring down the pollution rate.

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