Inspired by this http://www.unitednuclear.com/h2.htm website, what is an accurate estimate of when we will all be zooming around in hydrogen powered cars? Is the technology mentioned on the site really that far-fetched? Especially interesting are the “hydride” cells - are these feasible?
IMO, the problem with hydrogen for powering vehicles is that, unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is not an energy source but only an energy storage medium. That is, when we burn gasoline, we get the benefit of energy that was stored by natural processes millions of years ago at no cost to us (other than the pollution created by burning it, but that’s another subject).
We don’t get hydrogen for free. We have to make it, and making it takes energy that will probably come from burning fossil fuels at an electric power plant. So “clean” hydrogen is not all that clean. If you can make your hydrogen from solar electricity (which at the moment is not very likely or cost effective) it will be clean and free, but otherwise there’s no real environmental advantage to using hydrogen.
No cite, but I believe that hybrid gas/electric cars have the potential to be cleaner and more efficient and release less net carbon than hydrogen produced by conventional power plants.
Possibly never, if thermal depolymerization or some other method ends up as a cheaper/easier energy storage method for automobiles.
All the technology on the site looks pretty good - no blatent violations of physics, all of it seems pretty practical - the cost seem about in the right range, though they don’t mention how much it would cost to create the hydrogen if you don’t have your own windmill or solar panels. Also, I disagree with their assement that carrying around compressed hydrogen would be all that dangerous.
I believed this too until recently. However, one of Honda’s hybrid refuelling centers in California uses only hydrogen cracked with solar power. Honda estimates that something like 600 vehicles per day could be fully refueled if the center ran at full capacity, and at a profit, no less.
Profits can be misleading. I strongly suspect that Honda makes a profit off of that place not by selling hydrogen, but through the advertising it provides for them (they are, after all, primarily in the business of selling cars). There’s no theoretical reason that solar power can’t be economical, but given the current efficiency of panels and the energy cost to make them, it’s not there yet.
The problem of transitioning from the gasoline powered engine to the hydrogen powered engine is another problem. We have the technology to manufacture the H-cells, and the fuel for them.
As far as the safety of compressed hydrogen cylinders go, most industrial cylinders are safe enough to be stored in a residence. I don’t know how that stacks against transporting them in a personal vehicle.
On a sort of connected note; I saw a prototype hydrogen vehicle recently (I think it was fuel-cell/electric, rather than internal combustion or turbine - the entire workings of the vehicle were packed into an 8 inch layer that formed the entire floor of the vehicle, the controls and instruments were entirely ‘by wire’, meaning that switching from left to right-hand drive was as simple as undoing a couple of bolts and moving the steering device. The body shell was completely and easily removable and could be interchanged with other models (such as pickup-style, station wagon, light van convertible types).
Of course, it’s a prototype, so some/much/all of the stuff there is just a flight of fancy, but it was interesting nonetheless.
This is not true; most of the commercially produced hydrogen today is refined from natural gas, so it is very much a fossil fuel. Production of hydrogen by the electrolysis of water is a very inefficient and expensive method of production, and until the price of natural gas rises significantly, hydrogen will remain a fossil fuel.
Hydrogen can work. There are prototype cars running around Hydrogen has HUGE efficiency bonuses for cars. Using internal combustion engines, only about 30% max of the chemical energy of the petrol (slightly more for diesel) is used to turn the cars wheels. The rest is noise, heat, etc. Hydrogen is close to 80% because fuel cells have no moving parts and create no heat. efficient. The technology behind hydrogen is expensive; but that will change. Petrol engines have had over 100 years of development now, so it will take time for hydrogen to catch up. I would say in 15 years hydrogen fuel cells will be common.
As statedabove, the main problem with fuel cells is the production of hydrogen. It either has to be mabe from hydrocarbons, electrolysis, probably powered by oil power plants. A lot of effort is being put into developing efficient and clean hydrogen production methods- it probably willl be accomplished sooner or later. Hydrogen also has storage problems; its a gas so it needs a lot of storage space, and is explosive.
Well, as Will Rogers said, it’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I don’t know where I got the idea that hydrogen today has to be split electrically, and I didn’t know or forgot about the natural gas connection. Thanks, Fear Itself, for correcting me.
However, (trying to save my position here) it seems to me that pulling the hydrogen out of natural gas (a hydrocarbon) leaves all the carbon behind. Does that carbon go into the environment in the separation process, or is it also collected and stored? If the latter, then there is probably little or no benefit to hydrogen vs. burning natural gas in the car, which I believe can be done somewhat more easily than refitting for hydrogen. (But as has become painfully clear, I’m not as well-informed on this topic as I’d like to be, so I could be all wrong about that, too.)
As George Gordon, Lord Byron said, “To my extreme mortification, I grow wiser every day.”
There has been some talk of cracking water biologically - some bacteria produce hydrogen as a by-product of photosynthesis - if this ability could be engineered into bacteria that feed on, say, sewage, then it could supplement the hydrogen requirement at the same time as being part of the normal water treatment process.