Propane is more viable at the moment, the supply network for it is already qite extensive, it gives performance similar to gasoline, and people are already used to using it in gas grills and such so it would be less “alien” for them to use
Gasoline is much more dangerous than hydrogen.
Not only can hydrogen be generated from any fossil fuel, it can also be generated from wind power, hydro power, solar cells, you name it. Anything that will make electiricity will make hydrogen. But it will take a long long time to build the knod of infrastructure that is needed for hydrogen cars and I still don’t expect to see them in significant numbers, not in my lifetime anyway.
Kindly do not confuse the Great Satan of the Coal Power Plant Industry with the Great Satan of the Petroleum Industry, even if some of the company names/divisions are the same. Every single owner and operator of a coal power plant that I know - some of them personally - would be tickled pink to have electric cars and hydrogen powered cars become prevalent in society. Both of those processes would increase electrical usage overall, under just about every practical scheme I’ve seen.
Wind power has been suggested as the energy source to extract the hydrogen from water. I’ve heard the author of this site as well as others discuss this proposal. A Google search for wind power will produce other sites.
Does anyone know the expected miles/per gallon we’re supposed to get from hydrogen? It could change the perspective of it, if it was say 2000 m/g, althouh if it was 70 m/g that’s much better but not extraordinary. Hybrids would be just as good would they not?
Question: where’s this hydrogen coming from? There’s lots of speculation (I’ll pick on Hari here, just 'cuz of proximity):
But what’s the raw materials? Electricity can’t just generate H from nothing. Where are we getting it? Water? It seems to me that that is still a bad idea - contrary to popular belief, water is not a renewable resource. It’s recycled, yes, but it’s non-renewable. There’s only so much of it on this planet (yes, I’m aware that it happens to be a lot, but it’s still a finite amount). Aren’t we just trading one non-renewable resource for another?
Bah - anything to get us off a petroleum-based economy. That hasn’t scored us any points either.
Snicks
Water is renewed in the working of a fuel cell: Hydrogen + Oxygen --> Water, yes?
If it’s recycled, how can it be a non-renewable resource? Hydrogen reacts with oxygen inside an engine (or fuel cell), turns into water vapor and eventually ends up as rain. It’s not destroyed. If we ever run low on fresh water, there’s always desalination.
Could we use LiAlH4 or NaBH4 instead of pure hydrogen in
fuel cells? It might be a pain since they might deposit solids on the
electrodes.
Here is a plan to extract hydrogen from sewage:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992230
and here is a plan to extract hydrogen from sugar:
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/08/28/hydrogen_plants020828
Bingo.
As it stands now, a “hydrogen powered” vehicle is actually a coal powered vehicle, or whatever the local utility plant uses for fuel…
Why don’t we just plant a huge electrolysis apparatus on top of
a bigass geothermal/solar/wind electrical plant?
We need not depend on fossil fuels to obtain the vast amounts of hydrogen we need to switch from gasoline. Nuclear power would be ideal for this application, with NO emissions of greenhouse gasses. Geothermal/Solar/Wind will never be able to provide the quantities of electricity we need to supply all of our domestic needs.
I think the real answer to your question is provided by the answer to the question:
“Why don’t we have bigass geothermal/solar/wind electrical plants supplying our electricity right now?”
Una
because they’re not constant. However, hydrogen doesn’t have
to be produced constantly.
And cost doesn’t enter into that…?
I was referring to “recycled” as in the evaporation -> condensation water cycle we all learned about in grade school. Many people confuse this cycle with the idea of a renewable resource. Water isn’t. For example: we use the resource of trees to make lumber and paper, among other things. Are we worried about ever running out of wood with which to make these things? Largely, no. We can plant more trees when we need to. Now, take a pint of water. You use this pint of water to wash your dishes. Somehow, this now dirty washwater is saved and cleaned at your local sewage plant. It’s reusable, yes, but there isn’t more of it - you still have a pint of water (perhaps even less due to losses in processing). And we can’t make more water cheaply and efficiently - we can only recycle what we do have.
This is my point - there’s only so much water on the planet. If we start breaking it apart into H and O, we’ve “destroyed” a quantity of water. It’s gone. If the H and O in our fuel cells don’t combine to make as much water in the finished product as was lost in the original decomposition, we’re losing water. Using it up, as it were. Given enough time, we’ll be in the same situation as now: huge demand, but only so much of a given resource.
Thanks, Maxwell, for the sources of additional hydrogen. Sewage - now there’s a renewable resource!
Snicks
The are also not very cost effective either- both fossil fuel and nuclear plants are more effcient at large scale power production than solar or wind, and geothermal is only practical in certain areas.
I think Bush’s big push in this area is a red herring to remove the pressure to mandate more fuel efficient vehicles. As has been pointed out by many posters, these vehicles, though admirable in many respects, are not the answer to the world’s pollution problems.
Taste the meat, not the heat!