So it looks like we may actually be headed down the road towards fuel cells and hopping off the oil bandwagon in the next few decades. I’ve heard lots of great possibilities about this technology, which seems to be legitimately within reach as opposed to lofty ideals like cold fusion which are, most likely, much farther down the future timeline.
But then a friend of mine mentioned a disturbing factoid, and I wanted to check its validity here. One of the benefits of fuel cells (and hydrogen power in general) is that the “waste” produced is just water, as opposed to all the noxious fumes that shoot out of our car exhausts now. This should help significantly lower pollution and help reverse any greenhouse effect (if there really is one).
Except that he’d heard that large amounts of water vapor can actually prevent the ozone layer from healing itself properly, and that because of that – fuel cells may actually contribute to a larger hole in our ozone layer.
I thought fuel cells were supposed to be an ecologically friendly, economically viable solution that would solve many of our energy and ecology problems. Have I just been deluded this whole time?
Water vapor shouldn’t be a problem. After all, 70% of the earth’s surface is water and half of that is in sunlight at any time - that’s a huge amount of water vapor.
Hydrogene won’t really solve the energy crisis. You would have to produce the vast amounts of hydrogene you’d need if a large portion of cars etc. switched to fuel cells, and usually hydrogene is produced electrolytically out of water (the H[sub]2[/sub]O is split into H and O). This consumes electric energy, as much as the fuel cell will produce later on by re-combining H and O into H[sub]2[/sub]O. So if you build oil-fueled power plants to get the electricity you need for hydrogene production, you haven’t gained anything.
I’ve also heard about the newgative impacts on the ozone layer, but I think the question of producing hydrogene is the more nasty one. There are ideas to build huge solar power plants in the sunny deserts of the world.
Water vapor won’t be a problem. We aren’t “making more water” … we’re taking the hydrogen out of our existing water supply. The article cited by a poster above notes that it’s the hydrogen escaping that might be a problem, much like gasoline or other fuels leaking pollute the air, ground, water, right now.
Producing Hydrogen fuel takes up a lot of energy and there is disagreement on how best to do it … more nuclear reactors, wind power, solar power, or coincidentally upporting thi country’ [coal*](http://balancedenergy.org/) and oil concern by giving them lot$ of blue $ky government re$earch money now to develop “cleaner solutions to making hydrogen”.
Points 2 and 3 are on topic because it points out that we still have to, at this point, ‘pollute’ just as we are doing now to create the cleaner fuel system and infrastructure … for at least the next 20-30 years.
The article doesn’t say what sort of ozone disturbance may occur. Maybe if hydrogen floated up to the ozone it would combine with the ozone to make water. If a gazillion tons of hydrogen gets up there, and if it eats ozone, and if UV doesn’t break up that water to release that oxygen, that could be a problem.
The original worry with freon was that it would cause catalytic destruction of ozone. Hydrogen wouldn’t have that mechanism.
I don’t believe freon ever was a danger. I’m not worried about hydrogen.
First of all, don’t expect a miraculous ‘hydrogen economy’. (I’ll get to the ozone bit later)
As everyone else has said,
Hydrogen is not a fuel source, it’s just a way to store energy – a hydrogen tank does exactly the same thing as a battery. You need electricity to fill both of them, and you get electricity out of them later. A fuel cell is just the converter to get electricty back out of the hydrogen.
The only difference between a hydrogen/fuell cell car and an battery-powered electric car is that current batteries are very heavy and bulky compared to a hydrogen tank and fuel cell, so you can store a lot more power in the tank than the batteries, making a range closer to that of a gasoline tank.
If someone ever invented a fantastic new kind of battery, with enough power storage per weight and no other real drawbacks, there would be no reason even to think about using hydrogen to store power.
So a ‘hydrogen economy’ is ridiculous hype. It’s like saying a ‘battery economy’. Does that make any sense to you? Of course not. We all know you still have to charge the batteries somewhere, using the same options for power plants that we have now : fossil fuels, dams, wind, nukes, etc.
If we converted every car in the country to electric drive (whether battery or hydrogen/fuel cell), we wouldn’t need any more gasoline, but we would need a lot more electric power plants to charge them up with. We wouldn’t be driving for free.
Which is not to say that there aren’t environmental (and some other) advantages to electric drive cars . The biggest is that you do have the option of producing the electricty using wind or something less polluting and war-inducing than fossil fuels. In particular, you can use plants that don’t contribute to global warming. Also, even a fossil fuel power plant is much easier to control pollution from than thousands of cars driving around, and is more efficent at the same time. It’s just not a free lunch to run electric drive cars.
As for potential damage to the ozone layer, yes, escaped hydrogen can damage the ozone layer, but this is really a minor issue that should be addressed in thoughtful designs of fueling stations and so forth, but isn’t a reason to junk the whole idea. It’s not that big an issue compared to global warming, despite what Texaco might like you to believe.
[nitpick]
Gasoline is for the most part a lot more dangerous than hydrogen, and its almost never a problem, so you don’t have to worry about an ejection seat. 2nd, liquid hydrogen is not the was to go, you need it cold and compressed and it takes yet more energy to get it cold and compressed. Hydrides are the most probable solution. You get hydrogen to bond with a chemical that makes it a liquid but still gives it the exploding properties. Much safer and easier.
[/nitpick]
To repeat: Hydrogen is not a fuel; it is an energy vessel. More energy is expended producing and transporting hydrogen than what you get out of it energy-wise. In other words, any car that is “hydrogen powered” is really powered by oil, coal, or whatever the local utilities are burning.
There are only a handful of “true” fuels: natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear, and hydro. Wood might also be considered a fuel. Even possibly windmills (?). Things that are definitely not fuels include PV arrays, electrochemical batteries, alcohol, and hydrogen – these are energy vessels.
I wouldn’t say that photovoltaic “definitely” isn’t a fuel… While it’s true that current PV arrays are horribly inefficient, and take decades to pay back their energy investment, that’s a technological problem. There’s no inherent reason we can’t invent practical solar panels. This is in contrast to hydrogen power, where conservation of energy inherently prevents it from being a power “source”.
I wouldn’t say that photovoltaic “definitely” isn’t a fuel… While it’s true that current PV arrays are horribly inefficient, and take decades to pay back their energy investment, that’s a technological problem. There’s no inherent reason we can’t invent practical solar panels. This is in contrast to hydrogen power, where conservation of energy inherently prevents it from being a power “source”.
I wouldn’t say that photovoltaic “definitely” isn’t a fuel… While it’s true that current PV arrays are horribly inefficient, and take decades to pay back their energy investment, that’s a technological problem. There’s no inherent reason we can’t invent practical solar panels. This is in contrast to hydrogen power, where conservation of energy inherently prevents it from being a power “source”.
As others have said, the hydrogen has to be created from something (usually water). So when you use hydrogen to power a car, the energy you get will, at best, equal the amount of energy it took to procuce it.
Fossil fuels, despite the problems of pollution, refining, international politics, etc have one big advantage. The crude product is already there. Whereas, with hydrogen, there are no hydrogen wells, no hydrogen mines, etc. Another problem with hyrogen is since it is gaseous, a big change might have to occur with the refueling infrastructure. Can gasoline pumps be converted somehow to pump hydrogen? Probably not.
Ahhh but there may be a better hydrogen power solution. An attempt is being made to use hydrogen peroxide to power a fuel cell. This has tremendous advatages. It is easier to manufacture Hydrogen Peroxide than it is to produce pure hydrogen. Second, hydrogen peroxide is a liquid and much easier to transport. Perhaps “hydrogen peroxide pumps” would not require drastic changes from present technonlogy.
Comments anyone ?