I understand hydrogen fuel is a realistic alternative to at least a better form of fuel for cars and at most a source of energy for homes. The preparation process while complex, is no more complex than the process to prepare petrol from crude oil.
Honda have created a car with does run on hydrogen. It has been proven to work.
Why are we not advancing to this fuel, continuing instead with electronic cars which need charging (using fossil fuel?) and hybrids which when you scratch beneath the surface leave there own environmental footprint.
Is the motive technical, political or something else?
Hydrogen for these purposes isn’t a power source, it’s a storage medium. As such, it runs into pretty much the same problems as electric cars - it’s still dependent on charging off the grid which generally is fossil fuel heavy.
The big advantage electric has now is that we have a pretty big electrical grid. It’s not perfect for car use certainly - there aren’t quick charging stations on the road like gas stations, nor do most parking lots have charging stations - but we’re closer to having that than we are to having hydrogen filling stations across the country. There may also be a safety issue to hydrogen that someone else can cover because I’m not too familiar with the real risks with current storage methods.
where do you think we get hydrogen now? mostly electrolysis of water (which requires a lot of electricity, which comes from fossil fuels) and stripping hydrogen from hydrocarbons (again, fossil fuels.)
there aren’t just big pools of elemental hydrogen out there waiting to be tapped. any method used to try to mass-produce hydrogen will have environmental footprints of their own.
Reminds me of the editorial letter some old codger wrote to the local paper the other day. Something along the line of “I saw an experiment in high school years ago how about you can separate hydrogen and oxygen in water with mere electricity. Why aren’t we doing that to solve our energy problems? Those idiots at the Department of Energy don’t know a thing!”
IIRC, if you do the math on the amount of energy required to split water to get hydrogen is more than the amount of energy that is derived from the hydrogen itself.
Simply, right now the hydrogen that would be used in cars would have to be made using fuels or other energy sources that are easier to run cars and other things on anyway.
If you could figure out a cheap, safe, non-polluting way to manufacture lots of hydrogen that doesn’t use stuff we’re already burning anyway, you could get really rich really fast.
one issue raised (from TV embassy features) is standardization and infrastructure. several countries have already workable HFC cars. japan already leases then within tokyo. germany made one that ran a record 5,000 kilometers without a breakdown. american designers have also gone similar distances. but how does one decide on the system of a HFC car for marketing? will it be pressurized H gas in a reinforced tank or in liquid form? at what level of pressure? what’s going to be the shape of the adapter and nozzle for re-fueling? who’s going to put up thousands of H-gas stations around the continents (don’t count on the car makers to do that)? who’s going to put up a humungus nuclear-powered H-gas plant to supply half a continent and how on earth are they going to distribute it?
Well, technically, the same is true of gasoline. The difference is, gasoline/fossil fuels have been produced over eons and are relatively abundant (compared to hydrogen) in places where we can get at it cheaply - for now.
To the OP:
The main reason hydrogen is interesting is that it can be produced fairly easily (though AFAIK not especially efficiently) and then stored for a long time and transferred in bulk. The storage and transportation part is important when you consider cars; it takes a lot of energy to power a car and chemical batteries take a long time to charge and they’re heavy. Compressed hydrogen on the other hand is relatively light, dense in energy and can be pumped around very quickly (similar to gasoline).
The main problem with hydrogen is that we can’t just dig it up. There’s not a lot out there where we can get it. We have to make it if we want to use it on any useful scale. To make hydrogen, you pretty much have to rip it off some existing molecule. That takes energy. More energy than you get back by burning it. Basically, hydrogen is a pretty good storage and distribution medium for energy, if you have a steady but unportable source of energy laying about (see Iceland’s take on this; with their geisers and dams) but it’s just not a source of energy in itself.
So we should not use hydrogen because it’s produced by electrolysis using the grid, which is fossil fuel heavy, but we should use electric cars, which are charged from the grid? At the risk of getting into GD territory there, if you have a point behind the distinction you draw there, it’s escaped me.
Actually I joined the thread to make a similar point, but in favor of hydrogen as a fuel. IMO, hydrogen does not have to itself be a net energy source, all it needs to do is come close to net neutrality (i.e., producing it consumes little if any more energy than it produces).
The point is that the world must move away from oil as a fuel at some point, not as an environmental or policy sort of question but as a physical constraint – there will come a time when there is virtually no easily accessible oil left. Whether this is in ten years, 50 years, or 500 years makes no difference to the basic statement.
Most “energy” (as opposed to “chemical”) uses of oil can be substituted for by other energy sources. But one major use is as a vehicle fuel: not just cars but trucks, locomotives, motor vessels, etc.
As a practical matter, electric and hybrid vehicles are now feasible – but strict electrics are good only for relatively brief use within populated areas, not long-haul or heavy-cargo operation. Hybrids are somewhat better but do use fossil fuels, just more sparingly than those exclusively powered by them.
What hydrogen is, is portable. It can be produced wherever there is sufficient electric generating capacity and water. And it can be used in independent vehicles going anywhere. By itself it is not a solution. As part of a process of moving power generation away from fossil fuels, it has a definite place. The porper way to measure it is in “avoided costs”, much like recycling programs rarely pay for themselves in recycled goods, but definitely do so in reducing the amount of landfilled waste. By itself hydrogen as a vehicle fuel would idealistically be a net-zero contributor, more practically a small drain on the power production grid. But in avoided cost as against oil, it becomes beneficial.
And solar, why not. If we can get there, I’m all for it. The point as far as the OP is concerned is; you still have to “make” the hydrogen. ETA: and if you make the hydrogen with electricity, and then use the hydrogen to make electricity, it’s always going to be more efficient to use the electricity directly if you can.
The point is that current (e.g. feasible) methods don’t solve those problems. Why would we tear up the infrastructure at great cost just to change the way we store energy? Hydrogen is not an energy source. At best, it can be a better battery.
Not correct. The biggest difference is that gasoline is a net energy source (i.e. you receive more energy from burning it vs. what you expended to obtain it), while hydrogen is an energy vessel, much like an electrochemical battery.
These days modern wind farms experience frequent periods when they produce more energy than the grid can take, and the turbines either get shut off or the energy is dumped.
Could wind farms be good places to use excess (free) energy to make hydrogen?
The sun is the source for gasoline. The gasoline is just the storage and it will run out a lot quicker than it can be produced. We can probably go on in this way a couple of rounds.
In its basics, hydrogen is the same sort of thing as batteries: You have to expend energy at some point to put it into your storage medium, and that energy presumably comes from wherever the electrical grid is getting energy. Once you understand that, then there come the practical questions: Which one is more efficient? Which one can store more usable energy in something that fits in a car? Which one is safer? Which one is easier to refuel?
To the first question, batteries (or capacitors) are much more efficient, and only getting better, while hydrogen is pretty much a mature technology, and isn’t likely to improve much at all. To the second, hydrogen is currently more energy-dense, but capacitors are likely to surpass it. To the third, I don’t think sufficient studies have been done yet to say, but my guess would be that hydrogen is more dangerous: Not because it’s flammable, but because it would have to be stored under high pressure. And to the fourth, it depends on how you’re refueling: It’d be easier to fill up from a hydrogen station beside the freeway (since it’d take hours to transfer that much energy electrically), but home refueling would be easier with electric (just let it charge overnight).
