Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike (which pike?)

New York Times ^ | Nov, 29, 2014 | (The Editorial Board)

[Olog-hai]

The once-distant promise of clean, affordable hydrogen-powered cars is starting to become a reality. Several major automakers, including Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, have started or will soon start selling these cars, which will be more expensive than comparable gasoline models but a lot cheaper than they were just a few years ago. Executives at Toyota say that the cost of making the critical components of hydrogen vehicles has fallen 95 percent since 2008. […]

The broad adoption of hydrogen-powered cars, which emit only water and heat, could play an important role, along with electric vehicles, in lowering emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants responsible for climate change. […]

Most hydrogen today is created from natural gas in a process that generates carbon dioxide. But scientists say fuel cells are still good for the environment, because making hydrogen produces far fewer emissions than burning fossil fuels. Hydrogen could be produced more cleanly by using alternative energy sources like solar and wind power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And it can be generated from renewable sources like sewage and animal waste. …

[thackney]

The technology works.

The economics don't. The technology has not been a problem for a long time. We have used hydrogen in industrial process for decades. But it isn't even close in price to the energy from refined products.

[thackney]

Let me know when methane cars get here.

Do you have time machine? Go back a decade or two...

[freedumb2003]

>> Hydrogen gas has a poor energy density.<<

So did my ex-wife...

[thackney]

Methane is probably the most economically available source of H2.

It absolutely is. It is the reason 95% of the hydrogen used today in industrial processes is steam-reformed from methane.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/chen1/

[cripplecreek]

Exactly. Until someone comes up with some magic to crack the Hydrogen from Oxygen as needed, its little more than a novelty for cars.

Hell I wish they would come up with decent fuel cell tech for home use.

[thackney]

Where do you get the idea hydrogen vehicles don’t work. They are in use today.

Any of those vehicles used by government functions, funded by tax payers?

Most Americans are not looking for another, more expensive source of fuel.

[353FMG]

At what pressure will the H2 tank be and what is the material, so as to prevent hydrogen blistering?

What can we expect to see when high-pressure H2 tank ruptures during collision?

How do they prevent H2 leakage? Car designers should talk with petroleum reformer designers.

[ptsal]

Alway fun and educational to give a topic a good hard twist. Then watch the comments flow...

Fireball !!!

Maybe hook-up a fleet of hydrogen engines to the solar generators out in the desert between Blythe and Palm Springs.

So far, Google has failed to produce the power needed to make payments on their government subsidized loan.

[Olog-hai]

All the questions that liberals cannot answer, too.

Hydrogen gas storage is the most problematic of all flammable gases due to also having the highest potential for leakage.

The hydrogen tank explosion in Mannasas VA last year was quite spectacular. Terrorists would love to be responsible for something like that.

[Olog-hai]

Don’t forget the fuel cell buses that a lot of transit agencies put out there for show. They would be shocked to learn that their “zero-emissions” bus that emits “only water from the tailpipe” is emitting the one true and actual “greenhouse gas”.

[thackney]

If hydrogen production facilities could be combined with remote solar/geothermal/wind/etc. power generation facilities, its use could become feasible/economical.

So you believe if we take expensive forms of electrical production, like wind and solar, and combine it with expensive hydrogen production, used with expensive compression, storage and distribution, the sum will somehow become cheap?

[thackney]

So is gasoline.

No. It is easy for gasoline vapor to be too rich to ignite. If not diluted down to 7.1% concentration with air, it will not ignite. The lower flammable limit is 1.2%

https://www.mathesongas.com/pdfs/products/Lower-%28LEL%29-&-Upper-%28UEL%29-Explosive-Limits-.pdf

[thackney]

with the opening of the hydrogen mines

You meant that as a joke?

[norwaypinesavage]

I have been an automotive engineer for a year less than a half century. If needed badly enough, I could modify a commercial automobile run on hydrogen, in my garage with available parts. What I can't do, is efficiently acquire hydrogen, or then store it safely and effectively in my automobile.

Hydrogen cannot be turned to liquid form at ambient temperatures. It can only be stored at very low cryogenic temperatures, or at vey high pressures. Even at 10,000 psi, which is unrealistic for reasonable cost, hydrogen occupies seven times the volume of gasoline (for the same amount of energy), NOT including the tanks. There is no known technology to make cryogenic hydrogen storage safe in a collision.

Making hydrogen from water consumes much more energy than it produces. Making it from hydrocarbons produces at least as much CO2 as it saves. Even when it is produced, the infrastructure to get it into your car does not exist. Even if it did, the cost of getting the infrastructure in place would cost trillions.

Besides all this, there is no catastrophic global warming.

[dhs12345]

What about the fact that we are comparing a gas with a liquid and the fact that a gas is dispersed with the oxygen and more likely to consume all of the fuel a lot more quickly.

[thackney]

Hydrogen is also a very difficult element to bottle up and transport, as it reacts with the material of a pipeline, forming a metal hydride, or it simply seeps out through the molecular structure of any synthetic material, say like Teflon, or most plastic materials, as the hydrogen is the smallest and lightest of elements, and easily fills in the interstices that exist in virtually every other molecular structure.

While hydrogen adds a complexity (cost), it is not a barrier. We have had hydrogen in industrial services for decades, even hundreds of miles of hydrogen pipelines.

A new 180-mile-long pipeline is being constructed to connect to existing Louisiana and Texas hydrogen pipeline systems. This integrated pipeline system will unite over 20 hydrogen plants and over 600 miles of pipelines to supply the Louisiana and Texas refinery and petrochemical industries with more than one billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day.

[PIF]

Of course, with Obola closing down all the coal-fired electrical plants to prevent man-caused climate disruption, the power needed to crack the water molecule in volume will be either prohibitively expensive or give the choice of hydrogen for vehicles or electricity for light and heat ... which is one reason this zany idea will fail.

[mikrofon]

(Laughing Gas? NOO ...)

[The Great RJ]

Drive by any corn ethanol plant on a cold day and see the massive amount of steam being released..water vapor being a powerful green house gas

[dhs12345]

I think that we are missing the important point here.

Gasoline is a liquid and hydrogen is a gas. Both react with oxygen to produce energy. Actually, gasoline has to be atomized in an engine by a carb or fuel injector in order to burn efficiently.

The problem with hydrogen is that, because it is a gas, it much more easily dispersed and therefore more likely to react with all of the fuel being consumed in an instant. Depending on the available oxygen, of course. Only the surface area of a liquid like gasoline is exposed to oxygen and therefor the reaction should be a lot slower.

This is why grain elevators are so dangerous. The grain particles are dispersed within the medium that has oxygen (air). And grain is not that reactive with oxygen as hydrogen.