Question about hydrogen by product.
As I was slipping and sliding to work something popped into my head.
Water is the by product of the Hydrogen fuel cell car.
What is the amount of water produced and where does it go?
If it is a large amount and it is dumped directly into the air as vapor or directlyt onto the roadway as water, won't this freeze and cause huge ice problems in colder climates.
Just wondering.
Not a problem, for two reasons. First, the volume of output is miniscule compared to the water vapor already in the atmosphere, even at very low temperatures. In fact, the lower the temperature, the higher the vapor will rise before dissapating. Second is the very fact that the output IS vapor, not liquid. Actually, that is a problem, because the heat of vaporization represents energy not captured for productive use, and thus completely wasted.
Hydrogen will NEVER be a fuel, in the sense of being an energy source, on this planet - it does not exist in its free molecular form here, in the way that petroleum hydrocarbons do. But as an energy VECTOR - a way to make concentrated energy storable and/or transportable - it might be useful.
However, consider the fact that if you compress molecular hydrogen to nearly 20,000 PSI - several times the usual pressure of commercial gases - you have the same amount of hydrogen per unit volume as plain old gasoline. I suspect that a pure form of synthesized gasoline, such as pure iso-octane - will become the hydrogen fuel of the future.