Jump-starting hydrogen car dream - Schwarzenegger to Seek $54 Million for Fuel Stations, Grants

Mercury News ^ | May. 23, 2005 | Paul Rogers

[calcowgirl]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will advocate that California invest $54 million in public money to help build a network of up to 100 hydrogen fueling stations statewide within five years, according to new details of his "Hydrogen Highway" plan.

A team of more than 200 scientists, automakers and environmentalists spent a year drafting the 144-page document, which the governor requested last year, calling hydrogen-powered cars a way to reduce smog, slow global warming and wean the nation from oil.

The "California Hydrogen Highway Blueprint" is set to be formally unveiled Thursday at a Sacramento news conference, and is posted on the state's Web site. If state lawmakers approve funding, California would move ahead of the 13 other states pursuing hydrogen initiatives.

The plan concludes that California can help speed a national transition from gasoline vehicles to environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel cell cars -- whose tailpipes emit only water vapor.

The money would provide matching funds to industry to build up to 100 hydrogen fueling stations in the Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. Because 39 already exist or are planned soon, 61 new stations, at a cost of about $1 million each, would need to be built by 2010, the report says. Funding also would provide state grants to automakers of $10,000 per vehicle.

"The idea is that if you build it, they will come," said Alan Lloyd, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. "You have to lay the groundwork."

Schwarzenegger in April 2004 called for up to 200 stations 20 miles apart on major freeways.

(snip)

Supporters of the plan include automakers and energy companies, with tentative endorsement by some environmentalists. Yet skeptics say broad use of fuel cell vehicles is still decades away . . .

[calcowgirl]

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

For more information, go to www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov.

[Brilliant]

peanuts compared to what it's actually going to cost.

And geez.... It sure is a good thing that Teddy Roosevelt invested billions of dollars in gas stations at the turn of the 20th Century, or we would not have them today.

[joesnuffy]

Hydrogen fuel systems..terrorist dream come true...

Drill Alaska and off the CA coast-

[.38sw]

Water vapor, water vapor. Lemme think. Isn't water vapor a greenhouse gas?

[Cvengr]

Elsewhere on the web, we are reassured that the Hindenberg thingy was just a myth. Referenced at the http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/17apr_zeolite.htm site ..

"Most hydrogen concerns stem from the Hindenburg disaster of 1937. The hydrogen gas that once filled the Hindenburg zeppelin did burn, but it did so quickly, upwardly, and away from the people below. When the airship was docking, an unexpected electrical discharge ignited the airship's canvas (which was unknowingly treated with two major components of rocket fuel!) The clean hydrogen flames swirled above the occupants of the passenger compartment, and all those who rode the airship down to the ground survived. 35 of the 37 casualties perished from jumping to the ground, and most other injuries resulted from diesel burns.

I can hardly wait to have all that power beneath my rear seat...

[glorgau]

Amazingly, the article never mentions Bush's plugging of the Hydrogen concept a couple of years ago.

[Feiny]

More Corporate Welfare.

What does Warren Beatty have to say about this?

[calcowgirl]

Amazingly, the article never mentions Bush's plugging of the Hydrogen concept a couple of years ago.

Yeah, it does. Unfortunately, the leftists think it's not enough!

Bill Magavern, a Sierra Club lobbyist in Sacramento, criticized the Bush administration's $1.2 billion hydrogen research program, calling it a smoke screen to avoid raising gas mileage standards now. But because California already has laws requiring automakers to build hybrids and reduce greenhouse emissions by 2009, the Schwarzenegger blueprint may make sense, he said. The plan calls for 20 percent of hydrogen to be made from renewable energy by 2010. Magavern said he would like to see 50 percent.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Did'ja miss the part about water vapor being a greenhouse gas? That plus the good ol' fashioned hydrocarbon combusion emissions (1 ppm radioactive?) making the hydrogen. How 'bout the integrated pollution from building this new infrastructure?

Sorry, I'll keep my 50 mpg diesel VW Jetta TDI. See my 'tagline'.

[Drew68]

Hydrogen cars are a scam. While hydrogen is the most plentiful substance in the known universe, the only way to obtain hydrogen for fuel is from natural gas, a very expensive process.

I wonder whatever happened to the concept of solar-powered cars? When I was in college in the early 1990s, my roommate was an engineering student and participated in a cross-country race of solar-powered cars. Granted they were small and slow but they were built by engineering students. One would think that the technology to make them powerful and efficient would not be too far away.

Of course there is little money to be made in petrol dollars from cars that run on sunshine.

[spokeshave]

"Hydrogen fuel systems..terrorist dream come true... "

LOx tanker + half a dozen H2 cars = major conflagration

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Next thing you know he'll want to blow up the moon to prevent PMS.

[alloysteel]

It will be much more effective, in the long run, to develop catalytic refineries to reformulate natural gas into Diesel fuel (gas to liquid technology, GTL).

Diesels (compression-ignition internal combustion engines) are vastly more efficient than spark-ignition internal combustion engines, for a couple of reasons. Diesels would run perfectly well on methane fuel alone (as would the spark-ignition), but they may run at a considerably higher compression ratio, which improves the thermodynamics, and with adiabatic expansion of the burned gases, the heat loss through the cooling system is much reduced. Turbocharging the Diesel, using the exhaust stream to compress incoming air through the induction system, raises the efficiency of the Diesel even further. When combined with an efficient transmission gearing system (or the hybrid internal-combustion engine and electric drive systems) that keeps the engine speed within a very narrow range, it is possible to tune the Diesel for peak efficiency, yielding what appears to be almost fantastic mileage by today's standards.

Build the GTL refineries on floating platforms out at sea, where the methane is being recovered, either from deep-water natural gas wells, or from Methane Hydrate mined from the ocean floor, where it exists as an amorphous solid at depths of 1,000 to 3,000 feet, and the water temperature never rises above about 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is estimated that there is perhaps a thousand times more energy captured in these accumulations of Methane Hydrate on the ocean bottom, than all the other known and estimated reserves of all other fossil fuels combined. And it is constantly renewing, as more anaerobic decomposition of organic materials goes on all the time.

[WHBates]

Not to mention the fact that playing around with Hydrogen could have some nasty consequences.

I haven't kept up with they latest delivery mechanisms but having work around large battery banks and O2 generators I think the safety aspects shouldn't be minimized.

[elmer fudd]

"I wonder whatever happened to the concept of solar-powered cars?"

Not a practical idea. A large solar panel might produce 190 watts and your typical car could only have maybe 4 panels like that on it. So with everything being optimal such a vehicle would produce about 1 horsepower.

Now if your talking about an experimental vehicle with an aluminum frame riding on high pressure bicycle tires on a flat track out in the desert at about 10 mph, then yes, it will work. But a 2000 lb. automobile in real world conditions, no way.

[GOP_1900AD]

What a waste. He'd be better off promoting more diesel cars and trucks, then, provide incentives for bio diesel.

[GOP_1900AD]

Amen!

[LegendHasIt]

$54 million MIGHT, just might, build a total of 7 functional hydrogen stations In Kaleefornya.... assuming all goes perfectly.

[Little Ray]

Gasoline is far more energetic than Hydrogen. There is a MUCH bigger boom in your gas tank than there would be in a hydrogen tank of the same volume. A hydrogen tank of the same mass would be about 12 times larger and would still have less explosive potential...

[3niner]

Many comments.

Yes, it is easy to build hydrogen powered cars, but the question remains, "Where to get the hydrogen?".

It can be cracked from methane, but methane is a hydrocarbon and cracking it releases carbon, which will end up getting combined with oxygen to become CO2. Better is to break water molecules, but this takes a large energy input.

Burning fossil fuels to get the energy simply moves the problem to another place (while sacrificing efficiency to conversion losses). There simply isn't enough "extra" energy available from hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, etc. sources to do the job. Can you say "nuclear"?

Of course we would first need to eliminate the pervasive anti-nuclear religion, before we could power America's cars with hydrogen gas.

That said:

Yes, water is a greenhouse gas. No, not to the extent of CO2, and water has reached a saturation level in the Earth's atmosphere. Have you heard of "rain"? A tiny amount from automobile exhaust pipes (compared to what evaporates from the oceans), would have no measurable effect on global warming. Assuming you think that's a problem.

Yes, there are solar powered cars, but learning a bit of math and physics will help you understand why they will always be "small and slow".

Hydrogen is far less dangerous than most people believe. Hydrogen (compressed and chilled, so that it can be transported as a liquid) is carried around the country by truck. Sometimes there is an accident where the tank is ruptured. This is far less likely to result in fire, than an accident with a gasoline tanker.

A tanker full of liquid hydrogen will normally evaporate and disperse in less than a minute, while gasoline will make a large liquid spill. Gasoline will often end up running beneath the engine, where the fumes can be ignited. Hydrogen "fumes" go up FAST, they don't normally get anywhere near the tanker's engine.

Yes, hydrogen can make a great motor vehicle fuel, but people need to understand that it is a secondary fuel, it still needs to be created from some primary source.