Posted on 08/01/2008 12:29:29 PM PDT by Red Badger
Who wouldn’t like the idea of a fuel cell car running on clean, pure hydrogen, the universe’s most plentiful element? Its byproduct is sparkling, drinkable water, with none of that pesky pollution spewing out the tailpipe. And then if there's any energy left over when you're done driving, why, you could use that car's fuel cell to power your house! We can get rid of gasoline! And fuel cells, hey, they use those in spacecraft, don't they? This is some modern stuff, and at first glance, hydrogen appears to be a viable solution to all our energy problems.
Well, think again. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dumb idea, and those who are pushing them are frauds. They want to advance their own agendas, and couldn’t care less whether their cars are practical or not. They just want to make more money. In fact, their tired ideas for fuel cell vehicles have already been left in the dust by electric and hybrid vehicles, and there are a lot of good reasons why.
Not for Sale Fuel cell cars are available today. But wait, you can’t really buy the Honda FCX Clarity — you must rent it for $600 a month. Why? Because if this wasn’t a publicity stunt, you’d have to buy the FCX for its real cost. The car makers are secretive about how much it's costing to build these vehicles, but you can bet it's well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.
To give you an idea, mass producing a fuel cell-powered bus is going to cost $200,000 extra just for the engine, according to its designers at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Pretty good, though, considering that just two years ago, the average cost of a fuel cell vehicle was a cool million dollars.
This huge cost issue is just the tip of this expensive iceberg. While some companies that are seeking funding for their fuel cell vehicle schemes say otherwise, the cars are notoriously impractical. I smell boondoggle.
Is Hydrogen a Fuel? No, hydrogen is not really a fuel, but an energy storage medium. It's more akin to a battery that soaks up energy when it’s extracted from something else, and then delivers that energy when it’s used. And, it takes a lot of energy to create that hydrogen. The energy must come from other sources, such as natural gas, or elaborate electrolysis using platinum membranes that separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, using, um, electricity. What? Using electricity to make hydrogen that's then turned back into electricity? Yes, it’s the laws of physics at work, where you have to put in energy to get some out. So you must use electricity or gas (or maybe solar energy) to make this stuff. So yeah, it works like a battery, except a whole lot more expensive. Why not just charge up an electric car instead?
Can’t we just mine hydrogen from the ground? No, there's no such thing as a hydrogen well. It doesn’t just gather in one place like oil or natural gas does, but quickly dissipates into the atmosphere because of its simple atomic structure. Because of that number-one position on the periodic table, hydrogen is difficult to store and corrodes pipes. It’s a clever escape artist, and can even slip between the molecules of steel or aluminum containers. So hydrogen can't be stored long-term — it must be created on the spot by stripping it from other molecules.
These fuel cell cars need four times the volume to store an amount of energy equal to that of gasoline. Even though the energy-generating equivalent of hydrogen is lighter than its gasoline counterpart, you need a 60 gallon tank to store the same amount of energy that’s in 15 gallons of gasoline. These cars won’t go far before it’s time for more hydrogen.
Where will you get that hydrogen? The oil companies would like to provide the infrastructure for such a “hydrogen economy.” The oil companies say to you, "No, don’t use electricity from your house to charge up that electric vehicle — depend on the oil company’s filling stations to get where you want to go, as you’ve always done."
Good luck with that, though, because so far there’s just one retail hydrogen station in the U.S. (run by, you guessed it, an oil company), far short of the thousands needed to make this hydrogen economy anything more than a pipe dream. The other experimental stations are nothing but showboat propaganda fronts that expend far more energy than they create. Anyway, the oil companies would be happy to invest in that costly infrastructure, because they know they'll get their money back. But it'll be coming out of your hide, just like it always has.
Plenty of Guff bush_hydrogen_00.jpgThere are a variety of impractical ideas for using hydrogen to propel cars, but they're years — and maybe even decades — from being cost-effective. Most of these schemes seem to suspiciously somehow involve the oil companies keeping their greedy paws in the “hydrogen economy.” To give you an idea, one great proponent of the “hydrogen economy” is energy expert, former oilman and conservation guru George W. Bush.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow We're all for innovation, but the fantasy of cost-effective hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is just a distraction from the real work that needs to be done: perfecting electric and hybrid natural gas/electric vehicles, charged by electricity generated by clean and renewable nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. These technologies are here now, and the associated batteries are getting more efficient at a rate that’s significantly faster than the snail's pace of impractical fuel cell technology. Maybe someday hydrogen fuel cells will be practical for personal vehicles, but not today, and not for a long time to come. Don’t be fooled by the self-serving frauds that keep trying to tell you otherwise.
Yes, water vapor is a severe greenhouse gas........if you believe in such things.............
Just teasing : )
I think most radioactive waste should be recycled.
Still waiting for those dilithium crystals.................
That's because it wasn't under a very high pressure, only enough pressure to inflate the bag. But increase that pressure to several thousand pounds and you get a whole new set of problems...........
Technically speaking, so is gasoline. Fire is a chemical reaction. When something burns, it releases it's stored electro-chemical energy. All flamable materials would fit the author's definition of energy storage media. So, I'm not sure what the author's point there is. Sophistry and word games.
Seems to me that the article is cynicism written for the sake of cynicism. Everything has to start out somewhere. The first computers were really expensive. Now they're not. I'm sure I could go back and find someone who thought they were a con-job too.
Another way to produce hydrogen:
“The prospect of a low cost internal combustion engine powered by hydrogen is not going to happen soon.”
It all depends on the meaning of “low cost” and “soon.”
BMW put a small fleet of their big 7 Series cars on the road, with Hydrogen power. I respect tis company very much, for technical expertise.
A few years ago some people claimed the hybrids were no good. A few still do, but I know a lot of happy owners of Toyotas and Lexus hybrid vehicles.
Today in the case of hybrids, the owners KNOW they are paying more in current dollars. Many can easily afford that. Toyota is can’t build enough hybrids to meet demand.
Toyota and Honda now have several years experience building these vehicles; experience the (former) big three elected to not get, while reaping short term profits from low mileage vehicles.
Tesla and Fisker will have electric vehicles “soon.” They will be high cost, but that may be “low cost” enough for the buyers.
So I wouldn’t rule out hydrogen.
The article has a resentment of oil companies, even though they have supplied excellent propducts at “low cost” and “soon” (meaning to me whenever needed).
I would gladly place the oil companies in line to operate the hydrogen supply system.
I look forward to a small turbodiesel wagon from BMW, Audi. Or how about a turbodiesel-electric hybrid, with say about 80 mpg city? I think that is doable with current technology, and good performance.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming like the Jetsons, but we don't have the tech yet to do some of the things people believe we already can do. Just because they see a prototype running down the road doesn't mean we will have anything like it on the general market for decades.
Oh, hydrogen would work - as an energy storage strategy.
So you have all these windmills whirling madly, but there is only a limited demand on the grid, and you have all this excess power with no place to go (it actually gets reabsorbed in the grid, by forcing some of the generators to go into motor mode).
So, divert the excess power in the grid into forming hydrogen from water and holding it in a compressed storage facility, then when the demand gets REALLY high, use the hydrogen to regenerate electricity on demand. Or to power up road vehicles.
Hydrogen is not, never can be, and never has been, a primary energy source. There is no such thing as a “hydrogen mine”, and hydrogen is so reactive that it does not exist in a free state for long in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, or even in a hydrocarbon gas-filled atmosphere, as it reacts with hydrocarbons to fill out an unsaturated carbon-carbon bond. Hydrogen has the annoying characteristic of forming metallic hydrides with most metals in the replacement series, and metallic hydrides are notoriously brittle and unreliable as a structural component. There are no cheap containers for compressed hydrogen.
The promise of an electric car is still very limited. In addition to the problem of "wear-part" battery packs, there are significant technical challenges to making electric cars appealing to the American public. One such challenge would be bringing the entry cost down to a level where the people most likely to purchase based on fuel economy are able to afford it.
Hmmm. Tesla Roadster or a pair of Porche Boxsters? Or a Boxster and $50,000 in gas.... Boxster MPG: 23 combined. Tesla MPG Equivelant (EPA): 38.
“There being no source from which one can pump hydrogen gas, hydrogen is not an an energy source, but an energy storage medium.”
Actually, gasoline is an energy storage medium as well. The energy in gasoline was originally solar, hundreds of millions of years ago.
(Unless you buy the theory of geosynthesis, in which case the energy in gasoline was originally core heat. Either way, its transference to the chemical bonds that comprise molecules of oil makes gasoline a storage medium anyway.)
Nonsense. My wife and I both work at separate bases, and we BOTH travel in opposite directions, and we BOTH put more than 40 miles a day on our cars.
Haven't made much progress on fuel cells, have they?
It’s always “10 years” away...............
FREE BEER TOMORROW!...........
Why would anyone be on a wagon that's going nowhere?
If you don't believe me, listen to this analyst talking about Ballard Power Systems, once one of the world's premier hydrogen fuel cell vehicle companies:
"In my view, the hydrogen car was never alive. The problem was never could you build a fuel cell that would consume hydrogen, produce electricity, and fit in a car. The problem was always, can you make hydrogen fuel at a price point that makes any sense to anybody. And the answer to that to date has been no."
Hyundai has a fleet of SUVs running on fuel cells now, but the range is still limited.
Natural gas should be used for heating houses, not car fuel.
Hydrogen can be consumed as energy.
Hydrogen is the most plentiful flammable gas in the universe.
Burning hydrogen produces little to no environmentally harmful byproducts.
Hydrogen will burn with as little as 4% concentration with oxygen.
Tell me again, why should we just give up on Hydrogen?
I bet when the rubber hits the road, it's all about profit. Oil generates enormous profits, hydrogen however is so plentiful, it would become a cheap, efficient energy source.
Me thinks it's greed that's inhibiting hydrogen energy research.
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