Hydrogen Powered Cars! HA!

1/25/2002 | John Jamieson

[John Jamieson]

Hydrogen Powered Cars! Yes, When the Lasts Drops of Crude Are Gone!

John R Jamieson MIT67, NASA67-94 retired

It seems like a great idea at first glance. Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth and burns very cleanly. It contains more energy per pound than any other fuel.

At second glance, things are a little less encouraging. Most of the hydrogen on earth is already burned! The oceans are the ashes of billions of years of hydrogen fires. The hydrogen is tightly bound to oxygen atoms and must be separated from those atoms before it can be used again. Using electrolysis, the hydrogen can be separated from the oxygen by putting in exactly the same amount of energy that will later be retrieved when the hydrogen is burned. Hydrogen, made from water, is thus an energy storage media like a battery, not an energy source. Neither the separation nor the recombination of this reversible process can happen at 100% efficiency. Waste heat is generated during each process. Because most of our electricity is generated by hydrocarbons, we would still be using hydrocarbons to run our cars. The inherent efficiency of the electrical energy generation process (about 40%) times the expected efficiency of the electrolysis process (about 50%) would indicate a hydrogen fuel price of about 5 times the price of fossil fuels.

The second major source of hydrogen is directly from hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons contain both hydrogen and carbon; about twice as many hydrogen atoms than carbon atoms, but since a carbon atom weights 14 times more than a hydrogen atom, much more carbon by weight. When we drive our cars today, we burn about 5.3 pounds of carbon and .7 pound of hydrogen per gallon of gasoline. Hydrogen plus oxygen equals water, good; carbon plus oxygen equals carbon dioxide, bad (the same stuff we exhale!). If we could breakdown natural gas, methane, gasoline, or fuel oil to separate the hydrogen from the nasty carbon (on which all life is based) and sell the huge piles of carbon for enough to pay for the separation, about 3 gallons of liquid or an equivalent weight of gas (about 18 pounds) would yield about 2 pounds of hydrogen, which is the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline or 6 pounds of natural gas. Remember that burning the carbon would not be allowed. We could make diamonds with it. The net result is that hydrogen fuel cannot, ever, be made for less than 3 times the price of fossil fuels.

OK, what if we just ignore that fact that we can’t make hydrogen economically. What do we do with it in an automobile? The logical answer is we burn it, in the same cars we’re driving today. Internal combustion engines basically don’t care what provides the heat. There are a few minor problems: How do you seal up the leakiest substance known to man? How do you store enough in the car to go 300 miles? What happens in a freeway crash? Etc. But, these little issues can all be solved. IC engines will need water injection to lower peak cylinder temps so we don’t make nasty NOX, but that technology is pretty well understood. Oh, but wait a minute, IC engines are nasty and unacceptable! Enter the miracle solution: FUEL CELLS!

FUEL CELLS work! There is about a $100,000,000 worth of them on each Space Shuttle generating the equivalent of almost 36 horsepower. Coleman just announced a real commercial home power generator that puts out 1.2 kilowatts for only $7,995 (Plus $100 per hydrogen canister that lasts for a few hours). GM just drove its latest fuel cell vehicle “Hydrogen1” on an “endurance test”, 230 miles from LA to Los Vegas. They only had to stop 7 times for more hydrogen. Many other companies built fuel cell cars and tried to go along, but didn’t make it. Zero to 50 was only 18 seconds.

The US department of energy recently set a goal of only $400 per kilowatt (about a horsepower, figuring electrical controller and motor efficiencies) for STATIONARY APPLICATIONS BY 2015. Won’t they be surprised that Detroit is planning affordable family fuel cell automobiles by 2010! If Detroit gets to magic $400 per horsepower five years early, and makes it small enough and light enough to go in a family car, you too, could be driving a 200 horsepower family car for a little over $100,000 that “burns” hydrogen costing you $5 a “gallon”. What a deal! You’ll drive it with pride knowing that your leaving no bad stuff in the air of your immediate area, while increasing the pollution of the poor people that live next to the power plant outside of town by a factor of 3 and increasing the importation (and probably the price) of Arab oil by a factor of three.

All this negativity aside, there is one and only one way to cheap automotive fuel, clean air and energy independence for this country. The answer is a massive, nuclear energy economy, probably fusion (hydrogen) powered. Hydrogen used for fusion generates power thousands of times more effectively than burning it with oxygen. A national effort equal to the Manhattan project or the Apollo program could develop fusion-powered electricity (and cheap hydrogen for automotive fuel) within 25 years. Then, we can truly say, we’re driving clean, fusion-powered cars. Electricity could be as cheap as 2 cents per kilowatt-hour and hydrogen for our cars, 40 cents per “gallon”. It is the only solution to the problem that has any economic, political, or engineering viability.

In the meantime, burn all the cheap Arab oil you can get and keep supporting the development our own fossil fuel sources for the day when we decide to shut the Arabs off!

[Old Professer]

I'm not disagreeing with you generally; you had carbon as 14, 1KW as 1HP when it normally requires nearly 2HP, and 1 gallon of gasoline the equal of 2 pounds of hydrogen (since hydrogen has, gram for gram about 41/2 times the energy as gasoline, 2 pounds of H would equal about 11/2 gallons of gasoline in the combustion process) hydrogen separated from gasoline would yield about .188*6.6 pounds or 1.24 pounds H.

[The FRugitive]

Make ultra-safe Nuclear reactors and we have unlimited clean burning fuel for cars.

[John Jamieson]

Calculate the cost per gallon saved yourself. Play the purchase cost diff (vs Echo), extra taxes, extra interest (either lost or spent), extra insurance etc. against the fuel saved. $11 is about right if you don't have to replace that battery.

I workedup the spreadsheet about a year ago and then bought a new computer. It's on my old machine.

[John Jamieson]

Interesting estimates from Edmonds website:

5 year cost of ownership (includes all costs, 15,000 mpyear)

Toyota Echo .30 $/mile
Toyota Prius .40 $/mile
Honda Accord DX .33 $/mile (much bigger, nicer car)

[John Jamieson]

If the country real cared about cutting Arab oil sales the following things make far more sense.

1. Stop burning fuel oil for low grade heat. No oil burning furances (use gas, coal, nuclear electric, etc).

2. Stop burning fuel oil in the remaining power plants (use gas, coal, nuclear).

3. Stop burning fuel oil in ANY stationary engine. (same)

4. Increase the effeciency of all commercial vehicles (they can more easily repay the technology investment because they travel 5 to 10 times as much).

5. Save the oil for cars and recreational vehicles.

THE WHOLE CURRENT APPROACH IS UPSIDE DOWN.

[John Jamieson]

I can't agree with you about Iraq. We should have finished it the first time. We only get a few percent of our oil from them anyway (12% from the whole Gulf). The place would make a nice parking lot for our extra SUVs.

[John Jamieson]

Not for everybody. It's about the same size and weight as the old VW Beatle. I thought the technology was pretty amasing. I'd take a 50 mpg Cadillac based on the same technology.

[John Jamieson]

1 kilowatt is 1 horsepower at normal electric motor eff. Hydrogen is only a couple pounds per cu feet even as a liquid at -420 degrees.

Glad to hear that you don't really disgree with my overall argument. Too many people accept what they are told by people selling stuff. Common sense usually will win.

[John Jamieson]

67 was a great year!

JRJ MIT67

[jackbill]

And the last thing, what to do with millions of tons of "used" fuel rods ?

Recycle them, as the French and others are doing. And as we would be doing except for the peanut farmer.

[Old Professer]

1 kilowatt is 1 horsepower at normal electric motor eff. Hydrogen is only a couple pounds per cu feet even as a liquid at -420 degrees.

Bear with me here, since 746 watts=1 HP, then 1000/746=1.34 HP ideally; efficiency losses brings us to between 1.5 and 2 HP depending on engine used and fuel efficiency.

One cubic foot of any liquid is 7.48 gallons, are you sure of your temperature for liquid hydrogen? I get -431(-257C) from Langes.

[John Jamieson]

1000 watts used at 74.6% eff makes 1 Hp.

-42X is what the liquid hydrogen was in the Shuttle external tank. It's very dependant on pressure. Ours was always boiling.

[TheHydroBaron]

I recommend Roy McAlister, president of the American Hydrogen Association. After looking into Hydrogen and why it hasn't been made a reality, I came across the individual previously mentioned. Although I thought purchasing three of his DVD's and his book would be another dead end an associate and I converted a small lawn mower engine's carburetor by removing it and feeding a Hydrogen fuel line directly behind the intake port. The mower runs just as good or even better than when it was on gasoline.

[Fiddlstix]

.....Hydrogen, made from water, is thus an energy storage media like a battery, not an energy source.....

Very true.

Question: Why just use the hydrogen? Why not use the oxygen too?
In other words, build an engine with "injectors" of some sort and inject the proper amount of hydrogen and oxygen into the combustion chamber.
It seems to me like that might increase the efficiency of the overall process as opposed to just using the hydrogen and "throwing the oxygen away" as it were.

Just asking.

[John Jamieson]

Because there is lots of oxygen floating around to use. The nitrogen in air helps control the maximum temp reducing cooling problems. No eff. increase to using pure oxygen.