Hydrogen vehicles dirtier than gas cars

I'm British.

 

Ah, one of my favorite topics. Excuse me for not even reading the article. Just the title of it alone is something we've known - and many of us have been harping on - for years.

Hey look, I have all my quotes in the wrong order. Oops...

We've had the "clean" technology for cross-country, fast-fill trips for a long, long time. And for some reason, it just hasn't taken off. We already have filling stations, the fuel cost is less than gasoline. While it is technically a fossil fuel, it burns way cleaner than anything else that we burn for transportation. The cars even get white HOV stickers that are still available! The cars cost just a tiny bit more than their gasoline counterparts (vs hundreds of thousands more) and they can be filled in minutes - just like the promise of hydrogen. And yet nobody buys these cars. So if nobody buys the cars I've just described, why would anybody want to buy the far more complicated, more expensive cars that have effectively zero infrastructure?

IF you haven't figured it out, I'm talking about CNG cars. Compressed Natural Gas. If there ever was a test case for how excited people are about carrying compressed gasses in a tank on the car, then CNG is it. Tons of similarities. Just that CNG is cheaper, less complicated, available and has infrastructure. And yet nobody seems to be buying them in any great numbers. Go figure.

This is key. Electricity cannot be branded. Hydrogen can be. Don't you want the Shell H2 with the special additive package?

There are cars now in existance that will go about 300 miles. But just like when they could only go 100 miles, we already had electrics that could beat that. We've had electrics that can go 300 miles for several years. So the range is better... but then you need long range just to drive from one H2 station to another. Remember, you can't just drive home and plug it in. :sigh:

The battery isn't just for regeneration! Typically the H2 Fuel Cell stack just sits and recharges the battery bank. The batteries are where the motive power is stored. The Fuel Cell cannot deliver the energy fast enough for modern acceleration. So a Fuel Cell car is a battery electric that is charged from an insanely expensive and notoriously bad MTBF on-board generator.

 

well i predict that we wont do batteries or hydrogen. instead we will do charge modules (ya, still pitching eestor, EESU's ,etc!!...) that we swap out when dead for recharged ones. 3-5 Kwh modules light enough (15-25 lbs) that a person could easily handle. that can be picked up as easily as a bottle of water at any 7-11 or gas station. our car will have 6-12 slots or so. the car will deplete each module in turn running on as little as 1 module at low speeds, occasionally drawing power from 2 modules for additional acceleration for hill climbing, etc.

now there will still be people who can afford to go and get the big hunking pack that will do 500 miles and have a quick charger installed in their garage at a pretty hefty expense, but most of us wont because we cant afford it and we cant charge it. most of us will have a few modules we might charge every night in our bedroom next to our cellphone charger because we live in apartments where charging directly to the car is not available.

now since these electronic charge storage modules are reputed to last a million cycles, we exchange modules freely since it does not matter whether we get a module that has been cycle 10 times or 10,000 times. and sure, with all this handling and the fact its us un-coordinated humans doing the handling, there will be a time that we will break one. but no biggie, turn it in, pay the charge fee and get a charged up one in a few minutes.

as for me, since the charge leakage is negligible, i will probably opt for the 20 module pack from Costco to make sure that i always have at least 4-5 charged modules sitting in the garage just in case....

now for all of you who think i am dreaming; i have to ask you... why you talking about hydrogen then?

 

Where is this CNG infrastructure? I know it exists for transit, government/fleet vehicles, but I've never seen a CNG fueling station that anyone can pull up to and use. After doing a bit of research, it seems to be more of a west coast thing. On the east, they appear to be mostly private (see DOE list below).

According to DOE, there are at most 1,220 CNG stations in the US. According to the Census, there are approximately 115,000 gas stations in the US.

IMO, the CNG infrastructure is not at the point where you can say that the public has rejected it. There is only one major manufacturer offering a CNG vehicle (which does not appear to be heavily advertised, if at all), and some states don't have a single filling station (public or private).

There are 10 million of these things out there, so if there was a disparity in safety, I'd think it would have been uncovered by now. Obviously this hand-waving isn't sufficient study, but I wasn't able to find anything in a quick search.

Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center: Natural Gas Fueling Station Locations

 

The only exception to this is when energy is converted to a more usable form. For example, nuclear energy is not easy to use at home, but electricity generated from nuclear energy is easy to use.

As for hydrogen, the only place I envision it making sense is as a replacement for chemical fuels in places where they must be used: aircraft, rockets, and perhaps a few other specialized applications.

Tom

 

IMO, it won't bother the oilies. After all ... THEY sell many of the products that often spin the turbines that MAKE electricity, that then generates hydrogen. And their research people, and long term stratigists similarly know that hydrogen as a fuel is a hoax.

Minor problems?
Your kidding, right?
Here's a post from a while back that I saved, so it wouldn't have to be re-written & re-written, again & again (though it seems it still needs to be ) regarding hydrogens failures:

1) Fuel cell vehicles cost an order of magnitude 10's of times more than EVs to purchase. Not only are fuel cell stacks obscenely expensive, but FCVs still require a li-ion battery pack (for buffering), an inverter, and electric motor, just like an EV or PHEV. Plus a hydrogen tank.

2) Hydrogen from natural gas costs 3-6 times as much as electricity per mile traveled. Hydrogen from electrolysis, 15-25 times as much. You'd go farther just burning the natural gas as fuel!

3) Hydrogen fuel cell stacks have half the longevity of modern automotive-style li-ion packs.

4) Hydrogen destroys ozone
5) Hydrogen leaks through almost anything with incredible ease
6) Hydrogen embrittles metals
7) Leaked hydrogen pools in explosive mixtures under overhangs

8) Hydrogen burns rapidly in almost any fuel-air mixture -- 4% to 94% by volume (unlike gasoline vapors, which have a narrow range of 1.4% to 7.6%)

9) Hydrogen readily undergoes deflagration to detonation transitions under atmospheric pressure, something very hard to achieve with most hydrocarbons. And it can do so in a wide range of mixtures -- 18.3% to 59% by volume.

10) Hydrogen ignites with 1/10th the ignition energy of gasoline and is much harder to see, despite burning hotter.

11) The electrolysis/fuel cell cycle takes 2-4 times as much energy per mile as EVs do. Even if the electricity is renewable, that's 2-4 times as many wind turbines, 2-4 times as much desert covered by solar panels, 2-4 times as many dammed rivers, etc.

12) Hydrogen hardly competes on fill time any more. Modern H2 vehicles, such as the Fuel Cell Equinox, take about 25 minutes to fill; EV rapid charging can charge batteries in under
10, and battery swapping in 2-3 minutes. There are rapid fill H2 stations that can fill a tank in 2-3 minutes, but they're not only ridiculously expensive, but since they involve storing large amounts of of hydrogen at ridiculously high pressures, they're extremely dangerous. A failure would mean leveling dozens of city blocks. By contrast, a short on a high power EV charger means you blow a fuse or breaker.

13) Liquid hydrogen, one of the techniques to get hydrogen to have even remotely reasonable density, makes the problems worse; for example, any air accidentally mixed in with liquid hydrogen liquifies/solidifies and can explode with similar properties to TNT.

14) Another technique, extreme pressure gasseous H2, involves pressures of up to 700 atmospheres, an amount that would be extremely dangerous if we were merely talking about air, let alone hydrogen. Naturally, FCV manufacturers boast about how their tanks are rupture proof or rupture-safe. Real-world usage of pressures that high in lightweight tanks thus far says otherwise, especially in the case of manufacturing defects.

15) A final technique, combining pressure with a storage medium, makes the efficiency and fill time problems even worse.

16) Hydrogen barely wins on range any more (when you compare apples to apples -- rather than, say, a $8,000 per month lease FCHV-adv with a Nissan Leaf, or the other ridiculous comparisons H2 advocates like to make)

17) Hydrogen fundamentally *requires* new infrastructure. For EVs, new infrastructure can benefit them (public charging stations, rapid charging stations, battery swap stations, etc), but they're not a fundamental requirement for EVs to be very useful. And the EV infrastructure is cheaper.

18) The FCV industry has lied to the public since the 1970's ... saying, "hydrogen will be ready for prime time in just 10 years". They said it in the 1970's ... the 1980's ... they said it in the 1990's ... they said it in the 2000's and they're still saying it in the 2010's.

Hello !

.

 

Tell me how to get more energy out of the hydrogen than it takes to "make" it and I'll be on board.

Just waitin' for my jet pack!

Icarus

 

In CA. You'll have to excuse me for being CA centric. For now it at least makes sense. It is where the EVs are all introduced, it is where the FCVs are and it is where the CNG cars are. What happens here moves across the nation eventually.

Swing by here for a visit. My nearest CNG filling station (that anybody can use) is literally 3/4 of mile from my house. In fact it is the same distance is my closest gasoline station. And there are four more within 20 miles. Of course within that same 20 mile radius, I also have over 50 public 240V EV chargers at my disposal as well. Again... welcome to CA.

Which means that there are way more CNG statons per car than gasoline stations per car. You can drive all over CA in a CNG car without much problem.

Ah... I'm trying to say more than that. We as a nation (world?) are rejecting it. And we reject it at the same time we think that H2 would be a good choice! It would be simple to build a bunch of CNG stations. And easy to build cars with custom, larger tanks. That gives us almost everything that Fuel Cell cars promise at a tiny fraction of the cost. And 100% of the technology exists RIGHT NOW. We know how to safely store and transport CNG. We know how to use it in cars. We've been using it for YEARS in transportation with very few proglems. All of our busses, and most of our electric utility vehicles and delivery vehicles use it. Private owners are driving these cars by the thousands around here. But we don't push CNG. Why? With all the advantages it has over H2, and the same type of fueling situation... why aren't we doing it? And more importantly... if we don't care about CNG, why are there so many people so darn excited about how well H2 will work? When we haven't even figured out how to make reasonably priced cars or filling stations? My point is that CNG is very similar to H2... but way the heck easier and cheaper... and we're not bothering to make a go of it in the public sector.

I didn't mean to imply that this was a safety issue. Heck, the fuel choice that scares me the most is gasoline! By far.

 

CNG was pushed in WA, but it simply didnt get enough funding to go anywhere other than private companies who elected to pretty much take on the entire project themselves.

i think there was a few token grants to study the option but little beyond that.

 

The idea that they take millions of CUFT of natural gas to convert tar sands tar into liquid oil, to refine it to liquid gasoline (along with the huge CO2 emissions involved in doing so) is crazy! If we are going to burn natural gas, why not burn it directly in the vehicles? It must be more efficient by an order of magnitude!

 

Yes, but who cares about efficiency, or pillaging the environment, when there's money to be made?

 

Hyo,

Right you are,, I am beginning to be convinced that (most) people will only begin to care (and understand) when there is a real catastrophe. What we have is the frog in the pot. By the time the frog figures it out, he's cooked!

 

This IS a catastrophe. Biomass and biodiversity are plunging at rates consistent with a mass extinction. We're liquidating our natural capital as fast as possible and calling it income. But of course, we're all far too busy concentrating on things that really matter. Like tv, sports, and quarterly profits.

 

No catastrophe according to you know who,,,

Too busy denying rather than working towards long term solutions.

 

Gotta go watch the hockey game,,,,

 

Yikes

Where Are The Corpses? Watts Up With That?

 

Proof of point, some folks won't get it until there are corpses. The reality is there already are,, just not in their backyards,, yet. They still seem to be stuck on the difference between climate and weather.