Hydrogen Powered Oil Solution?

How do you view hydrogen powered vehicles as far as them being a solution to America's oil conservation? It seems to be the direction that some auto companies are going towards. GM and Ford are currently experimenting with this technology.

 

Hydrogen isn't a solution at all.

Hydrogen is NOT an energy source, It is simply a (very lossy) storage medium for energy. Producing hydrogen takes far more energy than you get back by burning the hydrogen, unless you take the shortcut of "reforming" hydrogen from fossil fuels like natural gas, which does nothing to get away from fossil fuels in the first place.

Hydrogen makes sense only when you have very specific constraints (like as a propellant/fuel cell reactant on spacecraft), or an unlimited source of free, clean energy to manufacture H2 from water. Even then, you would get more energy efficiency by using the free power to charge batteries for electric cars....

 

I agree with Ellis about hydrogen being an engergy transfer system rather than an engergy source.

I am not as negative about its properties as a "battery." It is clean to make or use. Refuling is much easier than either charging or exchanging batteries.

No, sorry hydrogen is not a simple solution.

Solar is a good "free" energy source. And I hope that fusion energy gets better soon. When/if the oil crunch happens (like maby now) its going to get ugly. Very ugly. Our modern world runs on petroleum and.... well; picture the Iraq war without the pretext of "spreading democracy."

 

The trouble with hydrogen is how to make hydrogen. The most favourable solution is to separate it from water however this requires large amounts of electricity. This just means that the power stations produce the pollution not the car. Oil is another solution, although you stil release CO2 but not as much an internal combustion engine and it could be done with curtrent infrastructure so thats a possible interim measure.

My personal belief is that in the long run hydrogen will be the fuel, derived from water. Probably using traditional power stations at first (including nuclear). Switching to fusion and solar in the very long term all both these methods have fundamental physical issues to overcome ifrst.

 

I've read where scientists are experimenting with using bacteria and algae, that can make hydrogen from sunlight and are looking for ways to generate hydrogen from nuclear and solar power.

 

I cant think of any bio-chemical process that produces hydrogen in any large quantities. There almost certainly are some, the trouble with bio-reactions is that what the reaction generates isnt always what is finally emitted from the organism and hydrogen is quite reactive.

As for getting hydrogen from nuclear power I cant see how that works. Nuclear power uses very heavy atoms and breaks them into smaller ones. However atms lighter than Iron wont 'fiss' (is that a word? if not it is now). So I guess using nuclear would involve generating electricity and breaking up water. Again im not sure how you could get water from solar without first generating electricity. I guess you could use light to liberate hydrogen from something but you end up destroying your cell, im struggling. In the long run getting it form water is the ideal solution. In the short term there are other solutions that are more environmentally friendly then what we do now but not perfect

 

Generating hydrogen from solar or nuclear power is a trivial issue. Electrolysis of water is all that is needed once you have electrical power available (from PVs or a nuke reactor).

The problem is that the generated electricity could give more "bang for the buck" by being used to charge storage batteries to power vehicles, rather than being used to generate hydrogen to run fuel cells or IC engines.

Hydrogen has a LOUSY energy density, especially compared to liquid hydrocarbons. Storing it is a real PITA, either requiring high pressure storage tanks (as a gas) or cryogenic temperatures (liquid hydrogen).

Lots of info on the basic math involved in different energy sources:

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/energfun.pdf

 

Ellis, Are batteries up to the task of being charged and discharged as freqently as need for cars, trucks etc or is the search for a better battery still the big block that it has been.

 

I have a lot to say on the subject, but I'm just not feeling it right now.

Ellis is right, H2 itself isn't very energy dense at all, it's the lightest element... It'd be better to burn wood in your car.

But nobody's saying you actually put H2 in your car.

And nobody can deny that H2 cells work... for larger applications they work beautifully...

http://www.dodfuelcell.com/phosphoric.html

PEM cells, or another smaller scale hydrogen cell (IE car size) still have some kinks to be worked out before they're going to be adopted by the market, but I think most people who understand the premise behind PEM cells are fairly optomistic.

Anyway, I'm tired... I'll post some more later. :H

 

Battery technology is slowly improving, but there are pretty simple alternatives to long recharge times right now.

What about a "quick change" standard format battery pack, that wpuld simply be exchanged for a charged one at "refueling stations"? It could take no more time to swap batteries than it currently does to fill a gas tank. The station owner then recharges your dead battery, and gives it to another customer...

As far as not using hydrogen to power vehicles, where else could it be used if you were trying to use it as an alternative to oil? Most power plants burn coal, not oil. If you are looking to reduce oil consumption, most oil is used to power motor vehicles, so that is where an alternative energy source is most needed in the short term.

 

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Here's a link on nuclear power and hydrogen.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/tech/nextnews/archive/next041209.htm

 

Yeah thats just high temeprature electrolysis. Theres nothing special about the nuclear part, you could use a giant kettle.

 

Cool, battery technology is better than I thought.

 

100 years from now most of our energy will come from harnessing the tides, wind power and solar power, assuming no one has yet figured out cold fusion, or at least lived long enough to publish their work...

Those alive then will look back on us all as moron's, as they should.
It is ridiculous that we burn oil instead of creating the thousands of products that can be made from it.
I reckon there's some big-buck corporations that want us all to keep burning away like crazy, huh, whaddya think?

I can't wait for $5.00+ a gallon gas in America! Its already in Europe (for several years) and most of the European price is consumed in taxes since the cost of the raw material is about the same as it is in the US. But dumb-fuck bullet-headed American "consumers" hardly even know there IS a place called Europe (don't bother flaming me, I'm a Yank) so what else do they know? $5.00+ forces the issue, the sooner the better in my opinion.

Eventually there may be some sanity re oil-consumption in North America, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen ...

 

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I've heard of an experimental car that already exists. You fill your fuel tank with water. I can't recall if it needs to be specially filtered or not, But the engine burns the hydrogen and releases the Oxygen from the h2o molecules. That's what gets sent out the exhaust pipe. Now. Not only does this help our Oil problem, it also helps the Oxygen supply. Rainforests, etc...
This vehicle was featured one night on Art Bell.

 

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there was a motercycle rolled out about two weeks ago in Japan(?) That runs on fuel cell DOESN'T BURN HYDROGEN (the idea of fuel cells never was burning hydrogen, and I keep seeing that phrase it's ridiculous) it goes 55 mph has a modular fuel cell and looks rather sharp.