Posted by noola3 Mon May 11, 2009 3:35pm PDT
Hi Hank, I'm a retired chemical engineer who worked for a major industrial gas company for 32 years. I was involved in several hydrogen projects during my career. The whole concept of a hydrogen based fuel system was premised on making hydrogen from the electrolysis of water. With a little alkali and a bunch of electricity, water becomes H2 and O2, which combine to once again become energy and water. The cleanest combustion process on the planet. Problem is, all that energy was supposed to come from fusion reactors, which I won't see in my lifetime, my kids won't either, and my grandkids won't either. The other alternative is to mix natural gas and steam, and reform it to H2 and lots of CO2. By the time the hydrogen is produced, the byproducts are more than if the natural gas was simply burned as-is. There is some hydrogen produced as a by-product of chlorine production, but virtually all of that is used in existing industrial applications, including the space shuttle launch this morning. So, hydrogen powered vehicles are going the way of those powered by steam - an interesting technical concept, but economically doomed. Every car powered by hydrogen today should be switched to natural gas if for no other reason than the overall amount of CO2 discharged. There is one existing technology which could lead to a hydrogen infrastructure, and it is nuclear electricity production - and an almost unbelievable amount of it. Short of going full tilt into nuclear, we're probably going where no civilization has gone before, unfortunately we don't know what that is, only that it's going to be bad.
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Posted by mchockey_1998 Mon May 11, 2009 6:21pm PDT
I too am a chemical engineer and have an opinion on the the matter. The idea of hydrogen was big in the 90s and early 00s because of politics and thats about it. "The only byproduct is water?!?!! Thats incredible!!" What a buzz topic. Unfortunately very few people looked beyond that and thats how we wasted so much time and and money. I will say though, I dont think we can have a completely electric vehicle fleet because battery charging would take too long. The charging rate needs to be limited due to battery overheating and damage. So we are going to need extend range electric vehicles like the volt (except not $45K) that use some liquid fuels (probably BTL, not ethanol) when the battery runs out.
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Posted by Hey You! Yes, You, Laddie! Tue May 12, 2009 3:17pm PDT
Was the whole hydrogen thing just an expensive detour? Yes -absolutely! Fuel Cell automobile technology was an attempt by energy companies to keep the status quo: i.e. you buy an expensive car from a large company like GM and buy energy at a filling station owned by a company like Shell. Did anyone here see the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" GM had a perfect little sexy car, produced by Saturn, that you could charge at home off the grid. HAHA! They all lined up to kill that idea: GM, the Oil Companies, and the Bush Administration. GM recalled and crushed all of their electric cars, to hide the truth from you. Electric Cars are a viable alternative in an urban environment(where incidentally, the most air pollution is).
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Posted by spockum Sat May 16, 2009 7:20pm PDT
''Hmmmmmm......well all postings noted. We (I) have developed a cheap, high output, hydrogen generator,that will (tested) run any type of conventional fossil fuel engine, (an assist to diesel), without any additional fossil fuels. We have tested the device to power a GE turbine jet engine, and had more power than we knew what to do with.What is going to happen when we deplete, or cost rises, on Natural Gas? How are we going to heat our homes, factories, hospitals,etc? Natural Gas is a fossil fuel.The one author mentioned the length of time to recharge a battery. Well, where does that 'energy' come from? Coal fired plants, are going to start running OT for MILLIONS of electric cars? Hah! Obama doesn't look to Nuclear, and they take soooo long to build? Not. We are so close to the answer on Hydrogen, I don't sleep well! BUT I am going to have to depend on private or Government monies to complete the project. 6 mil, to save our world. Funny.
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Posted by lebenfitz Sun May 17, 2009 11:01am PDT
It's too bad, but I think at least initially the hydrogen thing was smoke and mirrors. That's left a bad taste in people's mouths and has severely delayed innovation...but I remain hopeful that there'll be a series of viable combustion based fuels available in the future. I don't think we need to focus on complete integration of any one fuel source, nationally or globally. Perhaps this will be something that is location specific (within a city) so that we can avoid the in-and-of-itself energy intensive process of transporting these new fuels from where they are made to where they'll be consumed. After 100+ years the combustion engine has now been perfected, and it seems a shame to throw away that knowledge and go with a completely electric infrastructure...I'm sure there are plenty of gearheads out there that would agree.
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Posted by Scott B Mon Sep 7, 2009 7:55pm PDT
Reminds of a press release by the Bush WH in 2004 that told everyone not to buy the Prius or other hybrids and to wait for hydrogen fuel cell cars to come out. I'm not sure if it was smoke and mirrors or just plain incompetence or both. I've done a lot of research on H2, though viable, it is just not a very attractive option. First, H2 is light, which makes it terribly difficult to compress and store, economically. Second, transmission and distribution, though potentially viable, is expensive, more so than gasoline, biofuels or even natural gas. The only real option is electrolysis of water or steam reforming of natural gas or some other biomass at the retail station. But then you still have the storage problem. Metal hydride tanks are the way to go in vehicles, but you can't really do that for fuel station tanks. Have you seen the size of what 5 kpsi tanks would have to be to satisfy daily demand at a medium to large sized retail station? 10 kpsi keeps the size of the tanks down, but is a crazy pressure, particularly when one considers the atomic size of H and how difficult it would be to compress with current technology and to do it efficiently.
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