Isn't hydrogen and fuel cells just a bunch of BS?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Mar 28 2007, 08:30 PM) [snapback]413891[/snapback]</div>

Then you're saying Honda is all wrong, which I would not necessarily say myself. The advantage to Hydrogen is that cars using it as a fuel don't pollute cities compared to gasoline or diesel. Yes you do need to produce the fuel cells somewhere, and that will cause pollution. Did you know that producing the batteries for the Prius causes pollution? And when you drive a Prius it will cause pollution, more than a Hydrogen car?

The real answer is electric cars. But even making electricity often causes pollution.

Dave

 

No, there are several excellent uses of fuel cells and hydrogen. It's already being put to use in stationary power generation. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) and Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells can consume a variety of hydrogen rich fuels (methane, diesel, etc) and use it at pretty high efficiency rates. They also produce a lot of waste heat that can be used. Sierra Nevada Brewery is using a couple of 250 KW (or are they 1 MW?) fuel cells to power part of their operations. The fuel for the SOFCs comes from anerobically digested brewer's yeast (methane). Not only does the Brewery not have to pay for fuel but they also save a fortune on water treatment costs. Fuel cells have also been installed at waste water treatment plants as well. So no they aren't just a bunch of BS.

For automotive applications there are several hurdles that would have to be overcome and from what I can tell BEVs are a superior choice, at least at the present.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Mar 28 2007, 08:30 PM) [snapback]413891[/snapback]</div>

I'm pretty sure that political figures like the Gobernator and the Bush Admin have tried their darnedest to overly dramaticize the "pluses" to Hydrogen fuel in an attempt to simply drown out the ridiculously obvious negatives; like the fact that an electric vehicle, charged by whatever means, is by nature supremely cleaner and more efficient. And it seems to be working. Probably due to the amount of people out there who blindly follow their party leaders believing that all they support and say is the best and only true "American" solution. Could also be related to how I'm still seeing a ton of SUV ad's on the boob.

It falls upon us self-thinkers and individuals (aka Prius drivers) to bring out the truth about how Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is an inordinately large waste of energy and resources. And if we fail, we can pretty much kiss away the chance at having commercially produced electric/air/other-"clean"-powered vehicles (what happened to the EV1 again?). :huh:

 

Hey for all you electric car guys/ girls. How far can an electric car go before recharging and how long to recharge it? Don’t give me well it depends. I can afford a 20k car and it needs to go 150- 200 miles on a single charge and be rechargeable in around an hour or two and I would really love if I could do a full charge in 5- 10 minutes. Oh do they have air-conditioning and if so how long can it be run before it dies/ runs the batteries dry. What about being stuck in traffic for 2-3 hours on a 100f day will the car die even if it has no ac and you have to sweat it out.


Ok lets say we switch to electric cars. Were does everyone charge them. What if you live in an apartment with hundreds of other tenants and a massive parking lot? Can we all just run hundreds of feet of extension cords? In this area the houses do not have garages and people have to park on the streets what do they use to charge their cars. Also how far can you go before you need to recharge and again how long would that charge take.

I know a lot of you like the ev1 hey I think it is cool too. But were would I charge it. I guess I would pay the extra $50 for a second parking spot and the buy a gas generator to charge it at night. Not everyone has a house with a garage that they can charge their electric vehicle in and that number of people is huge.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IAO @ Mar 28 2007, 08:38 PM) [snapback]413944[/snapback]</div>

Whatever the new alternative technology, the switch will not happen overnight. I do not know what your position is on fuel cells or hydrogen, but if you think that an FCV (or an EV for that matter, although they are closer) today will deliver the specs that you want, it will not. As for price, the internal combustion vehicle has had over a hundred years to develop economies of scale and bring the cost down. Say that we currently lived in a hydrogen economy. If some person (for whatever reason) wants to build a ICE vehicle such as a honda civic (during this hydrogen economy where internal combustion engines have never been widespread), it would cost nearly as much as a Tesla Roadster. If companies like Tesla become sucessful, I project that in 10 years we could have electric cars with your specifications. For fuel cell vehicles, this might take longer because they are naturaly more expensive and are lower in performance and efficiency.

In traffic, an electric vehicle never idles, conserving energy. Energy is only used when the car acctualy moves, and when you brake energy is sent back to the battery through regenerative breaking. This makes electric vehicles more efficient in traffic and city applications, similar to a hybrid.

I assume that EV drivers will first have a charging at their house and possibly at work. I think that having a charging station at their parking spot would be less expensive than a gas generator. When they go home, they just plug it in overnight. When they wake up, they have a full charge. They drive to work, utilizing and consuming a portion of the energy in their battery/ultracap. They might plug it in at work (where they have another charging station installed in their parking space) and charge up while working. Then they drive home, plug it in, and the cycle continues.

I believe that quick charging will be unnecesary once battery capacities increase to over 500 miles.

Eventualy, I see public charging to be as prominent as parking meters on streets. You just swipe you credit card or put a few coins in a slot and that's it.

As for the ease of building the vehicle infrastructure, it is much easier to tap into our already available electrical grid than to build a whole new chain of hydrogen fueling stations.

I hope that you are able to gather from this insight. If you are have read up until now and are still reading, congratulations! You are now in a class of your own my friend.

- C

 

Thanx for the info. You think putting in charging stations every what 12 feet or so would be easier than converting current gas stations to hydrogen stations. Ok sounds good I would rather charge my car on the street and not have to drive somewhere to put fuel in my car.

I ask about the ac because with my prius it kills my electric only distance. I can squeeze some distance out of the prius if traffic is right . but with the ac on when I get of the freeway my batteries drain very fast. So if I had an ev with ac I suppose I would have very little drive time and distance. Yes I know using the batteries until they are very low is actually not good for you total mpg. But if I am going to be on a road that it 50- mph or the freeway just after that I might as well im going to be running the ice anyway. My avrg mpg is 48 because of winter I like my car warm. This summer I will get back up into the low 50’s.

I am all for new technology that gets us away from the ice. My thing is that a hear people claim that we all should be using ev right now. I look around and ask how? I have no place to charge it. What happens when I drive around all day getting things done? Do I come home every so often recharge it (again were) and then go back out? In this area I just don’t see it happening unless the city places charging posts every 10- 12 feet. The could just put 2- 5 at the end of the block and let everyone fight over it.

Every other month or so I have to drive 4- 6 hundred miles for work I don’t want to make a 1 day trip into a 2- 3 day trip so I can recharge a car every so many miles. In the winter I need heat bundling up is not going to work and in the summer it gets hot I would want ac on a long trip. I suppose I could rent a car for these trips but that would cost too much.

The public is not going to adopt these technologies unless it can be integrated into their lives. I would hate to be in California on a hot day stuck in an ev with no ac. Or in traffic in new York during the winter with no heat.

 

This looks like a cool use of hydrogen for trucks

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=195

The HFI system is a bolt-on apparatus which includes an electrolysis unit, and a water reservoir. It uses power from the engine's alternator to electrolyze distilled water, and produce hydrogen on demand. The hundreds of semi trucks in North America which are now using this system enjoy improved horsepower, and emit about half of the particulates they did before the unit was added.

Sherwin Fast, the president of Great Plains Trucking, reports that their four HFI-equipped trucks have saved them $700* a month in fuel.

*each. When I saw this on TV a trucker said that they were saving $600 a month in fuel costs. I think it could work for cars also but this uses the excess electrical energy produced from the alternator. In a Prius this is stored but not always. This might be one more way to tap into wasted energy.

~buttster

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IAO @ Mar 28 2007, 09:38 PM) [snapback]413944[/snapback]</div>

No, but if you go to MN you'll see plug-ins for block heaters in many semi-permanent parking spaces (esp in motor pools and the like). It's also pretty trivial to add outlets to these kind of parking spaces. Compared with what needs to happen to create a hydrogen distribution infrastructure it's truly trivial.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(excuseMeButt @ Mar 29 2007, 09:08 AM) [snapback]414146[/snapback]</div>

This is also a potential solution to truckers idling at rest stops which consumes a HUGE amount of diesel. Having a means to supply electricity without idling a diesel engine would be awesome for air quality AND the company's bottom line.

 

We should be emphasizing hybrids, followed by clean diesel in the short term. I'd also have incentives for drivers to stop "super-sizing" there vehicles like they have be last 15 or so years.

Farther off in the future is EVs and fuel cell vehicles. Both have one significant advantage: consolodating the sources of pollution. There are millions of cars in the world. If they are all EVs and FCVs, they don't pollute. Yes - the soure of their energy pollutes - definitely. But now we are dealing with thousands of power plants or refineries instead of millions of vehicles to cap emissions. I'm no fan of conventional coal plants, but don't the pollute less than the equivalent in ICE cars?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jgills240 @ Mar 28 2007, 09:43 PM) [snapback]413895[/snapback]</div>

The thing that all of you who spew the theory that hydrogen fuel cells are just a conspiracy between the Bush administration and his oil buddies in order to make the oil companies money are missing the fact that Europe is actually a bigger proponent of hydrogen than the US. They've got test trials of hydrogen busses all over Europe, they've got their own equivalent of the "Freedom CAR Initiative" which funds research and development of hydrogen fueled cars, and they talk about hydrogen in their energy strategies.

So while you guys blather on in your "If Bush is for it, I'm against it" mentality, the Europeans, thankfully, are moving forward.

 

I don't know if anyone has put this forth yet but I just had an amazing moment imagining what the first hydrogen car or fueling station explosion might look like (Yes I understand it won't be like a Hydrogen bomb)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Atreides @ Mar 29 2007, 01:57 PM) [snapback]414278[/snapback]</div>

Is Hydrogen Dangerous?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("rmi")</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Mar 29 2007, 01:54 PM) [snapback]414272[/snapback]</div>

Unfortunately, that the Europeans are moving forward with it does not make it a good solution. I think that the whole point of this post is that hydrogen is not a good solution in the first place. Hydrogen has to be generated from somewhere, and for an automobile, that could be an energy intensive process that has the very real potential to be more polluting than the worst of the gas hogs on the road right now.

We spend so much time bickering about who is right and who is wrong that what matters is lost in the process. What matters, as I see it, is a clean energy source. Hydrogen does have the potential to be clean when used in the right application, but used in the wrong application, it can be much worse than current fuel sources. Think ethanol from corn and how much energy is required to make ethanol that way - assuming you have any inkling of just how much of an energy intensive process that is. Ethanol from corn IS far more energy intensive than running cars on GAS, but I am sure that it is popular with at least some farmers since it has the potential to line their pockets with lots of money, and, therefore, becomes a political issue, and part of the reason that the "Big Three" support it is because it would require the least amount of change from the way that they are currently producing vehicles - i.e., it will cost them almost nothing to implement - which is a variant of the "Big Three's" standard argument that it will cost too much and, since it will cost too much, no one will buy it.

Also, though I suspect that you'll pass it off as Bush Bashing, have a look at this article "Hydrogen's Dirty Secret."
Try to look past the political argument and see that there are some means of producing hydrogen that are dirtier than using gas in the first place. That is the point of the article. Unfortunately, the article is framed in a political manner, but, as I see it, the political framing only obscures the message that there are very polluting ways of producing hydrogen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Mar 29 2007, 11:03 AM) [snapback]414280[/snapback]</div>

Yes. It floats up to the ozone layer where it combines with O3 to produce H2O and O2 , destroying the ozone layer in the process.

If we think that we had a problem with aerosol...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Atreides @ Mar 29 2007, 01:57 PM) [snapback]414278[/snapback]</div>

It would be a lot less violent than a gasoline car or refueling station explosion. Hydrogen contains less specific energy, and it is lighter than air, so when it escapes it goes up. Gasoline flows out and splatters.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Mar 29 2007, 10:54 AM) [snapback]414272[/snapback]</div>

I for one do not care about the politics, just the science.

My problem with the whole fuel cell campaign is, how is it better than BEV when the same people complains that BEV pollutes with coal power plants. Then points out that Fuel Cell technology does not pollute.

Uh? The last time I checked, making fuel cell is from the same energy source as BEV. And polluting 3x worst than BEV energy consumption is some how better for the environment? This does not include transporting the fuel cells with tankers yet.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(excuseMeButt @ Mar 29 2007, 11:08 AM) [snapback]414146[/snapback]</div>

This system has nothing to do with excess energy from the alternator. The trucker is paying for all of the energy converted by the alternator in the form of increased fuel usage. The claimed gains in fuel consumption are due to improved burn efficiency from using injected hydrogen as a primer, minus the energy used to turn water into hydrogen.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IAO @ Mar 28 2007, 10:27 PM) [snapback]413994[/snapback]</div>

EV cars certainly is still in the early adopters stage at this point. So there certainly is no solution for you right now. And probably does not fit your needs until the infrastructure is better setup for your situation.

But when the infrastructure (i.e. electric station) for BEV is setup (which will take a lot shorter time to setup than Fuel Cell station), then you could go around the city to charge up like any gas station now exists. Further more, battery technology has advanced a lot the last few years so you could recharge in about 10 minutes with high amperage chargers. That means what you are doing with petro cars now, is what you will be doing as well with BEV cars. The only difference of course is you would be buying electricity instead of petro. And probably the source of energy is not produced by countries of unstable regions of the world.