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Hydrogen fuel cell cars could one day challenge electric cars in the race for pollution-free roads—but only if more stations are built to fuel them.
Honda, Toyota and Hyundai have leased a few hundred fuel cell vehicles over the past three years, and expect to lease well over 1,000 this year. But for now, those leases are limited to California, which is home to most of the 34 public hydrogen fueling stations in the U.S.
Undaunted, automakers are investing heavily in the technology. General Motors recently supplied the U.S. Army with a fuel cell pickup, and GM and Honda are collaborating on a fuel cell system due out by 2020. Hyundai will introduce a longer-range fuel cell SUV next year.
"We've clearly left the science project stage and the technology is viable," said Charles Freese, who heads GM's fuel cell business.
Like pure electric cars, fuel cell cars run quietly and emission-free. But they have some big advantages. Fuel cell cars can be refueled as quickly as gasoline-powered cars. By contrast, it takes nine hours to fully recharge an all-electric Chevrolet Bolt using a 240-volt home charger. Fuel cells cars can also travel further between fill-ups.
Would you rather trade in your gas-guzzler for a hydrogen fuel cell car, or an electric car?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:48PM (11 children)
Hydrogen fuel cells have a lot more to deal with than just a lack of fuel stations:
1. Energy density is lower than pure electric batteries.
2. Hydrogen must be stored under pressure.
3. Even with VERY efficient tanks its a tiny molecule, and leaks.
4. In the event of accident, or even just a big rock in the road, a pressurized fuel tank is a major hazard.
5. The rare earth metals used in the reaction process do not have long shelf lives and cost a lot of money.
6. Because of pressure differentials there is going to be a lot of thermal shock on refill. Coupled with refilling needed to happen really often thanks to #1 that's a recipe for early tank or fill nipple failure, which means that hydrogen cars will require major tank repairs sooner than gasoline cars, and will be non-functional without the tank in 100% working order (due to leaks)
Solve 1-6 before you start complaining that there are not enough refill stations to make the technology viable. (I heard some talk of hydrogen captivated inside soap or ethanol molecules which resulted in a higher energy density fluid that could be stored at standard air pressure and temperature- but have seen nothing about such recently. Even if such a technology were to arrive the technology would have to be FOSS or else its going to be 'Honda has a viable hydrogen vehicle and no fueling stations, everyone else has a non-viable hydrogen vehicle, and no fueling stations')
Dispelling a major myth about hydrogen:
1. Hydrogen gas is NOT more dangerous than gasoline (the pressurized tank is an issue, but the flammable nature of of hydrogen itself is much more tame than gasoline)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:51PM (3 children)
1. Energy density depends on the pressure. At the pressure currently in use I believe hydrogen is better than current batteries. The specific energy of hydrogen (which some people wrongly refer to as energy density) is much better than batteries.
2. Pressurized hydrogen has been chosen by the industry but it's not the only possible method.
3. With modern tanks hydrogen leaks very slowly. It doesn't appear to be a problem.
4. Maybe rocks are a hazard. It's hard to be sure.
5. What rare earths are you talking about? I'm not aware of any used in fuel cells. Platinum is expensive but it's not a rare earth.
6. The suppliers claim the tanks will last ten years.
1. Hydrogen burns with a wider variation in fuel/air proportion than gasoline or diesel.
Hydrogen look like a really stupid choice for cars but you need to work on your reasons. Others here have much better reasons to avoid it.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:11PM
> Pressurized hydrogen has been chosen by the industry but it's not the only possible method.
The U.S. government evaluated several methods. On page 6 of their report, they show cryogenic storage of hydrogen, or adsorption on the metal-organic framework MOF-177 as having greater capacity than pressurised storage at 700 atm. MOF-177 adsorbs the most hydrogen when it's cold and when significant pressure is applied. From pages 33 and 34 of their report I see that they studied it at 100 K and 250 atm.
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review10/st001_ahluwalia_2010_o_web.pdf [energy.gov]
I found the link to the report in Wikipedia's article about hydrogen storage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Automotive_Onboard_hydrogen_storage [wikipedia.org]
More about MOF-177:
http://www.ijee.ieefoundation.org/vol4/issue1/IJEE_11_v4n1.pdf [ieefoundation.org]
(Score: 1) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Monday April 17 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)
Most catalysts used are Pd. Some research is going into using Scandium. Neither Pd or Sc are plentiful enough to be used for widespread hydrogen cars.
That alone makes this whole hydrogen fuel-cell adventure nonsensical.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday April 17 2017, @01:21AM
Of course, that's also not a rare earth.
I hadn't heard of that before. From googling, I see it is used in solid oxide fuel cells. Interesting, but not currently used in the car market.
Palladium is rare but scandium isn't. It's about as common as lithium in the Earth's crust. Deposits are spread out and it's difficult to refine, though, so it's not as cheap to produce. Most of the current cost is from it being an immature market. The cost would likely eventually go way down if usage went up.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:00PM (5 children)
4. In the event of accident, or even just a big rock in the road, a pressurized fuel tank is a major hazard.
Mythbusters busted that myth years ago. It's far safer than gasoline.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @12:27PM (4 children)
Episode 63 "air cylinder rocket" supposedly aired oct 18 2006 they sheared the valve off some air tanks and blew the tanks thru one and a half concrete block walls.
2000 psi of H2 will go thru at least as much human flesh as 2000 psi of air. Having a slightly lower molecular weight means the Isp of a hydrogen tank with the valve sheared off will be a faster rocket... I've read N2 cold gas thrusters getting Isp values around 70 which isn't bad but helium running around Isp 160 seconds. So hydrogen should be better yet. I'd anticipate the performance gain as somewhat sub linear so if the mythbusters launched an air tank thru 1.5 concrete walls a hydrogen tank should go thru 2+ concrete walls.
In the old days (today?) cold gas thrusters were used for yaw/rotation control on boosters. They're pretty simple therefore reliable and you probably got a high pressure H2 system anyway for various other tasks, so if you need a nudge here and there to rotate thats good enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @04:15PM
Not to mention the fact that Hydrogen is flammable, so even if you ignore the risk of the gas canister suffering complete physical failure, there is still the risk of the leaking gas hitting its activation energy and catching fire.
(Score: 2) by WillR on Monday April 17 2017, @04:17PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @05:06PM
Its worth pointing out that air resistance would be an issue with a hydrogen car taking out an office building a quarter mile away, but not at the range of passengers in the vehicle or the driver that rear-ends a hydrogen car.
secured inside of the frame of a car
That is an interesting idea that most of the danger is a mostly intact ball or tube going rocket mode, but if the attachment to the frame exceeded the strength of the tank, the tank would break into little bits and harm a lot less people. Maybe it should look like a pineapple grenade or maybe attach explosive bolts (people are already cool with explosive airbags) and pop in half or eights or whatever in an accident.
Another interesting idea is frangible disk and an nozzle going both directions for net zero thrust now if a self driving hydrogen car detected an accident two seconds away it could controllably vent over 2 seconds instead of uncontrollably cracking and going rocket mode in 2 milliseconds or whatever.
Maybe something as simple as spears pointing at the tank so if the tank launches up it hits a spear making a new rocket nozzle pointing down counteracting it.
Well anyway the point is the mythbusters blew up some compressed gas tanks a decade ago. Admittedly slightly different type.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday April 21 2017, @04:11PM
The same thing happens with any pressurized gas, but you seldom hear of welding tanks exploding.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:39PM
Storage is done by binding it loosely with other (cheap) materials. That eliminates puncture hazards almost completely. And avoids most of the leakage since it's bound.