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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:28PM (6 children)
Electrics you can charge at home.
99% of the people driving do not need to refill every day, so charging overnight at home is more convenient than going to a filling station.
For those times you need to drive long distance, rent a gasoline car. I do that anyway to keep the miles off my own car which is over 10 years old and still going strong.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:41PM (2 children)
I just caught a nigger letting his dog shit on my property.
Can I go through life just once without encountering something which makes me racist? O' Lord, I try and I try to be a good man, but they just keep testing me!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:15PM (1 child)
It seems unfair that a user can get a +1 karma bonus but can't ever get a -1 karma deduction no matter how many times they are down-modded.
How about adding that in the next version of rehash?
(Score: 2, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:39PM
The FAQ is apparently in error about that:
Logged in users start at 1 (although this can vary from -1 to 2 based on their overall contribution to discussions)
/faq.pl?op=moderation [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:34PM (2 children)
What is the cost in USA for having a car but not using it?
(ie standby)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:38AM (1 child)
> What is the cost in USA for having a car but not using it?
+ insurance (varies with driving record, usage and location), mine is fairly cheap, $450/year
+ license/tag fees (varies by state, here it's about $50/year
+ depreciation (totally depends on the car--electric cars seem to depreciate very quickly, even Tesla)
+ storage (taxes on personal garage or rental cost if stored elsewhere)
When you use the car there are fuel costs and maintenance costs.
I'm very sensitive to the fixed costs because I work from home, ride a bicycle for short trips (when the weather cooperates) and don't put a lot of miles on my car--so my cost/mile is quite high.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @03:35PM
(totally depends on the car--electric cars seem to depreciate very quickly, even Tesla)
I think that's all high-end cars, not electrics or Tesla in particular. A quick look at cars.com says the bottom end for a base 2013 Tesla model S with 100k miles is about 37k, and most are asking 40-45k. But you can get a Mercedes S550 (just to pick something that's also full of computer driver assists) of the same age and mileage that was more expensive than the Tesla new for under 30k now.
(...and then on the semi-electric and more affordable front, there's Prius owners who all seem to think their 100k mile cars are still worth 90% of the original MSRP.)
(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.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(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.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:56PM (14 children)
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a giant con.
Their purpose is to keep fossil fuels in use for vehicles. The only economic source of hydrogen today is from fossil fuels.
Who cares? If it is charging overnight while parked at my house, the time taken is irrelevant.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by n1 on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:39PM (10 children)
most people I know, especially ones more inclined to go the electric car route do not have a driveway, often have to park a block or two from their homes. all this charging at home and have an iCE car for longer journeys may be fine in US suburbs, but it's far from practical in European cities or suburbs.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:55PM (9 children)
Either we have to build a hydrogen infrastructure or we have to provide power wherever cars are parked. I'm not sure which is easier but the end result is more appealing to me with EVs.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:26PM (7 children)
I agree... I really don't have a solution, and i'd be very happy to have an EV, but they do not exist for my use case at present, but I also accept i'm not in a normal situation...
People I know, who i mentioned in my original comment are, but i guess they could install EV charging points into parking meters and you can just scan your CC or do some other type of cashless transaction to pay for it. Now that's a good way for local government to spend huge amounts of money on infrastructure and then extract more money from residents through taxes and charging for the service, that will never see a RoI, no matter how much they put the prices or taxes up to become the greenest city/town in the state/country.
As i said, I don't have a solution... But for as much as everyone loves to praise the 'pioneers' of the growing EV market, i'm yet to see any real explanation of how we're going to keep up with the supply of lithium and how all that mining, recycling and refining, how that's a step in the right direction from what we're doing in regard to oil right now. I'm also interested in low long these EV's are going to last, I see plenty of average cars from decades ago still being used as daily drivers, i'm inclined to believe that over the long term a simple reliable ICE car that's been on the road for 30 odd years is going to be less damaging to the environment and less impact on the finite supply of resources available than the person who went from an ICE whatever to a Prius to a Lexus hybrid to a Tesla all in the last 10 years.
If TSLA, as the easiest example was really shaking up the energy market and ready to put the old fossil fuel peddlers out of the market... they'd do what they used to do and shut it down... But what they've done is actually become investors in TSLA... While they are changing the market, they're not actually changing the business models, it's all still based on debt and monopolies of infrastructure and resources. They're going to make as much money out of ICE, and make it last as long as they can because they're aware the world does not live in California... But they're also going to maximize the revenues from the change to EVs and they're going to want to sell/lease you a new one every 4-6 years, and like they do with ICE cars now, the planned obsolesce is done well enough you don't have much of a choice unless you want a repair bill for the same as what you'd get in a trade-in.
and then battery technology will change.... and we start again with all new infrastructure to accommodate in 2030 as we move away from lithium-ion.
maybe i'm just cynical, but all the new tech i see now, IoT/smart shit/EVs doesn't even seem to come with a selling point that appeals to me, just a 'you're less of an asshole baby polar bear killer if you buy this' or 'don't think, just buy shiny and we'll do the hard work of collecting your data'... just seems like a lot less freedom and choice for the consumer all around.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KilroySmith on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:09PM
Electrek posted a good summary of the elements used in current batteries, and their supply chain:
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla-batteries-possible-bottleneck/ [electrek.co]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:12PM (1 child)
Now that's a good way for local government to spend huge amounts of money on infrastructure and then extract more money from residents through taxes and charging for the service, that will never see a RoI, no matter how much they put the prices or taxes up to become the greenest city/town in the state/country.
Is that just anti-government fatalism or is there a reason why you think a public charging infrastructure can't be successful?
(Score: 2) by n1 on Monday April 17 2017, @01:51AM
Probably... I think a public charging infrastructure could work though, and it would be what i'd actually hope given current market/tech constraints... But as someone who lived in London for many years, I can only see how it will put the cost of living up further through parking and council taxes over anything else.... When I first started working, i'd spend more on parking for a day in some parts of town than i'd get in wages. Parking fees has gone up a lot, wages for young people not so much.
Personal transport is going to only become more and more of a luxury for city dwellers -- and everyone else -- the push towards EV's is going to help with that. Of course hiring/ride sharing and public transport variations will still be an option, but we are shifting away from the autonomy of travel people have enjoyed through recent years, when you could buy a serviceable used car for $1000 that would go for another 5 years and 100,000 miles with minimal maintenance.
This is obviously all not explicitly to do with the topic and hand of this article, but in larger metropolitan areas I do expect a big reduction in personal car ownership in the coming years, and the death of the cheap used car in, which will remove some freedom of movement for people on lower incomes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @12:47PM (3 children)
they could install EV charging points into parking meters and you can just scan your CC or do some other type of cashless transaction to pay for it.
The financial problem is they're going to be smaller scale and more expensive than paypal and the minimum paypal expense is equivalent to more than two hours of charging off a 15 amp circuit.
The EE problem is I googled the upscale local mall and it has 5086 parking spaces. Now a power plant sized nuclear reactor could output about eight million amps of 120 volt service (to one sig fig) and eight million amps of service divided by five thousand parking spots is about 1500 amps. A Tesla "supercharger" or "hypercharger" or wtf its called can draw 120KW per car and charges the car rather quickly although it doesn't take a math PHD to calculate that 120KW/120V is about 1000 amps of 120 volt service. So the point I'm making is to install and operate a Tesla Supercharger at every parking spot at the local mall will, to one sig fig, take the entire output of a modern nuclear reactor.
There is a financial and EE combined problem where the whiteopia suburban county I live in, has half a million people and hosts this nice upscale 5000 person shopping mall and takes one nuclear reactor to power it. The population of the USA is about 318 million plus or minus illegals so as a very rough guess to provide a supercharger port per person would only require the construction of 600 nuclear reactors to power it. Of course not everyone needs to charge at the same time (although I'm sure the demand spikes just after 9am and 6pm will be impressive) and not everyone owns a car etc. Or if you'd like a 5000 person mall in each of 3000 USA counties then we'd need about 3000 or so nuclear power plants although many counties are not heavily populated.
But it gives you sort of a scale of the problem, that a "large shopping mall's worth" of fast chargers takes about one nuclear reactor to power it.
Electric cars are a very stereotypical macro vs micro problem where on a micro scale when electric cars are a rounding error approaching zero, they're incredibly cheap to "fuel" but we as a nation simply can't afford to replace a significant fraction of cars with electric; we simply don't have enough generating capacity by at least one order of magnitude, maybe two. Its almost exactly the same problem as running every diesel engine on the continent off McDonalds fryer grease biodiesel, in that its practically free when no one does it but we can't run a significant fraction of engines on biodiesel because it takes more diesel to make the biodiesel than it would just to burn the diesel straight (see ethanol for a similar problem) and we simply don't eat enough french fries and fish fries to generate enough used grease.
Hydrogen has a similar problem where we make a heck of a lot of H2 out of natgas but we don't have enough natgas to make enough H2 to replace all of gasoline production. And why would we make H2 out of natgas anyway instead of just burning the natgas directly or slightly refining it into propane and burning that?
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday April 17 2017, @02:36PM (1 child)
Electric cars give you a demand management resource. At times of high electricity demand you turn off some or all of the free or subsidized chargers. If you really need your car charged up right away you go to a fast charger and pay perhaps three times as much.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @04:20PM
Oh I agree with you there are interesting alternatives.
Another idea you didn't mention is culturally we're only "cool" with filling up a car tank all the way.
There's no technological reason against, and probably several for, slow partial charging.
So if the average mall visitor is 5 miles away they'll slow charge maybe 5 miles per hour plugged in. That instantly drops the wiring expense from 120 KW * 5K spots to something like christmas tree wiring. Chargers operating at that low of a rate might use less electricity than the parking lot light poles, I'd have to run the math. At that point the capex of the chargers starts getting higher than the cost of the energy they use...
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday April 18 2017, @01:56AM
Easily worked around by requiring an account that holds credit and funding is added in $25 units when the credit held in the account falls below a certain level. Fastrak (bridge tolls) works like this, so does Chargepoint (largest charging network in the USA).
So you don't use a credit card, but you have some other kind of card that identifies your account. That's the way EV charging mostly works today. You don't even need one card per charging network: the cards can be associated with multiple charging networks.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:14PM
Since we already have the infrastructure to distribute electricity, I think the answer is obvious.
Also, there are improvements in fast charging in progress.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:00PM (2 children)
also, cobalt/lithium mining is done by hippie pixies who just sing songs and play acoustic guitar as it's magically summoned from the atmosphere, just leaving behind a faint smell of vanilla.
i'm all for moving away from ICE and fossil fuel, but just kicking that element to a different part of the supply chain in a different part of the world does not really change how materials are being sourced/mined and how we're still working with finite resources that are costly to extract through environmentally damaging methods.
as i may have mentioned elsewhere, i know a small country that's flexing it's green muscles, building electric car charging points for the none that exist there... the whole country is powered by massive diesel generators anyway.
with the apparent appetite for battery powered everything, is the world going to be able to keep up with the supply of lithium and whatever else is required to fit all these batteries from phones to huge trucks millions and millions of times over? i have my doubts we're going to do that, at least not in a way that results in an improved environment and more efficient energy supply chain and storage options.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KilroySmith on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:08PM (1 child)
Lithium isn't much of a problem - there's a lot of it around, and only the easiest sources are currently being tapped.
Electrek published a good overview last year:
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla-batteries-possible-bottleneck/ [electrek.co]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:46PM
There's a pretty hard limit of about twice the current price for lithium. At that point it becomes economically favorable to extract it from sea-water, and that source is effectively unlimited.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @03:06PM (2 children)
The energy offered by fuel cells is going to be a fraction of the energy used to produce the hydrogen. They're sold as "green" but nearly all hydrogen is generated using steam methane reforming which aside from relying on methane also produces CO2 as a biproduct. It's pretty much the opposite of green. The constant pressurization, during transit, inside the station tanks, and finally just before going into a consumer cars, requires even more energy. You end up still pumping tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, you get terrible whole-process energy efficiency, and it's expensive as a result of all of these costs.
The natural response is to suggest that the system can be made clean by using some sort of solar powered system - perhaps with electrolysis. In the distant future where we're producing quantities of solar energy grossly in excess of need I think this would be reasonable, but we're nowhere even remotely close to that point. By generating hydrogen fuel cells in these systems you're basically just wasting vast amounts of energy due to inefficiency that could be put to good use elsewhere, or stored in a battery at a much higher efficiency rate.
The technology just doesn't make any sense from any point of view that I can see.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:44PM
It'd make more sense if the hydrogen weren't made from fossil fuels, and if the energy that went into producing it were concentrated solar or nuclear. As it stands now the whole thing's a massive, massive scam.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Monday April 17 2017, @10:44AM
If someone also figures out an efficient way to form hydrocarbons (e.g. energy + water + CO2/CO) then you could go wind/solar/nuclear power/biofuel -> hydrocarbons -> [car: fuel cell -> electricity -> electric motor -> wheels ]. Much of the existing infrastructure and distribution can then be reused.
The US military has some motivation to figure out cost effective ways of forming hydrocarbons as an alternative to conventional petroleum- it's hard to get planes to fly at supersonic speeds with batteries, even Samsung ones ;).
(Score: 1) by chucky on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:35PM (3 children)
I'd say EV. Charging at home is not such a big problem, even if I had to ask 'the house' to get me a socket on the outside wall.
I could charge my car at work. I spend there over 8 hours every day. The office building has a much thicker cable coming in, they'd happily get a certificate of a green building and I'd pay a fraction of what I'd pay at home for electricity.
Now... can we do something with price of EVs in my part of the world? An electric car would cost most than my flat, weekend house and my car combined.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:42PM
Charge at work, spend the energy at home using a larger battery?
Just an economic idea..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:45AM
Don't know where you live, but 3 year old Nissan Leaf (typically end of 3 year lease) are being offered for less than $10K in the USA. There was over 100 of these available on SF Craigslist.org last time I looked.
Not widely discussed, but at this time there is little demand for lightly used electric cars, so the prices have collapsed -- that Nissan Leaf sold for $30K or more when new 3 years ago.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @12:57PM
Now... can we do something with price of EVs in my part of the world? An electric car would cost most than my flat, weekend house and my car combined.
You can thank range anxiety for that. "Sure I only drive 20 miles to work but OMG what if I wanted to drive to Florida for spring break in one single 18 hour drive without taking any breaks to charge? I'll never buy a car that can't be driven less than 2000 miles between charges" and suddenly your battery costs $80K instead of $800.
(Score: 1) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:47PM
Electric cars can be used for load balancing the whole house. Hydrogen burners can't do this.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @01:47AM (3 children)
Most hydrogen these days is created by cracking methane, which is why I have to ask why the hell you didn’t just use the methane as fuel in the first place. It’s a lot easier and safer to store and transport using well-known technology that the petroleum industry has been using for many decades, ordinary petrol-fuelled engines can be easily converted to use it. If you got your hydrogen by electrolysing water, then I have to ask where you got the electricity to do so. Unless your answer is a nuclear plant or some renewable power source, I have to question your judgement. And if you did get your electricity from nukes or renewables you might have done better to convert the hydrogen to methane instead for the same reasons above.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Monday April 17 2017, @08:44AM (1 child)
The burning of methane creates carbon dioxide and water vapor. On the other hand, the use of a fuel cell to combine hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen creates only water vapor. Thus a hydrogen vehicle can technically be called "zero emission". There are vehicles all around the world that run on some variation of natural gas like methane. Unfortunately that kind of direct burning of fossil fuels doesn't solve the problem of fossil fuels releasing excess carbon into the atmosphere. Where the carbon goes during the "cracking" of natural gas to produce hydrogen, I don't know. Theoretically hydrogen produced from water via electrolysis would be free of this problem, but we still don't have the technology to do that efficiently on a massive scale, and it would be a waste of energy that could have gone directly into batteries or some other energy storage medium more efficient than hydrogen.
This is why I am a proponent of battery-electric vehicles. Let us not forget that the typical hydrogen fuel cell vehicle also contains several kilowatt-hours of EV batteries in order to provide adequate energy output for fast acceleration while the flow of gas through the fuel cell slowly "ramps up", and to provide a place to store energy recovered through regenerative braking. HFCVs are therefore "electric vehicles" with inadequate batteries. Hydrogen simply makes no sense for small vehicles now that battery prices make EVs nearly cost-competitive with ICE vehicles even without subsidies.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 17 2017, @12:59PM
Where the carbon goes during the "cracking" of natural gas to produce hydrogen, I don't know.
The air of course. And the energy cost of the conversion is not free and the storage cost of H2 is enormously higher (its a tiny leaky molecule).
Hydrogen is the ultimate greenwashing energy "source".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @09:11AM
Nah can't use methane because high pressure tanks that are magically no problem and mythbusted for hydrogen are quite troublesome beasts in the real world. Also you won't get funding for funky adsorption or absorption materials like for hydrogen to make it work in lower pressure because grantgivers only give money to sexy projects and carbon is only sexy when it's single layer in hexagonal pattern, not simple hydrocarbon.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ngarrang on Monday April 17 2017, @07:54PM (1 child)
Fuel cells suffer the same fault as batteries...they require rare earth minerals. You are trading one master (Middle East) for another (China). What we need is for the proliferation of Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines. Hy-ICE makes use of existing engine manufacturing, with small modifications for support the use of hydrogen. If you really want Energy Security, batteries and fuel cells are the wrong direction.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday April 17 2017, @09:57PM
Rare earths are used in neither Tesla-type batteries nor in automotive fuel cells. Nickel metal hydride batteries use rare earths and some solid oxide fuel cells also use them, but neither of these will be in a modern car.