http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/22/1424/4137

Martin once correctly characterized my opinion about hydrogen as "no way" regardless of who announces a hydrogen vehicle. Unless several technological miracles occur, that remains my point of view. So I was impressed with Gar Lipow's retort to Amory Lovins' pro-hydrogen paper because BOTH argued their respective points of view paying attention to total energy.

I'm in the Gar Lipow camp even though his vision remains a hard sell. For me, the right answer is Gar's EV with a computer controlled, heat engine for recharging and at high speeds, a limited range, mechanical power link to wheels.

As for the heat engine, my priorities are:Now if we make our highways, roads and other vehicles a little smarter. But that is outside the scope of a hydrogen fuel transportation system.

Bob Wilson

 

hydrogen is a joke

however oil companies love the idea of an alternative fuel being at least 20 years into the future.

why no invest in electricity?

we already have a delivery infastructure
you can easily add clean tech to the generation system as it is developed
individuals have the capicity to add their own generation systems to the delivery structure
the storage technology (batteris) are relativly refined and pretty safe
Hydrogen requires either electricity or a chemical reaction to produce, if electricty is used, why not just transmit that electricity to a storage system directly instead of using it to create hydrogen, then compress it, store it, transport it, and sell it // all of which will requre a new distribution network.

i am too lazy to go on, but i think the above is enough to dispell hydrogen. Even IF you get a working, reliable, affordable car all of the above need to be over come as well.

I still think the tech is worth researching, but we also need to look elsewhere. No one solution will be the answer.

 

They don't call it the Hydrogen Fraud for nothing.

How to manufacture huge quantities of hydrogen? Who knows?
How to make a FCV costless than half a million dollars each? Who knows?
How to make a fuel cell stack last more than 50,000 miles? Who knows?
How to store hydrogen long-term without significant leakage? Who knows?

If GM hadn't wasted billions of dollars on FCV research, they could have spent the money on hybrid development and kicked Toyota's a$$.

Don't get me wrong: GM's Sequel and Honda's FCV are really cool vehicles. The cars apparently function, are smooth, quiet, and clean. I just don't see either one ever being commercially viable.

 

I don't think the animosity toward hydrogen as an energy storage medium is warranted. What is warranted is the recognition of its shortcomings. Flat-out declaring it a waste of time is jumping the gun a bit as far as I am concerned.

In my "professional" (sorta) opinion, hydrogen's success or failure rests on the success or failure of electrical storage media. Batteries, supercapacitors, and whatever comes next that we haven't thought of. It is generally accepeted that hydrogen only makes sense from an environmental standpoint if it is created using clean energy. This could be an purely electrical process or it could be the thermochemical process theorized to be possible with "fourth generation" nuclear power plants. (Short explanation: hydrogen can be generated using the waste heat from a nuclear or fossil-powered plant rather than using the electricity directly.) But the environmental concerns for hydrogen apply to EVs as well. So what it really boils down to is what kind of resources are necessary to generate distribute the stuff.

The advantage of the thermochemical processes under development is that they harness energy that is usually dissipated to the environment...wasted. It would be nice to capture that energy somehow, as there is a heck of a lot of it! The downside is that you need to put the equipment in place ($$$$$$$$$) to get it done. Electrical processes are simpler to implement but compete for electrical power that is already under threat of being insufficient for our near-term needs.

As far as distribution is concerned, hydrogen would require a massive investment in infrastructure. It could look a lot like our current transportation fuel infrastructure but the low energy density per unit mass of the stuff makes things like trucking and train transport of compressed gasses pretty ridiculous. It's pipelines and pont-of-distribution production or nothing IMO. Liquefied hydrogen can be done but it's enormously energy intensive and lossy to implement. (The best non-refrigerated liquid hydrogen tanks have to vent several percent of their capacity each day.)

In the vehicle, I like 'ideal' batteries a whole lot better than hydrogen tanks. Batteries are safe, and batteries don't require much maintenance. But charging takes time and capacities are limited at the moment. Could that be fixed? Sure, why not? But what is the theoretical limit, if any? I have no idea. And how long will it be before I can have a 350 mile range and a "refueling" time under five minutes? Again, no idea.

All I'm saying is that it's counterproductive to write it off completely. An open mind is always a good thing. Technologies may come along that could make a hydrogen infrastructure work incredibly well. Other technologies may come along that could make it completely stupid.

**EDIT**
Don't forget that FCVs are not the only way to use hydrogen to drive an automobile. Hydrogen ICEs are simple and effective. My undergraduate research project was to make a donated Ford 4-cyl engine run on the stuff for research purposes, and I did it on an undergrad's budget using off-the-shelf technology.

 

why not just distribute the electricity directly to a battery via the existing grid?
why do you want to take electricity and make it into hydrogen then turn it back to electricity, losing a great deal of energy in the process?

as for chemical processes, what chemical process created hydrogen without being accompanied by undesirable byproducts? Not saying there isnt one I just cant find any information about it.

There is a great deal of information that will back up the assertion that PHEVs will reduce the load on the electrical grid. This is accomplished by using the large battery packs as a buffer (owners could even be compensated). Something on the order of 70-80 percent of a power plants capacity is to deal with peak usage. If you reduce this spike by leveraging external storage you can save a lot of money. There is no new technology that needs to be developed, just people getting in a room and making a decision.

My main issue with hydrogen is that if it consumes electricity to create it, then why do you want to use hydrogen as an intermediary when we have a very capable electrical grid that can do it many many times more efficiently, without any capital expenditure, and do it today rather than 20 years from now?

 

Personally I believe that a series-hybrid design is ideal. It is essentially a fully electric vehicle that preservers the option of running the engine for longer driving range, or for generating heat in winter time. (Generating heat from battery power would be very expensive).

Considering that the majority of the time, most vehicles are used for commuting to work, a battery that could reliably deliver even 100 miles range, easily doable with today's technology, would be sufficient for the vast majority of people. A small, efficient generator could be used for anything longer.

Also, since the engine in this series hybrid would not be directly driving the wheels, it would be freed of a lot of the design constraints of vehicle engines today -- which must be able to generate a lot of torque, peak power if needed, and have fast throttle response. An engine designed specifically for driving a generator at a fixed speed could be more efficient than a typical car engine as well.

I understand that using heat energy from nuclear power plants to extract hydrogen is more efficient than electrolysis, but the primary problem with using hydrogen split from water as an energy sources is that a significant portion of the heat energy is required to extract the oxygen component of water, which is essentially useless, as there is plenty of free oxygen already available in the atmosphere. Using power plant waste heat to drive industrial processes, or heat greenhouses, or heat water for homes is however a great idea and should be done wherever possible. Even the best power plants are limited to about 50-60% efficient, so it makes sense to co-locate those plants where that wasted heat can be utilized.

 

Hi,

Although I mostly agree, don't dismiss the advantage of a mechanical gear that works just at high-speeds. Efficiently coupling the ICE to the wheels at speeds above say 55 mph gets the energy there with a much simpler, lighter weight transmission. For example, use a carbon-fiber drive shaft, multi-bearing supported running at ICE speed that goes to a rear differential that handles the step-down gearing to the wheels. Using the generator as a motor to match speeds, no clutch would be needed. Alternatively, use planetary gears to handle clutching.

Bob Wilson

 

why do people assume that batteries will have a limited range (as is 100 miles or 150 or 200 miles) and therefore need augmented?

is this because as of today you have not seen a battery in a car that has a longer range?

why cant we shoot for a battery that fits in a car with a 500 mile range? Why must we keep falling back on this hydrogen storage debacle? If you put the kind of money into battery development that is going into hydrogen we solve far more problems that just vehicle propulsion. We start to address power generation issues as energy can be efficiently stored off peak and used on peak which will dramatically reduce the load on power plants.

there is absolutely no need to develop a new infrastructure for energy delivery just so that an investment in batteries or other technology can be avoided.

i think we need to follow the fuel cell path and see were it takes us but right now we are giving up real advances just to fund the research. Lets focus more energy on defiantly achieving something now versus possibly achieving something in 20 years. I mean we CAN make a very usable electric car or PHEV TODAY that gets us 400 or 500 miles per charge, or in the case of the PHEV infinite range. We CANNOT, in the next couple years, develop the tech and infrastructure for hydrogen to work.

 

Hi,

I understand the frustration. Take a look at the energy density list in Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

The important column for a ground based battery is the "energy by density." In this column, my favorite battery chemistries are:

1. aluminum - 83.8 MJ/l
2. iron - 57.9 MJ/l

Both of these chemistries are such that the oxide by-products are relatively inert and can easily be reduced back. To my way of thinking, these make a much better battery electrode. To get usable power, they probably need to be molten so thermal management will be very important. Shuttle heat tiles come to mind.

Bob Wilson

 

I don't think the problem is raw range, as 250-300mi is perfectly feasible with current battery technologies as well as completely adequate for the vast majority of motorists' daily needs. But there is an issue of recharge time, which is to say that you can go that 300 miles but at the end of it you need to plug in for the night. The way I see it, the thing stopping EVs is the perception that this isn't good enough. Or, in some cases, the knowledge that this won't be good enough on the annual family road trip. Or even the fear that, despite a rational look at ones driving cycle, the 300 mile limit might leave one stranded because one didn't quite make it home...some day.

Manufacturers of advanced technology batteries have made claims that a full recharge could be done in 5 minutes. In other words, the battery chemistry could handle it. But there is a hurtle to be overcome on the distribution end if we are to have electrical filling stations.

Gasoline contains roughly 32MJ of energy per litre of volume. So your average family sedan with a capacity of 60L contains 32MJ/L * 60L = 1.92GJ of energy. To put things into perspective, the energy transfer rate for a 5-minute fuel stop would be 1,920,000,000J/(60s*5min) = 6,400,000W. (Keep in mind that it doesn't take anywhere near 5 minutes to pump 60L of fuel...more like a minute.) Of course, an EV would only require 1/3 of that amount of energy due to dramatically higher drivetrain efficiency. So let's call it ~2MWe for 5 minutes, or 1/500th the power produced by a large nuclear power plant. That's a heck of a lot of power, and not a trivial issue in the least.

Don't get me wrong here. I personally favor electric vehicles over a hydrogen infrastructure for a number of reasons. It's just that they aren't quite as simple and perfect as they may seem.

**EDIT**
Here's a very interesting figure published by Tesla:
http://www.teslamotors.com/performan...tric_power.php