Hydrogen Powered Commodores - Not so far away?

[sixshooter]

One enormous drawback which should cap once and for all any talk of a so-called "hydrogen economy", a term we are going to hear more and more as a catchy phrase...it is going to be used more and more for fuel cells and so-on, yet there is, as I say, one huge problem...
If you have a power system based on coal-fired stations, the enormous amount of power needed to produce Hydrogen means you get less energy out of the hydrogen you have just made than it took to make it...therefore I don't care how clean and green your car is running on hydrogen, it is still polluting more than a big block Camaro with stuck-open secondaries...it's just the pollution is coming from the smokestack of a power station somewhere instead of from the car exhaust.

Electric cars are a great idea for cities...however, see the above reasons about moving the exhaust from the car tailpipe to the smokestack.

People won't be buying cars that fill up with hydrogen... it's too volatile a substance... can anyone say Hindenburg ? Image a car accident between 2 Hydrogen filled cars ? the idea behind the Hydrogen Car was that it would generate it's own Hydrogen from water in a tank...just enough to supply the engines immediate needs. :thumbsup:

 

[davey g-force]

Wombat & Shaggerz: I agree with what you are both saying, however I thought the whole reason for pitching the Hydrogen car is not so much for it's "eco-friendliness" but more as an alternative to high petrol prices and dwindling oil supplies...

 

[shaggerz]

I doubt that it would be cheaper than using petrol for quite a long time, but if it becomes that way and is universally used, then we will still have the problem of even further increased greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the dirty methods used to generate the electricity that produced the hydrogen in the first place.

Also I agree completely with sixshooter. I am TERRIFIED to think of what will happen in a large number of car accidents if we were driving hydrogen powered cars... contrary to what we see in the movies, petrol is fairly safe. It burns quickly, yes, but it doesnt explode. Hydrogen on the other hand is an EXPLOSIVE gas... it is far more volatile than petrol. note the warning on your car battery. It is VERY easy to create an explosion with hydrogen. I would be afraid to be on the road with all those giant sticks of dynamite driving around...

EDIT: I know... lets power cars from NITRO GLYCERINE!

 

[Wombat]

Sorry sixshooter...but the old idea of "filling up the tank with water and the car will make it's own hydrogen", is a false line of reasoning and simply cannot work...

It sounds like a great idea...however, technical problems mean that the vehicle has to have a very powerful power source just to catalyse the hydrogen out of water. This power source will need fuel of it's own to run. There are several laws of physics which mean that you can't use the old "perpetual motion" machine logic and power the power source by the hydrogen it is producing...there is always a net loss and you get out less than you put in. Then there is the small matter of a way of splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen, compressing and storing the hydrogen (no way of using it "immediately", the catalyser would never keep up with the engines needs). Then you have to fit all this into a road vehicle.

So basically, such a vehicle would have, say, a conventional petrol or diesel engine to power the process, then it would need a complete catalyser or electrolysis plant to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then a way of refrigerating and compressing the hydrogen, and a way of storing it.

Too complicated and technically not able to be done on such a small scale with any efficiency.

When "hydrogen cars" are spoken of, the developers mean one of two things: either a fuel-cell powered electric car, using hydrogen as the fuel source for the fuel cells, or they mean a conventional internal combustion engine running off compressed hydrogen gas in a cylinder, similar to an LPG gas powered car now. They certainly don;t mean anything which you could fill up the fuel tank out of the garden hose. That is simply impossible I'm afraid, for many reasons on many levels.

You must also remember the fear factor...everyone remembers the Hindenburg. Several times over the decades there have been suggestions for the return of airships as a commercial travel possibility...sort of like nice slow cruise ships of the sky, for luxury travel. They can also, on a large scale like the massive ships built by Germany, the USA, and England, carry quite an enormous amount of cargo, because of the lift capability of a bag of gas that big. However, people fear them because of the Hindenburg disaster. People don;t realise that the only reason that the Hindenburg accident happened was that first, no-one would sell Germany Helium, so they had to use dangerous Hydrogen gas. Secondly, they used highly flammable powdered aluminium silver paint which burned like buggery at the smallset static spark. Thirdly, there is a lot of evidence it was a small bomb...film shows that the fire didn't start at the point where the ship met the landing tower, but much further back.


Hydrogen gas powered cars, either fuel cell or compressed gas, will all fail to sell in large numbers for the same reason the fantastic and technically well made Toyota Prius...no-one is going to pay that much money for a small car, especially when economy tests show that you can get the same economy out of, say, a turbo diesel Puegeot or several ,models of VW, which are much bigger and faster cars.

 

[sixshooter]

Sorry sixshooter...but the old idea of "filling up the tank with water and the car will make it's own hydrogen", is a false line of reasoning and simply cannot work...

It sounds like a great idea...however, technical problems mean that the vehicle has to have a very powerful power source just to catalyse the hydrogen out of water. This power source will need fuel of it's own to run. There are several laws of physics which mean that you can't use the old "perpetual motion" machine logic and power the power source by the hydrogen it is producing...there is always a net loss and you get out less than you put in. Then there is the small matter of a way of splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen, compressing and storing the hydrogen (no way of using it "immediately", the catalyser would never keep up with the engines needs). Then you have to fit all this into a road vehicle.

So basically, such a vehicle would have, say, a conventional petrol or diesel engine to power the process, then it would need a complete catalyser or electrolysis plant to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then a way of refrigerating and compressing the hydrogen, and a way of storing it.

Too complicated and technically not able to be done on such a small scale with any efficiency.

When "hydrogen cars" are spoken of, the developers mean one of two things: either a fuel-cell powered electric car, using hydrogen as the fuel source for the fuel cells, or they mean a conventional internal combustion engine running off compressed hydrogen gas in a cylinder, similar to an LPG gas powered car now. They certainly don;t mean anything which you could fill up the fuel tank out of the garden hose. That is simply impossible I'm afraid, for many reasons on many levels.

You must also remember the fear factor...everyone remembers the Hindenburg. Several times over the decades there have been suggestions for the return of airships as a commercial travel possibility...sort of like nice slow cruise ships of the sky, for luxury travel. They can also, on a large scale like the massive ships built by Germany, the USA, and England, carry quite an enormous amount of cargo, because of the lift capability of a bag of gas that big. However, people fear them because of the Hindenburg disaster. People don;t realise that the only reason that the Hindenburg accident happened was that first, no-one would sell Germany Helium, so they had to use dangerous Hydrogen gas. Secondly, they used highly flammable powdered aluminium silver paint which burned like buggery at the smallset static spark. Thirdly, there is a lot of evidence it was a small bomb...film shows that the fire didn't start at the point where the ship met the landing tower, but much further back.


Hydrogen gas powered cars, either fuel cell or compressed gas, will all fail to sell in large numbers for the same reason the fantastic and technically well made Toyota Prius...no-one is going to pay that much money for a small car, especially when economy tests show that you can get the same economy out of, say, a turbo diesel Puegeot or several ,models of VW, which are much bigger and faster cars.

aghh Sorry Wombat...I been up way too late to read all that... but I can tell you no street-machine enthusiast is gonna ever buy one cause they'll be a bitch to lower with a hydrogen filled tank... they should be good for tyre wear though

 

[Cheap6]

This is one perspective on the prospects for hydrogen as a universal energy carrier:

http://www.dotynmr.com/energy/DotyEnergy2.htm

The fact is no one really knows what will be the solutions (note the plural) to energy supply, so everything is worth exploring atm. Hydrogen will only be viable as a longer term option if at all.

Nuclear fission has some advantages, particularly for electricity generation, but would take decades to implement in Aust. and NZ, not least because no skills base exists for their design and construction. Say 10-15 years for the first one(s) then 5-10 years for each subsequent one. Coal and gas fired stations are still being built and more are currently planned.

There are no easy answers but whatever the outcome, any energy source substitution is certain to be more expensive than oil, gas or coal. The cheapest and easiest option is to use less of what energy is used now which if nothing else will buy some time. For cars, which are extremely profligate in their use of energy for what they do, the answer is probably not hybrids but lighter, and generally smaller vehicles. Mild hybrids, using the electric motor as flywheel, starter, power augmentation and generator do make sense. Pure electric may make sense where journey distances are relatively short and (re)charging is possible at at least one end. Hydrogen fueled vehicles as they currently exist, particularly those using ICE's, have ranges comparable to pure electric and additional refueling problems.

At some point, I think that it will be likely that not only will the release of greenhouse gases have to be halted, means of sequestering some of what has already been, and will undoubtedly be, released will be required. It is worth exploring geosequestration of CO2, as one possibility will be to use biomass in thermal power stations or Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel or chemical production processes, with (geo)sequestration of CO2. Note that there is not the potential for generating sufficient biomass in most parts of the world to use energy at the same rate at which it is currently used.

 

[shaggerz]

Agree very strongly with that article Cheap6...

It is disappointing that people, largely led around by the nose by the media, neglect to consider the entire fuel cycle. Hydrogen may burn completely cleanly and CO2 free, but its production is even less environmentally friendly than petrol. Bio fuels seem like an excellent alternative to me when you consider the entire fuel cycle.

A massive PRO to biofuels such as ethanol is that with a little work it can be emissions neutral. Ethanol made from corn crops for example would emit a similar amount of CO2 into the atmosphere if they were just left to die and complete a natural plant life cycle. The other half of this pro is that by growing crops for fuel, they are pulling CO2 out of the air which will only be put back in by the end of the fuel cycle anyway...

Carbon neutrality is the way to go!! The largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (other than naturally occuring) are power generation (this can be solved using nuclear power) and vehicle emissions. (which can be solved with biofuel)

An the best part about both of those solutions is that the technology already exists to make it happen, so we don't have to rely on imaginary technology that hasnt been invented yet.

Agree that nuclear power as a real alternative in Australia is a long way off, but starting down that path now to achieve a gradual solution over the next half a century or so must be FAR better than sitting on our hands as we are now...