Hydrogen based economy (focus on vehicles)

[radical centrist]

I hear time and time again these referances to development of hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. Now unless I'm sorely mistaken on the subject, this is FAR from being made a practical alternative. First are the economic issues. Hydrogen when used industrially is mostly extracted from natural gas, and second oil, only a mere 4% is generated via electrolysis of water. The reason for this is simple, it takes more energy to extract hydrogen by electrolysis than can be generated by reacting the hydrogen. Secondly, hydrogen is difficult to transport, and to be a feasible alternative many stations extracting the hydrogen would have to be built to reliably provide a fuel source. The costs of establishing and maintaining these facilities and transport systems i would imagine would be very high, and the initial investment required would be extremely high as well. Now these are a couple of problems i would imagine would be difficult, but the more extreme ones are the technical ones. Hydrogens density is very low, and while some crafty engineering can help this problem, it can't be solved entirely. The pressures required to be made practical are simply too high to be safe, and along with hydrogens reactivity, this poses a serious safety as well as engineering task. To this day, no experiments regarding a system containing a nessecary amount of hydrogen onboard something as small as a car have been deamed safe or structurally sound enough to be used (with the exception of more exotic chemical storage systems using paladium and other rare metals that are far to rare and expensive to be practical (If i'm wrong and this has been achieved, please send me a link as i would be very interested)). Secondly a straight hydrogen combustion engine pails in efficiency and reliability in comparison to a catalytic fuel cell, which again more often than not require the use of more exotic metals (though cheaper alternatives do exist). Now these are only two mahor technical problems I've mentioned, but they've only recently been tackelled in large-scale power stations, and even then they're still working out the bugs, and these are NOT simple problems to solve. But taking all this into account, i don't think that a hydrogen based vehicle economy would save on fossil fuels as much as it would first appear. Ignoring the initial development costs, the maintance and power consumption of generateing and distributing the hydrogen, along with the manufacturing costs of what would most likely be a nessecarily very precisely build vehicle would reduce the efficiency of the whole hydrogen economy much too far to be a practical alternative. America and the west in general has to lose its dependance on oil, but for these reasons i don't think hydrogen is the alternative. Also, does anyone have any studies on the effects of pumping as much water vapour into the air as such vehicles would in a place like LA or New York? On a side note, Just try to figure out what i'm saying, its been a long weekend and my writing skills are suffering from it lol.

[SirSpanky]

You're largely right. But, consider that ANY alternative to our transportation based infrastructure is going to cost muchos $$. People see Hydrogen in a somewhat skewed view I think; as a fuel itself. It is of course, but I like to think of it (meaning fuel cells) as energy storage.

It's very true that Hydrogen is (relatively) easy to extract from hydrocarbons, though obtaining it this way solves only the petro supply issue, not the pollution one. Therefore it's only one side of the solution. The other is clean(er) replenishable energy, on a gigantic scale.

The safety issues are not much worse than gasoline I think. To be viable at all, it would need to be in a liquid form, and technologies exist to limit vapourization. Even so, just under 2x the volume of liquid h2 is needed for an equivilant volume of gasoline.

The situation is dire.

[geoffrey]

Costs alot of money to make hydrogen, alot of pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants. We can't afford additional strain on our power transmission and production systems as is anywhere in the world, let alone the massive addition of producing enough hydrogen to fuel all our cars and everything in our lives.

Most green solutions are hardly green and actually polute more. Take recycling or solar power or hyrdoelectricity for example.

Clean coal is practical, effecient and green.

[Oddman]

Costs alot of money to make hydrogen, alot of pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants. We can't afford additional strain on our power transmission and production systems as is anywhere in the world, let alone the massive addition of producing enough hydrogen to fuel all our cars and everything in our lives.

Most green solutions are hardly green and actually polute more. Take recycling or solar power or hyrdoelectricity for example.

Clean coal is practical, effecient and green.

There are companies, such as Hy-Drive technologies, who have conducted tests that prove emissions can be lowered by over 80%.

And I find any economical reasons NOT to pursue alternative fuels to be short-sighted and impractical.

A question - Would you sacrifice 50% of your salary if it meant we could curb global warming? It is hypothetical, and I am not suggesting we have all the answers. But I fear that many cannot see past next payday and often set aside their concerns because the damage is not tangible enough to take seriously.

[Riverwind]

A question - Would you sacrifice 50% of your salary if it meant we could curb global warming? It is hypothetical, and I am not suggesting we have all the answers.

Global warming does not mean the earth will be destroyed - all it means is the same number of humans will not be able to live in the same places that they live now. It will create massive human problems as people are displaced by drought and rising sea levels, however, a large percentage of the population will not be adversely affected by global warming or will be able to adjust.

Personally, I think the bigger problem is the total number of people on the planet. Humans are consuming the resources of the planet faster than they can be replenished. Running out of cheap easily accessible resources will create more human suffering than global warming ever will.

[BubberMiley]

Running out of cheap easily accessible resources will create more human suffering than global warming ever will.

That's likely true. That's why conservation is also very important in a non-environmental context. Our economy will collapse if we continue to use oil as we have been, simply because it will continue to become less affordable. Cities like Calgary, whose infrastructure is based on the provision of cheap oil, will suffer most.