boizart1

What is the industry standard to make hydrogen gas? I know decomposing H20 is nonspontaneous so it must be paired with a highly spontaneous reaction, and the electrolysis of H20 yields Hydrogen and oxygen gas....both of these are fairly simple to do, are they not? Why is it we are still so stuck of gasoline?? its right back up to 3 dollars a gallon.

8 Maniac

iTrader: (1)

From what I understand, hydrogen fuel cells are the most effective method for using hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

Auto companies don't really have any huge incentives to spend money on developing them for regular use in most cars at this point.

Gas is convenient, understood, well established and available at much lower prices.

I don't know what the current capabilities of hydrogen are, but I'd imagine that it's still not quite up to par with gasoline engines.

maskedferret

iTrader: (1)

It's not so much the ease of producing the fuel; that's one of the obvious perks, however there are other considerations at hand:

The current infrastructure (fueling stations) would have to be completely reworked to support it on a national - if not global - scale.

Every car may potentially be a bomb waiting to be set off. This is probably not what a lot of people are comfortable with. (propaganda twist here a bit, I'm sure)

The automotive & oil industries like making money. Hydrogen fuel threatens the oil industry -> oil industry threatens automotive industry -> technology gets shelved. (Who Killed the Electric Car?)

8 Maniac

iTrader: (1)

Since corporations are considered people, they are legally allowed to donate money to political candidates (bribes much?). As a result, I'm guessing it would be hard for anyone to break into any significant cut of big oil's profits without a significant amount of funding.

boizart1

Its modern slavery...Gas prices dictate everything we do because everything goes up. The government constantly passes on new technologies so they can keep making money out of us. Just like those F*ing stickers on cars telling people to pump premium gas to cars that dont really need it.

8 Maniac

iTrader: (1)

For some cars, it's not necessary. A surprising amount of engines are designed to run on it though, so it could be problematic in a few more cars than one might expect.

You can thank the airliners from a while back for a lot of other cost increases as a result of gas increases. They lobbied against the development of train systems for both public and cargo transportation. That meant more airliners, less convenient transportation methods (trains) and a sudden need for 18 wheelers to haul most of the things sold in the US.

Bullet trains would be amazing. A good city system would be just as good or better. The trains in japan are just so amazingly useful and convenient that it's embarrassing. Maybe one day...

zoom44

thre was no infrastructure for gasoline before it was built. there was no infrastructure for electricity before it was bulit.

thats just not the case. the car your driving now is more a potential bomb than one fueled with hydrogen.



any way tons of hydrogen are produced all the time BY THE PETROLEUM companies. Al will pop in here Im sure to talk about that. Norway produces huge amounts of H every year through steam shifting. They have im sure you read started buildign the infrastructure for a Hydrogen Highway.

In the US a Hydrogen Highway was proposed for the West Coast for the WInter Olympics just passed. The Idea was to be able to drive from the border of Mexico all the way up to Vancouver BC for the Olympics on Hydrogen. In fact most of the California stations were built- enough to get you to within decent range of Oregon- as well as stations in Washington state. Oregon failed to build a single one after a bunch of lip service from our asleep at the wheel Governor.

Vancouver BC int he meantime built a number of stations and had Hydrogen fuel cell powered buses taking people out to the various venues.


Honda and another company (cant think of their name currently) have Hydrogen reformers that can go inside your garage and hook to your NG feed. It can crack out the hydrogen and heat the water for your house.

There is one company who has a type of chemical catalyst that can go in a whole system with a fuel cell in your car. your tank holds water. its fed through the catalyst to produce the Hydrogen which is fed right into the fuel cell to power the car.



Of course then there is Bloom Box which got alot of press lately which uses a secret formula that is apparently relatively cheap and easy to make to create their fuel cells with the added advantage that they can use a multitude of fuels to crack the hydrogen out of.

hmm there was something else i was going to write here so this is just aplace holder. edit: i remembered!

Oh yeah I remembered- Former President Bush had created a Hydrogen Intitiative int eh US and Congress had actually funded it. It was mainly aimed at research for Hydrogen production and Cheaper ways to produce Fuel cells and for things like GM's skate board. In May of last year Pres. Obama gutted the funding. Didnt close the program down mind you. Just reduced the funding to less than half of its previous years.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...hyd-2009-05-08

Another method for Hydrogen production is algae farming . I have been joking with my wife for a little bit about setting up algae greenhouses in the back yard






several people will enter the thread to tell you how H is a crap fuel.

PatrickB

Hydrogen is certainly interesting, but people have missed the biggest problem with it - energy density. Even highly compressed, there's much less energy per unit volume in compressed hydrogen than in gasoline, meaning worse performance and mileage from hydrogen. Of course, emissions are much better...

zoom44

if you're burning it. and much of that is due to design constraints of trying to produce dual fuel ICE vehicles. (not the density the performance)

look at Mazda's time with H rotaries. they doubled the power and range since the first Hydrogen premacy while still keeping it dual fuel

oh yeah and welcome back Patrick. good to see you

cbrf1wr

Just some quick research from the web:

"Typically hydrogen engines are designed to use about twice as much air as theoretically required for complete combus- tion. At this air/fuel ratio, the formation of NOx is reduced to near zero. Unfortunately, this also reduces the power out- put to about half that of a similarly sized gasoline engine. To make up for the power loss, hydrogen engines are usually larger than gasoline engines, and/or are equipped with tur- bochargers or superchargers."

I'm sure this will be disputed and is debatable. The general consensus I get from the web is the same though. Hydrogen ICU engines produce about 50% the energy of compatible gas engines. Not a big deal for large vehicles 18 wheelers, Bus, etc. Just put a bigger motor in it. There is plenty of room. Pretty big deal for standard 2-4 person passenger vehicle.

Fuel Cell is the way to go, if we could get someone to build those suckers for about 1/100 what they cost now.

ShellDude

iTrader: (12)

I shattered a test tube, and created a really cool mini explosion reproducing a fuel cell as a high school chemistry experiment on my parents stove. It's amazing what you can do with some heat, an airtight pot of boiling water and a valve. The hydrogen tends to rise to the top

Loki

iTrader: (1)

IMO, hydrogen isn't a solution. In order to produce hydrogen you need petroleum or electricity (statistically largely produced from coal or petroleum).

To produce it electrically, you need to input more energy to generate the hydrogen than you get out of it when you use it in the car, whether through internal combustion or chemo-electric process.

To produce it from petroleum, you need, well, petroleum, and you don't get as much usable energy out of the process as you would get from just burning the petroleum in the first place.

So in either case, we're not really any better off with it, we'd spend billions developing a technology and infrastructure that is less efficient than the one we have. Oh, and water vapour (exhaust of an internal hydrogen combustion engine) is a greenhouse gas too... so much for the whole environment thing.

Finally, as long as the energy you need to run your car has to be created somewhere else and then transported to you, the people who create it will have total control over the energy supply... as oil companies do now.

IMO, to do this right, we need regular old electric-only drive. Electricity can be generated locally cheaply and no less efficiently (in fact, more efficiently if you factor in transmission losses) than at power plants. Solar, wind, geothermal are all viable sources of local energy that can't be controlled. Battery technology is catching up very quickly.

0413B

make no mistake, you will see hydrogen powered vehicles, on a large scale, in the near future. my guess is that youll see them in vancouver first. its the 'greenest' city in the world. theyll start with public transit first then cabs. eventually when its a little safer, and the fuel gets better the infrastucture will be in place to support a larger demand. crazy canucks. ballard power, based in vancouver, is a leader in hydrogen cells. thier shares are $2.41 right now. guess which way its gonna go?????? if ya had an extra grand layin around.

paulmasoner

iTrader: (1)

there are quite a few H stations in the region of belgium i'm in

ShellDude

iTrader: (12)

That reminds me... The core of a Zinc carbon d cell made all the difference electrolisis wise

zoom44

You are correct. Distributed generation is exactly where we NEED to go. oen other method of distributed generation is with fuel cells making electricity. The The norwegians mostly make hydrogen as a by product of their geothermal power. So it makes sense for there. In the US where you have natural gas piped into your home you can use it to power a fuel cel instead of burning it and you will actually get better conversion than burning it.

Van cover is already a member of the Fuel Cell Bus Club. Ballard's stock has actually been higher tho. They lost some business for Fuel cells when GM tanked as well as some otehr issues

imop45

What about CNG?

there's 2 refilling stations near me in oklahoma city priced at $1.32 per GGE. Would there be a power loss? The cng it pretty high octane (103-112) but most ECU's can handle it from what I've read. Also, the extra tank would make extra weight, reducing performance. But it would be dual fuel usage.

CNG/LPE/Propane

boizart1

I dont think internal combustion would be the best choice though? I was thinking more of a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell...2 tanks, one with hydrogen and one with oxygen...when you make h2o the energy is released...not sure how much though. whatever it is I would think fuel cells is the way to go, no?

boizart1

if I may add, there's no such thing as hydrogen gas in south Florida...hell, most people down here probably dont know it even exist.

imop45

fuel cell is basically an electric car though

Psylence

Hydrogen is foolish. We get hydrogen by cracking CNG.... which takes energy. Just use the CNG.

boizart1

what does CNG stand for?

Psylence

Natural Gas. Current hydrogen gas production is via "cracking" the natural gas in order to separate the hydrogen out. Which is a waste when you think about it.... since natural gas is a more powerful fuel, AND you have to expend energy to turn it into hydrogen....

...you might has well have just burned the natural gas and saved a whole lot of time/money/power.

Natural Gas just doesn't sound as sexy as hydrogen though.

imop45

would the RX8 be able to handle compressed natural gas? For about $3K-$7K you can have a dual fuel system.

zoom44

"Natural gas may also be used in fuel cell technologies that rely upon chemical reactions to create electricity at much higher levels of efficiency than can be obtained from fossil fuel combustion. "

http://www.powerscorecard.org/tech_d...?resource_id=6

"When fossil fuels are used to produce hydrogen, other byproducts are produced, such as CO2 and in some cases small amounts of NOx, SOx, and particulate matter. These byproducts are much less than those produced by burning these fuels to produce electricity. Fuel cells are much less polluting and about twice as efficient as typical steam-turbine electricity production.

http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-I.../chp-fuel-cell

etc etc etc.