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8 Comments
Add CommentStoring hydrogen in cars is impractical and dangerous. I think it would be better if the research is focused on ethanol and/or bio-diesel fuel cell instead. (like using them to charge the battery of a plug-in electric+ethanol fuel cell hybrid car for long distance trips).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStoring hydrogen in cars isn't impractical or dangerous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt COULD be done impractical and dangerous.
Or it could be done practical and safely.
Kneejerk decisions based on short-term viability of long-term technological directives are what led to the ICE idiocy of the last 100 years.
What's the big deal about trying to make cars run on hydrogen? Hydrogen is a form of energy, not a source of energy. So it's not a real game changer. You can store energy (derived from various sources of energy and probably transported as electrical energy) in batteries or as hydrogen. Either way, the key question is what the source of energy will be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely. Hydrogen is produced using electricity anyway. Plus hydrogen cars would require extensive production, transportation, gas station changes. Plug-in electric car is way more practical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBLDP, PLUG, HYGS.. All doing fantastic today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnergy delivered to the drive train electrically from stored hydrogen energy has a theoretical efficiency around 80%. Hydrogen can be regenerated using electricity or a number of chemical reactions. Power generation using high-temperature gas turbines is much more efficient than internal combustion engines used today in most vehicles. Chemical energy is expensive to transport compared to electrical energy. Plug-in cars might be a viable option. However, they have their limitations too: range, replacement costs, weight of batteries, lifecycle costs of batteries including disposal and externalities like pollution. There is energy overhead inherent to the production of batteries. Batteries are typically just as dangerous or more dangerous than hydrogen stored at low pressure (such as this article describes). The above are not intended to argue against any other technology, but to list some of the attractive qualities of hydrogen energy as a storage medium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFarmers cannot support both ethonol AND food requirments, it has been proved and spoken of before that even E80 requires too much demand for farmers to be able to keep up with and still be able to support the food industry. I think that fuel cells are a brillent idea and would have been perfected nearly a decade ago if it were not for the fossil fuel industry having so much power and crushing the hopes of an earlier cheap and geen future!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd it also depends on the state/provience/country that the electriciy is produced in. For example, the provience that i live in in Canada nearly 80% of the electricity is produced by coal power plants. If even a small percentage of people were to be using electric vehicles they would not be able to keep up and would be burning coal (the dirtiest fuel on the planet) to indirectly fuel their vehicles. Some places can power electric vehicles for next to nothing while using green means to produce it, but others will be using electricity generated by the dirtiest least green power on the planet which was mined in a third world country with no human rights. I love electric cars because they are so directly clean, but you have to keep in mind where the energy in which they are using is coming from as well. Hydrogen on the other hand can be produced via electrolysis anywhere via chemical or physical reactions and for very little cost. The largest cost being to the manufacturing companies and there for to the consumers, but in the long run a very good idea since the only by-product is H2O. But then again nearly the same goes for propane since it can be man made in a lab and it's only by-product is water as well.....all these ideas would be leaps and bounds further along if it wasn't for fossil fuel billionaires being so greedy and crushing the green industry with their big powerful dirty thumbs....
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