Daimler Chrysler Plans Mass-Market Hydrogen Car In 10 Years Blah Blah Blah

[hatrack]

SINGAPORE — Car giant DaimlerChrysler said Monday it hopes to sell pollution-free, fuel-cell cars to the public within a decade but acknowledges that making them cheap enough will be its toughest challenge.

"We can expect to see a commercialization of fuel-cell cars in 10 years," DaimlerChrysler's Head of Technology and Environmental Communications Edith Meissner said in Singapore, as the company delivered five cars for road testing in the Southeast Asian city-state.

EDIT

Prototype hydrogen-fueled vehicles typically cost $1 million to $2 million each, including the $200,000 cost of making the fuel cell itself, according to industry estimates.

"At the moment, the cost is the biggest challenge we face. We are sure that with the economies of scale and the development of the techniques we will reach the goal," she added."

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-20/s_26012.asp

[Richardo]

1. "Pollution free"

...if you don't count all the natural gas they need to burn to produce the hydrogen. :eyes:

[hatrack]

3. Yeah, and the cost of materials extraction to get the stuff to build it

Etc., etc., etc.

[Worst Username Ever]

2. Stupid

You need to expend MORE PETROLEUM to create the hydrogen needed than you would need to just put the gas in the tank anyway. Dumb, dumb.

5. They'll use nuclear power

n/t

[kiahzero]

13. More likely solar

One of my good friends is doing research for the Army on fuel cells. Apparently, they are working on making the process for creating solar panels markedly cheaper, so that making a extremely large solar installation in the Mojave desert becomes cost-efficient.

They're also working on optimal ways to transport the hydrogen, and I believe his research is focused on the best ratio for the reaction. I'm not entirely sure, though, because chemical engineering makes my head spin.

4. before you say blahblahblah

explore this web site and stuff on Amory Lovins elsewhere.

http://www.rmi.org/

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid388.php

[hatrack]

6. Quite familiar with Lovins and his work - much of which is good stuff

I don't doubt that there may be some limited applicability for hydrogen as motive power for transportation.

But as a substance to replace oil as the energy base for industrial civilization, hydrogen ain't it.

And the blah blah blah is, if anything, directed as much at the Big Three and their incredibly lackadaisical non-response to fundamental energy problems and humanity's bottomless appetite for more and more fuel as it is at hydrogen visionaries.

So, maybe you'll have some mass-market hydrogen cars available in 10 years IF you can overcome cost problems and IF you can beat the technical conundrums you're facing and IF you can successfully make and market the things - wow, THANKS Daimler/Chrysler for your speedy and logical response.

8. gotcha.

:)

[BOHICA06]

7. So imagine .....

in a geostable State somewhere in the US - a ring of 20 to 25 Nuclear reactors doing nothing but creating electricity for electrolysis - to generate hydrogen and oxygen - release the O2 or figure some use - and pipeline the H2 to your local H2 store for your car.

Or ---- floating fields of solar cells - acres upon acres - in the Gulf of Mexico - for the same purpose - plus the Cobia :)

It is a Dream, I have. - Merlin

[phantom power]

9. that would work, but there may be better alternatives to H2

You could take those same energy sources, and manufacture hydrocarbon fuels. The carbon source would be CO2, so the cycle can be carbon neutral.

The main advantage would be that hydrocarbon fuels are a lot easier/safer /cheaper to store and transport, and we could probably leverage our existing distribution infrastructure.

[NNadir]

10. You got it, as usual.

The best fuel/refrigerant/hair spray propellant/solvent obtainable from hydrogen and CO2: dimethyl ether (DME). It can be made over catalysts like cobalt from synthesis gas or hydrogen, CO2.

The atmospheric lifetime of DME is 5.1 days. (See Chem. Rev. 2003, 103, 4999-5023, on page 5006) It's critical temperature is over hundred degrees, but it's gaseous at ordinary pressure and temperature, is nontoxic, and, though miscible with water, it is easily removed from water by simple air sparging.

Great stuff. You can reform it in a fuel cell too, to get hydrogen, or you can burn it in a diesel engine, or a turbine, run your stove on it, and, to quote Tom Waits, "It removes embarassing stains from contour sheets." When it burns, it gives zero particulates (no carbon-carbon bonds), very low NOx. The only drawback I can think of is that formaldehyde is part of the atmospheric decomposition pathway (which means some ozone).

The hydrogen itself is still only clean if it is derived from nuclear or solar sources.

[Donkeyboy75]

14. Not only formaldehyde,

but methane as well.

[amandabeech]

11. It is a dream.

I've seen references to "one gallon of oil equals one gallon of water." Nowhere but on the salt water coasts is there anything like that much water. In addition, electrolysis generally uses distilled water, which requires energy to produce and which leaves behind all kinds of substances which require reuse/disposal/return to the sea, because of inefficiency and severe corrosion/destruction of the electrodes. Perhaps the newer methods of separating the hydrogen from oxygen in water can be done without distillation, but you still would have to come up with extreme amounts of water: we use something over 300 billion gallons of petroleum a year in the U.S.

[NNadir]

12. Hydrogen is not transportable by pipeline. Electrolysis via nuclear

electricity is not a particularly attractive idea because it is still very inefficient. Even though nuclear power is the safest form of energy except for wind, it is still not risk free, nor is it eternal, and therefore it should not be used indiscrimately or wastefully. We owe it to future generations to conserve as much as is possible. (We also owe it to future generations to make the size of their generations very much smaller than our own, by sensible family planning.)

The best option for producing hydrogen from nuclear energy does not involve the generation of intermediate electricity and conversion of that electricity to hydrogen via electrolysis. This is not necessary because there are high efficiency (>50%) thermochemical cycles that can be operated by high temperature reactors such as gas cooled reactors or molten salt reactors. In these reactor systems, the electricity generated is not an intermediate, but is rather a side product, generated by means of a "co-generation" schemes. One such scheme, the sulfur-iodine cycle would involve cooling a mixture of sulfur dioxide, steam and oxygen from 830C to 120C, with the waste heat being used to generate steam for electric turbines.