On the Road, Hope for a Zero-Pollution Car

[RedEarth]

WHEN the largest aircraft ever built — the pride of Nazi Germany — crashed in flames at the United States Navy’s airship base here, it took 36 lives and smeared the reputation of hydrogen for decades.

In less than a minute, the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 turned hydrogen, which provided the zeppelin’s lift, into a pariah. But 70 years later, a growing number of advocates are promoting hydrogen as a panacea, a promising alternative to petroleum. In the last decade, every large carmaker has jumped on the hydrogen express.

In dozens of laboratories and research centers, scientists and engineers are busy searching for ways to reduce the cost and improve the practicality of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Development has progressed to the point that some of these prototype vehicles are in daily service, commuting around Detroit, delivering packages in Washington, serving urban bus routes.

To look in on the development progress of hydrogen vehicles, The New York Times invited 10 companies actively promoting hydrogen for personal transportation to bring their vehicles to the Naval Air Engineering Station here. With pressure mounting to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, the anniversary of a pivotal event 70 years ago seemed an appropriate time to look for a clearer understanding of what cars may be like in 30 years.

Some carmakers deemed the disaster site an awkward location for this gathering; others were sympathetic but unable to field a vehicle because experimental mules have testing and appearance schedules busier than those of presidential hopefuls. The three hydrogen-powered vehicles that did arrive here (all by trailer, because refueling was not available for the long trips from their bases) were not the latest models from the auto show circuit, but hard-working development vehicles with thousands of testing miles on their odometers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/automobiles/29INTRO.html?pagewanted=print

[NNadir]

1. Sigh...

How many more decades will we have to listen to this crap about hydrogen cars?

This article could have been written in 1987 and it would mean about the same thing. Remarkable for the New York Times, which has had "science reporting" on uranium written by that great scientist Scooter Libby, is that it confesses plainly that the first hydrogen car was built in 1966. Incredibly, almost 40 years later, there's still a lot of talk.

About the only good thing I can say about hydrogen fuel vehicles is that Governor Hydrogen Hummer in California faces a fair risk of explosion.

It's a dumb idea.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. There are ways to store hydroben other than a high pressure tank

and that has been around since the 70s. Down side is that you can not refuel rapidly.

[razzleberry]

5. this story is a disservice to the envioromental movement

this is crap.

I've heard the same garbage since the 70s.
meanwhile, the ocean is being stripmined,
and forests are being paved.

[IDemo]

2. They quote Simmons on Peak Oil, but left out his thoughts on hydrogen

"Right now, there is a deluge of stories on the wonders of
hydrogen. This is another area of great confusion. Hydrogen is not a
primary source of energy. For a Hydrogen Era to occur you need an
abundance of natural gas, or you need to create a great deal of new power
plants using coal and nuclear power."

[eppur_se_muova]

4. It's only pollution-free if the PRODUCTION of H2 produces no pollution.

Free H2 in quantity is not found naturally anywhere on Earth. It must be produced from other sources of energy -- fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass. But the H2 only serves as a medium of exchange, rather like a storage battery. Its production from fossil fuels would NOT be carbon neutral -- and that is currently the major commercial source -- although from renewables it would be. It's not the H2 that should get the credit for that, it's the renewable source. But renewable energy might better be moved and stored as electricity, or even carbon-based liquid fuels, rather than H2, which has a few drawbacks.

[Eclipsenow]

6. Fuel cell expert bags hydrogen

Dr. Ulf Bossel, organizer of the Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum, talks about the future of the hydrogen economy and a far more efficient electron economy with The Watt.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/thewattpodcast/tWW67P2-2006-07-23.mp3

Some good reading:

* The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak?
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E08.pdf


* On the Way to a Sustainable Energy Future (Text) and the presentation
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E15.pdf

[IDemo]

7. PDF links weren't working

These will:

http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E15.pdf

http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E08.pdf

[IDemo]

8. Good source

Quoting from "On the Way to a Sustainable Energy Future":

While modern power grids distribution over modest
distances may achieve about 90% efficiency, only
20 to 25% of the source energy can be put to use
when hydrogen is used as transport medium. This is
certainly in conflict with the efficiency mandate of
a sustainable energy future. Promoters of hydrogen
point out that the present use of hydrocarbons is
equally inefficient. However, this is a misleading
claim as it compares the poor efficiency of a future
hydrogen economy with the equally poor efficiency
of today's energy technologies. The hydrogen
choice must be compared to the electricity option to
be meaningful. Any comparison reveals that high
efficiency cannot be obtained with chemical energy
carrier. In a sustainable energy future hydrogen has
to compete with electrons. The results of our study
identify the winner. Hydrogen can never compete
with its own energy source, with electricity.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Interesting quote, thanks.

There is a thermal/chemical route to H2 under exploration, particularly in China; NNadir has mentioned this in some of his posts. I seem to have left my links to that on my other computer; here's a starter link on the "S-I Process" (Sulfur/Iodine): http://npre498.ne.uiuc.edu/NPRE%20498%2005%20Lect%209C.pdf
You can also Google "Bunsen reaction".

ON EDIT: I think the biggest strike against H2 as an automotive fuel is the difficulty of storage, which makes routine transfer a hazardous operation, and adds to the weight of the vehicle. Perhaps one should recognize that H2 is a nice, clean fuel, suitable for power plants and other large installations, but not really suitable for vehicles, particularly small ones. An oceangoing vessel could probably deal effectively with the mass of a cryogenic storage system, but smaller vessels would not seem to be good candidates, and land vehicles (excepting possibly trains) even less so.