hydrogen cars

Steve Chu proposed putting hydrogen car research and development on the back burner.   Sanity rules.

There are some very rabid hydrogen advocates and I receive a lot of flack whenever I bring up the subject. Difficult technical and infrastructure issues are associated with hydrogen transportation  that makes it a bad choice anytime in the near future.  

Hydrogen may be common in the universe, but it is taken with chemically combining with other materials and  H₂  does not occur naturally on Earth in non-trivial amounts.  Producing it requires large amounts of energy and often hydrocarbons, you realize gaseous or liquid hydrogen is closer to a storage system than a fuel (ok - fuels are energy storage systems, but the point is most of the energy in what we consider fuels has already been put there by some natural process).

So some issues:

• H₂ burns nicely in internal combustion engines, but gaseous or liquid storage is expensive.  The IC engines tend to have thermal efficiencies of less than 40 percent.  

• fuel cells are an option, but even if they can be made cheaply, efficiencies are under 50%

• the efficiency of manufacturing gaseous hydrogen is under 50% in most cases ...  so the total efficiency of an IC engine running on hydrogen is less than 20% and a fuel cell would be under 25%. 

• the combination of a battery and electric motor can be over 90% efficient.  Making clean electricity to charge batteries is much more efficient than breaking water down and running a fuel cell.

• the  huge infrastructure to move the gaseous or liquid hydrogen around does not exist - there is a chicken and egg problem that does not exist with plug in hybrids or range extended electrics. Who is going to fund this infrastructure - taxpayers or the companies involved?

• practical plug in hybrids will arrive in the next year or two and prices should drop dramatically in five years.  Fuel cells would require a huge breakthrough to move into the luxury car price range in the next decade.  Honda has a well designed fuel cell car now, but try to buy a few thousand of them and see what the price would be.  Then try to figure out where you would drive them.

I'm not strictly pro-electric and there are a few clueless electric car schemes out there (along with some clueful ones).  Hydrogen for transportation is a waste of scarce resources - there is a serious opportunity cost associated with focusing on it.  But dramatic improvements in carbon emissions and petroleum use can be made in the next decade with policy and traffic law changes - and part of the solution isn't exactly novel and may have other benefits.  American politicians are unlikely to address these issues, but there is a lot of low hanging fruit independent of electrics or hydrogen -- if we were really serious about the problem.  But the wild card is the price of oil -- permanent $200+ oil would focus politicians after a year or two. 

There are many ways to attack the problems at hand.  The Bush Administration latched onto hydrogen as it punted the problem far into the future and sent a lot of free money to oil and car companies without upsetting their business.  Now a serious physicist is in charge of the Department of Energy - someone who is able to cost out solutions and see if they might arrive in time.

Comments

[Breckenridge]

I would have to agree, electric is best at this point and for the near future. Hydrogen can be an option for future researchers to provide more electricity that can be distributed to households and such. Still, could you imagine the big boom you would hear if a hydrogen station had a bit too much spark? I do understand that the technology can be contained safely, but let's think of human error and neglect.

[fateh singh]

hi
h2o . i like hydrogen cars .good topic on this site.

fateh singh
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