Electric cars are a pipe dream

That doesn't compute. Even compressed to 70 MPA, hydrogen has less than 1/6th the energy density of gasoline. So if you wanted a Prius to go 650 miles on a tank, it would require a 15 gallon gas tank or a 90 gallon compressed hydrogen tank. The tank itself would also need to be heavier and a less efficient shape for storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Your claims so far have been at best handwavey and empty.

 

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Much worse! - Completely wrong hand waving! For example at the second large table of your link you see than CNG (natural gas) compressed to 250 bar (= 3626psi and very standard, I think because that is the most common pipeline pressure and one can fill without need of a compressor) has 9 MJ/ liter. Hydrogen, even when compressed to 690 bar (~10,000 psi) by expensive compressor has only half the volumetric energy density!

Lets assume you have a steel tank that can safely hold 10,000psi but instead of filling it with H2, you fill it with CNG. The driving range you get would be (9/4.5)x (650/250) = 5.2 times greater than with hydrogen in the same tank! Perhaps more, if that presure causes the natural gas to liquify, but I don´t think that is case, even on a cold winter day. If one more realistically admits that the IC engine has only 36% efficiency and the fuel cells may get 90% efficiency then the greater range with the tank full of CNG instead of H2 is "only" (36/90=4/10 =0.4)x5.2 = 2.8 times farther than if using hydrogen.

Or if you want to used a lighter tank with the same range, it is 2.8 times smaller in volume. If basically a cylinder, the diameter is 1.67 times smaller. That means the "hoop stress" in the steel walls is 1.67 time less and they can be 1.67 times thiner. So the circumference of the smaller tank is 1.67 times less and the walls are 1.67 times thinner. That means for the same range, the tank weight can be 2.8 times less! Basically you can chose how you want to take advantage of the superiority of CNG compared to H2. For example, you can have a tank that weighs 1.67 times less and get 1.67 times greater range. (1.67^2=2.8)

I.e. the weight reduction factor times the range increase factor must be kept equal to 2.8.

Summary: Only an "environmentalist" (water exhaust) would prefer compressed hydrogen over CNG even if CNG had the same cost per joule, but it is now only about 10% of the cost per joule (Just a quick guess, but even an idiot or extreme environmentalist* would understand after paying for hydrogen a few times.)

* but he does not have a car - only use busses etc.

 

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Nonsense. Drop a container of gasoline 100 feet onto a concrete pad. Now drop a cylinder of 3600 PSI hydrogen onto a concrete pad. Which one would you want to be farther from?

Now drop a gallon of gas onto the floor. Turn on your gas stove and make some eggs. Then release 100 liters of hydrogen into a room and turn on your gas stove. Which will you survive?

Now spill some gasoline in one room and release hydrogen into another. Then have someone try to identify which room is dangerous. Which one will they be able to avoid?

Industrial explosions at hydrogen facilities are extremely common. Do you want a list?

Yes, with a big tank on a trailer (or say an SUV with the back half filled with a big tank.) However most people don't want to pull trailers or give up half their car.

As a good example, the Mazda MX-8 hydrogen was a car that could run on either gas or hydrogen. It had a 28 gallon hydrogen tank for compressed hydrogen and a 15 gallon tank for gasoline. The range on hydrogen was 62 miles; the range on gasoline was 350 miles. To get those ranges to be the same you would need a 212 gallon hydrogen tank. That would take up the entire back of the car - or have to be pulled on a trailer.

Yes. Heck, oil is made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; those are three of the most common elements on the planet. It's combining them in a useful way that is the challenge. Fortunately we have some oil in oil form; we don't have any hydrogen in hydrogen form.

Ethanol is far cheaper than hydrogen. Look it up.

Nonsense.

. . . . because they have a lot of really good geothermal sites. Lucky guys.

I recommend you do the same thing - but this time look where the geothermal plants in the US are.

Natural gas is finite, methane is not - and they are interchangeable. Pigs produce it. You can make it from garbage.

Why not use a renewable resource we have, rather than one we don't have?

See math above.

 

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About 40 years ago there was a federal surge of interest in geothermal energy. As is often the case, the feds gave each state some funds to look for and find some. APL, where I worked already had a long standing contract with the state of MD to evaluate potential sites for new power plants. Idea was to avoid the NIMBY problem, or at least reduce it, buy buying up a few sites 50 or so years before needed, and posting signs telling that in ~5 decades there may be a power plant here. So it was easy for the state to just transfer the funds via that contract to APL. We were under strong political pressure to find some used for geothermal energy (as were all the states that accepted the federal money). There really is none in the US except in the upper NW, as I remember, but we did not let that fact stop us.

The Eastern Shore of MD is basically low thermal conductivity sediment more than a mile deep. At the bottom of it there are thus some warm rocks as that thick sediment does sort of serve as a thermal blanket. We found that one of Tyson´s chicken processing plants could almost break even by pumping water down one well and bring it up via another a few miles away, to wash the de-feathered chickens in. We wrote our useless report, but that federal funds boondoggle did pay about half of my salary (and three others) for nearly a year. Strangely,

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we completed the study just as the funds were exhausted.

There is little point in trying to educate theDoctor - he is one with a strong false pro-hydrogen opinion and a tightly closed mind. Just like our search for geothermal power in MD, he won´t let facts stop him.

 

here is video on the ammonia powed car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6HzP84KhoY&feature=related

 

FYI http://nh3fuelassociation.org/

 

The truth is I am talking Long term, In the future all we can really expect to never run out of is , Solar , geothermal and Hydrogen power. Everything else is finite. Going simply on that fact alone is enough to say that cars will eventually all be electric in one way or another. Just out of mechanical simplicity electricity is easier to work with, Managing an electric motor is much more cost effective than that of an internal combustion engine. Not dealing with a transmission and not dealing with chemical exhaust makes it a desirable choice.

Go forward 100 years, and tell me if you really think people will tolerate any sort of chemical Emissions from a vehicle. And using Ion batteries is something we like to avoid. You did mention that hydrogen cars still need a battery, this is true but they do not need a battery to the same scale that battery powered cars use. It would be more similar to that of a normal car battery.

The truth is the only way we would stick with a chemical power source if if we use methane produce by bacteria. But even then people are very cautious about chemical emissions. With Hydrogen we are simply held back by the technology, and that is advancing every day, with almost every other fuel source we are held back by its by products. SO that is why I say that Hydrogen is the future because technology will always advance and people will not want to make our air any worse if we dont have to.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

This article I think sums it all up. Truth is yes, Hydrogen at this point in time is not that great, So I could see cars going one of three ways, Either we develop better battery technology, we develop better systems for storing and transporting hydrogen, or we develop bacteria that produce methane in excess. I think at this point the latter is the most rapid in development but will be slower to be implemented, I think we are focusing as a community on the Batteries and Hydrogen is about a century to come. But as far as natural Gas goes and ethanol goes. I dont think they will last. Fossil fuels, by their nature, will not last. Unless they can be manufactured in a passive means in a rapid way.

 

We don't have any hydrogen. That's like saying "we will never run out of D-cell power because we can always build more D-cells." Perhaps - but building them takes time and energy.

So is geothermal.

Provably untrue, since lifetime costs of EV's are much higher than lifetime costs of gas engines.

Sure we will. We will tolerate water, nitrogen, oxygen, CO2 (in limited quantities) and argon. They are already in the atmosphere, after all.

Do the math and tell us what size of battery a car will need to accelerate to highway speeds a few times (to deal with the lower power but higher energy output of the fuel cell you are discussing.)

A good option, as is oil produced by algae, ethanol produced by cellulose and completely synthetic fuels created by pyrolysis from garbage.

You get the same benefits from methane derived from biological sources and battery powered vehicles. Indeed emissions from battery powered vehicles are lower, so if "absolutely no emissions" is your goal, that's the way to go.

I think we will do all three, and methane and battery will tend to dominate. A natural gas (IC) engine in a pluggable hybrid would reduce CO2 emissions drastically and not cost any more than modern PHEV's. Hydrogen will have niche uses (low range commuter vehicles, fuel cells for military use) but will not dominate due to its inherent problems.

 

Thanks. Here are a few "information gems" one of their papers has (from :http://nh3fuel.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/shroder-carl.pdf):

Sun supplies to earth surface over 2000 thousand TW-hrs/day and man´s daily total energy use was (in 2008) about 363 TW-hrs/day. Note >2000E3/363 = >5,510

For most terrestrial uses it is the energy per unit volume that is most important. Here are some of interest as a percent of the diesel, the highest, at 138,490 BTU / gallon: Diesel,100 Gasoline,89.8 Propane,66.0 Ethanol,61.0 Mehanol,45.1 Ammonia,43.5 Highest Li-ion battery,< 3.0 Liquid (very cold) H2,25.9 H2 at STP, <0.001

The liquid ammonia / liquid H2 hydrogen content ratio is: 43.5 / 25.9 = 1.68; So my prior statement, from memory, of about 1.30 is grossly unfair to ammonia.
Note liquid H2 requires refrigeration and storage at nearly absolute zero temperate, while liquid NH3 needs only very modest compression and no cooling.

Ammonia is by far the best way to transport hydrogen, and tons of it are safely transported every day (on annual average) for use on farms as fertilizer.

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The H2 powered fuel cell car has efficiencies of: 23% (compressed H2) & 19% (Liquid H2) vs. 69% for an EV car or 31% for the sugarcane ethanol IC engine car.* (Note sugarcane´s energy input is 87% free! So its lower efficiency vs. the electric car is not important.)

A 100 MWh (or Mjoules) of energy in both ammonia and or ethanol can be produced many times (at least twice - I´ll try to find and edit with exact data) lower cost than production of same energy produced in Hydrogen.

SUMMARY: The H2 fueled car (1) has much lower energy efficiency, is (2) much more expensive, and is (3) many times more dangerous than at least two well demonstrated alternatives with no damage to the environment! (H2 does, until US electric power is 100% solar) (4) Thus, hydrogen fueled car releases CO2. Hydrogen will never be used for transport fuel. "Four strikes and you are out!" (I give thedoctor an extra strike, but bet he cannot change his false beliefs.)


*Sugarcane ethanol has RoE = 8. Or is > 87% efficient. In a well designed IC engine it is >35% energy efficient. Thus over all efficiency is > 0.87 x 0.35 = >31%

Note also: Ammonia can be made from sunshine, water and air - inexhaustive sources too as when burned in IC engine, the water and N2 are returned to the air.

Either ammonia or sugarcane ethanol is MUCH more cost attractive, sustainable, environmental friendly, fuel for cars than hydrogen, and ALWAYS will be;
however, ammonia is toxic, must be compressed to be liquid, and does not have 35+ years of large scale demonstrated use as a car fuel, so I prefer sugarcane ethanol for all world´s cars using liquid fuel. The land required for growing that much sugarcane is about 1% of earth´s arable land.

Later by edit: Happened across fact that electrolysis require ~13.5Mj/kg of H2 (if memory of a few hours is OK). Article was noting that energy could be partly heat. I.e. 1000 degree steam, being split into H2 & O2, cut the electrical requirement by ~30%, but I seriously doubt that is useful. That is one hell of an expensive high presures to play around with and it you have it, why not make electric power? I had long ago the idea that electolysis at home could run to make high presure H2 with no need for a compressor - but it will take more electrical energy (no free lunch) and if not producing just a tiny volume per minute when you disconnet the line to the car, significant energy is lost as the presure in line and electrolsis unit falls. Also what use would I have for O2 at high pressure?

 

If geothermal is something we won't run out of, then so is thorium, really. After all, geothermal is just thorium power with a really bad heat exchanger. And thorium can provide all the energy for mankind on earth for as long as the earth is habitable, or thereabouts. Oh, and it doesn't cover the earth with bio-unfriendly sheets of silicon or even more toxic other methods. One more thing, it doesn't require humungus power grid modifications to transport it from where it can be made quasi-effectively, to where it is needed. Thorium power can be easily made available in small, modular 100MW packages (even smaller if desired) and can be placed conveniently near where-ever it is needed.

 

As I stated above, ammonia is a better way to store and transport hydrogen.

 

Translation: "I admit I don't know what I'm talking about, so I decline to defend any of the previous handwaving nonsense I posted. And I still don't get that hydrogen isn't a source of power, its a battery."

 

I apologize for any misconceptions, I am simply saying that we use Hydrogen as a method of storing energy for the use of Cars.

One problem faced with hydrogen is that it takes a lot of energy to produce it. This is a mostly nul issue because we, in truth, have a surplus of available renewable energy on this planet if we bother to look for it. In Geothermal, Solar and Hydro, not to mention other sources like heat differential, wind and even tidal.

Here is a map of the available geothermal Energy on this planet
/ww .go ogle .org/egs/

and some info

/ww w 1.eere.ene rgy .gov/geothermal/news_detail.html?news_id=19018


SO then it comes down to the effectiveness of storing hydrogen for the use in cars.
/ww .wir ed . com/aut opia/2008/06/516-mile-range/

We have cars now that can go 500 mile on one tank that is, in fact, kept in the car and not on a trailer as some have suggested it might.

and finally we go to the fuel cell itself, Primarily containing Platinum they tend to be very expensive but we are actually working on fuel cells that work with nickel and tin.
/www .en g r.wis c .ed u/news/ arc hive/2003/Jun30.html

SO it also has been mentioned and I admit a formidable competitor to Hydrogen Electric cars is indeed organically produced fuels like Methane, which have the advantage of being passively produced, but to say that the hydrogen-electric car is without potential would be completely false.

 

Still no acknowledgement of the fundamentals (laws of physics) about how much energy is required to split 2 of H2O into 2H2 & O2, which no technology can EVER reduce. Still no recognition that either cooling to liquid H2 OR compressing to practical tank pressure (and affordable / practical tank weight size trade off) are laws of physic - limits technology can not change.

For example the energy for compressing is significantly greater than the energy the compressed gas could produce if expanded against a piston (Carnot´s efficiency limit law, etc.)
For example the extremely cold H2 could be a warming "cold sink" for a series of Carnot engines (theoretically most efficient possible) and the energy needed for compression is greater than that - again laws of physic prevent technology from improving.

But theDoctor is not deterred by physical facts as "some day in the future ..." - He has not given up on H2 as a practical, economical car fuel. Hence I claim to have won my bet, made here:

Hey Doc want to invest in unlimited free energy, made with the passive “anti-gravity mat”? Its a simple future technology development system: Stand on the mat, dip bucket into the water trough (one end is over the mat, the other not) and lift up (no energy required as over the mat.) Then ease bucket sideways into the gravity field, neither raising nor lowering, to above the small hydro-turbine generator and pour. After water falling thru that generator produces energy it flows back via the trough to end over the mat and is lifted up again. Repeat cycle as often as you need to sell power cheaper than the fuel using power plant.

If scientists in the future can reduce the energy required to split H2O, liquify H2, Or compress it then surely a simple PASSIVE anti-gravity mat is "child´s play."
Daddy always said: “If reason doesn´t work, use ridicule."

 

Sure, but if it were easy, it would already have been done.

Agreed. But there is a wide gulf between "has some potential" and being practical.

 

The title of that article is "516-Mile Range In A Fuel Cell Vehicle You Can’t Fuel." They are referring to the enormous difficulty in compressing hydrogen to 10,000 PSI. There are no commercial compressors available that do this, partly because they are so inefficient and take so much energy, and partly because hydrogen is such a hard gas to work with.

Now, what range can you get in a car you CAN fuel? Fuel cell cars seem to be hitting around 350ish miles with very large (36 gallon) tanks compressed to about 3600 PSI, which is about the limit it's easy to work with.

 

Actually it is a reference to the lack of fueling stations and in the article it clearly states that we have the ability to make fueling stations for these vehicles it is just difficult and expensive to set up initially simply because there are already so many gasoline stations it would take some time to convert them and then it would take time before people start driving hydrogen cars to the point where it can make money.

If they have tested a car and it has been able to go 500 miles (and it has) I am not sure how you are going to continue to state that hydrogen cars are so limited.


Secondly, we have the technology today to have a surplus of energy coming from only renewable energy of about 1000% of our consumption needs, the only reason we have not done this is simple, there is no profit in making electricity that abundant, it would essentially become to cheap to meter. So it is not out of mechanical difficulty that we don't set up a renewable free electricity grid, it is out of greed. With that in mind then your concern about the amount of energy it takes to produce hydrogen is nul, because people would more likely than not gladly shell out the extra electricity to produce a fuel that leaves no negative footprint (or at least a lot smaller one)

 

Here is the correct link

** Were any on the road, driven by non-Hyundai or Toyota related renters, even a year later than planned, as announced in quote below, -i.e. in the summer of 2009?
I think not as the internet site of Hyundai in May 2013 says: "About 200 vehicles will be leased over the next three years, primarily in Southern California."

3x12x6000 = $216,000 just to rent, or more than three times the cost of OWNING this all electric car, now being profitably sold at $69,900 with greater range (>300mile on full charge):

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The Li-ion battery will last at least two times longer than the fuel cell, especially as fuel cell can only be fueled in polluted urban areas (if at all). The H2 fuel cell takes in O2 from the air, and with that, the pollutants that quickly poison the fuel cell - reason why you can only lease for three years, if at all, unless "Honda connected."

*I will admit red below is too strong a statement when ANY H2 car is sold to an individual with less than 10 million net worth, who has no connection to Car Company. They are at best toys for a few very rich to show off in. Not part of the US´s transportation system. Hydrogen will never be used for transport fuel. Economic reasons, the laws of physics and stated in post 3114, make me confident this red statement is true.

 

And because it is very, very difficult to compress hydrogen to 10,000 PSI. It takes lots of energy. The compressor is very expensive. The resulting fueling system is very dangerous. No one will want to spend $100,000 on a fuel pump.

The Space Shuttle was powered primarily by hydrogen fuel and could orbit the Earth hundreds of times. That's also somewhat impractical for your typical person to use.

I gave an example of a hydrogen car that was fairly practical for people to use - tank not too big, still runs on gas in a pinch, uses commercially available pressures. Its range is 62 miles. Perhaps that will be extended - but that's a long way to go.

Do you have a solar power system that meets all your needs? If not, why not, if it's too cheap to meter?

Again, why don't you do it?

If we have the extra electricity, why not shut down coal power plants instead - since they are the dirtiest source of power we have?

 

what about those cars that drive themselves? using lasers and what not