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In the new issue of mental_floss magazine, Ethan Trex answers The Biggest Questions of 2009. All this week, he’ll be answering additional questions of various sizes here on the blog.
As climate-saving plans go, few sound quite as appealing as cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. They don’t need any petroleum! They’re low on emissions! They’re…not in our garages. Why not?
Although most of us might not have seen one, there are hydrogen-powered cars out there. There just aren’t very many of them. Honda began production of its FCX Clarity in 2008. The little car runs on hydrogen fuel cells and can travel up to 270 miles on a full tank of hydrogen. The car can get from 0 to 60 in 9.2 seconds—about the same as Honda’s Accord. Sounds perfect, but there are a few hitches.
First, the hand-assembled car is tricky to put together; Honda can only crank out 200 of them in the first three years of production, and mass-production probably can’t start until 2018. On top of that, fuel-cell cars are 
mind-numbingly expensive, and not just by the standards of Honda’s Accord-buying public. According to Honda, just building a single 134-horsepower FCX Clarity costs several hundred thousand dollars, which is part of why the company only leases the cars instead of selling them.
Finally, there’s the problem of our lack of hydrogen fueling infrastructure. (When was the last time you saw a hydrogen station as you cruised down the highway?) Until there’s a nationwide effort to build an infrastructure for producing, distributing, and retailing hydrogen, the cars might be little more than a pleasant daydream. When Honda announced its plans to start leasing the Clarity in 2008, only Southern California residents were eligible to drive one home, and even they had to live near one of three existing hydrogen fueling stations in the area.
Although GM, BMW, and Hyundai hope to have hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles of their own in showrooms within the next five years, some experts estimate that it will take decades before the American fleet can convert to hydrogen. If hydrogen cars can’t really take off in significant numbers until 2050, it might be too late for the technology to make a meaningful impact on how we drive.
Bonus Question: Why are there different types of gas (premium, regular, and super) but it seems like there is only one gas tanker?
You can’t judge a tanker truck by its shiny metallic covering. Although from the outside these trucks look like one gigantic tank, they’re actually divided into a series of compartments. Each compartment contains a certain grade of gas so one truck can stock a station for all three grades of fuel.
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Comments (28)
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About the gas truck: only carrys at most 2 grades of fuel. There is a mixer for the mid grade.
posted by Vince L on 1-19-2009 at 8:31 pm
The other big question: where do we get all the hydrogen? Separating H from O takes quiet a bit of energy and is not very efficient, at least not yet. Some guys at the DOE up in Idaho had some preliminary results that were promissing.
You want mass-produced hydrogen? Get ready for more nuclear power!
posted by D-Mac on 1-19-2009 at 11:56 pm
I’m not in any super hurry to have thousands of tankers carrying liquid hydrogen into major metropolises (metropoli?) anytime soon. :P
posted by TJ Hooker on 1-20-2009 at 2:59 am
A question worth exploring is why there is this focus on hydrogen when electric cars are more practical and promising.
posted by BassMan on 1-20-2009 at 8:57 am
Electric is nice for stop/go driving around the city, but when you get up to highway speeds, you’re still burning mostly fuel (about 80-90%).
Also, the battery has a lifespan of only a handfull of years, and the cost to replace it is very expensive. (I’ve heard $5000)
posted by Lucas on 1-20-2009 at 9:34 am
I didn’t say anything about hybrids.
You should examine electric cars more closely. Then you’ll see how much more viable they are and how much more potential they have. Then check into why Bush/Cheney and oil execs prefer hydrogen..
posted by BassMan on 1-20-2009 at 12:33 pm
BassMan-
There’s a simple reason why we don’t have huge numbers of electric cars, and it has nothing to do with politics. It’s all about battery technology. It takes a heckuva big battery to move something as big as a car and a lot of juice to keep it moving any distance. Now, most people would be fine with an electric car in most daily use. However, if you want to go any further than about 40 miles, you’re looking at a looooooong recharge time (8+ hours)at household current levels. Contrast that to the – what? – 3-5 minutes you’ll spend filling your gas tank? And once that gas tank if full, you can go several hundred miles. Even though most people don’t need more than an electric car for daily use, most people do drive longer distances on a fairly regular basis, and they can’t afford a second car just for that.
I read a statement by a veteran automotive engineer who said that car buyers want three things from electric car: affordability, driveability (that is, comfort and convenience of comparable gas cars), and range. At current (no pun intended) levels of battery technology, you can have any two.
posted by Anthony on 1-20-2009 at 12:50 pm
To TJ Hooker,
Liquid Hydrogen is less explosive than the gasoline that rolls on our highways now (though it does have a lower flashpoint).
If you look at the specific energy (energy/mass) LH2 looks like it contains much more energy than gasoline (which is why it is so popular at NASA), but LH2 has a very low density. The Energy per unit volume of LH2 is roughly 1/3 that of Gas. So the tanker truck that you see full of gas would only have 1/3 the explosive energy if it were full of LH2.
Gas 46.4 MJ/kg 34.2 MJ/liter
LH2 143 MJ/kg 10.1 MJ/liter
posted by Brian on 1-20-2009 at 1:38 pm
I remember leafing through a “Touring Topics” magazine published somewhere in the 1910s, I think, and being astonished at how many models of electric cars were advertised. (Plus neat turntables for the garages so you didn’t ever have to back out.) So much for electric cars never having been given a real chance in history.
I also seem to recall from an episode of “Connections” that gasoline at first was considered a “waste by-product” – at a time when oil drilling was primarily to supply kerosene and such, it was the part that was too volatile to use. So using gasoline as a fuel for these new-fangled automobiles was, as a “waste-not want-not” act, sort of their equivalent of our biodiesels being run on used vegetable oil.
posted by VM on 1-20-2009 at 2:00 pm
Your comments all ignore the fact that the technology is already available to use seawater as a safe fuel. Google, or You Tube, the name John Kanzius.
posted by Pat C. on 1-20-2009 at 3:35 pm
I want to know more about the compressed air cars that are presently being used in India.
posted by Vickey on 1-20-2009 at 3:42 pm
There have been four widely-circulated myths/rumors about electric vehicles that are not true. Because the reality in each case is the 180-degree opposite of the myth, you should know about them.
posted by Seth Leitman on 1-20-2009 at 7:31 pm
Well the Honda FCX is ready for action….but Hydrogen cars will never make it with the GM volt all electric coming out next year and all these Natural Gas cars on the doorstep. I think we are just gonna totally jump over the whole hydrogen movement.
posted by Thomas on 1-20-2009 at 7:33 pm
One main problem with this technology that the media consistently and conveniently overlooks is that hydrogen explodes. Violently. So violently that the typical storage tank for hydrogen is situated off site behind a concrete wall.
Do you want to be driving around with a compressed tank of high explosives on the freeway? Right next to the SUV driving idiot swilling a late, gabbing on a cell phone, driving with their knee? Not me, that’s for sure.
The fact that this debate continues just shows how little your typical American knows about technology and science.
posted by VMS on 1-20-2009 at 7:53 pm
Nuclear-produced hydrogen is our solution.
posted by Anonymous on 1-20-2009 at 8:08 pm
Brian,
Thanks for the info.
TJ
posted by TJ Hooker on 1-20-2009 at 9:16 pm
A good national infrastructure project would be to put solar cells on all our roofs. A couple of advantages come to mind.
1) Reduced need to string high-tension wires, especially through environmentally sensitive areas.
2) The opportunity to generate hydrogen from the electricity. I don’t think my roof could generate enough hydrogen to replace all the gas my car uses, but if I had a dual-fuel car, I would use as much free Hydrogen as I could make.
Until the dual-fuel vehicle becomes available, I could run my refrigerator, vaporizer, or CFLs.
Now, all that sunlight is being wasted.
If Obama wants to support the ailing Construction Industry, create a new source of renewable energy, and cut back on our Middle-East contributions, heavily subsidizing rooftop solar panels would be good.
And of course, “economies of scale” consistent with government programs would bring down the price of the solar panels, etc etc.
posted by Neil on 1-20-2009 at 9:30 pm
I would beg you to consider that centrally-produced energy, whether from solar farms, wind farms, or nuclear power plants, means the continuance of our monthly electricity bill, primarily benefiting utility companies.
If we can’t entirely get rid of that paradigm, shouldn’t we try to minimize it as much as possible?
posted by Neil on 1-20-2009 at 9:36 pm
We are only factoring in the mileage when we are looking at alternative fuels for driving our automobiles. What additional energy is needed for heating and cooling? Try heating a battery powered auto and see how far you can go.
posted by Wayne on 1-20-2009 at 9:50 pm
THE main limiting factor in the development of the hydrogen economy is not the infrastructure, or the safety, or even the generation of hydrogen, but rather is the storage of H2 onboard vehicles.
To travel ~300 miles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles need about 5 kg of H2. At room temperature in its gaseous form, that’s enough to fill up a small room. Compressed at 10,000 psi, the tank will still take up your entire trunk, and about 1/3rd of the energy in H2 is spent converting it from gaseous to liquid form.
One of the more promising methods of hydrogen storage is storage in complex metal hydrides – which are solid state alloys that absorb hydrogen at high pressures and release hydrogen at high temperatures (like vehicle operation temperatures). These hydrides come in forms like LiBH4 or NH3BH3. The two problems concerning researchers in this field are a.) finding high storage density hydrides that release in the correct temperature window and that b.) release hydrogen fast enough. This is really the bottleneck – once a material is found that satisfies these parameters, the hydrogen revolution will almost inevitably continue.
A quick reply to the article and other comments: the infrastructure doesn’t exist because hydrogen vehicles are not yet practical. Once the technology is found to make hydrogen vehicles practical and cheap, the infrastructure will come about quite naturally.
As for hydrogen generation, many interesting renewable methods are being developed to do it via H2O electrolysis with solar power and excess wind-power. But like I said earlier, the driving force right now is still on finding a solution to hydrogen storage, rather than these other things that we will worry about later down the road.
posted by Wenhao Sun on 1-20-2009 at 9:58 pm
THE main limiting factor in the development of the hydrogen economy is not the infrastructure, or the safety, or even the generation of hydrogen, but rather is the storage of H2 onboard vehicles.
To travel ~300 miles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles need about 5 kg of H2. At room temperature in its gaseous form, that’s enough to fill up a small room. Compressed at 10,000 psi, the tank will still take up your entire trunk. Liquid H2 is also inefficient, as about 1/3rd of the energy in H2 is spent converting it from gaseous to liquid form, wasting energy and volume.
One of the more promising methods of hydrogen storage is storage in complex metal hydrides – which are solid state alloys that absorb hydrogen at high pressures and release hydrogen at high temperatures (vehicle operation temperatures). These hydrides come in forms like LiBH4 or NH3BH3. The two problems concerning researchers in this field are a.) finding high storage density hydrides that release in the correct temperature window and that b.) release hydrogen fast enough. This is really the bottleneck – once a material is found that satisfies these parameters, the hydrogen revolution will almost inevitably continue.
A quick reply to the article and other comments: the infrastructure doesn’t exist because hydrogen vehicles are not yet practical. Once the technology is found to make hydrogen vehicles practical and cheap, the infrastructure will come about quite naturally.
As for hydrogen generation, many interesting renewable methods are being developed to do it via H2O electrolysis with solar power and excess wind-power. But like I said earlier, the driving force right now is still on finding a solution to hydrogen storage, rather than these other things that we will worry about later down the road.
- I’ve tried posting this two or three times, if there’s a time delay sorry if this comes up several times.
posted by Wenhao Sun on 1-20-2009 at 10:01 pm
Iceland has implemented a very promising hydrogen fuel program. I read about it around a year ago. Their fueling stations do take up a little more space than your traditional gas station. Might have to take out the chip isle to make room.
posted by CVD on 1-21-2009 at 7:08 am
You can convert your car or truck to run off of water and gas to double or even triple you gas mileage with the Gas4Free system. I used it and got outstanding results. You can read about my experience with the product and how well it worked for me at:
http://www.thegas4free.blogspot.com
posted by jlw on 1-22-2009 at 1:16 am
To VMS,
I hope you include yourself in that snide little comment. Read my above post, Hydrogen is not that explosive in normal atmospheric conditions. Go look at video of the Hindenburg burning. It doesn’t disappear in a huge explosion, it burns like a car that has had its gas tank ruptured would.
Now you do have a point with a 10,000psi bottle rupturing, that can cause quite a bang. But consider that people all the time walk around with bottles of medicinal oxygen at around 2000 psi. That is a true bomb ready to go off at the slightest spark. At work we had to attend a safety class for dealing with high pressure oxygen safety. It can be some scary stuff.
posted by Brian on 1-22-2009 at 11:18 am
no way will hydrogen ever succeed we couldn’t get nuclear to succeed and its essentially the same problem. sure there is no half-life issue but having giant bombs everywhere is just as crazy
posted by Goldwing Guy on 2-1-2009 at 11:52 am
The point is there are not stations for it so its not going to sell!
posted by recession on 3-4-2009 at 6:03 pm
this technology will never see mass production. The reason: hydrogen has no natural source. It takes more energy to make a gallon of hydrogen than you can get out of it. My question is, if you are using some other type of fuel which you need to make the hydrogen to begin with, why not just use that fuel instead of hydrogen in the first place.
Hydrogen is an excellent energy CARRIER, however it’s 100% impractical as an energy SOURCE.
posted by Clark on 6-23-2009 at 3:53 pm
Thanks for posting this. I’ve started seeing more and more now days on the road and thats a good sign. I live in LA by the way.
posted by Used Cars on 11-18-2009 at 6:30 pm