Where Are We Going With Hydrogen?

[Hitchhiker]

Hydrogen could fuel cars, light trucks, and RV's. It could be used to generate electricity, for heating, and as a fuel for industrial processes. Could we have a future economy in which hydrogen is America's clean energy choice, affordable, safe, domestically produced, used in all sectors of the economy, and in all regions of the country?

Can you imagine a world running on hydrogen later in this century? If so, environmental pollution would no longer be a concern. Every nation would have all the energy it needs available within its borders. Personal transportation could be cheaper to operate and easier to maintain. Economic, financial, and intellectual resources devoted today to acquiring adequate energy resources and to handling environmental issues could be turned to other productive tasks for the benefit of the people. Life could get better.

Are the sources of hydrogen abundant? The more you have of something relative to demand , the cheaper it's going to be and the less expensive it'll be for the consumer. Is hydrogen power clean to use? Cars and RV's that would run on hydrogen fuel produce only water, not exhaust fumes. One of the greatest results of using hydrogen power, of course, will be energy independence. If we developed hydrogen power to its full potential, could we reduce our demand for oil?

The only known way to get free hydrogen is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen produced can provide. Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's simply is a carrier of energy. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen made from hydrocarbons and shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram.

Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that if hydrogen cars, trucks, and motorhomes were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one would buy such vehicles. This fact makes the hydrogen economy very unlikely.

Hydrogen is actually made by reforming hydrocarbons therefore its use as a fuel would not be very likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and might actually tend to increase them. Before hydrogen can be transported anywhere, it needs to be either compressed or liquefied. To liquefy it, it must be refrigerated down to a temperature of -423 degrees Fahrenheit.

At these temperatures, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics make refrigerators extremely inefficient. As a result, about 40 percent of the energy in the hydrogen must be spent to liquefy it. This reduces the actual net energy content. In addition, because it is a cryogenic liquid, still more energy could be expected to be lost as the hydrogen boils away during transport and storage.

As an alternative, we could use high pressure pumps to compress the hydrogen as gas instead of liquefying it for transport. This would only require wasting about 20 percent of the energy in the hydrogen. The problem is that safety-approved, steel compressed gas tanks capable of storing hydrogen at 5,000 psi weigh approximately 65 times as much as the hydrogen they would contain. So to transport 200 kilograms of compressed hydrogen, roughly equal in energy content to just 200 gallons of gasoline, would require a truck capable of hauling a 13-ton load.

An entire large truckload delivery would be needed simply to transport enough hydrogen to allow ten people to fill up their cars with the energy equivalent of 20 gallons of gasoline each.

So considering some of the economics of production and distribution of hydrogen, where do you think this technology will lead us as related to our RV's?

[Hitchhiker]

Hydrogen could fuel cars, light trucks, and RV's. It could be used to generate electricity, for heating, and as a fuel for industrial processes. Could we have a future economy in which hydrogen is America's clean energy choice, affordable, safe, domestically produced, used in all sectors of the economy, and in all regions of the country?

Can you imagine a world running on hydrogen later in this century? If so, environmental pollution would no longer be a concern. Every nation would have all the energy it needs available within its borders. Personal transportation could be cheaper to operate and easier to maintain. Economic, financial, and intellectual resources devoted today to acquiring adequate energy resources and to handling environmental issues could be turned to other productive tasks for the benefit of the people. Life could get better.

Are the sources of hydrogen abundant? The more you have of something relative to demand , the cheaper it's going to be and the less expensive it'll be for the consumer. Is hydrogen power clean to use? Cars and RV's that would run on hydrogen fuel produce only water, not exhaust fumes. One of the greatest results of using hydrogen power, of course, will be energy independence. If we developed hydrogen power to its full potential, could we reduce our demand for oil?

The only known way to get free hydrogen is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen produced can provide. Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's simply is a carrier of energy. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen made from hydrocarbons and shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram.

Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that if hydrogen cars, trucks, and motorhomes were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one would buy such vehicles. This fact makes the hydrogen economy very unlikely.

Hydrogen is actually made by reforming hydrocarbons therefore its use as a fuel would not be very likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and might actually tend to increase them. Before hydrogen can be transported anywhere, it needs to be either compressed or liquefied. To liquefy it, it must be refrigerated down to a temperature of -423 degrees Fahrenheit.

At these temperatures, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics make refrigerators extremely inefficient. As a result, about 40 percent of the energy in the hydrogen must be spent to liquefy it. This reduces the actual net energy content. In addition, because it is a cryogenic liquid, still more energy could be expected to be lost as the hydrogen boils away during transport and storage.

As an alternative, we could use high pressure pumps to compress the hydrogen as gas instead of liquefying it for transport. This would only require wasting about 20 percent of the energy in the hydrogen. The problem is that safety-approved, steel compressed gas tanks capable of storing hydrogen at 5,000 psi weigh approximately 65 times as much as the hydrogen they would contain. So to transport 200 kilograms of compressed hydrogen, roughly equal in energy content to just 200 gallons of gasoline, would require a truck capable of hauling a 13-ton load.

An entire large truckload delivery would be needed simply to transport enough hydrogen to allow ten people to fill up their cars with the energy equivalent of 20 gallons of gasoline each.

So considering some of the economics of production and distribution of hydrogen, where do you think this technology will lead us as related to our RV's?

[RustyJC]

Richard,

Actually, the most abundant source of hydrogen is sea water. To strip the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atom in a water molecule by electrolysis, however, requires electrical power. If we're serious about hydrogen and want to minimize our carbon footprint, then we'd better be prepared to start a crash program for building nuclear power plants to generate the required electrical power - solar, wind and tidal sources aren't going to get us there. Are the environmentalists ready for a bunch of new "nukies"?

Rusty

[Hitchhiker]

Rusty,

Good point about the amount of power to extract the hydrogen from water.

There's an idea of producing hydrogen via water electrolysis locally at filling stations, I read it somewhere but can't recall the source at the moment. To extract hydrogen at a contemporary gasoline station, it would require an enormous amount of power. This power would need to be supplied by the utility over special heavy-duty lines, and then transformed and rectified into direct current on site for use in the electrolyzer. The monthly power bill at such a station would be astronomical.

Electrolyzers use high amp-low voltage power, at least several hundred thousand amps would be required. And an electrolyzer would not be cheap either. At current prices such a unit could cost the station owner over $10 million, which mortgaged over thirty years would cost him about $100,000 per month, assuming it lasted that long. No one would want to do this, of course, since the same $10 million invested in five percent bonds could return $500,000 per year, much more than the hydrogen sales income under discussion, with no work and no risk.

Then the station owner would still need to buy and operate either a 5,000 psi explosion-proof compressor pump or a cryogenic refrigerator, and build and accept liability for high-pressure or cryogenic hydrogen storage facilities on his properties. Having paid for all that, there would then be the little matter of insurance.

I don't think hydrogen production at the corner gas station is anything we'll see in the near future. As you said in your post, nuclear power to produce the hydrogen may be the way to go in the future.

[NeilV]

In Europe they are starting to exploit the Stirling Engine for generating electricity and powering ships.

It basicly works on temperature differential (as little as five degrees) from one side of the engine to the other. Some water heaters that fit under the countertop are available that have a Stirling Engine powering a small generator to provide free electric power from the temperature differential comming off the water heater. When setup where there is a natural temperature differential available such as by a large body of water then no fuel is required. No nuclear waste or danger of radioactive discharge.

They are also being looked at as a source of power for Hybred Vehicles using the heat from the internal combustion engine to provide the temperature differential for the Stirling engine which would be setup with a generator to keep the batteries charged. This would make Hybreds capable of long highway runs with assistance from the electric motors for greater fuel efficiency. It could also make a Hybred Motorhome possible.

[Hitchhiker]

Actually, hydrogen cars are here now. There are already many hydrogen cars on the road. California and Japan have hydrogen cars being used as fleet vehicles now. In 2005, Honda leased the first commercial hydrogen car to a family in Redondo Beach, California.

For the past 28 years, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been conducting research on hydrogen fuel cells for use in transportation, industry and residential use. According to the LANL, "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Research at Los Alamos has made significant technological advances in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells, Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), and related technologies such as the electrolyzer (a fuel cell in reverse, liberating hydrogen from electricity and pure water)."

Unlike many of the hybrid and "green" cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current gas and diesel vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

President Bush has allocated approximately $2 billion in hydrogen highway research. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built by 2010 stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California. Since Californians buy one-fifth of the nation's cars, the new hydrogen car technology could simply replace the current gasoline engine automobiles in what is called "disruptive technology" where something so innovative comes along it simply replaces the old technology very quickly.

A more likely scenario is that dual-fuel automotive systems will be developed that can run on either gasoline or hydrogen as the hydrogen infrastructure is being developed. The conversion from gasoline-powered internal combustion engines to hydrogen powered combustion engines is agreed upon by most scientists and engineers to be a particularly easy transition and would buy time for hydrogen fuel cell cars to be fully adapted.

But, hydrogen cars are not isolated to those that burn the fuel in internal combustion engines. There are more hydrogen fuel cell cars being built currently than any other kind. There's also hydrogen-on-demand vehicles that are either using a hydrogen compound or electrolyzing water to create hydrogen, avoiding the compressed or liquid hydrogen refueling scenario altogether.

Honda has developed the Home Energy Station III that not only refuels a hydrogen car, but it can also power a home as well. The Home Energy Station III uses natural gas and an on board reformer to separate out the hydrogen for refueling the car. In order to create energy, it runs the hydrogen through a fuel cell and can thus generate power for a home as well.
In November 2007, Honda announced its new Home Energy Station IV that uses steam reforming of natural gas to derive hydrogen from both the steam and natural gas in equal parts. The Home Energy Station IV is 75-percent smaller than older units and provides hydrogen for a car as well as heat and electricity for the home.

The home refueling station is being tested at the Honda R&D Americas facility in Torrance, California. Honda is stating that the Home Energy Station IV will reduce CO2 emissions by 30-percent and energy costs by 50-percent compared to an average home that is on the grid and uses a gasoline-powered car.

General Motors announced that they are developing a home hydrogen fueling station for use with their line of Equinox Fuel Cell vehicles that they will soon begin rolling out. The General Motors hydrogen generator will be able to run on either solar energy or electricity.

[Paulin]

A recent TV program on alternative energy showed a Scandinavian country that is experimenting with hydrogen vehicles, I think it was Norway. They showed stand alone hydrogen fuel stations that produced their own hydrogen and therefore did not need bulk plants and pipelines for distribution.

The Santa Clara valley in CA has been running a trial fleet of hydrogen powered buses for a number of years. They are easy to spot as they emit a small plume of water vapor from their tail pipe.

[Hitchhiker]

Norway is pioneering an initiative entitled HyNor, with the initial ambition of building five refueling stations along a 360-mile route, which forms the backbone of its petroleum industry. Norway is committing to sustainable fuels in order to set an environmental precedent, cut down on transport emissions, and to combat climate change.

Here's a picture of one of the HyNor hydrogen filling stations currently in use:

[TXiceman]

It won't be long until the "greenies" link hydrogen to the Hindenburg and that will be the end of that.

I agree that we need to utilize multiple sources for the power...solar, wind, tidal, hydrogen, ethanol from sources other than corn and such. But move away from the "dino" mentality.

I have seen lots of ways to save energy over the years but people do not want to listen when oil and electricity are so cheap. Now we are paying for the sins of the past.

ken

[MtManLee]

Hitchhiker I know that they are testing a fleet of taxis in Calif for the feasibility of hydrogen fuel but you say they are sold to people aready in Calif, if that is the case where are the refueling the hydrogen from??? One of the news reports I was following about the system it would take five to ten years to have hydrogen stations across the US to make it feasible for use.

[Hitchhiker]

There's a GM project entitled Project Driveway under which GM selected at least 100 initial drivers of the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell from people applying to participate. Most of the drivers that GM selected live in California, within ten miles of the several '700 bar' hydrogen stations located from San Diego to Burbank, California.

These individuals drive the vehicle for three months. It is a free trial with GM covering the vehicle, insurance, maintenance, and fuel. Some business fleets will put the vehicles through a more extensive 30 month test. Over 3 years, 300 to 500 people are likely to try the vehicles for 3 months each.

The Equinox Fuel Cell is an electric vehicle with an electric drive motor, no engine, nickel metal hydride batteries, and a hydrogen fuel cell which generates electricity.

GM is making a priority of customer support. At the heart of the support is their OnStar system. OnStar is GM's in-vehicle safety and security system. OnStar's innovative three-button system offers: 24-hour access to one of 6, and later 12, Equinox Fuel Cell Advisers; a connection to emergency assistance; along with access to OnStar Hands-Free Calling. Each driver will have one person to deal with at GM, a driver relationship manager. All drivers will receive training.

Detailed data acquisition and analysis will help GM develop a knowledge base that will influence the roll-out of the next generation fuel cell vehicle. Customer support will include three dedicated service hubs for vehicle prep, training, deliver, maintenance and vehicle return.

Driving range is still a challenge for all makers of electric vehicles. The Equinox Fuel Cell will typically deliver a range of 160 miles between hydrogen fueling, but only by using the higher pressure '700 bar'. In California, only the Irvine station currently offers the higher '700 bar' pressure as well as '350 bar'. All other stations offer only '350 bar'. The Equinox Fuel Cell only has a range of about 80 miles when fueled at 350 bar.

Another challenge is that a number of hydrogen stations are dedicated to one fleet and are not available to the public. Over the next few years, range will greatly improve from drivers of fuel cell vehicles. Today, fuel cell buses with ten times the weight of the Equinox have ranges greater than 300 miles.

The Equinox Fuel Cell uses 35 kW of NiMH batteries in a mild-hybrid configuration. In other vehicles, such as the Volt, GM is testing new lithium batteries. In its next generation fuel cell vehicle, GM could achieve a range exceeding 300 miles by reducing vehicle weight, having a more battery-dominate full-hybrid design such as E-Flex, using its fifth generation fuel cell, and by switching to lithium batteries.

To accelerate the presence of higher pressure stations with public access, GM is spending millions to establish nine temporary '700 bar' stations from Burbank to San Diego. Hydrogen will be made by large-scale reformation of natural gas that is truck delivered.

A number of existing California hydrogen stations use zero-emission hydrogen production by using electrolysis powered by renewable energy, such as solar. Others, such as AC Transit and USMC Camp Pendleton, make hydrogen with on-site electrolysis of pipelined natural gas.

[MtManLee]

So you got hydrogen mainly it looks like situated around two cities. But good grief that still dont do any good if you are in an interest to go out of town or out of state. I know eventually.
As for natural gas, there are natural gas stations in every major city. Finding them should not be more than the local phone books but like the hydrogen what does one do inbetween the big cities. And natural gas vehicles have been around for 20 years and we still dont have stations across the US. Go figure.

[Hitchhiker]

Well, it's sorta like back in 1898 when the first gasoline auto was built. You couldn't go very far before you consumed all the gas you were hauling and there was no place to buy it. Consider that as the gasoline propelled automobile revolution started evolving at the turn of the twentieth century, there were many folks still riding horses well into the 20's and 30's.

So shall it be with any new technology in this century. As these new technologies evolve, many of us will be driving our gas guzzling behemoths along side the new vehicles well into the 20's and 30's of this century. It'll start gradually and evolve slowly.

I'd speculate that by 2040 none of our vehicles will be propelled by a source that's any where close in similarity to what we propel with now. Our grandkids will be in awe at the stuff we use today.

[rogueii]

The only way I want to use Hydrogen, is with an On-Board Hydrogen Generator, that produces the fuel as I drive. The RV is one vehicle that has enough room to fit these in, using the water we already carry.
I have been reading up and reviewing many of the systems already tried and being used. I don't want to drive around with a large tank of Hydrogen underneath my butt. On-Demand only.
I can run my generator to provide the power required for one or two On-demand hydrogen generators--this will only use about .7 gallons of gas an hour. There is a fairly well written up system on the internet, from the guy in Clearwater, FL, that was on FOX a few weeks ago. He is producing hydrogen, to replace the gas used in the welding industry. He is working on a prototype Hummer, that will run on both Gas and Water at present, for the government.