Slashdot Mirror

Give me a call when those fuel cells are ready for deployment...

Ok, what number should we call to wake you since industrial fuel cells are already available and apparently work fairly well.

Personally, my money is on Ballard Power Systems' Mark1030

They have been doing lots of field testing of residential cogeneration systems in partnership with Ebara Corp. of Japan for a number of years.

Personally, my money is on Ballard Power Systems' Mark1030

They have been doing lots of field testing of residential cogeneration systems in partnership with Ebara Corp. of Japan for a number of years.

I guess weight is the major obstacle at the moment.

It is. Current (pardon the pun) PEM fuel cell technology typically uses platinum, AFAIK. Stacks are heavy. The Ballard Mark 1030 provides about 78 Watts per liter of unit volume and 66 Watts per kilogram. The Ballard Mark 902, which is used in several fuel cell cars and buses, is much more powerful at 1133 Watts per liter of unit volume and 885 Watts per kilogram, but it's heavy (96 kilos, over 211 pounds). Note that neither of these devices weights include the power conditioning and management systems, fuel handling, etc. The entire integrated stack is much heavier when you're considering a "hydrogen in, electricity out" system. Furthermore, if you're not supplying fuel from a bottle of anhydrous hydrogen (a strange phrase if I've ever heard one), you've got a fuel reformer to take into account, which is one more package of weight and one more power draw on the system.

Having said all that, I think this is a great idea and hope it succeeds. From what I know (or think I know), so-called "ultracapacitors" are much lighter and more responsive than Lithium Ion batteries, and other slow-and-steady power generation systems, such as zinc-air batteries, might be able to back them up with better success.

I guess weight is the major obstacle at the moment.

It is. Current (pardon the pun) PEM fuel cell technology typically uses platinum, AFAIK. Stacks are heavy. The Ballard Mark 1030 provides about 78 Watts per liter of unit volume and 66 Watts per kilogram. The Ballard Mark 902, which is used in several fuel cell cars and buses, is much more powerful at 1133 Watts per liter of unit volume and 885 Watts per kilogram, but it's heavy (96 kilos, over 211 pounds). Note that neither of these devices weights include the power conditioning and management systems, fuel handling, etc. The entire integrated stack is much heavier when you're considering a "hydrogen in, electricity out" system. Furthermore, if you're not supplying fuel from a bottle of anhydrous hydrogen (a strange phrase if I've ever heard one), you've got a fuel reformer to take into account, which is one more package of weight and one more power draw on the system.

Having said all that, I think this is a great idea and hope it succeeds. From what I know (or think I know), so-called "ultracapacitors" are much lighter and more responsive than Lithium Ion batteries, and other slow-and-steady power generation systems, such as zinc-air batteries, might be able to back them up with better success.

Batteries? a Fuel Cell is not a battery. They remove electrons from hydrogen atoms by passing the hydrogen through a platinum coated mesh, use the current generated by the free electrons then put them back into the hydrogen atoms, adding oxygen, creating a total of 3 things in the process.
1 electricity
2 heat
3 potable water [ potable meaning drinkable ]

If the country wants to, they can set up a power station to electrolicise water creating the hydrogen and oxygen needed for the fuel cells. Blue energy has a generating system that can be used anywhere there is a tidal flow, creating power and using it to get the hydrogen and oxygen from the sea, then pump it to shore and fill tanks to be used for refilling any vehicle that is out of fuel.

The current status of fuel cell technology will work for something like a transit system, or the shipping industry, but the costs of the fuel cells is to high for them to be used for automobiles, due to the platinum required. When they can make a fuel cell cheap enough to be used in a car, then the technology will be affordable by all countries.

http://www.ballard.com/ Fuel Cell Manufacturer's site

http://www.bluenergy.com/ Blue Energy website

For those who are interested here is a picture of the car: http://www.ballard.com/media/image_gallery/full-in fo/Honda_FCX_Demo.jpg

Nearly every major city already has a source for getting hydrogen. Liquid or gas. And they deliver.

http://airgas.com/

Also, you can currently buy 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 psi hydrogen tanks. Now all we need is a low cost or at least reasonably priced hydrogen fuel cell and then we could convert our own cars over to hydrogen electric. All I need is either a low cost platinum based hydrogen fuel cell or a non platinum based fuel cell. How many years have they been working on these for now? Maybe if all that Iraq war money would have been spent on fuel cell development instead...

Hydrogen tanks:
http://www.lincolncomposites.com/

Hydrogen fuel cells:
http://www.ballard.com/

Interesting info:
http://www.knowledgepublications.com/page2.htm

In flat country, regenerative braking is not worthwhile. In moderately hilly country, regenerative braking could give up to 10% extra range.

Nevertheless, I'll attribute the remaining 35% mileage improvement to regenerative braking. That brings us to the 200 mile (maximum) range estimate in the article. Neglecting friction, 60 kWh at maximum speed (65 kW, 80 mph) gets you about an hour of driving, or an 80 mile range. My understanding is that electric motors have no preferable rpm range, so (neglecting friction) this is a valid estimate.

This means that, assuming the weights of the li-ion and fuel-cell-only systems are about equal, adding 25 miles for weight improvements, and with regenerative braking adding an additional 35%, a li-ion-only system would have a range of about 140 miles. Remember, though, that a significant portion of this is attributable to the dubious benefits of regenerative braking, which gives rise to the wide range of mileage estimates in the article.

I'll admit this range is suprising

"Do you know how much a 12-hour UPS costs??"

Actually, yes, $6k and a couple of bottles of hydrogen.

I saw some of these buses in Vancouver last time i was there visiting family. They are considerably quieter than a normal bus, and i wouldn't have known it was a fuel cell bus except for the slightly unusual roof, and the large banner proclaiming its power on the side. Ballard Fuel cells power these buses. There are also buses of the same make in Chicago

There is definately interest in hydrogen, but i wonder if it is the most appropriate solution. Hydrogen still needs power to be manufactured. Are there no better solutions out there?

I saw some of these buses in Vancouver last time i was there visiting family. They are considerably quieter than a normal bus, and i wouldn't have known it was a fuel cell bus except for the slightly unusual roof, and the large banner proclaiming its power on the side. Ballard Fuel cells power these buses. There are also buses of the same make in Chicago

There is definately interest in hydrogen, but i wonder if it is the most appropriate solution. Hydrogen still needs power to be manufactured. Are there no better solutions out there?

cheers

The fellas at Ballard Power Systems seem to have an interesting vision in this regard. (I'm trying to recall what I heard on a CBC interview with one of the company's founders, so what I describe here may be partly my own fabrication). Anyway, they describe an electrical grid in which individual cars help generate and store electricity for the entire system. Something about micro power plants. You may choose to sell your power to the grid (when your car is unused), benefitting from the current market price of the power. Similarly, you can purchase electricity and store it in your car (in hydrogen form) hopefully taking advantage of a cheap power rate. Buy low, sell high. Anyway it all seems very interesting to me, an idea of millions of micro power plants contributing to the greater power grid. One big distributed storage and generation system, probably better at absorbing peak power demands too -- you see that it's 1 pm on a hot summer day and the grid will pay big $$ for your power, you take advantage of that.

"Disposable" fuel cells have to be compared against primary batteries, not rechargeable ones. Rechargable batteries typically have about half the energy density of primary batteries. So claiming a 2.5x improvement in battery life for a nonrechargeable system is not a win.

Ballard is further along than anybody else in larger fuel cells. Even they don't have much more than prototypes. Their attempt to market a fuel cell under the Coleman brand was a failure. The Coleman Powermate was launched with great fanfare in 2002, and never shipped. It's not clear what's wrong at Ballard. Their 1KW units should be providing backup power for cell phone sites and such, but it isn't happening.

Ballard uses hydrogen in their fuel cells. Despite all the hype about the "hydrogen economy", Praxair, which sells hydrogen for fuel cells, has this to say:

• Clean burning and not considered an atmospheric pollutant, hydrogen is fast becoming the energy source of the future. Questions regarding cost, safety and infrastructure, however, need answers before hydrogen-fueled engines go into wide use.

  Fuel cell grade hydrogen is specifically designed to be used as a fuel in fuel cell applications. It contains extremely low levels of impurities (e.g. ammonia (NH3), carbon monoxide (CO) and sulfur compounds) that can harm the catalyst-coated membranes inside the fuel cell.

  It is supplied in high-pressure cylinders and can only be used by industrial customers, like factories, laboratories, universities, and military and government installations. Typically, industrial customers already use compressed gases as part of their daily activities. Its use requires adequate ventilation and/or monitoring systems appropriate to the size of the location, helping ensure the safety of personnel when non-air gases are present.

I don't know about really obscure stuff, but we could take another look at something obvious: power.

• Pebble bed modular reactors are very safe, very clean, and ready right now. Come up with some improvements on them.
• Fuel cells. They're still not good enough for general use, but they have good prospects -- look at vanadium redox batteries.
• Solar panels. They're already the best solution for most remote stuff in relatively sunny climates (navigational buoys, spacecraft), and they're still not very efficient (15%?).
• Energy transmission by microwave or laser (e.g. for orbital solar power).
• Floating seawater-cooled reactors. Don't laugh.
• Passive or semi-passive stuff: tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, weird-ass solar chimneys, etc.
• Why muck around? Go for cold fusion. Yes, the most famous attempt was a fraud. Yes, it's not going to be ready tomorrow, even given a huge breakthrough. But the potential is amazing.

There are three basic kinds of power: grid power, which comes in bulk; portable fueled power, like a car engine; and embedded power, like a battery. All of could be a lot safer, cheaper, and cleaner. Happy research.

you can always use a fuel cell and rewire the apartment.

For example, this one.

For the copy n' paste impaired (like me).

Ahh but this would be so much nerdier (and quieter) :-)

Fuel Cell

That's the basic principle of how it works. It's actually called Prion Exchange Membrane technology. For detailed information do a google on Ballard Power or check out their site. You can start here: Ballard Power: How it works

Ballard is a Vancouver, BC, Canada firm listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: BLD and more recently NASDAQ: BLDP). They have contracts to produce vehicles with GM, Ford, Daylmer/Chrysler and others.

The first auto with a Ballard Fuel Cell was introduced as a working prototype Necar 1 (Daylmer-Benz, 1994). Recently such vehicles as the Ford Focus FCV (2000) have been demonstrated.

The P3 Bus was introduced to daily use by the cities of Chicago and Vancouver in 1998, with 3 buses each.

Other cities that use this technology in public transportation include Orlando, FL and various California locations. The most recent model is the Mercedes-Benz Citaro which will deploy 30 buses in 10 European cities beginning this year.

Ballard also has Methanol-fueled technology which operates similarly (zero emissions). This is still currently under devopment.

Hydrogen stores energy more effectively than current batteries[...]

1. Get hydrogen to fit in a car, in metal hydrides or in another form;
2. Implement PEM fuel cells on cars (See Mercedes' Necar 4)
3. Use SO fuel cells to burn natural gas more efficiently and reduce emissions while managing to actually make money, see Siemens.
4. First mobile implementations will likely be buses, as they have a reduced chicken-and-egg problem (they all refuel at the same place and regularly), see Ballard.

They do.

http://www.ballard.com/tD.asp?pgid=75&dbid=0 For those of you concearned about water/humidity

Emissions : Liquid water 0.87 liters (30 fluid oz.) maximum per hour

That article is about about phosphoric acid fuel cells. That is a mature technology that's been in commercial use for over a decade. It runs at a high temperature, does not scale well below a quarter megawatt and takes time to start up. They compete with gas turbines.

PEM fuel cells are just beginning to appear in commercial products. They cost more per kilowatt, but can be scaled down to the size of a laptop battery and can go from zero to full power in a fraction of a second. They compete with batteries and small internal combustion engines, mainly in mobile applications.
See also this overview of fuel cell technologies and this table.

The Coleman Product is based on low-temperature PEM fuel cells from Ballard Power Systems. BTW you can pick up shared of Ballard pretty cheaply these days, NASDAQ symbol BLDP. Essentially all car manufacturers except GM and Toyota rely on Ballard for fuel cells to power their fuel cell cars. Ford and DaimlerChrysler own about 15% and 19% of Ballard, respectively.

As for the perceived dangers of hydrogen, it should be noted that hydrogen is much less of a risk than natural gas, because it disperses into the atmosphere much more quickly due to the low density of hyrdogen gas.

That's where you're wrong. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and their derivatives) can deliver more useful energy than it takes to produce them. It's a cost-effective equation. If, as you claim, it took more energy to produce them then they deliver, we'd be in a sorry state indeed, and would have abandoned their use many years ago.

I think you missed part of my point. It will always take more energy to produce a fuel than it releases. (See Thermodynamics: Law of Conservation of Energy.) We have just gotten used to having most of the energy being put in by natural processes. Which, is also a possibility in using hydrogen, it is currently known that hydrogen exists in large quantities, trapped in sub-surface rocks. (it is mentioned by NASA here.) And, as such could be mined (just like oil). So in the end, we could get H2 in large quantities, with about the same trouble as oil. Moreover, according to the same article mentioned above, the supply would renew itself, quickly, and as such, would not run into the same supply problem we are headed for with oil.

I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen.

This might be true, though, it would still face the problem that is getting in the way of cleaner technologies today: the consumer. People are comfortable with what they have, and don't want to switch. By the time you get everyone to switch over to diesel, hydrogen power will be available to the public, and then you are facing the same fight all over again. With the advent of such things as the GM concept car and the Ballard Field Tests, I think Fuel Cells are just about ready to mature into widespread use. It'd be better to wait the extra couple of years and only fight to get people to switch once.

Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
There have actually been a number of very successful experiments with solar power, unfortunatly, it only really has a chance in places that get a lot of sunlight. Plus it takes up a large amount of space. Problem is, its not as effiecent as burning coal (or commonly natural gas). So, it hasn't attacted much investment. Also, there is the problem that most power companies already have coal/NG power stations built, it makes terrible business sense to abandon a plant in the middle of its useful life cycle. Even if solar was cheap and effective, they are not going to shutter thier coal plants and build solar plants just because its cleaner, they would lose tons of money in the process, and that is what they care about.

Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.

I will agree that the amount of solar power needed to run the traffic in the US is a ways away, though I don't think it will be the decades you claim. And yes, diesel is available today, in fact it is available in the US already, people just don't buy it. (VW Golf TDI).
I will agree that someone looking to buy a car today, would be well advised to look into getting a diesel vehicle, if they are looking for eviromentally friendly. Personally though I think they would be better servered holding out for a couple of years and getting an H2 powered car.

Sorry if this sounds a bit sharp

Feel free, I explained badly. I didn't mean literally a capacitor you find in Maplins. I meant in general terms some short term storage medium which I was hoping someone else would fill in.

I ask again: where are these commercial fuel cells?

Personally I'm looking forwards to one of these, though if you want to see where a lot of them are being used then the Ballard web site is a good place to start.

How long does it take to build up mass in a new technology?

The good thing about hydrogen is that it can be easily extracted from a number of sources and in a number of different ways. I've even seen a "hydrogen gas station in a box" for sale, where all you provide is water and electricity. This means a much lower barrier to building infrastructure, as opposed to a power source that is geographically limited and has to be securely transported.

I'm going to be using a Zimmer frame before these babies are parked at the mall in large numbers.

If you are in your 50s then probably. It will be at least 30 years (imho) before fuel cell cars start to outnumber petrol cars, and that's with governments taxing the hell out of petrol and imposing highly punative emissions fines. That's fine though, as we are stuck on this planet for a long time to come yet.

Phillip.

It looks like this is many people's first discussion on the concept of alternate fuel vehicles.

First of all, forget everything you've seen about electric powered vehicles that look like golf carts with bad style. You have fallen hook, line, and sinker for what the oil companies wanted you to do. They wanted you to say "yuck" and underpowered and go back to the big hairy SUVs and sports sedans. Point 1 for petro companies, 0 for the geeks.

If you look at the electric powered vehicle outside of a climate like California (why do they introduce them in a place where battery power will always be at a peak?), you know without even starting pilot tests that this technology is doomed to failure in climates that get a touch of winter. Even if you get only 4 cold days a year, if that means you can do limited range and no hills, it is a failure. Batteries as energy storage make no sense in a territory where people have problems starting their gas powered cars with lead acid batteries.

The real solutions will be in hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. The electricity will be generated on demand from fuel cells, and there will be the same range of power available in the future as there is now. One benefit in going this way is 4 wheel drive available by putting a motor on each wheel.

Ballard Power and Stewart Energy Systems are two companies prepared to offer fuel cells and electrolysis systems to the market. Many of the big automakers have been involved with one or both of these companies. There are others.

GM is developing its own fuel cell solution.

Today there are limits on range, power and performance for hydrogen. These are getting better every year as competing companies break down the old technological walls.

The concept machines have little to do with the over all picture. The auto makers are targetting 2010 for the year you will be able to pick up a hydrogen powered car and then go around the block to Shell or whatever for a fill up.

Of course, that would mean your kids couldn't watch tv while you were away from the house.

Seriously, I doubt powering your home with your car would be simple enough to do practically, but it doesn't violate any known laws of physics. Calling it "excess" does sound like you are getting something for free, but really it is just that it would be an efficient power supply and perhaps cheaper than being hooked up to the grid.

More likely you just get a seperate fuel cell for your home from somebody like ballard

Ballard has been shopping fuel-cell powered buses for metropolitan centers for around a decade, I think. GM's lame attempt to appear progressive in the bus market is pretty pathetic, just as it's pretty ridiculous to flame Honda for trying to make better, more economical cars.

The Toyota gas/electric hybrid Minivan will be an excellent replacement for soccer-mom SUVs. The proven Prius hybrid power train (the Prius has been on the road for five years in Japan now) is unlikely to be challenged by GM's gold-plated version 0.1 entry.

Honda's system uses the excellent CVCC (Controlled Vortex Combustion Chamber) gas engine to get even better mileage than the Toyota, but it suffers from an inferior hybrid system that basically runs the gas engine all the time when the vehicle is in motion. (By contrast, my Prius can make it up to 35 miles/hour using pure electric propulsion on a good road.) As soon as Honda finishes fine-tuning their hybrid to match the efficiency of the Toyota, they can potentially get even better mileage - possibly in the neighborhood of 60 mpg (my Prius gets about 48).

The car is interesting, but the real work is all in the fuel cell. It's kind of like Dell saying, "We made this super fast computer, and it's rated at 5 gigaflops" without mentioning who made the CPU, motherboard, etc, etc.

I did some poking around - Ballard made the fuel cell, and here is their press release summary page:

Ballard Powers DaimlerChrysler's Fuel Cell Vehicle on a 3,000 Mile Drive Across the United States

it's excellent to hear that some medium scale implementations are going though.

BALLARD POWER recently unveiled their second-generation prototype fuel cell power generator for the Japanese residential market. The second-generation prototype unit has advanced to include an electrical inverter, to convert DC to reached AC gross electrical efficiency of 34 per cent(lower heating value "LHV"). The volume of the prototype unit has been reduced by 40 per cent from the first generation, and has increased heat recovery efficiency to 47 per cent (LHV), giving total efficiency of 81% (LHV).

There are too many preannouncements in the fuel cell business, and very few products shipping. Ballard Power Systems maintains the illusion of having a product line, but when you look closely, you can't actually order units and get delivery. Everything is a prototype.

Ballard is located across the bridge in Burnaby, B.C. They moved from North Vancouver a few years ago.

http://www.ballard.com/facilities.asp

Millenium makes the system that turns the sodium borohydride into hydrogen, then Ballard's fuel cell turns the hydrogen into electricity.

I want one.

Here's the spec sheet from Ballard of the Nexa module used in the coleman. Some interesting differences:

1200 W, not 1000W.
Lifetime: 1500 Hours (~2 months)
Control interface: RS485
Output: 46 Amps @ 26 volts
Unit must be protected from weather, sand, dust, marine, and freezing conditions in product packaging (I assume coleman does this to some extent)

Ballard builds big systems. Their shipped product is a 250KW unit the size of a standard truck/ship container. They've been talking about a 1KW unit for a while, but their site still doesn't have photos of it.

Ballard was supposed to be the hot company in fuel cells, but they've been at Real Soon Now for a few years, and it's not clear what's wrong.

Of course, this thing is expensive, seemingly inefficient, and probably impractical... for now. But keep in mind a few things:

First of all, Ballard (the company that makes the fuel cell in this thing) has said all along that they're going to have the really practical consumer devices in the market in 2005 (I think it's in their annual report, if memory serves). I think anything you see out there earlier is going to be a test product to smooth out the edges in production.

The infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel (the price of those canisters, for example) is one of the things that needs to be smoothed out as well. The price of fuel should come WAY down with centralized production.

Ballard fuel cells can also run on other fuels (methanol, for one) but at a reduced efficiency and with a slight hydrocarbon emission (still something on the order of 3-5% of what comes out of a combustion engine, but enough that you couldn't run one in a closed room).

Yes, hydrogen fuel takes energy to produce, but so does fossil fuel extraction and then once you've got, say, gasoline, it gets burned inefficiently and with lotsa nasty waste products. I know cars seem to be getting more efficient all the time, but every car I know of requires a separate system to keep the engine cool (read: waste heat) and I wouldn't put my lips on a tailpipe. Fuel cells do their thing at 75-80 degrees F, and when hydrogen-fueled, the only output is distilled H20. That's it.

Once practical devices come to market , they'll have the potential of decentralizing power, with that huge advantage of EFFICIENCY. And aside from the abovementioned advantages, don't forget to factor in power loss from transmission through wires. A world where fuel cells are practical everyday devices is nothing less than a PC revolution for power: power plants for all! Think an power Gnutella as opposed to the power grid. After all, I'm sure some folks were saying "Two thousand dollars for 64K of RAM? These things'll never catch on" twenty years ago...

If im not mistaken, ballard power systems has been working on fuel cells based on this technology for quite a while. (and will infact be available for public purchase soon) there also working with automobile manufacturs to produce fuel cell based cars. tho those are still a ways off.... just where would i refuel my hydrogen powered car anyways?

The oil companies already know this and have started calling themselves energy companies for a few years now. Hydrogen, whether you get it from biomass as methane (for those environmentalists out there) or out of the ground via natural gas or whatever, it's still a profit opportunity for these firms and they are busy gearing up to take advantage of the opportunity. Eventually, we will get the direct hydrogen infrastructure because it's simpler and cleaner but the vicious circle is broken, the multi-fuel aspects of fuel cells mean that we can shift from one fuel to another as infrastructure matures and we will never again have to pay homage to the sheikhs or anybody else because the fuels are so varied that nobody is going to be able to get monopoly power over all of them.

Since the oil companies are very aware and actually seem to like the idea of varying their markets and profit opportunities, I'd guess that the two Texas oil men in the White House are going to grease the wheels and make the hydrogen transition as easy as possible because it's going to make their campaign contributors lots of money, is going to clean up the environment, and is going to erase the US' national security vulnerability due to dependence on foreign energy sources. That's a very rare political three-fer.

DB

This device seems to be designed for infrequent use - like a backup or portable power source. 1200 watts handles *my* home server closet pretty well, and 1500 hours sure beats the lead-acid array I have now. What did you want to use it for, anyhow?

If you wanted to power your house with it, you should consider the units built by an affiliated company (whose name I forget, but it might be Ballard Generation Systems) that builds a cell that can power a neighbourhood which fits in a standard container - the size of the trailer for a big rig - and has similar noise output to this cell. I don't know how much it costs, but as I said it powers a *neighbourhood*.

Ballard

I heard a piece on the radio a few weeks ago about an even smaller fuel cell--about the size of a thimble--that could be used to fuel cellular phones... I dont recall if the technology was actually available now or not... I think that hydrogen fuel cells are the only real viable alternative energy source, ballard fuel cells have been used in several large cities to power public transportation for some time now. Another advantage is that hydrogen in its liquified form can be distributed with little modification to todays gas distribution infastructure.

Yes, if in a crash hydrogen will dissipate much faster than gasoline. Not only that, but the hydrogen fuel tanks' safety requirements are much higher than those of gasoline... you can't even get them to explode if you shoot bullets through them. I don't think the same can be said about most gasoline tanks. Crashes result in either an intact tank or one which has its fuel diffuse very quickly so it is not dangerous. Also, while the vehicle is running, though it may seem unusual, hydrogen-powered cars do not burn anything. Combustion has its own whole set of problems. A nice example of how they work is shown here, including a flash animation on the process.

Yes, if in a crash hydrogen will dissipate much faster than gasoline. Not only that, but the hydrogen fuel tanks' safety requirements are much higher than those of gasoline... you can't even get them to explode if you shoot bullets through them. I don't think the same can be said about most gasoline tanks. Crashes result in either an intact tank or one which has its fuel diffuse very quickly so it is not dangerous. Also, while the vehicle is running, though it may seem unusual, hydrogen-powered cars do not burn anything. Combustion has its own whole set of problems. A nice example of how they work is shown here, including a flash animation on the process.

Several companies, including auto-makers, are currently looking into non-combusting fuel cell systems (as is the US Navy). Fuel cells, imho, are much more practical than hydrogen combustion systems. They don't combust, so they produce no gaseous emissions. Fuel cells exist that run on hydrogen (these are perfectly non-polluting), but there are also ones that can run on de-sulfured diesel fuel and gasoline, as well as natural gas. The non-hydrogen ones use fuel reformers to utilize the hydrogen in the fossil fuels. These are usually used in large-scale applications like power plants, but they are being scaled down.

Non-hydrogen fuel cells provide the emissions benefit of hydrogen combustion systems without the problems in making new 'hydrogen stations'. Of course, you're getting energy from fossil fuels, and they do produce some waste (along with some other disadvantages, too), but they don't combust in a giant ball of flame, like people worry hydrogen systems will.

For more info, try http://www.ballard.com and http://www.internationalfuelcells.com/.

A Canadian company, Ballard makes fuel cells that work in buses and cars. I think they have some of these buses in Vancouver and maybe Chicago? I saw a story on TV about them where someone from the company put a glass up to the exhaust pipe and drank the water that came out.

Hopefully these things will be commercially available soon...I have no idea why they aren't already.

A Canadian company, Ballard makes fuel cells that work in buses and cars. I think they have some of these buses in Vancouver and maybe Chicago? I saw a story on TV about them where someone from the company put a glass up to the exhaust pipe and drank the water that came out.

Hopefully these things will be commercially available soon...I have no idea why they aren't already.

"There is a break point in bandwidth around a million bits, or a megabit, per second. If you get below a million bits you notice the lack of speed. But with anything above 1.5 million bits you hardly notice the increase; the difference between 2 megabits and 10 megabits is negligible. It is really surprising."