Los Angeles City Employees To Drive Hydrogen Power

mace_15 writes "According this CNN article the mayor of Los Angeles has signed a lease with Honda to allow city employees to drive experimental hydrogen powered cars. The cars can reach speeds up to 93mph and Honda claims they have a range of 220 miles before refueling. More information on the car can be found here. Mercedes-Benz has a similar car."

Comments

BMW has been working on these too

[mhesseltine]

A CNN article on hydrogen cars details this as well. Now, the question is, which comes first: hydrogen refueling stations so that people will buy cars, or hydrogen powered cars to drive the need for refueling stations?

Re:A possible downside

[jakobk]

Hydrogen _is_ _not_ more flammable than gasoline.

Re:A possible downside

[Nos.]

http://www.resnet.ucsb.edu/information/win2k.html

I used to think that too, until I did some reading. If a hydrogen tank is punctured, the hydrogen gas rises so quickly that there is very little danger. Even if it does ignite, it will burn up, and has the advantage of not sticking to things like gasoline will do. Hydrogen will dilute with the atmosphere so quickly, there's less danger than a similar incident with gasoline powered vehicle.

Which comes first?

[LuvWeasel]

There are several projects to convert gasoline to hydrogen, either at the point of sale, or in the vehicle itself. Of course efficiency suffers, but it does help remove the chicken or egg-like dilemma.

From this article

To use either methanol or gasoline on a PEM fuel cell vehicle, the fuel must be converted to hydrogen with an onboard fuel processor - every car would have to be equipped with essentially a high temperature mini-refinery or chemical factory to convert methanol or gasoline to hydrogen. This is an enormous challenge. Converting gasoline to hydrogen in a stationary plant operated steady-state 24 hours per day is feasible. But making hydrogen onboard a moving car to meet the full start-up and transient response of an automobile would be a complex task, with unknown cost and reliability implications. The differences between stationary fuel processing (such as the H2Gen HGM) and onboard mobile fuel processing is summarized in the following chart, where green indicates superior performance, yellow is cautionary, and red indicates inferior performance.

Re:what are you talking about?

[tid242]

here's a cp/paste from the BMW article the first duder posted on this thread:

What about safety?
Safety issues are a major concern for a fuel that's often perceived as more dangerous than others. While hydrogen itself played no part in either catastrophe, it was the fuel in both the Hindenburg and the Challenger.

Wagner says consumers should not fear a hydrogen-powered vehicle.

"Of course there is some risk, but it is comparable to the risk we have with conventional automotive fuels," he said.

BMW conducted numerous crash tests to see what would happen if the hydrogen tank was punctured or damaged. Their engineers report the liquid hydrogen dissipated harmlessly into the air.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/03/16/hydro gen.cars/

i think the point being that it's really not any more dangerous than gasoline, although you're right in that they don't bother talking about how much the hydrogen is pressurized, unless they're keeping it increadibly cold...

-tid242

What are *you* talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, the Hindenburg didn't use hydrogen for fuel, it used it for buoyancy. The motors were good old Diesels.

And it was the aluminum paint on the fabric that caught FIRE, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen EXPLODES with a nearly invisible blue light.

It's easy to make your own hydrogen with a home-made electrolysis setup and verify that for yourself.

Re:What are *you* talking about?

[spike hay]

And it was the aluminum paint on the fabric that caught FIRE, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen EXPLODES with a nearly invisible blue light.

I have done extensive, um, experiments with garbage bags full of hydrogen. (Put lye, al foil, water in gas can attached to hose.)

To explode, hydrogen needs a lot of oxygen. To make a bag full of hydrogen explode, you have to introduce quite a bit of air into it. (Enough air to render the bag unable to float) If you don't put any extra air in, the hydrogen just burns along the outside of the bag, and it actually takes a few seconds for all of the hydrogen to be consumed.

The Hindenburg did not explode because of the hydrogen. (A spark could not catch the hydrogen on fire on the inside. There is no oxygen) A spark must have caught the fabric on fire, which was doped with dangerous compounds like saltpeter. (Which actually rendered the skin very, very flammable).

So, it was mostly the skin catching on fire, which was aided by the heat of the hydrogen combustion. Also, those huge yellow flames you see? That's the skin burning. Like the previous poster said, hydrogen burns with a nearly invisible flame.

Hydrogen-powered cars in 10 years. Biodiesel now.

[Exocet]

While the idea of a Hydrogen-powered vehicle is a great one, if Slashdot readers are interested in a "more" environmentally-friendly vehicle there are options right now.

Biodiesel (more info here and here) is diesel fuel that will work in any new-ish diesel-powered vehicle with out ANY modifications. Benefits?

- Availability of the vehicle. Volkswagen produces a line of turbo diesel injected vehicles right now. They are available from about US$15k - $30k, depending on which model and features you ask for.
- Availability of the fuel. Biodiesel is NOT as wide-spread as diesel - not by far. But it IS available. There's a station in my hometown, Portland, OR and one down in Eugene, OR. According to the map of refueling sites provided by biodiesel.org, there are nine biodiesel stations in California.
- Cost of the fuel. B20, that is 20% biodiesel and 80% regular diesel, costs about US$1.75/gallon in Portland, OR. That's about what premium/super goes for here, give or take 10 cents. I don't have info on what B100 costs - probably around $2.25 or more or possibly less. Depends on your supplier.
- Biodiesel benefits the American (or local) economy. Biodiesel is created from plants. Soy and such. Soy beans can be grown locally in many places of the world. Oil can be had in America, too, but there's not much of it and one it's gone, it is GONE. More soy beans can be grown at any time.
- Biodiesel is "environmentally friendly". According to the US EPA in this PDF document, use of B100 biodiesel will reduce the output of carbon monoxide from a single veh by 50%. B100 will reduce particulate emissions by 70% (less smog). Total hydrocarbon emissions reduced by 40%. Reductions in sulfate emissions by 100%.
- Biodiesel takes less energy to make than diesel and much less energy to make than gasoline.
- Diesel vehicles, particularly the TDI's from VW, are VERY fuel efficient. Expect to get 40/city, 45+/highway (expessed in miles per gallon). Many people report getting 600+ miles to the tank.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles will be great when they are mass-produced in 10 years. Until then, look at Biodiesel. I think the benefits far outweigh the added expense of the fuel.