MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power

An anonymous reader writes "Bummer story on Science Blog for people looking to gas up on the H. Even with aggressive research, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle will not be better than the diesel hybrid -- a vehicle powered by a conventional engine supplemented by an electric motor -- in terms of total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, says a new MIT study. If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go."

Comments

Not a problem.

[Henry V .009]

Don't worry, by 2020 the main problems with C02 emission will be from third world countries with exploding populations anyway.

Re:Not a problem.

[lcs-150]

There are in fact fuel cells that work both ways, creating current from combining hydrogen and oxygen and also flowing backwards to electrolyze water back into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the energy required for the electrolysis could come from regenerative braking, or turning the motor backwards when going downhill.
Further, as stated the power has to come from somewhere, and there are always the renewable options of solar power, wind, hydroelectric and others. The article says that the study makes the assumption that hydrogen would come from hydrocarbons, which is one of the things that can be totally avoided with forethought. Why not just plug your car in when you get home at night, and have a full tank in the morning? Even electrolysis off of grid power is more efficient (though still a source of pollution) than many inefficient combustion engines.

Let the political ranting begin

[linuxwrangler]

Here in California we are old hands at eco-political ranting that disregards science. So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions? No? We can't support it.

At least California recently backed off it's requirement for a certain percent of all new vehicles to be zero-emmissions (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located). The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).

A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.

So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics - I just hope they are wearing their asbestos underpants.

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[crath]

...So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics...

Actually, from what the short article says(which is probably incomplete) MIT chose the most "expensive" (from an environmental impact) way to create hydrogen and compared that to hybrid diesel. How would these two technologies compare if fossil fuels were not used to create hydrogen, but wind or solar energy was used instead?

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[pmz]

So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions?

At 50 or so MPG for the VW Golf TDI, the pollution must be pretty darn low. And, this car isn't even a hybrid. If hybrids are supposed to be even better than this, I'd say they are a good compromise for the eco-freaks out there.

A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.

That's because ferries have big-ass off-road-rated diesel engines, while cars have tiny regulated-out-the-wazoo diesel engines. Also, more of the ferry polution goes straight into the water. Motorized boats are pretty nasty when you think about it.

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[bcboy]

> (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located).

A single point of emission is easier to clean than millions of points of emission, and there are advantages of scale.

There are also higher air quality demands in high population areas that are better addressed by zero emissions vehicles. With millions of cars in a city, it makes sense to move the points of emission such that air quality is safe in all of California, instead of having localized unsafe areas.

While at school at Caltech, I got an up-close and personal view of the problems in LA. The mountains trap the air, leading to a thick haze right over Pasadena. Zero emissions vehicles are a very good technology to address this problem.

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[Eccles]

MIT did not use these because you could never generate more energy than was used to create the wind or solar generation devices in the first place

windpower.org claims an 80:1 ratio of produced energy to energy to construct and maintain for windmills. Granted they have a bias, but an 80:1 bias?

A real reason not to include wind power is the expectation that even by 2020, there almost certainly won't be enough wind farms to provide enough energy for a significant fraction of the world's autos. So in the short run, hybrids will have the most dramatic effect on fuel economy.

diesel

[BigBir3d]

Diesel has been used in Europe quite extensively for some time now. Superior mpg, and clean emissions.

Of course, why not move up the schedule on particulate standards for big rigs, buses, garbage trucks etc. in the USA? World leaders my a$$...

Re:water, anyway

[skaffen42]

A few years ago I read a lot about some guy who had his car running normally on plain old tap water, I even contacted him and got him to send me plans of how he did it (foolishly I lent these to friends).

Amazing! If you find the plans again you should publish them on the internet and end humankind's dependency on oil.

BTW, want to buy a bridge?

Hydrogen was overrated anyway

[chriso11]

Politically, for Bush, there were two cool things about pushing for Hydrogen cars:

1) It has a neat hi-tech feel that even the greenest couldn't complain about;

2) It means he didn't have to do anything about SUVs or CAFE or such, 'cause, after all, he supports Hydrogen.

Why is it any surprise that Hydrogen is not a real viable solution?

Re:Where do we get the H?

[Xunker]

Windmills, of course.

Tidal power, too.

Solar?

Some may argue the real draw of Hyrogen is not the clean-ness of the power as much as it is the ability to store it.

Electricity is hard to store; Batteries must be huge to store large charges, and even then the larger th battery the faster it loses it's power in parasitic loss. Hydrogren, OTOH, is easy to store; presurize it, freeze it, whever. It's not as easy as a fluid such as oil, but loads easier than electrons.

So you get windmills. No, not some nebulous organization, but YOU, the consumer. You have one or two that run all the time. They generate tiny amounts of power, and this power cracks water though hydrolosis to get your hydrogen and have it in a storage tank out back of your house (like propane). When you need it, you pull it out of the tank.

Long story short: you get the same amount of energy back from a power cell as the engery it took to get the hydrogren in the first place (minus pesky thermodynaics): the good part is that using H you don't have to generate it all at one time -- you can do it over time using power from low-yield-long-investment instalation like wind, solar. geothermal, etc.

(I still understand what you're saying, though -- until efficient molecule-crackers are common, we'll probably end up using hydrocarbon fuel to power machines to produce our hyrdo, or decompose hyrocarbons directly.. but we don't have many options at the moment)

Where is the nuclear option?

[jakedata]

Nobody ever mentions nuclear power in relation to hydrogen manufacture. It is undoubtedly in the back of some people's minds but they dare not mention it for fear of alienating many of the very people that support hydrogen.

Now I am not advocating the proliferation of today's (really yesterday's) messy fission plants but let's support research into modern nuclear technologies be they fusion or fission.

Nuclear CAN be clean. Give it a chance.

No news here

[bcboy]

The only thing they're saying is that using a carbon based fuel to generate hydrogen isn't better than using the fuel directly. This isn't terribly surprising. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, since we don't have piles of it ready to burn. The only way it will be a clear win is if there is a viable way to generate it without using carbon fuels, e.g. solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

The headline is a bit misleading.

Two points

[Froze]

One, this result assumes that the production of H is a derivative of fossil fuels. that is currently the only economical means to do so, however! Fusion energy is not only the most enviromentally sound means of producing energy, but it has a higher energy density than just about any other energy production technology (barring matter/antimatter etc.) We all know that fusion has been somewhat pie in the sky, but it is a viable alternative and less than 20 years away. See http://www.iter.org

Two, Until we can light the fusion flame and keep a sustained burn, I would seroiusly love to have on of these. A hybrid bike that gets 180mpg and will do 0-60 in 6 seconds.

Pouring money into hydrogen infrastructure.

[Odinson]

The only problem isn't with research, but the appearance of research. Big government needs to dump big money into research for fueal cells for any company to seriously consider building nationwide chains of natural gas to hydrogen converter stations.

Diesel and Gas, however just require slight modification to exisiting use and application. They require little new infrastructure. They are going to happen naturally in the market now anyway.

Hybrid cars will be the temporary stop. Eventually leading to fuel cell models. Hybrids don't need any more boost than the current state of oil prices.

Look at Tommy's new hot rod, he got the big wet one!

Diesel or Biodiesel?

[KillerBob]

There's a difference. Biodiesel is available today, and will run in all Diesel engines. It's clean and cheap: 1L of vegetable oil will make 900mL of Biodiesel. It's becoming even cheaper to manufacture as it comes into use, and with the rising price of oil, Biodiesel is approaching par with gasoline.

Take a look at the emissions here. Significantly cleaner than Diesel, which is cleaner than Gasoline anyway.

Biodiesel is definitely a much more viable and clean alternative to hydrogen fuel cells. It isn't quite as clean as H2 cells, but it's available now.

Re:Where do we get the H?

[mbogosian]

it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn

I call bullshit on this one.

There is no way it takes 5 gallons of crude oil to create a bushel of corn. A gallon of crude costs about $ .50, while a bushel of corn costs under $2.00. If this was true, every corn farmer in America would have gone broke a long time ago.

From this article:

One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill President Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are really being served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow ever more corn, this despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus the plant already produces. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. But rather than design a program that would encourage farmers to plant less corn -- which would have the benefit of lifting the price farmers receive for it -- Congress has decided instead to subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that zea mays dominion over its 125,000-square mile American habitat will go unchallenged.

From this article:

Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes vast quantities of oil -- 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.

From this article:

The corn, in breathtaking defiance of economic common sense, sells for 50 a bushel less than it costs to produce, without regard to the foregone value of the water.

From this blurb about Frank Moore:

The amount of fossil fuel needed to produce one bushel of corn has been estimated at anywhere from one to six gallons.... Today's farm requires fossil fuels to manufacture fertilizer, power machinery and transport the final product. The short-term benefit is the corn gets to market more economically. The long-term effects are pollution, soil destruction and the depletion of a non-renewable resource.

These are just a few references availabe. The point is that corn production is subsidized and it uses a huge number of natural resources. In the words of South Park's portrayal of Johnny Cochrane, "this does not make sinse".

My hunchback was correct!

[Graymalkin]

If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.

Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.

What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.

The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.

These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.

Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.

Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.

I quit ranting and ran numbers ages ago

[Spamalamadingdong]

The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).

Tell me something I don't know. My position on this subject was proclaimed publicly on the 'net better than a decade ago. Back then we still had sucky batteries that a century of physics and chemistry research hadn't improved by more than a relatively small increment; it was painfully clear that the CARB was populated by idiots thinking that their mandates could accomplish in a decade what a hundred years of science could not. I argued that hybrids were the only way to go, because chemical fuels were still the only way to store sufficient energy within the mass/size constraints of practical vehicles. The constant-load characteristic of hybrids also improves emissions, which is CARB's first mandate.

I have since refined my analysis; it appears quite practical to have a half-electric (not merely hybrid) vehicle which can run a substantial distance on batteries alone (perhaps 20 miles) and then start up a sustainer engine for the rest. This offers the prospect of cars which have the option of charging from the wall, but don't have to, and also have the option of burning fuel for short trips, but don't have to do that either; you could get around locally even with a total fuel cutoff (as long as there was electricity) and of course you could still get around in a blackout. The real irony is that CARB is still cluelessly glued to the absolutist position, and when they could not achieve it they had no fallback; because their Holy Grail was unattainable, they wound up attaining much less than they could easily have done. If they really want to promote greenhouse-gas reduction they should just tax gasoline up to $5/gallon and watch everyone start buying hybrids.