Combined Gasoline/Hydrogen Fuel Station Opens

98neon writes "This story from Yahoo! News tells of a Shell hydrogen refilling station that has opened in Washington D.C. Six minivans will be the only vehicles refuelling anytime soon. Apparently some of the neighbors are concerned about having a large tank of hydrogen near their homes. Oh come on, what is there to worry about?"

Comments

Pah

[hypergreatthing]

Like a tank of gasoline isn't anymore explosive than hydrogen?

Re:Pah

[Leroy_Brown242]

People are used to gasoline though. They have been programmed to not worry about it. Hydrogen on the other hand is not something your average person has much knowledge of. So, being unknown, it's deathly scary.

Re:Pah

[Rei]

It's not anywhere near as explosive as hydrogen at STP. You not only have to get it vaporized, but you have to have it vaporized and mixed with oxygen at just the right ratios. And even still, an optimal gasoline/air mix isn't nearly as explosive as an optimal gasoline hydrogen mix.

Not only is hydrogen more readily combustible in air, but it's already in gasseous form *and* under high pressure.

Re: pah

[marcus]

Aside from the suggestion that Michael can think, all are on the right track here.

The same fear of the unkown or simple misinformation applies to nuclear topics as well.

Most don't know that cosmic rays pass through them every second, yet soil their pants when "nuc-anything" is mentioned.

Re:Pah

[codeguy007]

1) Hydrogen isn't explosive, it's combustable.
2) Hydrogen is the lightest substance so if a leak occurs it dispates quickly. You will not get build up like you will with gas vapor, propane or natural gas which is heavier than air.

Re:Pah

[nolife]

Same with nuclear power. Imagine the public outcry if someone planned to build a nuclear power plant in Honolulu or any where on the island of Oahu. Take a trip to the naval base and you can see probably 10 of them tied right next to the pier. The Puget sound area in Washington is even better. They have the multiple reactor compartments and various leftovers from defueled submarines scattered thorough out the shipyard in Bremerton. The submarine base about 15 miles north is home to multiple nuclear submarines and across the sound is Whidbey island.
I guess since these reactors are "portable", no one minds ;)

Hydrogen the next nuclear?

[AKAImBatman]

When nuclear energy first came on to the scene, many people were afraid that contamination could happen from one person to another. Anyone who'd handled nuclear materials or was exposed to such materials, was treat as a lepor.

Now we have people worried about Hydrogen (which floats UP while it explodes) instead of the far more energy dense gasoline that will continue burning everything after it explodes. Ah, progress. :-)

Seriously, what is there to worry about?

[qi3ber]

I mean, they've already got a giant tank of explosive gasoline near their house, can a little hydrogen really be that much worse?

Wha? wha? what?

[fizban]

Apparently some of the neighbors are concerned about having a large tank of hydrogen near their homes.

As opposed to what, a large tank of GASOLINE near their homes? Or maybe that large tank of heating oil sitting right outside their home? Or perhaps the direct natural gas feed right INTO their home?

Christ, some people are stupid.

Re:Oh so scary

[mikeee]

Heck, the most serious danger of either isn't fire; it's that the underground gasoline tanks will leak and contaminate local water supplies.

Re:Hydrogen

[ivan256]

How could they put this 50 yards away from a school?

Probably with a backhoe, a dump truck, a steamroller....

Seriously though, are you implying that it's bad to have this near a school without giving any credible reasoning. Why don't you compare and contrast for us the merits of the hydrogen fuel station 50 yards away from the school with what's likely the natural gas line and furnace that likely runs driectly to and resides inside the school?

Re:Hydrogen Power.

[Billy the Mountain]

Hydrogen isn't an "energy source," it's a (somewhat inefficient) way of storing energy.

Gasoline isn't an "energy source" either, it's an extremely inefficient way of storing what was ultimately energy from the sun. That's why we call fossil fuels non-renewable.

Hydrogen IS an efficient way of storing energy derived from solar, nuclear, wind, hydro or other sources. It's efficient because it can be moved around using existing natural gas infrastructures.

BTM

Re:Hydrogen Power.

[Suidae]

So congratulations to the "green" consumers choosing their hydrogen - I mean coal - powered cars!

Absolutely. At least coal (which is far more abundant and cheaper than oil) can be burned to produce power in large power stations which are easier to keep efficent and clean (clean relative to the smog-plants we currently put in cars, it can still be pretty dirty stuff).

Now, would a commercial system end up being cleaner and more efficent than what we've already got? Good question. I know of only one way to find out for sure.

Re:Hydrogen Power.

[sonicattack]

So that electricity comes from power plants - in the US, that means mostly coal and oil.

Yes, but that can change, and electricity can be produced from alternatives, giving hydrogen fuel from "green" electricity.

Try doing something similar with oil-based fuel. Not as easy.

Right but

[einhverfr]

The Hydrogen is lighter than air, so you get a huge explosion in mid air. Yes, this is dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as being *in* a Fuel-Air explosion by, say, Gasolene (which is heavier than air and so it hugs the ground, where, coincidentally, we tend to be).

My question, however, is how do you detect a leak? Do they add bad-smelling chemicals to the hydrogen (like, say, hygrogen sulfide)? It seems that this is somewhat important when you are dealing with hazardous gasses.

Also, I should mention that we do have a much more dangerous pressurized gas-- propane-- available at a variety of locations. Propane is also heavier than air, but it is also a gas and pressurized.

Re:Right but

[einhverfr]

Gasoline explosions in non-controlled circumstances are incredibly difficult to occur. Hydrogen explosions are not, by any stretch. That's the only thing that matters.

What about propane? I think it is likely to be much more dangerous than hydrogen. You have more potential energy/L and you have something which is heavier than air.

That's not a realistic scenario. Hydrogen explosions occur at the time of leak. Why do people keep invisioning some floating cloud of hydrogen?

Right-- they can't occur much after the leak because the hydrogen will dissipate *upwards* and away from possible sources of ignition. Gasolene on the other hand, has been known to explode in poorly maintained gas stations (I am recalling on in Africa). Not common but has been known to occur.

Probably neither Hydrogen nor Gasolene is likely to be anywhere near as dangerous as Propane.

Propane is a near-perfect explosive gas for disasters-- it is explosive, heavier-than-air (which means that in the case of a leak, it will dissipate but collect in low-lying areas, ditches, etc). A propane leak could allow a *much* larger amount of gas to accumulate for an explosion in most circumstances and lead to *much* more damage than hydrogen because of its weight.

Look, for example, at the Hindenburg. When it caught fire, where did the hydrogen go? Up and away from the craft. Remember that 2/3 of the people on board the Hindinburg survived, and falling was a much bigger cause of injury and death than burns were.

I have known of several other cases of gas explosions (most due to human error such as using it to clean electric motors in the vacinity of where they would be used again) which have occured near where I have lived at the time. I have also played extensively with small quantities of hydrogen (and set off a few explosions). I have found that in general, hydrogen is far more difficult to get to explode than may people think precisely because it dissipates upward.

Hindenburg?

[Harik]

Let's propagate a few less urban legends. Hindenburg was NOT a hydrogen fire. It was a fire of the highly HIGHLY flammable coating on the baloon itself. The hydrogen was gone pretty quickly, and would have simply burned out of wherever it was escaping from.

"It was skinned in cotton, doped with iron oxide and cellulose acetate butyrate impregnated with aluminium powder."

Yes kids, the hindenburg was coated in THERMITE.

Hydrogen won't achieve popularity...

[ikewillis]

...except through the use of reformers which extract hydrogen from gasoline or ethanol which can be in turn used in conjunction with hydrogen fuel cells.

I have much better hopes for E85 fuel, which combines 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. Any existing car can be modified to run on E85 in addition to regular gasoline, meaning that people don't need to throw away their existing vehicles and buy a new hydrogen car. Since they can still run on gasoline, you don't need to worry about looking for a specific kind of fuel station... buy E85 if it's available and regular gasoline if it isn't.

E85 is also substantially more environmentally friendly than gasoline:

E85 is environmentally-friendly. It has the highest oxygen content of any fuel available today, making it burn more completely (cleaner) than gasoline. E85 contains 80% less gum-forming compounds, like the olefins found in gasoline. Production and use of E85 results in a nearly 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. More than 100 major U.S. cities suffer from unhealthy levels of smog. E85 may be able to help. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies have shown that high-blend ethanol fuels can reduce harmful exhaust emissions by more than 50 percent and smog-forming pollution by 15% or more.

E85 can be produced from surplus feed corn which is otherwise thrown out every year. Our nation has the capacity to manufacture it in quantity, whereas hydrogen is currently difficult to produce and expensive, and the easiest chemical processes by which to produce it result in toxic chemicals (such as reacting metal with hydroxides). Furthermore, everything in our current gasoline infractructure, from tanker trunks, storage tanks, gas pumps, and vehicles, can be used with E85, whereas hydrogen would require that we retool our entire infrastructure.

E85 would also open the doors to a new class of pure ethanol vehicles, including, as I said earlier, ones which use reformers to extract hydrogen from ethanol and run it through fuel cells, virtually eliminating pollution and the inefficiency of internal combustion engines. E85 would move our source of energy from terrorist controlled oil to domestically produced corn and other starchy crops. E85 would allow us to utilize surplus starchy crops rather than just throwing them away, eliminating waste.

All in all, I don't see what the buzz about hydrogen is all about. It would require an impractical infrastructural transition which is unlikely to happen until we've thoroughly exhausted our oil supplies. E85 lets us keep our whole existing infrastructure while still solving most of the problems attributed to oil.