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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?"
Like a tank of gasoline isn't anymore explosive than hydrogen?
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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?
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
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
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.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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 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.