Slashdot Mirror
California Drivers Can Tank Up WIth Hydrogen
Country_hacker writes "News site TBO.com is reporting ChevronTexaco has opened a hydrogen fuel station in Chino, California, and has plans to open five more. Servicing three (or more) Hyundai SUVs, these prototype fueling stations are a part of a five-year cost-sharing program put on by the Department of Energy. Could this be the 'egg' in the alternate fuels 'chicken or egg?' scenario?"
We've had hydrogen refueling in Washington, DC for months.
Maybe the egg for the USA - but considering that countries like Germany already have started a nationwide rollout of Hydrogen fuel station, in reality the US is just starting to catch up so that they won't be left behind when everybody else is already long running on cleaner fuels.
The egg has hatched elsewhere already!
It makes its own hydrogen, though, from natural gas.
While I was in Brazil I noticed something unique. Ethanol AND Gasoline are both available at every gas station (I guess it should be called a fueling station). Here's an extremely informative website that shows some charts of ethanol.
0 04 .html
http://www.distill.com/World-Fuel-Ethanol-A&O-2
Why is the US going with Hydrogen instead of ethanol? I know that ethonal is more like "diesel fuel" so it requires the engine to heatup before starting the car in colder areas, but it seems that ethanol is already widely in use in other countries. Seems odd the US goes with hydrogen and everyone else is using ethanol.
Did you see who put up and OWN those stations? That's right, Fossil Fuel Companies(tm). As has been repeated many times here on /., the oil companies are going to control this From the Git-Go(tm).
*bursts CompotatoJ's bubble reluctantly*
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Just where do you think the hydrogen comes from? The cheapest way to get hydrogen is by cracking natural gas. So much for getting away from fossil fuels. Also, anyone who thinks that only water (vapor) comes out of the exhaust is wrong. That would be true if all that went into the engine were hydrogen and oxygen. Guess what? The air is 80% nitrogen. NOx formation can be a problem with hydrogen engines. The hydrogen itself also has properties that make for a bad fuel: it has such a low density that it is hard to carry much fuel and hydrogen can find the smallest holes to escape from that other gases would not.
don't the idiots in chino read popsci? URL:http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/artic le/0,20967,927469,00.html
This article adequetly explains with multiple reasons why the hydrogen community is lagging behind the ICE(internal combustion)
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask whats for lunch.
It takes very little percentage hydrogen in a room to become combustible. Outside it might be relatively safe. but The SUV itself or the gargage or pump rooms in the filling station are potential bombs and fire hazards. The saving grace is that since it is a gas and not a liquid the total stored energy in a confined space is much less so it offsets some of this concern. Still I'd never put one in my own garage without adding a ventilation system.
hopefully they will add some scent to it like they do to natural gas. But in my experience hydrogen seems to find leaks better than any other gas. Heck when I used to build vaccum systems we used to use hydrogen to find the leaks.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's been done for only a few grand - http://unitednuclear.com/h2.htm Make your own solar powered hydrolysis machine in your backyard :)
Death by snoo-snoo!
Overall, this is exciting news though. the thought of the american economy being hostage to canadian natural gas instead of saudi oil, just makes my wallet go pitter patter.
NEXT you assume only one square metre of solar cell space.... how big is your house? mine is around 8*20 metres = 160 m^2
SO if you take my house as an example, you are looking at 160m^2 * 200w (say)per m^2 * 8 decent sunlight hours per day = about 250 KWhours per day IF i cover my entire roof with panels, plenty to power multiple cars and the house and the neighbours house etc etc.
THE only problem with this scenario? due to a lack of widespread investment in solar technology, as opposed to oil or other fossil fuels, solar cells still cost about 5 bucks a watt, so your looking at an upfront investment of about 160 grand to cover my roof in panels. Now obviously i dont quite need that much power, but either way itll be a fair whack of money at current prices (otherwise i wouldve done it long ago). Hopefully some of the new thinner solar technologies coming out soon (within a year or two) will lower prices to a more reasonable level.
watch "the money masters" on google video
CNG is available in the vast majority of service stations. It blew me away when I first got here - being an American, I had no idea it was in widespread use.
.40 AUD per liter vs. 1 AUD for gasoline (and Australia has some of the lower gas prices in the world)
Good points:
- It's a lot cheaper than gasoline, about
- A liter of CNG gets you (just about) as far as a liter of gasoline
- It's less polluting
Most of the Sydney-area taxis use CNG for precisely this reason. The one person I know who owns a CNG-fueled automobile for personal use has a brother-in-law who owns a taxi company, so he got a stock vehicle, and had it painted (Sydney taxis are white)... He loves it.
Refoming gasoline using catalytic converters.
Text to the article.
Instead of spark plugs and cylinders, environmentally friendly fuel cell engines may be under the hoods of the cars of the future. But first, scientists must find a practical and economical way to supply the hydrogen gas needed to power them. Chemical engineers at Argonne have developed and patented a compact fuel processor that "reforms" ordinary gasoline into a hydrogen-rich gas to power fuel cells. The technology was recently named one of the top 100 inventions of the year by R&D magazine.
Fuel cells convert hydrogen gas into electricity and water. Compared to internal combustion engines, the energy conversion is clean and efficient. "You can think of fuel cells as batteries that are continuously charged by supplying fuel," said Jim Miller, manager of Argonne's Electrochemical Technology Program.
A team of scientists in the Chemical Technology Division, led by Mike Krumpelt and Shabbir Ahmed, have synthesized new types of catalysts to form hydrogen by reacting gasoline with oxygen. Catalysts are materials that speed chemical reactions by cutting the energy required to start the reaction. While catalysts help some chemical bonds form and others break, catalysts remain unchanged. Using the Argonne catalyst, Ahmed designed and built an inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture fuel-reforming reactor.
Don't burn it, reform it
Fuel cell engines are clean. They efficiently convert hydrogen and oxygen into electric power with water and heat as the only by-products. The fuel cell is expected to be 60 percent efficient -- twice as efficient as today's internal combustion engines. And fuel cells should cut carbon dioxide output to half that of a combustion engine.
Using hydrogen directly to power fuel cell engines would be environmentally ideal, but it is not practical today. Hydrogen-storage devices are heavy and bulky, and no retailing infrastructure exists for supplying hydrogen to consumers. These challenges prompted scientists to investigate compact processors that could produce hydrogen from conventional fuels to power the fuel cell onboard the vehicle.
Researchers originally developed methanol reformers but switched to gasoline because its production, distribution and retailing infrastructure is established. Fuel-cell car owners would use the pumps at the gas station to refuel just as they do now, but they would only need half as much gas.
History
The first fuel cells were built in 1839, but their role as a practical power generator did not emerge until the 1960s when the U.S. space program developed fuel cells to power the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft.
The space program continues to use fuel cells -- they produce electricity and water for space shuttle astronauts -- while fuel cell research has expanded into stationary and vehicle power generation. Argonne scientists have been involved with fuel cell research for nearly three decades.
Reformer design
In designing the fuel reformer, Ahmed used a simple, inexpensive plan similar to catalytic converters in today's cars. Catalytic converters pass the car's exhaust over a catalyst that converts carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide to eliminate the poisonous gas.
In Ahmed's gasoline reformer, vaporized gasoline is mixed with steam and air and then sent through a catalyst-packed cylinder. The result is a mixture of gases with a high hydrogen concentration, which is fed to the fuel cell. Some carbon monoxide is also present in the gas mixture. Before it goes to the fuel cell, it passes through a secondary processor, which reacts water vapor and the carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide and additional hydrogen.
Wanted: A few good catalysts
In addition to the reformer design, researchers needed new catalysts to spur the gasoline-to-hydrogen-gas chemical reaction. Hydrogen gas consists of twin hydrogen atoms bound tog
Actually, the biggest problem with his analysis, and yours, is that you're looking at equating kW's (power) for some reason instead of energy (kWh). If a car is powered by hydrogen, its power requirement is fulfilled solely by the capacity of the fuel cell - it has nothing to do with the solar panels at all. It's a matter of how quickly you can extract the energy of the hydrogen gas per unit of time via the fuel cell. Now, if you REALLY wanted to find out how long it would take to charge your car, you have to know how much sun you have. Typically, the US gets anywhere from 3.5 (northeast) to 6.5 (southwest) full sun hours per day, on average. So if you have a 7kW rated system on your roof and you lived in an average state, in terms of sun, you could generate about 35kWh (5kW x 5h) of energy everyday. Supposing that electrolysis is 75% efficient, you could generate about 27kWh worth of hydrogen gas per day. Assuming that the fuel cell is also 75% efficient, we're at about 20kWh worth of energy that can be used by the car. So, if a hydrogen fuelled car operates at 15kW on average, you could drive it for 1.33 hours everyday. That seems like more than enough for your average person. Of course, if you also wanted to power your house...
- Hybids can do considerably better; for instance, the Accord hybrid is tuned for performance while still delivering fairly good economy (design tradeoff).
- At least one Future Truck hybrid managed to add all the hybrid features to an Explorer while subtracting weight from the smaller engine and superfluous drivetrain components. According to this CSM article:
If that isn't enough for you... read one of their technical reports (not sure if that's the same vehicle or not). You made three errors in that statement:- Maximum power requirements are typically in acceleration, not hill-climbing.
- Running out of battery isn't "stranding", it's just going slower. Like, you know, having to downshift when climbing a mountain with a load?
- These folks appear to be using engines in the ~2 liter department, but they're getting better-than-V8 performance out of the system. Better performance appears to be one of the common elements of hybrids, though the extent to which it is stressed vs. economy is a design tradeoff.
If you don't know what I mean by now...Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I am shocked by all the comments in this thread about poor range and obscene costs, like the 1 million US$ by the parent. Here are two links about the latest GM fuel cell car, the Sequel.
0 _n ews/sequel_011005.html
t ml
http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/10
Let's see, range 300 miles, 0-60 under 10 seconds. Doesn't sound all that bad, especially compared to some SUV's. And since that page doesn't talk about cost, this link
http://americajr.com/news/naias/2005/gmsequel.h
has a quote from GM saying it would cost about 60-70k to build the Sequel today. Too high for mass market production, but not too high to think it will be economically viable in the mid-term future. Both articles state by 2010, but considering this is PR timeframes, I would double that to 2015. Which still doesn't seem bad. If hydrogen cars in ten years are where hybrid cars are today, I will be very happy.
The Associated Press is reporting the story, not TBO.com (see same exact story here on Yahoo news).
See Chevron's press release here.
See U.S. Federal Gov't press release on this here.
Funny how GM has been helping to pass around the idea the HYBRID vehicles are more expensive than conventional vehicles and people won't pay the price.
1: They are, and we don't. If we were all willing to pay the price, sometime over the last five years we'd have had more than just four hybrid cars in America.
2: GM (yes, THAT GM) has hybrid city busses that they're trying to sell. Albany's CDTA has one that is subbing for the #11, still with all the ads from the 04 conventions. (And, really, they're a great, GREAT idea.)
For all the poo-poo I am reading about cracking Natural Gas to create hydrogen and thus pollute may I mention the said process is done so the C02 can be treated as a point-source pollution vs. a non-point source pollutant (ie internal combustion engines). That allows for the sequestration of Carbon people!
Also, since the cracking of natural gas is done at a central site, the C02 can be sequestered instead of released into the atmophere. Electrolysis can be accomplished on a regional scale. All we need are some nifty pebble bed reactors, to provide us with safe energy for the electrolysis.
People wake up, the future is coming like a frieght train. America needs to learn to dream again.
Dusty (If you dont know what Carbon Sequestration is--- try google).
I doubt that.
20 % efficiency
1 m^2
200 w/m^2
6 sunlight hours per day
1200 kWh
At least a 10 year lifespawn
4,272,000 kWh to produce a 1 m^2 solar panel? Gimme a break.
Biodiesel is really what we should be concentrating on right now. Biodiesel pours right into pretty much any existing diesel engine and has only slightly less BTUs per gallon that petroleum diesel. Certainly biodiesel isn't as clean as hydrogen, but it's a whole heck of a lot cleaner than petroleum diesel and even more so than gasoline. The best part of biodiesel is the fact that you can start using it immediately in your unmodified diesel powered vehicle and not have to worry that you're going to be able to find some (currently) exotic fuel if you go on a trip. Worse case, just pour regular diesel in. Biodiesel would make the transition phase painless.
:-) All you need is a standard catalytic converter and a biodiesel-fuelled vehicle will likely meet the stringent Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle standard.
The nice thing about biodiesel is the fact any crop that has a high carbohydrate count can be processed in to biodiesel fuel. And the best thing is that biodiesel fuel burns very cleanly, not even needing a diesel particulate trap!
By the way, did you know that the very concept of biodiesel engines came from the original development work of Rudolf Diesel? The first Diesel engine ran off peanut oil, of all things! That explains why diesel fuel can be easily derived from plant sources. Also, there has been serious research into growing certain types of algae that could easily be refined into biodiesel fuel.
Anyway, today's diesel engines are high-technology wonders that have effectively banished the clattering and smoky exhaust of older engines. Thanks to careful design, common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection and catalytic converters that also "burn off" diesel particulates, they are quiet, clean-burning, and sound exactly like a normal gasoline engine. Here in the USA, if you live in any of the 45 states where it's legal go drive the Mercedes-Benz E320 CDI, a vehicle that demonstrates very impressive acceleration performance but when driven at reasonable speeds gets fuel efficiency around 32-35 miles per US gallon! =)
Anyway, I believe we'll see a large number of diesel-powered vehicles in the US market starting in Fall 2006. Thanks to the EPA mandate that all motor fuels can only have at most 15 parts per million of sulfur compounds in fuel starting September 2006, that makes it possible to develop modern turbodiesel engines that meet the ULEV standard, hence making them 50-state legal. And Americans will discover that modern diesel-powered cars are quiet, amazingly powerful (thanks to the very torquey nature of diesel engines in the low RPM range), and impressively clean-burning. I wouldn't be surprised that Honda brings over their well-regarded 2.2-liter I-4 i-CTDi engine for application in the Honda Accord, CR-V and Element models, and BMW brings over their 3.0-liter I-6 turbodiesel engine for the 3 and 5 Series automobiles.
Also, because diesel engines have their torque peaks at relatively low RPM range, that makes them a perfect match for SUV's, pickup trucks and minivans. Can you imagine by 2008-2009 most of these vehicles switched to clean turbodiesel power, which means they will have at least 30-40% better fuel effiency than now? The GM Duramax turbodiesel engine used on their Chevy and GMC pickup trucks sports a far high torque peak than the equivalent gasoline engine, and is far more fuel efficient, too.
Please explain how NOx gasses are produced...
It was my understanding that a PROTON membrane allows only H+ ions through to react with ONLY oxygen....
Your argument is based on hightemperature hydrocarbon and oxygen reaction in which some nitrogen in the air is fixed into oxygen.
The reactions here occur at reasonably high temperatures, but ONLY oxygen and hydrogen react.
this creates h20.
Learn before posting, and dont spread disinformation.
if your statements were true, then the human body would create NOx from its combustion reactions.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Hydrogen has no future. You need more energy to create it than you get out of it. Its "energy return on investment" (EROI) is negative. Biodiesel has a positive EROI.
1 _RP.pdf
Moreover, as a carrier, hydrogen has all kinds of problems (safety, you need a major overhaul of the entire infrastructure, entirely new cars, etc...).
Hybrid diesel and hybrid biodiesel cars are the only real alternative.
In 2003, MIT's Lab for Energy and the Environment made a study comparing the entire lifecycle for idealized automotive drive systems (internal combustion, hybrids, fuel cells). The results were very clear:
-straight gasoline scores worst of all
-gasoline hybrids score far worse than diesel hybrids
-diesel hybrids are nearly just as good as the best fuel cell systems.
The study didn't include biodiesel in hybrid diesel cars, but any laymen can dedude that it is the technology of the future.
You have to look at the entire lifecycle, when comparing technologies. And hydrogen/fuel cells are not efficient.
MIT's study can be found here (pdf): http://lfee.mit.edu/publications/PDF/LFEE_2003-00
This is not informative, its wrong. First of all, natural gas is not tied to fossil fuels. Currently we find alot of it with fossil fuels, but we don't need to.
Second, natural gas is methane. It is worse to try and "crack" methane and convert it into carbon and hydrogen than it is to use other sources of hydrogen. In fact, you have it backwards. Methane is often produced by heating a mixture of hydrogen and coal. Why would anyone use hydrogen and coal to make methane, just so they could turn it back into hydrogen and coal? I know, they don't.
NOx formation is no more a problem with hydrogen engines than ordinary engines using hydrocarbons. And guess what, they aren't formed. Isn't that weird? No, wait, that's completely normal, otherwise lighting a match in the air would cause NOx to form, creating more fuel, and more NOx, and it would spiral out of control and consume the entire atmosphere in flames. Nitrogen in the atmosphere is N2 and is stable enough that it will not break apart to form NOx molecules just because there is heat and or oxygen around.
And finally, hydrogen is compressed to a liquid for transport and storage, allowing you to carry plenty of fuel just fine.
The only question I have, is how did something so completely and totally wrong in every way get modded up to 5 informative?