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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.
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.
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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.
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.
Actually, they've gone to some real trouble to make carbon-fiber-reinforced tanks that are *very* hard to bust. I've seen the test footage, and when they finally did manage to bust one (which was no mean feat), it slowly leaked the hydrogen out. What is more, when they ignited the leaking hydrogen, it just burned, Just Like Gasoline; it did not explode.
Incidentally, leaking H2 is somewhat safer than leaking gasoline, because it tends to float up and away instead of accumulate in a growing pool on the ground.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
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!
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.
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...