Fuel Cell Powered Japanese Trains on Trial in July

ScorpFromHell writes "As per this yahoo! news item, "East Japan Railway Co. is to conduct a test run of the world's first fuel-cell-powered train in July. The fuel cells, which generate power from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, will help reduce environmental pollution compared to the existing electric and diesel engines, the company said." But I wonder how much energy did it consume to produce those huge amounts of Hydrogen & Oxygen? Will it be lesser than the power generated by the reaction between them? In other words, can this technology be used by countries with not so deep pockets as Japan?"

Comments

Re:no it's not worth it.

[LordLucless]

While I'm not sure about the relative polution created by burning natural gas to create hydrogen vs burning it for energy directly, there is an advantage to relocation the pollution to a single point. It's much more feasible to implement high-tech and expensive filters and control mechanisms in one or two hydrogen production plants than it is in a couple of million cars across a country. Then too, when a better method of production is discovered, all you need to do is upgrade the production plants, rather than wait for everyone to be a new, cleaner car.