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Home-Based Hydrogen Refueling Station
Sportsqs writes "One of the main barriers to the widespread adoption of fuel cell vehicles has been the lack of an adequate hydrogen-refueling infrastructure. Beyond a handful of hydrogen stations, such as the one near Los Angeles International Airport, there just isn't anywhere to fill up. Step forward ITM Power, a UK company that has developed a hydrogen refueling station that could be installed at home, providing a ready-made solution for fuel-cell car owners."
...that hydrogen is extremely flammable, often explosive, and very dangerous to work with, sounds like a smashing idea!
Seriously though, I think a home fueling station would be a great start. Not only because it provides a convenient source of fuel, but also because it pushes the energy requirements to the grid. (Which isn't a bad thing if we finally build more nuclear power plants!) As long as the safety concerns of generating hydrogen at home are worked out, I'm all for it.
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With something like this, any normal fueling station can become a Hydrogen vendor without having to arrange a supply of hydrogen.
It might not be the cheapest way to make and sell the stuff on every corner, but it may be the most feasible.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This device can only provide enough hydrogen for a 25 mile journey with overnight operation. Battery powered cars get better results with the same amount of charge time, and no one is going crazy to buy them. At $4K, this is a pricy way to make a hydrogen car work less efficiently than an electric car.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Hydrogen is still just an energy medium -- not a source. Say that hydrogen generator runs at 2kW (similar to an A/C unit), and it takes about 2h to generate enough H2 to run you for 100m... Oh wait.. that's like 25 cents ~ 1/4 penny a mile........
Or sometimes thereabouts. It's just a gaseous battery, effectively.
I still await that day when all I have to do is open up my Mr. Coffee-like power generator and put my scraps in.
It seems that these days people are very short-sighted, and paying a one time $4000 fee (plus small electric fees) will scare them away. Nevermind gas leaking that much out of their wallets in a few months, average Joe won't think clear enough for this to catch on quick. Well, I could always be wrong, and hope I am, but people and their actions have made me jaded over the years.
clearly, imagined fear is far more important than efficiency
What hype. Gee, they can make hydrogen from water and electricity. This is news? It's important to note that this home system claims to be able to give a hydrogen power car a 25 mile ability to travel. Which works out to a maximum destination of half that without a way to refuel until you get home. Also worth noting is that another tiny little barrier to a hydrogen powered car is that the current fuel cells used in hydrogen cars drives the price of the car to over $1,000,000 US per car (Ownership of the few existing prototypes is being retained by the auto companies because they can't realistically sell them.) Sure, the companies say that they hope to drive the price down to $40,000, but they don't ever seem to give any data to explains how they came up with that number.
While it would be interesting if the hope of making cost effective fuel cells became reality (it might not), it certainly seems more desirable, more practical and safer to not got through the hydrogen separation process in the first place. If the effort expended on fuel cell development were instead focused on battery, super capacitor and other electricity storage technology, a car could likely be recharged with electricity at home rather than being refueled with hydrogen. The range would be much greater (heck, it's already much greater than the 25 mile total travel capacity stated in the article), and a number of other problems would be avoided as well, including the problem of storing that hydrogen (it tends to leak out of anything and you don't want thick walled compressed gas tanks burning up range with their weight), and it is extremely dangerous in gas form in an accident.
And I say this completely expecting some eco-geek will mod me down because they didn't think through the hydrogen issue and think it's a good thing.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
home electrolysis is a horrible idea, unless its a renewable or maybe nuclear source the electricity is coming from
hire mexicans to push our cars. They have to be cheaper than gas.
I love the idea!
As I see it though, the biggest problem isn't necessarily the inherent danger that hydrogen has, but is the mere fact that this is something that COMPLETELY removes the large petroleum companies from the loop. I can only imagine that the issue of danger will be drastically overinflated until the idea that any normal person cannot be expected to handle the danger that comes with hydrogen, when compared to the grade A gas station attendants
As you can expect, the attendants would have some sort of hydrogen handbook. It would prevent explosions. Also, water for hydrogen would suddenly become the most expensive commodity know to man...
Indeed: instead of burning oil in the engine of a car, converting the heat to motion, it is proposed that we burn oil in the power plant, convert this to electricity, conduct the electricity to the home, use this to separate water, and finally burn the hydrogen in the car?
s/10/100/
This typo doesn't change the penny per kwh value of capital costs (obviously since $0.01 * 24 * 365 ~= $100) .
Which, in effect, gives us a coal-fired car. Terrific.
-Peter
It's not just law suits, you know. Consider that the "total life cycle" is a tad longer than for most human endeavours. It really is about safe long-term storage.
Do you think that something like this comes cheap?
http://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benford.html
"Good news, everyone!"
If we're going to use a gas as chemical energy storage, we should consider propane rather than hydrogen. Hydrogen is a bit of a problem for large scale use. It makes metals brittle by infiltrating their structure. It can diffuse through the walls of most gas cylinders. It has to be stored adsorbed (poor capacity) or under high pressure (danger of explosion, heavy cylinder).
In contrast, propane is easily liquified, relatively thin walled cylinders can store it safely, and it's fairly simple to convert a gasoline or diesel powered car to use it (disconnect fuel injectors, add regulator into air intake). We already have infrastructure to distribute propane. Many people are already familiar with it's safe use for grills, portable heaters, and RVs. Its safety track record is decades long. When it burns, it produces a visible flame.
Because it is already in use for RVs, grills, forklifts, and some trucks, it's much more readily available. If I needed 100 pounds of gaseous fuel today, I know exactly where to go to get propane (and I can get google maps of locations in any state. If I need hydrogen, I'm sol. Existing gas stations can afford to adapt to propane fairly easily, starting by getting an above-ground tank and signing up for regular delivery. Some gas stations have already done this for grills and RVs so it must be at least somewhat profitable for them to do so. If demand rises, more will find it profitable. In rural areas, many homes already have their own propane tank and regular delivery by truck. Practically any natural gas powered device can be converted to propane just by replacing the metering orifice and regulator. The needed part is readily cheaply available for most gas powered devices already. The conversion can be accomplished by nearly anyone using only pliers.
It burns cleanly, and if it was synthesized from carbon and hydrogen, it is carbon neutral.
Propane fuel cells already exist if/when needed for fuel cell electric vehicles. They are already in use in Alaska.
I really wonder if the "hydrogen economy" isn't more of an attempt to maintain the status quo while appearing to do something useful by insisting on a solution that requires multiple breakthroughs on several fronts and a brand new infrastructure just to get started rather than choosing one that requires only incremental improvements on proven technology and existing infrastructure.
It isn't *that* hard or dangerous. Virtually every farm of medium to larger size in the US has their own diesel and some also gasoline "station", and some have propane taps to keep forklifts running, etc. They certainly don't drive all their equipment miles into town and go "fill er up" all the time. We sure don't, only the larger road trucks that use road diesel get filled at an outside fuel station, but the bulk of our fuel use is offroad so we have a "station" and it gets bought in bulk. I am thinking and I really can't remember any decent farm I worked on that didn't, put it that way. And home natgas filling stations for cars are available now, just check with your local supplier, see if they offer that service, that's too big a variable but I know it is at least somewhat common, although usually more used for fleet vehicle use. And farmers are leading the way with the alternative fuels, example, one of our customers for our poultry litter is the largest regular corn and soybeans, etc guys around here, maybe the largest (we are the largest poultry operation by far locally). Last year he put part of his production into sunflowers and got a commercial biodiesel rig to use that sunflower oil for his equipment. And we got no choice, none whatsoever, the big oil companies/wall street/foreign national suppliers, etc are making -shoot-most everything in the "necessary" department unprofitable, if we DON'T switch to alternative energy in all the forms and decentralize soon we are all screwed, and those folks don't seem to care as long as they can squeeze out an extra trillion or two in short term profits.
What everyone seems to forget is that fuel cells are really bad for the environment. You think CO2 is bad? Its nothing compared to water vapor. Don't believe me? Check out wikipedia's entry for Greenhouse Gasses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
Quote:
water vapor, which causes about 36 to 70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth.
carbon dioxide, which causes 9 to 26%
Now, you may think that it's ok because were forming water from what was originally water and thus we have balance, but the problem is that when you recombine the H2 and O2 you get your water and HEAT. This heat turns the water into vapor immediately which is released into the atmosphere.
Save the earth- avoid fuel cells and use gasoline!
He's not scared, he owns a filling station.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
(Sorry, couldn't resist).
You have some interesting point - it does seem like it would be easier, short term, to switch to propane. Do you have any links to info on propane synthesis? What's involved in the process? As the main article for this discussion points out, creating hydrogen gas is something that can be done fairly simply, as long as you have access to electricity and water. People could have home-based fueling systems next to their house, and a hydrogen 'gas-station' never needs trucks for delivery - just water pipes and electric lines. Part of me likes the simplicity of a setup like that - the whole idea of delivering chemical fuels on trucks which themselves require energy in the form of chemical fuel, seems somewhat inefficient - you are paying a 'tax' on transporting the energy. Granted, you still pay an energy tax to deliver water (takes energy to run the city water pumps to fill the towers), and electricity (transmission losses), but I think the energy required to move water through the pipe network, and the losses in electric transmission would be smaller than the energy used to drive a truck (I admit I could be wrong about that).
In some ways, the 'hydrogen economy' can reuse existing infrastructure (the existing electric grid and municipal water systems) in ways that most other chemical fuels might not be able to. Right now the main problem would be an adequate supply of cheap electricity - if hydrogen cars started getting put into production, and people started driving them, I think we could expect some significant rises in the price of electricity, which already isn't exactly cheap. Also, in the short term, these home-based fueling devices aren't really a solution. The article says it produces enough hydrogen to drive 25 miles. Yeah. I can't afford to have *two* cars, and with a 25-mile limit (really, 12 mile limit since I gotta get *back* home), a hydrogen powered car isn't even gonna get me to work and back (I work about 20 miles from where I live; I'd live closer to work, except I also go to school, so I chose to live close to school instead, but I'd have to drive the distance between work and school one way or another, this isn't about me wanting to live in a McMansion in the suburbs - I actually live in an efficiency apt). Let alone longer trips to, e.g. visit relatives and friends who live farther away.
Propane is definitely better in that regard, but with propane, you do necessarily have to produce the propane somewhere else, and then move the propane to the point of consumption (e.g. gas station). It's true that you could have a large propane tank at home, instead of a unit that synthesizes the fuel, but that would require re-fueling the tank somehow - I'm guessing that would mean a truck coming to your home, and at that point, why not just go to a local fueling station like we do with gasoline right now (people could have their own 200 gallon tanks at home too, but most people choose not to bother).
So, while there are more places to get propane right now, they still aren't nearly as common as you would need to really have people start driving propane vehicles. I think that, ultimately, synthetic propane suffers from many of the same problems as hydrogen, though it does have a few advantages. The main problem being, as with hydrogen, if you are going to synthesize propane, you need an energy source to do it, I would assume, because of the law of conservation of energy (I presume electricity? I can't seem to find any info on Google or Wikipedia about propane synthesis). If electricity, that means we still need to find ways to produce massive amounts of electricity, cheaply, cleanly, and safely. Which is the biggest reason, I think, that hydrogen cars cannot succeed right now.
I used to be a big proponent of fuel cells simply because it didn't seem that electricity could really fit our transportation needs. But let me explain why I'm a bit of a convert (so far). It's not that I fear fuel cells I just think electricity is making some serious in-roads.
... and you and your family.?
Think about it: if your car has batteries and ultra-high capacitors then, yes, you could charge your car at home (more on this below). And with an ultra-high capacitor, or a well designed system of exchangeable batteries, there is the opportunity to "refill" at a filling station or with interchangeable batteries you just pull out the discharged stack and stick in a new one - think about how you can easily exchange your propane tank at grocery stores.
Also, extend the idea of improved batteries and ultra-high capacitors: EVENTUALLY, most of us would like to have inexpensive solar panels on our homes powering most of everything we own (there is also geothermal, solar thermal, etc. to tap into) so that we don't have to pay someone else for that energy. And now think of the economy-of-scale, if this comes to fruition then those same batteries being designed and improved upon can be put in our homes to capture energy during the day-time, or night-time if the wind kicks up, whatever.... I think you get my point: these improved battery systems and ultra-high capacitors would be useful to our everyday lives - minus the challenges of storing hydrogen.
(I know, I know, those solar panels and such cost money so we have to pay someone, but again, think economy-of-scale to the point that those costs are more affordable than today....)
Oh, and re: hydrogen tanks: I'd rather have an accident where the harmless gas dissipates up into the air than have gallons of environmentally destructive gasoline spill out onto the road and down into your drainage/sewage system. Imagine if that spill is ignited vs. a stream of gas escaping from a hydrogen tank - Note: those tanks are not designed to completely explode, they'd blow the valve off before blowing up completely. Which would you rather deal with? A jet of hydrogen flames shooting in one specific direction or a full-on gasoline fire spreading out underneath your car
One of the most important requirements, in my opinion, of an eventual solution to the energy problem would have to be the possibility to easily produce and store it at a local/individual level. Any solution that requires the existence of a distribution grid does not satisfy this requirement, and is bound to suffer from cut-throat monopoly practices.
For this reason I found the possibility to produce one's own hydrogen very appealing. This solution, I understand, is currently very limited in range, and the whole hydrogen technology has many concrete obstacles to overcome. But you cannot compare it to propane gas, for example. Propane gas is a fossil fuel (must be extracted), while hydrogen comes from water.
Yes, you need energy to extract hydrogen from water. The required electricity could come from a local windmill or solar panel array. What I did not find (maybe I did not search long enough) is, how does the electricity consumption to produce hydrogen to travel those 25 miles compare to a) the amount of gasoline and b) the amount of electricity that an electric car would use to travel along the same distance. Does anybody have these figures?