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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 gasoline is extremely flammable, often explosive, and very dangerous to work with.
If I spilled 1 gallon of H2 vs 1 gallon of gasoline I'd be a whole lot less careful. The H2 would be gone in an outdoor setting (or with an open garage) in a matter of seconds.
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.
Better: crack natural gas for the hydrogen in something like this. (Which is MUCH more efficient than electrolysis.) When we have better, renewable ways the cars will already be in place.
Which is what 99% of fuel cells do. The big myth is that fuel cells are carbon neutral devices. The truth is that while it is possible to operate this way (and this is cited endlessly), in the vast majority of cases the only reasonable implementation is to use a reformer--a device that strips hydrogen from hydrocarbons. Thus, most fuel cells release CO2 just like internal combustion engines, albeit at a much lower rate.
Seriously, I'd like to know where you got your facts from.
First off, gas isn't typically stored indoors, so I'm not sure why hydrogen would be.
Second off, hydrogen dissipates by default, and gas fumes tend to collect in low areas.
Third off, propane is not a liquid by default either, yet somehow that blows up a lot less often than gas does. Even though the propane tanks are frequently handled with a lot less care than gas tanks are.
Fourth off, the hydrogen cylinders aren't going to rupture in a dangerous way as frequently as gas tanks do for the simple reason that they can be designed to fail in a controlled fashion a lot more easily that liquid containers can. Plus on top of that it's relatively straightforward to design a stress release and emergency discharge. Try doing that with a gas tank.
It is true that gas in its liquid state is hard to light on fire, and that there is a relatively narrow range within which it's actually flammable, but it sticks around a lot longer to find that mix than hydrogen does. And when a gas tank ruptures the fumes do not dissapate on their own very quickly.
Propane cars haven't caused these sorts of problems.
They won't start spitting out Oxygen. The electrolosis that generates the hydrogen would create oxygen, but using the hydrogen will re-combine it with oxygen, turning it back to water.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
That it isn't an energy source is a point worth repeating, because people can forget it. However, it is an energy storage method which can reduce our needs for base-load power generation.
Imagine if this was successfully and safely scaled up to powering your house as well as your car. Now, you can run your power grid off solar and wind power because the intermittent supply would not affect you. You can also load balance power demands much more easily and prevent brown-outs, and in the event of a long term power supply issue people can ship in stored gas to keep the lights on.
And Honda has had a natural gas powered civic on the road for many years already, it is considered the cleanest internal combustion engine ever produced. On top of that they also have a home refueling station you can lease as well called a Phill. It hooks right up to your home gas line.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
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.
The funny thing? The efficiency is atrocious and the fear quite legitimate.
As for the fear: check out what NASA has to say about hydrogen. Some excerpts:
Ignition:
"Hydrogen-air mixtures can ignite with very low energy input, 1/10th that required igniting a gasoline-air mixture. For reference, an invisible spark or a static spark from a person can cause ignition."
"Although the autoignition temperature of hydrogen is higher than those for most hydrocarbons, hydrogen's lower ignition energy makes the ignition of hydrogen-air mixtures more likely. The minimum energy for spark ignition at atmospheric pressure is about 0.02 millijoules."
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Mixtures:
"The flammability limits based on the volume percent of hydrogen in air (at 14.7 psia) are 4.0 and 75.0. The flammability limits based on the volume percent of hydrogen in oxygen (at 14.7 psia) are 4.0 and 94.0."
"Condensed and solidified atmospheric air, or trace air accumulated in manufacturing, contaminates liquid hydrogen, thereby forming an unstable mixture. This mixture may detonate with effects similar to those produced by trinitrotoluene (TNT) and other highly explosive materials"
"Explosive limits of hydrogen in air are 18.3 to 59 percent by volume"
"Flames in and around a collection of pipes or structures can create turbulence that causes a deflagration to evolve into a detonation, even in the absence of gross confinement."
(For comparison: Deflagration limit of gasoline in air: 1.4-7.6%)
Leaks:
"Leakage, diffusion, and buoyancy: These hazards result from the difficulty in containing hydrogen. Hydrogen diffuses extensively, and when a liquid spill or large gas release occurs, a combustible mixture can form over a considerable distance from the spill location."
"Hydrogen, in both the liquid and gaseous states, is particularly subject to leakage because of its low viscosity and low molecular weight (leakage is inversely proportional to viscosity). Because of its low viscosity alone, the leakage rate of liquid hydrogen is roughly 100 times that of JP-4 fuel, 50 times that of water, and 10 times that of liquid nitrogen."
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It also covers how hydrogen likes to pool under roofs and overhangs, and that buildings containing hydrogen or hydrogen pipelines should have roofs designed to be blown away, as well as extreme caution on spark suppression. It also talks about how hydrogen can enter pipes and follow them to their destinations, and pool there.
As for efficiency, the efficiency of a hydrogen economy is atrocious. Don't take my word for it; listen to peer review. Check out the convenient chart. Electric cars have three times the efficiency of hydrogen cars from a given power source. Even if your power is renewable, this tremendous efficiency difference can't be ignored. This means, for hydrogen, three times the land covered in solar cells, three times the dammed up rivers, three times the coastline covered in wind farms, and so on.
Hydrogen is a complete waste of time. A fuel cell stack will weigh down and take up space in a typical vehicle as much as a modern li-ion battery stack, only give similar range, cost ten times as much, have less room for price improvement in fuel cell costs versus battery costs (platinum playing a big role in this), have a shorter lifespan (again, compared to modern automotive li-ions like phosphates, spinels, titanates, etc, not laptop batteries), more temperature sensitivity (yes, you read that right; modern li-ions are often good to -30 or less
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
This would be done at the hydrogen generation station, not on the vehicle: Split O2 from H2, put the H2 in the tank, release the O2 to the sky. O2 mixes well with Nitrogen - we have life as we know it thanks to that. It will dissipate with the normal movement of air and not make a dangerous rapid oxidation cloud ready to blow at any second. Moreover, electrolysis is SLOW process - it would take all day for this to slowly release.
O2 is only a problem when it is stored in volume. This can be done in limited amounts to pull away oxygen for medical or industrial (such as welding) purposes. But overall, H2 generation using this method will result in far more oxygen generation than can be utilized by industry.
The cycle is completed when H2 is "burned" in a car - both fuel cells and combustive methods require the joining of O2 and H2 to form water. Any oxygen volume released will be perfectly balanced by the use of the H2, so it is a neutral cycle with no impact to the environment or atmospheric conditions, etc.