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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.
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.