Local Fire Department at the ready — “Just in case.”
Recently the parking lot at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, California was outfitted with a test track and various invitees were allowed to test drive a variety of Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars including a General Motors developed Army pickup truck that is in actual use despite its $1 million value. All the main auto companies were present although I do not recall Chrysler being there. All the engines shown in the photos below are one-off hand made systems as slick as they look.
The hydrogen fuel cell technology is not ready fro prime time do to the storage limitations for the fuel itself. GM engineers told me that the latest technology has made it so they can compress the gas to 10,000 pounds-per-square inch and they are toying with liquid hydrogen to get to the magic 300-miles-per-tankful of fuel range that is necessary for commercialization. People in the gas business (as in helium, argon, etc.) are doubtful this will ever be possible without imposing other limitations that are unacceptable including public-relations issues. And I’m not sure I’d like the idea of driving around a 10,000 lbs/sq/inch potential bomb around myself.
Much of this research is underpinned by government mandates and comments by President Bush among others that we are actually going to make this work.
This much I can tell you. These cars actually run. The do go from point A to point B. They are not hot rods, but they go fast enough. Many make an annoying high pitched whine as the fuel cell is pressured to the maximum gas flow. “You stop noticing it after a while,” I was told. It’s definitely different than the sound from glass paks hanging off a 426 hemi.
The cars were previously driven down the California coast from up North and along the way ad hoc fueling stations were ready for them. Both Shell and BP seem ready to do an infrastructure build-up if they have to. One of the drivers who made the long trip was surprised mostly by the fact that the fueling was actually rather fast.
Here are a few pictures I captured at the event.
The GM new generation “engine”
Star of the show — actually in use
Disconcerting warning light inside Army truck. Instead of a tach, note the KW meter.
Cute Nissan
Toyota Cell
Yes, Shell hydrogen
The Ford
Cutaway view of car innards. Besides the equipment under the hood there is this gear underneath. The pressurized tank of gas is on the right.
“The hydrogen fuel cell technology is not ready fro prime time do to the storage limitations for the fuel itself. GM engineers told me that the latest technology has made it so they can compress the gas to 10,000 pounds-per-square inch and they are toying with liquid hydrogen to get to the magic 300-miles-per-tankful of fuel range that is necessary for commercialization. People in the gas business are doubtful this will ever be possible without imposing other limitations that are unacceptable including public-relations issues”
Why does this comment by the gas business surprise me. Maybe it will signal a reduction of their profits. Like it or not, oil is running short and it is unacceptable that this county has to kiss the ass of the scumbag Saudi’s and their like just to get a good price on oil. Hydrogen seems to be the best future option despite the problems that may arrise.
Good to know the hyrdogen tank is under the back seat, so the kids can sit on a miniature Hindenberg.
When I say gas I mean “gas” not gasoline not natural gas. I mean gas as in hydrogen, helium, propane. Someone selling compressed argon, for example, is not about to be affected by any of this. They have their opinions about the feasibility of all this and nobody ever asks them. They’re the real experts on storage and they are extremely skeptical. In fact even the engineers at this event know there has to be a “breakthrough” for any of this to work commercially.
Uggh…. stop the insanity. The only benefit of hydrogen technology is that it makes people happy about what is leaving their tailpipes. “Oh look, it’s nothing but water vapor!”
Until there is an energy-efficient way of deriving Hydrogen directly from water, we’re still going to be pissing away energy and fossil fuels on this crap.
Not to mention the massive infrastructure investments that have to take place before any significant fraction of the population can use these things….
keeping in mind, of course, that when you drive a gasoline-powered vehicle, instead of a 10,000 psi tank of hydrogen, you are instead sitting on a tank of napalm. Amazing more people aren’t cooked in their vehicles.
A few points:
– first, it is now believed that what brought the Hindenburg down was it’s shell cover, painted with a highly inflatable coating. This is because hydrogen burns with an invisible flame, and the flames of the Hindenburg were highly visible, more consistent with the burning of paint. The hydrogen of the zeppelin also would pretty much burn in a second or two, not half a minute or so. BTW, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion is also now believed to have been much gentler than inicially thought, to the point that the final report about the accident said that the crew compartment detached pretty much intact (!!!) and the astronauts survived for two and a half minutes while falling, helplessly, to the ocean. Again, what killed them was not the hydrogen explosion, but the lack of a proper safety device, namely a parachute.
– secondly, as for the car being a small high-pressure bomb, so are gasoline cars. The early issues cars had with gas tanks bursting into flames have mostly been solved, to acceptable levels. I think it’s pretty safe to assume any issues with the storage of hydrogen will also be *mostly* solved in time, and any situation that makes the tank explode would also kill you in a current day car.
– finally, in my opinion, the people who will soon be selling us hydrogen will be BP, Exxon, Shell, etc… not a small startup funded by the likes of Google. So they’re most likely not scared of hydrogen, they just don’t want to rush to invest billions of dollars, which is understandable – not legitimate imho. So all that’s needed is A LOT of customer pressure.
Why is it that people think “hydrogen = explosive = bad”. Gasoline is as, if not more, explosive then hydrogen, and it’s right under the kids in the bad seat too.
I saw film once of a test where they took a tank of hydrogen under pressure (not sure of the PSI) and fired a .22 into it. The shot punctured the tank, and the hydrogen started to leak, but that was it. After they took a torch to it they did get it to ignite though. They did the same test with a tank of gasoline and it went up in a fireball on contact..
It always amazes me to hear people talk about hydrogen as though it is inherently more dangerous. Then they always bring up the Hindenburg as proof. The papers have been full of stories over the years about some moron, who either killed himself, or burn himself, or his family, or burned down his home, because he had an open container of gasoline, and he is smoking a cigarette. Hello people, gasoline is highly flammable and explosive. I remember reading an article that said if you get a metal gas can, put an inch of gasoline in it, strap a hand grenade to it, that you have bomb that can blow up a small building. I also have read articles that have talked about an air fuel bomb that would have as much power as a small tactical nuke. Hydrogen at best is only equally as dangerous. If the Hindenburg had it ‘s gas bags full of gasoline fumes instead of hydrogen the fire would have been just as septacular.
Ummm….I don’t know anything about anything, so forgive me in advance, but why can’t have the hydrogen frozen in a big block that melts as we need it?
Good post John. It’s nice seeing a blogger post first-hand information once and a while.
Sigh…. someday “most” people will realize that the Hindenburg accident had nothing to do with Hydrogen, and everything to do with the rocket fuel they painted the skin with.
Ignorant, knee jerk, people like Steve will do more to stop the progress of hydrogen fuel cell automobiles than any problems with capacity, fueling stations, cost, etc. etc.
It is especially laughable to read comments like Steve’s, while they are driving around in their automobiles filled with 15 gallons of gasoline! (P.S. How close to your kids is the gas tank in your Camry?)
Oh the humanity! The “disaster” that has ruined hydrogen for the world only killed 35 people. How many people died in fires trying to gas up their cars last year?
Bryan
Thanks Ima, I try t post some reportage a few times a month…when I have the time. I should do more.
I don’t understand why pressurized hydrogen storage continues to be the norm for these prototypes. Check out http://www.millenniumcell.com. They have developed a non-pressurized hydrogen storage system. It’s an extra burden on the infrastructure side because there’s a waste product that has to be removed and recycled (by recharging with hydrogen), but it seems like a perfect alternative that would be more easily accepted by those who (right or wrong) are concerned about carrying around hydrogen at high pressure. It’s a safer storage medium than pure hydrogen or gasoline.
And Ryan Vande Water is correct… most hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas. Until we put large scale or large numbers of solar stills that separate hydrogen from water, we’re only cleaning up tailpipe emissions.
Just to add a note about what is practical and already happening — Toyota’s hybrid program continues to expand faster than they can build factories. Now, they’ve had to admit they can’t procure parts from their usual vendors fast enough, either.
The electric motor portion of the hybrid drivetrain [for Toyota] has been built by “sister” companies or traditional Toyota vendors. Starting this week, Toyota has had to turn to Hitachi for additional supplies of comparable electric motors — even though Hitachi is a long time vendor to Toyota’s oldest rival, Nissan.
I hope someone catches up, soon. As a potential consumer, I hate thinking of buying when demand exceeds supply by so much!
The hydrogen atom would leak out of an LPG tank rather quickly — right through the steel walls. This is the kind of naivete people have regarding this technology. Also LPG liquifies at 200 psi so you do not need the high pressure tank and fittings you’d need at 5000-10000 psi. HUGE difference. If you want to be around a 10000 psi tank when it blows I don’t care if it’s filled with helium..it won’t be pretty.
As for the M-cell technology of “hydrogen on demand” utilizing the unique properties of sodium tetrahydridoborate this would be the most expensive fuel in the world. The stuff is sold by the gram. It’s totally impractical for use in a car. Sorry — no sale.
As for the poster with the amusing comment about making a block of solid hydrogen, it’s worth a laugh. Simply put, this is not possible Only a few microscopic bits of solid hydrogen have ever been made and the amount of energy and liquid helium it takes makes it beyond impractical. Do some Google lookups before you ask these sorts of questions in the forum.
I should mention that I think this entire technology is a dead-end. That said there are so many smart people working on it that I follow it anyway. Things change when smart guys on working on them. Meanwhile, of course, we let genuine advances in wind power and other tricks go by the wayside.
I’ve never heard about the cost of the M-cell borate solution before. That sure explains why nobody’s running with that ball.
You’re all talking about the safety issue, but where are the savings in pollution or fuel use? You don’t just grab hydrogen out of the ground, you have to manufacture it, and this uses lots of energy. I’m not even sure if regular electric cars reduce fuel use.
I agree; pursing a hydrogen-powered economy is a path to nowhere. (Although the research may have some useful spinoffs.)
Generating hydrogen requires more energy than the Btu’s returned. The process becomes feasible only if you have sufficient electrical generating capacity to absorb the “oil economy” of our current transportation needs. Whether you replace oil with fuel cells or electric cars, it’s pretty much the same problem: you have to generate electrical energy and either store it in batteries or use it to produce hydrogen.
I did the math a year ago and, if I remember correctly, it would require the output of about 200 nuclear power plants to replace the oil btu’s. It would be interesting to calculate the number of windmills you would need to generate 200,000 megawatts of electricity, though I suspect the State of Wyoming (the windiest place I know) isn’t large enough to hold that many windmills.
Build 200 nuclear power plants — yeah, right.
There are very few environmental problems we can’t solve if we have enough cheap energy to apply. Conversely, we can’t solve ANY environmental problem without energy. Why is this concept so difficult for environmentalists to understand?
All this assumes that the tanks will be perfectly secure over the decades that cars are supposed to last. Dive tanks are hydro tested against fracture and seldom last more than a decade at only 3000 PSI. And they leak air! These tanks will be at even higher pressures when the refrigeration fails; it will only take one ruptured tank to fill up a house from the garage. Al Queida will have their work done for them if enough of these leakers are parked underneath a skyscraper. And – How big of an air polution problem will we have when 10 million hydrogen tanks slowly hiss out their contents in LA alone.
We don’t have to think back to the Hindenburg – that was a big tank of liquified hydrogen that went off next to the Challenger wasn’t it. Worse, the transportation, storage and dispensing solutions all scare me. And how much weight will we have to add back into cars to protect the tanks in a crash.
No wonder the vehicles cost $1M.
$900,000 of that is liability insurance.
Seems to me that wind power uses up land, the ultimate scarce resource.
Wind power…causes huge problems with birds of prey, and other birds….
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm
kills them dead as they didn’t see it coming. As the USA Today article put it ” windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors”
I don’t know, seems we NEED those birds of prey, because our rodent population in the bay area is getting much, much worse all the time. I think we need to re-think that wind power stuff, too.
…I’d like a steam engine, personally…..just fuel it on trash and whatever else I can find…. heck, even dung…not like we’re low on dung around here.
I have an idea. Why not combine this hydrogen with carbon and make easy to store conveinent hydrocarbons? Could they not come up with some way to do this effectively and efficiently? Really the only way to make hydrogen effective and cheap is to have a plentiful supply electric energy infrastructure (nuklear power), or some sort of bio-reactor that can generate hydrogen cheaply.
Eideard,
For wind generation to be effective, you actually have to have WIND. I’m glad that New Mexico is rated “capable of exporting wind generated electricity,” whatever that means. But according to the government (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/elect.html), wind generation of electricity is less than 0.4% of our total capacity.
Now I am assuming that smart people chose the best locations for placing our existing wind generators, so where are we supposed to site these 80,000 new generators?
Actually, Eideard, I did a bit more research into wind generation to correct that particular “misconception” (I have no idea what others you were alluding to). According to a document I found at the federal government’s energy website, the top US operators in 1993-94 had 11,451 wind generators with a combined capacity of 1348 megawatts. Now granted this data is heavily favored towards the older, less efficient designs, but that works out to a per unit average of only 120 kilowatts. The 2.5 megawatt capacity you mention is a remarkable, though not impossible, 20-fold increase in performance.
Still, the total generating capacity in this country from wind is only 4,000 megawatts. I’m saying that to convert all of our gasoline vehicles to either electric or hydrogen power, we need at least 200,000 megawatts more capacity than what we currently have. Or in other words, we need to increase our total generating capacity by 20%.
Too many environmentalist keep worshiping the holy grail of electric or hydrogen powered cars without once considering where that power will come from. If you think the rolling blackouts California suffered in 2000 was bad, wait until everyone starts plugging in their car each night for a recharge.
Shell has a whole Hydrogen web site at http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=hydrogen-en
Smith — the point of hybrids is that you don’t have to plug them in to recharge. That’s the point of hybrids and regeneration under braking.
Please, wander away from straw man arguments. Most enviros, for example, aren’t hot over hydrogen powered cars. Car companies and oil companies are.
LETS DO THAT YES JUSTT LIK BORAT
hey this forum is for people who want to talk about hydrogen fuel cells in engines so piss of ok’
ok me too want to lol
hello any one there