This entry was posted on 25. March 2009 at 05:17 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “The Car We Have - How About Hydrogen?”
The only problem with having a hydrogen car is that hydrogen is not really a fuel so much as it is in place of a battery. It must be made with electricity or may be made directly from nuclear power but no plant is currently set up that way - so currently it is all made from electric power.
This places it on the same footing as batteries in terms of the environment - and it has its own problems when it comes to creating the infrastructure necessary to use it effectively for transportation - problems that in many ways seem worse than those of using batteries; especially with some of the newer battery (and capacitor) technologies that are coming along.
It all comes down to efficiency and environmental impact. If you take into account the amount of power needed to compress and keep hydrogen cold in storage - and the amount that boils off during storage in an otherwise idle vehicle (how would you feel if you came out to your car after a week of not using it and found the previously full gas tank suddenly empty?) then hydrogen is certainly no better than other electric storage media and may be worse.
Only if/when hydrogen can be generated as a direct by-product of nuclear energy will it maybe be better in terms of efficiency - but that prospect is many years in the future, if at all.
This also does not consider the impact that having a bunch of battery/capacitor containing cars “on the grid” does for the overall energy generation system. They provide a buffer for excess generation capacity (during spin-down of nuclear and coal generation stations that can’t just stop producing but have to taper off gradually) and spare capacity for short times instead of having such large plants on standby all the time. Hydrogen does not provide this buffering action.
12. June 2009 at 01:46
The only problem with having a hydrogen car is that hydrogen is not really a fuel so much as it is in place of a battery. It must be made with electricity or may be made directly from nuclear power but no plant is currently set up that way - so currently it is all made from electric power.
This places it on the same footing as batteries in terms of the environment - and it has its own problems when it comes to creating the infrastructure necessary to use it effectively for transportation - problems that in many ways seem worse than those of using batteries; especially with some of the newer battery (and capacitor) technologies that are coming along.
It all comes down to efficiency and environmental impact. If you take into account the amount of power needed to compress and keep hydrogen cold in storage - and the amount that boils off during storage in an otherwise idle vehicle (how would you feel if you came out to your car after a week of not using it and found the previously full gas tank suddenly empty?) then hydrogen is certainly no better than other electric storage media and may be worse.
Only if/when hydrogen can be generated as a direct by-product of nuclear energy will it maybe be better in terms of efficiency - but that prospect is many years in the future, if at all.
This also does not consider the impact that having a bunch of battery/capacitor containing cars “on the grid” does for the overall energy generation system. They provide a buffer for excess generation capacity (during spin-down of nuclear and coal generation stations that can’t just stop producing but have to taper off gradually) and spare capacity for short times instead of having such large plants on standby all the time. Hydrogen does not provide this buffering action.