Los Angeles City Employees To Drive Hydrogen Power 60
mace_15 writes "According this CNN article the mayor of Los Angeles has signed a lease with Honda to allow city employees to drive experimental hydrogen powered cars. The cars can reach speeds up to 93mph and Honda claims they have a range of 220 miles before refueling. More information on the car can be found here. Mercedes-Benz has a similar car."
BMW has been working on these too (Score:4, Informative)
A CNN article on hydrogen cars [cnn.com] details this as well. Now, the question is, which comes first: hydrogen refueling stations so that people will buy cars, or hydrogen powered cars to drive the need for refueling stations?
chicken and egg (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:chicken and egg (Score:3, Insightful)
Leverage existing infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
What lessons there are here for alternative energy cars, I don't know. Aside from the folks who burn used french-fry oil in their diesels, opportunities to run alternate-fuel vehicles without special support appear to be few and far between (save for block-heater-friendly Canadian cities being EV-friendly)
Re:BMW has been working on these too (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, the question is, which comes first: hydrogen refueling stations so that people will buy cars, or hydrogen powered cars to drive the need for refueling stations?
Cars, of course. Hydrogen can be stored in the home or in already existing stations. Hell, you could get it from K-mart.
Re:BMW has been working on these too (Score:3, Insightful)
Hydrogen cars will have to become more common before the infrastructure is built. Noone is going to shell out the dough for trucking, storing, and the means of transfering the hydrogen from storage to car, without a significant clientelle. However if LA starts investing in Hyrogen for it's fleet of municipal vehicles, you can bet that one or two companies will get a sweet contract from the city to perform the essentials of keeping the cars fueled.
Which comes first? (Score:3, Informative)
From this article [h2gen.com]
To use either methanol or gasoline on a PEM fuel cell vehicle, the fuel must be converted to hydrogen with an onboard fuel processor - every car would have to be equipped with essentially a high temperature mini-refinery or chemical factory to convert methanol or gasoline to hydrogen. This is an enormous challenge. Converting gasoline to hydrogen in a stationary plant operated steady-state 24 hours per day is feasible. But making hydrogen onboard a moving car to meet the full start-up and transient response of an automobile would be a complex task, with unknown cost and reliability implications. The differences between stationary fuel processing (such as the H2Gen HGM) and onboard mobile fuel processing is summarized in the following chart, where green indicates superior performance, yellow is cautionary, and red indicates inferior performance.Re:BMW has been working on these too (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone can make hydrogen. Get a bucket of water and apply some voltage.
Do technologies exist to do electrolysis today? Yup.
Can I do it *safely* and *cheaply* in my garage at night? I have no clue. Anyone have an answer?
Re:BMW has been working on these too (Score:1)
Or in Los Angeles Terms... (Score:3, Funny)
Death of the hybrids (Score:4, Funny)
A possible downside (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't mod this down if you think it might happen, follow the mod rules.
Medevo
Re:A possible downside (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A possible downside (Score:3, Informative)
I used to think that too, until I did some reading. If a hydrogen tank is punctured, the hydrogen gas rises so quickly that there is very little danger. Even if it does ignite, it will burn up, and has the advantage of not sticking to things like gasoline will do. Hydrogen will dilute with the atmosphere so quickly, there's less danger than a similar incident with gasoline powered vehicle.
Re:A possible downside (Score:1)
what are you talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
please enlighten me, i fail to see your logic, and please don't tell me you're thinking about tritium used to add some 'zip' to nuclear weapons...
Anyone remember those "fly-wheel" cars that were all the hype a few years ago, which involved having a big-ass flywheel spinning at 50k+ RPM mounted in the back of a car, well one of those could certainly do a lot more damage than a tank-full of hydrogen, and i don't remember anyone even mentioning what would happen if someone got into an accident and allowed a 55,000 RPM flywheel to take off down the sidewalk...
-tid242
Re:what are you talking about? (Score:1)
Seems simple enough
Medevo
Re:what are you talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
What about safety?
Safety issues are a major concern for a fuel that's often perceived as more dangerous than others. While hydrogen itself played no part in either catastrophe, it was the fuel in both the Hindenburg and the Challenger.
Wagner says consumers should not fear a hydrogen-powered vehicle.
"Of course there is some risk, but it is comparable to the risk we have with conventional automotive fuels," he said.
BMW conducted numerous crash tests to see what would happen if the hydrogen tank was punctured or damaged. Their engineers report the liquid hydrogen dissipated harmlessly into the air.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/03/16/hydro gen.cars/
i think the point being that it's really not any more dangerous than gasoline, although you're right in that they don't bother talking about how much the hydrogen is pressurized, unless they're keeping it increadibly cold...
-tid242
What are *you* talking about? (Score:1, Informative)
And it was the aluminum paint on the fabric that caught FIRE, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen EXPLODES with a nearly invisible blue light.
It's easy to make your own hydrogen with a home-made electrolysis setup and verify that for yourself.
Re:What are *you* talking about? (Score:2)
cheers.
-tid242
Re:What are *you* talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
And it was the aluminum paint on the fabric that caught FIRE, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen EXPLODES with a nearly invisible blue light.
I have done extensive, um, experiments with garbage bags full of hydrogen. (Put lye, al foil, water in gas can attached to hose.)
To explode, hydrogen needs a lot of oxygen. To make a bag full of hydrogen explode, you have to introduce quite a bit of air into it. (Enough air to render the bag unable to float) If you don't put any extra air in, the hydrogen just burns along the outside of the bag, and it actually takes a few seconds for all of the hydrogen to be consumed.
The Hindenburg did not explode because of the hydrogen. (A spark could not catch the hydrogen on fire on the inside. There is no oxygen) A spark must have caught the fabric on fire, which was doped with dangerous compounds like saltpeter. (Which actually rendered the skin very, very flammable).
So, it was mostly the skin catching on fire, which was aided by the heat of the hydrogen combustion. Also, those huge yellow flames you see? That's the skin burning. Like the previous poster said, hydrogen burns with a nearly invisible flame.
Re:A possible downside (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen burns upwards.
Gasoline pours out on the ground and surrounds you with an incinerating puddle of fire.
It amazes me that people worry about cars with hydrogen, as if they weren't currently driving cars powered by miniature gasoline explosions.
Duh, it will blow up (Score:2)
This is *bad* news. (Score:3, Interesting)
The real long term solution is for people to stop being so damn energy intensive for every little thing. Walk. Bike. Relax.
But this won't happen until it's way too late. People won't change, they will want their comfort above all. This is why Max Planck said that for ideas to change, people must die. It's too bad the life expectancy is so long now.
And what will happen when every car is pumping out steam? Do people think smog just hangs around because it's smog, but water vapor will just float away immediately? When cities will be turned into saunas, we'll see
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true but belies the point so i'll ignore all the judgemental preachy-type stuff and just address this: This is a good point, which is why most environmentalists want to ultimately use solar power to bust hydrogen atoms from water... This is better than trying solar-powered cars, or the electric battery-based cars (what do we do with millions of discarded enormous batteries every year?). Personally this is why i like BMW's approach of actually burning hydrogen in a somewhat standard engine as opposed to a lot of other attempts to use H2 to fuel a generator that stores power in a battery. Besides i live in the midwest (Chicago at the moment, but will be going back to North Dakota and Minnesota in a few weeks) i've never been a big fan of battery-car anything for two reasons: batteries don't hold dick when they're cold and they don't give off any heat, when the temp is -40 i like my heat to be "ON" as opposed to "nonexistent."
Besides, increasing the humidity of cities is certainly better than polluting them with Ozone, unburned hydrocarbons, et al. i would rather deal with the problem of it raining a lot than sitting around debating whether or not diesel fumes are contributing to the Asthma epidemic in this country.
-tid242
clearing things up (Score:2)
1. The car runs on a fuel cell with only a small battery for regenerative braking energy storage and near line use.
2. Fuel cells can be used to generate heat very effectivly. They are even starting to use fuel cells as primary heat sources in many buildings.
3. The water output of a fuel cell is similar to that of an equivilant strength gas engine (his mistake, not yours)
More bad news about batteries... (Score:2)
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:4, Insightful)
First of... yes, hydrogen is a storage medium... what do you think gasoline is? That lovely little eqn e=mc^2 applies (with varying efficiency) to everything. The trick is the varying efficiency. If I could have a nuke plant churning out H, I'd prefer it to the massive oli infrastructure we have now. It will centralize pollution in one place (so that we can have lovely scrubbers and whatnot to get rid of it) and (as a long time past LA resident) prevent all the smog. Yes, water vapor forms clouds/fog/condensates whatever, but we need the water. What we don't need are stage 2 smog alerts where they recommend not going outside.
Yes, I admit that H cars are just a technofix, but compared with making society change, they are an amazingly useful one.
-Brian
Diesel is a better answer than Hydrogen (Score:2)
Overall, hydrogen costs energy to produce. You can't just go dig it up out of the ground. You have to produce it somewhere, and then store it, transport it, and eventually burn it. By the time you do all that, you've used considerably more energy than just using the electricity, or heat, or whatever energy source you used to create the hydrogen.
Remember last summer, when California had rolling blackouts because they couldn't source enough electricity? Now why would they, of all places, want to increase their energy demands?
Gasoline, for all its faults, still provides more energy than it costs to make it.
I don't think hydrogen is nearly as good an answer as we're being led to believe.
If you want to see more effecient, cleaner burning engines on the road, you should start pressuring the auto manufacturers to bring over more of the small diesel engines that are running in Europe.
I drove one of those four years ago -- it was a Vectra, made by GM, and was a midsize, four door. There was no discernable performance difference between that vehicle, and a similar gasoline powered vehicle. It had plenty of passing power at 85+ mph, and it regularly got 50-55 mpg.
We should be pushing to make these vehicles generally available in the states, instead of trying pie-in-the-sky methods that use more energy, instead of less.
Re:Diesel is a better answer than Hydrogen (Score:3, Interesting)
That it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen, than is recovered from it is not new. This fact is true of any fuel source. We've just gotten used to having most of the work done for us.
If you want to see more effecient, cleaner burning engines on the road, you should start pressuring the auto manufacturers to bring over more of the small diesel engines that are running in Europe.
This still will not solve the problem of pollution. All it will do is give temporary relif. Diesel still pollutes, and also kicks out lots of soot, which is staring to be linked to developmental lung problems. This is the big advantage of Hydrogen fuel cells, they only directly produce water, which is usually linked to drinking and water-fights. As for the indirect effects, this is just a matter of working up the supply chain to create a cleaner source. For example:
We fixed the cars at this point, and the H2 stations would be much cleaner (no more fuel tanks leaking gasoline, just H2 which disapates in the atmosphere harmlessly.)
The delivery trucks that bring the H2 to the stations could be H2 powered themselves, so little pollution there.
The H2 producing factories would be the only thing left, and those could be solar powered. And unlike solar cars, they could be placed in areas that have very high amount of sunlight (Arizona is pretty empty, so is much of Nevada). And bigger usually means more efficent in power production.
In the end we have an end to end solution that is cleaner than what we currently have. It may not be as effiecent, but it is cleaner, and that is what we are after at the moment.
Re:Diesel is a better answer than Hydrogen (Score:2)
That's where you're wrong. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and their derivatives) can deliver more useful energy than it takes to produce them. It's a cost-effective equation. If, as you claim, it took more energy to produce them then they deliver, we'd be in a sorry state indeed, and would have abandoned their use many years ago.
Hydrogen is not in the same category as these fuels, because it must be created, using energy. Think of usable hydrogen as a battery. It always takes more energy to fill up the battery than you'll be able to retrieve from it.
That's why I think we're better off with diesel for the moment. Yes it pollutes, but it pollutes less than gasoline, and the vehicles that use it are available today and are moderately priced, and have reasonable performance. Hydrogen and electric vehicles all have the same problems
They're not solving any pollution problem, they're just moving it.
They have a cost penalty (are more expensive than gas powered equivalents)
They have a performance penalty (reduced power/range over gas equivalent.)
Diesel engines don't have any of those problems. There is usually an initial cost penalty, but that's generally offset by the lower cost of fuel and additional longevity of the vehicle.
Diesel still pollutes, and also kicks out lots of soot, which is staring to be linked to developmental lung problems.
Yes, diesel engines still pollute. However, they put out less CO2, less CO and fewer Hydrocarbons than gasoline engines do. They do produce particulates (soot) that gasoline engines do not, but the industry is currently investigating particulate traps and/or catalytic converters that will remove most of those as well. In addition, another poster mentioned that most diesels today can burn Biodiesel, which is made from corn or soy crops, and is therefore renewable.
I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen. Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.
Re:Diesel is a better answer than Hydrogen (Score:1)
Re:Diesel is a better answer than Hydrogen (Score:2)
I think you missed part of my point. It will always take more energy to produce a fuel than it releases. (See Thermodynamics: Law of Conservation of Energy.) We have just gotten used to having most of the energy being put in by natural processes. Which, is also a possibility in using hydrogen, it is currently known that hydrogen exists in large quantities, trapped in sub-surface rocks. (it is mentioned by NASA here. [nasa.gov]) And, as such could be mined (just like oil). So in the end, we could get H2 in large quantities, with about the same trouble as oil. Moreover, according to the same article mentioned above, the supply would renew itself, quickly, and as such, would not run into the same supply problem we are headed for with oil.
I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen.
This might be true, though, it would still face the problem that is getting in the way of cleaner technologies today: the consumer. People are comfortable with what they have, and don't want to switch. By the time you get everyone to switch over to diesel, hydrogen power will be available to the public, and then you are facing the same fight all over again. With the advent of such things as the GM concept car [edmunds.com] and the Ballard Field Tests [ballard.com], I think Fuel Cells are just about ready to mature into widespread use. It'd be better to wait the extra couple of years and only fight to get people to switch once.
Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
There have actually been a number of very successful experiments with solar power, unfortunatly, it only really has a chance in places that get a lot of sunlight. Plus it takes up a large amount of space. Problem is, its not as effiecent as burning coal (or commonly natural gas). So, it hasn't attacted much investment. Also, there is the problem that most power companies already have coal/NG power stations built, it makes terrible business sense to abandon a plant in the middle of its useful life cycle. Even if solar was cheap and effective, they are not going to shutter thier coal plants and build solar plants just because its cleaner, they would lose tons of money in the process, and that is what they care about.
Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.
I will agree that the amount of solar power needed to run the traffic in the US is a ways away, though I don't think it will be the decades you claim. And yes, diesel is available today, in fact it is available in the US already, people just don't buy it. (VW Golf TDI [vw.com]).
I will agree that someone looking to buy a car today, would be well advised to look into getting a diesel vehicle, if they are looking for eviromentally friendly. Personally though I think they would be better servered holding out for a couple of years and getting an H2 powered car.
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for steam, you must have missed it when this question came up in discussions about fuel cell cars. The answer is that gasoline produces water in its exhaust as well, in comparable amounts, so you're overestimating the humidifying effect of water exhaust. I'm not sure what the numbers are like, really -- I wonder how a hydrogen car's exhaust would compare to a boiling pot of water, for instance.
come on... (Score:2)
Why are you spliting hairs? He obviosly meant that traditional cars run using an energy storage medium that is found with the energy already in it, while hydrogen cars use a fuel where we had to invest slighty more energy than the car can extract in order to obtain it from something that can not be used as fuel in the state in which we find it.
Re:come on... (Score:2)
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:1)
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:1)
yes, i realize my statement about people being cleaner contradicting itself, but people can go about their lives in pretty much the same way they do now, but in a cleaner fashion. for instance, recycling doesn't take much time or effort. they can do both without much trouble.
and yes, it is how you look at things. there are people who make a ton of money and aren't happy, there are people who make almost no money and are perfectly content and couldn't be happier. things can change, it will just take time and effort on the entire human race. i truly believe that it will happen. maybe not in any of our lifetimes, but isn't the point of change to make things better for future generations?
it's more than possible to change anything. it just takes time and effort on the part of a lot of people. for instance... look at slashdot. started out as a stupid little project while rob was in college. it turned into one of the web's biggest and most successful sites. not to mention all the other sites that have taken on a similar format because of slashdot's success. if there was a slashdot for every problem out there, the world would undergo an enormous change.
No, it's not (Score:2)
Re:No, it's not (Score:3)
I once told a friend that modern diesel trains run on electricity. The lights are electric, the controls are electric, even the drive train is electric. The only thing diesel about them is that they use a diesel engine to turn the electric generator. "Oh really?" she replied, blondly. "Why don't the run the generators on electricity too?"
Probably for the same reason that an energy conversion that produces lots of heat is efficient, I suppose.
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:1)
Re:This is *bad* news. (Score:1)
No, this is at best a temporary solution. Even if we were to cut our energy usage drastically (which ain't gonna happen), the population of Earth will continue to grow, so the problem is at best forestalled. The real long-term solution is to develop a means of energy production whose waste products can be removed from this planet permanently, for example ejection of spent fuel rods into deep space.
Wrong! It's so wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
Hydrogen-powered cars in 10 years. Biodiesel now. (Score:5, Informative)
Biodiesel (more info here [biodiesel.org] and here [biodieselnow.com]) is diesel fuel that will work in any new-ish diesel-powered vehicle with out ANY modifications. Benefits?
- Availability of the vehicle. Volkswagen produces a line of turbo diesel injected vehicles right now. They are available from about US$15k - $30k, depending on which model and features you ask for.
- Availability of the fuel. Biodiesel is NOT as wide-spread as diesel - not by far. But it IS available. There's a station in my hometown, Portland, OR and one down in Eugene, OR. According to the map of refueling sites [biodiesel.org] provided by biodiesel.org, there are nine biodiesel stations in California.
- Cost of the fuel. B20, that is 20% biodiesel and 80% regular diesel, costs about US$1.75/gallon in Portland, OR. That's about what premium/super goes for here, give or take 10 cents. I don't have info on what B100 costs - probably around $2.25 or more or possibly less. Depends on your supplier.
- Biodiesel benefits the American (or local) economy. Biodiesel is created from plants. Soy and such. Soy beans can be grown locally in many places of the world. Oil can be had in America, too, but there's not much of it and one it's gone, it is GONE. More soy beans can be grown at any time.
- Biodiesel is "environmentally friendly". According to the US EPA in this PDF document [epa.gov], use of B100 biodiesel will reduce the output of carbon monoxide from a single veh by 50%. B100 will reduce particulate emissions by 70% (less smog). Total hydrocarbon emissions reduced by 40%. Reductions in sulfate emissions by 100%.
- Biodiesel takes less energy to make than diesel and much less energy to make than gasoline.
- Diesel vehicles, particularly the TDI's from VW, are VERY fuel efficient. Expect to get 40/city, 45+/highway (expessed in miles per gallon). Many people report getting 600+ miles to the tank.
Hydrogen-powered vehicles will be great when they are mass-produced in 10 years. Until then, look at Biodiesel. I think the benefits far outweigh the added expense of the fuel.
Re:Hydrogen-powered cars in 10 years. Biodiesel no (Score:1)
Additionally, I believe that you are supposed to report the use of homemade fuels for road use, but I don't know what the tax rates and such are for that sort of thing.
not a troll but, (Score:3, Insightful)
Possible setbacks (Score:1)