Hydrogen Fuel Cells Hit the Road 530
caffeined writes "Well, it looks like Honda is doing a real test of their fuel-cell car. A family in California is renting the car for $500/mo. Honda is charging them so that they take it seriously - an executive explained that if it were free they might not get the kind of feedback they want. If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it. This is apparently the first fuel-cell car on the road anywhere in the world, according to Honda."
Ford had them in Vancouver first. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)
Photo links via Google... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.honda.co.jp/FCX/ [honda.co.jp] (Flash in Japanese)
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/hondas_mo
http://world.honda.com/news/2005/4050629.html [honda.com] (with family)
http://www.hondanews.com/CatID2045?view=p&page=1&
Enjoy!
Re:Effects of Hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
The Hindenburg went up so fast because the canvas was treated with substances that also happen to be used in rocket fuel. Even so, the passenger compartment itself was unharmed and the passengers survived.
Re:Effects of Hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
BC Transit (Score:4, Informative)
Must have something to do with Ballard...
Re:People will pay for anything... (Score:3, Informative)
Now there's a line of hyperbole if I've ever heard it. I imagine that they've done crash tests on this car to determine the exact dangers of this happening. At the very least, I've seen the early crash tests done to decide if hydrogen was feasible or not. The result of the tests was that *if* the hydrogen were to ignite, its direction (up) would be safe as long as the passengers weren't sitting on it. It actually ended up being *safer* than gasoline, as the gasoline cars continued burning long past the initial ignition.
Low temp operation (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:People will pay for anything... (Score:5, Informative)
For hydrogen to explode, it needs oxygen.
If the tank ruptures, the gas as light as it is would expand throughout the air very very quickly.
This isn't like lighting a balloon filled with hydrogen with a candle and watching the brief poof of flame.
This is like having a candle five feet away from a balloon filled with hydrogen and popping the balloon. That is, if there is a fire involved in the collission.
How often do collisions result in fire? I did a little bit of research into this, but the best I could find was that "crashes with fires are relatively rare" (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/regrev/evalu
To explore this a little further:
What causes a fire in an automotive accident? Faulty gas tanks and fuel lines. This results in leakage. The vapors (which are MUCH heavier than hydrogen) then get sparked by something. This ignites the vapors, leading back to the fuel tank which then catches fire. I've witnessed car fires before (a few months ago, a car in the parking lot of my apartment complex caught fire). The fire burned for 10 minutes before fire response arrived. In that time, the fire spread from one car to the two cars on either side. It took fire response about five minutes to put the fires out. During this 15 minute time period, the materials that were burning included the interior of the car, under the hood, and the tires. The only violent explosions that occurred were the tires exploding.
I'm theorizing the reason the gas tanks didn't ignite is that gasoline requires a very oxygen rich environment. Gasoline requires a 1.4% - 7.6% concentration in air for it to be explosive. Any less than this and it will merely ignite; any more than this and there isn't enough oxygen for it to explode. It will simply ignite. The pre-existing fire probably used up most of the oxygen near the fuel lines. There was probably a phenomenon similar to what you see with an oil well - a jet of flame from the fuel line. Hollywood car explosions just don't happen.
Now, on to hydrogen.
Hydrogen, being much lighter than air (as opposed to natural gas or gasoline vapors), dissipates very quickly in air. At concentrations of less than 10%, it would require the same ammount of energy to ignite as would natural gas. The main point here, is that hydrogen dissipates so quickly that the concentration would very quickly reach less than 4% (the lower limit of explosivity). The likelyhood of explosions is much less likely than with even gasoline because of this.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells do not use any sparking or arcing componants. Similarly, the engine is a simple electronic engine. If something shorted, it could spark - but there is no combustion inherent in a fuel cell car. This limits the chances of even igniting the hydrogen in the case of a leak.
Fuel cells are also equipped with automatic shutoffs in case a leak is detected. This can't help if the storage tank itself is ruptured, but that would be difficult (Normal air tanks for scuba divers are very difficult to rupture, and tanks used to transport flamable liquid are even more difficult to rupture).
The myth of the exploding hydrogen car can be linked to two things: the hindenberg and the hydrogen bomb.
The hindenberg burned, rather than exploded. The color of the flame was wrong for hydrogen to be the propellant. It's very likely that it was the flamable fabric covering the zeppelin that ignited, not a leaking hydrogen tank.
A hydrogen bomb requires special isotopes of H2, and very high temperatures. Neither of which would be found in a car fire or a hydrogen fuel cell car.
For more on hydrogen fuel cell safety: http://sanewsletters.com/FCIR/fcirfctpart1.pdf [sanewsletters.com]
In the meantime, stop propogating myth and FUD.
Re:Source for Hydrogen (Score:2, Informative)
Re:don't know about the first (Score:5, Informative)
An article on the Honda site [honda.com] says "In December 2002, the city of Los Angeles began leasing the first of five Honda FCXs, which are now used in normal, everyday activities by city officials." ... "While the 2005 Honda FCX is our second-generation fuel cell vehicle (FCV), it is the first to be powered by a Honda designed and manufactured fuel cell stack."
So this is a meaningful trial and a significant step but it is far from the "first fuel-cell car on the road".
car? maybe, vehicle? no (Score:2, Informative)
Re:People will pay for anything... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.visforvoltage.com/forums/uploads/post-
notice the hydrogen bottle. notice it's still whole.
Re:Ford had them in Vancouver first. (Score:1, Informative)
so, Honda's still first
Re:Effects of Hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct however about the death toll on the passengers. From the Wiki:
Re:OT: 3 column layout (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ford had them in Vancouver first. (Score:3, Informative)
See the Milestones section of http://www.bmw.com/com/en/index_highend.html [bmw.com]
Re:Don't hold your breath (Score:4, Informative)
Hydrogen Is Not An Alternative Fuel Source.
Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism, not an energy source (unless you're talking about fusion
What is it that hydrogen brings to the automobile that makes people want it so much (apart from hype)? A few things.
One, hydrogen vehicles are electric vehicles; thus, regenerative braking and other efficiency issues become much simpler. Two, the fuel is easy to come by (if gasoline were to dissapear, we'd have to use ethanol**) and can be made disjoint from the petroleum industry (relying on grid power), although inefficient by most means of production (for example, generating electricity, then performing electrolysis). Three, the efficiencies of using hydrogen are very high - 70-80% or so; if you produce your hydrogen efficiently (say, from nuclear power thermolysis), you have an overall extremely efficient fuel cycle.
** - To preemptively head off this tinder box before it ignites, ethanol is A) not a net negative energy balance, and B) even if it was, it wouldn't matter. As for (A), only Pimentol (and those he works with) claim this, and his numbers are extremely questionable (relying on archaic conversion efficiency numbers, making unreasonable assumptions about fertilizer and irrigation, etc - I can get into this more if need be). Essentially everyone else who has studied the issue comes up with a very positive energy balance. As for (B), even if it was negative, that's irrelevant. The Nazis turned coal to oil extremely inefficiently, burning far more coal to power it than they produced oil's worth of energy, and yet it drove the Nazi war machine. Most ethanol production today uses natural gas, but that's just because it's currently cheap. If it wasn't, they could use coal heat, nuclear heat, any waste power plant heat - they could even burn ag waste. You're turning something that you can't put into your gas tank into something that you can.
Re:What's so funny? (Score:2, Informative)
Please let those who aren't ignorant discuss this.
The worst part is, I got that link from the post directly above yours, and it preceded your post by 20 minutes.
Re:Nice (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Speaking of air... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sign me up! (Score:3, Informative)
Environmental benefits in comparison to petroleum based fuels include:
* Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net lifecycle basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust. (Sheehan, 1998)
* Biodiesel contains fewer aromatic hydrocarbons: benzofluoranthene: 56% reduction; Benzopyrenes: 71% reduction.
* It also eliminates sulfur emissions (SO2), because biodiesel doesn't include sulfur.
* Biodiesel reduces by as much as 65% the emission of particulates (small particles of solid combustion products).
* Biodiesel does produce more NOx emissions than petrodiesel, but these emissions can be reduced through the use of catalytic converters. Petrodiesel vehicles have generally not included catalytic converters because the sulfur content in that fuel destroys the devices, but biodiesel does not contain sulfur. The increase in NOx emmisions may also be due to the higher cetane rating of biodiesel. Properly designed and tuned engines may eliminate this increase.
* It has a higher cetane rating than petrodiesel, and therefore ignites more rapidly when injected into the engine.
"So, biodiesel=good--a step in the right direction--but, we still need to structure our lives and society so that we drive less (way less) and rely less on burning feul (however sexy)"
And that, I wholly agree with.
Re:Effects of Hydrogen? (Score:2, Informative)
** The rate depends on the size of the leak. Pinhole hydrogen leaks can spontaneously ignite, and burn for a long time. Also, propane can be trapped in bowl-shaped areas, while hydrogen gets trapped under overhangs and inside buildings.
Re:Don't hold your breath (Score:5, Informative)
Ugh. You are confusing a gasoline fuel cell with a [fuelsafe.com]hydrogen fuel cell [wikipedia.org]. You'll find they are very different things.
GMC is the only one who refuses to go along with fuel cells.
That is blatantly false. For one thing, GMC is a division of GM. For another, if you actually researched you'd find that GM is footing the largest part of the hydrogen fuel cell research. Honda is busy putting cars out and getting PR, GM is busy investing money in figuring out how to deliver hydrogen to the world efficiently.
Also it should be mentioned that the oil industry owns stock in these American automobile companies so they have a financial incentive to create gas guzzlers.
I don't know about this first-hand, but given the track record of your post I wouldn't take only your word for it.
Additional information on the Honda FCX (Score:2, Informative)
Also, an article on this story at Honda's website: http://world.honda.com/news/2005/4050629.html [honda.com]
Re:Effects of Hydrogen? (Score:4, Informative)
Stop and think for a minute here: Hindenburg, like most derrigables at the time, had been struck by lightning several times in the past, and had large holes burned in the skin by it. If the skin was so flammable, why didn't it (and other craft) catch on the first bolt, instead of only when it (and others that burned) were venting hydrogen? Only when the hydrogen was mixed in stochiometric ratios did it (and others go up).
I could easily go on here. The fact that completely differently constructed WWI blimps (with different materials in the skin) burned in exactly the same fashion (the outer skin acts like a glow lamp to the inner hydrogen, which slowly burns from sucked-in oxygen). The fact that the combustion can be visibly seen in the pictures burning along cell lines [altfrankfurt.com], despite the fact that the skin was continuous across cells. Etc. I suggest you read up on the subject - the Addison Bain Incendiary Paint theory has been widely debunked.
Re:Hybrids are a Load of Crap (Score:3, Informative)
Getting more out of ethanol than the fuels you used is easy: just use 1990s production techniques or better.
That means on the farm you have things like diesel tractors that get better use of the fuel, hybrid crops that yield nearly twice as much. Precision fertializer application so you don't waste it where the ground is fertil.
At the plant you use a dry milling process, your total return is about 167% of the energy input. Or you wet milling, but use all the other results from wet milling, and call ethanol a by-product that would otherwise be waste, so you don't count all the costs (though this is a bogus argument - but even without it you are looking at about a 110% payback of energy)
In the lab 250% payback has been done, but not all of this is ready for production use.
Cart Before Horse (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nice but (Score:3, Informative)
1) Plants aren't that efficient at turning sunlight into energy. They don't really need to be for their purposes, and they ignore certain wavelengths (such as green) altogether.
2) Once you have the plant, you need to turn it into diesel. Again, this is highly inefficient.
3) Once you have diesel, you must turn it into energy. Combustion engines are less efficient than fuel cells or power plant turbines.
Consider how much land we use for farming. Then consider how much more energy our cars use than we do.
All we need now are H2 wells (Score:3, Informative)
So if even a small fraction of US cars convert to another energy source, this would considerably lower the strain on the gasoline supply chain and probably lower the oil price -- at least until OPEP tightens the supply.
Naturally, you need that other energy source. If all you do is generate H2 from oil (or natural gas), then you accomplish nothing. You need nuclear power plants. They are not cheap (at almost $2 per watt, they are more expensive than natural gas plant), but they are considerably cheaper than solar arrays ($5/Watt), and they operate 24 hours a day whereas solar plants don't (a solar plant would need triple generating capacity and energy storage to be able to supply electricity at night -- generate 3x the energy during the day, store it, release 1x the energy at night, roughly).
More nuclear power plants would allow emerging countries to bootstrap their economy faster. Costly oil is really harming them right now. Mundane things like irrigation programs require pumps that run on electricity, which itself comes from oil. Expensive oil means no pumps, no irrigation, no crop.
So next time you meet a well-fed person opposing nuclear power, remind him/her that because of this attitude, millions of people are starving and rotting in abject poverty.
Re:Don't hold your breath (Score:2, Informative)
For the record, as I do work in the financial industry, and checked this out, while some oil companies own some of the stock, the are NOT major holders of ford or gm.
Re:Nice (Score:2, Informative)
Dammy
Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nice (Score:1, Informative)
>climates. when people began driving them across the hot dry deserts of north america, the
>flammable bits on the engines (rubber, grime, etc.) would catch fire.
Well IIAM (I Am A Mechanic) and actually the reason they would overheat is because VW's had an air dam that would close in cooler weather blocking the flow of air across the heads of the engine, to help bring the engine up to operating temperature, which would open up when warm. Eventually, these would eventually get stuck open or closed because nobody ever maintained or lubricated those things (You were supposed to have the valves on the engine adjusted every once in a while as well, nobody EVER did that.. most of the time nobody even changed the oil like they were supposed to).
In a cooler climate, the car might not get hot enough to overheat if that damper wasn't open all the way, but drive across a desert and any air restriction will make that bugger overheat. That's why you would always see them off on the side of the road in the summertime, overheated.
Really, it was very very hard to kill an old VW beetle... When you consider how people neglected them and beat the hell out of them, it's pretty amazing how durable they were.