Twenty Hydrogen Myths

I think many of these myths had died, or at least aren't a major opposition to FCEVs.

Personally, I'm surprised when the Hindenburg is still brought up. Then again, gas stoves made me uneasy growing up.

Making hydrogen through electrolysis is inefficient per mile compared to charging a plug in. With most miles on a personal car driven near to home, making the FCEV a plug in would likely quicken their adoption by allowing the car to be usable most of the time while refueling stations are spread out.

Great that there are some less costly ways of getting a hydrogen pipeline. There is a big but though. This hinges on there being other pipelines available to convert. If #10 and #19 are a myth, and the nation doesn't push to convert in a quick timeline, then all those natural gas and other pipelines won't be available to convert to hydrogen. Which leaves installing new ones, which might be cheaper than converting anyway.

I believe the FCEV makers are going to be as serious as Tesla when it comes to hydrogen safety. The Tesla S isn't an affordable car though. These high pressure storage tanks aren't either. Mass production will help. FCEVs will have a high level of depreciation because of these tanks. So even a lower priced one will cost a person more than a comparable ICE car.

The energy required to compress hydrogen to these really high pressures will add to the cost. Cheap natural gas and onsite reformers make it competitive while abandoning CO2 capture. Then I don't think CARB helps this myth by forcing the car companies to give the hydrogen away 'free' with the current FCEVs. I can understand why they do it though.

A high pressure, hydrogen refueling structure for a country the size of the US is a gargantuan and hugely expensive task. Ways have been brought up that help with the cost, but half of a trillion dollars is still 500 billion.

This is simple economics. Unless forced by regulation, hydrogen producers and users will just take the cheapest way, which is reforming natural gas without carbon sequesterian. Renewable methods can't compete with gasoline. They require break throughs; that might happen for the renewable gasoline and diesel fields first. Or break throughs with methanol fuel cells.

Using excess wind electricity, or night time electric to keep base load plants(nuclear, NG, or coal) efficient, to make hydrogen makes sense. It might more sense to use such hydrogen in an industrial fuel cell to provide electric to the grid during peak loads though than incur the costs it would require to get it to a FCEV.

For the established car companies, FCEVs are preferable to BEVs. While an electric, a FCEV will still require plenty of service to keep the dealers happy. I think the oil companies more don't like having an outsider(CARB) force them into something that isn't ready to make them money yet.

I don't believe this, but seeing what it might do in an area like L.A. would be interesting.

This is one that I don't think is a myth. Plug ins have come a long way since 2005. Even in 2005, I think Lovins wasn't being completely honest with himself.
For the the article, "Cars fueled with compressed natural gas or LPG have become quite popular in fleet markets and with some customers (especially government fleets, which must meet an alternative-fuels mandate) and in some countries (such as India and China, where conversions are cutting urban air pollution). They usually lower fuel and maintenance costs significantly and cut smog, but don’t compromise safety. It’s reasonable to suppose that hydrogen fuel cells, which provide all these advantages to an even greater degree, should win even more market support."
The TCO of the FCEV vehicle would have to come down to on par with the ICE CNG or LPG before a fleet operator will consider spending their own money on them. For many fleet operators, they have to install their own refueling station for CNG or LPG. So such hydrogen refueling systems need to also be competitive.

It may not require it, but the companies making the cars don't want to be the ones to pay to make them viable.[/quote][/QUOTE]

 

They left out the greatest Myth of them all:
Myth #21 Fracking has created an endless supply of cheep natural gas that will last and last and last.

Gee - imagine that. The Oily industry lied, in order to get investors to pony up tons of dough for more & more well pads.

The End of Fracking Is Closer Than You Think | VICE News

Funny thing about falsely promising endless cheep natural gas - it affects projections of endless cheep CARBON fuel to run the hydrogen car.
Yep The 10's of thousands of wells are drying up at such an alarming rate - it's virtually impossible to start new ones fast enough to compensate for all the ones that are on their way out. And how did we blow thru all that natural gas so fast? Selling it cheep ... the same lie that Toyota is building its hydrogen car on. Just lovely.

What's really troublesome is how little the media says about things like this:

U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power - Businessweek
Yea - good luck running hydrogen cars on natural gas for more than what .... 10 years if we're lucky?
I suppose one can pretend these are just more nay sayers ... poo poo'ing our endless techno future ... somehow we'll come up with another rabit out of the hat ... anything but conserve.
.

 

^^ The same lie EVs are based on, too.

 

Changing the subject? I'll bite. No - plug-in vehicles can inexpensively... emphasis .... INEXPENSIVELY use PV electricity to propel THEMSELVES. BUT a hydrogen CAR? It'd waste appx four times the energy creating hydrogen by electric distillation.
So - to go back on topic - and since hydrogen cars necessarily must use natural gas to even remotely think of competing with electric car efficiency, and since (see articles linked above) fracking can't even be counted on to continue at its present rate of output - it certainly can't run 10's - or even 100's of thousands of cars . That's all I'm getting at.
.

 

There's no such thing as painless change, and any transition to hydrogen fuel will have many pains. But that doesn't make it unfeasible. The potential gains are many, but not without a great many changes to our infrastructure, our economy, and not least of all, our expectations.

One thing to go will have to be our expectation to leave fuel in the tank, and jump in and drive whenever we want. Pressurized hydrogen fuel would be impractical due to the bulk of a pressurized vessel to contain liquid hydrogen. If vehicles adopt a low-pressure vessel, like they use in the space program, hydrogen "slush" could be poured into insulated vessels and be consumed as it boils off. This would work best for airlines, where the combination of lower weight and higher energy is ideal. The necessity to use the fuel immediately wouldn't be a problem with scheduled flights. Short delays wouldn't be too wasteful, as the hydrogen should remain cold for several hours in well-insulated vessels, the excess will vent harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The biggest problem currently is how to produce hydrogen economically and cleanly. Electrolysis is too expensive and inefficient, and extraction from natural gas consumes energy and emits carbon. Once we get our energy-production ducks in a row, hydrogen fuel will follow.

 

Oh, I know hydrogen cars are a crock.

My point is that until clean energy is in surplus on the grid, the argument that underlies the EV advantage is that they are (in the best case scenario) NG cars. They therefore carry all the baggage of NG.

 

Let me know as soon as you crack that 2nd law of thermodynamics.

 

Actually, I was eyeing the massive amount of free solar energy that falls on the planet every day, potentially 1 kilowatt per square meter. If we could harness a bigger piece of that, problem solved.

 

I agree, but I sure would not waste the sun energy captured on electrolysis if I could avoid it.

 

I'm still holding out for warp drive powered by dilithium crystals. Most likely that, or flying cars will come 1st. You can just nod - humor me on that.

 

I think anyone who has objectively looked into fracking knows which the real myths are.

 

...I made some solar H2 at home in 5 secs, just put some solar panel leads into salty water.
I don't see why solar H2 can't compete in remote areas where there's sun but no advanced multi quadrillion $dollar elec grid we need the taxpayers to fund. Plus you get O2 for free for, I do not know, welding in the dessert.

 

^^
I can imagine the hydrogen fuel cell finding a home in off-grid homes like I want to build, or perhaps as a time shifter for utility scale PV/Wind.
In the case of cars, the battery is *so* much cheaper and more efficient.

 

I make methane all the time.

 

Ah yes - the colon to hydrogen car project. They say that project stinks too.

 

...he who laughs last....

 

...laughs best in the "end."

 

...exactly, and the smiley emoticons do not work on my browser, so I am not laughing yet

 

....only just got the joke...

 

The Mira is going on sale this year in the UK.

John (Britprius)