Hydrogen power

Wig

I suppose you've all seen those Honda ads on TV. Honda has developed a car which runs on hydrogen, which will be supplied to us at filling stations. I don't suppose we have a hydrogen station in the UK yet? Norway has a hydrogen supplied highway along the South coastline Oslo - Stavanger.

Anyone also know how much does hydrogen cost per litre?

I found on another site that Honda intends to lease the car at $600 a month on a 3 yr contract. I guess the cost of all those motors and the hydrogen electricity generator must be quite high. What's the betting that if they come to the UK the cost to the UK motorist will be £600 a month instead of £300 ($600)?

I can't find the youtube link I wanted. It was a discovery channel clip about the Honda car and Norways hydrogen highway. They developed small hydrogen generators that would be used to produce hydrogen onsite at filling stations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgGlE97rJl4

Conor_3

The problem is that reliable safe storage of hydrogen isn't cheap so whilst they have the cars, there's no pump network.

epninety

What's the cheap, green method for creating lots of clean high pressure hydrogen?

Wig

epninety wrote: »

What's the cheap, green method for creating lots of clean high pressure hydrogen?

The discovery channel's presentation in association with Honda was really pushing the theory that all that was needed to produce all this hydrogen was renewable generated electricity.

Of course the renewable energy powerstations can produce it, but the question is can they produce enough of it? and still supply everything else.

sharoo

Are hydrogen cars run purely on hyrdogen or would it be a hybrid like most alternative fuels?

thescouselander

epninety wrote: »

What's the cheap, green method for creating lots of clean high pressure hydrogen?

The interesting thing about hydrogen it that the amount of energy used to genrate and compress the hydrogen to liquid form is typically 4 times that given out when the hydrogen is used a fuel. I dont think it will ever be cheap.

Wig

sharoo wrote: »

Are hydrogen cars run purely on hyrdogen or would it be a hybrid like most alternative fuels?

They run 100% on hydrogen, the only emissions from the vehicle is water which is drinkable. The Hydrogen is converted into electricity which is then used to power the electric motors on each wheel. It's a shame they pulled the video off youtube as it was quite interesting. All they have now are the Honda adverts. The idea promoted was that the car easily generates enough electricity to power your whole house, which would be great for people living off grid. I can't imagine that the cost of the hydrogen generated electricity would be cheaper than the mains supply.

Cardelia

I'm not sure liquefying hydrogen was ever a realistic option for hydrogen-powered cars. As well as being inefficient in terms of the amount of energy needed, it's also very dangerous.

As I understand it, current research on hydrogen storage is focusing on two main areas:

1) Getting hydrogen out of hydrogen-rich compounds. Materials like ammonia-borane or aluminium borohydride have high weight percentages of hydrogen. The current problem is finding a way of releasing the hydrogen from those materials, but it is a safe method of storage.

2) Adsorption of hydrogen on a solid surface. Some materials will allow hydrogen to "stick" to their surface and these can be used to store a large amount of hydrogen. The problem is in releasing the gas for use - the rate of release drops off markedly as the amount of adsorbed hydrogen decreases, which is impractical for long journeys.

Another problem with hydrogen as a fuel, which nobody seems to mention, is the environmental effect of the waste byproduct. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas and its contribution to the greenhouse effect is far more pronounced than CO2, even now. What happens when hundreds of millions of cars start releasing water vapour into the atmosphere? The best case scenario is that it will all precipitate out as rain, but that also comes under the definition of climate change. And there's the small matter of much more localised flooding. The worst case scenario is that the vapour stays in the atmosphere and acts as a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. So I'm not convinced about the benefits of burning hydrogen as a fuel, even if it were practical.