Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
I still don't see hydrogen being used to directly power vehicles.
If hydrogen can be produced so easily then it would more easily be produced by the oil companies and used to hydro form liquid fuels that are more energy dense, less hazardous, less reactive, less volatile and all around easier and safer to handle.
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Now you get it. Was it that hard?
If you had read my posts in the Rasa thread, you would have seen that this is exactly what I was proposing. We already use hydrogen from the sun stored in the form of hydrocarbons. No need for new, extensive infrastructure.
Now, as far as oil companies controlling the fuel output, it will not be easy for them. Nuclear power or excess renewables will be needed. So will a carbon stream such as a municipal waste stream. These resources are far more diffused and easily set up. A country could run totally off of fossil fuels if they chose to. I used Iceland as an extreme example for the now.
And if you wanted a long range, high performance electric car, it is going to cost you Tesla money with batteries as your storage. But, use a smaller battery pack and a smallish fuel cell and you can get the price down to that of a Lexus sedan. Fuel cells are coming down in price. My favored solid-oxide fuel cells are now able to run below 600 deg C, down from the 900 deg C of a decade ago. Current work has improved the rapidity of cycling starts to seconds instead of minutes and new material applications are eliminating the failure prone silicone matrix used in Anode/Cathode construction. They still need a burst of pure H2 and a few mg/cc of platinum to fast start, but those problems are not insurmountable as catalyst research is going like gangbusters compared to battery gains. Now, I can drive 80 Km on electricity and then tap the fuel cell powered by methanol for the rest of the drive giving me hundreds of Km range . You can't do that with pure batteries.
Yes, hydrogen is expensive in comparison to fossil fuels and straight renewable electricity. But my example of excess renewables being thrown away is where a company can set up shop producing synthetic methanol from this waste electricity storing this electrical energy in a dense, easily stored and transported form. As I have mentioned, the wind farms here in Palm Springs are capable of producing far more electrical energy than what can be used locally. This time of year is the windiest time and most of the wind turbines are feathered for reduced output or idled all together. Only one local company is producing H2 from this cheap electricity for industrial as well as transport use. A small addition to their process could yield methanol. Albeit, current catalysts need an acid step to produce the methanol, but a few lab solutions provide the possibility of a solid catalyst that can take H2 and CO2 under pressure and produce liquid methanol.
Once you get to liquid methanol, you can of course move to produce octane and JP8 analogs.
Once you wrap your mind around the concept that hydrogen is nothing more than a form of battery to be stored and transported, you start seeing the possibilities. Straight electricity to batteries is more efficient. But, hydrogen allows you storage and density advantages that will fit markets that batteries cannot fill.