hydrogen power of tomorow

[kristopherb]

Hyrdrogen is extremly explosive so do you think we will see H-power stations or cars?

 

[Xanikk999]

Not for awhile.

While hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, from my understanding the process to make it usable as a liquid fuel is very expensive.

 

[sysyphus]

I work for a hydrogen fuel cell company so I can shed a bit of light on this issue.

Cars are a decade away, and even in the industry we're not too sure that it will ever happen.

Right now the main focus (commercially) is in two directions.

First is for forklifts, which have great potential. H2 has the advatage that a tank can be refilled much faster than a battery can be recharged or replaced, saves on an immense amount downtime, and has safer emissions than propane.

Second is in backup power systems, mainly for telecom and data centres. Currently they use batteries and diesel generators. Batteries are very expensive, have a limited mission time and require a large amount of maintenance and frequent replacement. Diesels are dirty, produce very 'noisy' power (meaning that the DC output is not nice and flat), and cannot be installed in many of the places where they would be required.

I doubt we'll see our entire energy economy run purely on hydrogen, but fuel cells are here to stay.

As for safety, yes H2 is a dangerous gas, but so is methane which comes into our houses. It can be used safely, and stadards and parctices are being developed.

 

[sysyphus]

While hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, from my understanding the process to make it usable as a liquid fuel is very expensive.

Liquid fuel will never be used commercially. Right now compressed gas is the only path. The hope for the future is using metal hydrides to store it in a concentrayed form safely. Hydrides are expensive and heavy, so there's a lot fo development to go.

 

[Elrohir]

Sysyphus, I've heard that hydrogen cars aren't realistic because to make them feasible you'd have to compress simply huge amounts of gas that wouldn't be possible today, and could blow up too easily. Is that true?

 

[kristopherb]

I work for a hydrogen fuel cell company so I can shed a bit of light on this issue.

Cars are a decade away, and even in the industry we're not too sure that it will ever happen.

Right now the main focus (commercially) is in two directions.

First is for forklifts, which have great potential. H2 has the advatage that a tank can be refilled much faster than a battery can be recharged or replaced, saves on an immense amount downtime, and has safer emissions than propane.

Second is in backup power systems, mainly for telecom and data centres. Currently they use batteries and diesel generators. Batteries are very expensive, have a limited mission time and require a large amount of maintenance and frequent replacement. Diesels are dirty, produce very 'noisy' power (meaning that the DC output is not nice and flat), and cannot be installed in many of the places where they would be required.

I doubt we'll see our entire energy economy run purely on hydrogen, but fuel cells are here to stay.

As for safety, yes H2 is a dangerous gas, but so is methane which comes into our houses. It can be used safely, and stadards and parctices are being developed.

i don't mean entirely but 40~% of power

 

[taper]

Gasoline is pretty dangerous too if you think about it. As an EE, I'd prefer electrical storage, but we have a long ways to go until batteries or capacitors can match chemical fuels. I just hope whatever technology gets a breakthrough first turns out to be the best in the long run, otherwise we'll spend billions upgrading to a fuel we'll stop using, or use a substandard fuel because we have the infrastructure.

 

[sysyphus]

Sysyphus, I've heard that hydrogen cars aren't realistic because to make them feasible you'd have to compress simply huge amounts of gas that wouldn't be possible today, and could blow up too easily. Is that true?

Under current technology, that's pretty much true. One of the major challenges is to develop a means to store it in a safe concentrated form that isn't too heavy or expensive. We're a long way away still.

One inherently safe feature of hydrogen gas though is that it disperses very quickly, whereas gasoline pools. So if in the case of an accident the H2 doesn't catch fire right away, it'll disperse before it has a chance.

 

[StarWorms]

Personally I think power of the future will be similar to nature... using proteins to move around protons and electrons to store energy.

I think the real future energy though, will be about genetically modifying organisms to such an high degree, that they'll effectively be a normal organism but providing the energy for the machine rather than for itself, and be very efficient at it, and be able to metabolise a wide range of compounds. But that's a long way off.

 

[taper]

Kinda off topic, but they've already made a robot that can take energy out of sugar, and I think regular food. Bonus points: it also poops, just like everything else that digests sugar. It was no where close to being practical for consumer use, and I don't remember what college it was made at, but it's still neat.

 

[Xanikk999]

Kinda off topic, but they've already made a robot that can take energy out of sugar, and I think regular food. Bonus points: it also poops, just like everything else that digests sugar. It was no where close to being practical for consumer use, and I don't remember what college it was made at, but it's still neat.

Can you find a link? That would be very interesting...

 

[Irish Caesar]

Sisyphus-

Do you see hydrogen fueling stations happening, or is it just going to be tanks of the stuff to fuel the forklifts and backup systems and whatnot?

And is the power generated comparable to gasoline engines and the like?

Can you find a link? That would be very interesting...

I'm not impressed; I do the same thing.

 

[sysyphus]

Sisyphus-

Do you see hydrogen fueling stations happening, or is it just going to be tanks of the stuff to fuel the forklifts and backup systems and whatnot?

We've already built fuelling stations, they're used for the forklifts and some small utility vehicles. The backup stations store the H2 in standard gas cylinders.

And is the power generated comparable to gasoline engines and the like?

Yep, we even built an engine for a full sized bus, total of 230hp. A delivery van as well. Both were jsut demos of course, it's not economically feasible to commercialise.

 

[Kozmos]

Hydrogen cars will suck up all the water, leaving humanity dehydrated.

 

[sysyphus]

Fuel cells produce water as a product. Although water is consumed to make hydrogen gas in electrolysis, the same amount is put back into the environment when the H2 is consumed.

If the H2 came from reforamtion of methane, then that would be a net water gain (whcih is not necessarily a good thing).

 

[mdwh]

Yes, it's important to note that hydrogen power is not at all the same thing as water power - although hydrogen can be made from water, the energy has to be provided by some other source. The hydrogen is just a means to store energy for use in something like a car.

 

[History_Buff]

Which doesn't mean it's a complete failure. If we ignore the delivery end, generating the power in one place, and then storing it till release (be it H2, or batteries, etc.) it become much easier and much cheaper to reduce emissions.

 

[sysyphus]

There's that and the fact that increased storage ability will allow power generating devices to run at their peak efficiency and using the stored energy at peak demand.