Hydrogen cars = more gas consumption???
Last month, Patrick Bedard of Car & Driver (my favorite automotive publication) wrote a great article in which he crunched some numbers on what our country’s energy consumption would be if we all drove hydrogen-powered cars. The underlying problem is producing hydrogen. Because pure hydrogen does not exist naturally, it requires an input of energy to seperate hydrogen from a hydrogen-containing molecule (most often this molecule is water and the process is electrolysis). So where does this energy input come from?
Coal – Producing Hydrogen using coal is 12% efficient. If all cars in the US were hydrogen powered, we would consume twice as much coal than we currently are with gasoline power. We would also produce 2.7x carbon emissions.
Natural Gas – The popular process for creating Hydrogen from natural gas is called “steam reforming” and is 30% efficient. If all cars in the US ran on hydrogen created from natural gas, our gas consumption would actually increase 66% over current levels.
As depressing as it may be, the article offers clear evidence that hydrogen power cars are far from mainstream reality. Until scientists can come up with a very efficient way to produce hydrogen, this technology just does not make sense.
…a very revealing article with solid evidence. I am concerned with the feasibility of fuel cell at this stage too.
However, one must also evaluate the solution as a whole. For example, fuel cell has significantly less moving parts and emission control components as conventional engines, meaning less oil changes and less parts manufactured. Both of these will reduce the monetary and environmental cost of the fuel cell technology.
In addition, because fuel cell doesn’t generate as much heat as conventional engines, you can run them with much less cooling components.
All these contribute to less weight on the car, and as we all know, less weight equals higher fuel efficiency.
The list goes on, but must end here now because I have to read Rishi’s other blog entries : )
Maxwell
11 Dec 05 at 6:58 pm
[...] A few months back I posted about how hydrogen fuel cell cars actually are significantly less fuel-efficient than current gasoline-powered cars due to the fact that producing hydrogen fuel is itself a horribly inefficient process given the present methods. Ed Ring, editor of EcoWorld, recently published an article titled “The Hydrogen Hoax” explaining his belief that hydrogen research should take a back seat to further development and implementation of technologies which are commercially viable today: clean diesel cars, serial hybrid cars, and battery powered cars. Will scientists figure out someday how to store hydrogen in practical, economical ways? Will they ever figure out how to build cheap, safe and durable fuel cells? The answer to these questions is yes, but probably not before they figure out how to develop ultra-capacitors or cheap batteries with extremely high energy densities. [...]
It’s Rishi » Hydrogen pipe dreams
30 May 06 at 2:30 am
It is important that note that the two mentioned means of producing hydrogen are some of the least feasible solutions available. Much other technologies can be used to produce hydrogen, for which the means are readily available.
For instance, there’s thermal water splicing, which comes down to using heat sources for splicing H2O into H2 and half an oxygen molecule. With solar contractors (which use the same principle as an antenna dish) sunlight is converted into the heat used for water splicing. A durable source of hydrogen.
Via several chemical reactions, biological matter can also be broken down and hydrogen can be derived from it. Also a durable source of hydrogen.
Winning hydrogen from coal and gas might be the easiest solution as of yet, but certainly not the only ones and certainly not the cleanest ones. It’s not feasible to use hydrogen when those methods are used for obtaining hydrogen, but it could be if other methods are used.
Marco Kuis
18 Dec 06 at 11:53 am