Re: Best Books on Hydrogen Future Possibilities

"Gary" <jabadoodle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

... Please, do not take this to mean that I believe that hydrogen is or
will be viable. Only that I don't (yet) believe that it's hopleless. I
guess in the most fundamental sense, that's why I'm here: To find out if I
believe it's a possibility or hopeless.

In fact, many hydrogen vehicles have been built and they do go when you gas
them up and drive them. To date there is no such thing as a practical
hydrogen powered vehicle and the myriad obstacles of which you're aware put
the hydrogen economy in the realm of stupidsville -- a solution that creates
ten more problems is not a solution.

Near-term, filling your vehicle with hydrocarbon fuel is a far more
reasonable solution than building or buying a hydrogen vehicle and the
infrastructure to support it. Long-term, synthetic hydrocarbon fuels are a
more reasonable solution than H2. Both now and in the future conservation
is the most sensible step. Eliminate non-essential travel (wherever
possible conduct business and communications through electronic media.)
When traveling, use efficient and economical means of travel. Fix our
regulations so that more Americans can drive economical diesel passenger
vehicles. Hybrids have already made market in-roads and that's a positive
note.

Admittedly not knowing the science, I find this argument to
be the least worrisom. Sure, explosions are bad. But IF we're
able to overcome the production and volume/storage problems,
I'm willing to bet it can be made reaonable safe (for at least
some uses).

You might want to reconsider that bet. Any energy storage system with the
volumetric energy density required to power automotive vehicles will present
some significant safety challenges, but hydrogen has some special challenges
because of its fluffiness. Automotive applications require either
liquefaction or extremely high pressure. I wouldn't want every adult in the
country filling 300 psi scuba tanks without proper training and supervision,
and for every adult American to fill a 5,000 psi to 10,000 psi hydrogen tank
once a week (or more likely once a day)... well, it just seems out of the
question. We hear about remarkable progress being made in the area of high
pressure hydrogen containment, but I've never seen anyone run the numbers
for a typical filling station. How many BTU or kWh do the typical
underground tanks in a filling station hold and what would it take to hold
that many BTU in hydrogen? I really don't know the answer, but I'll bet
high pressure is not an option in those quantities, so the hydrogen would
probably have to be liquefied. That means throwing away a LOT of energy in
a hydrogen infrastructure. These are pretty major issues!

We should be allocating our time, money and natural resources in the most
effective way. Trying to make the least practical energy storage medium
work for automotive applications (oh, and by the way, build and entire
infrastructure to support it) is a farcical utilization of resources. I
resent the use of my tax dollars on such folly.

Don W.


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