Hydrogen powered cars?

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Hello, new member here. I was noticing on the news this morning; at a car show in Los Angeles, they had I believe some hydrogen powered cars. Is this something we can look forward to seeing in the future? Also, does anyone know if we will see sometime in the future a propane or LNG or LPG powered car or light truck?
 
Hydrogen will require a lot of infrastructure changes - and I mean a lot. Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a real energy source, unless, of course, you're the sun.

I've run LPG cars with good success. The problem here was the the more popular the fuel became, the higher the price became, which destroyed its main advantages. It was also more attractive in older vehicles with fewer emissions controls, too, since you'd get good emissions advantages from conversion.

I certainly would love to see more LPG vehicles again. They were great in taxi service for a lot of reasons. In fact, they spoiled me because of no fuel dilution in the oil.
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If it is a tank of hydrogen, then it has to gas off to relive pressure.
So in a week or so a full tank is empty.

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The storage problem is also a thorny one. Hydrogen is a gas and it likes to spread out. Putting it in a car means squeezing it down to a reasonable size, and that isn't easy. Furthermore, hydrogen gets warm while it's sitting in the tank of a parked car, which causes the gas to expand. This means that the tanks have to vent the hydrogen periodically from the car. Leave a hydrogen car sitting around for more than a few days and all the fuel will be gone.


http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/hybrid-technology/hydrogen-cars3.htm

So has anything regarding that changed?
 
In Utah LNG conversions are pretty popular. I've seen cars, and light trucks that run on natural gas, and the cost to fill up is still cheaper than gasoline. Given it's popularity here, it's not really hard to find a LNG station where you can fill up.
 
Honda has been making a CNG version of the Civic for a while now, and I believe Ford is coming out with a factory-equipped CNG F-150 as well. There are also retrofit kits for other vehicles. However, it's still not cost effective - for example, the CNG Civic starts at over $26,000 while the regular Civic starts at around $18,000.

I recently read an article on C&D that Toyota had been able to reduce the price of its hydrogen fuel cell module by 95% - from $1M to $50,000. And hydrogen has even less availability than CNG.

Maybe at sometime in the future we'll all be driving CNG or hydrogen fueled vehicles, but it won't be in 5 years and probably not in 10 years either.
 
Originally Posted By: BMWTurboDzl
Isn't this hydrogen fuel cells instead of hydrogen gas being burned in combustion chamber?


Car still must have a source of hydrogen in a tank.
Where does the hydrogen go when the car is sitting and the pressures build up?
 
LPG conversions are relatively easy and common. A buddy has a very nicely converted '64 Dodge truck with a custom-built (high compression) slant-6 to take advantage of the very high effective octane. Great driveability, and more power than a stocker. But he has to travel outside of town very carefully and with a map of available LPG stations.

A co-worker has a CNG powered Civic- those were available a few years ago. Nice package, but its literally tied to the city because there are no other CNG refuelling stations within its driving range right now. Its worse than an EV in terms of where you can drive it, but great for commuting.

The problem I see with hydrogen is creating enough to be a viable fuel. Electrolysis from water is pretty much a non-starter because you have to put in more energy (electricity) than you get back when you burn the hydrogen. OK, so you build massive wind-farms to get "fee" electricity to crack seawater... but that's ridiculous on a large enough scale (and I'd rather use THAT power to de-salinate seawater for drinking rather than depleting groundwater). You can get it as a byproduct of refining crude oil... but isn't that kinda negating one of the attractions?
 
Originally Posted By: BMWTurboDzl
Isn't this hydrogen fuel cells instead of hydrogen gas being burned in combustion chamber?


That's the easy and inefficient way. Fuel cells are more efficient, but also more expensive.
 
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Toyota promised a Hydrogen fuell cell car for 2015. This is Hydrogen reaction (making but H-O-H "exhaust" waste) to produce electricity.
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Nothing wrong with PEM fuel cells for vehicle applications, and many of the hydrogen storage issues are overblown.

The problem still is that making hydrogen is still inefficient. Electrolysis is inefficient, and so even if fed with free solar energy which has its own conversion efficiency problems. Reformation of liquid fuels makes a ton of sense, but start times and whatnot are challenges.

FCs dont have carnot efficiency issues, and the conversion efficiency of an FC can be roughly .7V/1.23V=57%, higher at lighter load. Far better than even the most advanced diesels, if the hydrogen production efficiencies can be kept high.

Cost, commercial adopters, and need for energy storage are some of the challenges that make it tough to adapt.
 
One of the problems with windmills is what to do with the power when it's not needed. I think this would work well with some H2 production.
 
There is another form of Hydrogen that is being considered for use as a fuel: anhydrous ammonia (NH3). Its main advantage is that it is stored as a liquid (moderately pressurized like LPG) on the vehicle, so the main problem of gaseous storage of high-pressure H2 is avoided. Just do an Internet search using "ammonia fueled engines", and you can read up on it.
 
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No way would I want to be riding around with anhydrous ammonia. You get a leak and you could not get out of the car fast enough.
 
What pressures are you talking about? If it has a tank of compressed hydrogen then it will just stay that way like any tank. Are you talking about producing hydrogen gas onboard by some process? What process?

Originally Posted By: sdowney717
Car still must have a source of hydrogen in a tank.
Where does the hydrogen go when the car is sitting and the pressures build up?
 
That would be an even more inefficient method of production.

But come on - tanks of liquified ammonia driving around? Imagine a breach during an accident at a crowded intersection. People would be dead all over.

Originally Posted By: A_Harman
There is another form of Hydrogen that is being considered for use as a fuel: anhydrous ammonia (NH3). Its main advantage is that it is stored as a liquid (moderately pressurized like LPG) on the vehicle, so the main problem of gaseous storage of high-pressure H2 is avoided. Just do an Internet search using "ammonia fueled engines", and you can read up on it.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
What pressures are you talking about? If it has a tank of compressed hydrogen then it will just stay that way like any tank.


Exactly.

The molecules aren't any better than helium in regards to being escape artists.

If you're talking a liquid H2 storage tank, those are vacuum insulated, and often with an insulation wrapping or 'blown-in' (micro-cell) in the annular space.

Those will hold the liquid and gas off very little. Still would be an issue onboard a vehicle.
 
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