Cheap Fuel Breakthrough From Stanford… Hydrogen Cars Gear for Market Debut

When can the dream come true? Ten years back, General Motors had made the ambitious claim that it would be the first company selling 1 million hydrogen-powered cars by mid-2020s. But although such mainstream automakers as Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Ford, Mercedes and BMW have begun unveiling state-of-the-art hydrogen cars and Industrial heavyweights like the U.S., Japan, the European Union and China are investing sums ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the field, engineering, cost and infrastructure bottlenecks make clear that widespread use of these cars will not be possible before 2030s. A few of the problems needing to be addressed:
– The U.S.hydrogen production (for gasoline reforming and chemical plants) is 9-10 million tons, a tiny fraction of what is needed for a “hydrogen economy.”
– For hydrogen replacing oil products to power 40 percent of cars in the U:S, an investment no less than 600 billion dollars is needed, say Argonne National Laboratory researchers .
– Chicken or egg problem: Whether affordably priced hydrogen cars will cause filling stations to proliferate or whether a thick enough network of stations will stimulate mass production of these cars remains unanswered. “I won’t change my car before seeing a hydrogen station at every corner,” say many consumers. But even in “green minded” California, the number of these stations does not exceed 20 or 30.
– Storage: Because it is such a volatile gas, hydrogen requires 3000 times more room than gasoline of the same volume. Hence, to fill a car with hydrogen fuel enough for long-distance travel, tanks should be able to withstand pressures of up to 700 atmospheres. Even fuel tanks that strong can have a volume eight times that of a gasoline-driven car.
– Transport: hydrogen with the energy equivalent of a tankerful of gasoline requires 21 tankers for transport. If the tanker also runs on hydrogen, it needs to consume 40 percent of its load for every 500 km. Cooling for transporting in liquid form requires prohibitive amounts of energy. As for pipelines, they need pumping stations every 150 km. If each consumes 1.4 percent of the carried fuel, a pipeline a few kilometers long will end up using 30-40% of the fuel. . And hydrogen production throug electrolysis at filling stations (to service for 2000 cars) requires an energy consumtion of about 80 megawatts of electricity.

Water or fire? Two rival concepts compete for powering hydrogen cars. First one is internal combustion engines which work like those in gasoline-driven cars, but use a mixture of hydrogen and air instead of the  air-gasoline mix used in conventional engines. These are called H2 ICE deniyor. The other relies on fuel cells  which combine hydrogen with oxygen via platinum catalysers to produce electricity (and water.) Pros and cons: Since the chemical energy stored in hydrogen is much higher compared to gasoline, H2 ICE engines are more efficient. They can use up to 70 percent of the energy contained in the fuel (the ratio drops to about half in fuel cells, and a mere 25 percent in gasoline cars.) But as the lighter hydrogen fuel  takes up far more space,  enough air (and oxygen) cannot enter the combustion cylinder.  Furthermore, since hydrogen is highly inflammable, it readiy ignites in the presence of a heat source, and even when approaching a sparkplug. This causes the engine to “cough” or even  backfire. To cope with the problem, Ford have developed a component it calls “supercharger” which forces 1.5 times the normal amount of Fuel-air mixture into the cylinder. Other producers employ other mechanisms whereby the air sucked into the cylinder is compressed (and thus heated) by the piston before the hydrogen is squirted in to cause the combustion. The vaunted advantages of H2 ICEs are more power they produce, reliability and their use of a tested and proven technology. They are also given a  “clean” stamp with no emission of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other harmful byproducts. Since they can function in lower (in cylinder) temperatures, they limit the production of txic nitrogen oxides. Hydrogen fuel cells stake their hopes on being “greener”. The only byproduct of these engines which generate electricity in the process of combining the fuel in the tank with oxygen in the air, is just water vapor. Their downside is hefty price tags pushed up by platinum or other precious metals used as catalysers  in  the fuel cells stacked together (numbers may exceed 100.) Wheras a kilowatt of power generated by internal combustion engines cost 30 dollars, It is roughly hundredfold with fuel cells.. Daha çok yer tutuyorlar, ve H2 ICE’lara göre daha az güç üretiyorlar. Their selling points are silent running and clean byproduct. Their  steadily dropping costs have now propelled them to the front in their rivalry with H2 ICE cousins.

Rendering of “Element One”, the hydrogen car designed and built by students of the Lawrence Technological University (Michigan, US), which received design awards at the 2008 Formula Zero hydrogen cars competition. Despite its imposing appearance, the vehicle  actually has dimensions of a go-cart.