Has anyone ever created a hydrogen powered car? Wouldn't this help the environment?

Question

If we had hydrogen powered vehicles, couldn't we use seawater to obtain an endless supply of hydrogen and wouldn't it be cleaner?

Also the only biproduct would be fresh water and salt. Could this plant also produce drinking water for places that need it?

Answer 1

Hydrogen fuel cells are a form of stored energy, sort of like a specialized battery.  By burning the hydrogen in the presence of oxygen, which  produces water and energy, you can power a car or anything else.  

Reversing the process - splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen - requires energy, so it doesn't make sense to power that process by burning hydrogen.  That would be like writing yourself a check because your checking account is running low.  

You need another energy source to split the water. That could be fossil or nuclear fuels, but those incur environmental costs. Other viable options could be ethanol, wind or hydroelectric energy.  Sunlight is the most desirable since it is clean, abundant and free, but right now solar energy is still expensive and inefficient to capture.

Answer 2

Yes there are hydrogen powered cars.

You can buy one from the hydrogen car company in Los Angeles(1)

The Hydrogen car company converts an existing gasoline powered car to run on hydrogen instead of gasoline.

The big challenge is the source of hydrogen.

It takes a great deal of energuy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water molecule.

To produce an amount of hydrogen with an energy content equal to one gallon of gasoline requires approximately 50 kilowatt hours of electricity. The process is relatively inefficient compared with storing electrical energy in a bettery.

When you burn the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine you are doing well if you get the equivalent of 10 Kilowatt Hours of energy back out.

Hydrogen is a rather inefficient way to store and use energy

It is more efficient to store the electricity in a battery than to produce the Hydrogen from water.

In the past the batteries were not safe and had very short range. The new generations of batteries will be much safer and will have much longer ranges.

Ultimately I expect that we wil go to electric cars instead of gasoline or diesel or hydrogen powered cars.

Answer 3

we could, but it would be totally pointless. To seperate seawater into hydrogen, oxygen, and salt, energy is needed. Where are you going to get all that energy for lifting, transporting, creating, and exporting your product? well... if you use your product, then you'll probably be using up more than you make, and if you use regular cars, and machines, then you'll just be polluting the environment.

Also, the biproduct would not be fresh water, but oxygen and salt, because if you remove the hydrogen, then all your left with is oxygen.

I'm sorry, but it just won't work. I wish it did though. :'(

Answer 4

yes they have and it helps the environment because it is only made out of water

Answer 5

There has been talk about it but you need an energy source to electrolyse the water.  Salt does not break down, it is left behind as a residue.

The US and 5-6 other countries are actively working on H2 fuel under the US Dept of Energy, it is part of the CO2 Sequestering / H2 development project (see Hydrogen Posture Plan in link).  It is an excellent fuel but still has issues, the main one being energy density:

To get the same amount of energy from Hydrogen at atmospheric pressure you would have to tow a fuel tank the size of a tractor trailer.  The main decision point for the next year or two is "Can we develop a light weight gas tank that will contain H2 at high enough pressures that the tank won't be bigger than the vehicle."  

Carbon fiber is the material of choice.

Answer 6

sure it can be done but not overnight. it took 100 years to develop a petroleum based economy. First build the hydrogen plant. but this has to be done in an area where there are retailers willing to distribute. no gas station will add hydrogen pumps and incur this expense if there's no customer base. no customers will buy a car they can't refuel, so there you are. E-85 is a much better starting point since it will run on regular premium gas, and then switch to E-85 as it becomes available. then move to E-100 and eventually to a hydrogen fuel cell. Maybe a full switch to hydrogen could be done in 30 years but probably closer o 50

L.A. and San Diego already use desalinization plants for water as well as hundreds of other places throughout the world.

Answer 7

There are cars that run on hydrogen - but there is not currently a way to make them cost effective.  

As far as the by-product of cumbustion, when the hydrogen burns, it combines 2 hydrogen molecules with one oxygen molecule to produce water - no salt involved.  

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are in the future, but still a ways off.  But there is a lot of work being done on it by many different people.

Answer 8

Yeah, I believe a hydrogen car has been created, but the industry doesn't have the government backing to subsidize the manufacturing.  It would be nice if the oil lobbyists would "switch sides" and then we'd see the environmental auto industry really take-off!!

Answer 9

Some scientists have come up with this experiment, but it is years away from production.

Answer 10

you can use hydrogen a couple of ways , through a fuel cell , with H20 ( nasty stuff really , Ford had to put a plastic exhaust on their car , it will corrode stainless steel ) as your exhaust , or burn it in a conventional engine that has been tuned for it . the problem is the cost of fuel , electrolysis is not efficient enough yet , the most common source is from natural gas ( Ch4) , as for de-salinization , reverse osmosis will work for that .

Answer 11

There was a DIY guy that converted his 20 year old GM to hydrogen .He had to put in special injectors and his trunk was filled with tanks. The car ran beautifully but only for about 50 miles on a full tank.

   The Seawater is a good idea...large and practically limitless. Use Renewables to process the water. Hydrogen is good all round ...the problem has always been to carry enough to make it worth while.

Answer 12

Yes believe it or not there is a product coming out soon that works from hydrogen not the gas form but by atom . I hate to even mention the name every time i do i feel like people want to beat me up on hear .Maybe there afraid to lose there job or a pocket full of oil money or something i don't know or just afraid of change .

Apparently some guy took radio waves hydrogen atoms and i think not sure laser and got a strong blast out of it . They are suppose to take the place of the spark plugs but you need no fuel just a Little controlled spark . They do have a patent of them and a discussion forum and phone discussions where you can ask question i think on Thursdays . The name of them are " nanodetonators " There are new inventions every day . Who would have ever known that we would go to the moon have cell phones or computers in our homes back in the day why not a new energy source to astound us

Answer 13

Yes.

BMW have their Hydrogen 7.

Honda have their FCX.

They both use Hydrogen as their fuel but use them very differently. BMW use hydrigen to power an internal combustion engine. Honda on the other hand use it for fuel cell.

Both emit virtually no pollutans and produces water as a byproduct.

The main problem is always a steady, cheap and reliable supply of hydrogen.

Answer 14

Mass hydrogen and oxygen emissions would alter the natural weather cycle and create unpredictable results. Just like carbon emissions creates smog and other global warming, hydrogen and oxygen emission would effect the environment in a different way, but on a larger scale. Hurricanes, snowstorms, droughts, and rain patterns would be altered, etc. It would also take huge volumes of water to extract hydrogen and produce the same energy as compact high energy gasoline. We would require additional water supplies (trucks, pipelines, etc.) to fuel everyday vehicles. Water is heavy to transport. If the hydrogen conversion was done onboard, we would need giant watertanks strapped to out bumpers. Our water delivery is already at maximum capacity in most cities. I do not see any feasibility in the idea.

Answer 15

I understand that the only problem with this is that current technology requires more energy to make the hydrogen supply that you visualize than the energy product itself.  There was a guy in a basement in Ohio recently who used microwaves to produce hydrogen but this was only experimental. I am with you completely if this could be done. The only two problems would be desalinating the seawater before putting it into your gas tank and keeping the water from freezing in winter months. I visualize a device that would convert water right on the spot in your car's engine compartment  just prior to combustion, in order to get over the problem of storing hydrogen. i.e. storing water is easier than storing hydrogen. Nanotechnology has recently found simpler methods of desalinating salt water.

To summarize my solution would be to store water in your gas tank since water is easier and safer to store than hydrogen, and convert it to hydrogen instantly in your engine compartment. This eliminates expensive fuel cells that are currently being studied. The gas tank would have to be heavily insulated and even heated from the icy cold of winter. Present day technology would therefore demand extra batteries and solar supplements to heat the gas tank, including a plug in device when available. As clumsy as this sounds it gets around the storage problem and avoids the expensive mass production problem I mentioned at the start of this answer.

Answer 16

THE COUNTRY OF CHINA ALREADY HAS NINE DIFFERENT AUTO COMPANYS BUILDING CARS SUCH AS THESE.THE GOVERNMENT MADE IT A LAW THAT ONLY HYBRID CARS ARE ALLOWED TO BE IN CHINA.CHINA  CUT THEMSELVES OFF FROM ANY FUTURE TRADE WITH O.P.E.C.