How safe and cheap is Hydrogen fuel?

Question

We just got a fleet of busses in Orlando, doing a test run for the Orlando Airport shuttle busses, that are being fueled by Hydrogen. Apparently there is only one extant FL hydrogen fuel center.

I want to hear from the serious environmentalists here, is Hydrogen fuel safe, clean and cheaper?

Answer 1

It is not a research technology. Even BMW in Germany has already launched its first hydrogen car.

It is much safer than current cars. One thing is the hydrogen nuclear fusion energy (that produces helium) and a totally different process is hydrogen combustion (mixing with oxigen). Obviously, car manufacturers dont sell a nuke bundled with each car :-)

It is absolutely clean, its waste is pure water, H2O. Not CO and CO2 as current cars.

Hydrogen is as cheap (or expensive) as oil is (at least in Europe).

But cars are more expensive. There are few gaz stations serving hydrogen yet, then hydrogen cars can be fueled by either oil or hydrogen, using a switching device. It means an important extra cost compared to oil fuelled cars.

Answer 2

In comparing hydrogen to gasoline, hydrogen is as safe as gasoline with some different characteristics.  Stored energy whether in million year old fossil fuels of just freshly separated water has to be handled with care.   Spill a pound of hydrogen wait ten seconds and toss a match on the spill you'll not be able to light it but if you were to spill with a pound of gasoline wait ten seconds and toss a match on it and it's a burning mess.

Clean very clean when derived from a renewable energy source like wind, solar, or biomass.   Water as an exhaust can't be beat.

Hydrogen costs depends on your source but the broad range is between $1 and $2 for the same energy as a gallon of gas.  I have no idea what price the new hydrogen filling stations will charge.   We'll be targeting $2 a gallon of gas equivalent.

Answer 3

The safety of Hydrogen depends on a number of factors, just as the safety of Gasoline. Hydrogen by itself is more explosive than gasoline when mixed with Oxygen. But with the right storage system (strong hydrogen containers or systems that use metals to store the H), the danger can be minimized. In addition, Gasoline emits carcinogens (Benzene), which H does not.

H definitely burns cleaner than Gasoline. The byproducts of burning H is water, we all know the many byproducts of burning gasoline. On the production side, H can be created without any further emissions through solar, wind or geothermal energy sources. There are also sources that use natural gas for creating H. All of them need to be compared to the emissions of refineries, and I am not sure if Gasoline really comes out ahead. Using the right technology, H production can be very clean indeed.

H is currently probably more expensive than gas, but look at the gas prices. At some point it will be more economic to produce clean H from renewable energy sources than finding new oil fields, build billion Dollar oil production platforms, transport the crude oil to refineries and then burn it in cars, polluting with each step. But we're not there yet.

Answer 4

I don't know about cheaper now, but it should be the cheapest fuel in the future. Just because you don't have a limited supply like gas, we have all the water we'll ever need, our planet is mostly water after all.

Yes it's safe, and only produces water out of the tailpipe, so as long as you don't think water it dirty, which most don't, then we can all agree that it's a clean fuel.

Oh I should elaborate on safety, they have to do a lot of testing to get it out to compete with regular gasoline, so it has to be top notch. I recall you can get into a full collision, or shoot a gun at the tank, and it's still safe. Also it burns up and out. Gasoline pools and burns down and out. Burning up and out is better it seems.

Answer 5

The safety of hydrogen has been in question since the Hindeburg blimp disaster in New Jersey.  A PBS program examined the Hindenburg disaster and found Hydrogen had gotten a bad rap.  Hydrogen can be handled as safely as gaoline.

Check the Hydrogen Ovonics (Michigan) website for information on costs, storage, and the hydrogen powered vehicles they test and drive on a daily basis.  They also have started a plant in Akron, Ohio to produce hydrogen storage tanks for reueling stations.

Other countries are way ahead of the United States in this technology.  Japan, for example, has been driving hydrogen powered vehicles for several years.  This year Honda is leasing a hydrogen powered accord in the United States in Los Angeles area where they have helped build the refueling stations.

Iceland has built a refueling station for their hydrogen power busses using Solar panel to produce electricity to break down the rain water collected and stored in tanks into hydrogen which is then stored in a tank. A pump takes it from the tank to refuel the vehicle.  No transporatation costs, ie. tanker truck.  No utility costs, ie solar power, and the water is free.

There is a lots of information, mis-information, and outdated information on this subject.  Check the internet as its full of information regarding this subject.

Answer 6

well - i would not say that hydrogen is very safe (it is very combustible)

i know that it is getting cheap

it is alot cleaner - i might add though

Answer 7

Safe? No. Hydrogen is extremely explosive.

With gasoline, for instance, you pretty much have to get the mix of gasoline and air just right to make an explosion.

By contrast, hydrogen and air will explode is just about any combination, from something like 90 percent hydrogen to about 90 percent air. Sending junior to the hydrogen station, where he will hook up the high-pressure transfer system to pump a tank full of high explosives might not sound like a great idea.

Clean? No. You either have to use a messy fuel cell to get hydrogen or you have to burn fossil fuels to make electricity to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen itself burns clean, but you have to make a mess to get it.

Cheaper? Not yet. It might get there, but not yet. There are some very promising technologies on the horizon, but they still haven't solved the problems of safety and environmental impact.

Answer 8

Your answer is: no, it is not safer;  no, it is not cleaner; and no, it is not cheaper.

"serious environmentalist" has become byword for totally uninformed.. I am a BS degreed conservative conservationist..

Hydrogen is more expensive to make than any other currently used fuel because we don't use nukes, wind or water to generate the electricity to isolate it via electrolysis of water and it takes a lot to get it compressed and safely stored, instead it is currently being removed from hydrocarbons in environmentally unfriendly ways. The claim that the only product of H2 combustion is water is to date not accurate because of the method of isolation. It does no good "environmentally" to use hydrogen in transportation except that the "mess" is made in one place and the fuel,when burned, is actually cleaner that gasoline

Answer 9

it can be safe...

it is clean in its reaction to move the car.... produces only water vapor.....but that's not the point, hydrogen is not a source of energy because it is not free in nature, you have to invest energy to obtain H from water....so its more like a energy carrier.... if your primary source of energy is clean then yea, its a clean solution, but 80% of electric power comes from burning some kind of hydrocarbon.... in the end you just move  the pollution to somewhere else......

another problem is the storage of H, this element has the smaller molecule on nature, that means that you cannot have a real container, because any material of which the container is made of it will have bigger molecules, that means that eventually the H will scape..... at a rate of 5% daily according to some studies.......

cheap?

hydrogen has the lowest density of all elements in nature.... so in order to making it economic, you have to liquefy it, that means put some pressure and/or lower its temperature to -60º C.  and that requires a lot of energy........

cheers!!