How would we store hydrogen for hydrogen fueld vehicles?

Question

My friend claims that the reason we do not have hydrogen cars is because we couldn't store the fuel. He says that the hydrogen atoms are so small that they will simply pass through the container the are in. Is this true?

Please back up your answers.

Answer 1

that is compleetly untrue. they alreadfy have hydrogen cars, so obviously it can be done

Answer 2

Your friend is dead wrong.

Hydrogen does occupy more space than any other fuel, whether it be in gaseous or liquid state. However, new tanks are providing for more storage of compressed hydrogen gas. The U.S. government recently certified 5,000 psi hydrogen tanks for use in automobiles. The German government has certified 10,000 psi tanks; and the U.S. is soon to follow. Dynetek Industries has also developed a 12,500 psi tank that should be certified within the next two years. BMW uses liquid hydrogen, which provides more hydrogen per volume than gaseous hydrogen, but is more expensive to produce. Liquid hydrogen tanks also require venting of the gas as it warms in the tank. BMW claims that their tanks will not require any venting for up to one week.

If hydrogen couldn't be stored NASA would never be able to send the Space Shuttle into orbit.

Answer 3

It is partly correct. We found that it leaked through hoses. Also if there is a bad connector. Hydrogen is also the most explosive gas on earth. I am a retired NASA Eng. Why would U want to drive a hydrogen fuel car ,if U have a wreck U will possibly be burned to death in seconds.

Answer 4

since hydrogen has to be cooled & maintained at -423degrees below 0 F to remain liquid, which is not practical or economical for cars, the only way we have to store it is as an explosive/flammable compressed gas at 5000PSI or more.  I guess your friend is right, he's also right about it being very hard to contain. hydrogen would leak through the tanks & valves used to store LP gas.

it can be done but its very difficult to make it safe in an accident.

Answer 5

The main problem with hydrogen is that it takes much more energy to produce than it ends up giving back when used.

Answer 6

My understanding, which may not be as complete as those of other answerers, is that we don't have hydrogen vehicles for two reasons.

First, we don't have a good, clean, efficient way to make large amounts of hydrogen yet.   Most of the hydrogen we do make is from fossil fuels - so there is no great environmental win there.   Or we use electricity (which in the US is often from coal or natural gas or nuclear energy) to make hydrogen - which really just STORES the energy that we made with coal or natural gas or nuclear energy.

The other problem is that we don't have a good delivery system yet.   There are three main energy delivery systems right now (excluding food) - the electricity lines, the natural gas lines, and the huge network of liquid fuel "gas" stations.   To provide hydrogen to cars in any practical way, we would need to convert literally hundreds of thousands of gas stations to dispense gaseous fuels.   And not just convert them, because all cars in the US would not change at once.   We would need to ADD gaseous fuel capabilty to these gas stations.

And, of course, we would need a whole new fleet of vehicles to accept hydrogen.     Although this would happen over time as cars wore out, it means that even if we mandated that every single car in the US took only hydrogen (can you see the congress going for that?) we would still need to provide both liquid fuels and gas for at least 10 to 15 years as the existing vehicles wear out.

In other words, we don't have a clean efficient way to get that much hydrogen and, even if we did, putting it into everyone's cars is a HUGE undertaking.

Great question.