Hydrogen infrastructure?

Question

What are some issues holding back Hydrogen and fuel cells, is it mostly because electrolysis is done with mostly by fossil fuels?, will we ever see hydrogen pumps at current locations?

Answer 1

You can do a Google search for hydrogen fueling stations and find them spreed out across the U S.

Honda is promoting hydrogen generators operated on natural gas from the home, or larger commercial units.

but in many instances they are suppose to release the same amount of hydrocarbons in the process as the burning of fossil fuels.

I think that the better idea is to look for better advancements in battery technology.

Answer 2

I wrote a wiki article on the subject (see link below).  One issue as you note is that most of our hydrogen (96%) comes from fossil fuels.  Another is that there's no infrastructure to transport and store the hydrogen.  Another is that fuel cells are incredibly expensive, partially because they currently require platinum.  Another is that they're simply less efficient than electric cars.  See the article for further details.

Answer 3

Well actually most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of methane not electrolysis (though electrolysis using fossil fuel generated electricity is likely to be worse, use a nuclear power plant though and it would be environmentally acceptable).

Whether electrolysis will be cheap enough to do the job is not known, it probably could be with cheap off-peak electricity from nuclear power plants (where it doesn't really cost any extra to just run at full power all the time), the sulphur-iodine cycle with a Gen IV reactor looks promising as a cheaper clean way to produce hydrogen.

Then once you've got production set up you have to get the hydrogen to the cars which means pipelines and tankers along with refitting all the service stations to have hydrogen pumps.

Then you need to replace all the cars with hydrogen cars, either internal combustion engines burning H2 or fuel cells.  This isn't the kind of change you'd expect to see happen quickly.  Starts to make synthetic hydrocarbons look like a better solution.

Answer 4

hydrogen is not a fuel, its a energy storage system, a battery, and an inefficient battery at that.

H2 will explode with anything from 5% AIR TO 95% AIR MIXTURE.  Hydrocarbons like gasoline, diesel, and propane only explode between 3% to 15%, so a small leak of H2 becomes very dangerous.

As for gas H2 being safer, no way, since only gas can burn or explode, liquid H2 is equally as dangerous.

Answer 5

Hydrogen is very dangerous ... To drive around with 10 gal liquid hydrogen is like driving a bomb. Gas hydrogen is almost as dangerous.The atoms are so small that it will leak through most hoses . This presents an explosive problem...

   I have thought about it and the only solution is a hydrogen generator ,so U would not have that much gas at any one time...

Answer 6

Good answers prior to mine. I'm for an alternative that's easier to deal with than hydrogen - natural gas (methane). I have 2 cars that run on it already. Skip the extra steps needed to make hydrogen (which uses natural gas, by the way), and just use the natural gas! Much easier, much cheaper, and it is compressed to a lower psi than hydrogen has to be. Nat. gas is also a lot easier on engines, while hydrogen destroys regular engines that aren't highly modified to accept it. Natural gas is also widely available since many homes are heated with it; but there aren't a lot of filling stations that have it yet. Check out my sources below for more info.