Why can't we switch to hydrogen???

Question

Why is the government not forcing automobile makers and the oil industry to switch to hydrogen production. With all the melting polar caps we are going to have too much water anyway, lets burn the stuff. Plus wouldn't be nice to have a home solar powered hydrogen producer in your garage. Combustion engines will run on hydrogen so I am sure that with a few minor modifications to the delivery system they would be fine!!! Last I checked we had plenty of H2O.

Answer 1

That would be wonderful ----------but who than will make The Money thats what its all about

Answer 2

When hidrogen burns,hot steam of water comes out.

Unusable in urban environment.

within 2 yrs the entire population would suffer painful rheumatic arthritis, wintertime even the highways would be covered by ice evenly.

Answer 3

Because you can’t make enough hydrogen to meet your daily transportation needs. You could charge a battery pack with solar power and meet your daily needs but you’d have to buy a electric car to do so.

Using solar power to make hydrogen is very inefficient way to use your solar power. You only get back 66% of your energy then you run it through an inter-combustion engine that at best get back only 37% of your energy;  in total you’d get back about 25% of your solar power.

So you’d have to buy hydrogen on the open market and that would drive the price of hydrogen way up, and most hydrogen isn’t made in a clean way so more pollution.

Answer 4

Actually, Honda is making a hydrogen-powered car.  Check it out on their site.

Answer 5

Isn't hydrogen unstable and explosive? What would happen if %50 of the time someone got into a crash their car exploded? How are you planning on making affordable solar panles to create the hydrogen? Have you looked at the price of solar panles? They are really expensive and a lot of work to maintain. Also, you can't use slatwater to make hydrogen without purifying it first. That extra step could add tons of energy useage and filters to replace. There isn't a lot of fresh water...I also agree with what the other person said- the government can't force the oil companies to do anything.

Answer 6

We actually do not have plenty of water...fresh that is.  If you wanted to use desalinized water what long term and immediate effects would that have on our oceans?  Everything has repurcussions that must be considered.  The question is why are we not using clean energy such as solar to power our cars.  Our technological capabilities are out of this world it is just a matter of getting lobbyists and big business out of our governments officials pockets.

Answer 7

umm..H20 is water, not Hydrogen. In order to produce Hydrogen you have to use Natural Gas. In order to produce enough Hydrogen to power vehiles you have to have infrastructure...which we currently don't have.  H20 is actually the only byproduct from burning Hydrogen so we'd actually be adding H20 to the environment.  

That being said, yes it would be nice but I'm sure the Governement is concerned with making Oil Companies and Power Companies obsolete with our home Hydrogen generators seing as how luctrative the taxes on electricity and oil are to government.

Answer 8

Several reasons.

1) Where to get the hydrogen.

2) No hydrogen transportation and storate infrastructure.

3) Fuel cells use platinum and thus are extremely expensive.

See the link below for further details.

Answer 9

Where to start with this one! For starters the government can't force them to change their product, they're a company making a TON of money, and have a lot of power and control. Secondly, the government doesn't need to push for hydrogen cars. Automobile makers have already produced full blown models, and cars that run with fill-up stations in NY and CA. Getting the hydrogen to power the vehicles isn't the issue when it comes to hydrogen powered cars anyways. The price to fill up the tank in the car would be much cheaper than the price of gasoline, however the cell that powers the motor is EXTREMELY expensive. I believe I read that it was around $20,000 and would need to be replaced within 10-20 years of purchasing the car.

Answer 10

First of all, the government is not and cannot force the oil and automobile companies to switch to hydrogen, we a democracy, not a communist dictatorship. We do not have the infrastructure yet. It would take all new fuel stations, new car designs, new hydrogen plants and so on. We cannot currently make hydrogen and ship it in large enough quantities to be the primary fuel. Gasoline vapor is dense, hydrogen is not. Therefore, hydrogen would not work as well as gasoline in converted engines. It also takes large amounts of energy to make hydrogen. The refueling process would also require everyone in the nation to convert their entire fuel system in their car and relearn how to pump fuel (as hydrogen would need to be pumped at incredibly low temperatures at high pressure). We have people who can barley pump gas, let alone hydrogen. It it were economical and they thought they could make a profit, car and fuel companies would have done it already.

Answer 11

well i think its a good idea to switch but think about it. everyone would need to buy a new car and the people who are poor might of just gotten a new car and were able to get to work until  now. what if we changed to corn we would destroy even MORE habitat for places to grow it. i think the best way is (the government might lose money)the government to give every one something to hook onto their car the uses the suns energy.

Hey in our science class i think they said if all the water was in a 2 Lt only 2 drops would be fresh water.

Answer 12

Hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it can create.  Fuel cells are incredibly expensive and the only other option is to use it in an internal combustion engine which is inefficient.  Hydrogen has the tendency to leak out of the container it is in.

Answer 13

well there is a big reason why we dont have more effective electric and why there hasnt been any good progress with hydrogen cars. car manufacturers are buying up patents from inventors of these more effective vehichles.  if you ever get a chance watch green machine, they have so very high powered fast machines that run on next to nothing with electricity.  but when they try to go to market who is gonna turn down a huge check from an auto manufactuer.

Answer 14

Better still, why doesn't everyone just cut back until we hit the oil companies below the belt (in their back pocket). Public transportation, one car per household, all that stuff.

I remember growing up in the 60's if my mother wanted to have the car for the day, she had to get up and take my dad to work. It was a treat for us kids to know we got to have the car! Too many households with too many vehicles. We are selfish, spoiled Americans.

Answer 15

You're assuming that it would be a simple matter to produce hydrogen by means of electrolysis of water.  But it isn't.  The process would have to be undertaken on a very large scale at the power plants, and would have serious safety and environmental implications.  For one thing, electrodes have to be platinum or else be replaced very often, which isn't so cheap.  The chances of explosion in dealing with the gases is very high. And you have to add salts to the water to make it conductive enough so your electrolyzing plant doesn't simply make hot water.  This means that you're also producing free halogens like chlorine, and nifty bases like sodium hydroxide, and these must be dealt with.  

Very simply, large-scale hydrogen plants don't exist, and are unlikely to: nobody likes to handle the stuff much.  It's not such a great fuel, anyway: you have to move a lot of it because its enery content is so low.  

You're correct that you're better off without fuel cells: those have been another great source of hokum.  And of course there's hardly a problem with the water supply: hydrogen-burning vehicles produce water vapor, which comes back as rain.

Answer 16

First of all, the government can't force the industry to do anything easily.  Infringing on the freedom if a corporate entity is much harder than infringing on the freedom of the citizen, keep in mind...  I have a solar powered water electrolyzer in my garage, and I AM making a pretty profit from it.  I am also selling the power I create back to the Utility company, under the guise of straight solar.  See, it's still illegal to keep that much Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen tanked where I live, without a permit, which I don't have.  LOL

          I am producing 80KW surplus with only one $4800 fuel stack, free solar energy, and tap water (with KOH added).  As it is, my electrolyzer processes about 5.3 gallons of water an hour, and I end up with such a large surplus that I end up having to sell allot of it to a local welding supply store nearby.  Luckily, they don't ask me where I get it, as it's a money maker for them.  They pay me about half of what they pay the company that normally supplies them, poffseting some of their operating costs.

          Also remember that many oil companies are pushing for Natural Gas reformation for Hydrogen production, as they already have LNG.  But that's Hydrocarbon use - in my book, the worng route.  HTE with a fission reactor is clean, and Areva is planning just that, so if other companies like Areva follow suit, we might be looking at a change in the balance of power in the energy industry.  Areva's EPRs are very clean reactors, and if we begin using Europe's method for spent fuel reprocessing, we'll decrease our nuclear waste output by about 98%.  At the same time, the plant would be used for comercial Hydrogen production in tandem.  Clean clean clean.  Eventually, ITER and DEMO will be completed, and decades from now, Fusion will be a comercially viable process (occuring in nature, actually.  Look at the sun, you're looking as a huge fusion reaction.  Simple.), and all our energy woes will dissapear, maybe.  Actually, one of the most succesfull fusion reactors to date used hydrogen as it's fuel.  Deuterium and Tritium are isotopes of Hydrogen.

          Hey, Hydrogen is the most abundant element that we simple humans know of.  It has allot of potential energy as well, and it stable.  Don't worry, it will happen, even if not by choice (given the oil crisis, and the lack of other feasible alternatives).  Some of these people who answered you are sort of like the kooks who scream foul when a new Nuclear power plant is assembled in their state.  Though, we don't recycle and reuse our waste, because we are stupid Americans, so I can understand people not wanting it dumped near their home...  The rest can be incinerated using Plasma Arc Incinerators, and reduced to a fraction of it's mass for storage.  Glass pellets, that's all that would be left to store.  No more of this Yucca Mountain nonesense.  They built that place on a fault line, anyways.  Hydrogen is the only answer, just as Nuclear power is the only answer, at least for right now.  Storing Hydrogen is a bit tricky though, I think I should mention that.  My tanks are storing liquid hydrogen at extremely sub-zero temperatures.  But the technology is sound, and will improve with time, if we make an effort to improve it.  Otherwise, it will be just like Fusion power; technology that was invented in the 50's (look up TOKOMAK), but which we "took our sweet time" researching.  The bush administration zeroed our funding for ITER this last year...I guess the money was "needed elsewhere", see?  Probably the war effort...

          By the way, have you read about the Honda FCX Clarity?  68 miles per gallon, with a 270-mile range, and a top speed of 120-130 mph.  Water is the only thing that leaves that tail-pipe.  Beautiful.  Leave it to Honda to be the first with a production-ready power cell car.  They're leasing about 100 of them in CA right now, as part of a test program.  And that car's powerplant will only get better...I mean, it's worlds better than the first FCX they built, lol.  Ugly thing, that one was.

Answer 17

Its volatile and no we done have plenty of water in the world it will actually run out if we don't do something about the fresh drinking water .. plus its expensive and we should  be burning stuff that gets dumped in chemical waste plants like the cooking oil people use that would be a better alternative especially considering all the fast food places in America alone...tons of people out there have converted there tanks to take grease and its basically free and harmless when it burns off in the environment ........