Why do proponents of hydrogen fuel not support the use of methane for fuel?

Question

The criticism for the use of methane is that being a true gas, it has to be pressurized into fuel tanks and that is a slow process. Well, duh! Hydrogen is a true gas also, and presurizing it into fuel tanks also is slow.

Answer 1

In very simple terms: When you use Methane as a fuel it produces Carbon Dioxide, e.g, greenhouse gases.    When you use Hydrogen as a fuel it produces only water.   So looking at JUST THE VEHICLE it produces less pollution and no greenhouse gases.

The problem is that there is no natural source of Hydrogen.  Hydrogen should only be looked at as a storage technique for portable energy.   Producing Hydrogen takes lots of energy -- usually electricity produced by burning coal.  

Assuming we can replace coal fired electric plants with some sort of non-polluting renewable energy then we may have a good non-polluting system.

Answer 2

Methane is a different gas and will only compress like water, so the tank is large. They don't want to produce any CO2 which the plants need to live.

Answer 3

I'm wondering that, too. We have 2 natural gas-powered vehicles, made by Ford in 1999 and 2000, and we love them. The technology has been around for years, yet we never knew such vehicles even existed until 7 months ago. Using natural gas would be so much simpler than hydrogen, since hydrogen is often made using natural gas. So why not skip the step and just go with nat. gas? Our tanks are pressurized to 3000 psi and the other is 3600psi, but it only takes about 3 minutes to fill them at the station, so what's the problem? The cars are 99% cleaner than gasoline-powered cars, and the nat. gas is a mere 64 CENTS per gallon here in Utah. I have no idea why this is so slow to catch on, except that there aren't filling stations in every state. Many households use nat. gas for heating or cooking, so the gas is there and available. It really wouldn't take all that much to do the needed infrastructure. In the meantime, we're just going to enjoy the huge savings, and let the masses whine, I guess. They'll switch over when they've had enough.

Answer 4

Methane is also poisonous.

Answer 5

I strongly doubt that the requirement to pressurize methane is a significant concern with natural gas, methane.

It is part of the energy cost of methane or hydrogen, but it is a smaller cost with methane.

Rather, the objection to using methane as a source of hydrogen is that to get our hydrogen from the methane we have to burn off the carbon, to CO2. Now we could store hydrogen as ammonia, and release only nitrogen, which is not a GHG.

Using methane to create hydrogen gives us more energy from a given volume of methane than does the use of methane in an internal combustion engine.

However, high pressure hydrogen does use up a lot of energy in compression that will never be recovered.

Methane and ammonia make it easier to compress a given amount of energy into a tank of reasonable size. Ammonia will allow more energy per litre, and only a bit less energy per kg.

THe difficulty with methane is getting the carbon back to add hydrogen to it. Ammonia needs only readily available nitrogen. or we have to use up natural gas, coal gas, wood gas, or bio-gas.

Answer 6

I would think most "proponents" would have to choose one or the other because an "agenda" doesn't have room for both.

Also, I think methane is a bulkier material.  It has more mass and would thus require more space to carry.  In looking for alternative fuel, you dont want to have to carry a fuel tank the size of your car.

Answer 7

Pound for pound, hydrogen contains almost three times as much energy as natural gas, and when consumed its only emission is pure, plain water. But unlike oil and gas, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a way of storing or transporting energy. You have to make it before you can use it — generally by extracting hydrogen from fossil fuels, or by using electricity to split it from water.  Love honey

Answer 8

For the same reason some people like to say tomAHto instead of tomAto.   If I think saying tomAHto is the correct way, why would I support people saying tomAto?

Answer 9

Because they do not know that hydrogen is better as a fuel transporter, not as a fuel source.  They've been too lazy to find-out how hydrogen is produced and needs to be stored.  They've been duped into believing hydrogen can be 'easily' extracted from water thru electrolysis.

In other words, they're being stupid.

All hydrogen on earth is oxided, or bound to oxygen atoms.  That hydrogen is useless to us for fuel.  Hydrogen is best extracted from natural gas. For freed hydrogen to travel in a fuel delivery system it has to be carried by a gas, like methane.  And in that case the natural gas itself would be a better engine fuel.

The only non-oxidized hydrogen in nature exists on the surface of stars.  You they don't know to figure that.