Why is every one so scared of having hydrogen tanks on there car. come on people wake up.?

Question

There are materials call Hydrides that absorb Hydrogen like a sponge absorbs water. Typically, the tanks are filled with granulated Hydrides, and Hydrogen is pressurized into the material. Hydrides have many advantages over liquid & gas. One is that the density of the Hydrogen stored in the Hydride can be GREATER than that of liquid Hydrogen. This translates directly into smaller and fewer storage tanks.

Once the Hydride is "charged" with Hydrogen, the Hydrogen becomes chemically bonded to the chemical. Even opening the tank, or cutting it in half will not release the Hydrogen gas. In addition, you could even fire incendiary bullets through the tank and the Hydride would only smolder like a cigarette. It is in fact, a safer storage system than your Gasoline tank is.

Then how do you get the Hydrogen back out? To release the Hydrogen gas from the Hydride, it simply needs to be heated. This is either done electrically, using the waste exhaust heat, or using the waste radiator coolant.

Answer 1

So, what do we use for fuel?

Answer 2

There are two factors here.

1.  The cost and the incorrection sttatment about hydride being more compressed than liquid hydrogen.  The amount of energy take to release H2 from Hydride is more than amount of energy need to release liquid hydrogen into gas form.  So, the cost of making hydride and cost of energy will be both prohibitive.

2.  You are only mentioned 1 part of the safety concern.  The other part is filling stations.  Do you trust your typical citizens or soccer moms handling the pumping?  Or are we going to pass a law to force full service on people like Oregon?  I worry about the leaking at the filling station where large explosion can happen.

Answer 3

Because people don't educate themselves on facts. I agree, Hydrogen is the key. But then the goverment and big auto, and big oil could not control you, and milk you out of every dime.

Answer 4

Wow..Amazing!

im givin this a star!

iHad no idea....im going to look more into this

Answer 5

Hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides does not have much energy density.  A conventional battery would store more energy by volume at a fraction of the cost of fuel cells and hydrides.

Answer 6

Indeed-this is what United Nuclear is planning.

I wonder what the energy density is for these tanks? would it exceed the energy density of gasoline?

To be a better option than gasoline, it would have to be cheaper (eventually), and it would have to have enough energy in roughly the same volume to compare to a gasoline engine.

One big strike against hydrogen as a fuel is delivery-there isn't a good delivery system in place to get the fuel to the consumer.

Ultimately, I think all-electric cars are a better option. The energy delivery system is already in place, and we are very close to achieving energy density that can compare to gasoline.

Additionally, we can get the energy for electric vehicles to solar, wind, geothermal or nuclear power. Much of the power for the US is currently provided by coal. Coal is dirty, but the good news is that it can be cleaned up some at the source, which is much easier than trying to clean up the energy production when it is distributed among millions of cars.

Do we have the will do make it happen? dunno.

Exxon probably wouldn't like it.

Answer 7

It's not exactly a bullet-proof technology.  Energy density isn't great; you can get a lot more hydrogen in a tank by just compressing it.  

The larger issue is where the hydrogen would come from.  There are no hydrogen wells, and the huge water electrolysis plants everyone envisions don't exist and would have some significant problems of their own.  Your welding-gas place can sell you hydrogen, but they get it from a carbon-black plant that heats natural gas until the carbon falls out, leaving the hydrogen.  It's a very energy-intensive process.

Answer 8

I gave you a star, too.  Does this mean that we can have another Hindenburg without the fire?  Or does this only work as a fuel?

Answer 9

Interesting choice of systems, at one time I was thinking exactly the same thing, but it is very expensive and heavy for transport and the heat required to release the H2 gas is relatively high (~800 deg if I recall correctly).  I agree you can get a lot of H2 in a small volume using metal hydrides, the problem is getting it back out.

The tank of choice seems to be carbon fiber; it will take the high pressures required to get the H2 to a density that is economical for transport and is still light weight.  Even if the tank or fittings leaked H2 won't explode below 4%, so just build coaxial tanks with an ignition system in the interspace, problem solved.

The fear of H2 is the same as during the change from wood to coal to oil to natural gas to nuclear: the devil you don't know (yet) is always worse.  It comes down to people's impression of "acceptable risk".  So long as the system is designed to handle the quantity of energy that could be released, the risk should be the same no matter what the fuel source.

Good question!

Answer 10

I'm not afraid of a hydrogen powered car blowing up if it were in an accident, I'm sure that they can make them safe enough to drive.  The only question is can they make them affordable enough to drive.  Right now they are just concept cars, nothing more.

The future of the automobile might very well be plug in electric hybrid cars.  GM has one coming out in 2010.  It charges the batteries by plugging into an outlet in your wall, and you can drive for about 40 miles before the gasoline engine kicks in.

Answer 11

And the cost?

If the fuel tank is more than the car, what have you accomplished?