US Automakers Take Babysteps into the Hydrogen Economy

The snout in the trough actions of the US car makers are international. In Australia both Ford and GM recieved $50 million in federal funding to develop their "new" models. Read change the grille and stop threatening to close up shop for another year. These are not the first of these kind of subsidies. Both the Falcon and Holden are inferior cars to the locally produced Mitsubishi and Toyota products. A locally developed Holden Hybrid was abandoned some years ago. The latest model Holden is available for export to Brazil as a high ethanol blend variant. Is that variant available to Australians? No way. Instead of using ethanol for all the good reasons that each of know about, our clever politicians have decided to increase LPG use. Considering the cost to domestic comsumers of this product is much higher than unleaded petrol even with 80% petrol tax added, how can this largesse be justified. When questioned about the excessive price of the gas Origin Energy quote worldwide shortages and high North American prices. Now of course the Federal Government claim there is a huge excess of it, and are handing out taxpayer funded subsidies to convert Ford and GM control the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport to such a degree that saloon car racing is a two horse event. Only Holdens and Falcons fitted with obsolete US V8 engines are allowed to race, that's right push rods. The fix is so blatent that the "cars" now have many common components, supposedly to keep down costs. The four local manufacturers all produce six cylinder cars, but they are prevented from racing. Racing in Australia is clearly a marketting tool not a development tool and team Corporate USA is in control. As for Hydrogen, the infrastructure to produce, distribute and utilise various alcohols exists in virtually all countries. Brazil have proven the viability of Ethanol. The Oil companies will use every trick in the book to prevent wide scale adoption of alcohols, not only for the loss of Motor Spirit sales, but the competition as a chemical feedstock. Alcohol makes sense for fuel cells from a safety standpoint alone. Biodiesel is viable right now, if Germany can produce 13% of its diesel needs just from land which has been subsidised out of production, the potential is enormous.

While H2 combustion is clean, the fueling infrastructure is not. Even granting a clean, emission-free process for fuel creation (nuclear? solar?), the loss of hydrogen to the atmosphere in the necessarily large commercial volumes may be a significant issue. Hydrogen will naturally head to the upper atmosphere, where it breaks down ozone. Are we trading a post-combustion emission problem for a pre-combustion one?

My thoughts may be naive (and some of my best are), but since electricity is used to generate hydrogen, wouldn't it make the most sense to generate it on-site, at existing fuel stations? If I'm right, the "delivery" of hydrogen to these stations would be unnecessary, as the electrical grid already exists, and all that needs to be focused on is development of efficient, safe, stand-alone hydrogen generation and compression units (perhaps even home units). And if the hydrogen production took place during off-peak hours, our existing and future electricity supplies would be much more effectively used. Then all we have to focus on is efficient and environmentally-friendly electricity production. I'm sure that ethanol, biodiesel, etc. could produce energy in a large scale electrical generation plant, cleaner and more efficiently than in individual vehicles. But when all this is said and done, why not electric cars, as it would seem to remove so many in-between steps? I guess it comes back full circle to the resistance and conspiracy of the status quo (oil & gas, automotive, etc.)

As per a previous post on CR4 in Sydney Australia electricity is now cheaper than petrol. I have also been looking at the extraordinary lengths that oil companies are going to in the search of more oil. How many $1,000,000,000 plus oil rigs are there in the Gulf of Mexico. When you look at the effort and money invested in developing a single oil platform it makes the amount of money that we are spending or research into alternative energy sources pathetic. What is going on? Art the executives of oil companies to spineless to look at other ways of making money or are the all conspiring together to keep us subservient to them? I hope its just that they are too gutless to look at alternatives!

In response to your proposal to generate hydrogen at individual location you may be surprised how much energy is lost to the power distribution grid. I remember reading proposal many years ago that put forward a plan to transfer energy by separating hydrogen from water then pump it through a pipeline and use fuel cells at the far end to generate electricity. I cant remember what distance at which the hydrogen became more efficient but it wasn't that great

I agree, electrical power tranmission losses are surprisingly high: typicaly 8-9%. [That, plus the parasitic losses in the plant (4-5% I think) and the ordinary low efficiency of generating via steam turbines makes electric cars less of a great efficiency/ecology deal than they might appear at first. At least for now -- eventually I hope there will more wind, solar, bio, etc.]

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think the hydrogen economy push is there to SUSTAIN our dependence on oil. The likelihood of converting to hydrogen anytime soon (next 30-40 years, anyway) is very, very remote: there are incredible technical obstacles. On the other hand, if there were a push for much higher fuel efficiency, we could be cutting our dependence on oil dramatically and quickly. That would mean lower short term profits for the oil companies. Fortunately there's the Automotive X Prize, which could help turn the tide.

coal gas has 50% hydrogen. Please let me know how to clean the producer gas and if hydrogen can be used for fuel or any other industrial application

REgards

Kapoor

Hi

I want to tell you that clean fuel is not so clean and watch out for Hydrogen and Nitrogen reaction product Hydrazine produced by leaked hydrogen in air. It is toxic and can cause cancer. More Hydrogen leak more Hydrazine and more cancer.

Our body is a chemical machine and it some how does not like many other chemicals in the atomosphere. Keep the air clean or else look for dooms day sooner.

Shyam

Business schools are teaching today that controlled introduction of new technolgoy industry wide is a good thing. Also no new technology should be sold until the old technology has reached it's level of maturity and sales begin to decline sharply. In other words stop buying new vechiles till the give us what we desire. Sales are what they are after not retooling and things being as they are I dont expect to see vechiles totally free of fossil fuel oil in my lifetime.