My last paying job was V.P. Of Engineering for Plug Power (Plug). We designed and manufactured fuel cell systems. They used hydrogen for fuel. I can tell all that are interested that it is a serious challenge to keep hydrogen captured. After all, it is the lightest molecule on the planet. Think triple o-ring every fitting.
One has to ask what the electricity from the hydrogen fueled fuel cell is being used for? Is it to charge batteries that actually power the vehicle? I’m intrigued by efforts to actually use hydrogen as the primary fuel for spark ignition engines. One additional comment; hydrogen fuel cells produce water. Water freezes in cold ambients. As I stated earlier, regulations are really failed designs. Just a few considerations. There are many, many more.
Very good points.
Hydrogen is the densest fuel we know of (most BTUs per pound/kg/unit of mass).
HOWEVER, it is also VERY hard to store SAFELY, very explosive (battery fires PALE in comparison), and it is difficult to produce in mass quantities.
The best production process we have found, the last time I looked into it, is electrolysis of water - to separate H2O into hydrogen and oxygen gases. As the name implies electrolysis uses electricity (a LOT of electricity) to break down the water into the two gasses, and unfortunately, it takes more electrical energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen than what you get back when you burn the hydrogen.
So you get back less usable energy from the hydrogen than what you put into producing it. That makes it a losing proposition. You can't beat the law of entropy. There's no free lunch.
As a car nut and an engineer I did a research paper on this topic of alternative fuels for my chemistry final, back when I was in college. I'm interested enough in the topic that I still try to keep up with the latest in the field.
The only really practical "clean" (non-fossil fuel) alternatives I found were ethanol and biodiesel
made from biomass WASTE (
NOT made from corn or canola, or any other food crops). Converting our FOOD into FUEL is also another losing proposition IMO.
Brazil is a good example of how it can be made to work. They produce ethanol from sugar cane waste, and sugar beet waste biomass. Their vehicles are properly tuned (high compression and fuel and ignition systems tuned for burning ethanol) so they can actually make an ICE engine run quite well and quite efficiently on straight ethanol. No fossil fuel required
Unfortunately, here in the good ol' USA, all of our ethanol production is geared towards using GRAIN (food) to make ethanol - that then gets added to our gasoline. Since the ICE engines in our cars are optimized more for petro-fuels, rather than straight ethanol, and we are producing what ethanol ICE fuels we do use from grain, it is actually more expensive than producing petroleum-based fuels. So we (taxpayers) have to subsidize the production of ethanol from grain crops.
But the special interests (ethanol producers, and petro-chemical giants) like it that way, and God forbid we would even consider upsetting their very profitable applecart! Especially when the bought-and-paid-for swamp creatures, the ones who make our laws and regulations, continue to promote subsidies that favor those special interests.
Until that changes we aren't likely to follow the Brazilian example of producing cheap ethanol and biodiesel from waste biomass any time soon. We'll continue to FORCE the impractical solution of EV's instead.
Follow the money. Every time. All the time.
