$2/kg hydrogen coming soon.

good thing natural gas is obtained so cleanly...

 

"Fool cell" fanboys and those promoting the "hydrogen economy" hoax always like to talk about some new process which will allow hydrogen to be generated cheaply. What they always ignore is that no matter how cheap it is to generate the hydrogen, that reduction in overall cost and energy will be insignificant because of all the money-wasting and energy-losing steps that hydrogen has to go through between being generated and being dispensed into a fool cell car's fuel tank.



As you can see from the above chart, if you start with renewable electricity from a power plant, then about 69% of that electricity is actually used by a battery-powered electric vehicle. By comparison, the massively inefficient process of generating, compressing, storing, transporting, re-storing, re-compressing and dispensing hydrogen into a fool cell car -- where it is burned at only ~50% efficiency -- results in the loss of about 3/4 or 4/5 of the energy it started with.

And that in a nutshell, gentle reader, is why neither you nor I will ever drive a hydrogen-powered car.

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Will reducing the price of generating hydrogen magically cause any reduction in energy necessary to compress it? Will someone wave their magic wand and cause the hydrogen molecule to become less pernicious, and something closer to being a practical fuel? Will a new process for generating hydrogen suddenly allow use of existing natural gas or oil pipelines for distribution of compressed H2? Will that new process magically remove the need for expensive high-pressure pumps at H2 filling stations?

No, nope, nyet, nada, ain't gonna happen.

Fool cell cars actually have an expiration date! They have a date on a sticker on the car saying "DO NOT REFILL AFTER..." a given date. That's because compressed hydrogen embrittles metals that it's in contact with. And that problem is also why any metal tanks or pipes in a H2 filling station will have to be replaced every few years, driving up the already ridiculously high price for building H2 filling stations even higher!

The only way to transform compressed hydrogen gas into a practical fuel would be to repeal the laws of physics. Good luck with that, fool cell fanboys!

* * * * *

Or, as one EV advocate joked:

Perhaps they could add a few extra steps:

1) Use the hydrogen in a fool cell to generate electricity
2) Use the electricity to electrolyze water to hydrogen and oxygen

Steps one and two can be repeated as many times as necessary to get to the desired level of inefficiency.​

-– John Hollenberg, comment at InsideEVs.com, September 24, 2015

 

What a very odd thing for you to say, after all those fool cell fanboy rants you posted just a couple of days ago, starting here:

https://insideevs.com/hyundai-shows-off-next-gen-fuel-cell-vehicle/#comment-1398567

I certainly am not going to delete any of the actual facts that I've posted refuting anyone's promotion of the "hydrogen economy" hoax. If you think this qualifies as abuse, you can use the "Report" button... just like I did yesterday in response to your extremely abusive and insulting posts in another discussion thread. Your abusive posts got removed by the moderator. Let's see if my factual ones do.

 

You mean "cite efficiency", not "site efficiency".

I'm certainly not one to claim that in this early stage of the EV revolution, a PEV (Plug-in EV) will fit everyone's life style. I have said many times that if you live where there is no reserved spot for you to park with a slow EV charger, then you shouldn't buy a PEV.

Not everyone agrees. I've gotten some arguments from apartment dwellers who think they should be able to use publicly accessible DCFC chargers to charge their car as needed.

Well, obviously I see things differently. First of all, who wants to spend hours every week waiting around for their car to charge... or arranging to get rides from that EV charger to their apartment, and then back again a few hours later? In the second place, public charging infrastructure should be used to supplement charging at home or work... not to replace it! Using public chargers for everyday charging would definitely be creating or adding greatly to the "Tragedy of the Commons" situation.
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But anyone can read those posts in context, along with the several EV-bashing FUD posts you wrote, which provoked my somewhat outraged responses:

https://insideevs.com/hyundai-shows-off-next-gen-fuel-cell-vehicle/#comment-1398567

You know, JyChevyVolt, when you post things which aren't true, you should try not to be so very obvious about it.
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If theyre able to get carbon fiber, carbon nanotubes from natural gas I think that's pretty damn cool. It says right in the article they want to sell the CF and CN to subsidize the pricey H.

Oil and gas can continue just digging and burning or they can try and adapt to new technologies. If they're going to adapt then that's good in my book. We need CF and CN for new tech like lighter and stronger cars. It also says it virtually eliminates the CO2 typically produced from the H conversion process.

We get CF, we get CN, and we get cleaner and cheaper H which goes into clean cars.

How is this bad??

 

I am strongly anti-FCV, but I have to admit that this is the best news I have read about low cost production of H2 because it does not emit CO2 as a by-product. Says this will bring it competitive with gas and diesel, still 2 to 3 times cost of electricity. My main beef remains, that is the taxpayer footing the bill for H2 infrastructure. If it was paid for by the oil companies (no more subsidy than for BEVs) I would applaud this news.

 

Doesn't say how efficient the process is. Needs to be more efficient than solar cells (17%) to be economically viable.

 

It's bad because it's just one more cynical attempt by Big Oil to promote the "hydrogen economy" hoax, the idea that hydrogen fuel could someday become a practical fuel. One of Big Oil's strategies in promoting the hoax is to keep up hope for some breakthru tech which will magically reduce the price of H2 to something reasonable.

I could explain at length just why this is both scientifically and economically impossible, but why repeat myself? I've laid it all out in detail in my essay "How to Promote the Hydrogen Economy Hoax".

 

They're doing the same in Germany. But let's be clear: This is not delivering hydrogen fuel. This is just diluting natural gas by adding a small fraction of hydrogen by volume. It's not like they can separate the H2 back out at the other end of the pipeline! But keep in mind that H2 is a very low-energy fuel by volume; that's why it has to be very highly compressed in FCEVs. So using H2 to dilute natural gas isn't replacing volumes of gas with equal energy content; it's lowering the energy content by volume. Essentially, it's diluting the value of the fuel.

But the key question here is: what volume of H2? What percentage of the natural gas in the pipeline is going to be replace with H2?

From the ITM Power website: "Injection of Hydrogen into the German Gas Distribution Grid"

Hmm, that article says it's limited to 2% by volume. If the percentage is that low, then it's not going to have much impact on anything at all, including greenhouse gas emissions... so why bother?

On the other hand, according to this (U.S.) NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) study:

"Blending Hydrogen into Natural Gas Pipeline Networks: A Review of Key Issues"

The study says "If implemented with relatively low concentrations, less than 5% –15% hydrogen by volume..."

If I was in the UK, then I'd certainly object to lowering the heating value of a cubic meter of gas by diluting it with between 5% to nearly 15% hydrogen! They pay for natural gas by volume in Britain, don't they? Pretty sure they do.
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