Toyota has sold more than 50'000 Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.
These cars have the highest range 800km and do not suffer from the
winter dip of Li-ion battery power. Further a fuel cell produce still
50% heat for your car...
Currently we have 155 fuel stations in central Europe :: https://h2.live/
Toyota did even sell more fuel cells for stabilizing the Japanese grid.
The problems of Hydrogen are:
You have to compress it to 350 Bar - costs energy
You have to find an efficient electrolysis process (now soon close to 90%).
If you can do electrolysis under pressure then you get a pre-compression
of up to 10-20 Bar.
But wind turbines work for nothing for long periods so this in the best
case is a grid waste free energy deal!
J.W.
On 05.04.2022 21:13, David L. Babcock wrote:
Is anyone considering bottled hydrogen sold at gas stations? Was
surfing and saw a link about nearly indestructible plastic containers
for powering -I think it was- heavy construction equipment.
Think one gallon propane tanks. Available in many/most gas stations.
So neatly identical that you just swap an empty for a full, without
regard for either the brand of the tank or the brand of your auto.
Quite expensive compared to a propane tank because safety, but the
market is rapidly expandable. No pipelines, no underground tanks,
transport is by ordinary truck -not even tankers.
I imagine that four or six bottles might be needed for a fillup.
These same bottles would serve many of the other petrochemical
markets, replacing acetylene and propane for instance.
On Mon, Apr 4, 2022 at 3:40 PM Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
Prior to this there had been and remains a nascent movement
around the idea that hydrogen made from wind or solar was
going to be our savior on the energy front - despite the
intractable poor economics involved in the manufacture and
storage.
The economics are poor. I expect this technology will never catch
up with things like solar combined with battery storage. But I do
not know if the problems are "intractable." If we had no
alternatives, the problems might be tractable. But there is now no
economic incentive to solve these problems. In that sense,
hydrogen from solar or wind resembles concentrated solar power
systems, such as Ivanpah or SEGS in the U.S., and various
installations in Morocco and Spain. If the cost of PV solar had
not fallen so drastically, concentrated solar power might have
been competitive long enough to develop it and lower the cost. It
often happens that whatever technology shows up first wins the
competition just because it was first. This is known as
"incumbency." See p. 63:
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf
Hydrogen might have been used as a method of storing solar or wind
power. Or as a method of transporting energy via pipeline from low
population windy places such as North Dakota to population
centers. That might still happen, but I doubt it. I do not think
there is any chance that hydrogen will be used for transportation
with fuel cells. The Toyota Mirai car is an example of that
(https://www.toyota.com/mirai/). It will never work because you
would have to have hydrogen fuel stations everywhere. An electric
car can be charged at home. Or you can install a charger anywhere,
because electric power is available everywhere. But a hydrogen
powered vehicle must be refueled at a hydrogen gas station. It
would cost huge amounts to build enough hydrogen stations. I think
the era of chemically fueled ground transportation is rapidly
coming to an end. It will all be battery powered electric soon.
--
Jürg Wyttenbach
Bifangstr. 22
8910 Affoltern am Albis
+41 44 760 14 18
+41 79 246 36 06
