Monday, August 17, 2009

Fuel of the future coming to Pittsburgh?


by Cylinsier

This coming week, Charleston WV will open its first hydrogen fueling station. The station will be located at Yeager Airport as part of a testing phase; the airport will also be receiving several hydrogen powered vehicles from the Department of Energy to use on the grounds. The station will be built in a fashion so that new parts and components can hopefully be easily interchanged to improve efficiency and cost as time goes one without having toe rebuild the entire thing from scratch.

This is big news for energy advocates looking for ways to get us off of oil. Hydrogen fuel is more readily available than fossil fuels and runs cleaner; the exhaust is water vapor. The idea behind the technology is that fuel cells and car engines that use them will eventually be able to efficiently run off of water, of which to the two main ingredients are hydrogen and oxygen. The car of the future could be attached to your garden hose! Then, the engine would separate the two elements and use the hydrogen to power the cell. The exhaust is water because there is some left over hydrogen which them recombines with oxygen; in this system the exhaust could potentially be redistributed back into the tank, adding a bit more efficiency.

Of course, this is a few decades off. For now, the efficiency of hydrogen vehicles is offset by the fossil fuel energy used to create the hydrogen. And hydrogen isn't cost efficient yet either, but its getting there. In fact, estimates are that a kilogram of hydrogen fuel would cost about five dollars. That's considered roughly the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. Consider that hydrogen cars actually run more efficiently than fossil fuel cars; they compare as high as 70 mpg. Suddenly, that makes $5 look more like $2. And if hydrogen fuel were government subsidized like gasoline is now...

The exciting part about this new station is its actually the first stage of a planned corridor of hydrogen ready highway that would lead from Charleston through Morgantown to Pittsburgh. That's I-79 if you're wondering. There is potential to take that corridor even further to either DC or New York, both already home to their own hydrogen stations. Again, that's a ways off, but it does sound promising for people in both the energy and environmental fields. It was disappointing to hear the Obama administration declare their intention to cut hydrogen fuel cell funding back in May, but at least the momentum for it didn't last long. And now we are seeing the Department of Energy taking a roll in furthering this promising technology. Its not a matter of if hydrogen becomes viable, its a matter of when.

My source on this story is here. It basically says the same as what I said here but with a little less conjecture and opinion. There was also a snippet about it on NPR over the weekend. Sphere: Related Content

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want a hydrogen car NOW!

-amom

Cylinsier said...

Heck yeah!

Ellipses said...

Hydrogen is cool and all... but I'd take an all-electric Nissan Leaf...

Cylinsier said...

A hydrogen car is an electric car; it just generates the electricity from a hydrogen cell, basically a battery that creates electric current from hydrogen, instead of your basic rechargeable battery.

Ellipses said...

Yeah... but I'd rather plug my car in like I do my iPhone...

At home.

With no pants on.

Drunk.

Instead of "filling up" at a convenience store :-)

The cost to plug in a chevy volt or a nissan leaf to fully charge the battery is like less than a dollar.

How much is hydrogen? What is the volume of the tank? How much electricity does one tank of hydrogen make?

Cylinsier said...

I said how much hydrogen costs and what kind of mpg comparison you'd be getting in the blog post. As for tank capacity, I guess that'll vary from car to car. As for plugging it in at home, why not fill it up with the garden hose at home? That's what a perfect hydrogen car will use; tap water.

Ellipses said...

Sorry, I interpreted a kilogram of hydrogen being equivalent to a gallon of gas to be something else... Does that mean you get 70 miles per kilogram? :-)

Also... I can see how you would fill up at a hydrogen filling station... but I don't see how you could fill up with water at home.

You would have to electrolocize the water to separate it first, which requires electricity... and then run it through the fuel cell to create electricity to move the car...

Which means you have to either get MORE electricity from the fuel cell than what you used to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water... and I mean a LOT more electricity... because water is heavy as hell... if you have a net gain of 10%, you have to haul around a shit-tonne of water with you

Cylinsier said...

Well maybe houses will have hydrogen fueling stations in their garages in the fuuuuuuuture?