What is Digg?441 Comments
- krische, on 06/16/2008, -17/+145The question I'm concerned about is where do we get the hydrogen from? And how environmentally friendly is harvesting hydrogen?
- TheAngryMob, on 06/16/2008, -3/+127I wonder if the license plate HNDNBRG is taken in my state? You know, just for fun.
- doctechnical, on 06/16/2008, -3/+65Nuclear energy. Makes your toast, recharges your car, and cracks hydrogen too.
- randomvictim, on 06/16/2008, -10/+54BMW has been ready to go full production of hydrogen cars for 10 years, why mass produce it if there is no demand or infrastructure to support them?
- FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -3/+40I think you're right - nuclear energy might be the way to go after all. We can make safe plants... we just need to stop people from being scared of it.
- thorseth, on 06/16/2008, -2/+39Why build a infrastructure if there are no cars? Circular argument. When the price of a hydrogen kilometer drops under a gas kilometer the customers will be there.
- schure1, on 06/16/2008, -4/+39Although there are no hydrogen fueling stations as of yet, it is possible to create a fueling station from a household water supply and some solar panels. This is very simple in concept and would only require a small initial investment.
Water exists as H2O. If you remember from high school science class (and weren't falling asleep), you can split water into H2 and O2 very simply by applying an electrical current (electrolysis) to the water. It is then possible to capture the H2, compress, store and use this H2 supply to fuel a fuel cell car. While you don't really need the solar panels, they make for a H2 generating source that has zero carbon footprint.
It is even possible to set up one of these systems to power your house, block, community, business, whatever via fuel cell.
Voila! Change the world people! ... kgo! - fracktica, on 06/16/2008, -3/+31What about solar/wind powered electrolysis? Too impractical?
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 06/16/2008, -3/+30Water vapor condenses and falls as precipitation. Uh oh, you'd better stop the sun from shining on the ocean! It's releasing tons of greenhouse gases!
- doctechnical, on 06/16/2008, -2/+25Not to mention it's a bear to store. It really, really wants to get out of whatever you put it in.
- dimplemonkey, on 06/16/2008, -4/+24Meanwhile GM states that their SUVs "go to eleven"
- hexydes, on 06/16/2008, -4/+23Because Honda has proven time and again that they don't mind sticking their neck out there and taking chances to be a leader in their industry. It's that very reason that they have the highest-rated cars for over two decades, as well as some of the best-selling cars in America (and the world).
Perhaps if the US auto industry wasn't such a bunch of pussies, and actually tried to innovate, rather than sell on history and status quo, they wouldn't be in the mess that they are in now (well, and solved the problem of unions, but that's a whole other can of worms). - NonServium, on 06/16/2008, -0/+19You get the hydrogen through a process known as electrolysis. Electrolysis is very simple. Fill a container with water. Put a couple wires in the water and run electricity through them. The water converts to hydrogen and oxygen as a result. Since hydrogen weighs less than oxygen, one simple way to catch it is to just keep the container closed and have a tank attached to the top. The hydrogen will float upward into the tank, while the oxygen will remain in the original container.
As far as how environmentally friendly this is, there is nothing about electrolysis itself that is harmful to the environment. The question is, how is the electricity to do this produced. And that can be done using either environmentally unfriendly ways such as burning fossil fuels, or by using green power sources like the sun, wind, running water, etc.
As far as the cost, folks with a small investment of $80 or so you'll be able to buy all the equipment needed to make your own hydrogen in your kitchen and after that all you need to pay for is the water, (and electricity if you still haven't set yourself up to get it for free). - albrad84, on 06/16/2008, -3/+20"Expensive how exactly? We aren't paying for the wind or solar power."
Right, because the solar panels and windmills simply build themselves at no cost.... - gn0stik, on 06/16/2008, -1/+18A few years ago I would have not have dugg this comment, however with new reactor types, and better ways to use the waste products, etc. I have to agree now. Nuclear energy is not what it used to be.
Gotta love those pebble-bed reactors. - aegis9975, on 06/16/2008, -0/+15Honda designed a home-hydrogen refueling station that fits into your garage and also acts as your water heater. It uses natural gas from your gas line, and converts it into hydrogen. It gets the equivalent getting 68 mpg using hydrogen this way.
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/nov2007/ ... - spinur, on 06/16/2008, -1/+15Hydrogen fuel cells are basically a highly efficient battery. They are therefore only as clean and efficient as the electricity used to produce the hydrogen is. That said, even a coal fired powerplant gets way better efficiency than an internal combustion engine. If you move to zero emission generation technologies like nuclear, wind, solar, or tidal, then you've got a truly zero emission system.
I seem to recall that Honda at one point wanted to market this car with a home hydrogen generator that would double as a home fuel cell, to allow you to generate hydrogen when electricity is cheap and then use hydrogen to reduce your electricity use when it's more expensive, in addition to supplying hydrogen to the car.
Hydrogen storage is much much safer than it ever was. We're more than 70 years past the Hindenburg disaster, and the biggest thing we've learned? Don't store hydrogen in a highly flammable container. That's right, the Hindenburg was covered with a highly flammable fabric. There are now hundreds of fuel cell buses on the road across North America and to my knowledge not a single one of them has had a hydrogen explosion. Why in God's name would you want to transport hydrogen when you can generate it on demand from water and electricity. This is the approach taken by the hydrogen filling stations in Iceland. We're actually pretty good at transporting electricity and water.
Brilliant plan. I hope they manage to pull it off. I'd be willing to have an around town car that I could fill at home, or even a neighbor's house, eventually. - mmijatov, on 06/16/2008, -4/+1775% of the Universe is hydrogen . . . shouldn't it be easy to obtain it in a usable form?
- manstein01, on 06/16/2008, -7/+20We can do it an environmentally friendly way, the real pink elephant in the room is that hydrogen is tremendously expensive to extract/refine.
- NonServium, on 06/16/2008, -0/+13The hydrogen fuel cell is a type of battery. It requires the proper reaction to release the energy stored in it. The same is true of every other battery.
- Harabeck, on 06/16/2008, -2/+14Too bad were not in the middle of a nebula. There is hardly any pure Hydrogen on Earth.
- gn0stik, on 06/16/2008, -0/+12Except in places that are powered by hydro, wind, nuclear, or solar. I live in Washington state, which uses only 10% coal, and 8% nuclear for power generation, which is completely unnecessary, since we typically use about 25% less electricity than we generate. There are plans to utilize high winds in easter Washington, and tidal in areas of western Washington, to close the gap. We also use biomass, and landfill gasses for a low percentage. It's getting better all the time, and states that are high on the self-sustainability factor are poised fairly well to do electrolysis in a way that does not shift the carbon debt to production.
Improvements are being made all the time to hydrolysis techniques, and hydrogen storage. Just because there are problems with it now, does not mean we shouldn't be developing it. As we move more and more toward clean power generation, it becomes more and more feasible.
Also, the byproducts of SMR (steam methane reformation) are recycled, so although it is true that Methane is worse than carbon, it's reused, and burned, so... not as bad as you think it is.
It's a logical fallacy to assume that just because it's not all that feasible now, that it never will be. - blooby, on 06/16/2008, -0/+11Well the first paragraph was ok
- slvrbullet87, on 06/16/2008, -0/+10Yucca mountain + salt, also we have alot less waste than you think, since they messure it by weight not volume. Since these are very heavy metals they have huge weights by volume
- helooksmortal, on 06/16/2008, -3/+13i always see these hydrogen vehicle articles popping up on the front page of digg like they're so wonderful... then i always post the same thing after reading comments on how great it is, how it's the answer to our fuel problems.
it currently takes the consumption of fossil fuels and electricity to create hydrogen as a fuel. hydrogen is not the answer right now... - had3l, on 06/16/2008, -0/+10Hydrogen would work great in a place like Iceland, where they have all the energy they could ever want from geothermal sources.
- inactive, on 06/16/2008, -0/+10There is a hydrogen fueling station in my town.
- zSlider, on 06/16/2008, -1/+10Or.... it can take running water through a dam....or...it can take wind blowing through some blades...or...it can take the harnessing the power of the atom....or....
See? More than just fossil fuels can generate the energy to make hydrogen, right now.
Plus will be easier in the future to switch power plants to newer cleaner power sources, that to switch the all the cars. But first we need all the cars to run on something clean that can be generated from multiple means (electric, Hydrogen). - biggbear, on 06/16/2008, -1/+10It takes more energy to split water by electrolysis than you get back from the H2 gas. Using electrolysis to produce H2 gas is a waste of energy. As helooksmortal points out above, fossil fuel consumption is the only efficient method of producing H2 gas. H2 is not the answer. Fuel cells have applications, but they are not the solution to the energy crisis.
- doctechnical, on 06/16/2008, -1/+9I'd like to see some numbers on the square meters of solar panels per cubic meters of hydrogen generated. It may no be such a great plan if I need an acre of cells to drive the car.
- Visual77, on 06/16/2008, -0/+8Feels like object oriented programming.
Rather than placing all the power sources in the end object, group them in the source class. This way, if you need to make a sudden change, you change it in one place and everything transitions smoothly.
I don't know why I commented with this. - stayputnik, on 06/16/2008, -1/+9except we still don't know what to do with the thousands of barrels of nuclear waste that will be harmful for the next 100,000 years.
- tushyd, on 06/16/2008, -1/+9fracktica, why would you convert energy twice? Every time you convert the energy you lose energy, thermodynamics in action. First you convert it from wind to electricity, then from electricity to hydrogen. Just keep it in batteries and w'ere all good.
- goyney, on 06/16/2008, -11/+19Energy inefficient electrolysis and fossil fuels. Hydrogen is not much better than using gasoline.
- iguanapunk, on 06/16/2008, -5/+13This is great, until a new study finds that to much water in the air caused by the hydrogen engine output will cause the end of mankind because humans are already composed of mainly water and adding more water to the equation means we will eventually become fish. Backwards evolution people, you heard it here first.
- derek20la, on 06/16/2008, -1/+9exactly. hydrogen is a CARRIER of energy, not a source.
- p3ngwin, on 06/16/2008, -0/+8EVERYTHING in this universe is a form of energy and an opportunity exists to harness that energy for those that have the ingenuity.
you can convert ANYTHING into ANYTHING, it's simply a matter of time and energy to do so. - Schrodinger2, on 06/16/2008, -0/+8It's the early adoption fee. You don't even get to keep the car at the end of the 3 years, but it's cost them millions of dollars to develop and produce these cars which wont show a profit for years and they're the critical first step. Once this takes off the price will surely drop.
- bwa236, on 06/16/2008, -0/+7dihydrogen monoxide! RUN!!!
- nova20, on 06/16/2008, -1/+875% of the Universe is hydrogen... but it's trapped in things like water, oil, etc, and it requires a *lot* of energy to separate it out.
So yeah, this vehicle may be "three times more efficient", but the energy requirements behind the scenes are enormous. If you're worried about energy usage, stick with your Geo Metro. - lazn, on 06/16/2008, -3/+10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
"Hydrogen has been called the least efficient and most expensive possible replacement for gasoline (petrol)." - digitizit, on 06/16/2008, -4/+11For the love of God, please don't associate Al Gore with Tennessee anymore. We have disowned him and kicked him out.
- jeffhansen, on 06/16/2008, -0/+7yes, canvas gas tanks would be not be good.
- thorseth, on 06/16/2008, -0/+7...or windmills or solar power or nuclear... if not now (4-5$/gal) when?
- Amazetbm, on 06/16/2008, -0/+7There is always nuclear. You have negligible greenhouse emissions when generating power from nuclear plants.
- jblen, on 06/16/2008, -0/+7Going out on a limb here but Isn't the expensive part the process and not the water?
- ljkelley, on 06/16/2008, -2/+8*****. Commercial Production does not equal 200 cars. Mercedes made over 100 A Class F-Cells just for testing purposes.
- bhavinp, on 06/16/2008, -2/+8I like how it looks like a normal car rather than something from jetsons with wheels.
- ZenMojo, on 06/16/2008, -0/+6Actually, if you had been paying attention to digg this year, Honda has already developed a home system that runs on natural gas. The centralized system powers your home and natural degradation of the gas creates hydrogen that floats to the top. Skim it off, plug in your car, drive away.
They're on the ball. - ZenMojo, on 06/16/2008, -0/+6*Brought to you by the Oil and Gas companies.
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