Honda unveils a solar-powered hydrogen generating station for refuelling your hydrogen car at home. According to Honda, this will produce enough hydrogen "for the average daily commute".Considering the amount of sunshine Chez Szondy gets, that sounds about right. Mind you, I work at home and my commute means getting from the bedroom to the office by way of the tea kettle. On the other hand, if your commute involves actually getting out of the drive...
6 comments:
I may have to relinquish my "planet haters" club card, I actually like this sort of thing.
Not the solar bit, that's stupid, particularly when there's perfectly good electricity right there in my wall that could break down water.
There's a sweet irony that has to be coming in the hydrogen business, while the greenies are screaming for it because it doesn't really work right now, sometime someone will sort it out and then the outcry will be against "Big Water" and the awful destruction being wrought by all that hazardous moisture being expelled.
Once the fuel cell thing is humming along I will no longer have to choose from pint sized go carts and will be able to buy a car the size of a 59 Lincoln.
Big cars and fuming lefties, it's win-win for me.
Well... I wouldn't want to get into the middle of the water fight that'd ensue in the U.S. southwest if hydrogen fuel cells and their requisite water electrolysis fuel generators took off in a big way. It's bad enough right now with city, industrial, and agricultural users vying against each other for it. Add in using it as a fuel base and things will get real ugly, real fast. It's an even worse idea than turning corn into ethanol for fuel.
If you are talking about the industrial use of aquifer water, then I agree. There's a paper mill that's been sucking the aquifer to death for years around here, right next to a major river that seems to be just filled with water.
There's no reason not to look to those big blue wobbly things that mermaids live in off each coast for manufacturing hydrogen. They even come with a built in electrolyte.
That's still going to create a need for a lot of pipe heading into arid places.
It's possible that once the more water rich areas convert to H, using so called "fossil" fuel and methane as a source of H would be a lot cheaper for those areas where it occurs in greater quantity than water.
Like anything else, the market will drive the changeover when the time comes.
Put a condenser and a 10 gallon tank on the exhaust.
Use the water over and over.
Electrolyzing sea water wouldn't work. The salts would coat the electrodes and clog the plumbing. It'd have to be desalinated first, which would blow the costs right out of sight.
Transporting hydrogen from areas with ample water supplies to those without sounds good. However, there is a basic limitation to that: the energy density of hydrogen. Even in liquid form hydrogen has about three times less energy per volume than gasoline. So you'd have to pipe three times as much as gasoline, and face all the technical issues of transporting a cryogenic liquid over many, many miles. This is not looking good, economics wise.
Yes, Gauss you are correct, no doubt about the difficulties in delivery. Hydrogen in a tanker would be a ridiculous waste of a gas (or diesel) resource to transport it.
I suppose hiring someone to tap the electrodes with a hammer to knock the salt off wouldn't be a viable plan either, but that's what the engineers are for. They'll think of something.:)
Mostly the conversion of H2O into H is going to require a lot more of the country to have atom plants in place humming along doing the water split, and at that point a case could be made for electric only vehicles.
(even my particular favorite idea of induction coils in the pavement that allow for an electric car to run with few or no batteries)
Fortunately there's still a load of oil to use up until the alternates all get sorted out.
JSL; the recirculation concept reminds me of the Doble steamer with a big condenser to turn the steam back to water to boil again!
Another of my automotive favorites
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