hydrogen car?

While this is exciting, the problem with hydrogen cars is the production of hydrogen. It's a common misconception that hydrogen fuel is a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel. The fact is, it's hardly even an alternative.

Here's the problem. You can get hydrogen from one of two sources: either from methane (derived from fossil fuel) or from water.

If you get the hydrogen from methane, you have to treat the methane with steam. The steam is usually produced by the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon monoxide is still a byproduct. For the geeks in the crowd, I submit this:

CH4 + H2O + e -> 3H2 + CO

See that e? That's energy, for creating steam. And that CO? Still pretty bad.

If you produce it from water, you need a lot (a LOT) of energy to break down the water into its components.

2H2O + e = 2H2 + O2

e here is 286kJ/mole, a whole freaking lot of energy. And let's not forget, while our supply of water may seem infinite now, so did the world's resources for fossil fuel less than one-hundred years ago.

Either way, you're just moving the dependence on fossil fuel from the engine to the fuel production.

I worked on a collaborative project to determine whether the energy for the breakdown of water could be harnessed by photovoltaic cells, but the efficiency, or return on energy investment, of the cells (and pretty much any "alternative" energy source - wind, hydroelectric, biomass, to name a few) is so low that it would take a continent of cells to generate enough hydrogen to shift our dependence on fossil fuel.

There is one alternative energy source that would produce enough energy to reliably output enough energy for the production of hydrogen: nuclear power! But I doubt an increase in dependence on nuclear power is what we're looking for.

The decrease in dependence on fossil fuel is imminent, but impossible under current conditions. So while GM working on a hydrogen-powered car is an exciting step in the right direction, it's no great surprise that automotive companies are perfectly willing to jump on the hy-powered car bandwagon, since the production of the fuel is the problem, and that's not their problem to solve. They would rather present so-called alternatives than admit that the only real solution is to eliminate the entire car-paradigm. We need to decrease consumption of fuel, period, by changing the way we think about transportation. And that's a cultural shift that America isn't prepared to make.

Posted at 9:55 AM in category enginerd for your pleasure.