Hydrogen and FCEVs discussion thread

[finman100]

how's that h2 efficiency stacking up? Still throwing away 4 times the electrons compared to just using batteries...to travel same miles. yeah, i want that...not.

 

[smkettner]

So Honda sells 5 vehicles gaining 45 vs 35 credits. Does it matter?

I'm not sure what this means... It matters to Honda!!! They can produce even less hydrogen cars, and potentially spend less money overall to comply with CARB mandates so they can sell thousands of oil burners in California.

At 9 credits each, they can sell 1/3 as many hydrogen cars versus the Honda Fit EV which only earns 3 credits.

Fit YTD 455 yields 1365 credits (1820 credits est for 2013?)

Clarity 2012 sales 5 for 45 credits

Yes the trick will be to sell at least 1/3 and try not to lose 3x as much on each sale. H2 is going nowhere IMO.

 

[TonyWilliams]

So Honda sells 5 vehicles gaining 45 vs 35 credits. Does it matter?

I'm not sure what this means... It matters to Honda!!! They can produce even less hydrogen cars, and potentially spend less money overall to comply with CARB mandates so they can sell thousands of oil burners in California.

At 9 credits each, they can sell 1/3 as many hydrogen cars versus the Honda Fit EV which only earns 3 credits.

Fit YTD 455 yields 1365 credits (1820 credits est for 2013?)

Clarity 2012 sales 5 for 45 credits

Yes the trick will be to sell at least 1/3 and try not to lose 3x as much on each sale. H2 is going nowhere IMO.

Except both Toyota and likely Honda will drop their battery EV in favor of their 9 credit hydrogen compliance cars for 2015-2017. Hydrogen isn't going anywhere as far as mass market, but neither are compliance battery cars!

 

[AndyH]

how's that h2 efficiency stacking up? Still throwing away 4 times the electrons compared to just using batteries...to travel same miles. yeah, i want that...not.

It's a damn sight better than the petroleum it's displacing.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

how's that h2 efficiency stacking up? Still throwing away 4 times the electrons compared to just using batteries...to travel same miles. yeah, i want that...not.

actually no, at least that is the rumor. but in reality, who really knows? We have a "Highlander" sized SUV that reported to get 68 miles/KG which is 3X better than its hybrid gas twin.

so, if a gallon of gas has 33.7 kwh and the Highlander gets 68 miles on a KG which is supposed to be equivalent (according to Yahoo) to a gallon of gas that is the same as saying it will get about 2 Miles/kwh right?

Now the RAV is a bit smaller but its getting about 3.2-3.5 ish? or so I guess I would have to say

No, its not wasting 4X electricity or 400% , but only wasting about 75% more?

check my math but its much better but still not great

 

[AndyH]

H2 is going nowhere IMO.

No disrespect to any of you - but if you haven't read about the 'third industrial revolution' and/or recognize that it's already happening in Europe, the developing world, Japan, and China, then I can understand the disconnect.

I might agree if any of you say H2's going nowhere in the US, as we're falling farther behind in a number of areas, but H2 is happening and will continue to happen and eventually even the US will 'get with the program.'

They're not in competition with BEVs because FCEVs and FCHVs are by nature EVs. Bring them by the hundreds of thousands - just as we need hundreds of thousands of BEVs.

Keep on ARB/CARB and make sure this doesn't turn into another "Who Killed..."

If we're going to start drawing lines in the sand, send the UAVs after gas and diesel, not H2 vehicles.

 

[finman100]

how do we get h2 again? is that part of the efficiency equation(s)? i thought so.

 

[AndyH]

Hyundai Tucson FCEV development and fuel economy

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/htac_may2012_hyundai.pdf

2008 drive from San Francisco to LA using a 2nd gen system
- 396 miles traveled
- 6.65 kg H2 consumed
- 60.7 mpg (gasoline equivalent)
- 471 mile est max range

2012 Tucson iX FCEV
- 100 kW fuel cell
- 34 kW battery
- 100 kW AC induction motor
- 73 mpg gas equivalent
- 406 mile range

Think of these as BEVs with a fuel cell range extender. These will take market share from GM and others' petro cars, not from BEVs - especially since the price of BEV city cars will fall much faster than FCEVs will, if for no other reason than the BEV's head start.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

H2 is going nowhere IMO.

No disrespect to any of you - but if you haven't read about the 'third industrial revolution' and/or recognize that it's already happening in Europe, the developing world, Japan, and China, then I can understand the disconnect.

I might agree if any of you say H2's going nowhere in the US, as we're falling farther behind in a number of areas, but H2 is happening and will continue to happen and eventually even the US will 'get with the program.'

They're not in competition with BEVs because FCEVs and FCHVs are by nature EVs. Bring them by the hundreds of thousands - just as we need hundreds of thousands of BEVs.

Keep on ARB/CARB and make sure this doesn't turn into another "Who Killed..."

If we're going to start drawing lines in the sand, send the UAVs after gas and diesel, not H2 vehicles.

I think Hydrogen has its place but not for consumer use. we dont have the infrastructure. Now set up major Hydrogen highways like from LA to Seattle (you could do it with 10 fueling stations) for 18 wheelers to start. This gets the tech out of the barn and allows more exposure to real life situations. This will lead to discoveries if nothing else by serendipity.

But a consumer car? no way... not me. call me in 10 years

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Hyundai Tucson FCEV development and fuel economy

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/htac_may2012_hyundai.pdf

2008 drive from San Francisco to LA using a 2nd gen system
- 396 miles traveled
- 6.65 kg H2 consumed
- 60.7 mpg (gasoline equivalent)
- 471 mile est max range

2012 Tucson iX FCEV
- 100 kW fuel cell
- 34 kW battery
- 100 kW AC induction motor
- 73 mpg gas equivalent
- 406 mile range

Think of these as BEVs with a fuel cell range extender. These will take market share from GM and others' petro cars, not from BEVs - especially since the price of BEV city cars will fall much faster than FCEVs will, if for no other reason than the BEV's head start.

LOL! keep the hydrogen, just give me a 34 Kwh battery!

 

[AndyH]

how do we get h2 again? is that part of the efficiency equation(s)? i thought so.

How do we get gasoline again? How's the efficiency of making new crude these days? How 'bout that CO2 - getting warm enough for you yet? :evil:

At this point, we can start getting stupid about the efficiency of H2 and die, or we can do whatever we can to stop burning carbon and live long enough to improve the efficiency of H2. Take your pick.

 

[Nubo]

how do we get h2 again? is that part of the efficiency equation(s)? i thought so.

How do we get gasoline again? How's the efficiency of making new crude these days? How 'bout that CO2 - getting warm enough for you yet? :evil:

At this point, we can start getting stupid about the efficiency of H2 and die, or we can do whatever we can to stop burning carbon and live long enough to improve the efficiency of H2. Take your pick.

And when the H2 is merely a way for the petro-moguls to find a market for their frakked methane, is the resulting CO2 nicer?

If the H2 fuel is required to be "clean", fine. Otherwise, no thanks.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

how do we get h2 again? is that part of the efficiency equation(s)? i thought so.

, or we can do whatever we can to stop burning carbon and live long enough to improve the efficiency of H2. Take your pick.

what is the chemical process for getting H2?

 

[TomT]

Currently fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen. Hydrogen can be generated from natural gas with approximately 80% efficiency, or from other hydrocarbons to a varying degree of efficiency. Specifically, bulk hydrogen is usually produced by the steam reforming of methane or natural gas. At high temperatures (700–1100 °C), steam (H2O) reacts with methane (CH4) in an endothermic reaction to yield syngas. In a second stage, additional hydrogen is generated through the lower-temperature, exothermic, water gas shift reaction, performed at about 130 °C. Essentially, the oxygen (O) atom is stripped from the additional water (steam) to oxidize CO to CO2. This oxidation also provides energy to maintain the reaction. Additional heat required to drive the process is generally supplied by burning some portion of the methane. The most obvious problem is that CO2 is produced by this process. This is usually sequestered in the plant by a variety of processes.

Other methods of extraction from fossil fuels are Plasma Reforming and Partial Oxidation.

Hydrogen can also be produced from water via electrolysis, the Ferrosilicon method, water splitting, the Sulfur-iodine cycle, and Biohydrogen routes.

what is the chemical process for getting H2?

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Currently fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen. Hydrogen can be generated from natural gas with approximately 80% efficiency, or from other hydrocarbons to a varying degree of efficiency. Specifically, bulk hydrogen is usually produced by the steam reforming of methane or natural gas. At high temperatures (700–1100 °C), steam (H2O) reacts with methane (CH4) in an endothermic reaction to yield syngas. In a second stage, additional hydrogen is generated through the lower-temperature, exothermic, water gas shift reaction, performed at about 130 °C. Essentially, the oxygen (O) atom is stripped from the additional water (steam) to oxidize CO to CO2. This oxidation also provides energy to maintain the reaction. Additional heat required to drive the process is generally supplied by burning some portion of the methane. The most obvious problem is that CO2 is produced by this process. This is usually sequestered in the plant by a variety of processes.

what is the chemical process for getting H2?

that is what I thought so we continue to burn carbon no matter what. spin it anyway you want, the oil companies are still banking on our dime with Planet Earth

 

[AndyH]

how do we get h2 again? is that part of the efficiency equation(s)? i thought so.

, or we can do whatever we can to stop burning carbon and live long enough to improve the efficiency of H2. Take your pick.

what is the chemical process for getting H2?

According to my freshman college chem book, Dave, it's something like this:

2 H2O(l) --> 2 H2(g) + O2(g)


According to the docs I've found for solid fuel cell stacks (which doesn't apply to vehicles), it's better for the carbon balance to reform methane than to burn that same methane - there's a lower release of carbon per unit of work to run the fuel cell. I can't yet speak to other types of methane reformers.

I am NOT advocating for fracking or reforming natural gas - but those solid stacks work very well reforming biomethane.

While I do appreciate that this is an EV site and a generally intelligent group that loves the plug, it's critical that we keep a bigger picture in mind here. I built this post in this thread earlier and then didn't post it here. I'll fix that error now.

I often wonder what future generations will think of us if we make it. 500,000 years from now...the only record they'll ever have that we were here is they're gonna see our CO2 footprint in the geologic record. Oh, way back then they were the oil people. We had the bronze age and the iron age; these people lived on carbon deposits from the sun and they built a great short lived civilization which almost destroyed the planet.

So now we have a global economic crisis. We've had four-five years of growth and shutdown because of the oil price and the other fossil fuels that attend it. We have growing unemployment, and a greater divide between rich and poor - these are things that happen when you move to the end of an entropic era. Now the crisis is compounded. This is not just an economic crisis - now we have a species crisis. We've been spewing that carbon into the atmosphere for two industrial revolutions - the 19th and 20th century. We have too much CO2 and methane and nitrous oxide into that atmosphere and now we can't get enough of the sun's heat off the planet. It's really as simple as that.

How bad is it? Much worse than you're being told in public policy discussion. I can tell you behind the scenes - terrified. We're terrified.

The last UN climate panel report was in 2007. At that time, we were looking at a three degree rise in temperature on the planet. And we though that would be devastating - maybe we can corner it at that point. Now that three degrees is looking very very conservative. But to give you an idea if you're a parent or grandparent, if we go up three degrees in this century that takes us back to where it was 3 million years ago in the Pliocene. Different world.

The new UN panel climate report is coming out this month and here's what's really terrifying...We don't talk about why climate change is so challenging. It's all about the water cycle. This is the watery planet. When we send probes to other planets the first thing we ask: "is there water?" - no water, no life. Our ecosystems have developed over millions of years based on certain reliability of water regimes - balancing of water cycles. For every one degree that the temperature goes up on this planet because of industrial-induced climate change, the atmosphere is absorbing seven percent more precipitation from the ground. Every single degree. That means the heat is sucking up that precipitation into the atmosphere and we're getting much more intense concentrations of precipitation in the atmosphere. This changes the entire water cycle of the Earth in one very small moment of time over six-seven decades. So what we're seeing with the change in the water cycle is more extreme winter snow events. More dramatic spring flooding. More prolonged summer droughts. And with that more wildfires, and more category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes, more tsunamis, more glacier melt, and more disruption of our coastlines from rising sea level. Does this sound familiar? And this is just 2013.

Our ecosystems cannot catch up to the shift in the water cycle in a brief moment of time and they're destabilizing all over the world.

All of our scientific studies now show we are in the sixth extinction event of life on Earth. Right now. That's the big statistic to remember. We've had five extinction events in 450 million years of life on this little planet. Every time we've had an extinction event, the chemistry of the planet shifted rather suddenly and [caused a] mass die-out. On average it's taken 10 million years each time to recover the biodiversity losses. We're now in the sixth extinction event - in real time - and our scientists say on the upper end we could see as much as a 70% loss of all plant and animal species by as soon as the end of this century. This is a wipe-out.

As my wife says, we're not grasping the enormity of this moment.

Source: Jeremy Rifkin keynote address, Saturday, 5 Oct 2013
http://www.eomega.org/events/index.php?token=5250133a3c4d3

This, most of all, gentlemen, is why we should be fighting for the wholesale revolution in energy and transportation. Hybrids are good, except for the tail pipe part. This fixes that problem - clean range. Even if it's temporarily fueled by reformed natural gas or with H2 generated from industrial processes until we get more wind and solar storage and hydrolysis units fielded.

I love you guys, but this is really painful to watch.

 

[TomT]

Yes, there are other processes that do not, at least directly, but they are less efficient and more expensive so are usually only used in special cases.

Other methods of extraction from fossil fuels are Plasma Reforming and Partial Oxidation.

Hydrogen can also be produced from water via electrolysis, the Ferrosilicon method, water splitting, the Sulfur-iodine cycle, and Biohydrogen routes. When I was working for a military contractor a long time ago, I actually did research on this latter method using algae and bacteria...

that is what I thought so we continue to burn carbon no matter what. spin it anyway you want, the oil companies are still banking on our dime with Planet Earth

 

[AndyH]

that is what I thought so we continue to burn carbon no matter what. spin it anyway you want, the oil companies are still banking on our dime with Planet Earth

It's not the same if there's less CO2 emitted preparing H2 than would be released refining and burning gasoline, Dave. No, it's not going from 'high' to 'off' but it's a significant step in the right direction.

It's not unlike BEVs - a 'coal powered' EV is still better than burning gasoline - and that's worst case.

 

[smkettner]

According to my freshman college chem book, Dave, it's something like this:

2 H2O(l) --> 2 H2(g) + O2(g)

There is something missing from that equation... Energy.

The question will be how many kWh to make a kg of H2
Don't forget transportation and compression.

 

[TomT]

For electrolysis the short answer would be 286 kj (1) x 2.6874 × 10E22 (2) = 76.8601*10E22 kj.
1 Watt = 1 kiloJoule/second so we are still looking at 2.135*10E20 watthours to make one liter.

The question will be how many kWh to make a kg of H2.