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The global race to develop 'green' hydrogen

16 Comments
By Marie Heuclin and Catherine Hours

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16 Comments
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How about first focusing on consuming less energy. Then as a second priority, switching over to the growing sources of viable renewables becoming available.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Are you saying you drive Tonopah to Ely to go shopping? 8-hour round trip if you drive non-stop? So what about working for you and your wife?

Look at a map and ask yourself what is out there. There are some very interesting jobs if you can handle living out here. We have come to love the high desert but it is not for everyone. However the lifestyle of the intermountain west, the basin and range, is too often overlooked by the big coastal cities when they push these ideas like electric cars. They are not practical with our cold winters and long distances. It is not uncommon for someone in Ely to shop in Las Vegas, Reno or Salt Lake City. Likewise residents of Tonopah will shop in Las Vegas, Reno or maybe down in California. Doing so in the winter is challenging. When you chain up you can only drive about 30 mph (50 kph). Any faster and you risk throwing the chains off the tires and doing a lot of damage to your car. It takes ages to travel modest distances. Roads you clip along at 80 mph in the summer are taken at 30-35 mph in the winter. Drive times increase accordingly and battery warmers are sucking the juice out of those batteries the whole time.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

What about the storage of Hydrogen. Doesn't the energy equivalent amount of Hydrogen require up to 10 times the storage volume as gasoline? 

Looks like a gallon of liquid H2 has the energy equivalent of 0.279 gallons of gasoline.

http://www.hionsolar.com/n-heq1.html

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Average distance on two tanks 300-500 miles?

225-250 miles is all I can push them. Gas stops can be far apart too. Tonapah to Ely is 165 miles with nothing in between but a little tea kettle oil refinery and some ranches, but there is no gas on either end of that leg for a good 50 more miles. Small tanks, high altitudes and steep mountain grades take their toll on mileage. I once came close to running out of gas out there from a heavy right foot and had to beg gas off that little oil refinery.

I can't make the round trip to LA on a single tank, and I always top up in Mojave in case there is a road closure that forces a long detour. Especially in winter major highways get closed due to snow creating multi hour traffic jams in the middle of nowhere and long detours. Winter weather depletes batteries fast just keeping them warm. A friend with a Tesla in Bend Oregon, which has bitter cold and long winters, tells me the battery warmers often consume over half the charge.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

What about the storage of Hydrogen. Doesn't the energy equivalent amount of Hydrogen require up to 10 times the storage volume as gasoline? Thats a much bigger potential bomb at all of our fuel stations. Imagine the gigantic storage containers of compressed or cooled liquid hydrogen being stored and transported. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9991

1 ( +1 / -0 )

This must be a joke.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

In the short term, thorium reactors could solve the clean energy problem. The technology already exists, it just needs to be commercialized. Long-term the real game is geothermal. The earth's mantle already supplies enough power to give us all the energy we could ever possibly need. We just need to invest in the drilling tech to tap it.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Go Japan, USA, and well- international industry.

Hydrogen fuel cells I read and heard takes only a few more minutes to reach 100% compared to a gas/ petrol fill up. It's below the 10 minute mark.

Current service stations and automobiles in use by the Public can be re-fitted with minimal modifications to store/ use Hydrogen. Again, I've read and heard. But imagine keeping your current gasoline vehicle, adding a Hydrogen modification kit, and driving it (perhaps in 1 day of repair work- if not hours) again as a clean driving machine. Well, at least a cleaner one.

And hopefully the repair work stays below $3000. It's fuel tank replacement, ECU re-map (software update at Dealer), and I forgot what other component- maybe the engine?

I haven't kept up on the info since I've been researching other topics recently. Oh, I would think jobs could be kept too for those employed by the petrol industries.

OPEC should start Hydrogen farming... anyways, excuse the vague comments but info on this topic is best left to the developers and news outlets.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Would love to drive a new-generation Mirai.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

We need plug-in hybrids with fuel cell engines instead of gas...

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Hydrogen is as powerful as regular fuel for trucks as trucks carry a lot of load/cargo for long distance. EV is a little powerless for much load. Auto company can make hydrogen trucks, but not many now because not many hydrogen stations all over.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Hydrogen as an engine fuel pretty much solves the problems associated with battery electric vehicles for those who need long range vehicles that also need to be refueled rapidly, such as long haul trucks, busses, construction equipment, ships and possibly airplanes along with those of us living in distant rural areas that need to travel to the big city regularly to shop going distances that require a full tank on departure and at least one gas stop to get home. Also the flammability worries me. My primary concern is that we do not create more pollution producing hydrogen than we reduce by replacing current motor fuels with hydrogen. I would be interested to know if biodiesel power is overall less polluting that hydrogen. If we are going to spend all this money on a new fuel infrastructure make the right choices now before we make choices we learn to regret.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

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