A lot of this drive to EVs is a feel good movement. That is, look at us we are saving the environment because I'm not burning a hydrocarbon to move my butt around. People either aren't capable of realizing the amount of resources required to make EVs or don't care because they want to feel good. Hey, lets us H2 fuel cell vehicles. But getting green H2 is costly (we are starting to discover getting rid of wind turbine blades that have reached their useful life is troublesome) and cheap H2 is from a hydrocarbon anyway. One of the biggest things we should be focusing on is how to convert plastics back to raw hydrocarbon.
The hydrogen people are just as myopic as the electric people.
Ballard Power is in Vancouver BC and they make hydrogen fuel cells. Of course the Greenies think every vehicle on the lower mainland should run on hydrogen. Somebody calculated that if you were to supply that hydrogen by electrolysis, it would tale an amount of water the size of Vancouver Harbour to do it.
Guess how much water you get as a byproduct of burning all that hydrogen?
Going to have to upgrade the storm sewers I guess...
Kevin
I am curious to see the math. Looking at Vancouver Harbor between the Lions Gate and Iron Workers bridges, I estimate about 114x10^9 gallons of water I am involved in a couple of H2 fuel cell vehicle projects (around infrastructure and H2 supply). If my calculations are correct, you could power 8.5 million cars for 10 years with the water from the bay. Or, if every vehicle in the US were H2 fuel cell, you could fuel every one of them for about 4 months. That is assuming that the resulting moisture is never replenished back into the ground. You do need a lot of water to get a small amount of H2 (every kg of water only has 0.05kg of H2).
Currently the majority of H2 in US is by steam methane reforming. Though there is a good amount that is produced by chemical process off-gas. The issue with SMR is that it produced a lot of CO2. Which is the one thing everyone agrees is causing global warming. There are some newer reforming technologies that reduce the CO2 production. And using off gas from land fills is becoming a major source of methane. But CO2 is still a byproduct. In addition, the current technology to deliver H2 to fueling stations uses a lot of diesel fuel. We are exploring higher and higher pressures to store which helps reduce delivery costs. Electrolysis is the most inefficient and capital intensive process to to get H2. Generating electricity to run electrolysis is a problem as solar is costly and results in E-waste, wind is good, but recycling the blades at the end of useful life is now a major issue. I think tidal wave generation using all proper materials to prevent corrosion is promising. Solar generation where sun is used to heat a salt that generates steam to run turbines is also promising. But this last method is most effective in the desert where there is lowest demand for power. Ideally, we all should lump into giant cities where we can minimize fuel usage to transport ourselves. But in the US, that will never happen. It is more common in Europe.
No matter what technology we use, it is nice to come up with something that will harm the planet less. I still run my 472cu in hemi. I use an O2 meter to try to optimize the tune. I am considering fuel injection. I think we all should do what we can. But we should make sure its the right direction that isn't going to cause a bigger issue later in time.
