Hydrogen..why not?
Discussion
The main issue with hydrogen is efficiency. The only clean way to make hydrogen is to use clean electricity. However, you're then using electricity to turn water into hydrogen, and then in the car turning the hydrogen back into water and electricity to drive the electric motor. These are two extra conversion steps in which a significant amount of energy is inevitably lost.
However, if in future we have a surplus of clean electricity from wind, nuclear, solar etc then this wouldn't matter.
Home fuelling is an interesting idea, however given a commercial filling station in Norway exploded https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/11/norway-explos... , I'm not sure that the idea of at-home devices which use high voltage electricity to turn water into a highly explosive gas, and then compress it to a super-high pressure, would go down very well ! Might bump your home insurance up a bit.
If you did have such a device the hydrogen itself would presumably be pure H2 molecules so just the same as elsewhere, only question would be if it would compress it as highly as the commercial filling stations can I suppose.
However, if in future we have a surplus of clean electricity from wind, nuclear, solar etc then this wouldn't matter.
Home fuelling is an interesting idea, however given a commercial filling station in Norway exploded https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/11/norway-explos... , I'm not sure that the idea of at-home devices which use high voltage electricity to turn water into a highly explosive gas, and then compress it to a super-high pressure, would go down very well ! Might bump your home insurance up a bit.
If you did have such a device the hydrogen itself would presumably be pure H2 molecules so just the same as elsewhere, only question would be if it would compress it as highly as the commercial filling stations can I suppose.
Cogcog said:
I see Toyota have a Fuel cell Mirai with a decent range ( 300+ miles). Sems too good to be true. But..
No infrastructure to refuel.
Are the commercial hydrogen concentrators and/orstorage tanks practical for home use?
Is the hydrogen the same potency?
Which bit is too good to be true?No infrastructure to refuel.
Are the commercial hydrogen concentrators and/orstorage tanks practical for home use?
Is the hydrogen the same potency?
Hydrogen has an incredibly low volumetric energy density, so you can only store meaningful amounts at very high pressure.
The tanks in the Mirai store it at 700 bar.
What exactly do you want to do with it at home?
I think the question is more "why?" than "why not?". Hydrogen is horrifically inefficient to produce and hence hugely expensive, even once produced it requires a lot of energy to compress to a usable level and even then is volumetrically very low density, it's a bugger to store, and there is no existing infrastructure for it.
It certainly has its place in some industries but for running cars I personally can't see the point.
It certainly has its place in some industries but for running cars I personally can't see the point.
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