It also turns every train, bus, and truck into a bomb waiting to go off along with every warehouse, roundhouse, and garage where they are parked.
No different than filling a BBQ propane cylinder; and remember, the use of hydrogen as a broad spectrum fuel is still in it’s infancy. Literally an inexhaustible, dead clean fuel. Hydrogen powered electrical plants & an induction system in highways to power electric vehicles is one ( of many ) options. The list is endless. Just need the research.
No more dangerous than any other compressed flamamble gas; but unlike petroleum products, it burns totally clean & will not pollute. Research - research - research. It’s all about research.
Yes much more so because 100% of the compressed hydrogen is potentially explosive where as with other hydrocarbons a much lower percent is.
Basically hydrogen is 100% pure energy just looking for oxygen and a spark or heat to get the reaction going.
The same thing that makes it so efficient as fuel makes it just as efficient as an explosive.
Of course it’s very flammable; but even if there was a major leak ( pipeline or whatever ), it’s not toxic. Even if burned, it’s not toxic. No nasty fallout. Just pure water as the byproduct. Much to be said about it. And still in it’s infancy. I say it’s worth every dollar spent on research. The answer may be right in front of us, but it may be that it’s being approached from the wrong direction. Just one efficient breakthrough that can be built on, is probably the key.
Yes and the toxicity isn’t even part of the discussion, the explosive nature of the gas is what I’m talking about.
No, it’s not new, they’ve been trying to crack hydrogen as an economical fuel substitute since prior to WWII when we’d been told again that we were running out of petroleum.
Hydrogen is far different - propane is a liquid in tanks at about 150 psi or so. Hydrogen doesn’t condense at any reasonable temperature, it needs to be compressed to over 1000 psi to have a decent energy density. That requires heavy high pressure cylinders and leaks are a much bigger hazard. Not insurmountable problems, just inferior in many practical aspects to a simple tank of gasoline.
Generating hydrogen is another issue - the standard way is with steam and methane, generating lots of CO2. If I’m betting on a replacement for gasoline, it is electric energy. Difficult to store, yes, but much more straightforward to generate and distribute.
If we could ever go to an affordable and practical nuke reactor based electric system where we used reprocessed spent fuel and keep burning it till there’s basically nothing left we could afford to replace gasoline with Hydrogen but you still could not beat diesel for heavy industry, farming, rail etc.
The power you can generate with diesel electrics is amazing and quite affordable.
Interesting Jim…
How long will fuel cells for hydrogen cars last? H2 fuel cells currently in production have a life expectancy of from 5,000 to 10,000 hours . If we apply that to an average driving speed of 45 mph (a combination of in-town on highway driving), we should expect to get 225,000 to 450,000 miles.