this is another fever dream brought-on by the easy installation of a gas tank in your own home..,,which is somewhat easy to have filled!
But there is nothing on the planet that will ever make h2 that easy!
its not like you can refine usable gasoline at home, and even though you have electrolysis for h2, by the time you take into account:
1: percentages of purity,
2. filtering-out contaminants,
3: paying for an insanely-expensive 10k psi h2 compressor, plus
4: that insanely-expensive catalytic converter for the most efficient electrolysis (
iridium, ruthenium, and platinum,)
See here for more details on the complex chemical process:
Water is essential for the production of green hydrogen. As the market matures, crucial questions about the use of water are starting to arise. How much water is needed? What quality is sufficient? Where should the water come from? Let’s shed some light on these fundamental questions.
hydrogentechworld.com
you might as well install multiple Supercharger points on the same land (you would have the same basic utility, at a fraction of the price!)
Even getting h2 home-delivered will never be feasible
So...I read through some of this and then started to laugh at the end. Let me explain. Do you know why the catalytic converters on cars are stolen? I'd assume so...but based upon your current statements it might not be clear. Catalytic converters utilize platinum, heat, and pressure to make sure that they produce CO2 rather than monoxides and dangerous stuff. Yes, your argument that rare earth metals are required, and thus this is impossible, ignores that if you own a current ICE engine you already have some expensive rare earth metals.
The other bits are varying amounts of true.
The purity of hydrogen, in a closed electrolysis cell, is not an issue. This would effectively be an electric car. It's only an issue if you intend to explode the hydrogen and pull ambient oxygen.
The payment for a compressor is...something. If you want to store insanely high pressure liquid/gaseous hydrogen it's needed...but the economy of scale...and amortization over the lifetime of the vehicle, leaves us something else.
It's funny. I see where you are coming from, but I just can't buy that you're sharing the real issues.
Now, let me offer my $2.18 (2 cents with inflation).
1) Hydrogen is insanely dangerous, very small, and those two mean you're leaking some amount of it all the time. Imagine if your gasoline tank was constantly leaking...
2) Water and methane are primary sources for hydrogen. One is finite and difficult to procure, and the other is a greenhouse gas. Which poison is better?
3) Cost. So...if you want to run this as an ICE it'll take additional cylinder reinforcement, new cooling techniques, and you still need oil as a lubricant.
4) Boom! If you've ever seen a burst gas tank combust it's dangerous. A pressurized hydrogen tank shreds the tank into a fragmentation grenade...and the combustion of the gas will rip apart everything remaining with a pressure wave. Sometimes cool technology is limited by practical safety concerns.
5) Cost. Electric vehicles are being subsidized by the government. If you're in the US look up the cash for clunkers program...and understand that the government is trying to modify people's behavior by artificially decreasing prices... This is how we have farmers growing corn to make ethanol...which is not cost effective without huge subsidies. This is not present with hydrogen because nobody has the tech to a reasonable standard. I hate to say this, but unless Toyota is willing to license their tech for almost nothing then it'll never fly. Electric cars are doing nothing new...so their only barrier to entry was motor controls and battery availability. The former is now cheap. The later is now also government subsidized. When you can say the same for hydrogen we can move forward with it.
I'd love to see Hydrogen. I hate the fact that current EVs are stupidly expensive, and the mining of enough copper along with the extra demand on the energy grid makes them about as wasteful as an ICE (with a much shorter battery life). That said, the likelihood is that we'll see EVs take over for ICE, then a reactionary shift back to efficient diesel and electric, and finally a new novel technology. If that happens to be hydrogen, great. That said, I'm not driving a rolling bomb that wants to frag me, shred me, liquify me, and do all of this because some idiot is chatting on their cell phone and decides to "accidentally" run a light.
ubitricity.com
statescoop.com
