Hydrogen powered engines - I know both Mercedes and GM Motors have the technology...?

Question

I met somebody who was in the know about the mercedes hydrogen powered car years ago, who told me the oil companies had paid a lot of money for them NOT to develop this technology. I just wondered if anyone knows whether we're likely to see hydrogen powered motors anytime soon?

Answer 1

Here are the current problems with using hydrogen to power cars.

1)
It takes more energy to create/extract the hydrogen than you can get out of combusting it.
The same goes for hydrogen fuel cells. This is an unfortunate fact of chemistry and the law of conservation of energy.
Thus, hydrogen is not a source of energy, rather, it is a way to store energy.
The difference, compared to petroleum, is that petro takes less energy to produce than it gives off when burned.
To produce hydrogen to power vehicles will require having another source of energy, such as nuclear, to power the extraction process.

2) With current technology, even with supercooling hydrogen down to its liquid state (for maximum storage density) you would only be able to drive about 150 miles (240km) without refilling.

3) The cheapest sources of hydrogen are coal and other fossil fuels.
Thus, to have anything close to comparable cost for power per mile, to the current gasoline and diesel costs, you would end up extracting the hydrogen from fossil fuels, creating the pollution that you want to avoid in the first place.

I too want to see a change from oil, coal, and the other fossil fuels..but, it is important to know that there are still some significant technological challenges to hydrogen.

I suspect that the future answer is nuclear central power generation, with hydrogen fuel for vehicles..with lots of fill-ups on those long road trips.

:-)

Answer 2

Hydrogen will not be practical as a fuel for automobiles until oil becomes much more expensive....never mind the safety issues. There are a couple of reasons. First hydrogen has more value as a raw material in the manufacture of other chemicals. Second, it takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen. The notion that hydrogen can be produced from water cheaply, is wrong. The amount of useful energy that you can get from hydrogen in a car application, is less than that which it takes to make the hydrogen in the first place. Perhaps if a breakthrough can be made in solar powered electricity, then producing Hydrogen from water, might become practical.

The only driving force for using hydrogen is environmental, in that it does not produce carbon monoxide. However, because it burns very hot, it does produce NO2, and NO3, when burned in air. These have serious drawbacks as well.

In engineering nothing is free.

Answer 3

Hydrogen powered engines are still under research stage.Commercial production is yet to be started.The size of the engine and power has to be modified to be fit into car and other vehicles.At present it is technically feasible only.Oil Companies may be prepared to block its development.But USA which is against Muslim countries and want to end oil monopoly of Arab countries will be only happy to develop it.Even if it is developed due to low engine power,large size,operational convenience etc,oil powered vehicles can not totally displaced by Hydrogen power.Just like solar power it will only co exist for considerably long time.Cost effectiveness of hydrogen power is not known.Perhaps it is better to develop small size nuclear power engines for future use.What we want is technology jump ,not slow progress

Answer 4

i like to see alternative source of fuel, no matter if it is hydrogen, solar, electric or whatever. Hydrogen being bit explosive gas when contacted with oxygen, so I am not quite sure it will take-over automobile industry.

Answer 5

everyone sees hydrogen as an unstable gas because they think of a hydrogen bomb but it is much more stable then propane, say in your barbeque