even though we have developed so much in technology,why can't we still use hydrgen as vehicle fuel?

Answer 1

We can and some are using hydrogen as a fuel. The problem is the cost. The good news is we know how to do it.

Even though the price of gasoline has risen dramatically in the past few years, it is still far cheaper to produce a gasoline engine and distribute gasoline around the planet than it is to do all that with hydrogen.

As fossil fuels become more scarce, the cost of gasoline will rise further. At some point hydrogen will be the cheaper alternative and will come to dominate the energy landscape.

You cannot think of just switching arbitrarily as there are tradeoffs to be made. If you switch too soon and it is too expensive, then there are other things society would have to do without, like food or housing. The choice is not as easy as it appears.

Answer 2

It is a question of infrastructure.
Hydrogen requires specialized handling and storage facilities which have not been developped yet. It is a bit like the first telephone: the first person who bough a phone after it being invented, who did he plan on calling at that time?
So, we will see the infrastruture go up when there will be enough hydrogen cars on the road, and there will not be that many hydrogen cars on the road until the infrastructure is established.

The other aspect to consider is that of producing the hydrogen. One way is to extract the hydrogen from hydrocarbon, i.e. oil and natural gas. Once you take the hydrogen away, you are left with carbon, and what do you do with that carbon? What is then the point of going through a process to remove the carbon so that you car can run clean, while the plant that produced the hydrogen is having the same problem with carbon as you did if you were to burn the hydrocarbon in your car, plus the fact that your car has now a complicated hydrogen containment system to haul around?

The other possibility is to extract the hydrogen from water, through electrolysis. That requires electrical energy that you will get from where? A oil or coal firing electrical power station? Or a nuclear one? If you are lucky, you can perhaps have access to hydroelectric power, solar power or wind generator to produce your electricity to power your water electrolysis; but the infrastructure for an all out solar/wind driven power generation economy is not developped and competitive yet.

Last thing to consider is that the first hydrogen cars are likely to have lots of little annoyance that have not been ironed out yet (unforseen snags) and will be very expensive as they require an initial development investment. Either you, the buyer of the first hydrogen car, would have to pay for it, or the makers of the car will have to absorb that cost... and they are probably not too keen on that.

Answer 3

Some great answers to a great question. I'd only add the safety aspect needs to be addressed. Vehicle accidents are almost a surety.

Compressed hydrogen gas can harm you in a couple of ways that gasoline or diesel won't. In the event of a leak or rupture of the tank; it can displace oxygen in the air you breathe. It's not poisonous per se, but it could lower the concentration of oxygen available for respiration, it's odorless and tasteless so you wouldn't know it). It can cause frostbite as it expands.

The upper and lower combustion limits for hydrogen are very broad and the flash point energy is rather low. keep in mind that gasoline liquid doesn't burn, only the vapor mixed with the proper amounts of oxygen. Thus, the risk of explosions is lower for any fuel that is liquid at ambient temperature (inherently safer). Hydrogen also has a pale blue, almost invisible flame.

Luckily hydrogen is lighter than air, so it will dissipate quickly in an outdoor environment.

Answer 4

HA...

The key word in your question is "CAN'T" ...

We can. CAN indicates the ability to do so.

The problem so far is that we don't want to do so.

Hydrogen is very highly explosive. Any single spark
will set off a very bad explosion. So, as a result, it is
not desireable to carry around a big tank of compressed
hydrogen gas.

Now, if there were some way to easily separate Oxygen and Hydrogen gas from water we could use that hydrogen for vehicle propulsion. However, at this point, no light weight, small devices exist to mass produce
hydrogen gas from water. You would not desire to haul around 10,000 pounds of equipment to produce the gas on the freeway. Gosh what a mess that would make in an accident. Your fuel mileage would be very low lugging all that stuff around with you.

Design us a variable rate hydrogen generator which runs solely on fresh water as a fuel and you will be king of the land in no time. Oh, one other consideration... switching from gasoline (fossil fuels) to fresh water fuel will provide an additional drain on supplies of fresh water. In some locations that will really cause near panic for scarcity of fresh water. So, I believe that some further thinking is required.

Answer 5

Hydrogen's clean burning characteristics may, one day, make it a popular transportation fuel. For now, the problem of how to store enough hydrogen on a vehicle for a reasonable range, and its high cost, compared to gasoline, are critical barriers to widespread commercial use.

Nearly all hydrogen currently is made from natural gas. For that reason, hydrogen usually costs more than natural gas.

Hydrogen fueled vehicles
There have only been a small number of prototype hydrogen vehicles made. Most of these have been experimental vehicles made by car manufacturers. Nearly all of these prototype cars were equipped with internal combustion engines, similar to ones that run on gasoline.

Answer 6

Because the best source of obtaining hydrogen is from water through electrolysis, but it requires a large amount of energy to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen, and this format does not make it easily portable for use in vehicles.

Answer 7

the fuel cell technology is following two paths, one is to use purified hydrogen. It gives the best and cleanest power, but needs the hydrogen tanks, heavy things to add on. The other is to reformulate hydrogen rich fuels on board. not as clean and efficient as pure hydrogen but still better than burning the fuel in a motor. This is still burning fossil fuels, so is current hydrogen generation. the next generation of hydrogen fuel tech is still being developed.
You might enjoy these links

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Solar_Hydrogen

http://193.71.199.52/en/energy/hydrogen/report_6-2002/22954.html

Answer 8

I think it's because major scientists are still working on it to make it a final product. Hopefully we could use hydrogen in the near future. I've seen some documentaries on Discovery, about Hydrogen Technology, which GM is trying to advance.

Answer 9

we can. or could.

but it is NOT a solution to our problems. Because you need to extract the hydrogen from somewhere, and that's typically from natural gas, and it requires electricity.

Answer 10

greed, big business and the government don't want things to be cheaper, they want our money