What's your strongest point against hydrogen?

[Brent]

I sometimes find myself trying to summarize and simplify the problems with hydrogen, only to find my listener's patience wear thin with all the technicalities. As such, I'd like to find and focus on one single, nearly insurmountable problem with hydrogen.

For the moment, I've been using its relative inefficiency; that is, that it takes a lot of energy to create cleanly, that there's just no way around it, and that in a world with limited resources, it's not a sustainable way to power cars. But I don't know if that's the strongest argument, or even if it is strictly true.

Any ideas?

[TEG]

The biggest problem right now is lack of refueling infrastructure.

With EVs, thankfully we have a grid that basically runs everywhere already.

[Cobos]

I know this is not really the answer you want, but my strongest point is that there is so MUCH wrong with it.

Lacks very expensive infrastructure
Very hard to store efficiently
Low power, expensive and unknown reliability on fuel cells
Bad energy efficiency
Doesn't actually do anything better than a BEV

Taken together these problems means you don't just need 1 breakthrough, you need several AND someone willing to risk a lot of money on a very highrisk endeavour. It gets even worse when the Bluestar from Tesla means BEVs and their charging infrastructure will be so widespread they will be the entrenched technology. So Hydrogen NEEDS quite a few major breakthroughs now and commercialization within the next 3-5 years or they've lost. At least for cars.

I see a possible future in hydrogen based aviation or for stationary load-leveling applications like connected to remote windmills or PV.

Cobos

[TEG]

The big list goes on and on. The stuff (as a fuel) isn't easy to keep contained. You have to store it at very high pressure and it tends to leak out, so the following tend to happen:

#1: Your tank can slowly leak if you leave your car parked for a while.
#2: It can take a long time to refuel (e.g.: ~30 minutes) if the facility doesn't store at the highest pressure.
See this:
Jay Leno on his Fuel Cell Equinox - ApteraForum.com - Aptera Car Forum

[Brent]

I guess we could separate the problems like this: those solvable through better engineering, those solvable only through scientific breakthroughs, and those that cannot be solved because of some physical or molecular limitation. I realize the categories are highly arguable, but still I might group them like this:

Cat 1 (engineering): Infrastructure and fuel cell improvements. Expensive, but possible, especially with fuel cells, which have shown great improvements over the past twenty years.

Cat 2 (scientific): Pipeline, storage, leakage issues. New classes of metals probably need to be invented to help prevent embrittling, along with better containers, etc.

Cat 3 (physical/molecular): Hydrogen production, inefficiencies. Hydrogen is found on Earth very tightly bound to other elements, and takes a huge amount of energy to release it.

I'm probably all wet with this stuff, though...

[vfx]

The movie WKTEC used Joe Romm's five problems with Hydrogen

WIKI
Hydrogen fuel cell
The hydrogen fuel cell was presented by the film as an alternative that distracts attention from the real and immediate potential of electric vehicles to an unlikely future possibility embraced by automakers, oil companies and a pro-business administration in order to buy time and profits for the status quo. The film backs up the claim that hydrogen vehicles are a mere distraction by stating that "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses 3 to 4 times more energy than a car powered by batteries" and by interviewing the author of The Hype About Hydrogen, who lists 5 problems he sees with hydrogen vehicles (these are his paraphrased claims, along with exact quotations):

1. Current fuel cell cars cost an average of $1,000,000. This cost, in his words, "has gotta drop."
2. Current materials cannot store enough hydrogen in a reasonable space to "give you the range people want."
3. Hydrogen fuel is "wildly expensive." In his words "even hydrogen from dirty fossil fuels is two or three times more expensive than gasoline."
4. The need for an entire new fueling infrastructure. He claims "someone's gonna have to build at least ten or twenty thousand hydrogen fueling stations, before anybody is going to be interested."
5. Competing technologies will improve over time as well. "You have to hope and pray that the competitors in the marketplace don't get any better. Because right now the best car in the marketplace just got a lot better, the hybrid vehicle..."

[TEG]

Previous Hydrogen related topic here:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/off-t...-stations.html
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/off-t...n-storage.html
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/energ...gen-power.html

[TEG]

The movie WKTEC used Joe Romm's five problems with Hydrogen

[TEG]

I guess we could separate the problems like this: those solvable through better engineering, those solvable only through scientific breakthroughs, and those that cannot be solved because of some physical or molecular limitation. I realize the categories are highly arguable, but still I might group them like this:

Cat 1 (engineering): Infrastructure and fuel cell improvements. Expensive, but possible, especially with fuel cells, which have shown great improvements over the past twenty years.

Cat 2 (scientific): Pipeline, storage, leakage issues. New classes of metals probably need to be invented to help prevent embrittling, along with better containers, etc.

Cat 3 (physical/molecular): Hydrogen production, inefficiencies. Hydrogen is found on Earth very tightly bound to other elements, and takes a huge amount of energy to release it.

That is basically the way I look at it too.
Some hydrogen fuel creation, storage, and fuel cell use seems prudent in some cases, but just doesn't seem like the right answer for the standard automotive power source. It makes tons of sense on spacecraft where you are already storing liquid hydrogen, need electricity and clean water as a byproduct is very useful.

Some hydrogen naysayers bring up the Hindenberg as the reason why hydrogen is too dangerous/flammable to use, but that argument "runs out of gas" rather quickly.

[Cobos]

But hydrogen is seriously explosive though. I thought until pretty recently you needed a 2:1 hydrogen oxygen mixture to get an explosion. But you don't need that. I've seen demonstrated a normal balloon with a radius of maybe 5 inches filled with hydrogen ignited. At the back of the auditorium around 30 feet away from the balloon that was uncomfortable bang. Fun of course, but not comfortable If that would actually have been O2:H2 mix the power would have been many times stronger.

So you really want to make sure if you've got an oxygen tank that it doesn't mix with the hydrogen prematurely

Cobos