Good article, at least they are open and honest about the hurdles involved.

Of all the technical hurdles that have to be crossed in order for FCVs to become even remotely viable for mass production, PM has identified the production of hydrogen as the most fundamental (correctly IMHO).

The numbers are, presumably, based on current technology and near-term innovations. Over the implementation timescale (e.g. 30 years), significant investment would surely spur additional innovations. On the other hand, the numbers also exclude the near-certain cost overruns inherent in almost any huge government project (and who else would pay for this but Mr. & Mrs. taxpayer?)

The table at the end of the full article illustrates how using photovoltaics for the purpose is, economically speaking, a non-starter. Solar concentrators that could split the hydrogen thermally were not considered in this context.

Wind also proves to be very expensive, though considering the US is willing to spend ~$80 billion a year on Iraq, such an investment could be amortized over 30 years.

Much cheaper and also light on net CO2 emissions is biomass gasification. The notion of a perfect carbon cycle only applies if all of the production machinery and distribution infrastructure is also operated on renewable energy. So lets be honest and assume doing this would increase both the infrastructure investment and the cost per unit of product to levels roughly comparable to the natural gas and nuclear routes. Even then, a perfect biomass cycle would be vastly preferable - no CO2 nor nuclear waste to deal with.

That leaves coal with sequestration, which comes in at the lowest price. Sequestration is the subject of active research and I would argue that it remains far from proven that it is even feasible at the scale envisioned here. The more sequestration sites are in operation, the greater the risk that some of them will fail and start leaking CO2. As long as the leakage rate is low, this would have few immediate drawbacks. The potential for abuse is disturbingly large.

What is missing from PM's article is a discussion of the alternatives to both crude oil and hydrogen. After all, just because carmakers want the emissions regulators off their backs and, the nuclear industry is dreaming of thousands of new reactors does not neccessarily make the so-called hydrogen economy a sound idea.

So rather than accept Pres. Bush target of 150 million tons of hydrogen by 2040 as a given, I'd like to see the discussion framed in terms of the personal and cargo mobility requirements over the next 30 years and, the associated environmental impact.

IMHO, that would be a more meaningful basis for comparing the hydrogen economy with e.g. the infrastructure and operations cost of an alternative perfect carbon cycle yielding liquid hydrocarbon fuels and/or electricity for HEVs/PHEVs/BEVs. That might well prove cheaper and available sooner than any of the six hydrogen routes, in spite of the greater carbon mass that must be recycled.

They have discussed other options for fueling vehicles in previous issues this year and last year. One did not go into very much depth of any one source because they were discussing the costs and impact of several different sources.

The table in the article states that its possible to make 2000 nuclear plants for only $840 billion. Does anyone believe this is a little too low. It would mean you can make a plant for just $420 million

Nukes for $420B? Yes and no, sorta maybe!

If we build nukes in the US tradition that each one is different, each one is licensed after years of fighting by environmentalists and every level of government then individually financed by private capital, then built by a new consortium created for a one-time build, then we couldn't manage 2000 nukes with the entire resources of the nation.

But it doesn't have to be that way. It is reasonable to think that standard design, continuous fabrication and constuction and personnel training, plus assured financing could cut the costs to perhaps a third of what we spend now. (of course we don't actually build any now due to constraints I cited)

Even so, $420B is probably too low. It is suspiciously close to an extrapolation of the costs from two reactors China is building with the pebble-bed design.

As for hydrogen - besides obtaining it, distributing it, storing it, and using it, there are no problems at all.

H2 is an environmental wish having nothing to do with energy independence and reducing fossil fuel use. I think the latter two are more important today and H2 will not become common.

Even though the author of the PM article succumbed to the temptation to join the Anti-Hydrogen bandwagon, he provided good data to argue for the impending feasibility of Hydrogen as transportation fuel:

1) Cost of H2 at $1/kg when gasified from coal or $1.90 /kg from biomass. Bygolly, that's lower than the cost of petrol /gallon. If H2 vehicles can double (H2-ICE-HEV) or triple (FCV) the mileage of petrol motorcars, it will means energy cost below that of electricity cost of BEV's.

2) Cost of H2 @ $3 /kg for wind energy. Now, that's regular electrolysis, not high temp SO electrolysis, which can double the H2 output per kwh electricity consumption. So, using the waste heat of a gas turbine power plant coupled with surplus wind electricity, this $3 /kg can be reduced to $1.5 to $2 USD.

3) Cost of transporting Compressed H2 is 11% of its energy per 150 miles per diesel trucks. Now, if a H2 plant is near a major city and only has to transport H2 in less than 15-mi radius to gas stations, expect the cost of H2 transportation to be under 1% its energy content. Factor in the 2% loss due to friction in the compressor and expander motor during H2 compression and H2 expansion to reclaim the compression energy by an in-vehicle expander motor, and add the ~1% loss in local transportation, and we have 3% energy loss associated with H2 distribution.

This, in comparison to the 8-10% loss in Electricity transmission from the power plant to home socket, and guess which form of energy is more efficient?

4) Cost of initial H2 infrastructure can be minimized by the use of a trailerable H2 tank parked at each gas station. Each station will have a H2 compressor to re-compress the H2 to a much smaller storage tank when the pressure of the large tank is reduced. For example, if each car has 5000psi tank, then the gas station tank will be ~8000psi, and as this pressure is below the level required for rapid fill-up, then the compressor will recompress this for maximum utilization of H2 in the trailerable tank. When used up, this trailerable tank will be exchanged for a filled one by a tractor-trailer vehicle.
This type of arrangement can transform each gas station into a H2-capable station almost overnight. At mass-production of tens of thousands of units, each unit of compressor, dispensor and tank that can service 1000 cars twice weekly may cost as little as ~300,000 USD.

So, to service a million H2-cars will require infrastructure investment of $300,000 x 1000= 300 millions USD. H2-ICE-HEV will cost little more than the Prius now costs.

In comparison, for a BEV or PHEV with a battery pack costing $10,000, and equipping 1 millions of them will require investment of 10 (TEN) billion dollars. BEV with all the power electronics Without the battery pack will still not cost any less than the future H2-Prius.

The local metropolitan government can mandate each local gas station be H2-capable, in return for loans setup to pay for the H2 filling equipment. These loans can be paid off as a percentage of the H2 revenue, for example, 10% of all revenue from the selling of H2 may be the required loan repayment. This will eliminate the financial risk for a gas station owner. Those gas station that has little H2 revenue will pay little in term of loan repayment.

Risks of explosion with H2 tanks? the use of carbon fiber (Kevlar) re-enforced tanks will eliminate this risk, as the cross-woven fiber will eliminate the tear that progress from a structural crack or flaw that can propagate into a full blown explosion. Risk of fire with H2? No more than gasoline. H2 will flyoff so fast that it will carry the flame with it skyward, leaving little heat on the ground, unlike gasoline which pools on the ground and incinerate the car and its occupants to ashes.

You are comparing the cost of an H2 ICE with HEV to the cost of a PHEV and BEV yet you compare the efficiency of a FC-HEV vs. Gasoline? Trying a little too hard to put a rosy tint to hydrogen.

Roger: most of your points are well taken but I start to get a little fuzzy when it comes to your comparison of the cost of hydrogen infrastucture to batteries. The batteries in a BEV or PHEV are part of the cost of the vehicle. So the accurate comparison of battery cost(est. $20,000) is with the cost of the fuel cell stack(est. $30,000 mass prod.) and the hydrogen tank on the car. Right now the cost of the stack alone is greater than the cost of the batteries. As for the cost of the hydrogen infrastructure, you need to compare that to the relatively small investment needed to upgrade the existing electical grid. That said I'm sure big oil will gladly foot the cost of the infrastructure just to stay in business. The only advantage I see for hydrogen is the faster refueling rate.

I'm not silly enough to say that we will never go to hydrogen (I rarely ever bet against the kind of money being spent trying to make it happen); but PHEV/BEV should win out due to shear simplicity.

I don't think hydrogen should completely be written off. Keep in mind that it does have potential as a replacement for aircraft fuels like kerosene and avgas, even if it isn't feasible at present for our motor vehicles.

The Popular Mechanics article is a good read. I would like to know if any of its material is out right incorrect. I didn't think hydrogen was even feasible but according to the article it seems like a reach but possible. With a wind, nuclear and biogas mix we could make the switch and the cost would be within reason for a 30 year switch. The only thing... battery electric cars seem like a better idea.

God what claptrap.

1 H2 will be a premium fuel early on simply because it will allow the use of cars that have no constraints due to pollution equip or milage issues. This means it will be the mux auto fuel of the 202-2030 timeline as lux cars get crushed out of gasoline and biofuels due to emissions issues.

2 The tech to make h2 at 3 bucks a kg from eltrolysis is already being fine tuned. Thats cheaper then it needs to be to sell at a profit.

3 2000 nuke plants cost less then 1 on a per plant basis because they work off a limited number of preaproved designs. Oh and yes the early plants were all different thats because they were all test plants and experimental plants. There isnt a single us plant that is REALY a purely comercial operation.

FInaly look at where we were before bush did his push and look at us now? The goal is STILL 8 years away and the full scale work is still 23 years away. We have alot of time and alot of good solid work already behind us.

Lux cars get crushed out of gasoline and biofuels due to emissions issues? Emission of what, CO2? The cars in question will probably be gasoline ICE hybrids, PHEVs or BEVs. Why would a person who can afford a luxury car want to tie themselves to a more costly fuel with infrastructure issues? I don't see it.

George,
If you would follow my argument for H2 in my previous posting, then what more costly fuel and what infrastructure issues, when H2 can be produced more cheaply than gasoline and H2 infrastructure can be quickly setup?
Relatively speaking, of course, since engineering design and testing will always take a lot of time to reach the final product for any energy system proposed.
Take, for example, producing millions of Lithium battery packs of 12-30 kwh sufficient for PHEV and BEV will take a lot of $$$$ investment and time for development of infrastructure for handling such huge volume, if there'll be enough of Li reserve world-wide for that, and if escalating demand won't cause a huge price hike that will drive Lithium battery out of practical reality.

And if you prefer the status quo of using hydrocarbon fuel but renewable from BTL process, then you'll still face with the momental task of build up huge numbers of gasification plants AND chemical plants for synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon from syngas. Perhaps even more expenses and more steps involved than using H2 and methane themselves!

Oh! well, too much trouble? Ok, let's just continue to burn petrol to the last drop and don't do much of anything. That, of course, is Big Oil's hidden agenda if they'll have everything their way, I would guess!!!

Hamden, the PopMech article has a number of inaccuracies. Just looking at the table at the end, the natural gas required is off by more than a factor of 1,000,000. Less dramatically, the windmill count is off by almost a factor of two (the nuke and solar infrastructures would produce 10e12 kWh, which is about right for electrolysis, but even with an optimistic 35% capacity factor the 1 million windmills would only produce 6e12 kWh).

A billion tons of coal should produce three billion tons of CO2, not the 600m listed in the table. A footnote says 90% of the CO2 will be sequestered, but the cost either excludes sequestration or is extremely optimistic.

Despite these and other errors, the article is more or less on track. Hydrogen is difficult but doable. The question is not whether H2 is possible, but whether it makes sense. With battery power we'd only need a couple hundred nukes (vs. his 2000 for H2). Similarly you'd only need about 1/8th as many solar panels or windmills for EVs as for H2 cars. Of course barring an EEStor-like breakthrough EVs cannot provide 100% of our vehicle miles. But plug-in hybrids could deliver 80% of our vehicle miles via electricity by 2025. Then we could go to work on the other 20%.

Unlike H2, plug-ins need no new infrastructure and require no technological breakthroughs. Plug-ins also do not require the trillion dollar type of expenditures listed in the PopMech article. $5-10b/year in direct consumer subsidies plus a national commitment to reduce oil consumption each year would do the trick.

Simply put the car makers already know they have a metric arseload of profits waiting them when they make a solid h2 drivetrain and start slpaping that puppy into various high end cars. Its not in doubt its not questionable its solid hardfact. h2 is moola.

On the fuel providers side its fairly mucyh the same. They know that all they have to do is get the cost within reason and get the delivery of the h2 handy clean and safe and simple and boom moola ensues.

Now the interesting part now is that its no longer a question of IF or even when but in fact no question at all. They know when they know how they have it nailed down.

And on the other side the fuel providers also no longer are asking if or even when. They know when and how already.

So, it looks as though H2 captures high end big iron vehicles and BEV gets the rest. Problem for many US owners is they don't/cannot park their vehicles anywhere near grid access. Millions of cars sit on streets away from any convenient plug-in option.

Parking garages/spaces are not available to every resident and most do not have grid access. These consumers will probably have to stay with liquid fuels.

At least until we build vflux consolidators?

doggydogworld,

Your dogged refusal to see the potentially high efficiency in H2 production is admirable. H2 can be produced by high-temp nuclear reactors via thermo-chemical route, or via high-temp solid oxide steam electrolysis just as efficiently as electricity production. To overcome the inefficiency in transporting H2, locate the nuclear reactor near the point of H2 consumption, OR, build a large hydrogen pipeline to transport H2 from point of production to point of consumption at low energy loss due to the large size of the hydrogen pipeline. Remember that nuclear electricity used for BEV or PHEV will suffer from the 8-10% loss via distribution. Nuclear electricity is produced by steam turbines at ~40% efficiency for high-temp reactor, or at 34% for low-temp reactor. High-temp nuclear H2 production can be as high as 50% efficiency. Now, of course, BEV has effficiency of ~70% grid to wheel, whereas H2-FCV's efficiency is only 60%, or H2-ICE-HEV's efficiency is only ~45%, but when considering the higher efficiency of H2 production, you can see that H2 and Battery-electricity have comparable overall efficiency.

Ditto for solar electricity or solar hydrogen. Solar electricity is ~25-30% vis solar thermal plants, or 30-40% via concentrated PV. Solar Hydrogen via high-temp solid oxide electrolysis has up to 45-50% efficiency. Or, surplus solar or wind electricity can be used in solid oxide high temp electrolysis using waste heat from a gas turbine power plant, or waste exhaust heat of a distributed electrical-heat co-generation plant in a large building to achieve 140-150% efficiency of H2 production with respect to the electrical energy input. Notice that the larger than unity in the electrical energy efficiency of this method of H2 production is due to the additional energy provide by the waste heat.

gr,

H2 can be used for any size of car, big or small, as long as the car is ultra-efficient in order to keep the H2 tank within reasonable size for adequate range.

BEV technology is more suitable for smaller vehicles due the high cost of the battery. BEV's can be used anywhere, even far away from the electrical socket, thanks to the invention of the "Extension Cord."

Furthermore, the main disadvantage of the PHEV is due to the high expense of the battery pack, now costing ~9,000-12,000 USD. If multiplied by millions of PHEV's, then we can see the extra investment will be tens to hundreds of billions. H2 infrastructure probably will cost less, but will last much longer instead of having to be replaced like the PHEV's battery pack every 5 years or so. The ultimate cost of mass-produced FCV's is still out, whereas the cost of H2-ICE-HEV's will not be much more than the current ICE-HEV's, once the cost of development is recouped.

Roger: Once again you have compared the cost of batteries with the cost of H2 infrastructure. Lets compare the cost of batteries with the cost of fuel cells and onboard hydrogen storage tanks. Then compare the cost of H2 infrastructure with the cost of an upgraded electrical grid.

I personally don't think that H2 infrastructure is a problem since big oil will do it to stay alive if confronted with BEVs. I also think that the cost of both batteries and fuel cells is a problem. H2 also faces one additional challenge in the form of H2 generation inefficiency (a problem that electicity does not have)

Neil,
Cost of large battery pack for a PHEV represents extra cost in the tune of >9,000 USD in upgrade cost from a base HEV like the Prius. Whereas a H2-ICE-HEV incurs a modest cost increase in having a H2 tank, for much, much less. So it is then fair to consider the high cost of battery upgrade to the additional cost of H2 infrastructure setup.
H2-ICE-HEV will be adequate for near-term future. FCV-HEV will be the ultimate for the long-term future, if and when the problem of high cost and low durability of the PEM fuelcell will be solved. Apparently, Honda and GM are pretty optimistic about FCV even for the near-term future, whereas BMW and Ford are preparing for H2-ICE.

H2-ICE?!!? the well to wheels is now truly terrible. Inneficient H2 creation combined with ICE's 25%? You still have the onboard storage problem. If you're going H2 it will have to be FCV and some breakthroughs will be needed on H2 generation. Not to mention ICE=noise pollution. What will the Hell's Angels do when all motorcycles are electric?

Hasnt this "myth" been busted for some time now?

Some people believe that if you throw enough money at a myth it becomes reality. Who knows, they might just succeed. With the kind of money going into H2 I'm not ready to declare it dead. It's just not the easiest way to do it.

All publically available evidence suggests hydrogen FCVs' tank-to-wheel efficiency is less than that of hydrogen ICE vehicles.

Last graph I saw had PEM FCV peak efficiency of 60% tank to wheels. Are you trying to tell me that a hydrogen ICE vehicle gets peak efficiency of over 60%? Regular ICE engines are lucky to peak out at 40%. The best number I've ever seen for H2 ICE is 45%. You still have to make the H2 (currently inefficient) and you still have noise pollution.