Do these people not read blogs? How could they not know that hydrogen has been declared a dead, dead end, and that all these technical breakthroughs are pointless?

For transportation it is certainly a dead issue, but there are other needs for hydrogen gas, so this may actually have some value.

The key is, how much electricity will be required to produce this hydrogen? And what will be used to produce this electricity. We shall see, I guess. In the mean time, let's keep our options open. Storage, of course, remains a major problem.

I would fill the NG pipes with SNG made from biomass. No sulphur and mostly methane. I would store it on vehicle as CNG and use it in ICEs or reform it on vehicle for fuel cells. It is estimated that we have about 10 years of NG left in the US. The Canadians are keeping theirs for tar sands and LNG is expensive and limited. I think the days for SNG from biomass are at hand.

Multiply that by a few million cars and that's one hell of a lot of clean water.

Domestic water consumption in developed countries is around 500-800 liters per person per day, and domestic water consumption is about 1/5 of total water consumption (agriculture being the biggest by far).

The current generation of Honda FCX gets 57 miles/kg.

Average US household puts on about 21,000 miles/yr. There are about 110 million households, so that comes to about 2.3 trillion VMTs. At 57 miles/kg, that comes to 41 billion kg, or 365 billion liters, or 1 billion liters/day. Using the above average of 650 liters per person per day, US total domestic consumption is about 195 billion liters/day.

So, making hydrogen would increase domestic water consumption by 0.5%, and overall consumption by 0.1%. Double that to account for all ground transportation, then adjust according to whatever average efficiency you project. No matter how you slice it, water won't be the constraint.

The Chevy Equinox FCV gets about 47.6 miles per kg of H2 (granted this is going to be an optimistic estimate). 2.9625 Trillion miles traveled (urban & rural) in 2004 by passenger vehicles requires 62.238 billion kgs of H2 or 560.14 billion liters of distilled water in a year. Land transport of goods would probably triple that number.

An estimated 477.4 Trillion liters of fresh water was used in the US in 2000.

Land transport of goods would probably triple that number.

Cars, motorcycles, and light trucks account for 78% of surface transportation liquid fuel consumption in the US.

I will have to take back my 14KWh/Kg figure. After posting I tried to find where I read it, and cannot find.(I know I have seen it, but was it a reliable site) I did find a couiple that refered to the 53-67KWh/Kg.

OK you made me look up the numbers. Passenger vehicles and motorcycles consume 43.7% of the liquid fuels and other land vehicles consume 56.3%.

Cite your source. And define "land vehicles", since that's not a commonly used term in the field.

Here's my source:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_05.html

Jim,

1 kg of H2 has about the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. At 100% efficient conversion, that works out to 36 kWh/kg. Most commercially available hydrolyzers are only 50% efficient, so you'd have to put in 72 kWh of electricity to get 1 kg of H2 (you'd also get 36 kWh worth of heat). The fact that these guys are pushing it as high as 80% efficient, in some cases, means you'd only need 45 kWh of electricity to make 1 kg of H2 (you can't get below 36 kWh; there is no such thing as >100% efficiency).

45 kWh of electricity, at $0.10/kWh (average rate in the US) is still $4.50 for the H2 equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline. While I applaud their efforts and their results, it's still going to be a while before electrolysis will get the cost of H2 down low enough to compete with reformed hydrocarbon fuels.

45 kWh of electricity, put into a battery, will still get you better than 36 kWh back out again. A modern, compact battery-electric vehicle gets about 5 miles/kWh. That's 180 miles for the same electrical input as the hydrogen vehicles they're describing above. Sorry guys, but fuel cells still have a long way to go before they can compete, in $/mile, with BEV's.

"45 kWh of electricity, at $0.10/kWh (average rate in the US) is still $4.50 for the H2 equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline..."

Yes, but does a fuel cell drive train convert more of that energy into motion?

Efficiencies and economics make only a couple of considerations in future renewable resources. More likely is the desire of a huge liquid fuel economy to stay afloat. The change from petro to LNG, to biodiesel to ethanol or H2 is relatvely moot to them. As long as they can bottle it, control it and sell it - they're happy campers. It's the all-electrics ideas that terrify these guys - and they will not turn over a trillion dollar market without... a fight.

"Do these people not read blogs? How could they not know that hydrogen has been declared a dead, dead end, and that all these technical breakthroughs are pointless?"

Its not pointless. Someday hydrogen from efficient electrolysis may make sense for hydrogenating coal in producing synthetic diesel fuel, and in the far future for producing synthetic fuels from limestone and water.

Not terribly useful today, except for maybe getting large quantities of heavy water for nuclear programs fair and foul.