Your Questions About Hydrogen Fuel Cell

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Why bother? It’s obsolete, and has been for years!

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Hydrogen cars have many problems. Where to get the hydrogen in the first place, how to transport and store it, how to make fuel cells (which currently use platinum) affordable, etc. I wrote a wiki article on the subject linked below.

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I’m a mechanical engineer who has been working in the energy conservation / alternative energy field for about 20 years.

I’m very skeptical about hydrogen fuel cells.

Right now, we are make most of our hydrogen from fossil fuels. Unless we find a biomass source for hydrogen, they don’t reduce carbon emissions. Many folks who don’t understand seem to believe that we can make hydrogen from water – and we can – but not economically or at any energy benefit.

And we don’t seem to have any infrastructure set up for hydrogen the way that we do for electricity, natural gas or even diesel fuel, for example. I read recently in the Wall Street Journal that General Motors and Toyota have serious doubts about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and instead are turning their attention to electric cars.

Most importantly, I remember that I did a study on fuel cell cost effectiveness for distributed electricity production for a client in California about 17 years ago. At the time, the client (a natural gas company) was confident that within 5 years, everyone would have a fuel cell in their basement generating heat and power. Then, about five years later, in a different job, I did an analysis on using fuel cells for power generation in hospitals. The industry press claimed that there was a six year timeframe before fuel cells were EVERYWHERE. And five years ago, I worked on preliminary designs for a fuel cell factory. The manufacturer was convinced that fuel cell demand was going to take off. The factory was never built. So it’s fifteen years later, and we seem to be no closer to the mass adoption of fuel cells – even as solar power has made huge advances, and hybrid (and even now electric) cars have started hitting the streets.

I guess I’ve been hearing the little shepherd boy cry “Fuel Cells” for years now, with no results and I’ve given up believing him.

Good question.

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I believe O2 (or the oxygen we breath) is used as a fuel source for a Hydrogen Fuel cell, as for your next question Hydrogen becomes Water when ignited, when ignited the Hydrogen reacts with the Oxygen in the air, or around it to form H2O, if the state of which the Hydrogen is present matters; I am not entirely sure.

Also, when combining Hydrogen and Oxygen to form water the amount of water produced is very little compared to the space the 2 Gases took up to create the Water.

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If you want details, you can get that on a basic internet search.

Basically
H2 –> 2H+ + 2e-
1/2 O2 + 2H+ + 2e- –> H2O

The H+ ions and hte electrons flow in different paths. There is also an electrode potential difference created between the two half cellreactions. The flow of electrons under this electrode potential is what results in electricity.

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There is a lot that might need more definition within the wording of your question. What is a greenhouse gas? There are many. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas.

Do you think that anyone has measured the amount of sweat put out by workers building fuel cells? Or how many times per minute and how much carbon dioxide they have exhausted while breathing.

There may be some measurement of the amount of energy (other than human) that has been used to build fuel cells but what of all the components that have come to that point. What about the pollution released in transporting each component to the point where it is used.

The problem with these kinds of calculations is that at some point they become just conjecture or defined so narrowly that they become meaningless.

Perhaps if you could give some idea of where you were heading with this information it might be easier to make some guesses. Although this is supposed to be the “information age,” I doubt any realistic information actually exists on this.

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Yes, I think it will work very well. Not only that, but hydrogen is useful for fuel economy even in its raw state. People have been making their own hydrogen for awhile now for adding homemade hydrogen to gasoline to increase mileage and reduce emissions. I think that this technology should be heavily explored as well, as an increase in fuel economy is just better for the environment in general. I think that this would be a great interim technology while fuel cells are being researched.

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Not more than 286 kJ per mol of Hydrogen as H2. I know nothing about fuel cells but I know a lot about thermochemistry and that is all the energy per mol of H2 you can get when H2 oxidizes.

It is not that efficient, in general. Hydrogen production consumes a lot of fossil fuels anyway. I don’t understand why people think Hydrogen is a good alternative for fossil fuels.