Combined Gasoline/Hydrogen Fuel Station Opens 551
98neon writes "This story from Yahoo! News tells of a Shell hydrogen refilling station that has opened in Washington D.C. Six minivans will be the only vehicles refuelling anytime soon. Apparently some of the neighbors are concerned about having a large tank of hydrogen near their homes. Oh come on, what is there to worry about?"
Pah (Score:5, Insightful)
first/second/third/15th post! (Score:2, Insightful)
The hindenburg only went up because of it's coating of paint that was pretty much rocket fuel, not because of the hydrogen itself.
Someone mod it down.
Hydrogen the next nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we have people worried about Hydrogen (which floats UP while it explodes) instead of the far more energy dense gasoline that will continue burning everything after it explodes. Ah, progress.
Re:Pah (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, what is there to worry about? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wha? wha? what? (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to what, a large tank of GASOLINE near their homes? Or maybe that large tank of heating oil sitting right outside their home? Or perhaps the direct natural gas feed right INTO their home?
Christ, some people are stupid.
Re:Pah (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only is hydrogen more readily combustible in air, but it's already in gasseous form *and* under high pressure.
Re: pah (Score:3, Insightful)
The same fear of the unkown or simple misinformation applies to nuclear topics as well.
Most don't know that cosmic rays pass through them every second, yet soil their pants when "nuc-anything" is mentioned.
Re:Hindenburg (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh so scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably with a backhoe, a dump truck, a steamroller....
Seriously though, are you implying that it's bad to have this near a school without giving any credible reasoning. Why don't you compare and contrast for us the merits of the hydrogen fuel station 50 yards away from the school with what's likely the natural gas line and furnace that likely runs driectly to and resides inside the school?
Re:What about... (Score:2, Insightful)
The fuel to move the vehicle was still regular gasoline.
Re:No one burned to death... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pah (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Hydrogen is the lightest substance so if a leak occurs it dispates quickly. You will not get build up like you will with gas vapor, propane or natural gas which is heavier than air.
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline isn't an "energy source" either, it's an extremely inefficient way of storing what was ultimately energy from the sun. That's why we call fossil fuels non-renewable.
Hydrogen IS an efficient way of storing energy derived from solar, nuclear, wind, hydro or other sources. It's efficient because it can be moved around using existing natural gas infrastructures.
BTM
Re:Pah (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess since these reactors are "portable", no one minds
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely. At least coal (which is far more abundant and cheaper than oil) can be burned to produce power in large power stations which are easier to keep efficent and clean (clean relative to the smog-plants we currently put in cars, it can still be pretty dirty stuff).
Now, would a commercial system end up being cleaner and more efficent than what we've already got? Good question. I know of only one way to find out for sure.
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that can change, and electricity can be produced from alternatives, giving hydrogen fuel from "green" electricity.
Try doing something similar with oil-based fuel. Not as easy.
Hydrogen is a nonsensical proposition (Score:2, Insightful)
Experts all agree that these investments are nonsensical, since hydrogen is not a transitional fuel, it's way too futuristic, and we must first go via biodiesel.
By proposing hydrogen NOW, oil criminals can go on with their business and tell us 20 years from now that the Hydrogen experiment failed.
Meanwhile, they refuse to develop REAL alternative fuels.
WE MUST EXPOSE THE FRAUD BEHIND THE HYDROGEN PROPOSITION.
It has to start somewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
D.C. was probably picked because we're very politically visible here, and if Shell really wants to make a serious push into alternative energy, it makes sense to put a filling station where government lawmakers can see the technology at work. If it works one place, it'll slowly trickle out into other metro areas, and eventually the rural regions. But it has to work here first.
As far as safety goes, I think there are more pressing issues in D.C. than one lousy hydrogen tank.
Re:Why Hydrogen? Why not cut out the middleman? (Score:3, Insightful)
Go get a hydrogen bottle refilled. How long did that take you? How much energy is now stored in that bottle?
Go recharge a battery. How long did that take you? How much energy is stored in that battery?
I can't plug a battery into a charger, go inside, get a coffee, pay for the recharge, and take off and go any significant amount of distance. I can with gas, and I can with hydrogen, LNG, or any other alternative fuel.
Re:Approx figures for "green hydrogen" (Score:3, Insightful)
Studies show that living fast and dirty is cheaper overall. Living to be 80 or 90 will cost much much more than burning out in your 20's. Consequently, the wisest course of action is for people to think only about their immediate pleasure and have no concern for the future. The cost of foresight is just too damn high.
Right but (Score:4, Insightful)
My question, however, is how do you detect a leak? Do they add bad-smelling chemicals to the hydrogen (like, say, hygrogen sulfide)? It seems that this is somewhat important when you are dealing with hazardous gasses.
Also, I should mention that we do have a much more dangerous pressurized gas-- propane-- available at a variety of locations. Propane is also heavier than air, but it is also a gas and pressurized.
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:3, Insightful)
If hydrogen was so much more efficient than gasoline, or even biomass fuels, then we would be using it.
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Your car is no longer subject to the Carnot cycle, therefore you can use most of the energy stored within the battery (hydrogen) you are carrying. Now, you may be thinking, the coal used is subject to the carnot cycle, but coal is not generally burnt but is reformed by steam to form hydrogen and CO2, which is largely more efficient than electrolysis via burning the coal.
2. The CO2 production becomes a Point Source at the Hydrogen production plant (instead of being produced at each car), and thus can be treated more efficiently using emerging scrubbing techniques or Carbon Dioxide sequestration.
The Major problem with Moving totally to H2 cars is that we would see a drop in CO2 emmisions, but there would be little to no drop in NOx, SOx, Volitile Organic and Particulate Matter emissions (all of this data can be found from goverment databases). The problem is that coal has large amounts of mainly Nitrogenous and Sulphurous impurities, and there isnt technology in place to scrub enough of those impurities out of the CO2 after combustion or reformation.
Anyways, the only way we are going to be able to do this is to start transitioning to green sources of energy soon, and anticipate the use of hydrogen as a "fuel" in the next 20 years or so. If we are going to use coal (like Bush wants us to) serious technological advances need to come into place, otherwise we may end up in a WORSE spot enviromentally.
--nerviswreck
Everything is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say that a Hydrogen tank is no more likely to explode than gas one. Leaking might be a little more likely, but it is just......hydrogen......
Hindenburg? (Score:4, Insightful)
"It was skinned in cotton, doped with iron oxide and cellulose acetate butyrate impregnated with aluminium powder."
Yes kids, the hindenburg was coated in THERMITE.
Re:Right but (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline explosions in non-controlled circumstances are incredibly difficult to occur. Hydrogen explosions are not, by any stretch. That's the only thing that matters.
What about propane? I think it is likely to be much more dangerous than hydrogen. You have more potential energy/L and you have something which is heavier than air.
That's not a realistic scenario. Hydrogen explosions occur at the time of leak. Why do people keep invisioning some floating cloud of hydrogen?
Right-- they can't occur much after the leak because the hydrogen will dissipate *upwards* and away from possible sources of ignition. Gasolene on the other hand, has been known to explode in poorly maintained gas stations (I am recalling on in Africa). Not common but has been known to occur.
Probably neither Hydrogen nor Gasolene is likely to be anywhere near as dangerous as Propane.
Propane is a near-perfect explosive gas for disasters-- it is explosive, heavier-than-air (which means that in the case of a leak, it will dissipate but collect in low-lying areas, ditches, etc). A propane leak could allow a *much* larger amount of gas to accumulate for an explosion in most circumstances and lead to *much* more damage than hydrogen because of its weight.
Look, for example, at the Hindenburg. When it caught fire, where did the hydrogen go? Up and away from the craft. Remember that 2/3 of the people on board the Hindinburg survived, and falling was a much bigger cause of injury and death than burns were.
I have known of several other cases of gas explosions (most due to human error such as using it to clean electric motors in the vacinity of where they would be used again) which have occured near where I have lived at the time. I have also played extensively with small quantities of hydrogen (and set off a few explosions). I have found that in general, hydrogen is far more difficult to get to explode than may people think precisely because it dissipates upward.
Re:Hydrogen Power. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are real reasons to move from gasoline to hydrogen even if we make hydrogen using conventional fuels. Its a better storage medium. Then coal can be phased out by nuclear and other energy mediums.
Its a step in the right direction. The key is to make it cost less to power a car by hydrogen. make hydrogen cars comparibly priced. I think shell is doing a good thing.
bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't try to lump together unrelated topics to push your personal political agenda.
A key step in the generation of nuclear power has never successfully been demonstrated to be solvable, let alone economically solvable: waste disposal. People like you apparently like to pretend nuclear waste just can be made to disappear somehow, but right now, it is stored at a large cost to the tax payer, under constant guard and supervision. Long-term storage has not been implemented, and its safety has not been verified in the real world; all people have is a lot of ideas and suggestions.
Yes, this is "fear of the unknown": generating huge amounts indestructible, highly toxic radioactive waste without knowing where to dispose of it safely is something to be feared by any rational being.
As for hydrogen storage, even there, people are justified to be concerned. Commercial hydrogen filling stations are fairly unproven technology. Even though the hydrogen may be safer than gasoline, the overall risk may still be larger because an explosion might be more likely due to unexpected engineering problems (hydrogen affects metals) and new kinds of human errors.
Hydrogen won't achieve popularity... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have much better hopes for E85 fuel [cleanairchoice.org], which combines 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. Any existing car can be modified to run on E85 in addition to regular gasoline, meaning that people don't need to throw away their existing vehicles and buy a new hydrogen car. Since they can still run on gasoline, you don't need to worry about looking for a specific kind of fuel station... buy E85 if it's available and regular gasoline if it isn't.
E85 is also substantially more environmentally friendly than gasoline:
E85 can be produced from surplus feed corn which is otherwise thrown out every year. Our nation has the capacity to manufacture it in quantity, whereas hydrogen is currently difficult to produce and expensive, and the easiest chemical processes by which to produce it result in toxic chemicals (such as reacting metal with hydroxides). Furthermore, everything in our current gasoline infractructure, from tanker trunks, storage tanks, gas pumps, and vehicles, can be used with E85, whereas hydrogen would require that we retool our entire infrastructure.
E85 would also open the doors to a new class of pure ethanol vehicles, including, as I said earlier, ones which use reformers to extract hydrogen from ethanol and run it through fuel cells, virtually eliminating pollution and the inefficiency of internal combustion engines. E85 would move our source of energy from terrorist controlled oil to domestically produced corn and other starchy crops. E85 would allow us to utilize surplus starchy crops rather than just throwing them away, eliminating waste.
All in all, I don't see what the buzz about hydrogen is all about. It would require an impractical infrastructural transition which is unlikely to happen until we've thoroughly exhausted our oil supplies. E85 lets us keep our whole existing infrastructure while still solving most of the problems attributed to oil.
Re:Pah (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, even if the flame is almost completely invisible in daylight, any flamejet that is big enough to be a serious concern is probably going to cause the air the start to incandece. Second, companies are perfectly capable of adding adulterants to make the flame any color they want. For instance, the reason you can smell natural gas leak is because the gas company adds a rotting eggs smell. Otherwise your house could fill up with natural gas and you wouldn't know before you were dead. A tiny fraction of some other gas added to pure hydrogen would probably easily be able to make the flame a bright and obvious color.
Re:Hydrogen won't achieve popularity... (Score:1, Insightful)
than you get out of it. So you are still burning
the same amount of gas and/or desiel.
The only real hope is to make cars more effecient.
Re:Hydrogen won't achieve popularity... (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like those from Texas?
Give me a break people, not everyone in the middle east is a terrorist nor is every country. Not to mention that not all oil is from the middle east.
I'm definitely in favor of getting off the oil habit, but lets not do it for blind hatred's sake.