Hydrogen Powered Vehicles The push is on for electric cars. It has been an off an on love affair for over a hundred years when electric cars lost popularity for a long time but some electric vans still plied the roads. More recently hydrogen cars have been struggling to replace gasoline ones. This hasn’t come to much so far, at least to our knowledge. There have been stories of a couple of cars which used water to fuel them. The water was said to have its hydrogen extracted by a device and this hydrogen sent to the engine as fuel. One of the problems with hydrogen is the big tanks the car would have to carry to give it a decent range. Experimentation with the hydrogen fuel has taken place where it can come in different ways. Why is hydrogen so popular? Companies are trying to develop a dependable and safe hydrogen powered car because the only waste product it produces is water. Think about that. Also, you don’t have to charge the car all the time. One of the most sought after ways to power a hydrogen powered car is with a hydrogen fuel cell. What most people don’t know is unlike extracting hydrogen from water, the process which would be used is to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuel. So, while your car might not have a dangerous exhaust the factories producing it this way might. If the hydrogen comes from natural gas it is much safer and about 95 percent of all hydrogen is being extracted that way. What happens is steam reforms the gas. There are other ways to power the extraction process and solar power can be used to extract hydrogen. It turns out there is a lot of different ways to extract it. Another way is using bacteria. The key factor would be which process is the most cost effective. Creating hydrogen, the most economical way is important to a company but figuring out the best way to store it in your vehicle is another ball game. A new process has been discovered by German scientists; it is a magnesium-based paste. Here is the really great part of this, the pasted will hold ten times the power of a lithium battery in a block the same size. Storage of hydrogen is thought to be the biggest problem for companies. It has been said the extreme limit for a hydrogen powered car would be about 300 miles. Fast refueling would be another problem. The scientists are proposing creating cylinders full of the paste which can be reloaded into a car quickly for refueling. It is believed a hydrogen car equipped this way will have a greater range than a gasoline powered car. So, what might happen to electric and gasoline powered cars if hydrogen powered cars become popular. We could eventually see them replace both types of vehicles. One has to wonder if people like Elon Musk are preparing for this. I am sure he watches this sort of thing very closely and probably wouldn’t miss a chance to change over to hydrogen if he thought it was advantageous. Here is a question for many out there, when did the first hydrogen powered car get invented? Are you sitting down? The first vehicle to use hydrogen was a four door vehicle with a combustion engine and was invented in 1807 in Switzerland by Francois Isaac de Rivaz. He stored his hydrogen in a balloon. The history of cars and trucks is probably more ancient than most know. I just want to mention the fact Napoleon had steam powered trucks in his army called “Fardier a vapeur.” There are plenty of trials going on for vehicles which use hydrogen. One which comes to mind is taking place in Bolechowo, Portland. It involves hydrogen powered buses. Other areas are also testing buses and more are coming online. But hydrogen is not only limited as a fuel to cars, trucks and buses. Other conveyances include trains, ships, military vehicles, airplanes and yes, even bicycles. I find the idea of a hydrogen powered bicycle interesting so let’s talk about it. The idea is not that new, it was demonstrated in 2007 by a Chinese company. The company was Pearl Hydrogen Poser Source Technology Company of Shanghai, China. Over the years companies in other countries experimented with the concept and a company in France known as Pragma produced a hydrogen powered bike with a range of 150 kilometers, or about 93 miles. Some companies thought this to be impractical because it would be too expensive for fuel and too hard to refuel. One thing which was not discussed is how safe is the hydrogen paste. No one has spoken to that as far as I know, but it would seem to be easier to store and probably safer, but it is too early to know and if the paste is to be used as fuel, it might be years away. Boeing has been testing airplanes using a hydrogen fuel cell for years. So have a couple of other companies. Boeing has made a statement about hydrogen fuel cells, saying they probably will never be used to power large commercial planes, but might make excellent power backups for other devices in the plane. Reaction Engines Limited may not agree with this. They are studying its use for a hypersonic speed jet liner with a long range. The engine would have to be modified and precooled. Hydrogen fuel is a fascinating idea. I am not so crazy about extracting it from fossil fuel however when it is so abundant in water, but as I said before, cost will be the guiding factor. If it is much cheaper to get it from fossil fuel, I am sure that is the way companies will go.
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