How these scientists plan to make hydrogen fuel cell cars more cost-efficient

[nationalize the fed]

GeekWire.com BY JOHN STANG on August 13, 2016

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory says it’s about two years away from making hydrogen fuel cell cars more cost-effective — a 20-plus-year journey that once included a dream of going to Mars.


Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers Paul Armatis, Bob Wegeng and Richard Zheng with the Solar Thermochemical Advanced Reactor System. (Photo: PNNL)

Researchers at the lab in Richland, Wash., have been working on a solar-reflector-based power source that they say is dramatically more efficient at generating electricity than a standard solar panel. The idea is to use the solar-reflector device to provide the power to convert natural gas into hydrogen fuel for vehicles.

A typical solar panel converts sunlight into electricity at a 20 percent efficiency rate, while the experimental solar-reflector device can reach a 70 percent efficiency rate, said Bob Wegeng, the engineer in charge of the PNNL project. As a comparison, photosynthesis in plants converts sunlight into energy at an efficiency rate of slightly less than 10 percent.

Why hydrogen? A kilogram of hydrogen (2.2 pounds) has about the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline (6.3 pounds). A hydrogen-fuel-cell car gets roughly 50 to 81 miles per kilogram, according to various estimates from the federal government and auto manufacturers.

With most of the solar-reflection power source completed, PNNL is now working on the engineering to use that power to create hydrogen fuel at a target cost of $2 per kilogram. That’s dramatically cheaper than the current conversion cost...snip
Read More: http://www.geekwire.com/2016/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-more-cost-efficient-pnnl/

$2.00 per Kg of H2 will change the world!

A Prophetic Book--Solar Hydrogen: Fuel of the Future
by Mario Pagliaro, Athanasios G Konstandopoulos
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry (June 15, 2012)
https://www.amazon.com/Solar-Hydrogen-Future-Mario-Pagliaro/dp/1849731950




At the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
H2 is #1

[CentralMass]

1. Why not just use the natural gas directly?

[nationalize the fed]

2. Perhaps

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers Paul Armatis, Bob Wegeng and Richard Zheng haven't thought of that. You should tell them immediately. What's 20 years of research anyway.

Edit to add contact info:

http://www.pnnl.gov/contacts/

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[Ready4Change]

3. That article leaves massive gaps in the "what happens here?" question.

They are using solar power to crack hydrogen out of natural gas. That's not new. The major push behind hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles is the fossil fuel industry. Why?

I think it's because they see electric vehicles coming on strong. That's a danger to the fossil fuel industry, because electricity can be produced by sources OTHER than fossil fuels. Direct solar. Hydro. Nuke. Every EV on the road is ripping profits out of the pockets of fossil fuel.

So we get a massive push for Hydrogen. It's a clean burning source of power, right? Wrong. In nature Hydrogen does not exist in a free state. It is nearly always bound to other materials. In order to get it out of those other materials you have to put energy INTO it. That means Hydrogen is NOT an energy source. It is an energy carrier. Take electricity from a coal power plant. Pump it into a tank full of natural gas. Split out the Hydrogen. Pump that into a car. Then, when the car runs, it is very truly running on COAL power, and the fossil fuel industry has managed to sell both coal AND natural gas. For them it is a win-win.

What they also don't say is what happens to the other components of natural gas once the Hydrogen is cracked out. Left over are things like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide. Yep, similar to if you had just burned the NG in its raw form.

It's a shell game. you think your car is all green, but you've just shifted the pollution output to another location. You have not CHANGED a damn thing.

And THAT'S what they've spent 20 years on. To make this appear legitimate. But it's a shell game.

[kristopher]

4. It's also incredibly inefficient as an energy carrier...

...requiring nearly 3X the original input energy (thus 3X the energy generating infrastructure) versus battery electric for every mile driven.