A far better solution is green hydrogen fuel cell based EVs
No. Hydrogen cells and hydrogen economy have been investigated since decades. I remember reading about it in a yearbook from Germany’s Jülich nuclear research center when I was visiting my uncle. He was doing his training as chemical engineer there and still living with my grandmother. This must have been in 1978 or so. He also had an interesting mechanical computation machine. He is long retired now.
I also did a talk abput fuel cells in my physics study, around 1993. My university was researching them. They were still far too expensive - a fuel cell for a car would have cost millions. Also requiring really expensive catalytic materials like platinum.
But the death knell for them is physics. They simply can’t be as effective as batteries, and also the process to generate hydrogen by electrolysis is energetically very expensive.
It is possible that fuel cells in some far future might become relevant for things like planes. But they won’t be powered by hydrogen because hydrogen can’t be stored efficiently - you can compress hydrocarbons like butan but hydrogen would require very heavy high-pressure tanks, and compressing gas to high pressure is energy-intensive again. And so on, and so on.
At that point, using hydrogon where batteries work well ist just another distraction from the step to just use tech great technology we have, to get away from fossil fuels. As fast as possible, before their use kills us.
No. Hydrogen cells and hydrogen economy have been investigated since decades. I remember reading about it in a yearbook from Germany’s Jülich nuclear research center when I was visiting my uncle. He was doing his training as chemical engineer there and still living with my grandmother. This must have been in 1978 or so. He also had an interesting mechanical computation machine. He is long retired now.
I also did a talk abput fuel cells in my physics study, around 1993. My university was researching them. They were still far too expensive - a fuel cell for a car would have cost millions. Also requiring really expensive catalytic materials like platinum.
But the death knell for them is physics. They simply can’t be as effective as batteries, and also the process to generate hydrogen by electrolysis is energetically very expensive.
It is possible that fuel cells in some far future might become relevant for things like planes. But they won’t be powered by hydrogen because hydrogen can’t be stored efficiently - you can compress hydrocarbons like butan but hydrogen would require very heavy high-pressure tanks, and compressing gas to high pressure is energy-intensive again. And so on, and so on.
At that point, using hydrogon where batteries work well ist just another distraction from the step to just use tech great technology we have, to get away from fossil fuels. As fast as possible, before their use kills us.