Progress...

Dana Sheets · Post by **Dana Sheets** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:56 pm

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/30/news/fo ... tm?cnn=yes

GM in fuel cell deal with government
Auto manufacturer says it has inked $88M pact to build fleet of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2009.
March 30, 2005: 10:33 AM EST
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DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. Wednesday said it signed an $88 million deal with the Department of Energy to build a fleet of 40 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and further develop the technology.

Under the five-year program, the world's largest auto manufacturer will spend $44 million to deploy fuel cell demonstration vehicles in Washington D.C., New York, California and Michigan.

The Department of Energy will contribute the other half of the program's investment under an agreement that expires in September 2009.

In a separate commercial agreement, Shell Hydrogen LLC will support GM by setting up five hydrogen refueling stations in Washington, D.C.; New York City; between Washington D.C. and New York; and in California.

Other program partners include the Army at Fort Belvoir, Va., and Quantum Technologies in Lake Forest, Calif. Both will provide facilities for GM to store and maintain fuel cell vehicles. ...
___________________________

I enjoy our efforts to progress beyond fossil fuels to power our vehicles.
Dana

2Green · Post by **2Green** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:55 am

Some time ago, (on the way home from Uechi class actually) I heard on CBC radio an interview with a visionary proponent of hydrogen fuel-cell tech.

Here was his general drift:
#1: You start with all the forklifts in North America. Where are these? In factories and large retail centres.

#2: You install the re-fuel technology in these centres which are using the forklifts, so they can refuel conveniently.
What has this done? It has deployed large retail centres as refueling stations.

#3 You introduce Hy-Cell tech into fleet/delivery vehicles using these now available refuealing stations.

#4: You introduce Hy-Cell personal vehicles, NOW that there is a widely spread and reliable infrastructure to distribute the fuelling. The bugs are worked out and personal vehicles are the LAST to adopt this suddenly not-new technology.

Brilliant, I thought.

Lay down the carpet first, THEN invite the public to walk on it.

NM

Dana Sheets · Post by **Dana Sheets** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:20 pm

That is good vision.

I think the likely consumer answer will be a hybrid of electric and /something/ - my hope is that it will be hydrogen produced electricity as well as some safe form of compressed hydrogen fuel.

The current hydrogen fuel compression model is a little scary for highway vehicles but the hybrid concept is working well and will probably prove the best bridge into alternatives.

Every little step brings me hope.

Dana

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:45 pm

Most of the engineers qualified to speak on this issue (that I've read) say that Hy-Cell technology isn't even close to being ready. I read an article just a little while back in one of the IEEE mags that gave page after page of things that needed to be "fixed" before it was ready for prime-time and NONE of those things had anything to do with distribution for re-fueling.

Unfortunately, once the oil runs out... that's it. Our entire society runs on a hydro-carbon based economy that has been cheap, abundant and used inefficiently. (And I'm not talking about SUVs... they aren't the culprit here... instead realize that it takes 7 calories worth of hydrocarbon fuel to grow 1 calorie worth of food currently!) I recently read an article that quoted an economist who stated that the abundance of oil over the past century has been the equivalent of each of us having SEVEN slaves to help us, but more than that... they have been seven cheap slaves who we didn't have to worry about feeding, clothing, sheltering, and caring for.

I fear that such programs (such as the GM deal) that are aiming for initial roll-outs of some test vehicles in 5+ years are simply too little too late... mainly because there are so many aspects of our day-to-day lives that rely on hydro-carbon fuel... down to the manufacture of prescription drugs, vitamins and herbal supplements... and including all those neat little plastic gizmos and gadgets that we buy from Ron Popiel... not to forget the massive electronics industry that creates, builds and powers the computers you're using to read this. There are so many "ways of life" that have been lost that will need to be rediscovered for people to ween themselves off of the petroleum economy. Perhaps the Amish DO have the right idea.

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:40 pm

Dana

Rich and I have been chatting about this ad nauseum on our car wars threads. Rich is a big fan of U.S. auto industry in general, and GM in particular. GM really is going for broke on this, and it is being back by Bush. Meanwhile, other parts of the world are investigating the use of alcohol from corn and such (midwest U.S.), biofuel (much of Europe, and some in the U.S.) and various hybrid technologies (Japan having the most patents here). The race is on, and the urgency is no where near as high as it needs to be (as Panther alluded to).

This book here says a lot.

The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate

From Publishers Weekly...

In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush seized the nation's attention with his advocacy of a "hydrogen economy," with fuel cells that produce energy and water taking the place of fossil fuels in cars that produce greenhouse gases. As Romm (Cool Companies), a former Department of Energy official in the Clinton administration, points out, however, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source (at least until we tame nuclear fusion). Hydrogen can be extracted from biomass or seawater, but the primary source today is natural gas—which produces greenhouse gases as a byproduct. Romm expresses extreme pessimism about the potential for hydrogen fuel cells in automobiles, even as car manufacturers jump on the fuel cell bandwagon. Romm maintains that it will take decades to solve the infrastructure demands presented by a hydrogen-powered car, such as hydrogen's propensity to embrittle metal. There are also safety issues: an electrical storm several miles away can ignite hydrogen, as can a slight charge from a cell phone. Romm believes that stationary fuel cell systems to provide power to companies and homes hold much more potential (and he works with companies promoting this technology). His central chapter lays out the case for global warming and the potential for catastrophic climate change in the next few decades. Readers looking to separate facts from hype about cars running on hydrogen and large-scale fuel cell systems will find a useful primer here.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

One of the biggest problems for using hydrogen in automobiles is its inherent lack of energy density. From Romm...

Perhaps the largest problem for hydrogen fuel cell transportation is the size of the fuel tanks. In gaseous form, a volume of 238,000 litres of hydrogen gas is necessary to replace the energy capacity of 20 gallons of gasoline.

So far, demonstrations of hydrogen-powered cars have depended upon compressed hydrogen. Because of its low density, compressed hydrogen will not give a car as useful a range as gasoline. Moreover, a compressed hydrogen fuel tank would be at risk of developing pressure leaks either through accidents or through normal wear, and such leaks could result in explosions.

If the hydrogen is liquefied, this will give it a density of 0.07 grams per cubic centimeter. At this density, it will require four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Thus, a 15-gallon gas tank would equate to a 60-gallon tank of liquefied hydrogen. Beyond this, there are the difficulties of storing liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to freeze air. In test vehicles, accidents have occurred from pressure build-ups resulting from plugged valves.

Beyond this, there are the energy costs of liquefying the hydrogen and refrigerating it so that it remains in a liquid state. No studies have been done on the energy costs here, but they are sure to further decrease the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of hydrogen fuel.

A third option is the use of powdered metals to store the hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides. In this case, the storage volume would be little more than the volume of the metals themselves. Moreover, stored in this form, hydrogen would be far less reactive. However, as you can imagine, the weight of the metals will make the storage tank very heavy.

And then we have heard about carbon nanotechnology, etc., etc. Still... There is no "simple" solution to this.

It's still a daunting issue, and IMO one that won't be overcome with today's paradigm of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

Dilithium crystals anyone??

- Bill

RACastanet · Post by **RACastanet** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:02 pm

A subject near to my heart.

The DOE announced the partnership teams to develop the hydro vehicles and Ford, DaimlerChrysler and Hyundai are included along with GM. Plus, BP and ChevronTexaco in addition to Shell.

This is an enormous industrial group. The amount on $ capital and knowlege capital available is incredible. The oil companies know they are doomed unless they replace oil as their only commodity.

With hundreds of $Billions of revenue at risk you can be sure that good old capitalism will find a way to make hydrogen work. Maybe not in 10 years, but it will happen.

Rich

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 10:07 pm

Bill Glasheen wrote: ...the urgency is no where near as high as it needs to be (as Panther alluded to).

Bill,

One book for you to read is Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael Ruppert. Completely documented, a little hard to get through some parts, but very compelling in it's position.

On March 14th there was a presentation in the U.S. Congress that came right out and recognized major parts of the problem. Here's the transcript:

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=4733

And there is other writing on the wall... ummm... subject, that is available.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... rp.shtml#0

With the Chinese having now passed the Japanese as the second biggest importer/consumer of oil, and with Peak Oil a recognized situation that either is occuring or has occured, and realizing that oil reserve estimates have gone down this past year along with both a lack of finding new reserves and an inablilty to turn the spigot on more... and considering that the oil that has already been pumped from the earth was the easy stuff to get to along with the fact that the oil remaining will be much, much harder to get out...

Believe things are just fine all you want, but oil just hit a new record of over $57/barrel today and there are more than a few folks that are saying it will be over $100/barrel by the end of 2006. Economists projections are already showing oil at $180/barrel in the not-too-distant future. While that may mean $7/gal gas and some folks might think that they can deal with that... think of all the OTHER things that are made with petroleum products. Plastics, medicines, food (enormous amounts of petroleum are needed to farm, grow, harvest, package, transport!), electricity (since nuclear has been "out" for so long and since we haven't done much with wind/solar or even hydro as a percentage of need, we use petroleum to generate electricity...) and the list goes on and on.

I certainly hope that we have the 20+ years that I believe it will take to make alternatives the mainstream, but I'm not so sure. If you're right, I'll be very happy. If you're not... things are going to go from bad to worse very, very fast.

cxt · Post by **cxt** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 4:46 pm

Panther

Exactly why we should have been developing alternitive energy sources with all possible speed.

Now we have to play "catch up" and deal with all the problems of doing so.

Man, I wish there had been some sort of oil crisis, say back in the 70's that would have given us some incentive for working on ASE for the last 30 years.

....Oh wait. THERE WAS.

Dana Sheets · Post by **Dana Sheets** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:54 pm

Ya know I'm not usually one to go defeatist and I'm really the opposite on this one. We will figure it out. And if we hit a crisis we'll put that much more energy (pardon the pun) into it and figure it out faster.

As long as there is oil and people make money off of oil we'll work more slowly on everthing else. Just a fact of human nature - we're comfortable until we're not comfortable.

When we start to feel the pinch - we'll move into action. May not be pretty - but we don't have a choice. Different energy or total chaos...I don't think many will be in favor of total chaos.

Dana

cxt · Post by **cxt** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 7:11 pm

Dana

Good point and I agree, we WILL fix the problem.

Just kinda irks me that we have not already solved it--we knew the problem was coming, we knew that it was a problem historically.
We just did nothing about it.

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:17 pm

It can be pretty difficult to do something about it when your neighbor is buying up cheap oil and kicking your bootie in the world economy. So we all need to buy up all this cheap oil while it is cheap. And that reduces the incentive to do something different.

We haven't had visionary leaders for years. GW actually isn't such a bad visionary. He's much better than dad on that account. But not by a lot.

The good news for us is we have tons of coal and lignite to dig out of the earth for a couple of hundred years. We're near tops in the world on that energy reserve. Getting clean energy out of all that isn't easy, but it is doable.

Forget about wind and solar, except for small concerns.

Tides perhaps... There's a lot of energy in flowing water if we learn how to tap it.

But I think there's no way to get away from nuclear energy. And that has its issues, for sure.

As for all the things made from petroleum products, well... Remember that we can make that from biomass as well. We can do more with plant oil than just biodiesel. And then there is all that animal waste. No schit... I mean... Schit yea!!!

- Bill