Hydrogen cars + math. Worth the trouble?
I'm starting to think that the "hydrogen advocate" Greg Blencoe (always an AutoblogGreen fave) might be working against the hydrogen industry. In a new post on his Hydrogen Car Revolution blog, he responds to five energy efficiency arguments against hydrogen fuel cell cars. The problem? His rebuttals are not convincing (sorry, Greg). One of his points is a real head scratcher: "Regarding renewable energy, there is far more high-quality wind and solar power available than could ever be used. Therefore, why is it so important to use this energy in the most efficient manner?" That just has fail written all over it.
Blencoe also wrote an extended version of the cost issue item, which you can read here. He uses some absurd math and reasoning. To wit: he says that replacing all of the cars on the road with $40,000 Chevy Volts would be an additional cost of $4.4 trillion. Of course, no one is suggesting we do any such thing, not even GM, but his response is that "the cost per vehicle for the hydrogen fueling station is $2500." Why he compares the PHEV's cost with the cost of an H2 station is unknown, because a fair look at the numbers would be to add up the cost of PHEVs and a recharging infrastructure and compare that to the cost of H2 vehicles and how much it will cost to put in hydrogen refueling stations, right? It almost feels like Blencoe's making the case for plug-ins. Strange.
[Source: Hydrogen Car Revolution]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Joe 3:03PM (12/01/2009)
So.... Greg Blencoe is an idiot. This is news?
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Jared 9:50AM (12/02/2009)
That's what I was thinking. Just another idiot trying to manipulate numbers to confuse those on the same intelligence level.
Alan 3:14PM (12/01/2009)
Anyone else having trouble accessing his website?
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Phil L. 8:33AM (12/02/2009)
Yeah, it looks like it now requires a site-specific account. I have a generic Wordpress account; it didn't allow access to that site.
Carney 3:34PM (12/01/2009)
The cost of setting up a hydrogen refueling station are pretty far north of $2,500.
From former NASA rocket scientist and nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin's devastating article, "The Hydrogen Hoax"
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
"Given these technical difficulties, the implementation of an economically viable method of retail hydrogen distribution from large-scale central production factories is essentially impossible. Because of this, an alternative concept has been proposed wherein methane or methanol fuel would be transported by pipeline or truck, and then steam-reformed into hydrogen at the filling station itself. This would eliminate most of the cost of hydrogen transport, but would increase the cost of the hydrogen itself, since small-scale reformers are less efficient, both economically and energetically, than large-scale industrial units. Also, it is questionable how many service stations would want to buy, operate, and maintain their own steam reforming facility. The station would also need to operate its own 5,000 psi explosion-proof high pressure hydrogen pump, or a cryogenic refrigeration plant, both of which are very unappealing prospects. Such a scheme of distributed production stations would also eliminate any hope of implementing the hydrogen economy’s advertised plan to sequester underground the carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of its hydrogen manufacturing operations. At bottom, the whole idea is ridiculous, since either the methane or methanol used as feedstock at the station to make the hydrogen would be a better automobile fuel, containing more energy, in less volume, at less cost, than the hydrogen it yields.
The idea of producing hydrogen via water electrolysis locally at filling stations is equally preposterous. To see this, consider the following. A kilogram of hydrogen has about the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline, so the owner of a filling station could only expect to obtain the same net income from a kilogram of hydrogen as from a gallon of gas. A reasonable figure for this might be $0.20 per kilogram. To obtain a modest net income of $200 per day from hydrogen sales would therefore require selling 1,000 kilograms per day. Since hydrogen requires about 163,000 kJ/kg to produce via electrolysis (assuming an 85 percent efficient electrolyzer), this means that 163,000,000 kJ = 45,278 kW-hr per day would be required by the station. At current grid power costs of $0.06/kW-hr, this would run the station an electric bill of $2,717 per day. If the electrolysis unit ran around the clock, it would need to be supplied with 1,900 kilowatts of electricity (about a thousand times the power draw of a typical house). This power would need to be supplied by the utility over special heavy-duty lines, and then transformed and rectified into direct current on site for use in the electrolyzer. Electrolyzers use high amp-low voltage power. In this case, at least several hundred thousand amps would be required. And the 1,900-kilowatt electrolyzer would not be cheap either. At current prices such a unit would cost the station owner over $10 million, which mortgaged over thirty years would cost him about $100,000 per month, assuming it lasted that long. (No one would want to do this, of course, since the same $10 million invested in five percent bonds would return $500,000 per year, or seven times the $200 per day hydrogen sales income under discussion, with no work and no risk.) Then the station owner would still need to buy and operate either a 5,000 psi explosion-proof compressor pump or a cryogenic refrigerator, and build and accept liability for high-pressure or cryogenic hydrogen storage facilities on his properties. Having paid for all that, there would then be the little matter of insurance.
This, as should be obvious, is economic insanity. For just $6,000 per day, plus insurance costs, you could make $200, provided you can find fifty customers every day willing to pay triple the going price for automobile fuel. I don’t know about you, but if I were running a 7-11, I’d find something else to sell."
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Reality Hurts 3:50PM (12/01/2009)
Robert Zubrin is an idiot who exagerates facts. This entire article was just him trying to promote his book.
H2 vehicles are not ready and have a LONG TIME before they are 100% plausible, but to say that they are "impossible" is nonsense, they will be part of the future of powering cars, even if that future is 20+ years away.
EV's are plausible now, but no one single technology will replace oil.
Bill 4:19PM (12/01/2009)
Zubrin's costs are probably too low.
Electrolyzers have an efficiency of about 70%, but that is before before expending the energy to compress the resultant hydrogen gas to 10,000 psi (not 5,000 psi), at least if you want a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with any decent range.
Sean 8:15PM (12/01/2009)
According to Greg Blencoe (a fanatical hydrogen supporter) approximately 12% of the energy stored in the hydrogen is lost in compression.
Sean C 9:03PM (12/01/2009)
Robert Zubrin may be alot of things, and maybe even exaggerates, but he is NO idiot.
Boyprodigy1 10:12PM (12/01/2009)
@Reality Hurts
A hydrogen fuel cell car is essentially an electric car with a fuel cell stack instead of a battery (An unnecessary step if you ask me). Present hydrogen fuel cell stacks cost way more than an EV battery (Tesla roadsters included) and only go for 240 miles per charge. Read:The roadster already has it beat and there is room for improvement. The cost is already lower and there is room for improvement there too.
The only thing that i dont know for sure is how much more (or less... it could happen) dense in weight a battery is than a fuel cell stack.
I really don't see much future for them.
Ernie 4:57PM (12/02/2009)
@RealityHurts:
Robert Zubrin's article is sound. His math is sound. His chemistry is sound. He might exaggerate a bit with the wording of the article, but the basis of his argument is that producing hydrogen is ludicrously expensive, and he's correct in that.
The only actual benefit that hydrogen has as a method of storing energy over batteries is that you can refill your storage medium faster. Coincidentally, it's technically possible to do the same with batteries, it's just that noone has those kind of quick-charging stations right this moment.
Mark Kiernan 4:04PM (12/01/2009)
2500 for what regarding the H2 station, the nozzle?
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Dave 4:19PM (12/01/2009)
It says "per car"
A hydrogen station can support hundreds of cars per day, possibly more.
Dave D 4:44PM (12/01/2009)
Hmmm, the only way he could have arrived at that $2,500 number would be if he did some math such as:
250,000,000 vehicles in the US fleet
~150,000 current gas stations
So ~ 167,000 cars/gas station
and 167,000 cars * $2,500 = $4,170,000 per "hydrogen station".
So, could you really create the infrastructure for a hydrogen station for just north of $4m?
According to Zubrin, some components alone might cost $10m. And even if the $4m is correct, that's a whopping $625B just for the end point gas stations. I'm betting that number is low and if you included the total infrastructure costs then it would top $1.5-2 Trillion. That's a big number folks.
Dave 5:02PM (12/01/2009)
"That's a big number folks."
Not really.
We're talking about a fifty year project.
The ICE isn't going away any time soon.
jake 6:56PM (12/01/2009)
To be fair, $4 million is not far off from what a typical hydrogen station might cost. Of course I'm not sure if it will service the same amount of cars as a gas station, and you are right that there will be additional infrastructure to support the station, though to be fair you might need it too for plug-ins (an expansion of electricity capacity to handle peak loads, even though 80+% of the fleet can be powered by off-peak power).
The missing factor is the cost of hydrogen cars, which we still don't know so far. Again 2015 is the year we hopefully will find out.
paulwesterberg 7:11PM (12/01/2009)
Even if the cost of a hydrogen station is only 4 million how do you front the cash when there are no cars on the road? How do you make the monthly loan payments when there are no cars on the road and nobody is buying hydrogen? How many vehicles per month at what price per kg do you need in order to break even?
Consumers wont buy the cars unless there are stations to refuel at, gas station owners wont add expensive hydrogen infrastructure if they cant make any money on it. Creating the entire system is a prisoners dilemma because it requires many disparate business owners to cooperate and make capital investments at the same time or they all fail.
I think the only way that hydrogen stands a chance is as a bev range extender if batteries cannot reach acceptable energy density & time to recharge. That way stations only need to be built at interstate intersections.
Doug 9:31PM (12/01/2009)
@Dave
"The ICE isn't going away any time soon."
To wit, this is reason fuel cell advocates should focus on liquid fuels that are compatible with the existing fueling infrastructure.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/h2fuelcell/kalhammer/techreport/techreport.htm
Dave 10:44PM (12/01/2009)
"To wit, this is reason fuel cell advocates should focus on liquid fuels that are compatible with the existing fueling infrastructure."
AFAIK -
Methanol is more expensive to produce and methanol fuel cells are less efficient than hydrogen fuel cells. (or is there some other liquid fuel cell that you are proposing)
In the short term, methanol may make sense, but in the long term, the greater infrastructure investment of hydrogen would be paid back by the greater efficiency.
Dave D 12:24AM (12/02/2009)
Why does everyone talk about how expensive it is to produce methanol when the average world wide price for a gallon of methanol is less than $1.00???
http://mcgroup.co.uk/news/2009/11/19/3///Methanol%20Prices%20Rise%2020%20Cents%20per%20Gallon.html
And that price is with most of the US capacity to produce methanol moth-balled because the price/demand is too low to support making it.
So somebody please tell me why people keep saying that methanol is too expensive.