Topic: Society's misguided fear of hydrogen; a result of oil corporation? - page 2. (Read 19524 times)

That is a very good point. Looking at this from an insurance perspective, I wouldn't touch it with a 100ft pole. Liquid fuel cars at least are pretty much only a danger to the driver and at most someone they impact. Pressurized gas fuel tanks are also a danger to however many bystanders and first responders that may be even great distances away. That is a liability nightmare.

Nitrogen is not nitrous oxide.

An oxidizer tank does not explode.

There is no difference in which pressurized gas is contained, when the containment breaks open. Then the tank disassembles rapidly. The speed of escaping gas may be calculated from its pressure; the force and speed that it accelerates shrapnel may be similarly calculated.

You know nothing about these subjects.

I like how all of a sudden, idiots think nitrogen is the exact same chemical as hydrogen.

Let's base all the fears of previous gas failures on hydrogen because there's other gases that had what feasibly could be similar issues.

So much misguided fear in today's society; such sad.

I'm sure you are familiar with Burt Rutan's Spaceship One concept and vehicles. During testing of the nitrous oxide rocket motor, there was a mishap. That was a hybrid motor, with the nitrous oxide as the oxidizer and plastic as the fuel. The plastic simply lined the sides of the combustion chamber. This is considered a far safer motor than either a solid propellant motor or a bipropellant motor.

There was a mishap. The N2O tank had a weak point, and it disintegrated. The internal force of the pressurized contents threw the pieces out, literally with the force of an explosion. Three engineers were killed 800 yards distant.

That was pretty much the exact type of tank that would be required for h2 storage in a car. The talk about those tanks being safe has to be taken with more than a grain of salt.

Having places to fill up your car is important; that's why building out the infrastructure is totally serious; https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/us-hydrogen-economy-a-requirement-for-a-sustainable-future-5037134

Car fires/explosions are incredibly uncommon. I'd be willing to bet that cars full of gasoline are safer than a vehicle with a 10,000 PSI tank of nitrogen, let alone hydrogen. When servicing machinery, pneumatic pressure is a dangerous proposition. Its easy to cut electricity and bleed a fuel line. Forgetting that there is a hose full of compressed air somewhere is somewhat common.
 
All of that said, if a billion people come into contact with ducks, and 2 people die from them. And one person comes into contact with a shark and dies from it, that doesn't mean ducks are more dangerous than sharks. Its kind of hard to draw any type of useful conclusion about hydrogen safety based on a small handful of incidents and their casualty counts, versus completely unrelated metrics, ie a blimp versus cars.

About energy density, cost, etc all of the limiting factors of batteries, they improve every year. Internal combustion engines for example haven't gotten all that much better in the past 100 years. The Model T got like 20 miles per gallon. Don't get me wrong, ICEs are becoming more efficient, more reliable, etc, but not at the same rate as batteries. In under 10 years, the cost per KWH of electric car batteries has decreased 70%, and the energy density has increased 3x recently with new Lithium batteries. Assuming it'd take... 30 years generously to introduce hydrogen as a useful fuel, where will battery technology be at that point? Just to reiterate, my position is to skip hydrogen, and just improve what we have for clean electricity already.

On a side note, while I was looking for some info about the fuel cells themselves, I found this article. I didn't really use the information in it to draw any conclusions, but its pretty interesting.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/pump-it-up-we-refuel-a-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicle

https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/9xpxw5/firefighter_still_standing_after_a_car_explodes/

So safe, many explodes.

None would have died if it had been helium, in fact, there would have been no crash or mishap.

The vast majority of people are way smarter than you 

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Overall, the cause of death was flying in a blimp. If it were helium, there's a good chance many people would have died (probably the same amount). It's crazy how people date back to an incident that occurred in the last millennium as a danger.

I wonder how many people first died when fire was utilized by man? I'd imagine thousands

Oh WELL THAT'S NOT DYING FROM A GASOLINE FIRE! THAT'S DYING FROM SUFFOCATION!

Be logically consistent please. When it's hydrogen, you want to assert that Hindenburg deaths were not from the hydrogen. When it's gasoline, side effects of the disaster are included in the death count.

Really? How dumb do you think people are?

Gasoline fires often cause people to suffocate to death actually.

In the one case a person would burn to death; in the other his body would be disassembled before the brain received signals that there was a problem

   I'm not certain that dying from a rapidly moving flame front is any more pleasant than dying in an explosion.

In the grand scheme of things, more people died between your post and this post from dirty air inhalation from coal, but that's not a big deal (to most people, it seems).

Not all blimp technology is safe it seems (regardless of the fuel used); http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/14/blimp-pilot-dies-saving-passengers-from-fiery-crash/

Turns out using flammable lighter than air gases to float isn't the safest thing in the world.

Highlight tragic events involving individuals is easy to do with any energy technology. Take a look at nuclear and all those disasters, yet it's still statistically safer than solar roof top installation...

These knee jerk emotional reactions to disasters aren't a great way to define "safety" of the technologies involved.

Yes, the Pinto had problems, but you have to pretty much go to that to show "cars exploding."

Movie producers routinely have to add explosives to get the "car to explode."

By the way, it's important to note that the Pintos did not actually "Explode." You are seeing a rapidly moving flame front based on a fuel mist, not detonation.

By contrast hydrogen is gonna actually explode. Giant difference.

     First of all, the Wikipedia article on the Hindenburg does acknowledge that the most accepted theory is that the hydrogen was ignited by a static spark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster#Cause_of_ignition

     Second, I qualified my statement.
     Third, the people obviously jumped to their death because they were trying to escape the flames. Just like in the Titanic, the iceberg didn't directly kill anyone. However, the Titanic crashing into it definitely started the ball rolling for many to die. So I don't really see your point. Especially when you state that only 35 died, like its some insignificant number.
However, I realize that gasoline is also a highly volatile substance that can also have negative circumstances if not properly contained.

So when a car veers off the road on a mountain, the people die from falling, not from a traffic accident. Really?

Batteries aren't very energy dense. It takes hundreds of kg of batteries to equal the same amount of energy as a tank of compressed hydrogen.

Batteries are about 10x more expensive than hydrogen tank / fuel cell combination (per kwh). Fuel cells have more durability than li-ion batteries (so longer lifetimes without having to replace the systems).


Technically, fuel cells can get up to 60% currently. As we find better catalyst for PEM fuel cells, it's theoretically possible to hit 95-99.99%.

Both technologies do use an electric motor, so that drive-train remains the same, allowing you to take advantage of features such as regenerative braking.

The problem really with batteries is the energy density... there's absolutely no way you're going to be able to compete with a battery (or capacitor) against compressed hydrogen in terms of energy / weight.

If we had magic super batteries, I'd say "sure, let's skip the step of hydrogen", but we've been working with battery technology for like 2000 years. While battery energy technology is getting better and better, it's not even close to the energy density than compressed hydrogen gives.

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I think hydrogen is the best solution going forward, as it requires way less resources to create the hydrogen tank and PEM fuel cell than what it takes to make a li-ion battery. Also, production of hydrogen can be done cleanly with a nuclear reactor (steam biproduct -> hydrogen instead of massive cooling towers to reclaim water).

Hydrogen can be used in many applications... cars, boats, and even planes. There's no way we're going to be able to fly a jet with batteries. Batteries are just simply too heavy for the energy they hold.



Perhaps you should read the wikipedia article. Most individuals died from jumping. Out of the 85 people onboard, only 35 people died. And there's no evidence anyone died due to the hydrogen. This thread covered the hindenburg hydrogen myth several times now... which shows you hadn't read before posting.

I may have a misunderstanding of hydrogen fuel cells, isn't hydrogen driven through a catalytic converter and combusted?

I take that back, I was mistaken about how the energy was captured, its not thermal its creating current from the splitting of H2 gas and separating the electrons off. In this case, how is that any different than just using batteries? I suppose the only benefit would be "charge" time where you just refill the hydrogen rather than recharging a battery in its place. It'd still be far less energy efficient than just using batteries.  If we make the splitting process more efficient and it takes 1.1 joules to get 1 joule worth of hydrogen. Then you get a 50% efficiency from the fuel cell, wouldn't you have been better off just taking that 1.1 joules, putting it into a battery at negligible loss, and running a 80% efficient electric motor?

I'm all for clean energy, I'm particularly pro nuclear, but I'd be perfectly content if we increased our solar/wind/hydro/tidal/geothermal power instead. I'm not "against" hydrogen. I just don't think its a practical option.

Perhaps the dangers are a bit overinflated. But we do have a rather dramatic example of how hydrogen could be dangerous.