The End of the Hydrogen Economy?

Most of you probably missed it, but about two weeks ago, the Obama administration announced the cutting off of funds for research into the use of hydrogen fuel cells to power the next generation of cars and trucks. The reasoning? The technology was not expected to be viable within the next 10-20 years and the administration wanted to spend its (our) money on projects with a quicker payoff. The difficulties with using PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells in cars and trucks are many. Problems with on-board hydrogen storage, the need to use high purity hydrogen (ppm levels of CO poison PEM fuel cells), low power densities, and the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure (e.g. filling stations) all have to be solved first. Basically, this is an admission that we’re still a long way off from the much touted hydrogen economy.

And it doesn't help that hydrogen may not be as "green" a fuel as first thought.

Note: Fortunately, this has no effect on my work on SOFCs (solid oxide fuel cells). SOFCs can utilize both H₂ and CO as fuels, both of which are produced by on-board reforming of gasoline or diesel fuel. SOFCs have their own set of difficulties, but they’re much closer to being solved.

Bioelectricity

The “corn into ethanol as automotive fuel” supporters received another bit of bad news the other day. They were already smarting from criticisms that corn based ethanol would not only dramatically drive up the price of food but would also generate more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels (once you take into account the entire life-cycle of corn growing/ethanol manufacturing). Now, Elliot Campbell (UCM), David Lobell (Stanford), and Chris Field (Stanford) have calculated you can get more energy per acre by simply burning the biomass (corn, switchgrass, or whatever you’re growing) to make electricity. Converting the biomass into ethanol just wastes a significant portion of its energy content. The authors also point out that an additional benefit of “bioelectricity” might be in the area of carbon sequestration. You can sequester carbon at a stationary power plant, but not for mobile sources like automobiles.

Of course, this only helps lower our dependence on oil if we’re all using electric cars.