Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

[tomsax]

On the SEVA mailing list, Dave White wrote:

> I'd like someone to do the calcs to figure out what the explosive force of a
> tank of full of 10,000 psi of hydrogen woud be like?  Maybe a mini-hydrogen
> bomb?

The energy in the tank of hydrogen is going to be about the same as that in a tank of gasoline, and just like gasoline if you want to feed a significant portion of that energy into an explosion, you have to get it out of the tank and mix it with oxygen in the right proportion and only then ignite it. Hydrogen is probably safer than gasoline because it's lighter than air and more inclined to float up and away, unlike gasoline fumes that are heavier than air and hang around.

Hydrogen bombs don't burn hydrogen, they fuse hydrogen atoms into helium which generates many orders of magnitude more energy than any chemical reaction. There's no comparison.

The problem with hydrogen isn't that it's explosive. (The cause of the Hindenburg tragedy was that its skin was made of a flammable materiel. That started burning and that got the hydrogen burning, but an airship with a burning skin is doomed already.) The problem with hydrogen is it's just an energy storage system that is much less efficient than power lines and batteries, requires a huge investment in infrastructure and only works in vehicles that will still be too expensive to sell 10 years from now.

[aviken]

I think this sums it up http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/22087/

[tomsax]

aviken: That's a great article. Thanks for posting it.

[aviken]

No prob - Just reposting what I saw on the Maillist (someone else found it not me).