Why did fuel cell technology seemingly disappear as a possible alternative to gas/petrol in vehicles?
In: Technology
Hydrogen has a *lot* of problems, most of which stem from the fact that as the smallest and lightest element, it is very difficult to effectively contain and transport. It simply leaks out of *everything*. Not to mention the fact that it’s under pressure and explosive. That means you can’t have the kind of production and distribution network that oil and gas have: no continent-long pipelines or large tractor-trailer tanks delivering hydrogen to fueling stations.
Instead, each individual station would have to have its own production facilities to produce hydrogen more or less as needed. That’s a huge added expense for fuel stations, who usually want nothing to do with *making* stuff and only want to buy fuel in bulk and then sell it to consumers. Also, hydrogen production is costly in terms of energy. Sure, water is everywhere but breaking it apart to get the hydrogen is hard. It’s exactly *because* of that strong bond that you get so much energy *out* of combining hydrogen and oxygen, and you must by the laws of thermodynamics put more energy *in* than what you get *out* to reverse that reaction.
That’s all well and good for plants and other natural processes because they generally go about it slowly. There’s lots of sunlight available for plants to do just a little bit at a time, over a very long time. But that slow, inefficient process can’t keep up with our needs. Instead, we have to pump a *lot* of energy into a *lot* of water all at once to get a *lot* of hydrogen quickly. That creates its own energy production and distribution problem.
In any case, the main benefit of the hydrogen fuel cells was that they powered an electric generator, and *that* provided power to electric motors. This can be very efficient because you can keep the engine running at its most efficient speed and charge a battery when you need less power to move and drain the battery when you need more power to move. Except…that’s what gas-electric hybrids do. So, the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid cars is rapidly approaching that of a hydrogen fuel cell, which somewhat negates the need for them. At the same time, battery technology is improving drastically so fully-electric cars are totally viable and more affordable, also negating the need for hydrogen fuel cells. And both of those alternatives use the production and distribution networks already in place in just about every country.
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