Will future Hydrogen Fuel Cells use Iron instead of Platinum

[Alliance SpecForceTrooper]

Ok,

I came across this while looking up something on another board I frequent. We were discussing the impending oil crash and either how to avoid it or how many ways to Sunday we will be screwed. I found out recently that Hydrogen Fuel Cells currently made use platinum and this is one of the main reasons they are neither economical nor a replacement for the oil using combustion engine.

Has anyone else heard of this idea that new generation Hydrogen Fuel Cells being tested or on the drawing board would use iron-sulphur compounds instead of platinum?

Link

[Xero Cool Down]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

[Pcm979]

It sounds like staple Star Trek technology, then.

[Xero Cool Down]

It sounds like staple Star Trek technology, then.

Pretty much.

[SPOOFE]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

I thought we already had those... at least, that's what Hollywood has led me to believe.

[Gil Hamilton]

Hydrogen fuel cells have alot of problems for vehicles that aren't very large because of things like fuel storage density and the problem that hydrogen is very very hard to keep from leaking. Hydrogen fuel cells are one of those technologies, like nuclear fusion, which will be consistantly invented in the next fifty year.

[AMX]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

Source?

[HyperionX]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

Wow, with that description a hydrogen cell sounds about as dangerous as a full tank of gasoline.

[Edi]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

Source?

Any decent chemistry book. H2 + sparks, open flame or anything else that can create a combustion reaction = big bada-boom. For the amount of hydrogen you need to burn keep the ICE functional and deliver the kind of performance, it needs to be seriously compressed and there needs to be a lot of it.

Added to this, hydrogen fuel cells have a serious problem: you need electricity to separate hydrogen from water, and to get electricity, youneed to generate it somehow, mainly by burning fossil fuels, which makes hydrogen a net energy loser as car fuel.

Edi

[Xero Cool Down]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

Source?

Compressed hydrogen has a much lower flash point and creates much more heat when it explodes than a comparable amount of gasoline. I don't have an internet source for it since I learned it in school, but there is probably an article about it in the chemical and engineering news published by the ACS.

[Edi]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

Wow, with that description a hydrogen cell sounds about as dangerous as a full tank of gasoline.

More dangerous, because it is far more volatile.

Edi

[Xero Cool Down]

Added to this, hydrogen fuel cells have a serious problem: you need electricity to separate hydrogen from water, and to get electricity, youneed to generate it somehow, mainly by burning fossil fuels, which makes hydrogen a net energy loser as car fuel.

Edi

The current idea is that if hydrogen is adopted as a wide scale fuel it will be made locally at stations where cars can refuel, or made at large central stations and pumped throughout the country to such stations using the currently available natural gas lines. The stations will get the electricty from some enviromentally friendly source such as atomic, wind, or solar.

[Edi]

Added to this, hydrogen fuel cells have a serious problem: you need electricity to separate hydrogen from water, and to get electricity, youneed to generate it somehow, mainly by burning fossil fuels, which makes hydrogen a net energy loser as car fuel.

Edi

The current idea is that if hydrogen is adopted as a wide scale fuel it will be made locally at stations where cars can refuel, or made at large central stations and pumped throughout the country to such stations using the currently available natural gas lines. The stations will get the electricty from some enviromentally friendly source such as atomic, wind, or solar.

Then it will not possibly be feasible as a replacement for current cars at the current level of usage. Which means that infrastructure and government services are provided with fuel first and everyone else gets told to go fuck themselves. Because the infra will consume that much of it.

Edi

[AMX]

Great, now I've got to go through these godawful Modern Times archive again...

From memory: H2 is actually a lot safer than gasoline; if the fuel system is breached, you get a very hot, nearly vertical flame, but neither an explosion, nor a lake of burning liquid under the car - it's simply to volatile to build up the necessary concentration.

[Xero Cool Down]

Great, now I've got to go through these godawful Modern Times archive again...

From memory: H2 is actually a lot safer than gasoline; if the fuel system is breached, you get a very hot, nearly vertical flame, but neither an explosion, nor a lake of burning liquid under the car - it's simply to volatile to build up the necessary concentration.

Errrr, if you say so, but I don't know why you would have to build up a concentration, if the storage tank goes the whole amount of hydrogen explodes.

[AMX]

Errrr, if you say so, but I don't know why you would have to build up a concentration, if the storage tank goes the whole amount of hydrogen explodes.

How?
It's got to mix with air before it can burn!

[Chmee]

If it's a choice between hydrogen or the pig-shit-to-methane route to save the American love affair with the car after the Big Oil Crash, I vote hydrogen.

Just Say No to the domination of Master-Blaster!

[AMX]

Finally found it.
Hope you can read German.
If not, the important bit, babelfish'd and slightly cleaned up:

The security of hydrogen car was extensively examined in many crash tests. Professor Swain of the University of Miami compared fires of autotanks - once filled with gasoline and once with hydrogen -. The hydrogen car left - the gasoline car right in the picture.

Remote ignition of the tanks - the hydrogen burns down immediately perpendicularly. After one minute the hydrogen flame is already weaker - the gasoline fire spreads ever more strongly.

After one and a half minutes the hydrogen fire was nearly out, the gasoline fully inflamed.

After two minutes and 20 seconds: The hydrogen does not burn any more - the gasoline fire spreads to the interior. The fire drives out from the inside by the trunk. The right front tire bursts - parts fly around everywhere. Result: The hydrogen car is hardly damaged, the gasoline car burns out completely.

Professor Swain, Universitaet Miami: "hydrogen is not more dangerous than gasoline, in the case of fire even safer."

And the picture that goes with it

[Korvan]

Back when I was in high school, I rigged up a special effect for a amateur movie. We wanted a huge fireball, so I took a 1 litre propane bottle (the type used for torches) and set it up in a shallow pit filled with a crude black powder. I also placed a .303 shell in the mix in the hopes that it would penetrate the tank. (it didn't, it was stupid, we were lucky noone got hit by the stray bullet).

After ignition, all we got was a very intense vertical flame as the propane vented though the safty release valve. Propane is much heavier than hydrogen, so hydrogen will even be more likely to burn straight up rather than build up in a "pool" and explode.

Due to deadlines in the movie, we had to make do with the shot we had, but my other idea for a fireball would've worked for sure. What I wanted to do is take an empty bbq tank, fill it with water and then use electrolsis to create a pressurized mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

[Sea Skimmer]

Errr they also aren't used because a car wreck where the hydrogen cell was breached would result in an explosion that would vaporize the cars occupants as well as anything close to it.

You know, gasoline explosions have blown the flight decks off of aircraft carriers, totally destroying and sinking the vessels. And yet we manage to drive around in cars fueled by gas without people being incessantly incinerated. You see, if you've got a tank full of fuel, it can't simply explode. The fuel, be it gas or hydrogen needs to mix with air first. Unless the fuel tank is violently torn apart, you simply will not get an explosion. A leak will give you a fire, but not an explosion. But if you're in an accident strong enough to totally destroy your fuel tank, then no one in the car will have survived anyway

[HyperionX]

Wow, with that description a hydrogen cell sounds about as dangerous as a full tank of gasoline.

More dangerous, because it is far more volatile.

Edi

Isn't this merely the Hindenburg myth/legend again?

While hydrogen is pretty volatile it has a very low density and rises quickly. If escaped it'll disspate rapidly and very harmlessly unless it catches on fire, in which it'll burn like with a flame like the natural gas in your stove, it won't explode, and not for long because of it's low density.

[Alliance SpecForceTrooper]

Isn't this merely the Hindenburg myth/legend again?

This I do know, is that the Hindenburg's exterior doping was made from the same shit we use now in the Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters. Some kind of aluminum compound that once its lit, it cannot be stopped IIRC. The basically coated the exterior to make one huge roman candle.

[HyperionX]

Isn't this merely the Hindenburg myth/legend again?

This I do know, is that the Hindenburg's exterior doping was made from the same shit we use now in the Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters. Some kind of aluminum compound that once its lit, it cannot be stopped IIRC. The basically coated the exterior to make one huge roman candle.

Yeah, that's the one. But you can't really blame them though. I mean, who would've thought that metal could burn back then?:D

[tharkûn]

Yeah, that's the one. But you can't really blame them though. I mean, who would've thought that metal could burn back then?

Any decent chemist. Thermite was patented in 1895 with uses in welding. It was well known that Aluminium powder and Iron Oxide react in an excessively exothermic manner, also the cellulose dope is known to be flammable. The proportions are completely wrong, but thermite was well understood and an obvious problem (minus the question of how to produce a hot enough ignition point).

As far as the OP, I've seen hydrogen schemes involving most elements in the periodic table. A viable fuel cell to replace gasoline has to meet volume restraints, weight restraints, cost restraints, and chemical restraints. To date nothing can simulataneously do all four. Barring some screwy structure I see no sufficiently massive advantage to FeS cells to make them the big winner.

[The Silence and I]

I've also heard that hydrogen can be stored very securely as part of a metal compound, sort of meshed in among the atoms of the metal's structure. It's been a while since I've read the details, but such a "tank" would not explode, either as a fireball or as a compressed tank might.