Running on hydrogen

To get to the cutting edge of alternative energy in New Jersey, travel a two-lane mountain road, turn left at a cluster of old-fashioned mailboxes, amble across a wooden bridge and snake up a gravel driveway. There, on a 12-acre lot in East Amwell Township, sit 10 cylindrical fuel tanks – waiting for the day Mike Strizki's four-bedroom colonial will become New Jersey's first hydrogen-powered house. Once it's running, the home's solar-and-hydrogen system will make its own energy. Three years after receiving a state grant to design the system, Strizki is close to reassuring officials his project is safe – that he isn't assembling a potential H-bomb in the foothills of Hunterdon County's Sourland Mountains.

"Some people are afraid of hydrogen," he said. "Hydrogen is no less safe than propane or any heating fuel. In fact, I think it's safer." Across the country, others are rallying around hydrogen power. Hydrogen fuel cells are already powering flashlights, laptops and video cameras. A handful of homes around the nation as well as some industrial buildings and college campuses in New Jersey run at least partially on hydrogen.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a "hydrogen highway" with fueling stations for hydrogen-powered cars. The federal government, meanwhile, has funded a $1.2 billion program to develop affordable hydrogen vehicles and commercial power installations. Still, many in America's fossil-fuel-addicted society doubt that hydrogen will ever be a viable -- aka affordable -- alternative. Misperceptions about hydrogen's safety are among the biggest barriers to its becoming a widely used alternative energy, said Patrick Serfass, spokesman for the National Hydrogen Association. "You can have the best technology out there, but if people don't have faith in it, you won't get far," he said.

Hydrogen's biggest advantage is its abundance on Earth. Forget OPEC, drilling in the Arctic or splitting atoms at nuclear plants, hydrogen can be stripped out of a water or methane molecule, even extracted from coal or algae. But storing and delivering it is a challenge. Explosion concerns arise when hydrogen is stored as a high-pressure gas, which is often done in industrial settings to shrink its volume. Storing it in low-pressure tanks requires a lot of space – something that isn't practical for most homes. Safety isn't the only problem. Using hydrogen as a fuel for cars and homes will require substantial changes in infrastructure and engines.

"This is almost an indescribably huge undertaking we're talking about," said Lyle Rawlings, a chemical engineer who is Strizki's neighbor and business partner. The two men run a solar-panel installation company and have joined in a second venture -- Reaction Sciences of Long Branch – that is seeking to overcome hydrogen's problems. The technology that makes hydrogen energy possible -- fuel cells -- has been around since the 19th century. It is still being perfected. The fuel cells that power some industrial buildings and college campuses in New Jersey can't run on their own – they need natural gas or other fuels to generate the hydrogen.

At Rutgers University, researchers are trying to build a fuel cell that can be more cheaply scaled to the size needed. Lisa Klein, a science and engineering professor who is leading the project, believes it will be years before hydrogen replaces a significant chunk of the fossil-fuel market. "There have to be some fundamental breakthroughs and new technologies before we see that happen," she said. It also will require a lot of help from the government, she said. "The powers that be in the petroleum industry aren't going to give up their monopoly anytime soon," she said.

Since September, energy experts, entrepreneurs and academics have been debating whether New Jersey should open its doors to this emerging industry. Called the Hydrogen Learning Center, the group was created with a $200,000 grant from the Board of Public Utilities. "It's a question of whether New Jersey wants to deploy its resources to supporting this industry," said Scott Weiner, director of the state's Center for Energy, Economic and Environmental Policy. "I don't hear anybody saying hydrogen is not a fuel of the future. The question is when."

The U.S. headquarters of BOC, one of the world's largest hydrogen companies, is in Murray Hill. Its chief business is supplying hydrogen to businesses for use in manufacturing, but it has a small division developing fuel cells for forklifts and as backup power sources for cellphone towers and utility companies, said Mike McGowan, the company's director of hydrogen energy.

In Eatontown, Millennium Cell is working on portable power fuel cells -- called hydrogen batteries -- for use in laptops, flashlights and video cameras. It has military contracts to build long-lasting batteries for battlefield operation kits. Officials at both companies predict the nation will be slow to wean itself from its reliance on gasoline-fed engines and coal and nuclear power plants. The chief reason is cost.

Back when it was trying to develop fuel cells for vehicles, Millennium Cell patented a method of storing hydrogen in a liquid or salt form, said Rex Luzader, the company's vice president of government relations. But it would have cost the energy equivalent of about $25 a gallon – making today's $3 per gallon for gasoline seem like a bargain. "We cannot realistically compete against the gasoline market and the electrical grid," he said. McGowan thinks it's more likely that hydrogen will first be used to power buildings in remote parts of the world where there is no power grid.

Strizki, however, believes people need to think big -- and stop focusing so much on cost. The civil engineer has helped design two hydrogen cars, a boat, a plane and highway signs for the state Transportation Department. Now, there's his hydrogen-powered house. In the summer, solar panels combined with a geothermal system will harness energy from the ground to run his air conditioning and appliances. The solar energy also will power a machine that converts water into a hydrogen gas to be stored in tanks. In the winter, that hydrogen will fire up a fuel cell that will keep heat and electricity flowing.

Nothing will be emitted from this mini power plant, Strizki said. On the day he flips the switch, he'll need a shipment of hydrogen gas. After that, the house will make its own. But first, he needs to convince officials his project is safe. Officials in his community said they didn't have the expertise to rule on his permit request. Then Strizki had to enlist a building code expert to explain his plans to state officials. The state is studying some of the electrical details, but has signed off on the mechanics of the plans. The cost of the hydrogen system could exceed the $225,000 grant Strizki received from the BPU.

That price tag is way too high for the mass market. His goal is to get the power on and look for ways to reproduce it more cheaply. "Technology is always going to cost more in the beginning," he said. "But over time the costs go down as you figure out how to make something more efficient and how to mass-produce it."

None of these alternate fuels are even close to viable due to cost. The last time I checked it only starts to make sense if gas hits $4.50/gal.

Of course right now that's not too far away...

"Hydrogen's biggest advantage is its abundance on Earth."

When I got here, I had to stop...

Although hydrogen is abundant, it really doesn't exist except in a form that can be used. Water is 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, but it's already oxidized (burnt). To generate hydrogen from it, we must put back in a equal amount of energy to what was released when it was oxidized in the first place.

So it's not a fuel, but a possible storage mechanism for energy. And not a very good one at that...

Don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be storing hydrogen. Don't want my neighbors storing it either. The stuff leaks out of the tiniest of holes, ignites the easiest of all the gasses and is downright explosive (more so than other gasses) when mixed with air.

My dad worked around rockets way back when and he gave me this chart. Your basic minivan is ~100 cubic feet. If that minivan had a hydrogen leak and it was filled with 35-40% by volume of hydrogen, it would have the explosive effect of almost four pounds of C4. From another chart he gave me, that will take out windows to 200’ and buildings to ~50-60’. Wanna be a first responder when this minivan gets in an accident?

it would have the explosive effect of almost four pounds of C4.

How is the "C4 equivalent" measured? In joules, peak pressure, pressure at some specified distance in open air, or what? Since the specified mixture contains about 42 grams of hydrogen and 336 grams of oxygen, that would suggest that it has about five times as much energy per unit mass as C4. Since hydrogen-oxygen is mass-efficient (that's why NASA uses it), that seems plausible.

If you are indeed measuring joules, then your comparison fails because what makes explosives effective is the speed at which their energy is released. A four-pound block of C4 can release all its energy in microseconds; the vehicle full of hydrogen would require milliseconds.

Further, I don't see how--other than by deliberate design--the air inside the vehicle would magically attain the proper hydrogen mix before igniting. If an ignition source were present, it would likely ignite the gas well before the highly-explosive concentrations were reached.

How is the "C4 equivalent" measured? In joules, peak pressure, pressure at some specified distance in open air, or what?

I would guess the latter as my father and this guy nicknamed "Blast King" did the calcs and building designs for structures around rocket test stands. Blast pressures were what they cared about.

They had a terrible time working with hydrogen. The stuff leaked like crazy and drove their mechanics nuts. One time, a mechanic waved his hand over a pipe to try to feel where a leak was coming from. He found it. The jet of gas pierced the skin of his arm and inflated it like a basketball.

Here's the other chart they used. It uses TNT blast as a reference. Figure C4 is ~four times as powerful as TNT per weight so that 100 cu ft of mixed H2 would give a blast equivalent to 15 to 16 pounds of TNT. You'll see from the graph that 15# of TNT gives a pressure of ~2.5 PSI at 50 feet.

Keep in mind this chart dates late fifties/early sixties. ....And I suck at math.

"It will require a lot of help from the government". "The powers that be in the petroleum industry aren't going to give up their monopoly anytime soon."

Anyone see an agenda here?

At 10,000 psi, a very high pressure requiring very heavy tanks, gaseous hydrogen requires seven times the volume of gasoline to store an equivalent amount of energy. It is simply not practical to carry gaseous hydrogen around in a vehicle.

Looks like I can't follow a graph either LOL. According to the chart above, I grossly underestimated the damage radius.

Looks like walls to 200' and windows to 500' are likely in trouble.

I would guess the latter as my father and this guy nicknamed "Blast King" did the calcs and building designs for structures around rocket test stands. Blast pressures were what they cared about.

If the 100 cubic feet of hydrogen-air mixture were surrounded by a lightweight and fragile balloon, the peak pressure would be nowhere near that produced by TNT. Inside an automobile, pressures would get higher because of the mass of the windows (even after pressures exceed the breaking point of the glass, it would take a few moments for the glass to be pushed out of the way). Nonetheless, the failure of the containment vessel would limit the peak pressures reduced therein.

Don't want to get into a pissing contest. Suffice to say Hydrogen is nasty stuff. It doesn't take much of a pressure vessel to turn a hydrogen deflagration into a detonation.

Comparison of explosion pressure for various stoichiometric fuel-air mixtures in a 10 m wedge-shaped vessel

Further, I don't see how--other than by deliberate design--the air inside the vehicle would magically attain the proper hydrogen mix before igniting.

Hydrogen has an explosive range of approximately 4% to 74% mixture in air, so if it's in the air, it's probably in the explosive range. OTOH, unlike gasoline vapors, is lighter than air and will dissipate more quickly. As a first responder, the risk would probably be less, as whatever was going to happen would have happened by the time we arrived on scene. Basically, if there was a rupture, unlike gasoline, all the fuel would have vented and either disspated or ignited. FWIW, I made a call a few years back where a couple of guys in a Ford F150 flipped. They had a five gallon propane tank in their camper, and an open window into the camper from the truck. The neck broke off the propane bottle, and it vented into the cab, igniting. They were frozen in position trying to climb out of the cab through the windows. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"The solar energy also will power a machine that converts water into a hydrogen gas to be stored in tanks."

Right here is where it all falls to pieces!!! The bogusness of not recognizing that the only way to make hydrogen with the VAST amounts of electrical energy that takes must be accomplished by nuclear energy, or else is will always cost too much!!!

Solar is the most expensive way to make electricity to then in turn try to make hydrogen with such pitifully small amounts produced... It's just foolhardy!!!

But of course, so is the fathead Governor of CA!!! Hydrogen Highway... Phhhhhhhhht!!!

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