Wonder if this will ever pan out

[Wild one]

Yamaha’s 450-HP Hydrogen V8: The Future of Power and Sustainability!

Yamaha’s 450-HP Hydrogen V8 is revolutionizing high-performance engineering, proving that internal combustion can be sustainable. With zero carbon emissions, exhilarating sound, and high efficiency, this engine offers an alternative to silent EVs. Is this the future of performance cars?

engineerine.com

 

[Docwagon1776]

I've posted on it pretty in depth before, but in short:

In Japan, maybe.

In North America, no.

Why?
You put more energy into hydrogen than you get out of it. It requires electricity to 'crack' since there's no exploitable large scale hydrogen deposits on Earth. Hydrogen loves to latch on to things, so it doesn't stick around in it's elemental form very well.

So you need a lot of electricity to make, and you it's less efficient than just using electricity directly. If you have a lot of mineral wealth in oil and natural gas, hydrogen is way too expensive. If you have a lot of cheap energy production, say nuke plants, and no easy access to oil and natural gas, it's much easier for it to be economically viable. Then add a small footprint for infrastructure vs a massive continent...so Japan vs North America becomes even more of a gulf.

California has tried to make this a thing for years, sunk massive amounts of subsidies into it, and it's limped along on the edge of death the whole time.

 

[BossHogg]

This ship sank before it left the harbor.

Search for hydrogen-powered cars in California. The cost per pound will send you into cardiac arrest. If I recall correctly, a fill-up was in the $170 range.

 

[tron67j]

I am kind of hoping it is like fracking, in that the technology wasn't there years ago to do it cheap enough to be viable. But times change, knowledge gets amassed, and when oil gets expensive enough it might just become worthwhile. Today, not so much.

 

[NCRaineman]

Just like EVs, there is little to no INFRASTRUCTURE to support it. That's the hurdle which has to be gotten over with any "alternative fuel."

 

[Docwagon1776]

I am kind of hoping it is like fracking, in that the technology wasn't there years ago to do it cheap enough to be viable. But times change, knowledge gets amassed, and when oil gets expensive enough it might just become worthwhile. Today, not so much.

There will never be a technology that allows it to be cheaper than electricity if we have to crack it, and for the same reason there will never be a perpetual motion machine. You can't get more energy out than you put in and every system loses some. Cheaper electricity equates to cheaper hydrogen, but it's just a competition between battery stored and chemically stored at that point.

Right now most of our hydrogen is from methane from natural gas wells.

Now, in theory there are possibly large scale deposits of hydrogen in the Earth's crust. Some rare small scale deposits have been found, most famously in Mali. Cracking naturally occurs under intense heat and pressure when water hits certain catalysts. *IF* we figure out a way to locate and exploit those *AND* there are sufficient deposits shallow enough for us to get to (remember the Earth's crust is 4x as thick as humans have ever managed to drill see: Russian Kola Bore) so the deposits need to be fairly shallow to be cheaply accessed.

So...maybe. Imagine if Australia becomes the new global energy center and what politics and war looks like when nobody gives AF about oil/gas in the Middle East any longer...

 

[NCRaineman]

Gas and oil will never disappear. Commercial shipping uses ten times more of it than privately owned vehicles do. Boats, planes, semis, trains.

Heck, I work in grocery distribution and we have a fleet of over 3000 refrigerated trailers. They burn one gallon of diesel an hour when running.

This is all a scheme to make you more dependent upon the government. Commercial enterprises won't have to worry about it.

 

[tron67j]

Well, gas and oil may never be depleted but it will get to a point where the cost to extract it will not make financial sense. Oil is a finite commodity, arguable whether there is enough to power things through 2050, 2070, somewhere in-between. Will they find more reserves to significantly increase this supply, maybe. But ultimately it kicks the can down the road and we have a responsibility to ensure we don't leave a problem for our children. I would like my son to enjoy the freedoms we have now, that is why I hope there is a breakthrough in using renewable energy to create hydrogen. For example we are woefully inadequate in converting solar energy to actual power. Perhaps a breakthrough creates exponentially greater amounts of power from the sun which powers hydrogen power.

 

[NCRaineman]

Well, gas and oil may never be depleted but it will get to a point where the cost to extract it will not make financial sense.

"Experts" have been crying about *peak oil* since the 1970's. It's a myth. New sources are being discovered every year.

What's not a myth is world governments making private use of gasoline and diesel and even natural gas more difficult and costly every year. What you and I use in our cars and our homes is a drop in the bucket compared to what is used for commercial activities, power generation and materials manufacturing.

All the plastics that are in everything now, they are derived from oil. Every container ship and cargo hauler on the ocean uses oil. Every semi moving goods from Port to store uses oil. The people who want you to sacrifice your way of life to "save the planet" are flying to *climate conferences* on private jets that consume more fuel in one flight than your car does all year.

If you want your child to be "free" as you are you'd better wake him up to the scam that is "climate change" and how the government is working to make him a serf without firing a shot.

 

[tron67j]

My statement wasn't a peak oil cry, it is a fact that there is a limited amount of oil. What no one knows is when we reach the point when the costs start to get prohibitively expensive to extract. We only know what we know today, tomorrow requires planning.

And please refrain from picking a fight with people on topics such as climate change. I didn't go there and quite frankly there is way to much to aggregate in two words. This thread will get shut down like so many others. People are free to believe what they want based on their own research, that and other such topics have no place here. This thread was to discuss about the hydrogen engine and our hopes or lack of belief that hydrogen will pan out - both are possible options. I believe it will, but learn more about the issues from what is shared here.

 

[Docwagon1776]

"Experts" have been crying about *peak oil* since the 1970's. It's a myth. New sources are being discovered every year.

Demand goes up every year as well. We've had a 50-ish year supply of exploitable known reserves for decades precisely because of that. Exploiting reserves faster than demand rises would push prices down, and oil needs to live in a sweet spot of profitable enough to fund more exploration and new exploitation but not so high as to crash the economy for everybody, which then crashes them as a second order effect. Hence why entities like OPEC try to control the flow.

"Never" is a long time, though, and eventually what's left is going to be so difficult to recover as to be prohibitively expensive. New technology like fracking can push that back, and it's not something I think will occur in my life time or my son's life time, but it will eventually happen.

 

[tjfdesmo]

notgonnahappen.com