Can hydrogen fuel cells replace EV batteries?

11 June 2022
Why are most of the electric cars powered by a battery? Is there a viable alternative?

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  • Anonymous

the table mentioned in this article is the most misleading i have ever seen. it only shows the losses of H2 production. what about the production of batteries? ArenaEV is getting oblivious here. how much energy does it take to mine raw materials like lithium for batteries? how much energy does it take to manufacture a battery? with H2 fuel cells you only need to make the chemical reaction for H2 and to compress it. for batteries you need to destroy the environment to get the materials through mining, the disposal of batteries is bad for the environment either.

  • Anonymous

This article is so misleading. And what is the validation of the data? Ltt explained rightfully how fuel cell works

A patent on a working method would be worth so much to existing energy companies. I remember those claims. There was a TV show about it in the UK. I did a little looking into it over the years because I was interested and nearly falling into that conspiracy mode. But look, if you find some way of extracting H2 from water that goes against established basic chemistry then you need extraordinary proof. There's no known way these processes work. The inventors hide away behind "someone will steal my idea" because they want to cash out somehow with people who don't know it's bunk.

  • Anonymous

one question, in that above diagram of fuel cell, can the generated H2O be feed back to cathode side to do electrolysis with incoming electrons(and with help of additional rechargeable batteries that are chargeable at home) and then re-produce H2 and O to be reused there itself to produce a circular eco-in-system.

  • Anonymous

The losses for the production of electricity used in EV are nowhere mentioned... Once those are taken into account the overall efficiency of both processes mentioned in the article drops significantly further.

  • Healthy Alternative

It would be nice the mentioning of at least on of the many supressed inventors that managed to produce H2 on demand under the hood of the car. Or the possibility to obtain pure H2 through frequencies and acoustics..
However such tech did not fit the oil agenda neither will fit the "sustainable" energy agenda..
Thanks for the article

  • Anonymous

there's a reason they haven't mentioned the adsorption method: it's pretty much purely theoretical right now. There hasn't been anything that's left the materials testing lab. No real products (not even a prototype).

We can talk about it when a real-life example exists, not just "theory". Because if you're going to talk about theoreticals, we can compare that to solid-state lithium air batteries or something equally theoretical.

  • Zeke

This article mentions only two methods of storing hydrogen in fuel cells, with both of them having serious deficiencies in the form of extreme requirements, such as cryocooling (which requires a complex system), or keeping H2 molecules sealed within a container at several hundred atmospheres of pressure (being the smallest element, Hydrogen is notoriously very difficult to prevent from leaking).

There is however another alternative: solid state storage of hydrogen atoms via substrate adsorption. In short, rather than trying to capture and keep H2 molecules in gas (high pressure) or (cryocooled) liquid form, you have individual Hydrogen atoms that bind with solid materials inside a replaceable/reusable fuel cartridge, and can be released for electricity production through various mechanisms.

This third technology is the one receiving perhaps the most significant amount of attention right now, because the other two have serious deficiencies that are hard to solve cheaply, even after price reductions due to economies of scale, and because this third alternative is one that isn't yet fully developed (i.e. the best method has yet to be established), while showing a great deal of promise after the details have been worked out.

The following YouTube video does an IMO great job of explaining one example of this third alternative in layman's terms (there are various other routes involving other methods of capture and release that are currently being researched): https://youtu.be/U7CCq4oBgw4

This is from Dubai Expo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUYWJCbJ-TM

I am so proud of my tiny country Slovakia and their technicians.
Looks awesome and pretends to be even better.
Trully amazing car.

  • kek

I feel we should be better off improving the current fossil fuel process in order to reduce CO2 emissions instead of diving into the EV world where every option seems like it needs expensive steps with little returns.

For starters, batteries hate high temperatures and extremely low temperatures. That's another thing that needs to be taken care of compared to Gas Motors.
Batteries do not like impacts and are really flammable and difficult to control when they catch fire.
Batteries tend to die after some years of use and their replacement is really expensive.

So, I dont think moving too fast into EV territory is actually a good idea for now. The technology is green right now and so many options need to be explored first. This Hydrogen fuel cell seems like a good idea to power cities or a house rather than a car.

  • Anonymous

better question:

do you want them to? can you make hydrogen at home? is it worth the hassle?

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