Designed to break...

[Seraph]

Just you watch out if your hybrid or Hydrogen car catches fire. Word is out that rescue workers (at least here in the states) won't pull out people trapped in a burning Hybrid car because once the fire hits the hydrogen cells that car is going up like a really big firecracker.

I can't figure out what you really mean. Hybrid cars don't contain any hydrogen cells.

If hydrogen was to leak from a ruptured tank, being a lighter than air gas it would not form a dangerous pool like petrol, but disperse very quickly into the atmosphere. Also burning hydrogen does not heat the surrounding area anywhere near as bad as petrol with its hot soot resulting in less danger for the rescue worker.

Hydrogen burns clear, so if there was leak from a tank storing gas under pressure you could never know it. If it was stored under pressure it's possible the pressure of the gas itself could cause seriously injury. I've seen video broom handles broken in half by jets of gas from leaking cylinders, imagine what that would do to someones leg.

I knew a chemical engineer who liked to tell this story:
He worked in a chemical manufacturing plant. He was trying to track down why part of the process was broken and was walking along a catwalk pushing a cart with equipment on it when without any warning the cart burst into flames. It turns out that hydrogen had made a steel line brittle and the line had devolped a small high pressure leak which had then ignited. There was a stream of high pressure very hot hydrogen running across the catwalk. This leak would have easily killed someone who walked into it.

[wellard]

Originally posted by Thoran: You're not going to see hydrogen fuel cells in cars unless a storage mechanism that's safe is developed.

Maybe a few seconds more research would show that most major car manufactures already have hydrogen cell cars. Honda has already sold some to the public earlier this year. This is not new technology just improvements in cost and complexities have made the goal closer (so close you can hear the oil companies panic)


Many Australian cars, taxis and buses (hopefully mine also next year) already run on LPG, filling a hydrogen cell car with pressurised gas would be just the same as filling a pressurised LPG car, it really is no big deal