Fuel cell bus in California destroyed after explosion during refuelling.

[NNadir]

Engulfed in flames | Fuel cell bus in California destroyed after explosion during refuelling.

Subtitle

‘Too early to speculate’ on cause of fire, says bus company CEO

It requires a free registration to the hydrogen website to read the entire thing. I signed up to read it; I'm easily amused.

Excerpts:

A $1.1m hydrogen fuel cell bus in the city of Bakersfield in California was destroyed after an explosion was seen and heard during refuelling in the early hours of yesterday morning (Tuesday).

A section of the Golden State Highway was closed as firefighters fought the flames, but no injuries were reported and damage was limited to the single bus and the dispenser of the refuelling unit.

Golden Empire Transit (GET), the company operating the fuel cell buses, announced in a statement on 18 July that the hydrogen fuel tanks were seen and heard to have exploded, but it later retracted that statement, telling Hydrogen Insight on 28 July that “Explosion- like sounds were seen and heard and it was speculated that it was the tanks”, adding: “We will not have any concrete answers until the investigation is complete...”

A technical point not covered in the article is that fuel cells generally have Nalfion solid phase electrolytes. Nalfion is a fluoropolymer, in the class of compounds known as persistent fluorinated organic substances, a rather large environmental problem that is growing pretty fast, but not quite as fast as extreme global heating, which hydrogen fantasies have done nothing to address. To be clear, many firefighting agents, fluorinated foaming agents, known as AFFF (aqueous film forming foam) were historically in this class of troublesome compounds, but it didn't seem to save the bus. Places where AFFF were used either to fight fires or for training fire fighters are permanently contaminated.

Despite fossil fuel "bait and switch" ads here and elsewhere pretending otherwise, there really aren't that many hydrogen buses in the world, but even in a small subset they're already blowing up. This is unsurprising given the low viscosity, low flammable limits and incompatibility with many metals - leading to metal failure and leaks - that hydrogen exhibits.

Hydrogen is not, despite much carrying on to the contrary which is regrettably well advertised but false, emission free. It is overwhelmingly made by the steam reforming of dangerous fossil fuels, accompanied by exergy destruction.

[Demovictory9]

1. Good that no one was on the bus

[NNadir]

2. Fortunately these buses, despite the hype, are relatively rare. Were they not rare, it is inevitable that someone...

...will at sometimes be on the bus when it explodes. But they are not going to be anything major in any future. The shell game will break down because it's a shell game, especially if fossil fuels are unavailable to waste to make hydrogen.

[IbogaProject]

3. The Hindenburg was a Hydrogen explosion

Toyota and others are in on this mistake.

[NNadir]

4. In fact, so was Fukushima a hydrogen explosion. I'm...

...not so sure that all this hydrogen car stuff is all that serious; it may be part of the marketing budget.

In any case, it's not going to work out any better now than it has in the last 50 years of pratting on the topic. The reason is the poor physical properties of hydrogen and more importantly, the second law of thermodynamics.

It was very big with the prattling idiot Amory Lovins in the early 21st century, for one example.