The Hydrogen Thread

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by Peter.N. »

The only way you can produce hydrogen efficiently and cheaply is with surplus grid power. I believe that's what they are doing with some of their surplus on Orkney.

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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Do hydrogen Cars have a future?

Not so fast, warns Carlos Tavares, CEO of the PSA Group. “Now people see EVs are going to be difficult, they are going to say: ‘Oh, what about hydrogen?’ You’re going to see lots of headlines about hydrogen and everyone’s going to have a hydrogen project,” he said at the Frankfurt motor show in September. Despite Tavares’ reluctance to be dictated to by headlines, the PSA Group has its own hydrogen project (the 2021 van), but Tavares warned that it would be “very expensive”.
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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and in other hydrogen news!

Technology and research never stands still, but of course many false dawns before these things become a reality

Science Daily:New catalyst efficiently produces hydrogen from seawater
Holds promise for large-scale hydrogen production and de-salination


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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles in terms of Trains and Trucks still very much alive as we start 2020.

Arup to help put UK on track for hydrogen trains

Heavy-Duty Hydrogen: Fuel Cell Trains And Trucks Power Up For The 2020s

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Glasgow's Gritters

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Glasgows Gritters Get Grant.....
NewcastleFalcon wrote: 18 Jan 2020, 11:53
white exec wrote: 18 Jan 2020, 11:46 BBC News did an extensive item on Glasgow's electric and clean-air push: charging points, hydrogen gritter trucks, and an accelerated target to be carbon-neutral. Sounding good.
My ears did prick up when I saw that on the news and heard the phrase "hydrogen gritter trucks." Curiousity will have me looking it up, with the cost of your fuel cell vehicles being relatively enormous I wonder if its going to be a LPG type conversion for the gritters only using hydrogen, while still having their ICE.

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Glasgow City Council On Road To Zero Emissions Vehicle Fleet

"Glasgow City Council's ambition for a zero emissions vehicle fleet has taken a major step forward with a £805,000 funding award from Transport Scotland that will allow the council to convert 23 winter gritters to dual fuel hydrogen."

er...whats dual fuel hydrogen?

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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Not much information on these proposed Dual-Fuel Gritters, except that the non- Hydrogen bit of the dual fuel is..........Diesel :-D

Now this Liverpool Company have collaborated to produce a dual fuel Road Sweeper for Aberdeen......
about Ulemco
"ULEMCo Ltd is based in Liverpool, UK and was founded in 2014 as a spin out of Revolve Technologies, to commercialise intellectual property and capability in hydrogen combustion engine technology. The company retrofits vehicles, starting with diesel Ford Transit vans to enable them to run on commercially available hydrogen. The technology allows vehicle fleet managers to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to ultra-low levels.

Commercial fleets across the UK benefit from a reduced carbon foot print while still having the full range capability of standard diesel vehicles. Alongside various partners, ULEMCo already supports a fleet of 20 vehicles across a range of hydrogen hubs in the UK. The company is targeting commercial fleet retrofits to grow the market significantly over the next 18 months, and then expand into other vehicle types over the longer term. Its growth plans include creating a hydrogen re-fuelling network, to capitalise on the existing local infrastructure for this ‘green’ fuel."
[/quote]

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Last edited by NewcastleFalcon on 05 May 2021, 21:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

I think that there is probably enough interest/research/ "hydrogen projects"/full scale fuel cell cars from Toyota and Hyundai/ fuel cell buses/trains/HGV's for at least a modest scale hydrogen infrastructure to evolve in Europe.

The major oil companies if BP are anything to go by, are not particularly worried about vehicle electrification as the demand for their products are set to rise by world population growth and developing countries developing and desiring what the developed world already has, for the most part decent personal cars/roads/homes etc.

In the worst case scenario for their current digging up of a phenomenal number of barrels of oil per day, where the whole world no longer demands petrol/diesel/kerosene and the rest, a hydrogen economy would be best for them seeing as they could produce hydrogen instead, with a tiny bit of token greening of their production facilities through carbon capture etc.

So I expect them all to dabble a little in Hydrogen, just like they are dabbling in the electric car infrastructure, and maybe a little more than dabbling in "green energy" as an aside, with consequent useful PR.

As far as the "problem" of the ICE car goes, by the current transition method of an increasing the number of new 100% electric vehicles year on year, the change is going to take ages. The electric car may well be the better mousetrap by 2030 or even sooner, but if the supply isnt there of the new mousetrap, the old mousetraps will still be bought. Remember the makers of mousetraps, want to still keep making the old mousetraps.

OUr friends in Glasgow with their dual fuel hydrogen/diesel gritters, and the firm from Liverpool heavily invested in this "probably worst of all worlds" contribution to a cleaner "fuel", are at least trying to address whether there is some sort of ICE conversion which can be effectively bolt on and affordable.

BMW experimented with a 100% Hydrogen ICE with their BMW Hydrogen 7.

Image
BMW Hydrogen 7 at TED 2007
Sachi Gahan from San Francisco, USA [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

Inefficient burning Hydrogen in an ICE has been overtaken by fuel cells which are more efficient, and the idea of a hydrogen ICE has fallen by the wayside. The hybrid gritters with the bolt on conversion seem like a bit of a dead end, I haven't discovered much detail on them, but with Hydrogen and Diesel being such different fuels
and having different properties I suspect the dual fuel bit comes with injecting hydrogen into the air intake side of things causing a more effective "burn" of the diesel injection. I would be surprised if there was a flick of a switch which turned off the diesel, and then magically adjusted all the mixture parameters to turn an engine/ engine management system designed to run on diesel, to an engine set up to run on Hydrogen.

I wonder what the warranty on the gritter would be after the bolt on conversion, and whether the Council's insurers would hike the premiums for that bit of their fleet.

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by Stickyfinger »

Nowt wrong with high efficiency clean burn ICE generating in a hybrid, that technology (the mobile generator) can convert then to any fuel type at a later date as those become for efficient, cleaner and more cost effective in personal transport.
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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There arent many hydrogen fuel cell cars "on the market" but one of them that just about is is the Toyota Mirai, now in its "new improved" second incarnation, far too expensive for mere mortals of course.
2020 Toyota Mirai: will next-gen fuel cell car make hydrogen mobility a reality?

The comments often reveal more than the article eg....
Matthew Riley 21 Jan 2020 10:24AM
There are a lot of advantages to H2 fuel cell vehicles, but they will only ever be a niche market since the total efficiency from electricity generation to vehicle propulsion is comparable to that of petrol/diesel and far lower than battery electric vehicles (BEV), at around 30% for H2 vs 70% for BEV. See for example here: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/st ... stion.html
Note also that the Tesla model S has a range of 374 miles, which compares well to the Mirai at 404 miles.

Huw Jenkins 21 Jan 2020 10:37AM
@Matthew Riley
Yes, but the point is that with the increasing use of renewable electricity generation which can't simply be switched on and off when you need it, you either have to be able to store the electricity (i.e. in batteries) or in some other way - and hydrogen generation/storage is a good candidate.
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by bobins »

An article today on the BBC website (based on an article in the journal 'Science') about a new form of storing Hydrogen for use in fuel cells. Still early days yet, but Hydrogen isn't dead in the water just yet !

"A new material developed, by scientists could give a significant boost to a new generation of hydrogen-powered cars.
Like a bath sponge, the product is able to hold and release large quantities of the gas at lower pressure and cost.
Made up of billions of tiny pores, a single gram of the new aluminium-based material has a surface area the size of a football pitch.
The authors say it can store the large volume of gas needed for practical travel without needing expensive tanks."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52328786
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Just to port some recent discussion from the "Electric Vehicles What is Available?" thread relevant to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles to the thread.....
Mandrake wrote: 28 Jun 2020, 08:58 A bit of a black eye for Hydrogen powered cars:
https://interestingengineering.com/hydr ... ta-hyundai
How long until that happens in a (perhaps old and poorly maintained) car instead of a refuelling station ?
Hydrogen fuelled cars were already dead man walking IMO due to rapid improvements in BEVs but events like this might help to seal its fate. LiOn batteries can certainly burn vigorously if they catch on fire but they don’t explode!
NewcastleFalcon wrote: 28 Jun 2020, 10:13 That's old news Simon from back in Jun 2019, but the safety of hydrogen has always had a bad name. Then again petrol is fairly explosive and flammable too (see bobins' reply here on the Hydrogen Vehicles thread). Haven't been keeping track of the latest from the car, bus, train, truck industry recently seeing as everything has been overtaken by the one news story in town.

I'm sure that although that incident was a set back undoubtedly it didn't significantly dent developments in the hydrogen field. It will be interesting to see what the priorities are going to be for the Auto Industry. You can see production being cut, but is it going to be a case of plans for electrification/other alternative fuels are going to be delayed, or the time is right to make a radical change. Money will talk as ever I feel and big investments with falling or uncertain demand are going to be a gamble.

Hydrogen not quite killed off yet,
bobins wrote: 28 Jun 2020, 10:40 There were no doubt countless detractors of BEVs 20-30 odd years ago, many saying "It's a dead man walking" back then due to high cost and poor range, but technology kept progressing and range has improved - though recharge times still need improving, initial cost is still prohibitvely high for many, and range is still a valid concern for a lot of motorists. But progress keeps on rolling forward and these things improve. The same should be said of Hydrogen. Yes, it's very early days yet, but they're coming up with much better (and safer) ways of storing it. The cost of making fuel cells will continue its decline. The 'refill' times of a Hydrogen tank is almost on a par with that of petrol/diesel, and that is a major plus when it comes to commercial fleets that can't sit around waiting for a battery recharge. The cost of Hydrogen filling stations is often cited as a reason not to bother with a Hydrogen filling infrastrusture - conveniently overlooking the massive cost involved in litium battery manufacture on top of that of installing the charging network and upgrading power supplies. Everything has a cost, but that doesn't mean it should be cast aside. We'd not have BEV's if the detractors of decades ago had been listened to.
Hydrogen as a common source of motive power is not dead until it's stopped breathing and no amount of prodding by scientists can revive it. There's a considerable amount of research and development still ongoing into Hydrogen (fuel cells) as a source of motive power. Progress should be welcomed, not stifled.
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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and seeing as it has been raised what is the current state of play.

Here is one little snippet, come to your own view.
https://sifted.eu/articles/corporate-in ... -hydrogen/

"Enel, Europe’s largest utility, is set to launch a hydrogen business next year. The move comes just as Germany earmarked €9bn to expand its hydrogen capacity and the EU is expected this week to launch a hydrogen strategy with aims to turn this into a €140bn industry by 2030. There is a good summary of the state of play in this Petroleum Economist article. "

https://www.petroleum-economist.com/art ... en-economy
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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

On 8th July the EU hydrogen strategy will be presented in the European Parliament, alongside a related initiative to integrate the various components of the energy system where hydrogen is also expected to play a key role.

This, probably unfortunately titled article, discusses the latest state of play ahead of the official launch. Germany, which takes over the EU’s rotating presidency in July, has taken the lead on the issue, outlining a €7 billion plan earlier this month to promote “green” hydrogen at gigawatt scale.

“Hydrogen is one of the enablers in the context of the Green Deal for decarbonising sectors like chemical industry, steel industry and transport,” the Commission document states, listing the industrial sectors where future demand for hydrogen is expected to be highest."

Leak-EU puts onus on renewable hydrogen in latest draft strategy

Hydrogen has by no means gone away.

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Re: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?

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Well there was a little piece on News at Ten on the BBC about Hydrogen tonight with diggers, buses, trains, ships, trucks and planes.

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