Hydrogen

Just watched a great video on Hydrogen power. I always believed that a battery papap was never the way to go. So a new Vauxhall astra is around 14 grand. A battery powered one is 29K. Never is or could work. I think we all knew this. So watch this video of Harry's garage interview with the owner of JCB. Mr Lord Bamford. They have it cracked. Elton Musk was the instigator of it must be electric according to him. A guaranteed good watch.

Steve.

Hydrogen power

Edited By Steviegtr on 22/07/2021 00:09:45

Forgot to say going out with friends on the Multistrada 1200s today. Full race decat exhaust & upmap chip to dose the environment with lots of crap. Maybe could convert to Hydrogen.

Steve,

Hydrogen IC engines don't burn any oil?

As understand it H2 IC is a less efficient way of getting useful energy than H2 fuel cell and if harvesting braking energy then you need electric motors in there anyway.
If we can find 'cheap' ways of getting green H2 from spare renewables that would be wasted/turned off otherwise then I'm very much in favour of saving battery weight and recharge time.

pgk

Where are the hydrogen mines?

Hydrogen burns very cleanly, only toxic emissions are the NOx produced as a by product of the combustion temperatures. Almost all of the rest of the emissions can be recycled.

There seem to be a few drawbacks

1 Hydrogen does not occur naturally, so has to be extracted by some process, from water, other gases, or some hydrocarbon.  Where does the energy for that come from?

2 Hydrogen provides less energy than a hydrocarbon fuel (Obvious, since it lacks the greater atomic weight carbon! )

3 Hydrogen is difficult to store, needs to be under pressure to have a useable mass, needs strong heavy storage vessels. (Just like all gases, such as Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, CO2 etc ).

Years ago, a Hillman Imp was converted to run on Hydrogen. The cylinders left only room for the driver, no passengers, but that problem should be solveable, now. It was a conversion of a vehicle designed to run on a different fuel.. Converting a steam locomotive from coal to oil was probably less difficult in terms of storage.

4 Presently almost no infrastructure to support widespread use (But like charging stations for battery powered electric vehicles, that can be solved, given time and money )

Presumably the motoring organisations will have to have vehicles equipped with high pressure Hydrogen cylinders, to refill vehicles that have run out of fuel at the roadside.

Think of having to refuel construction machines, such as JCBs, well away from roads, and surrounded by acres of mud!

But, faced with the various problems, solutions will have to be found.

Howard

Edited By Howard Lewis on 22/07/2021 08:58:51

.

Here’s one answer, which I have posted previously: **LINK**

https://www.itm-power.com/h2-stations/rotherham-wind-hydrogen-station

MichaelG.

refuelling construction machines isn't the issue. An average car holds 60L, a moderate JCB telehandler 150L and an HGV upto 1500L.
The real issue is making green H2 and that's only possible with x/s renewables when there's more sun or more wind than the grid needs.

pgk

Farming is going in a different direction the use of methane will become more normal: New Holland will add methane powered tractor to range in 2021 - AFDJ

the intention is to create energy neutral farms producing methane from animal & farm waste, there are already a number of farms selling methane to the national grid so it is a small step to fuel the tractors and other equipment in the near future.

I thought that burning methane produced CO2 - isn't that a non starter ?

Methane is probably a better way to go. It is produced naturally without any man made energy input. Solar or the environment may supply energy if the digestion is not exothermic.

Digesters to run gensets have been use on farms and waste sites for years.

I would be surprised if 1500 litres of liquid hydrogen would provide the productive ton miles that hydrocarbon fuel does. Productive meaning payload ton miles. (Hydrogen cylinders will be HEAVY! so gross weight might be the same, but the payload will be less )

And if you compare ton miles per gallon of hydrocarbon fuel for a car with that of a HGV, you will find the HGV is more efficient, and the same may be likely for hydrogen as a fuel..

About 70 vs about 350 !

Howard

You've got to make it and get it to the refuelling stations where it's actually needed.

Just like any other 'new' system, how are you going to develop the infrastructure and who is going to pay for it? If you don't have the infrastructure then building the relevant cars at sensible prices will be a massive gamble, as will buying them.

This is one of the places where electric scores at the start, as we all have electricity. But a large takeup of them leads back to needing more ways of recharging them efficiently.

Contrary to claim above actually h2 tanks do not need to be heavy, luxfer already make lightweight tanks used in hydrogen fuel storage. The video makes some very important points not least the capital cost aspect of electric v h2. Currently running cost for h2 is higher and never likely to come down to meet MGO prices but it is likely to meet derv in the next few years. Plenty of opportunity for h2 production, there are plans approved to site an electrolyser on a solar farm near me and it complements solar and wind energy nicely by providing a means of energy storage to iron out the intermittent nature of solar and wind without tons of batteries. There is a lot going on in the h2 arena currently and it shouldn't be ignored.

Paul.

One presumes in the same way we did for horsefeed, for petrol, for electric vehicles, as we did and do for any new technology deployed at scale.

There seems to be an awful lot of "wellwhataboutism" on this forum - the purpose of engineering is to solve problems, not find reasons it can't be done! It's one thing to say "I don't understand how this can work", it's another to say "and therefore it won't work"!

Quite agree - and if fast electric chargers are to be installed all over the place the electric infrastructure may well need upgrading anyway.

Any change away from current technology will demand changes and this film shows me that the choice lies between battery electric, hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell electric. The first demands resources that could well be limited in availability and very expensive while both of the others demand pipes, tanks electrolysers and tankers - all current technology and no resource implications. Thereafter the cost difference between fuel cell and direct hydrogen combustion sells it to me.

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 22/07/2021 14:18:45

The insuperable problem that everyone faces is that of folk, often politicians, who make wild promises without understanding just what is involved in bringing those promises to completion, if possible.

The need is to think things through completely. But that is a task for mere mortals, such as civil, electrical and mechanical Engineers. THEY are the people who actually find and apply solutions to problems.

It is all very well someone saying things like "By 2030 we shall be Zero carbon" without thinking about how places like hospitals will manage without standby generators, and having standby batteries.

Soundbites don't provide solutions.

As long as you keep topping up the tank, a genset will run VERY long periods. A standby battery has a limited capacity.

Maybe we should be devoting much more effort to optimising tidal or wave power, for the electricity that powers and will power even more of our needs.

The wind does'n always blow, or does too strongly, the sun doesn't always shine, but tides are predictable, and waves keep washing onto the shore. Those are the reliable sources of energy to power our new Zero carbon world, whether hydrogen, or battery electric operated at point of use .

Howard

I think you’ll find it does. It’s been shining for millions of years and has millions to go before it goes out.

Storage of all that power is the issue and there are lots of companies addressing it.

Just one

Another

Another solution put forward is a fully connected power network, because as the sun shines all the time it will be providing energy somewhere on our ball. Politics though means this is highly unlikely to ever happen.

I’m sure we can find solutions if those with the imagination work at it.

I agree. Possibly it's an age thing. I've only had the time and spare cash to Model Engineer since I retired and the kids grew up! Being retired is wonderful but there's no doubt about it, I'm less willing to tackle new challenges as I mature. I also dislike the sense or gradually losing control as my understanding of the world drifts away from current events. One moves from prime of life to Yesterday's Man so quickly. Always been thus: the older generation becomes small 'c' conservative and, because it's bad for us, we resist change to the best of our ability.

Thought it was funny when it happened to my parents wanting gramophone needles, not so amused now it's happening to me! I sympathise more and more with the Spanish proverb 'All new things are bad', even though I know rationally that clinging to the past is dangerous rubbish.

Except youngsters do it too. Maybe it's because tried and tested seems safer than new alternatives, even when tried and tested is obviously failing! Possibly laziness or 'I'm all right Jack, and 'it can't happen to me'. Or the sense of expectation generated by an unchallenged comfy lifestyle.

I feel the main thing to be learned from the past is the need to keep up to date. Bad things happen to societies that don't adapt to changing circumstances and to societies who choose the wrong options. My advice: vote for evidence based decision making, even if the outcome is personally uncomfortable.

Dave

I didn't(and haven't ever) said it won't work. But we claim to be engineers; the people who actually make stuff work. We can't use the politicians technique of If I say it, it has happened.

So before we dive headfirst into the trap of Wow, that's really cool, how about some critical thinking:

Why are we making this change?

Is it possible?

Will it make something(hell, let's be generous- anything) better?

Can we afford it?

Can we afford not to do it?

Who is going to do it?

Who is going to pay for it?

And how do we convince them of that fact?

Going back to the examples above: horsefeed was a development of existing agricultural systems; petrol was a waste product that was originally sold in tins by chemists shops; and car charging is a fancy new box on the end of an existing system.

Which brings us back to hydrogen:

the process to separate it is a straightforward, long developed industrial process. Doing so commercially just needs money. So does building a new oil refinery, but the return on that expenditure is well known.

How do we distribute it once it's 'made'? Put it in tanks and drive it to specially built sites, transfer it to a big tank and sell it in small quantities. But that's no different to petrol! So there's nothing really to do except buy some different kit. Just takes money. Again.

We have the technology to make efficient road vehicles that use it as a fuel. Just to make them industrially and convince people to buy them. Yet more money.

So is hydrogen better? If we can 'make' it with clean, emission free electricity, find enough cash to buy all the new kit, convince people to use it and do all of that in, say, 10 years then the answer is a limited probably.

Is it worth it? That will require some real, and realistic numbers. I guarantee that none will ever be published. Because that's how politicians work.