Hydrogen

There’s a bun fight going on, on Social Media. Someone posted this so I thought I’d share. Source is Transport & Environment but I couldn’t find the original article.

There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

MichaelG.

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https://www.transportenvironment.org/about-us/

A campaign group 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/01/2023 14:12:49

The big problem with stuff like hydrogen, although it's not as bad as acetylene, is it's explosive range

4% to 75% = badaboom

But do you disagree in principle? I read a long while back that, not including the fuel source, EV’s are 95% efficient whilst ICE vehicles are only around 20 - 25% efficient. The rest as we know is wasted as heat and sound.

Yep and Vic just propagated their cause one step further. Well done Vic.

Their page is badly configured too when it pops up their cookie/analytics options if you click one of the switches by accident (they colour it blue when 'off', opposite to usual) it automatically accepts all cookies, closes that pop-up and hits you with a donate pop-up instead.

I think the man with the welly boot expressed something along those lines too !

One can "prove" almost anything with "statistics", as we all know.

Example, With nuclear power, electricty will be so cheap that we will not be able to give it away ??????????

I think we all know how that worked out !

That graphic is Figure 9 in This Report ( p28 of 36 page pdf download)
https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Full_%20Roadmap%20freight%20buses%20Europe_2050_FINAL%20VERSION_corrected%20(2).pdf

Bill

The most obvious limitation of the comparison it assumes efficiency matters, and perhaps it doesn't.

Electricity produced by Green methods is dirt cheap, the problem being it depends on the weather. So it has to be stored in some way. But efficiency may not matter because the clean cheap energy can be used wastefully.

One possibility is a battery, the disadvantage being size, weight, cost and limited capacity. Their efficiency only matters in the context of a vehicle.

Another possibility is Hydrogen, the disadvantage being it's a difficult to compress gas needing careful handling. The advantage is it's not a battery! For example, waste heat produced by a fuel cell is a good way of keeping a car warm in cold climates. As soon as the heater is switched on in a battery vehicle, it's efficiency goes to pot because the power isn't turning the wheels. Hydrogen needn't be used to generate electricity either. It can be burned in an internal combustion engine: still cheap and low pollution, but with the extra stamina needed for earth moving or heavy transit. Another good use is central heating. Hydrogen is much safer when mixed with Methane much as it was in coal made town gas, and it can piped to homes much in the same was as we get Natural gas. Doing this with chemically made Hydrogen is insanely expensive, but electrolytic Hydrogen made with surplus Green energy (Bright windy days), is cheap as chips.

Efficiency isn't the be all and end-all. Cost is the driver.

Dave

Do bear in mind that the report is over 5 years old and is primarily referring to freight & busses.

I came across this version of renewable/bio diesel the other day; Peak Oil is a local distributor, just outside Chesterfield, Derbyshire, who sell fuel and lubricants privately and commercially.
They have an unmanned 24 hour pump which dispenses their own branded diesel, which certainly burns cleaner, as seems to be evidenced by my own MOT tests.
I've not tried this HVO Diesel, available through a different pump, as it was 40p/l more expensive than their normal Super Diesel.
http://www.peakhvo.co.uk/
https://www.peakoil.co.uk/about-peak-oil/peak-oil-history/

Bill

Hydrogen FCEV’s are becoming as emotive an issue as BEV’s as demonstrated by your nasty comment.
Do you have to be so personal about it though or are you normally rude to people you don’t know?

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I don’t have the data to know, one way or the other, Vic … and whenever I see a simplistic analysis like that, I get a twinge telling me that someone is [whether by accident or design] not telling me everything.

For obvious reasons, I have yet to see a ‘whole life’ cost analysis for any of these new vehicles … inevitably, most of the numbers are guesstimates.

I enjoy driving my 2003 [petrol] car the few miles that I do in it these days … but many would have scrapped it, and been on their third replacement by now. … Where do people like me fit in these calculations, I wonder ?

In the honourable rush to save the planet, I fear we may throw the baby out with the bathwater.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/01/2023 16:52:29

I'm sorry if you're offended but if you're going to further a pressure-group's agenda onto a forum that's unrelated to the topic you'll have to accept that some people might take exception and give you an undesirable response. Your smiley face at the end of your sentence suggests that you knew it might be contentious and you were posting for effect.

Bottom line is, if you don't want an emotive response, don't start a thread on an emotive topic on an inappropriate forum.

I hope that I am wrong, but I suspect that the expensive electric cars will begin an end for cars for the masses. In principle it should be easy to produce a cheap electric run about. But they seem to be aiming the products at boy racers.

Statistics don’t lie they are just a way of displaying a data set. Providing the information about how the graphs or numbers are arrived at and a full disclosure of the data set statistics are very helpful. So how about this if the input is renewable electricity and the output is transport then all methodologies are 100 % efficient at reducing carbon emissions if just the fuel cycle is taken into consideration. Adding in emissions from the production of the infrastructure such as the vehicle and the wind farm etc will lower this and should be recognised.
People can however obscure stats by not telling the whole story. Don’t blame the maths though.

regards Martin

I’m not furthering the agenda of any pressure group, I just posted a picture I saw on Social Media. I wasn’t posting for effect and it’s not emotive for me, it’s just technology. Sorry stuff like this upsets you enough though that you feel compelled to be rude about it.
I also posted it in the “Tea Room” section of the forum so how you see it as inappropriate is anyone’s guess as there are jokes and all sorts in there totally unrelated to ME.

No need to reply I won’t see it as I’ll be making use of the forums ignore member feature.

I dunno what people are arguing about. A case of the readers not understanding what is being demonstrated?

This table is a simple comparison of how renewable energy (in the form of electricity) can be used.

EITHER directly stored in, and used from, the best Lithium ion battery (and using the most efficient electric motors around).

OR used to first produce Hydrogen (by electrolysis of water) with eventual use in an automotive, via energy conversion in a fuel cell.

OR using renewable energy to produce liquid (hydrocarbon) fuel, by carbon capture and chemical synthesis of the liquid fuel, before using that synthesised fuel in an ICE.

If it is about people thinking this has anything to do with burning fossil fuels, in vehicles, they are completely off their heads.

Please can someone elaborate on the ‘bun fight’ going on. I see nothing, particularly incorrect with that table and would like to know what the ‘issues’ are, or might be.

Edited By not done it yet on 08/01/2023 18:11:20

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You’re correct, of course, Martin … it’s people that lie and/or make errors

The trouble is that the innocent Medium conveys the dodgy Message.

MichaelG.

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Ref. __ **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics

I hope you’re wrong as well Keith. Like Michael I’m happy driving my petrol car. Although it’s a few years old now it hasn’t got many miles on it so I won’t be changing it anytime soon. I’ve read several times though that price parity is expected within a few years and that as alternative energy vehicles have 1/5 the number of parts of conventional vehicles they should, eventually be much cheaper to make. Hard to see them selling for less though as two of the worlds biggest car makers are massively in debt.

Thank you. I can’t find it now but it was basically about Hydrogen being the future for transport.

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Thanks for the link, Bill … I have downloaded the document, to read this evening

Meanwhile, for more convenient reference, here is a decent image of Figure 9

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[ click to enlarge ]

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MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/01/2023 18:29:23