Is hydrogen, rather than electric, the future for big-engined machinery?

TTony

The debate for many people already seems to be polarising - ie the solution is either this, or that, or something else.

I can see a mix of fuels being used, depending on requirements.

For someone who does few miles - ie a short commute, or nipping into town - then an EV could well work.

For users who do many miles - eg the haulage industry - then EVs wouldn't seem to have as much promise.  Ditto planes & ships.

We're also going to have a fairly long tail of usage of petrol & diesel.  The 20m/25m vehicles on the UK's roads today, powered by one or other of those, aren't going to be replaced overnight, and nor would that be the right thing (environmentally) to do anyway.

20years ago, diesel was the answer and the govt was encouraging the use of diesel cars.  Today, diesel is evil.  (Apparently).

Today, EVs are the answer and the govt is encouraging us all to "go green". 

But in 20 years time .... EVils ....

crunchman

Danny1969 said:

The trouble with electric cars is charging, it's too slow for a lot of people who don't have a drive. One of the reasons it's slow isn't to do with the power available or the battery but the conversion in the car. AC comes into the car and gets converted to DC at a lower voltage but this current is limited by the cars internal inverter. Something like a Tesla supercharger can bypass the cars inverter and directly charge the car with DC at a very quick rate but the cost of building these mega inverters is about 40K a pop. That price could come down a lot if there was more demand for superchargers but there won't be until there's more electric cars ..... but people are put off buying an electric car because of the lack of quick charging  so it's a kind of catch 22 situation 

Solid state batteries look promising, they have a higher energy density than Lipo and are safer. Toyota announced they hope to have a car with SS battery in production by 2030

What would suit most people is a light small EV with 2 battery packs, each capable of 30 miles and each one removable and carry-able indoors to charge. There are people who drive all day and some people drive 70 miles to work but I would guess most people do only a 40 mile round to work and back and these people don't need a huge battery that can't be removed. At the moment even a 30 mile range battery pack made from current 18650 type cells  would be too heavy for some people to carry but a solid state battery is much lighter due not needing the fire protection. All these removable battery packs could be made to a common physical dimension spec with a common connector so changing a depleted battery would be simple and cost effective. Plus recycling would be simpler due to the common construction standard. 

It will never happen though, every manufacturer  thinks their own standard is superior 

You talking about putting hundreds of amps through the grid for those though.  To do that on a large scale will require massive upgrades to the grid.  Where are the plans for that?

stickyfiddle

crunchman said:

Fretwired said:

Saudi Arabia is banking on hydrogen having a role. They believe they can produce vast quantities of green hydrogen and export it globally.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy

I'm not sure about the idea of transporting it all around the world.

It would make more sense to produce it locally.  It's not something that's constrained by location like oil.  All you need is water and electricity, and a small amount of some electrolyte to add to the water.

True, but you need to put in vast amounts of energy to crack hydrogen - all the energy that is stored in hydrogen must come from somewhere. That needs hugely more area for PV panels or wind turbines than is available, based on current renewable tech. Obviously there is room for efficiency gains, but the kind of energy required for shipping and aviation isn't going to be turned into hydrogen without massive amounts of land somewhere. 

Fretwired

stickyfiddle said:

crunchman said:

Fretwired said:

Saudi Arabia is banking on hydrogen having a role. They believe they can produce vast quantities of green hydrogen and export it globally.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy

I'm not sure about the idea of transporting it all around the world.

It would make more sense to produce it locally.  It's not something that's constrained by location like oil.  All you need is water and electricity, and a small amount of some electrolyte to add to the water.

True, but you need to put in vast amounts of energy to crack hydrogen - all the energy that is stored in hydrogen must come from somewhere. That needs hugely more area for PV panels or wind turbines than is available, based on current renewable tech. Obviously there is room for efficiency gains, but the kind of energy required for shipping and aviation isn't going to be turned into hydrogen without massive amounts of land somewhere. 

Saudi has lots of empty land, water, and sunshine - the government could build massive solar panel grids to generate clean power to crack hydrogen.

The UK's great untapped power source is the ocean - as an island, we could harness wave and tidal power. The Government estimates that wave and tidal stream energy combined has the potential to deliver around 20 percent of the UK’s current electricity needs which equates to an installed capacity of around 30 – 50GW.

To make hydrogen viable it needs to be made from clean, fossil-fuel-free electricity. As another forumite has said the short-term answer will be a mix - hydrogen for big machinery, trains, and maybe buses and electric for cars and smaller machines. The Germans think they have solved the charging and range issue but that still leaves the mining of the rare earth metals and battery disposal.

stickyfiddle

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

crunchman said:

Fretwired said:

Saudi Arabia is banking on hydrogen having a role. They believe they can produce vast quantities of green hydrogen and export it globally.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy

I'm not sure about the idea of transporting it all around the world.

It would make more sense to produce it locally.  It's not something that's constrained by location like oil.  All you need is water and electricity, and a small amount of some electrolyte to add to the water.

True, but you need to put in vast amounts of energy to crack hydrogen - all the energy that is stored in hydrogen must come from somewhere. That needs hugely more area for PV panels or wind turbines than is available, based on current renewable tech. Obviously there is room for efficiency gains, but the kind of energy required for shipping and aviation isn't going to be turned into hydrogen without massive amounts of land somewhere. 

Saudi has lots of empty land, water, and sunshine - the government could build massive solar panel grids to generate clean power to crack hydrogen.

The UK's great untapped power source is the ocean - as an island, we could harness wave and tidal power. The Government estimates that wave and tidal stream energy combined has the potential to deliver around 20 percent of the UK’s current electricity needs which equates to an installed capacity of around 30 – 50GW.

To make hydrogen viable it needs to be made from clean, fossil-fuel-free electricity. As another forumite has said the short-term answer will be a mix - hydrogen for big machinery, trains, and maybe buses and electric for cars and smaller machines. The Germans think they have solved the charging and range issue but that still leaves the mining of the rare earth metals and battery disposal.

Exactly - that's the KSA in my first post  

It's one of the most obvious places with good shipping connections. Bits of North Africa are probably the next most obvious but the governments there haven't got their shit together in the same way.  I assume China will be looking at doing similar as well. 

Wind makes much more sense in Europe on a utility-scale because there's nowhere near the same reliable daylight, and the tech has been developed better because that's where the developer are based. 

As for battery charging & vehicle range I'll believe it when I see it. Seems to be like nuclear fusion that someone is constantly saying "nearly there - another couple of years to go" but it never quite happens. 

ICBM

TTony said:

20years ago, diesel was the answer and the govt was encouraging the use of diesel cars.  Today, diesel is evil.  (Apparently).

Diesel was never the answer, and those in government who encouraged its use were idiots who didn't understand physics or environmental science. At best it's slightly more efficient than petrol for longer journeys.

So the question is less which of the new technologies is best, and more how we stop the same idiots making the same type of mistake again and forcing us (by marginal tax breaks, it really doesn't take much) down a similar blind alley...

crunchman

stickyfiddle said:

crunchman said:

Fretwired said:

Saudi Arabia is banking on hydrogen having a role. They believe they can produce vast quantities of green hydrogen and export it globally.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy

I'm not sure about the idea of transporting it all around the world.

It would make more sense to produce it locally.  It's not something that's constrained by location like oil.  All you need is water and electricity, and a small amount of some electrolyte to add to the water.

True, but you need to put in vast amounts of energy to crack hydrogen - all the energy that is stored in hydrogen must come from somewhere. That needs hugely more area for PV panels or wind turbines than is available, based on current renewable tech. Obviously there is room for efficiency gains, but the kind of energy required for shipping and aviation isn't going to be turned into hydrogen without massive amounts of land somewhere. 

Like I said above, we need to reduce the distance we transport our goods and food.  That should reduce the requirements from shipping and aviation.  I also pointed out that we reduce the number of unnecessary car journeys.  That will also reduce demand.

There are also huge areas that could be covered in solar panels in our cities.  The installation my brother had on his old house could generate 2.5kW.  That was 10 year old tech and newer panels are more efficient.

If you put solar panels on 5 million more houses, that's 12.5GW, even based on the older tech.  That alone will add more than 10% to the current capacity of the grid.

Schools, supermarkets, factories, farm buildings, and offices have a lot of roof space.  You could add the same again by covering them in solar panels.

We are going to face a lot of these problems with battery cars anyway.  We don't have anywhere near the capacity to charge millions of cars on top of converting domestic heating to electric - especially as a lot of the energy will have to come from solar or wind, which we will need to store.  Every time we charge and discharge batteries used for storage, there will be losses.  There will be losses in the transformers and inverters used for charging the cars.  The supposed efficiency benefits of battery cars are not as big as their marketing people make out.

grungebob

From someone who’s job is in the water /power industry, it isn’t as simple as “all you need is some water, electrolyte and electricity”.

Well it is if you only want to make one batch!

It’s going to take a fair amount of energy not just in electricity for the split but energy in processing the water source to a suitable quality to enable to splitting to be done with as little energy as possible.the water quality and chemistry needs to be exact to prevent huge losses through condenser and heat exchanger fouling(resulting in inefficiency)to flow assisted corrosion on you assets. 

Saudi Arabia already has large scale desalination plants for its municipalities, it’s got the expertise in processing refinery effluents so it’s got a good grip on its water balance. It also has plentiful solar generation. Their refinery’s and CHP’s will already be investing in hydrogen manufacturing as their output for oil drops. 

You still have the transportation issue to solve. Pipeline? Rail? Like I said earlier hydrogen doesn’t store well for long periods of time, even less so in the desert. 

TTony

ICBM said:

TTony said:

20years ago, diesel was the answer and the govt was encouraging the use of diesel cars.  Today, diesel is evil.  (Apparently).

Diesel was never the answer, and those in government who encouraged its use were idiots who didn't understand physics or environmental science. At best it's slightly more efficient than petrol for longer journeys.

Indeed - I'd shortened my sentence.  

20 years ago we were told and encouraged to adopt diesel because governments of the day decided that was the better option (answer).  In the same way that - today - we're being told and encouraged to adopt EVs.

I didn't believe them then, and I'm really not inclined to believe them now.

But it's keeping the car industry going very nicely, $bns being ploughed into R&D and mahoosive new manufacturing plants.  And car prices seem to have virtually doubled over the last 10 years.    Luckily, PCPs are now "the answer" too, so sticker prices are no longer an issue and that keeps another industry going ...

stickyfiddle

crunchman said:

 

Like I said above, we need to reduce the distance we transport our goods and food.  That should reduce the requirements from shipping and aviation.  I also pointed out that we reduce the number of unnecessary car journeys.  That will also reduce demand.

There are also huge areas that could be covered in solar panels in our cities.  The installation my brother had on his old house could generate 2.5kW.  That was 10 year old tech and newer panels are more efficient.

If you put solar panels on 5 million more houses, that's 12.5GW, even based on the older tech.  That alone will add more than 10% to the current capacity of the grid.

Schools, supermarkets, factories, farm buildings, and offices have a lot of roof space.  You could add the same again by covering them in solar panels.

We are going to face a lot of these problems with battery cars anyway.  We don't have anywhere near the capacity to charge millions of cars on top of converting domestic heating to electric - especially as a lot of the energy will have to come from solar or wind, which we will need to store.  Every time we charge and discharge batteries used for storage, there will be losses.  There will be losses in the transformers and inverters used for charging the cars.  The supposed efficiency benefits of battery cars are not as big as their marketing people make out.

Yes perhaps, but if you have a 100% clean logistics chain then that ceases to be an issue to anything like the extent it currently is. Shipping and aviation aren't going to stop. They're just not. 

2.5kW is fuck all compared with utility scale. The UK grid alone is approx 85 GW, which means you need 34 million of those panels. But there are only 25 million houses in the UK, and a chunk of those won't be suitable for PV panels. Add electric cars to that and I'm assuming that 85 GW requirement will become 100+GW (noting I absolutely haven't run the numbers on that - the UK is not my area!). 

I'm not necessarily arguing, just noting that it's hugely complex. As you say every bit of conversion and transmission involves losses - that's true now and still will be in future, regardless of tech. But when you account for greening of ships and planes that's a fuckload of extra energy required to be generated somewhere

Axe_meister

The answer is of course dodgems. Take all the engines out of the cars and stick em in a massive warehouse were they all generate electricity at optimum efficiency. Then cover all roads with a metal mesh with all cars having a big conductor sticking out at the back.
Eventually we retune the engines to run on hydrogen just to bring this back on topic

hywelg

Bridgehouse said:

At the heart of net zero is a significant lowering of electricity usage and demand. The whole built environment question for net zero isn’t just converting all power to electricity, but significantly reducing its usage. I’m currently working on the first new build net zero schools in the U.K., and the reality is that not only are they converting to 100% electric, but their annual consumption is planned to drop by 55% overall. If it doesn’t, then they aren’t net zero. 

We can’t assume that transport conversion to electric will merely add to our current consumption - because most carbon reduction projects seek to heavily reduce consumption. Our ability to produce electric isn’t the main issue with electric vehicles. Their initial carbon footprint for manufacture still is, as is the infrastructure required to charge them either at the roadside or at home. 

Sorry buts a completely false assumption. Energy consumption might well drop but electricity consumption is bound to rise to replace fossil fuel usage in heating, automotive, et al. and we should be happy for it to provided that we do it with green electricity. 

There are millions of homes that are going to remain inefficient, my own included and demolishing schools to build energy efficient versions is not going to happen and is not sensible. 

We are missing a trick with solar PV by not insisting that any new warehouse like the huge Amazon sheds that you see around the country are not compelled to install pv's on their massive rooves at build time. 

hywelg

TTony said:

ICBM said:

TTony said:

20years ago, diesel was the answer and the govt was encouraging the use of diesel cars.  Today, diesel is evil.  (Apparently).

Diesel was never the answer, and those in government who encouraged its use were idiots who didn't understand physics or environmental science. At best it's slightly more efficient than petrol for longer journeys.

Indeed - I'd shortened my sentence.  

20 years ago we were told and encouraged to adopt diesel because governments of the day decided that was the better option (answer).  In the same way that - today - we're being told and encouraged to adopt EVs.

I didn't believe them then, and I'm really not inclined to believe them now.

But it's keeping the car industry going very nicely, $bns being ploughed into R&D and mahoosive new manufacturing plants.  And car prices seem to have virtually doubled over the last 10 years.    Luckily, PCPs are now "the answer" too, so sticker prices are no longer an issue and that keeps another industry going ...

I agree, I am not going to buy the betamax EV. Thankfully I have vehicles that will or should last at least 15 years if looked after and at that point I would hope that the VHS (or even the digital video) solution will have emerged . 

Bridgehouse

hywelg said:

Bridgehouse said:

At the heart of net zero is a significant lowering of electricity usage and demand. The whole built environment question for net zero isn’t just converting all power to electricity, but significantly reducing its usage. I’m currently working on the first new build net zero schools in the U.K., and the reality is that not only are they converting to 100% electric, but their annual consumption is planned to drop by 55% overall. If it doesn’t, then they aren’t net zero. 

We can’t assume that transport conversion to electric will merely add to our current consumption - because most carbon reduction projects seek to heavily reduce consumption. Our ability to produce electric isn’t the main issue with electric vehicles. Their initial carbon footprint for manufacture still is, as is the infrastructure required to charge them either at the roadside or at home. 

Sorry buts a completely false assumption. Energy consumption might well drop but electricity consumption is bound to rise to replace fossil fuel usage in heating, automotive, et al. and we should be happy for it to provided that we do it with green electricity. 

There are millions of homes that are going to remain inefficient, my own included and demolishing schools to build energy efficient versions is not going to happen and is not sensible. 

We are missing a trick with solar PV by not insisting that any new warehouse like the huge Amazon sheds that you see around the country are not compelled to install pv's on their massive rooves at build time. 

I’m not even going to bother to reply to all of that. I will just say that there’s 450 schools in planning for rebuild as net zero so it’s happening. And it is sensible because they need rebuilding anyway and just happen to be being rebuilt as net zero schools. 

I find it amusing on this forum that people will just flat out refute or deny statements by people who actually live and breathe a topic day in and day out, have business relationships with leading climate change scientists like Mike Berners-Lee and actually bear witness to what’s going on. 

I could actually take you physically to a building that that has converted from gas to electric heating and consumes less electricity than it did beforehand due to the changes made to insulation, control systems and building management systems, but hey.. you clearly know what you’re talking about.

FastEddie

I have thought that hydrogen is the way forward for a while. 
I've been working in automotive/motorsport for a couple of years and have seen this growing.
Toyota have a hydrogen car at their UK factory. Ready to go. 

Makes so much sense. 

My worry with batteries is the recycling and metals which are needed. That's not sustainable. The UN and those with skin in th game are not telling us the whole story. 
I'm surprised Elon has gone all in on batteries. In fact, that is my only concern for hydrogen. He is a powerful and bright person.

I'm all for petrol until it runs out. By then we will have found an alternative. Petrol won't fry us. 

VimFuego

I think the future lies in the past, we should be using cars powered like they are in the Flintstones. Not only is it green and renewable, but it will also help deal with the obesity epidemic. 

Jimbro66

ToneControl said:

I had 2 LPG-converted cars, they worked fine, it's a fast way to change most petrol cars to carbon-neutral if you can generate the methane. Surely better than scrapping all ICE cars or waiting until they stop working?

LPG was a viable alternative but I'm not aware that any car manufacturer offered cars that ran on LPG back then*. That meant costly aftermarket conversions of petrol engined cars with the added disadvantage of a large LPG tank in the car's boot.

Dacia (a Renault Group brand) now offers petrol/LPG dual-fuel cars but they have rather missed the boat in the UK as LPG availability on filling station forecourts has reduced considerably since Shell and others abandoned Autogas. LPG is still widely available in mainland Europe - Dacia's main market.

* Edit: Of course very many commercial vehicles worldwide made to run on LPG then and now.

Reverend

hywelg said:

TTony said:

ICBM said:

TTony said:

20years ago, diesel was the answer and the govt was encouraging the use of diesel cars.  Today, diesel is evil.  (Apparently).

Diesel was never the answer, and those in government who encouraged its use were idiots who didn't understand physics or environmental science. At best it's slightly more efficient than petrol for longer journeys.

Indeed - I'd shortened my sentence.  

20 years ago we were told and encouraged to adopt diesel because governments of the day decided that was the better option (answer).  In the same way that - today - we're being told and encouraged to adopt EVs.

I didn't believe them then, and I'm really not inclined to believe them now.

But it's keeping the car industry going very nicely, $bns being ploughed into R&D and mahoosive new manufacturing plants.  And car prices seem to have virtually doubled over the last 10 years.    Luckily, PCPs are now "the answer" too, so sticker prices are no longer an issue and that keeps another industry going ...

I agree, I am not going to buy the betamax EV. Thankfully I have vehicles that will or should last at least 15 years if looked after and at that point I would hope that the VHS (or even the digital video) solution will have emerged . 

so you don't want the better quality EV that has no porn?

TTony

Saw this on the BBC site this morning ...

"Formula 1 boss Ross Brawn says hydrogen could be future fuel"

What made me smile though was a quote from Lando Norris included in the article;

LandoNorris said:

You just don't get the same buzz from electric cars

You do if you plug them in the wrong way round

PC_Dave