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I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
Rare earth batteries should be a niche market - sodium based batteries would be more sensible for large scale, static applications.
http://http//pgbgroup.materials.ox.ac.uk/research/na-ion.html
http://https//www.popularmechanics.com/science/a32743665/best-sodium-ion-battery/
http://https//bdaily.co.uk/articles/2021/07/15/aceons-mobile-solar-power-station-to-lead-the-world-in-sodium-ion-technology
http://http//www.bestmag.co.uk/indnews/china-deploys-world%E2%80%99s-first-sodium-ion-grid-scale-battery-ess
Hydrogen supply to your house? Well the original house gas supply was from coal gas and was re-purposed for natural gas, starting in the mid sixties when development drilling for natural gas kicked off in Southern North Sea (gas plants at Bacton and Theaddlethorpe etc). I guess you could re-purpose and improve the existing infrastructure. It would be a low pressure supply, so unless you could compress it into your cars tank, it probably wouldn't work out for refilling your car at home.
Remember all the "cooking with gas" adverts in the early/mid 70s? National industry British Gas drove all that along. Someone mentioned shipping hydrogen from abroad by boat - no problem. In fact the Gas Council (later became British Gas) were shipping natural gas from North Aftrica to Canvey Island in the early 60s. The discovery of large gas reserves in the Southern North Sea brought that to halt.
Large, cheap, batteries make sense for static applications. Energy density of hydrocarbons is a big plus for mobile applications.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
The power on a railway is only about 11%- the cost of buiding the rail makes no odds
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
But not all rail lines can be electrified, either due to environmental features like cliffs, forests, and tunnels or simple infrastructure costs.
Transpennine electrification was budgeted at £2.9 billion - but the minister at the time, Chris Gayling, said "there may be insufficient benefits to justify the cost of electrification" .. Grant Shapps the current transport minister has said the £2.9 billion is not enough but he's keen to electrify the whole railway.
However, Network Rail has pointed out that it may not be technically possible due to the "inherently challenging topography." Enter hydrogen or battery-powered trains.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Even if we were to discover some kind of free energy what would we use it for anyway? Producing more waste and pollution.
Years ago when I was building pedals and working on amp there was talk of making capacitors out of banana skins and things. What happened to all that?
but we have roads that are built already, why build railways?
all you need is hydrogen-powered buses, autonomous at some point in the future
It's about freight - that's why HS2 is being built. Getting trucks off the road will help. As for more train lines where I live in Herts roads have reached max capacity. The A1 is two lanes for large sections. The motorway is clogged every day with traffic and the air quality is worse than in central London. There are still old railway lines that could be reactivated with small trains that could shuttle people between local towns for work etc.
Coaches are for long-haul trips - trains already cover this. The best solution is to basically improve public transport and tax cars off the road. I worked in Denmark - most people don't have cars as the tax is so high. They use excellent, cheap public transport.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
The big benefit of HS2 is capacity, not a half hour quicker journey between London and the North. It's not just the capacity of HS2 itself but what it does on the existing main lines. Once it's built, speeds can reduced on the existing mainlines, which will massively increase capacity on them as you can run trains closer together at lower speeds (think about the stopping distances on your driving test).
And ... To generate hydrogen we need water. That's not an infinite resource, do we have enough?
That brings me to another point. There's often resistance to battery EVs because of the environmental concern about production and disposal. I think there's valid cause for concern. But to say we should stick with burning oil because of it is largely ridiculous, right? Worse, I believe this thread had a post printing hydrogen fuel cells because of the known environmental issues with batteries which were extrapolated to includes potential but unknown issues. This seemed to imply that Hydrogen fuel cells have no environmental issues, known or unknown. That's odd. Ultimately, we will make choices and later learn something that may make that choice look terrible, or absolute genius. We can't stand still with bad technology (ICE vehicles) just we don't know what the perfect solution is. Progress comes with challenges.
Just because hydrogen fuel cells produce water, I don't think you "get it back". It's still stuck in a system where is needed. How much water is needed for a car is something I don't know. If it's a few litres, maybe that's ok.
I worry that this water use will be the eco problem for hydrogen fuel cells. Mainly, less travel is going to be the best way forward.