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Next stop, hydrogen-powered trains
- wffurr 7y agoWhat about a separate tanker car? Seems like that would solve the range issue. What about biodisel or syngas made with renewable energy instead of hydrogen? Still carbon neutral operations.
- pintxo 7y agoWould be a nice comeback: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_(rail) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_(rail)
- adrianN 7y agoBiodiesel has absolutely terrible efficiency and uses up valuable land. Outside of very niche applications where demand can be satisfied with food waste we shouldn't use it at all.
- wffurr 7y agoHydrogen production is not especially efficieby either and uses fossil natural gas (some of which escapes during handling and is a potent greenhouse gas). I think what's needed is a systemic look at various liquid/gas fuel energy storage mechanisms for converting renewable energy for use in transport. Batteries and transmission lines seem to be the clear winners in current usage, everything else is niche for one reason or another. An analysis of the tradeoffs and direction for potential research plus funding for that research is what's needed. Not mindless boosterism (like the article) for one particular fuel.
- brnt 7y agoCarbon neutral is a fossil industry marketing gimmick. The climate does not care about provenance of CO2, it only cares about its presence. We need to de-carbonize, and hydrogen produce by renewables such as wind qualifies.
- zokier 7y agoGrowing biomass removes co2 from atmosphere. Burning carbon from that biomass releases it back. Make the process efficient enough (with addition of external power) and you end up with no added co2 in atmosphere. That's not just a marketing gimmick. Of course it is debatable if it is an efficient approach for doing things, but the concept is sound
- brnt 7y agoThere is no net reduction of co2 emissions here, that's why its marketing. The fact that sequestration in plants happens first does not make it better for global warming if you then burn it right after. Encouraging plant growth on top of a decarbonized energy cycle, now that will make a difference.
- wffurr 7y agoHow is replacing fossil diesel with recycled atmospheric co2 not a net reduct of emissions?
- wffurr 7y agoI am not so sure that hydrogen is the best energy storage medium for using renewable energy for transport. The handling properties of biodiesel and synthetic gasoline likely outweigh and efficiency losses.
- Yetanfou 7y agoAn advantage of fuel cells over biogas/biodiesel is that the former only produce water vapour while the latter, due to the fact that they use ambient air for combustion which contains 78% nitrogen also produce nitrogen oxides which in turn lead to smog, acidification, ozone and fine particle production.
- fold_left 7y ago> In 2016, Germany unveiled the Coradia iLint, the world’s first hydrogen-powered train, which can run for 600 miles on a single tank of fuel – on par with the distances that traditional trains achieve on a tank of diesel > The train’s hydrogen power system produces sufficient power to take the train 50 to 75 miles. The train, called Hydroflex, is the UK’s first to be powered by hydrogen The iLint seems to be much further advanced. In this Industry, what does a Team in the Hydroflex's position normally do next in this position?
- jillesvangurp 7y agoLong distance tracks are mostly already electrified in most places. In Germany & the Netherlands, diesel trains are limited to the edges of the rail network and there have been plenty of experiments with replacing those with hydrogen, gas and even battery trains. Mostly those trains service short routes.
- fyfy18 7y agoThat's not so true in the UK, here is a map of electrification from 2010 [0]. The only major difference is the Great Western Mainline (from London to Wales) is now electrified as far as Cardiff. A lot of passenger trains are still powered by diesel, and for freight trains I believe diesel is used in even higher proportions. [0] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/410/media/images/46102000/gif/_46102937_uk_electric_rail_226map.gif https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/410/media/images/46102000/gif/...
- microcolonel 7y agoHere in Ontario, Canada, all regional rail is diesel.
- jessriedel 7y agoWhat keeps all the tracks from be electrified? If it's just cost, what would make it cheaper to use fuel cells?
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- natmaka 7y agoAFAIK this is good because some renewable energy sources cannot produce continuously (solar, wind), and therefore storing their production is a major challenge. As stated in this article generating hydrogen can be done with electricity. Moreover fuel cells may also power trucks and even cars.
- greatpatton 7y agoThe main issue is the overall efficiency of the process. Creating hydrogen by electrolysis is about 80% and then a fuel cell electric efficiency is 60-70%. So overall the whole process is not very good.
- chrisco255 7y agoHow's the energy storage density on Hydrogen though? One of the main problems with Lithium is it's heavy and requires a lot of space to store energy.
- greatpatton 7y agoI think that you can get good energy density with Hydrogen which will allow long train journey, but this will degrade further the overall efficiency as high compression of the gas is needed, and this energy is likely lost during usage.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- calaphos 7y agoExtremely good for weight and extremely poor for volume. To reduce the gasses volume storage is usually either highly compressed (200-700bar) or cryogenic (30K), like in the space shuttles tank. In both cases the volumetric density is still quite poor, cryogenic is about 70g/l, which is actually less than the weight of hydrogen chemically bound in a liter of gasoline. There exists some concepts of storing hydrogen chemically bound, e.g. to hydrocarbons or metal hydrites which release the gas on high temperatures (100-200°C).
- thepete2 7y agoI suppose hydrogen-powered trains can make some sense. Provided that it's worth wasting the electricity (bc of inefficiency of hydrogen energy storage) for a lower cost of energy capacity (no expensive lithium-ion batteries).
- LatteLazy 7y agoClassic britian: out electric train is 4 years later than the German one, with a tenth the range for double the price.
- dgellow 7y agoIf that can make you feel better, Germany also has its own classic clusterfuck :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport
- kwhitefoot 7y agoIt might decarbonise the railway but not the supply chain. Currently the only practical large scale source of hydrogen is methane, mostly by steam reforming: Steam-methane reforming reaction CH4 + H2O (+ heat) → CO + 3H2 Water-gas shift reaction CO + H2O → CO2 + H2 (+ small amount of heat) See https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production. There are possible methods to produce hydrogen without releasing CO2 but they are not in widespread use, for instance, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171208171749.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171208171749.h.... So this looks like it is a way to keep the petro/gas industry in business instead of electrifying the network. One of the justifications in the article was avoiding the expense of electrifying rail routes that had few passengers; perhaps a more rational response would be to close the line and use buses instead (which could also be hydrogen if necessary but which can already be battery electric).
- Freak_NL 7y agoReplacing rural train links with buses invariably means significantly reducing mobility for a lot of people. It is also akin to a signed death-warrant for a locality that prospers from tourism and/or houses commuting families. That can be a valid choice for some localities, but it is a choice with far-reaching consequences. Travelling with a pram or a wheelchair using public transport is doable by train. By bus it is fine for a short ride (up to a few kilometres), but with increasing distance it becomes undoable for more and more people. Another group of people heavily affected are those with incontinence or bowel diseases. Trains usually have accessible toilets on-board (usable with wheelchairs as well), buses don't. A rational response is to explore all possibilities for keeping a train link operational in a sustainable manner.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> signed death-warrant for a locality that prospers from tourism If it is prospering from tourism by rail then why is the rail line not profitable enough to warrant electrification? > Travelling with a pram or a wheelchair using public transport is doable by train. By bus it is fine for a short ride (up to a few kilometres), but with increasing distance it becomes undoable for more and more people. Perhaps my perspective is skewed because I no longer live in the UK. Where I do live (Norway) travel by medium distance bus with a pram or wheel chair is not a problem because buses have powered lifts and dedicated spaces for both. Buses are also more flexible, new routes are vastly easier to set up than new routes for trains.
- eisa01 7y agoAnother option to expensive full electrification is partly electrifying the tracks, and running on battery in between That’s the current Norwegian plan for electrifying the Northern Norway line as its the cheapest option https://www.railjournal.com/technology/norway-to-replace-diesel-traction-with-battery-trains/ https://www.railjournal.com/technology/norway-to-replace-die...
- tyfon 7y agoThey're still considering hydrogen too, however hydrogen production/distribution is really inefficient and as of today not very carbon neutral [1]. When you count the whole supply chain it has about the same efficiency as a diesel. Pumping hydro electricity into a battery is much more efficient. I guess there would also be issues transferring the hydrogen to the trains, we already struggle (struggled, the H-stations for cars are closed after an explosion here) with multiple cars filling up in turn. The pumps would just freeze and you had to wait for half an hour to fill up the next car. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
- Confiks 7y agoWhat I often don't see mentioned in the discussion about using hydrogen power is solving the volumetric capacity problem of storing hydrogen. One potential solution is to instead use formic acid as stable energy storage. There have been recent advances in catalysts that make it feasible to convert hydrogen to formic acid and back again. Formic acid is stable, not very toxic, and has an energy capacity of 1.77 kWh/L. The only party I know of that is trying to bring this to market is Dens [1], formed out of a student group at the University of Eindhoven [2]. Their website is a bit high on the rhetoric (including trying to coin "hydrozine"), and their mockups looks like, well, mockups, but there are real technology advances behind this, for example their trial with a city bus [3] (Dutch). [1] https://dens.one/our-products/ https://dens.one/our-products/ [2] https://teamfast.nl/technology/ https://teamfast.nl/technology/ [3] https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/deze-stadsbus-in-eindhoven-rijdt-nu-op-mierenzuur-en-dat-is-behoorlijk-revolutionair~bb027b8b/ https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/deze-stadsbus-i...
- 08-15 7y agoFormic acid, being more oxidized, has lower energy density than methanol. In what way is it better than methanol?
- Confiks 7y agoIt isn't purely about the (energy density of the) chemicals themselves, but also about the available reformation / hydrogenation processes. As far as my limited knowledge goes, the processes for methanol have seen more development, but formic acid has a potential for simpler and smaller systems in less demanding circumstances (pressure, heat). [1] was the first comparison I stumbled upon. [1] https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002
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- ajuc 7y ago3-car 200-passangers train going 160 km/h in Sweden uses 5.6 kWh per 1 km [1]. More than that when it accelerates, but it mostly happens near the stations where there is electric network. Or if the train stops there you can just detach used batteries and attach freshly charged ones - should help if the charging is too slow (but it shouldn't be - after all if the electric network is sufficient for powering trains when they accelerate/decelerate and use several times more power than on cruise - then it should be also sufficient for charging batteries powering trains when they cruise). That's 560 kWh or 112 of used Tesla battery modules 5 kWh each. You can buy one for 1300 USD [2]. That's a recyclable resource (from used electric car batteries) and it would cost about 150 000 USD to upgrade one train with these. 150 000 USD is peanuts compared to multi-million USD prices per car of most modern passanger trains [3]. It would also add 2.9 tonnes to the train, which isn't that much for 3 cars train that weighs 165 tonnes [4]. You could add it as a small aerodynamic car trailing the train that can be swapped on stations if needed (so you don't need to upgrade all the trains, just buy enough of these cars to serve the unelectrified lines). This would bypass the need for new hydrogen supply chain, would have much better synergy with already electrified tracks, would allow to gradually improve the system, and wouldn't need any carbon emission (unlike hydrogen production). It's also a proven technology unlike hydrogen power. Sources: [1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-is-used-by-a-train-to-run-1-km https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-is-used-by-a-trai... [2] http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=TeslaBattModule http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=TeslaBattModule [3] https://montrealgazette.com/business/local-business/bombardier-transportation-wins-580m-contract-in-sweden https://montrealgazette.com/business/local-business/bombardi... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_(train) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_(train)
- NoblePublius 7y agoThe only industrial-scale process for making hydrogen starts with carbon fuel. Come at me, Chevron lovers.
- nerdponx 7y agoWhat's the net carbon emission from 1 kWh from a liquid hydrogen engine compared to a modern diesel engine?
- NoblePublius 7y agoWell, you need to burn a lot of diesel (or it’s equivalent) to produce, store, and transport the hydrogen so I think it goes without saying that hydrogen fuel is worse.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoAnyone know of efforts to enhance the efficiency of electrolysis with RF resonance? There is a relatively old patent, but I'm looking for recent scientific work. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4265721A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US4265721A/en
- senectus1 7y agoI wonder how these would go in a heavy haulage scenario.