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Fuel cells are not a good solution for small vehicles now, but I think there's an argument to be made fr their use in trucking, where electric vehicles don't ma

Fuel cells are not a good solution for small vehicles now, but I think there's an argument to be made fr their use in trucking, where electric vehicles don't make economic sense due to battery weight, poor range, long recharge times, and currently poor towing capacity. While hydrogen is expensive to produce, difficult to store, and less efficient in transfer than electrochemical batteries, I suspect they'd be a good technology for large fleets of trucks due to weight and range. Fuel cells can also be made to run on natural gas, which might end up being a good stop-gap, as we already have a strong natural gas production infrastructure and despite its downsides, it's far easier to store than hydrogen.

armada651 3y ago
Most hydrogen is already produced using natural gas as a stop-gap. So making a hydrogen truck operate on gas is just cutting out the middle man.
- more_corn 3y ago
  Wait so hydrogen is just petroleum with extra steps? Was this whole thing a scam by the oil industry?
  - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
    The cheapest way to produce hydrogen today does indeed involve methane as the starting material, but the promise of hydrogen was that there is a clear path to producing hydrogen from renewables. We can easily do it today, it’s just currently more expensive. If you think of hydrogen like just the energy storage / transport mechanism this isn’t any different than electric infrastructure, where electricity can be produced by fossil fuels or greener alternatives. Lots of people get upset at hydrogen for this reason, but I really don’t think it is warranted. The real reasons to be upset with hydrogen are the various impracticalities with the infrastructure and storage. Hydrogen leaks out of solid metal tanks because the atom is so small, and it has to be kept under enormous pressure because it doesn’t liquefy without cryogenic temperatures. There is no reason that I know of to assume these practicality concerns will ever be solved for car sized applications.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Most hydrogen today is produced by steam reforming from natural gas. Which means hydrogen cars are more expensive natural gas cars. There is green hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water. But it more expensive than other sources. It only makes sense when fossil fuel sources aren't allowed. Hydrogen cars are a bad idea. Now, they aren't green and don't have infrastructure. In clean electricity future, battery cars will be better. Hydrogen will be important in the future for industrial processes that need heat. And maybe for long-distance transportation like planes and ships where electricity won't work. But those only make sense with green hydrogen.
    - thatcat 3y ago
      There is also microbe produced hydrogen extracted from ch4. This would allow using corn as the input similar to ethanol fuel, which already has a large scale production infrastructure.
      - adrianN 3y ago
        Solar panels provide orders of magnitude more energy per area than corn and don't require fertilizer or pesticides.
anordal 3y ago
I think you are onto it: Why don't we use a heavier hydrogen-bearing molecule that is actually possible to store as energy bearer? You mention natural gas; that's one option (CH3 = methane). Ammonia – NH3 – is another that's starting to look promising and really could use some of hydrogen's hype: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel Not for personal transportation, though – it's toxic – but for big engines in ships and airplanes.
theodric 3y ago
> trucks You're not the only one who thinks so: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/netherlands-unveils-150m-plan-to-subsidise-hydrogen-trucks-vans-buses-and-filling-stations/2-1-1526684 https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/netherlands-unveil...
jillesvangurp 3y ago
There are already far more battery powered electrical trucks than there are hydrogen trucks. That race was over before it ever began. Like with hydrogen cars, the gap is growing very rapidly. All sorts of battery powered trucks exist right now in every weight class. Everything from tiny vans to mining monster trucks. The notion that this cannot work is utter nonsense and easily disproved by just pointing at the obvious reality of these things existing in the market right now. There are only two limiting factors on electrical trucks: cost of batteries and production volume of battery manufacturers. This is a temporary problem. As the production volumes improve, cost will come down. You can cover any range by just using more batteries. Typical trucks in the market have less than half a mwh of battery. This provides them with a useful but not amazing range. Unlike car owners, truck companies typically settle for good enough and don't suffer from range anxiety. They buy the range they need. Mining trucks need batteries in the mwh range. Batteries are heavy of course but this isn't a problem in a vehicle designed for moving heavy things around. Australia actually has battery powered road trains weighing hundreds of tonnes. Reason: superior torque over any diesel engine and electricity is very cheap (lots of solar power over there). Some of these vehicles are converted decades old diesel trucks. These aren't high tech vehicles. The process for producing them is brutally simple: rip out the diesel engine, replace that with an electrical motor and shove in pallets of batteries where the fuel tanks used to be. It takes minutes to swap batteries with a fork lift truck. Supremely pragmatic and awesome. If Australians can do this in the middle of nowhere, anyone can. Likewise there are logging trucks in Canada that are built locally for the same reason. Hard core power users of trucks are going for electric. They are just better. The only thing better than electrical road trains is actual trains on rails. Those too can run on electricity. In fact that's very common and has been so for decades. There are far more electrical trains than diesel trains. High speed trains, freight trains, passenger trains. Long trains, short trains. Any kind of train. Fuel cells can indeed run on gas. The reason nobody is talking about that or seriously considering this as an alternative is that it is far more lucrative for gas companies to use way more gas to produce hydrogen while grabbing subsidies and selling the hydrogen at premium. Never mind that hydrogen has nearly 3x the volume of gas, both in liquid and compressed form. And never mind the high pressures you need for moving it around in gas form. Because doing so in liquid for is stupidly expensive and technically challenging. In compressed gas form, diesel has about 18x the energy density of hydrogen stored at 200 bar. Meaning you need about 18 trucks of hydrogen for every truck of diesel to move a fleet of trucks around. Transporting hydrogen to fuel stations at scale is stupidly expensive and inefficient. Producing, storing, compressing, pumping, transporting, etc. You lose money and energy at every step. It's stupidly inefficient and costly. That's why Shell just pulled the plug on this business. It was a scam and these things served their purpose. EVs won. Game over. Moving on to the next thing. Of course the exact same thing is going to happen for hydrogen truck fueling stations. But not until after they pocket the subsidies. Until then they'll be talking up how awesome hydrogen trucks are going to be all while battery electrical trucks are actually being awesome all over the place already.
cheradenine_uk 3y ago
No. It has extremely poor energy density. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-liquid-hydrogen-dumbass-paul-martin-vhbfc/?trackingId=LYF2CY4yCC77oSHi0uI0vw%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-liquid-hydrogen-dumbass-p...
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  by volume, but great energy by mass (3x gas/diesel), but yeah... the tank issue eats that up.

armada651 3y ago

Most hydrogen is already produced using natural gas as a stop-gap. So making a hydrogen truck operate on gas is just cutting out the middle man.

more_corn 3y ago
Wait so hydrogen is just petroleum with extra steps? Was this whole thing a scam by the oil industry?
- MobiusHorizons 3y ago
  The cheapest way to produce hydrogen today does indeed involve methane as the starting material, but the promise of hydrogen was that there is a clear path to producing hydrogen from renewables. We can easily do it today, it’s just currently more expensive. If you think of hydrogen like just the energy storage / transport mechanism this isn’t any different than electric infrastructure, where electricity can be produced by fossil fuels or greener alternatives. Lots of people get upset at hydrogen for this reason, but I really don’t think it is warranted. The real reasons to be upset with hydrogen are the various impracticalities with the infrastructure and storage. Hydrogen leaks out of solid metal tanks because the atom is so small, and it has to be kept under enormous pressure because it doesn’t liquefy without cryogenic temperatures. There is no reason that I know of to assume these practicality concerns will ever be solved for car sized applications.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Most hydrogen today is produced by steam reforming from natural gas. Which means hydrogen cars are more expensive natural gas cars. There is green hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water. But it more expensive than other sources. It only makes sense when fossil fuel sources aren't allowed. Hydrogen cars are a bad idea. Now, they aren't green and don't have infrastructure. In clean electricity future, battery cars will be better. Hydrogen will be important in the future for industrial processes that need heat. And maybe for long-distance transportation like planes and ships where electricity won't work. But those only make sense with green hydrogen.
  - thatcat 3y ago
    There is also microbe produced hydrogen extracted from ch4. This would allow using corn as the input similar to ethanol fuel, which already has a large scale production infrastructure.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      Solar panels provide orders of magnitude more energy per area than corn and don't require fertilizer or pesticides.

anordal 3y ago

I think you are onto it: Why don't we use a heavier hydrogen-bearing molecule that is actually possible to store as energy bearer? You mention natural gas; that's one option (CH3 = methane). Ammonia – NH3 – is another that's starting to look promising and really could use some of hydrogen's hype: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel Not for personal transportation, though – it's toxic – but for big engines in ships and airplanes.

theodric 3y ago

> trucks You're not the only one who thinks so: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/netherlands-unveils-150m-plan-to-subsidise-hydrogen-trucks-vans-buses-and-filling-stations/2-1-1526684 https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/netherlands-unveil...

jillesvangurp 3y ago

There are already far more battery powered electrical trucks than there are hydrogen trucks. That race was over before it ever began. Like with hydrogen cars, the gap is growing very rapidly. All sorts of battery powered trucks exist right now in every weight class. Everything from tiny vans to mining monster trucks. The notion that this cannot work is utter nonsense and easily disproved by just pointing at the obvious reality of these things existing in the market right now. There are only two limiting factors on electrical trucks: cost of batteries and production volume of battery manufacturers. This is a temporary problem. As the production volumes improve, cost will come down. You can cover any range by just using more batteries. Typical trucks in the market have less than half a mwh of battery. This provides them with a useful but not amazing range. Unlike car owners, truck companies typically settle for good enough and don't suffer from range anxiety. They buy the range they need. Mining trucks need batteries in the mwh range. Batteries are heavy of course but this isn't a problem in a vehicle designed for moving heavy things around. Australia actually has battery powered road trains weighing hundreds of tonnes. Reason: superior torque over any diesel engine and electricity is very cheap (lots of solar power over there). Some of these vehicles are converted decades old diesel trucks. These aren't high tech vehicles. The process for producing them is brutally simple: rip out the diesel engine, replace that with an electrical motor and shove in pallets of batteries where the fuel tanks used to be. It takes minutes to swap batteries with a fork lift truck. Supremely pragmatic and awesome. If Australians can do this in the middle of nowhere, anyone can. Likewise there are logging trucks in Canada that are built locally for the same reason. Hard core power users of trucks are going for electric. They are just better. The only thing better than electrical road trains is actual trains on rails. Those too can run on electricity. In fact that's very common and has been so for decades. There are far more electrical trains than diesel trains. High speed trains, freight trains, passenger trains. Long trains, short trains. Any kind of train. Fuel cells can indeed run on gas. The reason nobody is talking about that or seriously considering this as an alternative is that it is far more lucrative for gas companies to use way more gas to produce hydrogen while grabbing subsidies and selling the hydrogen at premium. Never mind that hydrogen has nearly 3x the volume of gas, both in liquid and compressed form. And never mind the high pressures you need for moving it around in gas form. Because doing so in liquid for is stupidly expensive and technically challenging. In compressed gas form, diesel has about 18x the energy density of hydrogen stored at 200 bar. Meaning you need about 18 trucks of hydrogen for every truck of diesel to move a fleet of trucks around. Transporting hydrogen to fuel stations at scale is stupidly expensive and inefficient. Producing, storing, compressing, pumping, transporting, etc. You lose money and energy at every step. It's stupidly inefficient and costly. That's why Shell just pulled the plug on this business. It was a scam and these things served their purpose. EVs won. Game over. Moving on to the next thing. Of course the exact same thing is going to happen for hydrogen truck fueling stations. But not until after they pocket the subsidies. Until then they'll be talking up how awesome hydrogen trucks are going to be all while battery electrical trucks are actually being awesome all over the place already.

cheradenine_uk 3y ago

No. It has extremely poor energy density. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-liquid-hydrogen-dumbass-paul-martin-vhbfc/?trackingId=LYF2CY4yCC77oSHi0uI0vw%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-liquid-hydrogen-dumbass-p...

Scoundreller 3y ago
by volume, but great energy by mass (3x gas/diesel), but yeah... the tank issue eats that up.