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I don't think hydrogen will ever be a thing for personal cars. Apart from the abysmal "well to wheel" efficiency it's also just such a hassle to create a fuel n
by BadBadJellyBean 8mo ago
I don't think hydrogen will ever be a thing for personal cars. Apart from the abysmal "well to wheel" efficiency it's also just such a hassle to create a fuel network for it. Gasoline is bad enough but a gas that will just leak away whatever you do seems like a stretch. It is just so much simpler with electricity. Pretty much every gas station already has it. No driving it around with trucks. Just maybe once install a bigger cable or a battery/capacitor.
- bombcar 8mo agoMy understanding is most hydrogen fueling stations produce the hydrogen onsite via electrolysis of water. EDIT: My understanding was wrong - it's produced locally onsite but via steam-methane reforming: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na...
- hvb2 8mo agoIf you can do that at a meaningful rate you might as well install ev charging and just not electrolyse when cars are charging
- b112 8mo agoHe didn't say it doesn't have local tanks. Only that it makes h2 local. You can still make h2 to replenish, and have storage. This is akin to how almost all power used to charge cars, is not-green. For example, there are still Ng, coal, and other types of power plants. If cars switched to gas, instead of electric charging, then some of those could be shut down. But the true point, is as we convert to more and more solar, we'll eventually shut down the last of the fossil fuel burner plants, and eventually the cars will all be green power sourced. Same with h2. Getting non-polling cars out the door and into people's hands, is key. Eventually, where the power comes from will be clean. And really, we're already having issues with power infra, even before AI, so re-purposing Ng pipelines for H2 would be a great thing.
- estimator7292 8mo agoWe won't get rid of natural gas any time soon. Ng pipelines are not in any way similar to H2 pipelines except the word 'pipe'. You can't just put hydrogen in them. You can't even retrofit them. You're looking at laying an entirely new pipeline either way. Furthermore, most H2 is produced by fossil fuel extraction. We aren't cracking water to get H2, we're pulling it out of the ground. Cracking water is hideously expensive. All in all, combustion engines are more efficient than green hydrogen. That's the core problem. We simply don't have the absurd amounts of unused energy required for green H2 production. If we did, we'd be pumping fully half of that energy into the atmosphere as waste heat. Hydrogen cars aren't going to happen. We won't have grid-scale hydrogen. It's just a terrible idea. Hydrogen is too difficult to handle and incredibly dangerous to store. The efficiency is so ludicrously bad that you would genuinely do better to create syngas from captured atmospheric carbon and burn it in regular combustion vehicles. Avoiding carbon emissions is not the only concern in regards to the climate. Focusing on carbon and nothing else leads you to really dumb and bad ideas like piping hydrogen gas across the continent.
- b112 8mo agoh2 can be co-mingled with Ng and extracted with a molar filter at the other end. Ng pipelines are everywhere, so it makes perfect sense.
- adastra22 8mo agoNone of the pipes or valves are designed for hydrogen. It will steal leak. And leaking a very flammable gas isn’t great.
- mike50 8mo agoLet alone the compressors or the flow measurement equipment. Also significant portions of the pipesline (especially in neighborhoods / last mile) aren't metal anymore.
- reamaer 8mo ago
- blibble 8mo agothis is the case while they're in the hype building phase, when people are paying attention if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass produced via steam reforming of natural gas (which is why the oil majors are the ones desperately pushing it)
- b112 8mo agoThat makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoBut isn't that a counter point? Just putting the electricity directly into a car seems sensible instead of converting it to H2 and then back to electricity. Especially now that wo don't usually have a huge oversupply of green energy. We can think of ways to use the oversupply when it really becomes a problem. But I'd assume then BEV will be so dominant the no one will go through the hassle of supporting H2.
- Tade0 8mo agoThere's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount of energy, are easier to charge and are, of course, cheaper.
- b112 8mo agoEVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. They are not cheaper long term, for they rely upon thousands of pounds of heavy batteries. If they go further now, that is not a given down the road. Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first came out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road. It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is. But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's discount other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're older, cost less to the environment to build (batteries are terrible, environmentally), and so on.
- hannob 8mo agoYour understanding is entirely wrong. Most hydrogen fueling stations receive it from the next steam reformer, which will make it from fossil gas.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoOkay not driving it around then. But somehow it's worse. You still have to build the special tank and the special pump and also get an electrolysis device that is big enough to create enough hydrogen and also you have to get heaps of power somewhere that could instead be just straight put into a battery in a car. Make it make sense. What's the point? Who is willing to do that?
- MBCook 8mo agoDon’t forget keeping everything cold enough. On the vehicle side, you can make a gasoline tank in pretty much any shape you want. We have lots of experience making batteries in different shapes thanks to cell phones. High-pressure tanks only want to be in one shape. And it’s not especially convenient.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoIs the shape round? I bet it's round.
- flir 8mo agoUltimately, it's shrapnel-shaped.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoIs that shrapnel arranged in a roundish pattern?
- fuzzfactor 8mo agoNo need as I have shown in my other coment.
- fuzzfactor 8mo agoOne of the reasons we use cryogenic liquidfied gases is so the density can be in the same ball-park of more-easily liquified gases which do not need low temperature to keep from expanding until the tank ruptures. >One of the reasons we use cryogenic liquidfied gases is so the density can be in the same ball-park of more-easily liquified gases which do not need low temperature to keep from expanding until the tank ruptures. Propane, butane, LPG are all gases but the pressure which needs to be contained as the gas is turned into a liquid using pressure, is not too high for the typical welded BBQ tank. Designed to hold about 350 psi. The two lighter hydrocarbons, methane & ethane can be compressed way beyond what a high-pressure spun cylinder (like the typical 3000 psi rated heavy oxygen tank welders use) can handle, and still not liquefy. So similar to oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen and other "fixed" gases, methane needs to be liquefied cryogenically or any reasonable size tank will still not hold enough to last but a very small fraction of the time compared to the same capacity cryogenic storage. But "storage" is doing a lot of work here. Interestingly, with cryogenics you're going to need to handle even less pressure than the BBQ tanks, and the same size container ends up holding way more than the high-pressure cylinder at 3000 psi. A typical liquid nitrogen cylinder runs at about 50 psi, the tank will be rated quite a bit higher than that but not considered "high-pressure" by anybody. Thinner and non-curved shapes can be fine which can be lighter in weight than higher-pressure ratings would require, but you really have to have plenty of good thermal insulation to boot. The thing is, once you refill your cryogenic tank with cold liquid gas, you can never actually shut the tank completely. There is no additional cooling. The only thing keeping it cold is the low temperature of the liquid itself, no matter how good the insulation is, heat will gradually soak in and given enough time the whole thing would eventually end up at ambient temperature. Not cold enough to remain as a liquid any more. That would be eventually explosive whether it was a flammable gas or not. Instead, the tank is continuously venting a constant stream of gas from top. IOW the rate of heat absorbtion is compensated for under equilibrium as it boils the liquid a little bit constantly and there has to be a way for that gas to escape. The remaining liquid maintains the low temperature because the boiling point of the gas (at that low pressure) is still in the cryogenic range. The liquid self-refrigerates by evaporation to the (negative) boiling point of the substance. Which is why liquid helium is so much colder than liquid nitrogen in an identical cryo tank. That means if you fill a tank with one of these cryo gases, depending on your usage rate the losses to evaporation may be more than the amount you are utilizing. Or if you fill the cryo tank and don't use any at all for a while, it will empty itself by evaporation anyway and it could be before you got to use any of it.
- deadbabe 8mo agoIsn’t this bad? This means H2O molecules are being destroyed and the water is not returning to the water cycle to be reused. We will literally run out of water if everyone did this.
- dxdm 8mo agoWater gets split into oxygen and hydrogen using energy. The hydrogen then gets burned to release usable energy, which creates water. At least as far as I remember from chemistry class ages ago.
- vardump 8mo agoThere's some truth to what the gp said. Some hydrogen will escape, enter the upper atmosphere, and be blown away by the solar wind and thus be permanently lost.
- dxdm 8mo agoI assume that this has been happening to all gases in the atmosphere for aeons, and thus, while technically correct, it is completely negligible for the relevant time scale.
- aunty_helen 8mo agoThat’s not a thing. Anyone who’s seen hydrogen being split from electrolysis knows it takes a lot lot lot of electricity and is very slow. If two people needed to fill up in the same day it would run the well dry.
- jasonwatkinspdx 8mo agoCompletely wrong. Globally over 95% of hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas wells. Electrolysis is very limited to niche applications or token projects.
- mmooss 8mo agoThe electrolysis needs power and could be fueled by fossil fuels.
- bombcar 8mo agoMaybe that's what it was - produced onsite via steam extraction from piped in natural gas (which means you could just as easily burn the natural gas in the vehicle). Either way there aren't many trucks full of hydrogen zipping around.
- buckle8017 8mo ago> Pretty much every gas station already has [electricity]. Sure but they don't have electric vehicle recharging electricity. They have run the pumps and power the lights electricity.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoStill seems like a smaller investment to get a bigger cable than H2 infrastructure (Tanks, Pumps, maybe even electrolysis system).
- buckle8017 8mo agoBigger cable is a laugh. Bigger cable, upgraded delivery infrastructure to support that cable (think more or stronger poles), transformer upgrades, and finally the charging stations which unlike the home ones aren't just a complicated switch because DC fast charging. H2 is a stupid fuel, but the idea that high power vehicle charging stations are a cheap or simple upgrade to a gas station is ridiculous.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoYou are correct that neither option is free BUT there are options. I don't know but to me it seem like the cheaper option than building the H2 infrastructure. Second of all there are options like on site battery/capacitor banks that can buffer the energy used for the faster charging. It might not be for everywhere but as a final option there is slower charging.
- MBCook 8mo agoTrue, but they already exist. Hydrogen stations don’t. If you have to build new ones, especially if you have to supply them with enough power to create their own hydrogen for water, what’s the difference from just building EV chargers? And if you’re going to add hydrogen to existing gasoline stations then same question. If hydrogen was somehow able to use existing gasoline infrastructure it would make a lot more sense. But it’s not.
- helterskelter 8mo agoI always figured it would make more sense for hydrogen to be an option for renewable infra if the problems with leaking and embrittlement could be solved. Currently, moving renewable power over very long distances and storing it at scale is a non-trivial issue which hydrogen could help solve. This way, for example, Alaska in the winter could conceivably get solar power from panels in Arizona.
- pfdietz 8mo agoStorage is the bigger problem, specifically very long duration or rarely used storage (to cover Dunkelflauten, for example) for which batteries are poorly suited. Hydrogen (or more generally e-fuels) is one way to do that, but another very attractive one is very low capex thermal storage. Personally, I feel the latter would beat hydrogen: the round trip efficiency is similar or better, the complexity is very low, power-related capex should be lower, and there's no need for possibly locally unavailable geology (salt formations) for hydrogen storage. With this sort of storage, Alaska in winter gets its energy from Alaska in summer.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoOnly if we had a true oversupply of green energy. Converting electricity to H2 and then back is so incredible inefficient. It's less work to just create better electrical transmission systems. China did that with their high voltage DC lines.
- fsh 8mo agoThese problems are grossly exaggerated in popular discussions. Hydrogen has been routinely transported and stored in standard steel cylinders for over a century. Most cities originally used coal gas (50% hydrogen by volume) for heating and illumination before switching to natural gas after World War II. What kills the idea is the abysmal efficiency of electrolysis and hydrogen fuel cells. Standard high-voltage DC power lines would be much better suited for getting solar power from Arizona to Alaska.
- stetrain 8mo agoMoving renewable power is easy, we have a grid for that. Infrastructure for movement of electricity is ubiquitous in places that have never seen a hydrogen pump. If the grid is insufficient in a particular place or corridor, investing in upgrading it will provide a better long term solution than converting electricity to hydrogen, driving that hydrogen around on roads, and converting it back into electricity. Storage is a bigger issue for sure.
- mappu 8mo agoGaseous form is a problem, but have you seen the Fraunhofer POWERPASTE? I was optimistic when the news was first announced, but that was a decade ago and of course it's not widely used.
- XorNot 8mo agoAt that point you're just building a weird battery storage system again though.
- cbmuser 8mo ago> It is just so much simpler with electricity. Yet the market still thinks differently. Lots of countries still keep subsidizing EV despite them already being mature technology for such a long time. We didn't have to subsidize the smart phone to make it successful, we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.
- kibibu 8mo agoWe also wouldn't need to if environmental externalities were costed into petroleum prices.
- pjerem 8mo agoMaybe if we had smartphones that emitted greenhouse and toxic gases by using a mini ICE engine that were so cheap nobody would buy anything else, we would subsidize the electric ones. We may even ban the gas phones.
- jiggawatts 8mo ago> we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either. Smart phones were subsidised, just less obviously. Much of the fundamental research into the radio systems was done by government labs, for example. Not to mention that governments provide maaaaasssive subsidies to the entire fossil fuel industry, including multi-trillion dollar wars in the middle east to control the oil! Look at it from the perspective of pollution control in cities. China just invested tens of billions - maybe hundreds — into clearing out the smog they were notorious for. Electric vehicles are a part of the solution. The alternative is everyone living a decade less because… the market forces will it.
- DangitBobby 8mo agoICE love is cultural, and there's a bunch of FUD from entrenched interests.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoI am not comparing BEV with ICE. That would be stupid. ICE is not and will never be a solution to the fact that we are burning oil and destroying the environment. But EV has to compete with ICE and many people don't like the fact that they might be a small inconvenience. The environment is just not part of the calculation so to make BEVs even slightly competitive the price has to be lowered. H2 doesn't compete with ICE. It competes with BEV. That and in that comparison I do think it is much simpler. I'd be open to be enlightened why the killer feature of H2 is that makes it even worth considering with all these downsides.
- Tuna-Fish 8mo agoAnd more to the point, if you want to use synthetic fuels, why on earth would you pick hydrogen? Yes, it burns to clean water, but if the carbon feedstock is renewable, synthetic hydrocarbons are renewable too. The efficiency loss from doing the additional steps to build hydrocarbons is not large compared to the efficiency losses of using hydrogen, and storage can be so much easier with something denser.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo agoI'd assume because it is complicated. Capturing enough carbon, splitting it, generating enough H2, combining it with the carbon to make long enough chains. That all sounds complicated and expensive and probably needs even more surplus green power that we don't have. It also doesn't solve the problem of local pollution when burning carbon based fuels.
- ACCount37 8mo agoWhy go for long synthetic chains? Methane has good energy density, doesn't demand cryogenics or diffuse through steel, burns very cleanly, and can be used in modified gasoline ICEs - without even sacrificing the gasoline fuel capability.
- fuzzfactor 8mo agoWithout cryogenics, methane has such low energy density that a low-pressure fuel tank would still have to be as big as a bus for your compact methane-powered vehicle to go as far as you could on a few gallons of gasoline.
- ACCount37 8mo agoWhy? CNG ICE vehicles exist, especially in parts of the world that have cheap natural gas and expensive gasoline - often as dual fuel retrofits. They have to deal with high pressure tanks, but compared to the woes of hydrogen storage, that's downright benign.