Featured Daimler Trucks GenH2 Hydrogen Semi

...."To make CO2-neutral all-electric vehicles competitive, regulatory and government action is needed, including the necessary infrastructure for charging with green electricity and for the production, storage and transport of green liquid hydrogen."

Liquid H2 is the coldest thing on the planet next to Liquid He. Hard to imagine that cryogenic fuel tank.
Interesting to see what gives with Nikola.

 

i hope their fueling infrastructure is better than ours

 

Even before refrigeration to a liquid state, hydrogen manufacturing costs about 3x that of the equivalent electrical kWh. Please understand I'm not anti-hydrogen but I am against inefficiency. There is too much waste making hydrogen and later when making electricity within the fuel cell.

Bob Wilson

 

The fuel tank isn't going to be much different than that used for liquid nitrogen. The secret is that they vent. The liquid will warm up, and some convert back to gas. When the pressure in the tank reaches a limit, some of the gas is vented. A little tank on a bi-fuel BMW would vent itself empty in a week.

A ventless tank is possible, but it would be quite bulky with all the insulation, or need to be actively chilled.

For a truck running nearly all the time, the losses wouldn't be too bad, but there are still better fuels for a FCEV.

 

Maybe this works for a refrigerator truck.
Otherwise another wasted effort.
If is was true that you couldn't make a battery powerful enough and small/cheap enough then maybe hydrogen would be a good idea.
But we know this isn't true...just might take a few more years.
Meanwhile hydrogen hasn't improved since He said, Let there be light.

Mike

 

There are places like port of LA that require such things. Port of Los Angeles Preliminarily Awarded $41 Million from California Air Resources Board to Launch Zero Emissions Hydrogen-Fuel-Cell-Electric Freight Project | Port of Los Angeles
My guess is California taxpayers will end up with the fuel bill but its small compared to how much they are paying for hydrogen fueling for the tiny number of fcv on the road. Really if you drop a 100 kwh battery in a hydrogen fuel cell semi, the Fuel cell does not need to be that big as the big battery can buffer the load and provide the bulk of the 600 hp a semi needs. You could probably get away with about 2x the fuel cell in the mirai - or 228 kw. In reality the cost of the truck and driver is going to be large compared to the cost of the fuel cell stack/hydrogen tanks/etc.

The problems for the hydrogen proponents is time. Tesla Battery day is next week. I would be surprised if within a decade there are not packs and charging that is as fast as hydrogen and charging and maintenance will be much less expensive. Maybe you can do a phev semi truck with 250 miles of electric range for when you are in the pollution zone like port of LA. Diesel can charge the battery when you don't have time to plug it in ;-)

 

OveralI I am bullish on H2 ...just not sure about Liquid H2.

Our utility Dominion Energy says it is looking at (for a Utah test run?) co-burning H2 in natural gas power plants, whereas the H2 is hypothetically made from excess renewable energy....so sort of a battery....similar to the idea of pumped water storage, which Virginia has the worlds most of that. Not sure that H2 co-burn idea makes sense, but they caught me by surprise on it.

 

I agree. However, I am also a realist and I think that electricity isn't necessarily the best case for everything ( battery weight, etc... ).

Might as well explore all avenues. It is not a 'wasted effort', as some would say.

 

Hydrogen as grid storage does have some merit. Using batteries that work for cars means competition for the same resource, and diversity is usually a good thing. Storing hydrogen at a stationary site isn't as big a deal has in a vehicle; can even use lower pressures for energy savings.

I've seen discussion of injecting hydrogen into the natural gas supply. There are cost savings with this, as you don't need to upgrade the gas lines if the amount of hydrogen is, IIRC, 20% or less. A turbine may need some upgrades for pure hydrogen fuel. It also means current appliances need tuning to account for hydrogen's lower flame temperature. The injecting can be a general way of reducing fossil fuel use.

That said, if you have a CO2 supply, you can add on to the hydrolyzer, and make methane.

Co-burning I take to mean having the two fuels separate before feeding to the turbine, though. I've seen work of this with diesel trucks. It can reduce the emissions of the engine.

I think the issue the FCEV developers have is that they have been working on PEM type fuel cells for so long that they want to see a return for their investment. When they started, PEM FC's seemed to be the best bet. Their one limitation is that they need high purity hydrogen, or the membrane becomes poisoned. That's why the vehicles mount sensors instead having a simple odorant added to the gas for leak detection.

The PEM FC development has taken long enough that other fuel cell types have reached the "this could work" stage. Solid oxide fuel cells are already being used for stationary power, and it is what Nissan is using in their FCEVs. Along with hydrogen, they can use other fuels. They run hot, and can autoreform small compounds to release their hydrogen. They do this with methane, and perhaps ammonia and methanol. For other fuels, the heat of the cell can partially run an onboard reformer; Nissan is using ethanol this way.

So it seems the makers of PEMs(virtually all the car companies) and hydrogen suppliers are pushing their products now as they have run out of time, and don't want to admit a loss. The success of BEVs is a major driver, but a delay can also mean hydrogen and PEM FCs aren't needed for the cases where batteries don't work.