Featured Review of hydrogen

Regurgitating the same old statement over and over again and nothing new. Yet Hydrogen is clearly gaining popularity among several countries that see the virtues of a Hydrogen state.

 

5 reasons why hydrogen is the fuel of the future | DHL Logistics of Things

 

Some interesting things in there. Some of which show that hydrogen for energy is still in the experimental stage, Though the main issue I have is that it doesn't answer how hydrogen becomes the fuel of the future.

It mentions a 30% reduction to the cost of green hydrogen by 2030, but even the linked source doesn't explain how that happens.

Shipping hydrogen around as ammonia has merit, but why not skip the part of freeing the hydrogen, and use the ammonia as a fuel directly?

The polymer storage capsules is the same concept as metal hydrides in terms of carrying hydrogen around. Work on that has been going on for years, and cost is still an issue. The capsules themselves have just been made in the lab, so are as far from commercial use as similar battery break through announcements.

The Electriq-Global fuel sounds too good to be true, and the lack of details doesn't dismiss that. We do know the amount of hydrogen in the aqueous fuel is 3%. For 5 kg of hydrogen, the car will need to carry around 44 gallons of the fuel, plus the supporting equipment to free the hydrogen. Since the spent fuel needs to be pumped out for recycling, refueling may take longer. If it does work out, and is adopted, the millions spent on hydrogen stations becomes a loss. With metal hydrides, and those capsules, it is only a partial loss.

 

Here in Europe we have a lot of that questions rising.
Some point out at the scaling factor of the electrolysers, other point out it is the cheaper (solar PV) energy, bridging the two we should see significant decrease in the cost.

 

Yes, I agree those should lead to reduced costs for hydrogen production, but simply stating costs will come down without how doesn't help convince people to support it. Specially when the something has been coming up every once in awhile for decades.

Of course, cost of production is just one part. Hydrogen car fuel is expensive because of the additional costs of transport to stations, and getting it into the car.

Cheap green hydrogen is great because we need it for fertilizer and decarbonizing industry. Being cheap doesn't mean it will automatically work for personal cars.

 

The Hydrogen Hoax

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Yes .... regurgitating the facts IS nothing new. Yet the hydrogen lobby still wants us to remain adicted to a product that they must sell you ... & you must buy from them .... call it the anti-BEV fuel, as BEV's can run economically on PV, whereas Hydrogen cars haven't been able to run economically, for all the decades & decades they've been promised.
One would seemingly be able to connect the dots, & know what side of the bread the hydrogen lobby's butter is on.
maybe not.
On a more insightful - comparative note - if a $60K electric car was given to you for $15,000 & you got $15,000 in free DC QC? You wouldn't be able to keep ANY one from buying them. Hydrogen cars? Not so much.
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Hydrogen ... the only 'Bang' for their buck:

Hydrogen Hoax: Wind & Solar Rent-Seekers Demand Subsidies To Convert Their Chaotic Power Into Gas – STOP THESE THINGS

and .... from another;

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scam — From George W. Bush & "The Big 3" To Toyota, Honda, & Japan
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Jelly?

 

That’s the best you can do? Oh come on now.

 

All the inexpensive renewable hydrogen has to do with wind not solar. Wind often blows when when demand is low so can be discounted at night and made into hydrogen then used later to refuel cars, or sent into the grid as electricity or the natural gas pipelines (up to 10%) to reduce natural gas use. Solar is typically driven at more peak times and does not get discounted other than government subsidies. what is left out is a car like the rav 4 prime could use the hydrogen after it is upgrade to methanol using co2 and renewable electricity. This renewable methanol be run through a modified engine, or changed into gasoline and gasoline additives using the FT process and renewable electricity. Methanol running through a phev would likely be much cheaper per mile than the fuel cell.

The big problem is it takes energy then to compress the hydrogen, and expensive tanks at the dispensing station. A station would likely need to cost at least $5M and have a volume of vehicles to reduce fixed and variable costs. Build 1000 of those stations, something that would be needed to cover california and parts of nevada, would cost another $5B. I can't image that will work in the US or china. In japan and korea, the government may just pour the money in.

 

Why Are We Still Talking About Hydrogen?

 

Oh well, with a depreciated value now at near-zero dollars, at least their cars won't lose any more value .....
Hydrogen car drivers can take solace in that, i guess.

 

I see that anti-hydrogen propaganda has spilled over to Prius chat forums. Is it at all surprising that someone who financially benefits from slow uptake of hydrogen technology shits on it? Musk was extremely disingenuous when he made that statement. Fact of the matter is that batteries have a low power to mass ratio. This is true even with all of the recent advancements. It will certainly improve with solid state batteries when they come out. But mass production of those has been tricky so far. And it is no secret that charging EVs is more time consuming than what people are used to. And it will remain so with DC fast chargers. And batteries are still costly today. Even with the large price drop in the last 10 years, we still don't quite have a Civic or Corolla competitor. And lastly, adding range to a BEV is expensive. More range requires more battery which is costly and heavy. So scaling to large applications for long durations is tricky. No ifs or buts about it. So given this, it's preposterous to suggest that there's no room for another technology in the marketplace.

Given that hydrogen could act as a battery buffer for intermittent sources of energy, that it can also be created from methane in landfills, and overcomes the shortcomings of the battery, it certainly makes the case for itself. Is it better than battery in all aspects? Obviously not. It's hard to imagine it getting the majority share of the passenger car market.

Why should electrolyzer efficiency remain low? What physical law dictates this? Why should electrolysis remain expensive? What physical law dictates this? Why should steam reformation remain the primary source of hydrogen? Opponents of hydrogen pretend that hydrogen technology will stay stagnant while battery technology will not.

Given that we have to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, is it reasonable that hydrogen is going to find itself in shipping? Yes! Aviation? Yes! Long haul trucking? Yes! Short-haul passenger car market? Looks unlikely! It'll be a niche player at best. Between short-haul passenger cars and long haul trucking, there's an inflection point where one technology will have an advantage over the other. And that's going to remain fluid as long as the technologies keep developing.

Tesla proponents vehemently discounted hybrids. Even though hybrids and EVs have similar carbon footprint in coal-heavy regions. They spent more time opposing hybrids than the 20-mpg monster SUVs that sell in the millions. Then they discounted PHEVs. Then they discounted alternative EVs and hydrogen. It's simply been about promoting Tesla, and people are starting to see it.

 

"about the author": I am the editor of independent electric vehicle website WhichEV.

That's about it.

 

Meh, 1000 mile EV you never plug in

https://www.google.com/amp/s/robbreport.com/motors/cars/aptera-new-solar-ev-can-cover-1000-miles-no-charging-1234585242/amp/

many PHDs will explain why the hydrogen cycle isn’t worth persuing, not just John Q


Or you could instead of wasting half the methane to make hydrogen
simply use the methane as fuel directly thus creating less co2 than making hydrogen

laws of physics keep hydrogen cycles well under 50% efficient in theoretical land but currently sit around 19% efficiency which is worse than most cars.

So making hydrogen from NG is because it will always be the cheapest and most efficient way of making hydrogen

Similar to how under 10% of plastic was recycled last year, there is no economic way in the US to recycle most plastic because companies pay little attention to making packaging that is easily recycled and even when they do virgin materials are always cheaper

No need to pretend, the hydrogen cells built today are merely smaller than the ones used in the 1960’s, further efficiency has moved up only about 5%.
A hydrogen car is still less efficient than a Prius hybrid and laws of physics dictate that it will never be more efficient.

 

Propaganda, AKA facts / knowledge

Tech promised in the 1970's, meaning we're on our 5th decade of "slow uptake". Every 10 years - promising it will be ubiquitous in 10 years.

Bluntfully Truthful

And customers don't even care, so the point is somewat pointless - as owners just keep loving 'em and the buyers just keep buying them.

& no one's forcing ev's on the unwilling, or scared, or inflexible buyers

250 miles in 25 minutes works on those cannonball run / minority outlier trips - but why the need to downsell the tech that works for many

Quickly / nearly approaching parody with the cost of building ICE, a far cry better than hydrogen costs, which gets double the incentive dollars hear in California compared to an EV.
Even with the large price drop in the last 10 years, we still don't quite have a Civic or Corolla competitor. [/QUOTE]
this is the big concern? we are way way WAY farther away from a hydrogen Corolla - if ever. Remember? It's been how many decades of hydrogen false promises?

Did someone say ev's need to replace everything?

Hopefully it'll happen before it uses up the available tax dollars, as we can't even afford to reduce the miles and miles of homeless with the tax dollars we have remaining

The ice industry discounted the EV for decades, putting out false advertising, saying no one wants them. Yet Volkswagen itls going 100% EV, & Tesla has already made over 2 million EV's. Others are quickly ramping up, even if hydrogen is withering on the vine, for good reasons.
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I looked at Hydrogen as storage too, and I can firmly say the guy in the video is wrong. He made a mistake that many people do when looking at this without enough detail or enough creativity.

Read this. It was written by a guy I know: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35889.pdf

The TL;DR is this: Hydrogen storage for grid firm-up is uneconomical compared to batteries. So don't do that. Instead, use batteries for grid firm-up and hydrogen instead of curtailment for vehicle fuel. This results in the overall lowest-cost system compared to either hydrogen or batteries alone.x

Oh, and light vehicles should still be PHEVs, with batteries big enough that at least 75% of vehicle miles traveled are on plug in electricity, with hydrogen just for long trips. The H2 vehicle fuel is just for long-range off-highway, long-range trips for light vehicles and heavy uses off-highway such as ships, aircraft and construction equipment.

 

I think it is interesting that part of the proponents is dhl's building of 100 fuel cell delivery vans. This was partially funded by the German government and a good test. You don't need a nation wide fueling infrastructure. The cost of the hydrogen really is not that significant compared to cost of the driver and other things, so it won't have a big impact on delivery costs.

These are for dhl's longer range vehicles and they claim a range of 500 km, likely around 250 miles epa. One of the suppliers to dhl's own bev integrator manufacturer is ford. Ford's e-transit due next year has a reported range of about half that with a 75 kwh battery pack. The thing missing is that by the end of the year dhl will have replaced half of their postal delivery fleet (15,000 vans) with bev delivery vans. If 10% of the the miles are done by fuel cell vans instead of bev vans, even if this takes 3x the renewable electricity, then we are still talking only 120% of having the entire fleet bevs. Germany is willing to spend more money to have zev. it seems to be a good choice for R&D.

for light vehicles the die has already been cast, outside of korea and japan governments are not willing to pay for the infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles. That may change but it would require some very big technical breakthroughs. The charge time is not limiting bevs, nor is range today (400 miles for longest range and 600 mile range vehicles are already developed). The biggest barriers is public confidence, charging infrastructure, and costs. These are all worse for hydrogen powered vehicles.

fuel cell forklifts work, and are in many warehouses. These vans may work. Long range 10,000 psi hydrogen trucks have a problem though, as tanks will have to be very large or infrastructure very expensive. These delivery vans don't have that problem. BEV busses are already much more popular than fuel cell busses with far lower operating costs and higher reliability. That was one of hydrogen's hopes but does not seem to be happening. Perhaps fuel cell busses will work for longer distances but this is a small percentage of busses.