> moving hydrogen is so hilariously in efficient though. It would have to be produced right where you fill the tank of those ships, trucks and planes.
Exactly! I see hundreds of H2 generation facilities adjacent to trucking routes near the massive wind resources of the US great plains.
Each would have a fuel stop with high efficiency H2 electrolyzers and tanks that buffer H2 using wind piwer when it's available, so intermittency won't matter, since stationary hydrogen storage is a solved problem. Hydrolysis is also a solved problem, and getting more efficient constantly (currently up to 70%). Oh, and the facility's only exhaust is oxygen.
Substitute wind with the locally abundant source of renewable energy, and presto, no shipping of hydrogen needed.
A megawatt electrolyser fits in a cargo container, so that's not as impractical as it sounds. But personally I think at least for ships ammonia is the nicer fuel.
Ammonia is so much more practical than elemental hydrogen that a hydrogen-based project inherently has the appearance of a toy. This is especially true in agricultural areas where existing infrastructure already produces and distributes ammonia in massive quantity for use as fertilizer.
Batteries aren’t an answer for anything but cars. Honestly even for cars they still aren’t a great answer. They are way too heavy and take up too much space.
There are all sorts of problems to solve with hydrogen, but I think we’re closer to solving those problems than we are to increasing battery density by an order of magnitude.
I mean that we're at the absolute edge of possible range with existing battery tech, and there is no path to dramatically increasing range. The Model 3 is 20% heavier than a Honda CRV, the "range" is about 30% less, and the total cargo capacity is also about 30% less. We can't add more batteries because the weight is already an issue, and so the only viable path forward is to dramatically increase energy density. I compared a sedan to an SUV because you otherwise wouldn't expect a small sedan to weigh so much more than an SUV.
Most effort today is going into decreasing costs via economies of scale. What's the path to an electric vehicle with a 1,500 mile range? Hydrogen "gen1" cars are already over 400 miles of range, and you can add 400 more miles of range in 3 minutes.
Basically... batteries seem more like a stopgap than a permanent solution. Do you really think batteries will ever power an airplane, for example? I do think it's plausible that planes could run on hydrogen.
For cars, they are much more than a stop gap. How will hydrogen work in cars? We need to build hydrogen filling infrastructure across the world, and then manufacture and ship hydrogen across the world.
Electricity on the other hand - we already have that infrastructure, and it basically costs nothing to move it huge distances.
We are no where near the edge of what is possible for batteries, every couple of years cars are released with 10+% more range. There is more efficiency, and chemistry to be done here.
Also hydrogen vehicles ARE EVs so how can you say batteries are a stop gap while also saying they are the obvious future… the fuel cell charges a battery, the battery delivers the energy to the motor.
>We are no where near the edge of what is possible for batteries, every couple of years cars are released with 10+% more range. There is more efficiency, and chemistry to be done here.
Nope. Not even close. The Tesla Model S had a range of 265 miles in 2012. The top end Model S today has a range of 375 miles. If we were truly extending range 10% every couple of years we would have vehicles approaching 700 miles in range on the market today.
Instead we have seen about 42% range growth paired with a 91% increase in price over the last decade. The majority of electric vehicles on the market or hitting the market in the near-term have EPA estimated range less than 300 miles.
There is no path this decade to an electric vehicle with a range that is even approaching 700 miles.
>Also hydrogen vehicles ARE EVs so how can you say batteries are a stop gap while also saying they are the obvious future… the fuel cell charges a battery, the battery delivers the energy to the motor.
You are overstating battery requirements of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The Toyota Mirai, for example, has a 1.24 kWh battery pack that weighs 45kg. There are also literal hydrogen combustion engines which require no batteries at all. Future hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may not require a battery at all, and may instead rely on a bank of super capacitors.
This giant heavy duty truck we're discussing has a 72kWh battery. Tesla sells sedans with bigger batteries than this.
>We need to build hydrogen filling infrastructure across the world, and then manufacture and ship hydrogen across the world.
Hydrogen can be made with water, locally. We're basically one electrolysis (or other) invention away from trivially mass manufacturing hydrogen wherever there is water. We've already solved every other problem with hydrogen.
If you're betting on BeV you're basically betting that we will quite literally never solve hydrogen production problems. I wouldn't take that bet.
The Model 3 long range is almost 1,000 pounds heavier than a Camry, and the Camry has more range (and a faster “charging” time). Interior volume is similar, with a slight advantage to the Camry, though given the Model 3 has smaller exterior dimensions I’d give it the edge there.
“Charging time” is such a bullshit term. EV means everyone has a “petrol pump” in their home. So charge time only matters on long distance driving, and we are talking 30-50 minutes per 400 miles. This just doesn’t feel like a real problem to me.
Who on an 800 mile road trip is upset about a 50 minute stop?
Sure. Electric vehicles have enormous batteries which weigh thousands of pounds and take up a substantial portion of interior volume. We’re at the bleeding edge of battery tech and the best we’re able to achieve is 300ish miles of range. We can’t realistically expand this to 500 to 1,500 miles anytime in the next decade or so.
As example compare the Model 3 and a CRV. This is an absurd example because the CRV is an SUV, but the comparison is telling given the weight differences.
The Model 3 weighs 4,200 pounds with 97 cubic feet of interior passenger space.
A Honda CRV weighs 3,500 pounds and 103 cubic feet of interior passenger space.
So we have a smaller car that is quite a bit heavier and it’s almost exclusively due to the battery. Tesla can’t cram more battery into that car so the only option is to dramatically increase energy density. There is nothing in the horizon except incremental improvements.
I think you're missing the point. 300 miles is not my ideal and, yes, change may or may not be incremental. I'd be happier with 1000m. But 300m is enough for me to buy one now. And that is progress.
And I think your point on space is out of date. I have no idea about the Tesla M3. In my mind I hate how that car looks and so I've never even tested one. But, for space, try an ioniq 5. Magic.
... yeah, but it's more than good enough for actual use, and moving away from internal combustion is important. Internal combustion cars can't go 500 miles on a tank of gas either, and trips longer than 300 miles are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority for most people.
I heard on a podcast that this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suiso_Frontier new hydrogen tanker could only go 30 days with the hydrogen it carries. Which is why it runs on diesel. It's 40 days to Europe.
This is a solved problem, why do people persist with stuff repeated in the 1980s?!
There are endless h2 vehicles on the road. Do you think the tanks used, are apt to become brittle, and leak?!
There are h2 refueling stations for said vehicles, all over the place.
Do you think these leak, and become brittle?
And amusingly, your comment is redirecting from the claim that transporting h2 is hard. You are now poking at storage, instead of at transport (which can be done with pipelines, and is done with them).
In my case it's been at least a decade since I looked at materials science and hydrogen destroys steel isn't as well known as hydrogen blows up easily.
But ignoring this, allows the anti-h2 crowd to continue to deride h2 tech.
The heart of this often claims that h2 is polluting, based upon the fact that currently, we source a lot of h2 from Ng.
Of course this disregards that electricity is often derived from dirty sources too, meaning, all the same arguments should be levied against battery based power sources too.
What we need, is to get non polluting engine/point of use tech out there, asap! And h2 is the only tech which provides the range, due to refueling speed, to replace many applications.
Without end of use clean tech, we have zero hope.
Any environmentalist should be happy, joyful, exuberant with h2.
Sounds plausible. Is the idea to build pipes out of the same stuff? Might be worth mentioning that fibre composite essentially means epoxy with fibres in, which is not necessarily environmentally superb in the thousands of miles of pipes format.
Wonder how people will deal with burying very stiff pipes without them breaking when the ground moves. Maybe sections with rubber joints, though the joints would leak.
The Mirai needs check ups and part replacement every 5000 miles[1]. It is car sold at a huge loss (middle 5 to low 6 digits) because the tech is super expensive.
The question is can this interval be reduced once the technology matures?
Let's look what the Miria II brings in that regard.
Compressed or chilled hydrogen storage is hard. I am huge fan of using geological structures for it (salt caverns f.e.), as they are voluminous the pressure route will be an unnecessary cost and security risk.
What is it with H2 crowd and their persecution fetish?
Exactly! I see hundreds of H2 generation facilities adjacent to trucking routes near the massive wind resources of the US great plains.
Each would have a fuel stop with high efficiency H2 electrolyzers and tanks that buffer H2 using wind piwer when it's available, so intermittency won't matter, since stationary hydrogen storage is a solved problem. Hydrolysis is also a solved problem, and getting more efficient constantly (currently up to 70%). Oh, and the facility's only exhaust is oxygen.
Substitute wind with the locally abundant source of renewable energy, and presto, no shipping of hydrogen needed.