Why did we abandon hydrogen cars so quickly?

[Aquinus]

The world’s biggest hydrogen fuel cell EV has started work in South Africa

Green hydrogen is made on-site to power the enormous truck's fuel cells.

arstechnica.com

Interesting article here, this makes a lot of sense for hydrogen.

The article says:

Of course, the hydrogen has to come from somewhere, which is why Anglo American will make it on-site using a 3.5 MW electrolyzer, with electricity coming from a 100 MW solar array. When fully operational, it should be capable of producing up to a metric ton of hydrogen a day.

Unless it's being done under high heat and high pressure like those that use waste heat from nuclear plants, it's bound to not be that efficient. This is the way to do it though, using some renewable source to create the H2. Photovoltaic solar is probably better for something like pumped storage though as there fewer losses compared to run of the mill electrolysis. Something like nuclear power is probably the best way to electrolyze water to make H2 because the reactor provides both the electricity to run the electrolyzer, but also the heat to improve efficiency (it also doesn't stop when the sun goes down.) For those that don't know, electrolysis is fairly efficient at really high temperatures and pressures and reduces the amount of power needed to produce H2. This is not anywhere near STP or what you would encounter in nature on Earth though, hence nuclear being a good choice.

With that said though, something like a combo of photovoltaic and thermal solar could have a similar result in theory, but it doesn't sound like that's what this company is planning on doing since parabolic mirrors that move with the sun tend to cost more than stationary panels do. I'm still not sold on the idea that hydrogen is a good way to store energy. Even if we do manage to produce it efficently at scale without breaking the bank, there are a lot of safety considerations with hydrogen considering how volatile and reactive it is.

 

[Space Lynx]

The article says:

Unless it's being done under high heat and high pressure like those that use waste heat from nuclear plants, it's bound to not be that efficient. This is the way to do it though, using some renewable source to create the H2. Photovoltaic solar is probably better for something like pumped storage though as there fewer losses compared to run of the mill electrolysis. Something like nuclear power is probably the best way to electrolyze water to make H2 because the reactor provides both the electricity to run the electrolyzer, but also the heat to improve efficiency (it also doesn't stop when the sun goes down.) For those that don't know, electrolysis is fairly efficient at really high temperatures and pressures and reduces the amount of power needed to produce H2. This is not anywhere near STP or what you would encounter in nature on Earth though, hence nuclear being a good choice.

With that said though, something like a combo of photovoltaic and thermal solar could have a similar result in theory, but it doesn't sound like that's what this company is planning on doing since parabolic mirrors that move with the sun tend to cost more than stationary panels do. I'm still not sold on the idea that hydrogen is a good way to store energy. Even if we do manage to produce it efficently at scale without breaking the bank, there are a lot of safety considerations with hydrogen considering how volatile and reactive it is.

yeah that is what I mean, it is great for unique type of vehicles in certain work situations. i don't think it will ever be scaled for everyone, but like you know, take the Nevada Lithium locations where the big mines are there for that mineral, Nevada is perfect for another situation like this, some massive solar farms, and some giant ass hydrogen miner trucks

 

[Aquinus]

yeah that is what I mean, it is great for unique type of vehicles in certain work situations. i don't think it will ever be scaled for everyone, but like you know, take the Nevada Lithium locations where the big mines are there for that mineral, Nevada is perfect for another situation like this, some massive solar farms, and some giant ass hydrogen miner trucks

A hydrogen leak in a confined area like a mine scares the hell out of me. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Regardless of the use case, hydrogen is an extremely dangerous substance that needs to be handled with extreme care.

 

[Space Lynx]

A hydrogen leak in a confined area like a mine scares the hell out of me. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Regardless of the use case, hydrogen is an extremely dangerous substance that needs to be handled with extreme care.

When I look at these giant trucks doing giant mining sites, they really don't drive into "cave like" areas, these trucks are too big for that, the ones from the South Africa article I linked anyway.

I am sure they know it is dangerous in South Africa too and take precautions, its massive amounts of money invested, so I am sure they have massive amounts of protocols too... unlike BP offshore oil drilling anyway...

 

[X71200]

Hydrogen does make more sense towards big rigs than cars (not in for having a huge tank and conversion equipment in car). Though, like when nearly every truck is rocking diesel... and the other bits such as carrying of hydrogen with diesel trucks added in... it still isn't implemented all properly, even in trucks. Nikola was a cool idea but not a lot came out of it in the recent years. To be honest though, hydrogen is nowhere to be as commonly found down the tanks as diesel... so yeah. Maybe in the future, since price of diesel is not exactly cheap.

 

[DOA]

I am not sure where the size vehicle will favor hydrogen, maybe trains and bigger?

If it's at all possible to use electricity directly (or batteries) you have about a 40% efficiency advantage. The electricity - hydrogen - electricity cycle just cannot be made very efficient. But hydrogen does store well and scales to larger sizes.

 

[dragontamer5788]

If it's at all possible to use electricity directly (or batteries) you have about a 40% efficiency advantage. The electricity - hydrogen - electricity cycle just cannot be made very efficient. But hydrogen does store well and scales to larger sizes.

Why not? NiMH batteries are literally the electricity - hydrogen - electricity conversion for example and modern NiMH are in excess of 90% efficient charge/discharge.

--------

Now instead of storing Hydrogen in Nickel or other metals, you bulk-store hydrogen in a pressurized canister, so that you can add/remove energy to portable applications. Bam, you have fuel cells.

All of these forms of energy are related to each other. Its just physics and chemistry.

 

[Shrek]

Let us not confuse terminology

Fuel cell - Wikipedia
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen[1]) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions.

 

[Aquinus]

hydrogen does store well

No it doesn't. You need to be very careful to make sure the tanks don't become brittle due to the reactive nature of hydrogen. It's not like storing other fuels because not only is it very dangerous if there is a leak, it reacts with a heck of a lot more things than other fuels. So the difficulty of storing it safely is actually a relatively hard problem.

 

[Shrek]

I seem to recall that hydrogen can slowly leak through steel (the hydrogen atom being so small).

 

[dragontamer5788]

Let us not confuse terminology

Fuel cell - Wikipedia
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen[1]) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions.

What is there to be confused?

Hydrogen stores chemical energy. Inside of a NiMH battery, the Hydrogen is released on anode, travels to the Cathode where it is stored. And the process is then reversed.

In Fuel Cells, the source of hydrogen is external. In NiMH, the hydrogen is internal and transfers between two different sides. Otherwise, its the same element / molecule that's performing the energy storage.

In life itself, Hydrogen is still the source of energy storage, its just being trapped in the Carbon element (aka: Hydrocarbons). Those hydrocarbons can turn into ethanol or even synthetic gasoline with the right processes. All of this technology is related. The ultimate goal is to try to find a technology that uses Hydrogen's energy-storage potential and wraps it up into an easy-to-use package.

 

[Aquinus]

Inside of a NiMH battery, the Hydrogen is released on anode, travels to the Cathode where it is stored.

NiMH does not utilize elemental hydrogen, it's hydroxide ions that are involved in that reaction.

 

[X71200]

Let's be real here, though... hydrogen tanks are just Shrek in size, lol. Battery technology, on the other hand, is consistently improving. Samsung developed fully charging ones that do themselves in some 15-20 minutes... couple years back. Nowadays with some cars moving towards alternative batteries than Li-On, things will certainly lead towards pure electric. Like no brainer.

 

[Shrek]

What is there to be confused?

A fuel cell is not a storage device, it is a conversion device.

 

[Vya Domus]

Battery technology, on the other hand, is consistently improving.

What isn't improving is their weight, having to haul around half a ton worth of batteries in a regular sized car is and will always be inefficient. Not to mention that this makes EVs effectively worthless for heavy duty transport when half your payload will have to be batteries alone.

 

[X71200]

What isn't improving is their weight, having to haul around half a ton worth of batteries in a regular sized car is and will always be inefficient. Not to mention that this makes EVs effectively worthless for heavy duty transport when half your payload will have to be batteries alone.

That's because companies are doing the lazy by stacking loads of li-on which is old tech. If you look at the early Mercedes EQC battery configuration, you could see a massive luggage sized, 384-cell li-po or something. It was impressive especially for an SUV.

A lot of Chinese EVs are coming out, and many Tesla's are still floating with a huge rack of li-on underneath. Korean companies like Hyundai are just using li-on as well.

Things will probably change down the years when you get the more advanced batteries with faster chargers.

 

[Shrek]

Is heating the limiting factor for fast charging?

 

[X71200]

It's more of not having the uber fast chargers usually available, that's the issue. Outside of Tesla, in the U.S you're bound to using slower chargers with other electricity companies. It's like that in other regions too, say you live in a 3rd world country, you'll be putting it to some charger down the mall and spending time while it's charged.

 

[DOA]

"Why not? NiMH batteries are literally the electricity - hydrogen - electricity conversion for example and modern NiMH are in excess of 90% efficient charge/discharge."

This thinking is so wrong on so many levels. Battery chemistry and storing hydrogen from electrolysis are not really comparable for efficiency. Batteries cannot approach large pumped hydro and hydrogen capacity and suffer vampire drain.

 

[Space Lynx]

I had no idea how bad lead was.... wow... just finished this new video from Veritasium. Highly recommend it... also, in regards to the graph used in that video correlating crime rates to lead usage, I believe I also read somewhere part of the Roman Empire's fall may have been attributed to lead.

Piston engine airplanes need to go to hydrogen asap (I believe UK already had a successful test flight of one recently)... piston still uses lead fuel...

The epic attempts to power planes with hydrogen

During the Cold War, both the US and USSR researched liquid hydrogen as a way to fuel aircraft. Could this cleaner fuel finally be around the corner?

www.bbc.com

interesting read there.

 

[Aquinus]

vampire drain

self-discharge is the proper term for this and NiMH tends to be worse in this respect than a lot of other types of rechargeable batteries.

Piston engine airplanes need to go to hydrogen asap (I believe UK already had a successful test flight of one recently)... piston still uses lead fuel...

At least it's low lead in the sense that it's nowhere near how much was used in the past, but you're right. Ultimately to replace it, you need a more cost effective option that also achieves the same anti-knock characteristics since avgas (100LL,) has an octane rating of 100 RON which is higher than your typical unleaded equivalents. There are formulations that can achieve this, but they tend to cost more and nobody likes paying more than they have to (and avgas is pretty expensive.)

 

[Mussels]

I had no idea how bad lead was.... wow... just finished this new video from Veritasium. Highly recommend it... also, in regards to the graph used in that video correlating crime rates to lead usage, I believe I also read somewhere part of the Roman Empire's fall may have been attributed to lead.

Piston engine airplanes need to go to hydrogen asap (I believe UK already had a successful test flight of one recently)... piston still uses lead fuel...

The epic attempts to power planes with hydrogen

During the Cold War, both the US and USSR researched liquid hydrogen as a way to fuel aircraft. Could this cleaner fuel finally be around the corner?

www.bbc.com

interesting read there.

Egyptian Pharaohs used lead makeup, romans used lead pipes, america used lead in controlled explosions so they could go fast

When it comes to any technology, even one as simple as commonly used metals - it will take generations of human lives to find the slow-acting harmful ones.
Either it kills you instantly, kills you fast, or kills you over decades - very little isn't harmful.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Egyptian Pharaohs used lead makeup, romans used lead pipes, america used lead in controlled explosions so they could go fast

When it comes to any technology, even one as simple as commonly used metals - it will take generations of human lives to find the slow-acting harmful ones.
Either it kills you instantly, kills you fast, or kills you over decades - very little isn't harmful.

Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang was told that mercury would grant him immortal life. So he ate a few mercury pills.

There's also a few emperors / kings who loved to show up at parties in asbestos robes. The party trick was to throw the robe into a bonfire, and then pick it up later (as Asbestos has incredible fire-resistance).

Ahhhhh... the joy of luxury items being made out of literal poisons...

 

[95Viper]

Stay on topic.

 

[cvaldes]

We have already gone over this before in this discussion, the technology isn't the limiting factor.

The biggest inhibitors for hydrogen vehicles are distribution and infrastructure. For cars the infrastructure is too expensive for the return.

Hydrogen as a fuel for commercial aviation makes more sense than regular consumer motor vehicles.

For commercial aviation, this might be more attainable due to the fact that airports are the refueling stations. It's not like a cross-country flight from LAX to JFK randomly stops in Wichita, KS or Des Moines, IA to take on more fuel, use the restroom and buy some snacks.

That said, there would have to be some sort of agreement between major governments to push for the distribution of hydrogen fuel for aircraft. It's not like a brand-new hydrogen-powered jetliner will fly from LAX to CDG or LHR only to find out that those European airports don't have hydrogen refueling available.

Trust me, I'm not blind to the issues with leaded fuel. There's a push to shut down a local general aviation airport (Reid-Hillview in San Jose, CA) due to lead-related pollution and health hazards due to their continued usage of 100LL avgas. It was built in 1937 when most of the surrounding land was farmland. Population growth pushed development right to the airport's fences. Humans have greater awareness of the dangers of lead today but also we have worsened the situation by developing real estate. If the general aviation industry had adopted hydrogen fuel 20-30 years ago, this particular community conflict might have been moot but here we are in 2022.