Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably better than hydrogen for those use cases). My gut is that the majority of hydrogen proponents are oil and gas lobbyists or funded by them.
Hydrogen for cars is dead. However long haul flights, fertilizer, green steel, etc. very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen.
> batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases
That's not true. There are two main storage cases: from day to night and from summer to winter. Because there are 365 days and nights in a year and only one summer and one winter, a battery for seasonal storage needs to be 365 times cheaper than one for daily storage to break even after the same number of years. Of course, there are no batteries that are 365 times cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. Nothing comes close.
People are thinking that chemical energy storage could work for the case of seasonal storage. It doesn't quite work right now, but it's not off by 2 orders of magnitude, it's off by maybe a factor of 5. It is much more likely that we'll succeed in making green hydrogen production, transportation and storage economical than that we could make batteries cheaper by a factor of 100.
Separately, there is a fairly good chance that we'll be able to extract hydrogen from underground deposits (google "white hydrogen", e.g. [1]).
Third, hydrogen storage economics enjoys the square-cube law: larger pressurized tanks can hold a lot of hydrogen for not a much larger cost than smaller tanks. So hydrogen could make sense for applications where very large tanks are needed, and one such application is railways. A typical train oil car has a volume of about 130 m3. At 700 bar (typical storage tank pressure), one m3 of hydrogen weighs about 42 kg, so this is about 5.5 tons. Hydrogen has about 3 times the energy density of diesel, so that would be the equivalent of about 16 tons of diesel. Train have an efficiency of at least 400 ton-miles per gallon, which is more than 125 ton-miles per kg, or 2 million ton-miles for 16 tons. In other words, such a tanker car could be enough to propel a ten thousand ton freight train for 200 miles. It would be much easier to convert diesel locomotives to burn hydrogen than to electrify thousands of miles of railways, so there's a fairly good chance that rail could be hydrogen's killer app.
Am not well versed on these considerations but it appears one advantage of hydrogen is energy density compared to batteries. This may be less an issue for passenger vehicles but could be more relevant for air travel - as an example. No comments or opinions otherwise re: funding etc.
Are you referring to hydrogen as a mobility fuel specifically? I generally agree.
However, it is a critical large-scale industrial input, a replacement industrial input for several additional large industries, and an excellent large-scale stationary energy store.
I still believe there is potential for hydrogen/ammonia/methane fuel to be a seasonal storage mechanism. Battery technology does not seem capable of offering grid scale storage for the entirety of Winter. While the solar->fuel->electricity conversion takes huge efficiency hits, for “free” renewable energy, it can still pencil out as economical. Plus, it is feasible today without unobtanium (but not currently cost competitive vs fossil fuels)
Hydrogen was pushed by the Japanese government because BEV's aren't as ideally suited to the country's economy and resources. It's not a coincidence the only two companies making hydrogen cars were both the largest Japanese automakers, Toyota and Honda. And both of those models are economic failures atypical of their usual engineering prowess.
If you can take natural gas out of the ground, split it into hydrogen and CO2 (releasing heat, which can be used to generate electricity), and inject the CO2 back underground to help release more oil and gas.
At this point, you have hydrogen gas.
Sure, you could burn that hydrogen to make more electricity, but it works out financially better if you can directly use it.
The benefit of this approach is it can make use of most of the existing oil and gas infrastructure, and countries sitting on big gas reserves have a use for them.
The downside is it makes minimal sense unless there is some financial disincentive from just burning the gas and releasing the CO2.
The fdp, a small german party part of government, that holds the traffic ministry, managed to block an EU-wide phase-out of ICE vehicles to promote e-fuels. Whats e-fuels you ask? Its even more ridiculous than hydrogen cars - using renewable energy to synthesize fossil fuels. The beauty is that this makes ICE vehicles supposedly green, so then you can just keep selling them forever. And at some point down the line u just kill the e-fuel requirement.
It's posited as a "dump" for excess electricity; while batteries may be good for storage and balancing out the grid, hydrogen is suitable to put everything else in, that is, what if the batteries are full, or there's still more electricity in the grid that has nowhere to go? Hydrogen generation - as far as I'm aware - can scale to schlurp up any excess to a huge amount in the same plant.
The other one - in my country - is that they want to wind down natural gas entirely, but then want to reuse the pipes for hydrogen; I suspect this may be to continue making use of the huge infrastructure investments made in the gas pipelines.
> Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while [...]. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn
Sorry, you say you're familiar with hydrogen fuel cells and you don't know it's not burning?
Hydrogen fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction to turn hydrogen and oxygen from the air into electricity and water. The byproduct is water, not fire.
I'm not rich enough to own either a battery-electric or hydrogen-electric car, but it's weird how the only people who hate hydrogen are the battery people. I don't hear any hate from fossil-fuel guys.
It seems they're more interested in protecting their investment than saving the environment through a process (which is more inefficient, but) that doesn't require rare earth minerals.
The problem is that oil/gas companies see their impending demise. They are good at moving flammable things through pipes. Electricity is not that, and if it takes hold, they're in for a _major_ pivot. So they do what they've always done.
Your comment contains no substance. You are just pushing a conspiracy theory.
Hydrogen based fuels make sense on multiple fronts: long term storage (batteries cannot do this), scale (adding more tanks is cheaper than whole battery packs) and energy/power densities are still above what the best batteries can provide.
Batteries go bad over a rather short period of time and are incredibly expensive too. They’re basically currently infeasible as a mode of transport without _a lot_ of trade offs. Compare that to a tank for fuel, which is comparatively minuscule in cost and basically never goes bad. I don’t think electrical is as scalable as liquid fuel and I’m not convinced it ever will be, especially if it’s continued to be made by exotic materials.
Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view.
Our ancestors will never believe that we were nuts enough to not only allow this, but actually legally manndate it. They will think it's an urban legend and no ancient people could have been so short-sighted and egotistical.
There is an Oil Sector Lobby and there is an electric sector Lobby too. All Lobbies hate competition.
The electric sector wants to destroy Hydrogen because it competes with them, of course, they want to destroy the seed so no tree comes out of it. Hydrogen disappearing is not going to happen, because it going to be necessary for some things, like heavy transportation.
Just because clean Hydrogen is in the early stages in development(like EV were 15 years ago) does not mean that we should not develop the technology.
I personally believe that NH3 is great for storing energy and energy transportation, and extremely useful for things like growing food.
It is also toxic and difficult to handle, like oil, but in lots of sectors(like heavy industries) it makes lots of sense. In other sectors, electricity and batteries make more sense. Different technologies will coexist together and compete.
The YouTube channel Engineering Explained has an excellent video regarding why hydrogen is not a practical replacement for gasoline/petrol/diesel in a traditional internal combustion engine:
Not saying the oil sector is powerless by any means, and I guess maybe they're going for regulatory capture, but this is a non-starter from an economic reality perspective so I'm not too worried about it. The train is well out of the station for electric vehicles. I believe every car maker (save 1 that I know about) is fully committed to 100% electrified vehicles in the not-too-distant future. I feel like eventually even Toyota will give up their weird H2 push.
I wish them much good luck, but it's a bit like the dinosaurs complaining about those uppity mammals getting underfoot: their days are numbered. BEVs are here to stay, hydrogen is - as far as I can see - a non-starter except when it comes to heavy traffic and possibly rail or air but even there I have my doubts.
Meanwhile BEVs are rapidly building momentum and coupled with solar and wind make very good sense. Even the last holdout for a passenger hydrogen vehicle (Toyota) has finally seen the light and is making BEVs now, I don't remember ever seeing a Mirai but given how many have been produced that's not so strange.
I'm not so sure that BEVs will reach anything close to 100% of all cars on the road. My primary reason is this: as long as you "only" have 10%, 20%, even 30% BEVs the electric charging infrastructure is mostly free, we already have it. But after that, BEVs will require expensive infrastructure to be built in the electricity transmission grid. Think "we need to dig up all of the roads". Because it's not just cars going electric, it's everything else as well at the same time.
At that point hydrogen cars could very well see a resurgence. Especially in places with cold weather, where the fuel cell waste heat can be used for the climate control, while the BEV needs to spend energy running a heat pump, so the efficiency advantage of BEVs is mostly gone.
My view on hydrogen is that we will look at it like pressurized air in the 1900’s.
Some industrial applications exists but its not the silver bullet many articles are talking about. It is inefficient and we shouldn’t spend many ressources on it.
However, I am happy some people experiment with it, we may discover an innovative application that may be a true breakthrough. But I won’t bet on it.
Yup. It's painfully obvious here in Canada, where the loudest champion of hydrogen-powered vehicles is the Premiere of the oil-and-gas-generating province of Alberta, and she's an ideological-conservative pro-oil leader at that.
Seeing people like that rally to hydrogen over EVs is the loudest argument against the tech.
Hydrogen technology doesn't exist to save the Earth, it exists to save the natural gas industry.
The business model for hydrogen that's generated is
1. Hydrogen is extracted from natural gas.
2. A miracle happens, capturing the carbon dioxide from this process.
3. Hydrogen goes in cars.
The amount of truly "green" hydrogen out there is functionally zero.
So it's a tech that isn't green, has no refueling infrastructure, and practically no adoption in the car industry. At this point it only exists so that anti-environmentalists can claim there's an alternative they prefer, since it's politically unacceptable to be pro-apocalypse.
What can we do to make it so that motivations are more clear around messaging? It feels like so many things are ruined because industries are so good at messaging and people are so bad and disadvantaged at recognizing misleading messaging.
I took the afternoon off work to drive around town supplying school kids doing walkouts and walking across town to the administrative buildings to protest drastic changes that were announced <5 days ago, completely change 6 schools, and have apparently been planned in secret, for no good reason. We're starting to do some deep dive investigations because of the secrecy.
It just feels like so much of the system is impossible right now.
Hydrogen systems have zero advantage over GMO biodiesel (short-cycle carbon neutral) for energy capture, storage, and distribution.
The local Ballard H2 bus test platforms were reverted to diesel after 6 years.
Mostly, people see Hydrogen as a way to green-wash catalyzed natural gas (30000 years to reach carbon neutral).
The Battery people seem to think $7000/Kg for global lithium deployment is feasible. Look, a EV/pollution-relocation device is impressive, but is still unsustainable.
I retain the opinion goat-carts are the future. =)
One thing I never see discussed about why hydrogen is so popular as a replacement for hydrocarbons: You can fairly easily generate hydrogen from natural gas via methane pyrolysis, and the carbon falls out as carbon black, a solid. The waste heat from a single gas turbine can generate enough hydrogen to power about 3 turbines of the same size, so when it's all said and done at a combined cycle plant with a steam turbine on the other 2 units, you're down about 12% on your net energy production, but it's not releasing any carbon into the atmosphere.
I'm not trying to put white hats on petroleum executives, but it must be pointed out that -- given the overall incentives and regulatory environment -- they cannot do other than to attempt this.
> At the bottom “uncompetitive” end of the ladder are hydrogen cars and domestic heating — which he says make no sense when you have battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) and heat pumps.
which begs a question: might we see hybrids with electric motor drive, small batteries for regenerative energy capture, and hydrogen fuel cell for quick refills? That is, hybrids that only involve battery and fuel cell to both drive a single electric powertrain?
Renewable power calls for massive over provisioning to minimize time where backup energy has to be used. Over provisioned energy could power hydrogen production, in which case the "inefficiency" doesn't really matter, as long as there is no other better purpose for which the energy can be spent.
There's obviously a sweet spot which may invalidate this argument. But to me it sounds like a win-win, even if only focusing on aviation.
Aviation could be interesting, but when it comes to cars the problem is not hydrogen production, it is delivery. The hydrogen could be produced for free and it would still be a bad solution.
Were they being engineer-minded or where they being lobbied?
I would like to think they were betting on Beta -- the superior technology -- in the Beta v VHS battle of our time.
What am I missing here? Toyota's engineers have a great track record and the company isn't easily swayed by fads or Wall Street.
It is also possible that Toyota's engineers are not the level they used to be, much like Fujitsu's engineers (who caused one of the largest banking outages ever) or (other company of your choice that used to be a great engineering company but was hollowed out).
Considering the work load at Toyota (it is often referred to as a "black company" by people I know), the level of pressure that is put on their shita-uke companies, and changes in what people consider acceptable work environments, I imagine that they might not attract the same level of talent in 2023 that they did in 1983.
I would assume they were maintaining a visible (and subsidized) presence in a non-fossil technology, while ensuring their profitable ICE business faced no immediate threat.
While I agree using clean electricity to make hydrogen to power things seems a bad solution compared to batteries there looks to be quite a lot of potential for "white hydrogen" which is basically drilling for naturally occuring hydrogen in the earths crust.
And elsewhere in the crust. It's just people haven't really focused on drilling for it until recently https://archive.ph/RbQwv
It might be a practical solution to use our existing equipment which is basically the same as drilling for natural gas, but with no or at least less CO2.
Water is a greenhouse gas as is the methane infrastructure that will be used to create the hydrogen. I don't say this disparagingly, but an ignorant populace will fall for it, and that includes Congress.
[+] [-] gmane|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _fizz_buzz_|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw04|2 years ago|reply
https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/a-look-at-japans-latest-hydr...
[+] [-] credit_guy|2 years ago|reply
That's not true. There are two main storage cases: from day to night and from summer to winter. Because there are 365 days and nights in a year and only one summer and one winter, a battery for seasonal storage needs to be 365 times cheaper than one for daily storage to break even after the same number of years. Of course, there are no batteries that are 365 times cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. Nothing comes close.
People are thinking that chemical energy storage could work for the case of seasonal storage. It doesn't quite work right now, but it's not off by 2 orders of magnitude, it's off by maybe a factor of 5. It is much more likely that we'll succeed in making green hydrogen production, transportation and storage economical than that we could make batteries cheaper by a factor of 100.
Separately, there is a fairly good chance that we'll be able to extract hydrogen from underground deposits (google "white hydrogen", e.g. [1]).
Third, hydrogen storage economics enjoys the square-cube law: larger pressurized tanks can hold a lot of hydrogen for not a much larger cost than smaller tanks. So hydrogen could make sense for applications where very large tanks are needed, and one such application is railways. A typical train oil car has a volume of about 130 m3. At 700 bar (typical storage tank pressure), one m3 of hydrogen weighs about 42 kg, so this is about 5.5 tons. Hydrogen has about 3 times the energy density of diesel, so that would be the equivalent of about 16 tons of diesel. Train have an efficiency of at least 400 ton-miles per gallon, which is more than 125 ton-miles per kg, or 2 million ton-miles for 16 tons. In other words, such a tanker car could be enough to propel a ten thousand ton freight train for 200 miles. It would be much easier to convert diesel locomotives to burn hydrogen than to electrify thousands of miles of railways, so there's a fairly good chance that rail could be hydrogen's killer app.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/prospect...
[+] [-] dieselgate|2 years ago|reply
Found the below article useful as a primer:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/fuel-cell-and...
[+] [-] malchow|2 years ago|reply
However, it is a critical large-scale industrial input, a replacement industrial input for several additional large industries, and an excellent large-scale stationary energy store.
[+] [-] baq|2 years ago|reply
I don’t believe hydrogen is the answer but methane cells could be… liquid energy storage is just so much more practical compared to alternatives.
[+] [-] 0cf8612b2e1e|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reducesuffering|2 years ago|reply
Toyota Mirai sales have been flatlined at low ~1-2k since they started, for 7 years: https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/toyota-mirai-sales-figures-usa...
While Tesla immediately had ever-growing sales: https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/tesla-us-sales-figures/
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
If you can take natural gas out of the ground, split it into hydrogen and CO2 (releasing heat, which can be used to generate electricity), and inject the CO2 back underground to help release more oil and gas.
At this point, you have hydrogen gas.
Sure, you could burn that hydrogen to make more electricity, but it works out financially better if you can directly use it.
The benefit of this approach is it can make use of most of the existing oil and gas infrastructure, and countries sitting on big gas reserves have a use for them.
The downside is it makes minimal sense unless there is some financial disincentive from just burning the gas and releasing the CO2.
[+] [-] ant6n|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] super256|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|2 years ago|reply
The other one - in my country - is that they want to wind down natural gas entirely, but then want to reuse the pipes for hydrogen; I suspect this may be to continue making use of the huge infrastructure investments made in the gas pipelines.
[+] [-] xdennis|2 years ago|reply
Sorry, you say you're familiar with hydrogen fuel cells and you don't know it's not burning?
Hydrogen fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction to turn hydrogen and oxygen from the air into electricity and water. The byproduct is water, not fire.
I'm not rich enough to own either a battery-electric or hydrogen-electric car, but it's weird how the only people who hate hydrogen are the battery people. I don't hear any hate from fossil-fuel guys.
It seems they're more interested in protecting their investment than saving the environment through a process (which is more inefficient, but) that doesn't require rare earth minerals.
[+] [-] Reason077|2 years ago|reply
This is less than the number of EVs Tesla builds every single week.
[+] [-] askvictor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] numbers_guy|2 years ago|reply
Hydrogen based fuels make sense on multiple fronts: long term storage (batteries cannot do this), scale (adding more tanks is cheaper than whole battery packs) and energy/power densities are still above what the best batteries can provide.
[+] [-] idontpost|2 years ago|reply
I don't understand how any one looks at the electric car charging situation and thinks it makes sense to scale that out to 100% of vehicles.
A 2 hour wait to get a charger spot isn't a workable transport system.
[+] [-] teaearlgraycold|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otabdeveloper4|2 years ago|reply
Our ancestors will never believe that we were nuts enough to not only allow this, but actually legally manndate it. They will think it's an urban legend and no ancient people could have been so short-sighted and egotistical.
[+] [-] cracrecry|2 years ago|reply
The electric sector wants to destroy Hydrogen because it competes with them, of course, they want to destroy the seed so no tree comes out of it. Hydrogen disappearing is not going to happen, because it going to be necessary for some things, like heavy transportation.
Just because clean Hydrogen is in the early stages in development(like EV were 15 years ago) does not mean that we should not develop the technology.
I personally believe that NH3 is great for storing energy and energy transportation, and extremely useful for things like growing food.
It is also toxic and difficult to handle, like oil, but in lots of sectors(like heavy industries) it makes lots of sense. In other sectors, electricity and batteries make more sense. Different technologies will coexist together and compete.
[+] [-] downrightmike|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meindnoch|2 years ago|reply
Except oil is a liquid, while ammonia is a gas. You can put oil in an open container and it won't hurt anyone. Now try doing the same with ammonia...
[+] [-] rasz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackmott|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drewg123|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
Meanwhile BEVs are rapidly building momentum and coupled with solar and wind make very good sense. Even the last holdout for a passenger hydrogen vehicle (Toyota) has finally seen the light and is making BEVs now, I don't remember ever seeing a Mirai but given how many have been produced that's not so strange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai
[+] [-] semi-extrinsic|2 years ago|reply
At that point hydrogen cars could very well see a resurgence. Especially in places with cold weather, where the fuel cell waste heat can be used for the climate control, while the BEV needs to spend energy running a heat pump, so the efficiency advantage of BEVs is mostly gone.
[+] [-] 0wis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] g-b-r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reason077|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|2 years ago|reply
Seeing people like that rally to hydrogen over EVs is the loudest argument against the tech.
Hydrogen technology doesn't exist to save the Earth, it exists to save the natural gas industry.
The business model for hydrogen that's generated is
1. Hydrogen is extracted from natural gas.
2. A miracle happens, capturing the carbon dioxide from this process.
3. Hydrogen goes in cars.
The amount of truly "green" hydrogen out there is functionally zero.
So it's a tech that isn't green, has no refueling infrastructure, and practically no adoption in the car industry. At this point it only exists so that anti-environmentalists can claim there's an alternative they prefer, since it's politically unacceptable to be pro-apocalypse.
[+] [-] linsomniac|2 years ago|reply
I took the afternoon off work to drive around town supplying school kids doing walkouts and walking across town to the administrative buildings to protest drastic changes that were announced <5 days ago, completely change 6 schools, and have apparently been planned in secret, for no good reason. We're starting to do some deep dive investigations because of the secrecy.
It just feels like so much of the system is impossible right now.
[+] [-] Joel_Mckay|2 years ago|reply
The local Ballard H2 bus test platforms were reverted to diesel after 6 years.
Mostly, people see Hydrogen as a way to green-wash catalyzed natural gas (30000 years to reach carbon neutral).
The Battery people seem to think $7000/Kg for global lithium deployment is feasible. Look, a EV/pollution-relocation device is impressive, but is still unsustainable.
I retain the opinion goat-carts are the future. =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFTyJDjfjG0
[+] [-] z_rex|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezekiel68|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|2 years ago|reply
> At the bottom “uncompetitive” end of the ladder are hydrogen cars and domestic heating — which he says make no sense when you have battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) and heat pumps.
which begs a question: might we see hybrids with electric motor drive, small batteries for regenerative energy capture, and hydrogen fuel cell for quick refills? That is, hybrids that only involve battery and fuel cell to both drive a single electric powertrain?
[+] [-] firebaze|2 years ago|reply
There's obviously a sweet spot which may invalidate this argument. But to me it sounds like a win-win, even if only focusing on aviation.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpymchn|2 years ago|reply
Were they being engineer-minded or where they being lobbied? I would like to think they were betting on Beta -- the superior technology -- in the Beta v VHS battle of our time.
What am I missing here? Toyota's engineers have a great track record and the company isn't easily swayed by fads or Wall Street.
[+] [-] jbm|2 years ago|reply
Considering the work load at Toyota (it is often referred to as a "black company" by people I know), the level of pressure that is put on their shita-uke companies, and changes in what people consider acceptable work environments, I imagine that they might not attract the same level of talent in 2023 that they did in 1983.
[+] [-] matthewdgreen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
There seems to be a lot of it eg "huge reserves found in France". Potentially 46 million tonnes in Lorraine, 1 euro a kilo to produce https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/exc...
And elsewhere in the crust. It's just people haven't really focused on drilling for it until recently https://archive.ph/RbQwv
It might be a practical solution to use our existing equipment which is basically the same as drilling for natural gas, but with no or at least less CO2.
[+] [-] bparsons|2 years ago|reply
For smaller, lighter vehicles in warmer climates, lithium batteries make a lot of sense.
For heavy, long haul trucks that require minimal refueling, hydrogen fuel cell makes a lot of sense.
You need to build out the infrastructure for both.
[+] [-] throwaway5752|2 years ago|reply
They oil industry are filthy liars, aided by petrostates like KSA and Russia. They are like the tobacco industry, but many thousands of times worse.
[+] [-] SCAQTony|2 years ago|reply