Hydrogen availability

Author
Discussion

GT9

6,834 posts

173 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Blackpuddin said:
Toyota is developing ammonia-fuelled engines as we speak.
A highly toxic and corrosive substance that can cause injury or death at certain concentration levels in air. Just what we want in the car park fire scenario…

Blackpuddin

16,650 posts

206 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
GT9 said:
Blackpuddin said:
Toyota is developing ammonia-fuelled engines as we speak.
A highly toxic and corrosive substance that can cause injury or death at certain concentration levels in air. Just what we want in the car park fire scenario…
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.

otolith

56,462 posts

205 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Blackpuddin said:
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
Anhydrous ammonia is nasty stuff, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a ruptured tank.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/03/us/truck-crash-...

tamore

7,056 posts

285 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Blackpuddin said:
Toyota is developing ammonia-fuelled engines as we speak.
why are toyota flailing about trying to develop vehicles where you have to continue putting a nozzle into it to fuel it up? phallic?

the prius was a stroke of genius. their current direction is just akin to having a stroke.

ATG

20,697 posts

273 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Blackpuddin said:
GT9 said:
Blackpuddin said:
Toyota is developing ammonia-fuelled engines as we speak.
A highly toxic and corrosive substance that can cause injury or death at certain concentration levels in air. Just what we want in the car park fire scenario…
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
I seriously doubt Toyota are spending billions on this research

GT9

6,834 posts

173 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Blackpuddin said:
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
Do you know what the well-to-wheel equivalent efficiency is for renewable ammonia?

Every single one of these futile attempts to avoid the use of batteries for renewable propulsion is dead in the water from the outset.

You have to start at the system level and ask where is the energy originating from, and how much will it cost to create that new pathway.

The EV pathway, a far as the UK is concerned is primarily a plan where newly installed offshore wind is extracting energy recently arrived from the sun.

The investment in the generating equipment alone, on a per car basis, is something like £1500. Heading towards £50 billion over 25 years to supply 30 million cars.

The amount of generating equipment required is inversely proportional to the pathway efficiency, as the pathway output is fixed by the number of cars and the mileage they are covering.

An EV charged from wind is achieving something like 70-80% efficiency from the turbine to the wheels of the car.

This is due to the use of an electric motor to propel the car, and the ability to recover kinetic energy by regenerative braking.

If you instead want to convert that electricity to a fuel to feed an ICE, the turbine-to-wheel efficiency drops to between 10-20%, maybe even less, depending on whether it's a synthetic hydrocarbon, hydrogen or ammonia.

That £1500 number above just became closer to £10,000 per car, and that's just to pay for the equipment to generate the electricity.

30 million cars = £300 billion worth of wind turbines.

It doesn't include paying for the additional electricity itself and it doesn't include converting it to a fuel, which requires another gargantuan amount of equipment.

Soon you are heading towards £1 trillion......

Where the hell does this money come from?




SteveKTMer

785 posts

32 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
GT9 said:
Blackpuddin said:
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
Do you know what the well-to-wheel equivalent efficiency is for renewable ammonia?

Every single one of these futile attempts to avoid the use of batteries for renewable propulsion is dead in the water from the outset.

You have to start at the system level and ask where is the energy originating from, and how much will it cost to create that new pathway.

The EV pathway, a far as the UK is concerned is primarily a plan where newly installed offshore wind is extracting energy recently arrived from the sun.

The investment in the generating equipment alone, on a per car basis, is something like £1500. Heading towards £50 billion over 25 years to supply 30 million cars.

The amount of generating equipment required is inversely proportional to the pathway efficiency, as the pathway output is fixed by the number of cars and the mileage they are covering.

An EV charged from wind is achieving something like 70-80% efficiency from the turbine to the wheels of the car.

This is due to the use of an electric motor to propel the car, and the ability to recover kinetic energy by regenerative braking.

If you instead want to convert that electricity to a fuel to feed an ICE, the turbine-to-wheel efficiency drops to between 10-20%, maybe even less, depending on whether it's a synthetic hydrocarbon, hydrogen or ammonia.

That £1500 number above just became closer to £10,000 per car, and that's just to pay for the equipment to generate the electricity.

30 million cars = £300 billion worth of wind turbines.

It doesn't include paying for the additional electricity itself and it doesn't include converting it to a fuel, which requires another gargantuan amount of equipment.

Soon you are heading towards £1 trillion......

Where the hell does this money come from?
But as you yourself pointed out some months ago with a report from National Grid, there is not the generating power nor the distribution (due to cost ?) to service all of us having EVs and the way governments in the EU and UK are going, there is unlikely to be the charging infrastructure either. (Battery tech will not develop at a fast enough rate to catch up and cover up for the dismal performance here). So some people will be left using fossil fuel cars for some years to come, more than likely with fuel rising in price as governments struggle with the loss of fuel duty. Wouldn't it be good to get rid of those and convert them to a clean(er) fuel ?

Hydrogen is the only option for heavy plant as we've all seen the JCB videos, unless they retain diesel. Amonia for cars and vans ? Maybe - as ever, it seems a mix of fuels is the answer, not just mass adoption of BEVs.

GT9

6,834 posts

173 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
SteveKTMer said:
GT9 said:
Blackpuddin said:
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
Do you know what the well-to-wheel equivalent efficiency is for renewable ammonia?

Every single one of these futile attempts to avoid the use of batteries for renewable propulsion is dead in the water from the outset.

You have to start at the system level and ask where is the energy originating from, and how much will it cost to create that new pathway.

The EV pathway, a far as the UK is concerned is primarily a plan where newly installed offshore wind is extracting energy recently arrived from the sun.

The investment in the generating equipment alone, on a per car basis, is something like £1500. Heading towards £50 billion over 25 years to supply 30 million cars.

The amount of generating equipment required is inversely proportional to the pathway efficiency, as the pathway output is fixed by the number of cars and the mileage they are covering.

An EV charged from wind is achieving something like 70-80% efficiency from the turbine to the wheels of the car.

This is due to the use of an electric motor to propel the car, and the ability to recover kinetic energy by regenerative braking.

If you instead want to convert that electricity to a fuel to feed an ICE, the turbine-to-wheel efficiency drops to between 10-20%, maybe even less, depending on whether it's a synthetic hydrocarbon, hydrogen or ammonia.

That £1500 number above just became closer to £10,000 per car, and that's just to pay for the equipment to generate the electricity.

30 million cars = £300 billion worth of wind turbines.

It doesn't include paying for the additional electricity itself and it doesn't include converting it to a fuel, which requires another gargantuan amount of equipment.

Soon you are heading towards £1 trillion......

Where the hell does this money come from?
But as you yourself pointed out some months ago with a report from National Grid, there is not the generating power nor the distribution (due to cost ?) to service all of us having EVs and the way governments in the EU and UK are going, there is unlikely to be the charging infrastructure either. (Battery tech will not develop at a fast enough rate to catch up and cover up for the dismal performance here). So some people will be left using fossil fuel cars for some years to come, more than likely with fuel rising in price as governments struggle with the loss of fuel duty. Wouldn't it be good to get rid of those and convert them to a clean(er) fuel ?
The opposite actually.
All renewable options start from electricity, does that really need spelling out.
I've always maintained that the only 'renewable' option for cars is to use that electricity directly and NOT convert it to something else.
The growth plans that the NG have shown in the documents I've referred to include sufficient additional capacity for 100% electrification of cars over 25 years.
In broad terms it's a 1% increase in capacity per million electric cars, reaching a total increase in capacity of 30%.
Al other pathways massively exceed the planned capacity.
By 2035, only 1/3 of cars will be EVs, the rest will still be ICE.
We just don't need to replace petrol with some other alternative fuel for 25 years, it will take us through to 2050 perfectly well for those that can't or won't drive EVs before then.





Evanivitch

20,302 posts

123 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
ATG said:
Blackpuddin said:
GT9 said:
Blackpuddin said:
Toyota is developing ammonia-fuelled engines as we speak.
A highly toxic and corrosive substance that can cause injury or death at certain concentration levels in air. Just what we want in the car park fire scenario…
I seriously doubt that Toyota would be wasting billions on developing it without a satisfactory health and safety policy to back it. The pressures that hydrogen vessels operate at are more worrying to me.
I seriously doubt Toyota are spending billions on this research
Japan is. They need to import energy. They can't interconnect with China, North Korea or Russia. They don't have massive natural resources. Offshore wind is too deep. They abandoned much of their nuclear. Geothermal is all in national parks. So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.

Big Nanas

1,410 posts

85 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
SteveKTMer said:
Hydrogen is the only option for heavy plant as we've all seen the JCB videos, unless they retain diesel. Amonia for cars and vans ? Maybe - as ever, it seems a mix of fuels is the answer, not just mass adoption of BEVs.
Not necessarily.
When Gridserve expanded the Scotch Corner services to 12 chargers, they used a battery powered digger, backed up with a solar power battery charging station. It's in the trial phase, but seemed to work well. It would easy enough to deploy these solar chargers to work sites, which would make sense.

https://projectplant.co.uk/2023/09/sustainable-ene...

Where would the hydrogen plant fill up their tanks? You wouldn't be able to deploy removable hydrogen storage facilities to work sites, after all.

GT9

6,834 posts

173 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Evanivitch said:
Japan is. They need to import energy. They can't interconnect with China, North Korea or Russia. They don't have massive natural resources. Offshore wind is too deep. They abandoned much of their nuclear. Geothermal is all in national parks. So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.
Toyota is repeatedly brought up as an example of 'other options' to EV.
The fact that they are working on technology solutions for their domestic market where they indeed have a problem that we don't doesn't mean we need to, or will, go down the same path.
Everything hydrogen based is a halfway-house option for where electrification isn't possible.
Its decarbonisation credentials are significantly inferior to direct electrification.
The UK is the opposite, electrification of cars is entirely possible using offshore wind.
I believe today we hit 20 GW of wind, close to a record and over 50% of all generation today.
To put that into perspective, just 9 GW continuous power is enough to keep 30 million EVs on the road.
By 2035, I expect there will be about 10 million EVs on UK roads, so we need 3 GW continuous power to charge them.
Sure, you need more than 3 GW capacity to continuously deliver that, but we are making good progress, including now the largest offshore wind farm in the world.
If these alternative power plants to EVs were actually viable on a large scale, do we not think that the O&G companies would have latched onto them big time by now.
This is how BP see the global fleet of cars for an accelerated decarbonisation scenario:
Just 1% of all cars globally in 2050 are hydrogen powered, almost certainly concentrated in Japan.
Nothing showing there for ammonia....



SOURCE: BP Energy Outlook 2023

Evanivitch

20,302 posts

123 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
GT9 said:
Toyota is repeatedly brought up as an example of 'other options' to EV.
The fact that they are working on technology solutions for their domestic market where they indeed have a problem that we don't doesn't mean we need to, or will, go down the same path.
Everything hydrogen based is a halfway-house option for where electrification isn't possible.
Its decarbonisation credentials are significantly inferior to direct electrification.
The UK is the opposite, electrification of cars is entirely possible using offshore wind.
3
I agree, but Toyota are doing it because it's their government strategy. Just like Welsh Government keeps funding stupid hydrogen vehicle projects...

otolith

56,462 posts

205 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Evanivitch said:
So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.
Given the exceptional toxicity of ammonia to aquatic environments, I'd be more comfortable with them shipping H2.

Evanivitch

20,302 posts

123 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
otolith said:
Given the exceptional toxicity of ammonia to aquatic environments, I'd be more comfortable with them shipping H2.
Sure, but hydrogen transportation and storage has its own issues (not least hydrogen as a greenhouse gas).

Mikehig

750 posts

62 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Big Nanas said:
Not necessarily.
When Gridserve expanded the Scotch Corner services to 12 chargers, they used a battery powered digger, backed up with a solar power battery charging station. It's in the trial phase, but seemed to work well. It would easy enough to deploy these solar chargers to work sites, which would make sense.

https://projectplant.co.uk/2023/09/sustainable-ene...

Where would the hydrogen plant fill up their tanks? You wouldn't be able to deploy removable hydrogen storage facilities to work sites, after all.
Wouldn't be difficult....just use cylinder packs - or tube trailers for larger demands. That's how much hydrogen is delivered at present.

Mikehig

750 posts

62 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
otolith said:
Evanivitch said:
So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.
Given the exceptional toxicity of ammonia to aquatic environments, I'd be more comfortable with them shipping H2.
That's a worry because there are now - or soon will be - ships at sea powered by ammonia.

Evanivitch

20,302 posts

123 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Mikehig said:
otolith said:
Evanivitch said:
So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.
Given the exceptional toxicity of ammonia to aquatic environments, I'd be more comfortable with them shipping H2.
That's a worry because there are now - or soon will be - ships at sea powered by ammonia.
Are we going to forget they're largely powered by bunker oil currently? Not nice stuff...

Evanivitch

20,302 posts

123 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Mikehig said:
Big Nanas said:
Not necessarily.
When Gridserve expanded the Scotch Corner services to 12 chargers, they used a battery powered digger, backed up with a solar power battery charging station. It's in the trial phase, but seemed to work well. It would easy enough to deploy these solar chargers to work sites, which would make sense.

https://projectplant.co.uk/2023/09/sustainable-ene...

Where would the hydrogen plant fill up their tanks? You wouldn't be able to deploy removable hydrogen storage facilities to work sites, after all.
Wouldn't be difficult....just use cylinder packs - or tube trailers for larger demands. That's how much hydrogen is delivered at present.
Even if they used Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) with green hydrogen (instead of grey at this time) it would be something. At the moment HVO is just greenwash.

Mikehig

750 posts

62 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Evanivitch said:
Mikehig said:
otolith said:
Evanivitch said:
So they want to ship energy from Australia and South Korea. Ammonia is one possibility, or Liquid Hydrogen.
Given the exceptional toxicity of ammonia to aquatic environments, I'd be more comfortable with them shipping H2.
That's a worry because there are now - or soon will be - ships at sea powered by ammonia.
Are we going to forget they're largely powered by bunker oil currently? Not nice stuff...
Not at all but "exceptional toxicity" sounds much nastier.

otolith

56,462 posts

205 months

Wednesday 18th October 2023
quotequote all
Mikehig said:
Not at all but "exceptional toxicity" sounds much nastier.
I would say worse than oil, though less visibly and much less persistent. You’d be able to use the beach again once all the rotting sea life had gone. Ask anyone with a marine aquarium how tolerant they are of ammonia. A big tanker disaster could sterilise a large area.