Hydrogen is the future, not BEVs?
Discussion
Mikehig said:
These claims about "massive" reserves of natural ("white") hydrogen could move the goalposts a bit...if they pan out:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
It was the percentages, wildflowers and someone carefully pointing to some paperwork that sold me https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6ye8oY310&em...
NMNeil said:
Mikehig said:
These claims about "massive" reserves of natural ("white") hydrogen could move the goalposts a bit...if they pan out:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
It was the percentages, wildflowers and someone carefully pointing to some paperwork that sold me https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6ye8oY310&em...
And 50 million tons will last how long exactly?
GT9 said:
NMNeil said:
Mikehig said:
These claims about "massive" reserves of natural ("white") hydrogen could move the goalposts a bit...if they pan out:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
It was the percentages, wildflowers and someone carefully pointing to some paperwork that sold me https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environmen...
Natural hydrogen has always been described as very rare so it will be interesting to see if/how this develops. The USGS is due to publish a report on worldwide reserves at the end of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6ye8oY310&em...
And 50 million tons will last how long exactly?
Rowan Atkinson ran a hydrogen powered GR Yaris at Goodwood. The car has been around for a couple of years now. It's not a fuel cell car like the Mirai, it's a GR 1.6 turbo with modified fuel and direct injection to take hydrogen. It's not zero emissions doing it this way but it's close to it.
ajprice said:
Rowan Atkinson ran a hydrogen powered GR Yaris at Goodwood. The car has been around for a couple of years now. It's not a fuel cell car like the Mirai, it's a GR 1.6 turbo with modified fuel and direct injection to take hydrogen. It's not zero emissions doing it this way but it's close to it.
I don't suppose practicability and running costs of running a hydrogen powered car were high on the agenda. Using hydrogen to run an ICE seems pretty pointless and as bad as a FF powered one. ajprice said:
Rowan Atkinson ran a hydrogen powered GR Yaris at Goodwood. The car has been around for a couple of years now. It's not a fuel cell car like the Mirai, it's a GR 1.6 turbo with modified fuel and direct injection to take hydrogen. It's not zero emissions doing it this way but it's close to it.
Yup. The stuff has been around for some time. The problem isn't burning the stuff in an ICE head but the packaging and distribution of the fuel. It's hugely on the back foot against petrol and electricity and even LPG. Fundamentally, this is why we see multi millionaires and billionaires enjoying the product. Along with having business interests that benefit from getting other lessor millionaires to get involved.
Goodwood is a brilliant example of the problem of bringing 50,000 EVs to a field from across the country. How we develop temporary charging networks to facilitate these simultaneous mass movement events will be interesting.
Invariably the local charging network not only couldn't cope as it will have been built for the local, conventional demand but you obviously can't then suddenly have visitors locking out all the local users for two days or more.
Static batteries are a non starter really as they'd just be a buffer due to being constantly drained for two days while needing to be constantly recharged simultaneously so if you can get that amount of electricity to site then you don't need towers of batteries etc.
Park and rides from locations further afield seems likely to play a role but so does green hydrogen.
Sure, you can burn a bit going round in circles making a bit of noise and attempting to make out that motorsport is 100% pollution regardless of how it is fuelled but the true value of green hydrogen, should it exist, may be as the fuel that can be shipped in to temporary car parks all day to generate electricity to top up the cars of folk willing to pay huge sums for the convenience.
The key will be to use car parking where the blast radius is far enough away from the main event.
I don't think many people are not seeing some useful niche uses for green hydrogen should it ever appear in sufficient quantities beyond what's needed to decarbonise the hydrogen industry.
OutInTheShed said:
Meanwhile, high % biofuels are available and in quite widespread use.
Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
Most of it is impossible to scale and misleading.Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
For example, McDonald's recycle vegetable oil. Great! But that works because it's a waste product.
Many fuel oil suppliers will sell you HVO, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil. It's a straight swap for diesel in modern engines. The issue is the H is hydrogen, which comes from mostly natural gas. And again, how do you increase the amount of waste oil? Instead you're using crops primarily for fuel, which is absurd.
OutInTheShed said:
Meanwhile, high % biofuels are available and in quite widespread use.
Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
The issue with biofuels is that there is a limited amount of natural waste from which to make them so over 95% are manufactured from crop. We get a carbon benefit but at the same time we inflate the price of food and monetise deforestation. They're best used in niche cases where batteries are a long way from being properly viable. We do want to avoid using them in conventional private transport. We shouldn't really be putting ethanol in our petrols. Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
Synthetic fuels will always be too expensive for normal folks' transport needs but are certainly viable in non essential niches such as motorsport of only to keep the orange powder trustafarians at bay.
DonkeyApple said:
Goodwood is a brilliant example of the problem of bringing 50,000 EVs to a field from across the country. How we develop temporary charging networks to facilitate these simultaneous mass movement events will be interesting.
So How many fuel pumpos at Goodwood....That isnt a great example really. All that have converted to EV operation no longer run the car as if its powered from Hydrocarbons. So there would not be a massive need for power on the scale that you are trying to imply. And as for charging.... There will be the oppurtunists that try to get a lot of money so charging at goodwood would probably be around 3x as expensive as your typical motorway stop. so you would not see ful charges happening, more like a quick top so they can venture to more reasonable charge points on the way home.
They can buffer charge batteries and use that to power the chargers, thing is the batteries dont even need to be beside the chargers, all that they need to do is have a battery bank and run an HV ring round the few chargers that they have installed. The batteries only there for when they have big events and when not in use they can be gainfuly deployed else where. The battery bank can be hydrogen charged diesel charged or simply charged from the mains supply. Those batteries on charge all the time and the system feeding into the charger network as appropriately. The technology is getting better and improving all the time. An event like what your talking about wont really be problematic.
DonkeyApple said:
OutInTheShed said:
Meanwhile, high % biofuels are available and in quite widespread use.
Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
The issue with biofuels is that there is a limited amount of natural waste from which to make them so over 95% are manufactured from crop. We get a carbon benefit but at the same time we inflate the price of food and monetise deforestation. They're best used in niche cases where batteries are a long way from being properly viable. We do want to avoid using them in conventional private transport. We shouldn't really be putting ethanol in our petrols. Maybe synthetic fuels blended with biofuels will be part of the answer?
Synthetic fuels will always be too expensive for normal folks' transport needs but are certainly viable in non essential niches such as motorsport of only to keep the orange powder trustafarians at bay.
OutInTheShed said:
So it's OK to cover farmland with solar panels to power vehicles, but not OK to grow fuel crops?
Solar panels can be used on ground ill suited for growing crops. Solar panels can also support low-intensity grazing by sheep, and in more extreme climates can provide partial shading for crops. Long term then can even be justified as an opportunity to improve long term soil health over a 10-20 year period before returning to agricultural use.Biofuel comes in many different forms. But American corn stocks are often used and have a huge number of inputs. Even British crops like rapeseed have significant issues with pesticide usage that either damage insect populations and jeopardise yields to almost catastrophic levels.
DonkeyApple said:
I wasn't proposing that the drivers had hydrogen cars. That would be silly. 
yup it would, hence it was hydrogen powered fuel cell / engines to provide power to charge network. have battery bank and local generation and connect that to your vehicle chargers. lots of thought on this already.
https://powerstar.com/battery-buffered-electric-ve...
Few months old, but lighting a fire at the weekend I came across this article in hard copy.
Interesting take on the topic, and the huge amount of lobbying currently going on in the sector.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/t...
Interesting take on the topic, and the huge amount of lobbying currently going on in the sector.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/t...
OutInTheShed said:
So it's OK to cover farmland with solar panels to power vehicles, but not OK to grow fuel crops?
This page calculates the yield of bioethanol available by growing sugarbeet and wheat in the UK on setaside.https://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/02-0...
It comes up with 56.97 billion MJ worth of ethanol from 644,000 hectares of land.
That's 9.9 MWh of energy per acre, per year.
This solar farm produces 73,000MWh per year from 200 acres
https://www.nationalgrid.com/uks-first-transmissio...
That's 365 MWh per acre, per year.
Then consider the difference in efficiency of burning that ethanol in an engine vs charging an EV.
Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff