Hydrogen availability

[anonymous-user]

[ATG]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

You've spotted it. No one else ever thought of that. The whole tower of cards collapses. BEV is a busted flush.

Do you approach all subjects like this? I.e. pick a point of view and then stick to it by ignoring an enormous stack of evidence and even the explanations that some people have kindly given to you directly on this thread based on their own considerable experience and expertise?

I honestly don't know why anyone is still bothering. The usual response would be to shake one's head sadly while tapping one's temple with an index finger.

[Greg_D]

I’m continuing to read just from grim curiosity. The fact that the entire world is gearing up for a bev future at max speed holds no sway because a small company noone’s ever heard of is ‘working on something’ and there is a report from an accountancy firm with some extremely unlikely modelling that paints a rosy picture of fcev.
I’m a pragmatic person and as such, I’ll support the view of the oems who have invested billions in bringing bevs to market over some fringe case abstract possibilities in relation to fcev.
No one is saying fcev doesn’t have a place somewhere. Likely in long distance hub to hub haulage, but to think that it will be a significant mover in mass private transport is so unlikely as to be disregarded imo. It’s answering a question no one is asking... high power charging is a lot cheaper to implement From an infrastructure POV if you need to extend range in a hurry.

[anonymous-user]

ATG, nobody is saying BEV is a busted flush.
I've continually stated I don't believe that.
I am simply querying how well it will serve us when the numbers increase.
I've posted quite a lot from industry and from governance that questions this.
I'd be interested in seeing detail from someone who has considered it.

Gregory, continually waving your arms around and having a hissy fit is not a good look.
You did it yesterday, harping on about anything BUT the detail that was put in front of you.
If you don't agree with the projections of respected, international consultancies then that's fine. But if you want to make a point of it then please post some detail.

Furthermore this thread is about hydrogen. Feel free to ignore the thread if you don't what to hear about hydrogen.

[jjwilde]

Volkswagen declare hydrogen "nonsensical" for cars:

https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/22/volkswagen-ma...

Solidifies stance on battery-electric cars.

But I'm sure you know better, Professor Kampff

[Greg_D]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Ok Jonathan, I was making points, maybe not in the format you would prefer, but points nonetheless. Be assured that I was not being hissy in the slightest. You are making a cerebral point regards the possibility of a fcev future. No one is disagreeing that it may have a place, and a discussion around the challenges and possible solutions for a limited rollout would be welcome and enthusiastically embraced. I think what has gone wrong with this thread is you giving the impression that fcev is to be given equal credence to bev and that is simply farcical given its current state of development and the baked in downsides regards efficiency.

But you’re right that my points have been made before, and everyone but you is singing from the same hymn sheet, so I will post on this thread less going forward.

[anonymous-user]

I think the subject needs approaching from the other side tbh!

namely toi ask

"how do i make money from hydrogen?"



Now, making money from a passcar is REALLY quite difficult, as countless companies with hopes of being the next Henry Ford have found to their cost.


But there is a (potentially) viable hydrogen solution, that acts as an enabler to passcar, but doesn't require you to do anything actually with a passcar.

Namely (as i have previously mentioned) you invest and set up in a large scale grid balancing plant, using hydorgen as your short term storage medium. This enables you to make your money by balancing the grid (buy 'lecy when it's cheap, sell when it's expensive), and enables the grid to consist of more dynamic generation assets (ie less base load). So that in itself is a win.

But site your plant near a major road, and that plant can then act as a booster for DC fast charging of BEVs! It can trickle charge itself overnight on cheap green 'lecy, and then pump that energy into a stream of BEVs that want to quickly charge the next day on say a sunny bank holiday monday!


This is the real enabler of hydrogen imo, acting as the middleman :-)

[Gary C]

Polite M135 driver said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

very energy intensive if you are going to use seawater, you need to purify it first and this is not easy.

We used to use dilute lye as an electrolyte rather than seawater. The transformers were 3.3kV to 121V transformers so that gives you an idea of the current used in the electrolyser (as I recall about 3000A, but would have to check that, might be wildly off as its been a good 15 years or more since the plant ran), but lye is quite aggressive and we ended up with breakdown of the insulation and got arcing between plates (not a good thing when you are dealing with pure H2 and O2) so the protection kept tripping the plant.

We also used to electrolyse seawater directly with smaller currents (still about 700A though!) to produce hypochlolrite to kill marine growth in the cooling systems. A right pain to filter the sea water and maintenance of the kit was a challenge due to the corrosion. It was out of service for a couple of years and we then had to dig out 300-400 tonnes of mussels. As we had to shutdown for a month to do this, they all died and the stink of rotting mussels was appalling !

We now buy hydrogen and hypochlorite in bulk and inject carefully metered amounts into the pump suctions and let the people who know how to maintain that sort of kit do the job.

Edited by Gary C on Saturday 24th October 18:33

[anonymous-user]

Max_Torque said:

I think the subject needs approaching from the other side tbh!

namely toi ask

"how do i make money from hydrogen?"



Now, making money from a passcar is REALLY quite difficult, as countless companies with hopes of being the next Henry Ford have found to their cost.


But there is a (potentially) viable hydrogen solution, that acts as an enabler to passcar, but doesn't require you to do anything actually with a passcar.

Namely (as i have previously mentioned) you invest and set up in a large scale grid balancing plant, using hydorgen as your short term storage medium. This enables you to make your money by balancing the grid (buy 'lecy when it's cheap, sell when it's expensive), and enables the grid to consist of more dynamic generation assets (ie less base load). So that in itself is a win.

But site your plant near a major road, and that plant can then act as a booster for DC fast charging of BEVs! It can trickle charge itself overnight on cheap green 'lecy, and then pump that energy into a stream of BEVs that want to quickly charge the next day on say a sunny bank holiday monday!


This is the real enabler of hydrogen imo, acting as the middleman :-)

Hydrogen power generation companies won't be sniffy about powering BEV passcars,
Especially if they can charge 'motorway prices'!!!!!
I guess, because there's that element of storage and generation on site, they can flex for fluctuating demand, like you say the bank hols. Their modular nature should make them quite flexible in terms of installation and speed of installation. I guess it does depend on whether the cost of getting these in place will be effective against good old fashioned BEV chargers plugged into the grid. If the hydrogen modules can serve BEVs as well as FCEV passcars and FCEV haulage then that multifunctionality would be a major boon.

I wonder if these have potential for more remote areas too, if the village hydrogen filling station (with or without gen, depending on pop and demand) can also replace LPG with hydrogen based fuels in the homes there?
Be as useful as possible to be as viable as possible.
I'd be interested to know what the score is with agricultural vehicles too, whether they're going to go BEV, FCEV or something else (ICE style but tweaked for biofuels or hydrogen based fuel).

[anonymous-user]

Gary C said:

We used to use commercial lye as an electrolyte rather than seawater. The transformers were 3.3kV to 121V transformers so that gives you an idea of the current used in the electrolyser, but lye is quite aggressive and we ended up with breakdown of the insulation and got arcing between plates (not a good thing when you are dealing with pure H2 and O2) so the protection kept tripping the plant.

We also used to electrolyse seawater directly to produce hypochlolrite to kill marine growth in the cooling systems. A right pain to filter the sea water and maintenance of the kit was a challenge due to the corrosion. It was out of service for a couple of years and we then had to dig out 300-400 tonnes of mussels. As we had to shutdown for a month to do this, they all died and the stink of rotting mussels was appalling !

We now buy hydrogen and hypochlorite in bulk and inject carefully metered amounts into the pump suctions and let the people who know how to maintain that sort of kit do the job.

Wait a minute! Do we spot a potential business plan here, tonnes of mussels?!!

[Gary C]

but I do think we should continue to discuss the engineering challenges of both BEV and FCEV (and maybe, just for fun HICE too)

[anonymous-user]

jjwilde said:

Volkswagen declare hydrogen "nonsensical" for cars:

https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/22/volkswagen-ma...

Solidifies stance on battery-electric cars.

But I'm sure you know better, Professor Kampff

Hahaha!

That attitude does seem at odds with just about every other car company out there though.
But maybe it explains their peeps getting pally with old Elon!
It could be that VW see themselves selling more small to medium sized cars, that general consensus suggests will be more suited to BEV than FCEV in the short term. They quite clearly need to be well into BEV right now, having current BEV offerings, and perhaps their strategy is to throw all time and all resources into BEV only to be able to compete with Tesla and the Chinese BEVvers. Maybe they feel they need to send out the message that they're serious about BEV in order to give people confidence to buy their BEVs.
One thing I've noticed with Germans, from experience with their manufacturers, is that they are very focussed on one way of doing things, sometimes to the extent that they appear blinkered to alternative options.
You're not German, are you?
They've got time to change their mind if they need to though!

Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 24th October 18:59

[otolith]

Gary C said:

we ended up with breakdown of the insulation and got arcing between plates (not a good thing when you are dealing with pure H2 and O2) so the protection kept tripping the plant.

As a teenager I once touched the electrodes while extracting them from a plastic soda bottle in which I had been electrolysing salt water. Should probably have turned the current off first. It was quite loud.

[Gary C]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

[anonymous-user]

Greg_D said:

Ok Jonathan, I was making points, maybe not in the format you would prefer, but points nonetheless. Be assured that I was not being hissy in the slightest. You are making a cerebral point regards the possibility of a fcev future. No one is disagreeing that it may have a place, and a discussion around the challenges and possible solutions for a limited rollout would be welcome and enthusiastically embraced. I think what has gone wrong with this thread is you giving the impression that fcev is to be given equal credence to bev and that is simply farcical given its current state of development and the baked in downsides regards efficiency.

But you’re right that my points have been made before, and everyone but you is singing from the same hymn sheet, so I will post on this thread less going forward.

No. What's gone wrong is your understanding about this thread and about what I'm saying.

I don't know why it matters to you whether there's some kind of equal credence offered to BEV and FCEV. That's not the point I'm making.

One of my points is that, although the term average exists, you can't apply average thinking to these things. The requirements of humans are so varied that I don't believe BEV can satisfy all people and I don't think it can suit the lifestyle of all people. I think it will be that there will be BEV and FCEV in passenger cars, perhaps a hybrid of the two.
I have posted reports from professional companies paid to study these things, and a report based on feedback from automotive executives. These reports support my thinking.
I don't believe you can fairly say I am on my own in this respect.

Another point. The continual assertion that relative efficiency renders FCEV worthless. Why do we still have petrol and diesel to this date when there are clear differences in the economy they represent? Why hasn't one killed the other? Is it perhaps through people choosing vehicles for many other reasons other than only efficiency and sometimes DESPITE efficiency? Is it through governments playing with taxation? Maybe. Both points I've been making.

[anonymous-user]

Gary C, it is OT but it's very interesting to hear!
Well I think so anyway.
Cheers!

[SWoll]

Is the issue not that for FCEV to be a genuine alternative for those use cases where it's suggested BEV doesn't work the infrastructure would need to expand massively and offer genuine national coverage?

But as those number of use cases is already limited and likely to become more so as EV charging options expand and range/efficiency continues to improve who is going to invest in the FCEV infra for a diminishing number of possible users?

It just seems to be too late to the party to become viable?

[GT119]

SWoll said:

Is the issue not that for FCEV to be a genuine alternative for those use cases where it's suggested BEV doesn't work the infrastructure would need to expand massively and offer genuine national coverage?

But as those number of use cases is already limited and likely to become more so as EV charging options expand and range/efficiency continues to improve who is going to invest in the FCEV infra for a diminishing number of possible users?

It just seems to be too late to the party to become viable?

This is the rub.

A minority of cars with an expensive and complex onboard power conversion system that requires a really expensive and complex fuel distribution system that offers poor energy efficiency.

And when the installation and maintenance of these systems eventually ends up not being to the very high standard required it goes very wrong very quickly, and people will get hurt.

VK mentioned not learning from the mistakes of the past, the words Hindenburg and more recently, Norway spring to mind.

All so we can take our campervan for a day trip to a remote beach in the Outer Hebrides on the 29th of February.

[anonymous-user]

SWoll said:

Is the issue not that for FCEV to be a genuine alternative for those use cases where it's suggested BEV doesn't work the infrastructure would need to expand massively and offer genuine national coverage?

But as those number of use cases is already limited and likely to become more so as EV charging options expand and range/efficiency continues to improve who is going to invest in the FCEV infra for a diminishing number of possible users?

It just seems to be too late to the party to become viable?

When you realise the vast majority of people still drive ICE cars then it becomes clear the race has only just started!

The hydrogen infrastructure is going to have to expand, that's clear. Don't forget that the freight sector, locomotive sector and intercity bus sector is going to need and drive this infrastructure. Unless you think BEV is going to work for them too?

[ruggedscotty]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Hmmmmmm sounds like Torness..... !

Did a project a while back at Hunterston, using chillers and generators with a pumped cooled water set up to cool down a heat exchanger to allow them to work on it quickly without the usual cooldown period, that was a good graft that was, and interesting to see Hunterston.