- cross-posted to:
- tech@kbin.social
- cross-posted to:
- tech@kbin.social
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Germany just announced they will discontinue their hydrogen-powered train service in favor of a battery-based solution due to the higher running cost.
Hydrogen may be an alternative, but it has yet to make continuous, solid financial sense for any type of transport.
If weight isn’t an issue, then it makes sense to use a system that only costs a fraction of a hydrogen-powered setup.
Trains don’t need to fly. Just pack them full of batteries or - arguably even better - just electrify the line wherever possible.
That’s just not an option for planes, so hydrogen remains a potentially viable approach.
Same goes for large container ships. It won’t make sense to use batteries unless there are significant breakthroughs in capacity technology.
One of the advantages of hydrogen is that tanks and fuel cells can withstand a large number of “charging cycles” much better than batteries. Additionally, for ships, the amount of energy needed to move is so enormous that I fear we’ll have a hard time creating batteries that are feasible for long-distance shipping.
For short distance ferrying (including large, car carrying ferries) on the other hand, Norway has already implemented quite a few electric stretches. The major issue there is building the infrastructure to charge the ferries.
No they can’t, the membranes of fuel cells degrade extremely quickly, as I a couple of 100 cycles before significant efficiency loss. That’s currently one of the biggest issues with fuel cells and one of the biggest areas of research. Currently, batteries are far more reliable as an energy source.
I’m just happy that there are efforts being made into alternatives to oil… at any level.
Sadly industrial hydrogen production is done by reforming petroleum with steam which releases huge amounts of CO2.
Oh. Well shit.
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You’d need huge cryogenic tanks due to the volume density of hydrogen over kerosene. Good for rockets that you can jettison tanks from, but less so for planes. I just don’t see it ever being practical for aviation over just creating our own hydrocarbons out of something else. Either catalyst based or otherwise. That’s potentially carbon neutral as well.
Edit: my comment, but with numbers https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/74/9/11/928294/Hydrogen-as-an-aviation-fuel It’s not a problem with how heavy the fuel would be or just how much space they’d take. It’s how heavy the damn tanks would need to be and how much of the aircraft would be devoted to them on long distance flights.
It’s no more of a problem than dealing with LPG, surely? Pressurise it for storage.
You can’t keep liquid hydrogen by pressure alone and even as a liquid it’s volume density it’s very low compared to other liquids.
Hydrogen sounds like a great idea for decarbonization until you get around to asking, “wait, where do we get the hydrogen from?” and realize that it’s incredibly energy intensive and the most popular process releases a lot of CO2 directly.
Hydrogen is an energy storage, like a battery, so of course it requires a lot of energy to produce, that’s the energy that you get back when consuming it (minus inefficiency losses of course).
The advantage of hydrogen over fossil fuels is that it can be produced from renewable energy, while fossil fuels cannot.
There’s a comment on another post with this article doing the math on this, and it seems like the net emissions (when you account for efficiencies) actually favour steam-reforming + fuel cells.
No… No, it isn’t… But you can imagine what it would be like if it was, right?
The output is water, right? Wouldn’t this put more water vapor in the atmosphere? Because water vapor also increases the greenhouse effect.
It’s ok, well drink it
Hydrogen-powered planes almost ready for takeoff
No they aren’t, and they never will be (save for maybe a few small private one-offs). Certainly never for anything commercial.
While I certainly agree with the first part of your comment, what makes you sure they’ll never be commercially viable? The energy density and application of liquid hydrogen is getting pretty good these days.
Leaking hydrogen into the upper atmosphere sounds like a bad idea. It extends the life of methane, making the green house problem worse. I really hope that they reduce the leaking issue to a minimum.
But the short term profits!!!
Isn’t it flammable? I’d think leaks would have to be zero for even more basic reasons.
Yes, it’s very flammable. But it’s also very light. Lighter than Oxygen. And the molecules are small which means most air tight applications don’t work well. Even the tanks they make now still has this issue where hydrogen molecules can escape through the barriers over time.
Imagine the explosion upon impact. 🤣
