Cause and effect

[Suff]

Hydrogen sounds like a great idea right? We make it, vehicles run on it, we can push it through the gas lines and don't need to change our boilers apart from jetting.

But!

A hydrogen economy could create bigger, longer-lasting ozone holes over the poles, a new study claims.

If hydrogen catches on as a 'non-polluting' fuel for energy production, leaks from its production and transport could increase the amount of the gas in the atmosphere. This change would worsen ozone depletion, calculate Yuk Yung and co-workers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena1.

Ozone holes were an issue right???

[Workingman]

Oh dear, an almost 20 year old article with lots of "ifs" and "coulds" and with a selective headline and snip to try to make a point.

You EV and heat pump fans must be getting desperate.

Let's try a few more to even things up.

Just after the click-bait headline and introduction we get:

Although its environmental benefits would still far outweigh any drawbacks.

and when it comes to Ozone...:

If it takes more than 50 years for hydrogen to become widely used as a fuel, CFCs will have largely disappeared and ozone depletion will no longer be a problem. By then, hydrogen transport and production might also be less leaky.

Mr Yung also goes on about "human-made hydrogen" and making hydrogen. I wonder how that happens! Last time I looked it was an element, the most abundant in the Universe. He must be an alchemist.

[cromwell]

It's pretty certain, or looks so at this stage, that hydrogen will play some part in the future of transportation.
Probably in heavy vehicles, HGV's and large plant machinery, and maybe in aeroplanes too.
The batteries needed to power an HGV would be very large and heavy and would take away from the HGV's capacity to carry goods. If the limit is 44 tonnes all up and batteries take up a significant proportion of that you won't be able to carry the amount cargo that you did before.
Same thing with planes, the batteries would have to be massive.

The thing being that if you still have truck stops where you can refuel with hydrogen, people who drive cars might want to use the same fuel?

[Suff]

Planes and ships, yep.

Trucks?

Welcome to the Tesla Semi. One of several EV trucks in development.

This is not vaporwear, there are now half a dozen pre production models out there. The main constraint to starting production is Tesla's own 4680 battery cells. Which are only now going into production.

Initial pre orders q3/4 2022 delivery.

Growing production from Q2 2023 onwards.

Check out the specs. Especially the speed up a 5% grade. There are more tech specs out there. But the estimated fuel cost savings (2021 prices), are dramatic. Enough to push companies over the edge for moving away from diesel. Especially when the estimated fuel savings are more than the cost of the vehicle. Then there is maintenance, or the lack of it.

So, yes, if trucks are sucking up electric and companies are providing it at wholesale rates, then car owners may want to charge their cars where the trucks charge.....

[Workingman]

Ah, now I get it.

The OP was not really about hydrogen or ozone, it was to enable yet another Tesla advert.

EVs, of all classes, will not quite be the motoring version of Betamax, but nor are they any silver bullet. They are certainly not "green" over their production and life cycles. The future of transport will be a mix of technologies; including hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic fuels and a few others - much like today.

[Suff]

No it was about hydrogen and ozone.

I was just redirected and responded with what is going on right now.

If you want scandal linked to Hydrogen trucks look up Nikola.

The OP came from a post in the clean hydrogen thread of a climate forum where it was mentioned that H2 leaks will have a rather unfortunate side effect which, should we ramp up to FF levels, could have rather damaging effects. This thread talks about Hydrogen being used for everything from energy storage for renewable power backup to trains, planes, ships and busses. The overwhelming answer is always the same. 40% round trip efficiency Vs 98% round trip efficiency.

Cromwell mentioned that batteries in HGV's are not feasible. I just gave only One of the ways they are making it feasible. Germany and Sweden are working on motorways with overhead cables and last few miles on battery. Others are working on not needing the cables at all. I posted that.

Whilst there is tons of talk about using Hydrogen, virtually nobody is doing it.

As for hydrogen for heating etc. Town gas had 20% hydrogen in it. For domestic gas, in the 1960's we averaged about one domestic gas fire and explosion every 441gwh of domestic gas consumed. In 2020 we averaged one domestic gas fire and explosion every 1028gwh domestic gas consumed. In 2020 we consumed around 6.5 times as much domestic gas.

Extrapolating roughly and, yes, I know we have much better materials, etc, if we consumed that much town gas in the 60's we'd have had 546 explosions per year compared to the 291 we had in 2020. With 20% hydrogen.

Just imagine how many we could have with 80% hydrogen???

Wonder why that is.

[Suff]

Might be worth having a look at why hydrogen fuel cells are considered (by those who have actually worked with them), to be a bad deal.

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/06/10/hy ... ll-expert/

Yes it is 2016/15 but do you know what has changed since then? Not a hell of a lot.

My own research on the lifetime of fuel cells says that the catalyst in them is platinum. Because it's so ridiculously expensive, they use nanoscale coatings of platinum on top of carbon. It wears out. Worst case 2 years. Yes there is research on using specifically treated graphene, but that is exactly that, research as of late 2021.

It is worth reading the bullet point breakdown on the conceptual pro's and the real con's. Not least of which is very slow acceleration if additional batteries and booster systems are not fitted to assist.

I can see hydrogen being touted for the home heating, but I can't see the logistical reality for it unless it is blue hydrogen (steam reformed methane taken from natural gas and oil products). Hardly a CO2 saver.

So this research which shows what Hydrogen is likely to do to the ozone layer. Just one more downcheck on hydrogen. The only place I can really see it being used is in the grid power generation as a buffer. Store the excess power in Hydrogen and burn it in ccgt when renewables are low. Efficiency is horrible but it is supposed to come from excess power so efficiency is moot.

Time will tell but as the flip flopping of Nikola shows, their BEV articulated truck is being produced first. Mainly because they need to become a hydrogen fuel producer because there isn't enough fuel for their customers.

Happy to discuss why Hydrogen might be the super fuel of the future. But it will have to be a discussion which contains all the real benefits and all the real challenges. Not a bunch of perceptions made up by vehicle manufacturers who just want to sell compliance cars and a dream of some clean hydrogen cars which are never going to happen, along with fossil fuel companies who think they can switch to Hydrogen, sell non existent CCS technologies as a "good" thing and just carry on as usual.

If you thought Battery refuelling was scarce, here is the H2 refuelling map.

https://h2.live/en/

Contrast the BEV map. https://chargemap.com/map

ZapMap for the UK gives you a better feel for it. And more detail. But it doesn't do Europe. https://www.zap-map.com/live/

I can see Hydrogen being a stopgap where it doesn't need to go very far or to be introduced into the gas network. But it is a short term vertical integration solution.

I recall my father in law being surprised that we would put in gas central heating for him. He remembered gas technology as old tech that was superseded by the "modern" electricity.

Times change.

[Workingman]

I am wondering why so much effort is being put into killing hydrogen before it is born.

It is not because it is dangerous or inefficient, they are just populist excuses. It is because so much time, effort, subsidies and expense has been put into the solar and windmill baskets that they have to be pushed forward, sideways and backwards at every opportunity and to the exclusion of everything else.

Everything has to be electric otherwise it is Duff. It is zealotry at its very worst.

[Suff]

Not really. It is about well to wheel and round trip efficiency on grid power.

These have been studied to death and when you plug Hydrogen into the same equations it comes up dramatically lacking.

Most Hydrogen is blue sky lala land thinking or it is used to hold back change in order to continue fossil fuel usage and keep profits up for large companies.

When I worked for Linde Gas last (largest H2 producer in the world), the Linde magazine in 2011 was hailing the "massive moves" BMW had made with making Hydrogen safe for use in road vehicles.

11 years later the only moves BMW have made in production low emission vehicles are with Hybrid Electric and Pure Electric.

There's a message there somewhere.

[Workingman]

You people are like these UFO / UAP investigators. You want to prove your point, but have no real scientific proof, so you give us ever so much circumstantial evidence and hearsay to flood the negatives.

Town gas was between 46% and 51% hydrogen with 30% methane and 15% CO2. It was delivered to homes via lead pipes and used as lighting, heating and cooking in equipment nowhere near as safe or efficient as today. No wonder there were explosions!

Modern natural gas blends use hydrogen at not more than 25% for safety reasons.

Very few, if any, use 80% blends for safety reasons - it is too easy to reach the the critical hydrogen / oxygen (air) explosion ratio.

Hydrogen is not explosive. It burns as a gas, as do methane and petroleum (liquid). It only explodes, as do the others, when the air (oxygen) ratio is reached.

On hydrogen networks work is being done....
Here
Here
and
Here

Fuel cells.
Here
Here

BEVs have been around for over 140 year, give fuel cells a chance.