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Hydrogen locomotive
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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While it may not be the best option, is it not good that somewhere is at least trying it?
As long as it’s not widespread adoption, it seems like a good idea to at least trial these sort of things on a small scale to properly determine the real world application, even if the conclusion is just “yeah, it shit”.
No! If it doesn't immediately solve the issue completely without any drawbacks it must be scrapped and no one should work to improve it!
Best regards,
Every conservative party (and their corporate sponsors).
Most of the supporters of hydrogen trains are the Oil & Gas lobby, a traditionally conservative group. It's another, "Technology will save us from climate change!" scheme, which will allow unabated oil extraction to continue so we can make hydrogen fuel.
If I may?
Hydrogen, green hydrogen, can be produced from water, using electricity produced from renewables, like solar amd wind.
My own country is in the process of converting a decomissioned refinery into a hydrogen plant.
It may not solve much in the short term but as an energy reserve, hydrogen can find use directly as a fuel or for running gas turbines to produce electricity in replacement of conventional gas.
Green Hydrogen from Electrolysis is extremely inefficient (<30%). Renewable energy isn't without cost or environmental impact, so we need to responsible with how we use it. Unless the grid you're pulling from is 100% renewable and has excess power that is just being wasted, that renewable energy could be used elsewhere in a more efficient manner.
Siemens quotes 80% for their electrolysers, fuel cells run at about 60%... in steel smelting if you squint right over 100% (reducing directly with electricity is possible, but less efficient in practice than going via hydrogen). Similar for chemical feedstock where "just use electricity bro" really isn't an option in the first place.
Precisely because of those uses hydrogen (and by extension ammonia) will be a massive energy carrier in the future anyway. And both, and definitely ammonia, doesn't self-discharge, or have cycle life limitations.
Regardless, it is a start. Unless we are to stumble upon the secret of cold fusion, we need to compromise in order to make any kind of move away from fossil energy.
The project I mentioned is to be a self contained system, reliant on renewables only, hence the green classification.
but it's not either /or is it? there places where overhead cables are not a good option for trains so a Hydrogen train makes sense there it's a niche but it's use case is there
It can be made from water and renewables at about 3-4x the energy cost of charging a battery. In train terms, that means you could be charging 3 battery trains instead of 1 hydrogen train. Or you could have 3 battery tenders and have more logistical flexibility in how they are deployed.
To what I know, the hydrogen to be produced is intentended to replace fossil gas in northern europe countries. It's meant to be a stockpileable energy resource.
It's not ideal but we either make middle of the road commitments and actually get something done to move forward or just call it all off an let things fizzle out
Unless someone figures a way to sequester hydrogen into an inert, reversible form you really don't want to be stockpiling hydrogen for obvious reasons.
It's not like we have had disastrous events related to hydrogen.
The objective is to built a trans-iberian pipeline for the liquified hydrogen. So, it will be interesting.
And this is exactly the case here. This train is being trialed by an oil subsidiary. They'll greenwash it, proclaiming "nothing comes out of our train but water!", neglecting the fact the hydrogen was made from fossil fuels.
https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=V-quSEb-Q5WKHY4z
This train is being trialed by an oil subsidiary so I think there is more than a little greenwashing going on here. The vast majority of hydrogen is "blue", i.e. it's manufactured from fossil fuels, so there is no environmental benefit to this. Even if it were "green", i.e. made from water and renewable energy, the same power used to make the hydrogen, store it, transport it, turn it back to power could charge 3 or 4 battery powered trains or tenders - a tender could mean a smaller locomotive hooks up to however many battery tenders it needs for its route or switches them out in the yard.
Honestly all this feels like the railway's Dieselization 100yrs ago. When the end of steam powered engines was drawing near, coal hauling railroads and Baldwin Locomotive in the U.S. tried all kinds of whacky and hilariously inefficient engine designs, just to keep the ol' ways alive... none of these worked out - everyone who stuck to it lost hugely. Viz. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_and_Ohio_class_M-1
The environmental benefit of blue hydrogen is that it doesn't put CO2 into the atmosphere. This is better than burning the hydrogen carbon gas it was produced from.
Except it does. This study suggests that the plants that produce hydrogen from fossil fuels are only capturing 80% of the CO2. So 20% is emitted. And aside from that hydrogen has the potential to contribute 12x as much to global warming as CO2 emissions.
That statement is correct, but you are still wrong. Blue Hydrogen specifically refers to hydrogen produced fron fossiles where the CO2 is captured. There is just very little blue Hydrogen being made from fossiles- most production is either grey Hydrogen (from gas no capture) or brown (same but coal).