Why did we abandon hydrogen cars so quickly?

[Bomby569]

I encourage you to read the linked article, it is very interesting.

Also, which countries did you have in mind? Any with a port could take a berthed ship with container-sized reactors. Heck, a pair of (new) Panamax-sized ships could power the entirety of Venezuela, and if security became a concern they could just sail off. Also, modular reactors with road-transportable pieces resolve many of the issues with the nuclear power plants currently under construction.

Look that's a good example, no one would ever give nuclear tech to Venezuela, and like them there are countless countries that aren't stable enough for anyone to even consider doing it, cross all of Africa, all of South America, most of Asia. And i'm sure you can see the flaw in having a container ship with nuclear reactors capable of powering a country. And even if all of this was possible there was still the cost, construction, maintenance, decommissioning, most countries can't afford.
And assuming all these countries would want a nuclear ship on their shores. Countries like NZ are not some crazy nation and they have laws against nuclear.

Nuclear lives of unrealistic dreams and often detached from reality, always has.

 

[Steevo]

You can turn down nuclear plants just like any other. It’s greener than “renewables” and depending on reactor design can Reuse waste from current generation plants and leave less waste overall than mining for the compounds needed for other energy sources, fusion is still 20 years away.

Hydrogen has the issue still of cost of production and energy density. If we create a nuclear base load reusing coal fired sites and or desalination for the cities running out of water and electricity we could also incorporate hydrogen and oxygen production into the same facility. Cars can be electric for short trips or hydrogen or hydrogen product powered for Ag, industrial, long haul, and aviation. Pull CO2 out of the air.

 

[dragontamer5788]

You can turn down nuclear plants just like any other.

In theory yes. Economically, no. Solar, Nuclear, and Wind cost lots of money to startup, but effectively have "free fuel". The only economic reason to ever "turn them down" is if the price of electricity goes negative.

Nuclear costs are almost entirely in construction and safety. Similarly, Solar and Wind are "free fuel", all the costs are in building the devices to begin with, so it only makes sense to turn them off if the grid is so unstable that the spot-price of electricity goes negative.

But what if: instead of those devices turning off, we keep them running and take the "free energy" and dump it into Hydrogen? (Or really, any energy storage. Its just that Hydrogen is one of the best options right now after pumped hydro). With enough energy storage, the price of electricity will never go negative (there's always someone out there willing to store the energy). But we need to build large-scale energy storage for that to happen, we can't just assume it will happen naturally.

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To put it another way: any "renewable energy" source is high-CapEx / low-fuel costs (or even "free" fuel costs). In contrast, "carbon-producers" like Natural Gas, Coal, or Oil plants are low-CapEx / high-fuel costs. Completely different economically.

We keep trying to pound a square-peg into a circular hole. It only works if we have enough energy-storage to stabilize our grid as we transition to renewable energy. I personally don't care if the future is solar or nuclear, either way we're dealing with a high-CapEx / low-fuel cost plant over there, and need to solve the energy storage problem.

 

[Shrek]

Why hydrogen for storage? why not a heavy weight that runs up and down a long shaft? efficiencies would be high.

 

[defaultluser]

You can turn down nuclear plants just like any other. It’s greener than “renewables” and depending on reactor design can Reuse waste from current generation plants and leave less waste overall than mining for the compounds needed for other energy sources, fusion is still 20 years away.

Hydrogen has the issue still of cost of production and energy density. If we create a nuclear base load reusing coal fired sites and or desalination for the cities running out of water and electricity we could also incorporate hydrogen and oxygen production into the same facility. Cars can be electric for short trips or hydrogen or hydrogen product powered for Ag, industrial, long haul, and aviation. Pull CO2 out of the air.

Desalination to get your cooling water? that will raise the already high nuke running costs into astronomical-vile.

See here, where having two independent water systems means you use almost twice s much water.

Monarch Partnership

Utilities Simplified

monarchpartnership.co.uk

And as the planet heats-up, the temperature delta available becomes harder to deal with (and plants have to shut-down often)

Nuclear Power Plants Are Struggling to Stay Cool

Climate change is reducing output and raising safety concerns at nuclear facilities from France to the US. But experts say adapting is possible—and necessary.

www.wired.com

As-opposed to wind, which needs no such cooling And Solar (thanks to electrostatics may turn-out not to need very much water to keep panels clean in dusty regions):

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm0078

I'm sorry man, but nuclear has been heading in the wrong direction fr several decades. And, aside from France, no other country has found a way to make reprocessed fuel the same cost as grabbing virgin fuel from the soil (and at that price, nobody will buy it)

 

[dragontamer5788]

Why hydrogen for storage? why not a heavy weight that runs up and down a long shaft? efficiencies would be high.

One GW-hr of energy is 3600 Gigajoules. That's 360 Kilotons of weight traveling 1-kilometer straight up-and-down to store. Feel free to tweak this however you like, but its not reasonable to use gravity storage for this scale (unless you're emptying entire lakes like Pumped Hydro does). (One metric ton provides 9810 Newtons of force. 360 Kilotons * 9810 Newtons * 1000 meters == 3600 Gigajoules aka giga-Newton-Meters)

EDIT: Did the math wrong at first. I think I fixed it this time.
EDIT2: Kilotons, not megatons.

In contrast, one kg of Hydrogen stores 120MJ of energy. 3600 Gigajoules is 30,000kg of Hydrogen, (aka: 30 metric tons), which is a lot for sure, but like... actually physically doable.

If I'm doing my math right, 30,000kg of Hydrogen at 700-bar of pressure is 1200 cubic-meters of storage.

 

[Shrek]

10 battleships... seems plausible.

 

[dragontamer5788]

10 battleships... seems plausible.

And you're gonna hang 10 battleships on a chain and raise/lower them 1-kilometer... how? And do so within 10-hours (10 hours to store GW-hr of energy, and then 10 hours to release it). Safely, repeatably for the next 20 years?

What geography even supports this kind of insane project? (And don't say pumped Hydro, we all know that works, lol)

 

[Shrek]

Rack and pinion with the motor/generator on the weight; just playing with ideas.

Maybe Li-ion
Tesla secures big 200 MWh Megapack order for a new energy storage project in Australia - Electrek
0.2 GWh

 

[dragontamer5788]

Rack and pinion with the motor/generator on the weight; just playing with ideas.

Maybe Li-ion
Tesla secures big 200 MWh Megapack order for a new energy storage project in Australia - Electrek
0.2 GWh

To give you an idea of the scale of these hydrogen solutions: https://global.kawasaki.com/en/corp/newsroom/news/detail/?f=20201224_8018

This singular tank of liquefied H2 is 710 tons of H2 storage, or 23 GW-hrs of energy storage. (If I did my math right, lol)

 

[Shrek]

I seem to recall someone quoting 55% efficiency, so almost as much lost as stored?

 

[dragontamer5788]

I seem to recall someone quoting 55% efficiency, so almost as much lost as stored?

You need to think of the economics of the future of energy. Nuclear, Solar, and Wind give us free energy, but at the wrong time.

55% efficient gathering of free energy is still free. The problem is energy storage. Nuclear, Solar and Wind creates energy at the wrong time, and requires natural gas to spin-up / spin-down to match the grid. Large-scale GW-hr scale energy storage is the only way we actually make Nuclear/Solar/Wind to work.

 

[Shrek]

If Tesla can do 0.2 GWh today, imagine what industry could do.

Solar is not free; the cells are not exactly cheap. So, efficiency remains an issue.

Before there is any misunderstanding, I am all for Solar and storage; so, we are only quibbling about how.

 

[R-T-B]

just answer me this, how many batteries would a NY to London plane need and the weight? or to illustrate this point better, how many batteries would one of those container ships need to go from China to Europe?

Someone missed the whole discussion about "practical" vs "impossible."

 

[dragontamer5788]

Solar is not free; the cells are not exactly cheap. So, efficiency remains an issue.

Li-ion isn't free either. In contrast, steel-and-concrete structures are basically free compared to Li-ion. We can mass produce those H2 containers today, with our current tech. Its just steel and concrete.

I have to "imagine a future" where Li-ion production improves by 150x fold before its competitive. Meanwhile, the H2 tanks exist today to solve the problem. If Li-ion becomes competitive 10 years from now, we just build those battery systems then.

But today, we need to plan our production around what today's technology can do. There are huge issues about how dirty it is to mine those rare-earth metals of Li-ion (not just Lithium, but also Cobalt, Nickel, and other rare elements). Steel and concrete? That's basically available everywhere with less of an ecological issue of producing.

 

[R-T-B]

I like hydro power - wave, river, tidal - but those are strongly location-specific.

As a resident of the pacific northwest, we both love and kind of hate them. They are certainly better than carbon, but they devastate salmon runs.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

My point was that an international organization such as the UN could own and operate such ships, say through the UNFCC. They have the power to provide them with sufficient security against non-state actors and could reserve the right to withdraw them at a moment's notice if they felt that there was a threat of sufficient level to endanger the ship. If an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was retrofitted with reactors using TRISO fuel optimized for safety, replacing the existing engine systems with a steam generator system, I don't see why power could not be made available to developing countries, even ones with unstable political situations, if a port or even a coastline is available. A simple pressure vessel could also buffer the capacity so the reactor output could be decreased below peak energy demand.

Edit: the reason for the class of ship chosen is that they were recently decommissioned from the USN and several are in storage pending their fate.

And you're gonna hang 10 battleships on a chain and raise/lower them 1-kilometer... how? And do so within 10-hours (10 hours to store GW-hr of energy, and then 10 hours to release it). Safely, repeatably for the next 20 years?

What geography even supports this kind of insane project? (And don't say pumped Hydro, we all know that works, lol)

Rack and pinion with the motor/generator on the weight; just playing with ideas.

Maybe Li-ion
Tesla secures big 200 MWh Megapack order for a new energy storage project in Australia - Electrek
0.2 GWh

From a practical standpoint, that is 180 blocks of concrete about the length and width of the USS Iowa, 100m in height. I chose concrete as being reasonably dense and cheap. I strongly doubt that this is practical on a large scale. Also, I doubt there is enough lithium in the world to do battery storage, besides the not inconsiderable environmental impact of battery production.

Interesting image grabbed from Wikipedia:

As a resident of the pacific northwest, we both love and kind of hate them. They are certainly better than carbon, but they devastate salmon runs.

As a resident of Tennessee, I love them. Tennessee has one natural lake - six hours drive away from where I live. Thanks to the TVA, I have 5 lakes within 1 hour, and cheap electricity.

 

[claes]

Plans have been drawn to build more, despite the babbling of green activists.

Dismissing green activists, which include a lot of scientists, and laughing at people that disagree with you when you make a mistake rather than just owning it, comes off as incredibly dismissive. Why not respond to the claims on face?

I have questions about solar, wind, etc, as well, particularly due to their dependence on rare earth materials, but most activists critical of nuclear power share those questions. The primary arguments from the left seem to be that nuclear takes way too long to build and is unsustainable.

https://www.energyforhumanity.org/en/briefings/energy/nuclear-power-and-safety-the-facts/ For those concerned about other risks, such as safety, please educate yourselves.

A film director and two entrepreneurs? Kirsty is the only one who is credentialed in anyway to discuss nuclear power. Half these orgs are just props to invest in nuclear. Not that “green technology” doesn’t have the same problem, but I think we both know the issue is way more complex than presented here.

 

[anfazi54]

Some says in gas industry worker, hydrogen isn't easy to work with

 

[Bomby569]

Someone missed the whole discussion about "practical" vs "impossible."

practical isn't an issue as it is an impossibility, if someone were having that discussion, that should clear it up

 

[R-T-B]

practical isn't an issue as it is an impossibility, literally, if someone were having that discussion, that should clear it up

So, drones are impossible? They fly.

You seem to be arguing in circles.

 

[Bomby569]

Some says in gas industry worker, hydrogen isn't easy to work with

and gas is? batteries are?

So, drones are impossible? They fly.

You seem to be arguing in circles.

man are we now comparing drones with planes with people and/or cargo or container ships crossing an ocean? that can't be what you meant for sure.

 

[R-T-B]

man are we now comparing drones with planes with people and/or cargo or container ships crossing an ocean? that can't be what you meant for sure.

No, we aren't. We never were. I'm just taking your initial statement that started this whole comment chain, that battery powered flight is "impossible." Any other insinuations are on you. Frankly I'm tired of explaining this, so lets just drop it.

 

[dragontamer5788]

No, we aren't. We never were. I'm just taking your initial statement that started this whole comment chain, that battery powered flight is "impossible." Any other insinuations are on you. Frankly I'm tired of explaining this, so lets just drop it.

There are some.... physics problems... associated with current battery tech compared to other forms of fuel... to say the least.

Airplanes have volume-constraints (energy-per-liter) and mass-constraints (energy-per-kilogram). Hydrogen has one problem: volume is terrible, but plenty of energy-per-kilogram.

Batteries, at least with today's technology, have both volume and mass issues. Any reasonable discussion about "batteries on airplanes" requires magical batteries with 10x the volume-density and 10x the mass-density.

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H2 on an airplane looks very, very difficult. Liquid Hydrogen is the only "reasonable" solution, but that requires cryogenics to store the Helium. Other solutions (700-bar pressure or 350-bar pressure) use up too much volume. Powering the cryogenics so that the Hydrogen can be used as the airplane flies seems non-trivial.

Airplanes are just a really hard problem. I'm not feeling bullish on either batteries or hydrogen for airplanes frankly. The best solution proposed seems to be Hydrogen + CO2 syngas -> Kerosene, and we continue to use Kerosense as jet fuel (but instead synthesize it from green sources). Unless some crazy other battery breakthrough happens, that's probably our best bet...

 

[R-T-B]

View attachment 256020


There are some.... physics problems... associated with current battery tech compared to other forms of fuel... to say the least.

Airplanes have volume-constraints (energy-per-liter) and mass-constraints (energy-per-kilogram). Hydrogen has one problem: volume is terrible, but plenty of energy-per-kilogram.

Batteries, at least with today's technology, have both volume and mass issues. Any reasonable discussion about "batteries on airplanes" requires magical batteries with 10x the volume-density and 10x the mass-density.

--------

H2 on an airplane looks very, very difficult. Liquid Hydrogen is the only "reasonable" solution, but that requires cryogenics to store the Helium. Other solutions (700-bar pressure or 350-bar pressure) use up too much volume. Powering the cryogenics so that the Hydrogen can be used as the airplane flies seems non-trivial.

Airplanes are just a really hard problem. I'm not feeling bullish on either batteries or hydrogen for airplanes frankly. The best solution proposed seems to be Hydrogen + CO2 syngas -> Kerosene, and we continue to use Kerosense as jet fuel (but instead synthesize it from green sources). Unless some crazy other battery breakthrough happens, that's probably our best bet...

Yes. That wasn't what I was disputing.

No one is going passenger plane on Lithium-Ion tech.