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Transportation China

China Launches 100-MPH Hydrogen/Supercapacitor Train (newatlas.com) 67

Posted by BeauHD from the a-first-for-China dept.
The world's largest rail vehicle manufacturer has rolled out a zero-emissions train running on hydrogen fuel cells with a supercapacitor buffer. The four-car train is capable of 100 mph (160 km/h), making it the fastest hydrogen train to date. New Atlas reports: Jointly developed by state-owned industrial monolith CRRC and Chengdu Rail Transit, this is China's first hydrogen-powered passenger train, offering a range of 373 miles (600 km), and emitting nothing but water. It's capable of self-driving, with 5G communications, automatic wake-up, start and stop, and return to depot functionality. Germany is ahead on this kind of thing, with some 14 hydrogen-fueled Alstom trains already in service as of last year. The CRRC machine can beat the German trains for speed by around 20 km/h (12 mph), but the German trains currently offer a much greater range at ~620 miles (1,000 km). According to Information Trends, there are just over 1,000 hydrogen stations in the world -- one-third of them being in China.
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China Launches 100-MPH Hydrogen/Supercapacitor Train More

China Launches 100-MPH Hydrogen/Supercapacitor Train

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  • What does China use to produce their hydrogen?

    • electricity from their coal power plants...

      • Re:electricity from coal? (Score:4, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @05:23AM (#63234844)

        electricity from their coal power plants...

        The hydrogen likely comes from coal, but from steam reforming, not electrolysis.

        Steam reforming [wikipedia.org]

        Powering a train with H2 makes little sense, rather than just pulling power from the grid through the rails.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Electric trains require expensive overhead wires or a third rail. That massively increases the cost of initial build and maintenance. Self powered zero emission traction like this is economically attractive. Trams and light rail would also benefit, especially as overhead wires are difficult / unsightly in some urban settings
          • Hydrogen as fuel with fuel cells is at best 40% efficient. electric trains with overhead cables is 90% efficient. Hydrogen as a green fuel makes no sense. It makes far better sense as a greenwashing-lets-continue-to-use-oil-and-coal sense. hydrogen is the fossil fuel industry's "solution". overhead cables expensive? LMFAO

            • Overhead catenary can be expensive due to small old bridges and tunnels where the track cannot be lowered easily due to ground water.

            • Hydrogen as fuel with fuel cells is at best 40% efficient.
              That is nonsense.

              You have two options:
              a) Put another Diesel train on a non electrified rail
              b) Put a train that does not use Diesel on a non electrified rail
              Your pick.

              Or you could wait 20 years until the non electrified rail is electrified ...

              Your pick.

              • Diesel.

                It's more efficient than hydrogen, and unless the hydrogen is produced by 100% renewable electrolysis and all other grid electricity is also renewable, you're going to be dumping out more CO2 with hydrogen.

                So diesel train now because trains are more efficient than cars, build the infrastructure to wire the track, and put the effort into converting the grid to renewables.

                • HFC trains are much quieter than diesel trains and they don't stink. The Alstom iLint sucks, though.

                • Diesel is not more efficient than burning H2 in an ICE.
                  And it is most certainly not more efficient in relation to a fuel cell.

            • Hydrogen as fuel with fuel cells is at best 40% efficient. electric trains with overhead cables is 90% efficient. Hydrogen as a green fuel makes no sense.

              Hydrogen has never been a fuel. It's a battery replacement.

              • Yes: Hydrogen has never been a fuel. It's a battery replacement. The German process being used here has 20% efficiency, but the 99kg of hydrogen per cylinder provides the equivalent energy of 557kg of a Tesla 3 equivalent battery. The cylinder does not weigh 458 kg so there is a large weight savings at high loss of efficiency cost.

                • Also don't forget that a battery keep its weight even when empty. Hydrogen don't. But it's not only about the weight. Hydrogen can be refueled much faster than charging batteries, and don't degrade over time. I'm still not sure how much capacity you get from that 80 kWh battery after 15 years, but I know that a 60L fuel tank can carry 60L after 15 years, and the same must apply to hydrogen tanks (not sure about hydrogen fuel cell however).
                  Also hydrogen likely works just as well in cold temperatures. Batteri

                  • Current design lifetimes for high pressure hydrogen vessels are 10 years. They do degrade and almost on the same time scale as batteries because hydrogen eventually penetrates and makes brittle almost any substance. One major factor in lifetime is how rapidly you change the pressure each time you refuel, but yes even with purposefully limited pressure rate changes (to minutes) you can shift energy faster with pressurized gas than when charging a battery. A high pressure hydrogen vessel failure can be ver

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by jeadly ( 602916 )
                      Your last sentence is very important. Those pressure vessels need to be replaced preemptively at expiration, there's no "limp" along with reduced range time like you might with a chemical battery.

                    • because hydrogen eventually penetrates and makes brittle almost any substance
                      That is nonsense.
                      Hydrogen under pressure brittles metal tanks - modern pressure vessels are made from carbon fibre, though.

                      A high pressure hydrogen vessel failure can be very catastrophic. One of these 99kg hydrogen cylinders at 350 bar is the equivalent of 2.5 tons of TNT if detonated.
                      Hydrogen can not detonate. It needs to be mixed with a huge amount of oxygen to do so - facepalm.

                    • Hydrogen can not detonate. It needs to be mixed with a huge amount of oxygen to do so - facepalm.

                      Where could a huge amount of oxygen possibly comes from anyways?

                  • Also hydrogen likely works just as well in cold temperatures.
                    Nope it does not. Hydrogen is converted together with Oxygen into water, so the membrane in the fuel cell, aka "the fuel cell" needs to be kept above freezing point.

                    • that's only true for a fuel cell I guess, not to a hydrogen tank and a combustion engine which emits water vapor

                      And how big of a problem is it for fuel cells? You are going to want to keep the car's interior over the freezing point anyways isn't it? So you may as well heat up the fuel cells at the same time.

                • The German process being used here has 20% efficiency,
                  That is nonsense.

                  Simple hydrolyzis is 45% efficient already. Why you think one would use a process not even half as efficient, is beyond me.

            • Hydrogen may make sense for aviation; you can't run wires to an aircraft, and batteries have the problem of low energy density. But I don't see it playing much of a role for trains; the energy efficiency of the system is just too low.
        • Watch out, criticizing the PRC publicly might get you disappeared. :-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Electrifying the line is expensive and in some cases not possible. Hydrogen and battery powered trains are a cheaper option, and sometimes the only option.

        • Over land trains do not pull electricity from rails.
          Are you really that dumb?

          The train is powered with H2 fuel cells: what exactly does not make sense in that regard when the only alternative is Diesel? Are you really that dumb?

          Half your posts are so utterly bullshit dumb that it looks like one has hacked your account and is posting in your name.

          • Let me introduce you to this newfangled concept where we take a copper wire, string it above the track and use that to supply electric power to a train, using the rails as the return path. In some countries a third rail is used for the supply instead of an overhead catenary.

            2/3 of China's rail network is electrified.

        • Uhm, putting electricity in the rails is a good way to electrocute people.
          • Uhm, putting electricity in the rails is a good way to electrocute people.

            It's China. They have plenty of people to spare.

    • Re:Hydrogen source? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0ptix ( 649734 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @06:56AM (#63234916)

      Writing these H2 train (and similar) projects off because they dont reduce CO2 emissions today is thinking too narrow in scope. Its missing what seems like their main value today.

      E.g. They serve as test beds and PoCs for developing H2-based tech. They give us platforms for building know-how about how to use H2. They create initial small scale demand for H2 to help drive more investment in H2 generation.

      More generally, they are about trying to get past the chicken-and-egg problem inherent to changing major corner stones of our entire industry (i.e. our fossil-fuel based energy life-cycle).

      • More generally, they are about trying to get past the chicken-and-egg problem inherent to changing major corner stones of our entire industry (i.e. our fossil-fuel based energy life-cycle).

        The problem with hydrogen fuel is that it's a crappy storage medium. By this I mean when you figure in the full life-cycle of energy sources, it's much more efficient to use battery cells to storage electric potential. However, the real problem is economic because it's several times cheaper to simply rip natural gas out of the ground and crack it then it is to produce hydrogen with any other means. Regardless of where it's built, thinking a train like this will ever not be driven by CO2 pollution is fanta

        • Regardless of where it's built, thinking a train like this will ever not be driven by CO2 pollution is fantasy.
          that train is in China. It is completely driven by "green H2", green means: it is produced by renewable energies.

          So: what exactly is your point? That you are an idiot? Or do yo want to nitpick that somewhere in the production process of the whole train, some CO2 was produced and hence running it now in green way is for naught?

      • Who is writing them off? I just wanted to know if they were using lng or something else.

    • Cost-effective green hydrogen is very doable [pv-magazine.com], the hard part is building out the infrastructure to store and transport it cost-effectively at utility scale. Of course it will always be better to use wind/solar electricity right as it is generated when possible, but hydrogen might be the winner for storage between seasons and transport between continents, and maybe even for air travel although doubtful.

      • Cost-effective green hydrogen is very doable [pv-magazine.com], the hard part is building out the infrastructure to store and transport it cost-effectively at utility scale. Of course it will always be better to use wind/solar electricity right as it is generated when possible, but hydrogen might be the winner for storage between seasons and transport between continents, and maybe even for air travel although doubtful.

        Hydrogen is going to be the future energy source of choice for applications where batteries are impractical. Various manufacturers are testing semi trucks powered by H2, which in some applications will be more practical than batteries. Hydrogen could be the practical replacement for stationary diesel generators (generators can be refueled in use and run for days or weeks, where batteries to support that run time are impractical). It may have applications in cargo shipping. Heavy equipment in the mining

    • They are using the Germnan Alstom hydrogen fuel cell traction engine so likely using same hydrogen production too which is hydrolysis using a 5kWh plant producing 350 bar compress hydrogen, 99kg per cylinder giving 3326 kWh per cylinder usable energy. They have an end-to-end efficiency of about 20%.

  • Supposed to be zero emissions. But where do they get the hydrogen? From cracking gas? At what energy cost in the transition.

    The range and capacity and speed are not impressive either.

    There is a sort of madness about this stuff. First there is supposed to be some kind of crisis, then things that will have no effect on it are proposed and even implemented in some cases. They turn out to have no effect on the supposed crisis, even make it worse, and then the objectives of the programs are changed to make

    • At what energy cost in the transition.
      That is school knowledge. Learned that stuff something like 50 years ago,

      Or it is google fu.
      Try it. You get better at it with more practice.

  • Original article https://www.globaltimes.cn/pag... [globaltimes.cn] 160 kilometers Stop converting the darn units you AMERICANS!

  • this is something which is also a problem with electric cars; regenerative braking can help, but isn't a full solution. And then there's noise.

    This is good news, but let's not pretend it solves all the problems of transport.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by canavan ( 14778 )
      What noise? Modern Trains are certainly less noisy than an equivalent number of cars or trucks. Regarding braking, modern passenger trains as well as the latest freight cars use disk brakes that are much quieter than the old style brake pads that use the wheels' running surface.

      This is good news, but let's not pretend it solves all the problems of transport.

      Nobody claimed that this solves all problems. Let's also not pretend your continued ownership and use of cars solves all problems.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jeadly ( 602916 )
      For those not familiar with the actual study those headlines last year were breathlessly repeating, it assessed different size particle emissions of EVs and concluded that heavier vehicles caused more emission. Which, sure, we should try to keep vehicle size in check and not ignore whatever remaining emissions they create. But many headlines seemed to imply that brake pad emissions were somehow worse in all EVs and that meant it was worse that ICE tailpipe emissions. Typical FUD.
      https://www.oecd-ilibrar [oecd-ilibrary.org]

      • The problem with EVs isn't brake dust, it's tire dust. They have wider tires so they can support their additional weight with a larger contact patch at the same pressure (preserving ride quality by allowing the tire to flex) but they also have softer tires than hybrids because they have more torque and without them, you can't enjoy the full acceleration force. Tire dust accounts for 50% of marine microplastics.

        None of this applies to trains, which produce more brake dust than wheel dust, and the wheel dust

        • The problem with EVs isn't brake dust, it's tire dust. They have wider tires so they can support their additional weight with a larger contact patch at the same pressure (preserving ride quality by allowing the tire to flex) but they also have softer tires than hybrids because they have more torque and without them, you can't enjoy the full acceleration force.

          Many of the smaller BEVs I see on the road have relatively skinny tires presumably to maximize rolling and aero efficiency. Larger BEVs are more likely to sacrifice the range for the performance and aesthetics of more normal sizes.

          https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n... [japantimes.co.jp]

      • I don't understand why EV's are using traditional brakes and not regenerative braking.

  • The emission is whatever the hydrogen is reacted with. Presumably mostly oxygen causing the emission of water.

    It most certainly is not zero emission.

  • Siemens has recently unveiled their Mireo Plus H [railway-technology.com], which also reaches 160 km/h. Still, very interesting the Chinese added self-driving on top of it, drivers are usually the most expensive item in any vehicle.

    The US are not out of the race: Stadler (well, as Swiss company) is going to deploy a H2-powered FLIRT [railjournal.com] in CA next year.

  • Also, how do they keep the train from floating off the tracks?
  • HFC seems to be the front-runner, but there's plenty of room for experimenting with things like compressed air and renewably-generated biofuel.

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