Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Fueling Stations (insideevs.com) 172
Shell once announced it would build 48 new Hydrogen fueling stations for light-duty vehicles in California, according to the blog Hydrogen Insights. But then in September, Shell told the site they'd "discontinued" that plan.
And last month the Inside EVs blog noted that in all of 2023, just 2,968 hydrogen cars were sold "in the United States — and by that, we mean in California, where the series-produced models are available." That's according to data from the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership — admittedly a 10% increase from 2022's sales figure of 2,707 — but with both numbers lower than 2021's sales of 3,341. "The overall cumulative sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles exceeded 17,940 as of the end of the quarter (not counting vehicles removed from use), which is 20% more than a year ago."
Then this week Shell said it will "no longer be operating" any light-duty hydrogen fuelling stations in the U.S., and will close all seven of its California pumping stations immediately. (Three in San Francisco, one in Berkeley, one in San Jose, and two in the Sacramento area.) Inside EVs says Shell's move "represents another blow to the struggling hydrogen car market in the only state where the fuel is widely available at all." Shell had, until recently, operated seven of the 55 total retail hydrogen stations in California, per the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership (H2FCP). That makes this a blow, but not apocalyptic news for the (small) hydrogen community....
In the letter announcing the closure, Shell Hydrogen Vice President Andrew Beard said they were shutting them down "due to hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors." It's not hard to see what Beard is referencing here... Hydrogen Insight reports that this shortage has been disrupting stations since August 13...
Some are also down for repairs, as many hydrogen stations suffer from serious reliability issues. Iwatani, a Japanese gas company that is one of the two largest names in American hydrogen filling stations, is currently suing the company that provided the core technology for its stations. In a court filing viewed by Hydrogen Insight, Iwatini alleges that its provider did not test its equipment in a real-world commercial scenario, hid defects, and misled the company. It is, in short, a big mess.
All of this makes the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the United States even more uncertain. The technology has struggled to catch on, as the stations and their fuel remain expensive. Though hydrogen car manufacturers usually include a large amount of free fuel in the purchase of a vehicle, once that runs out consumers are left with eye-watering prices from stations that are often broken, out of fuel, or swarmed with long lines. It's why used hydrogen cars are so cheap, and why they still aren't a good deal.
Few companies can make a better case for it than Shell, though, as the cheapest way to produce hydrogen involves a lot of natural gas. Its proximity to the fossil-fuel industry was supposed to make it cheaper, and provide incentive for robust fueling infrastructure. That hasn't played out, though, and one of the largest oil giants is throwing in the towel. If even a fossil giant like Shell can't justify investing in the future of light-duty hydrogen infrastructure, we're not sure who can.
And last month the Inside EVs blog noted that in all of 2023, just 2,968 hydrogen cars were sold "in the United States — and by that, we mean in California, where the series-produced models are available." That's according to data from the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership — admittedly a 10% increase from 2022's sales figure of 2,707 — but with both numbers lower than 2021's sales of 3,341. "The overall cumulative sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles exceeded 17,940 as of the end of the quarter (not counting vehicles removed from use), which is 20% more than a year ago."
Then this week Shell said it will "no longer be operating" any light-duty hydrogen fuelling stations in the U.S., and will close all seven of its California pumping stations immediately. (Three in San Francisco, one in Berkeley, one in San Jose, and two in the Sacramento area.) Inside EVs says Shell's move "represents another blow to the struggling hydrogen car market in the only state where the fuel is widely available at all." Shell had, until recently, operated seven of the 55 total retail hydrogen stations in California, per the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership (H2FCP). That makes this a blow, but not apocalyptic news for the (small) hydrogen community....
In the letter announcing the closure, Shell Hydrogen Vice President Andrew Beard said they were shutting them down "due to hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors." It's not hard to see what Beard is referencing here... Hydrogen Insight reports that this shortage has been disrupting stations since August 13...
Some are also down for repairs, as many hydrogen stations suffer from serious reliability issues. Iwatani, a Japanese gas company that is one of the two largest names in American hydrogen filling stations, is currently suing the company that provided the core technology for its stations. In a court filing viewed by Hydrogen Insight, Iwatini alleges that its provider did not test its equipment in a real-world commercial scenario, hid defects, and misled the company. It is, in short, a big mess.
All of this makes the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the United States even more uncertain. The technology has struggled to catch on, as the stations and their fuel remain expensive. Though hydrogen car manufacturers usually include a large amount of free fuel in the purchase of a vehicle, once that runs out consumers are left with eye-watering prices from stations that are often broken, out of fuel, or swarmed with long lines. It's why used hydrogen cars are so cheap, and why they still aren't a good deal.
Few companies can make a better case for it than Shell, though, as the cheapest way to produce hydrogen involves a lot of natural gas. Its proximity to the fossil-fuel industry was supposed to make it cheaper, and provide incentive for robust fueling infrastructure. That hasn't played out, though, and one of the largest oil giants is throwing in the towel. If even a fossil giant like Shell can't justify investing in the future of light-duty hydrogen infrastructure, we're not sure who can.
More uncertain future? (Score:5, Informative)
All of this makes the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the United States even more uncertain.
No, I think it's been pretty certain that hydrogen powered vehicles don't have a future for some time now. More conventional batteries have quite definitively beat fuel cells and hydrogen.
Too bad. I had hopes for a while that fuel cells powered by more easily handled fuels (methane, ethane, butane, methanol, ethanol) as fuel might work but apparently not. No one has even mentioned them in 20 years.
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Conventional batteries have found niches, where they can't compete with fossil fuel they mostly are non solutions entirely. Take away fossil fuel and you are left with no solutions.
Hydrogen is for net zero.
Re: More uncertain future? (Score:2)
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Hydrogen is a failure every where it has been tried, even spacecraft are moving away from it. Fueling station problems that aren't going away, fuel cell problems, often contamination that leaves hydrogen powered buses in the yard half the time and bus companies getting rid of them as soon as the government funds stop. As well as the well known storage, metal britlement etc problems.
Much better to make other types of fuel for the situations such as flying where a liquid fuel is ideal. Even methane created w
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> Really? The only problem most people who have no personal experience with EV ownership care about with batteries ia time to charge
Fixed that for you...
> I can buy two wireless headphones increase i need them longer than the charge and I do, but can't do that with a car
How many hours a day do you drive?
=Smidge=
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That's the wrong question. The correct question is how many hours a day might i need to drive in the future and the answer is i don't know. I have had situations occur where i have had to drive 12 hour days so i would be wise to have a car that can do it.
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That's the wrong question. The correct question is how many hours a day might i need to drive in the future and the answer is i don't know. I have had situations occur where i have had to drive 12 hour days so i would be wise to have a car that can do it.
I have had situations where I need to transport a piano across the country. By your logic, it would be wise for me to own a moving truck.
Or I could, you know, rent a car when I'm doing something two or three standard deviations from my normal behavior like most people do.
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If fuel cells made sense as a power source for road vehicles, someone would have figured it out by now (the technology has been around since the 60s if not earlier).
They make great electrical power sources for spacecraft (NASA has used them since the 60s) but they can't beat either internal combustion or batteries as a power source for road vehicles.
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Methanol is a fairly problematic fuel even compared to gasoline. It shares the hygroscopicity problem with ethanol, and it also is easily absorbed through the skin and can cause blindness, CNS damage, and death (though the first two are much more likely in that context.)
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Methanol is a fairly problematic fuel even compared to gasoline. It shares the hygroscopicity problem with ethanol, and it also is easily absorbed through the skin and can cause blindness, CNS damage, and death (though the first two are much more likely in that context.)
[citation needed] on how methanol is toxic when you casually splash yourself with it. Wikipedia lists 10 mL (ingested) as dose when problems start, to absorb that much through skin you'd pretty much have to take a bath in it.
Plus, you get several hours to administer the antidote, and results are usually good.
Methanol [Re:More uncertain future?] (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, you get several hours to administer the antidote, and results are usually good.
And, turns out the antidote to methanol poisoning is: ethanol.
Seriously. If you accidentally ingest methanol, the best thing to do is to get drunk as fast as possible.
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It's amazing how much resistance AI models have to verify this claim. But it finally computed that for a 200 lbs male, you'd need to take 7 shots of vodka (5.7 oz) to counter the immediate effects of methanol poisoning.
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Ethanol just gets classified (same as Methanol) as H225: Highly flammable liquid and vapour.
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The "dangers" of methanol are WAY overstated. It used to be most commonly encountered by older children for flying model airplanes (a mixture of mostly methanol with nitromethane and castor oil).. It didn't prove to be much of a hazard. It can also be found in a wood fire (though much of it vaporizes and burns).
It's not like gasoline (even lead free) is benign.
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:4, Informative)
Are there better sources for this story, the best I could find was this and even still talks about in terms of research projects:
The direct methanol fuel cell is currently too expensive to be used in passenger cars. Its high cost comes mainly from the platinum and ruthenium used as catalysts. Prakash and others are developing a variety of approaches to reduce the amount of catalyst needed: making the catalyst more active, increasing its surface area, and using nanoscale methods. When this technology matures, Erickson believes it might replace the hydrogen fuel cell. “An inexpensive, high-power direct methanol fuel cell is the Holy Grail,” he says.
https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
https://cordis.europa.eu/proje... [europa.eu]
Now I don't disagree this is worth investigating but the lack of funding for this, wouldn't that be more of an example of a market/investment failure? Looks like they are moving ahead with a phase 2 production plant but according to the 2nd link the first plant operating in notoriously energy excessive Iceland produced 4/kt a year.
I'm not exactly ready to go pointing fingers towards "Total State" conspiracies just yet, especially when it makes total sense why the market forces would move towards BEV over alternative liquid fuels, alternative liquid fuels require massive amount of cheap abundant electricity and we just don't have that yet
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense.
If there was any way to get a profit from this process then companies would be using it right now.
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You are obviously not familiar with 'making the market'. There is initial investment into creating a market - sometimes this fails, actually it happens a lot. You see it right now with the AI stuff, and all the blockchain crap before that, and every iteration over the years of the 'next big thing'.
Doing so with fuel cells and the fuel for same is actually pretty expensive, same as the Musk plan with his Teslas. People start believing in inevitability/necessity and then your market is made. This one didn
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You are obviously not familiar with 'making the market'. There is initial investment into creating a market - sometimes this fails, actually it happens a lot.
But that's the thing: Olah doesn't have to create a methanol market, there already is a robust one. He just has to start producing and selling. If he can't compete on price, he'll have to compete on being green and that seems like an easy sell right now.
If you want to do the reverse, start selling methanol fuel cells, I'm sure there are a ton of market applications. I wouldn't necessarily start with vehicles. I'd perhaps start with backup power supplies. Yes, you've bringing a new type of product to market
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with solar panels to run the thing.
Efficiency and input energy costs?
Solar power from the sky may be free. But there is a significant capital cost involved with capturing it. More so if high temperatures are required.
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Any time I see somebody claim that a process is environmentally friendly because it can be powered by solar electricity, I just think "how is that different from just injecting that solar electricity directly into the grid?" You can't just take an energy-intensive process and slap "solar powered" on it and claim that that makes it environmentally friendly. You need to consider any energy-intensive process in the context of the actual source mix of electricity generation in the region.
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I'm not a fan hydrogen for small vehicles such as ca
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I'm not really suggesting injecting small amounts of solar into the grid at a large number of ingress points, as it could be easier to manage that by building out dedicated solar plants if necessary. I'm just trying to say that it's silly to say that some process is solar powered when it's ultimately still just electric and not connecting solar panels to the grid doesn't change the fact that it's consuming a lot of electricity. Somebody might say "a hydrogen fuel cell car can be environmentally friendly bec
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Any time I see somebody claim that a process is environmentally friendly because it can be powered by solar electricity,
It could very well be environmentally friendly. Just not economical.
how is that different from just injecting that solar electricity directly into the grid?
If it's an easily throttable process, then it can accept variable solar/wind inputs. While the grid might not be able to. That sort of thing, IMO, is the ideal application.
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Any time I see somebody claim that a process is environmentally friendly because it can be powered by solar electricity, I just think "how is that different from just injecting that solar electricity directly into the grid?
All true. I think the same thing when someone says "hydrogen powered this" or "ethanol powered that". There's another story posted today about converting CO2 to aviation fuel. That's interesting because no one has a plausible suggestion how to make long range electrical passenger planes at any sort of reasonable price.
In terms of vehicles, that's my original point about hydrogen seeming to be a dead end. Like it or not, the industry has largely decided batteries are a better approach than fuel cells so ther
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:4, Informative)
Currently, the price for 1 kilogram of CO2 is about $5. While water is comparatively cheap, Methanol as a fuel will be not, especially if it is supposed to be made from atmospheric CO2, and you have to have a very cheap source of energy to create the Methanol.
In general, energy from synthetic Methanol (or any other types of synthetic fuel) will cost about 3-5 times the amount electric energy costs. It will only be viable where direct electric power is out of question.
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OTOH, CO2 is a by-product of the industrial gas industry.
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]–25%25).
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George Olah (Nobel Laureate) invented a catalyst to easily convert CO2 plus water to methanol and set up a seaside demo unit with solar panels to run the thing.
He was very bullish on methanol fuel cells and using existing gas station infrastructure for distribution.
Funny. There was another article posted an hour ago about exactly that. I expect it's much harder to do at scale and at a reasonable price than Olah expects. We'll see. If he succeeds, that will be quite interesting.
The Total State made sure that such projects can't get funding. Too many people with too much to lose.
That's one possibility. The other is that it's harder to do that it seems. If Olah really has a plausible process and business case, I'm sure there's someone who will fund a plant. He doesn't have to convince every investor, he just as to find one.
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think energy is the problem. Fuel IS energy, bound densely in a transportable and storable form. You either get it from a natural reserve (like oil) or you have to make it yourself some other way, by inputting the energy to be stored, and that will ALWAYS involve collection, concentration, and conversion of energy, and that will never be "cheap", because ultimately all "cheap" means is "not requiring a lot of energy". And as we're finally coming to terms with, you can't just keep relying on conveniently collected, concentrated, and packaged energy laying around just waiting to be picked up.
When it comes right down to it, we may NEVER find a more convenient and energy-dense form of fuel than gasoline. (or other hydrocarbons) We could be working harder on technology to create gasoline (or some other form of hydrocarbon) from other sources of energy, but the biggest complaint I see is that it's too expensive to make. IE it requires more energy input. But it creates a more energy-dense fuel, that's easier to transport. But the public doesn't see it as a "good value" yet because there's still a lot of hydrocarbons just lying around to be picked up. That's changing of course, but it's going to be awhile before it reaches the tipping point,
Most chemical fuels are things that can be stored and later combined with oxygen (burned) to release energy. You could even say that the energy isn't in the gasoline or the hydrogen, it's in the oxygen in the air that's the actual fuel, and all we're carrying around is the catalyst to harvest the energy out of the air. Hydrogen is the best thing to combine with oxygen for energy release, and it's he hydrogen in the hydrocarbon that we're using. (but then we have that pesky carbon to get rid of, and we choose to release it into the air as CO2 instead of say, storing or recycling it, because it's more convenient)
But that carbon is very useful in increasing energy density by tying that hydrogen down so we can store it as a liquid instead of as a gas. We just traded problems, we got rid of the pesky carbon, but now we have to store our fuel as a gas. It really wasn't a very good trade-off, just look at all the problems that hydrogen has that gasoline lacks.
Getting back to your comment though, hydrogen generation by hydrolysis has NEVER been "cheap" because you're storing just about the maximum amount of energy by splitting hydrogen from water. It will ALWAYS take a lot of energy input because that's what you're doing - concentrating and packaging energy. Energy IS the product. The problem boils down to exactly two things: (1) find an abundant source of energy, and (2) reduce inefficiencies in the packing process. That's it, just those two things. Solar is a no-brainer for power but the middle east is naturally using their oil to do it. That's not a long-term solution of course. As for efficiency, we're already pretty good at that, there's not a lot less to optimize.
So what that means is it's NOT going to get "cheaper", because we're nearing the theoretical max. It only LOOKS like we might be able to get the cost down because of how expensive it currently is. The requirement for energy input is NOT negotiable. So almost all of hydrogen's production cost is a fixed-cost, that can never be reduced.
In summary, hydrogen will NEVER be a "cheap" source of energy. It's already very close to its theoretical lowest "price". All that can happen now is the cost of production of OTHER fuels will continue to rise, making hydrogen look better.
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We already have market conditions from time to time when price of energy is negative
Those are weird fluke events that rarely happen. Assuming that free energy will be available is not a reasonable basis for a national energy policy.
The surpluses are local and transient and will fade as we improve the grid with more HVDC lines. Rather than use supply spikes for hydrogen, they can be used to top off BEVs.
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The electricity costs more than the hydrogen you're selling.
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:4, Insightful)
Electrolysis is quite energy intensive, even if you limited yourself to the brief periods of electricity surplus. No, It's even cheaper to produce hydrogen from methane with Steam methane reforming (SMR). Because of this, most hydrogen is not "green". And the industry has failed to secure the same government protections that other technologies have received. We're all-in on EVs now, for better or worse.
Re:More uncertain future? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the [hydrogen] industry has failed to secure the same government protections that other technologies have received. We're all-in on EVs now, for better or worse.
I'd almost say the opposite; hydrogen has gotten way too much support from the government. Because of the density and storage problems, it really is not practical for vehicles, but the government keeps supporting it.
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Density and storage are a problem with EVs as well on vehicle. Hydrogen has faster refueling times and currently longer range. The problems of storage at a hydrogen refilling station parallel the problems that EV charging stations have with electrical capacity and grid infrastructure. A pressurized hydrogen tank takes some good materials science to make it lightweight and safe. But the same could be said of an EV's battery pack.
Speaking in the long term, I think EV is the most flexible option. Electricity i
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The theoretical advantage would be on road trips. If
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Ummmm... electrolysis?
Electrolysis isn't cheap. Even if you have fluke market swings that allow you to take advantage of free electricity the up front cost of an electrolyser and the risk of operating it is incredibly high, to say nothing of the utilities around it such as water RO plants needed to get pure water into the things.
How much cheaper than literally below zero do you want?
Total Cost of Ownership matters including construction and risk.
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Electrolysis fails the "cheap" proviso, because it is extremely energy intensive.
At present the only economical way to generate hydrogen at anything larger than benchtop scale is steam reformation of natural gas, which in fact produces the majority of the world's commercial hydrogen supply. This unfortunately generates one CO2 molecule for every four H2 molecules generated. Hydrogen produced this way is called "gray hydrogen" because it's not quite as dirty as hydrogen produced from coal gasification (so c
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That sounds complicated. The cheapest form of hydrogen is "white" or natural hydrogen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Turns out the stuff is in the ground just waiting to be released by drilling for it. It first turned up by accident in 1921 and till now the result has been to simply plug the wells and move on.
Who could have predicted (Score:2)
This is one of the most clear cases I can think of, other than most dot-com startups from the '90s, where even a back-of-the-napkin due diligence review of the business plan would show that the operation would never be competitive.
And that includes the fact that, as far as I can recall, I never saw anyone write about the reliability of the equipment itself.
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This is one of the most clear cases I can think of, other than most dot-com startups from the '90s, where even a back-of-the-napkin due diligence review of the business plan would show that the operation would never be competitive.
And that includes the fact that, as far as I can recall, I never saw anyone write about the reliability of the equipment itself.
Your first statement is spot-on. In addition to the business plan, there is the fact that hydrogen by itself is not a good fuel, and fuel cells for transportation have problems all of their own.
It's the age of 3-D animation, an authoritative narrator, allowing people who have no technical acument to suddenly become geniuses, and to belittle and attack anyone who dares to question the white paper. We end up dealing with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Trigger alert - it's a Thunderfoot video, whi
Good (Score:2)
Hydrogen as a fuel is a stupid proposition to me still. I don't need effort and money wasted on it at this point.
And let's be honest. from THAT part it wasn't ever going to be more than lip service anyway. "Look, everyone, we're doing SOMETHING! We're not the bad guys, see?"
Something interesting was brought to my attention in a youtube comment. Yeah, I was shocked, too. That person's argument was that if we turned our life around this isntant and stopped burning dead dinosaurs in lieu of hydrogen... what im
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Water vapor is really not a big comparative problem with hydrogen because it's not like gasoline cars don't produce water vapor. On cold mornings you will literally see the condensed water dripping (and/or pouring) out of tailpipes. It's all the other things, like producing it and storing it.
Agreed that hydrogen is suited towards stationary applications. Also, it might make sense for some military use.
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Hydrogen as a fuel is a stupid proposition to me still.
It wasn't if you were to believe that solar/wind power could be used for the electrolysis and cryogenic storage of hydrogen. But that never came to be.
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It wasn't if you were to believe that solar/wind power could be used for the electrolysis and cryogenic storage of hydrogen. But that never came to be.
No it still is. Hydrogen presents an insane risk for storage and transportation. The idea of hydrogen was to replace gasoline, that means replacing fuel stations, that means storage bullets of one of our most volatile gasses in built up areas.
I'm working on a hydrogen project now, a fuel station. We imposed a siting requirement that it is 300m away from any commercial or residential building. That's how to safely build hydrogen refuelling stations. Do you think people would be happy with their hydrogen vehi
Water vapor [Re:Good] (Score:3)
p>Something interesting was brought to my attention in a youtube comment. Yeah, I was shocked, too. That person's argument was that if we turned our life around this isntant and stopped burning dead dinosaurs in lieu of hydrogen... what impact would all that water vapor have on our climate?
Quick answer is: no effect.
Water vapor condenses and leaves the atmosphere in the form of rain.
The main determinant of water vapor content of the atmosphere is temperature (Keep in mind, we have 150 million square miles of ocean directly exposed to the atmosphere that evaporates more quickly if the temperature rises, and more slowly when the atmosphere is cooler.)
But, directly injecting water vapor in the atmopshere? No, not a problem; it condenses out. So you can rest easy about that one particular thing,
More green scams (Score:2)
Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply?
CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2
That's how.
Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
Re:More green scams (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument is that hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis, and this is a well known technology, so if we had the infrastructure to use it, it would be easy to evolve this into a solar-powered transportation infrastructure.
The good thing is that it's a great fit for solar power; you produce hydrogen when you have excess energy, and don't when you don't. The bad news is that hydrogen is really a terrible fuel for vehicles, because the storage density is so lousy.
It was a dumb idea from the start.
Re: More green scams (Score:2)
The reaction above can be run backwards, and exothermically at that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
If you can make green hydrogen, you cangey green hydrocarbon fuels for free. Either way, hydrogen is dumb, batteries are questionable at best for the foreseeable future, and hydrocarbons have a century and a half of investments in them that would need to be rebuilt from scratch if "decarbonization" is to happen.
Re: More green scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Whale oil lamps had a century and a half of investments in them, too. Technologies change; Infrastructure changes. Don't expect it to change overnight, but it changes.
Re: More green scams (Score:2)
My point exactly. The way the politicos and the true believers are talking, it's just policy that's preventing an overnight decarbonization of everything from home heating to transportation, not economics or technological limitations.
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It seems we are in agreement.
We can't and shouldn't expect change to be immediate.
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Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply?
CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2
That's how.
Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford? WW2 era German synthetic fuel? Coal? Wood gas? Prayer? Folding the tents and reverting to horse drawn technology?
Not one of the methods of propulsion are some sort of everlasting and perfect solution, not even the god of fuels, petrochemicals.
Hydrogen as a fuel sucks, Fuels like diesel and gasoline have incredible energy density - doesn't get much better than those fuels. But just shitting on everything else as a fai
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What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford?
Fermentation/distillation of various agricultural inputs to produce ethanol. Diversion of various vegetable oils to produce bio-diesel.
We'll just have to keep people from eating our motor vehicle fuels.
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What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford?
Fermentation/distillation of various agricultural inputs to produce ethanol. Diversion of various vegetable oils to produce bio-diesel.
We'll just have to keep people from eating our motor vehicle fuels.
I suspect that was tongue in cheek. But if not. Assuming that there will be more war - killing other humans is a core competency - is the plan to have people stave to death to feed the war machines?
Even so, we are depleting a lot of land resources just to feed all 8 billion of us. Attempting to e service an economy where it is a mark of patriotism to drive 10 mpg Pickup trucks is almost certainly not goiing to allow the patriots to roll coal - or will it be rolling french fries?
And funny, the so called
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I'm at Red Lobster, eating the free cheddar biscuits. You keep bringing plates of shit to the table and each time I tell you those plates are shitty and I'll stick with the cheddar biscuits.
It doesn't mean I think the cheddar biscuits will continue forever or are a complete balanced diet. It just means everything else you've offered is shit.
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I'm at Red Lobster, eating the free cheddar biscuits. You keep bringing plates of shit to the table and each time I tell you those plates are shitty and I'll stick with the cheddar biscuits.
It doesn't mean I think the cheddar biscuits will continue forever or are a complete balanced diet. It just means everything else you've offered is shit.
You took a lot of words to say that you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.
But that does happen a lot - A friend who was a die hard Trumper, had this to say about energy. "Fuck people in the future, I don't give a fuck about people - they can fuck off and die. Not my problem. I want my fuel, I want it now, I want it cheap, and I don't give a fuck about anyone else."
In keeping with his outlook, when he died of alcohol induced liver problems - we didn't attend or honor him.
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Re: More green scams (Score:2)
What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford
Assuming that this happens naturally as opposed to by political diktat, my answer is that people will steer themselves toward alternatives that suit their needs. Some of that will be all electric, some will involve synthetic hydrocarbons, and some of that may be something I can't imagine right now, like a new technology or a voluntary cultural shift.
Point being it's going to happen more efficiently and more durably as a result of the wisdom of gradual distributed decision-making and innovation rather than b
Re:More green scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
Sure, as soon as gasoline cars also start accounting for all the emissions the surveying, extraction, refining and transport of the gasoline make up and put that into the price and emissions ratings at the pump.
No carbon tax means all energy sources are "a scam" not just the ones you don't like because of politics.
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Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
A battery EV charged by a coal power plant has an overall efficiency of a post-2019 ICE car working in perfect condition.
A battery EV charged by the power grid has an overall efficiency greatly exceeding the theoretical maximum efficiency or an ICE engine.
At least you picked a suitable name for yourself.
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Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
No. Both heatpumps and EVs are far more efficient and have lower lifetime emissions even if you power them from coal and oil. You're just ignorant.
Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply? CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2
Is this the same fossil fuels industry that is investing an insane amounts of of money in hydrogen electrolysis, including at refineries where they want to turn SMRs into load followers rather than primary hydrogen generators? You're just ignorant.
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> Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.
Nearly all heating in my province is pure electric. A heat pump takes less electricity to produce the same amount of heat as an electric heater. Nearly everybody is going to have an air conditioner anyway, and heat pumps have only a small additional cost (if any) over an air conditioner. How is that anything other than a pure win?
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H2 vehicles are a scam, many of us have been saying so frequently all along, myself among them.
Electric vehicles are greener than ICEVs even in the really real world now, especially if you use LFP batteries (oh noes 5% less range)
There is a real need for more fast charging stations in general, but otherwise EVs are pretty good. Battery DRM is also offensive, we need to fix that.
The only chance for hydrogen is trucking (Score:2)
Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane) so it suffers far less from chicken and egg problems. Once the infrastructure for that exists, hydrogen range extenders for light duty vehicles can piggy back on it. For when you want to tow your boat cross country.
For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too. For EV trucks to charge during mandatory breaks, you need multi-MW of
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Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane)
cryogenic methane is 111.7 Kelvin. Hydrogen liquidus point is 20 Kelvin.
They are not even vaguely the same problem.
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Material wise, not the same problem. Insulation wise, pretty close really.
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Material wise, not the same problem. Insulation wise, pretty close really.
Insulation wise, not even close. A factor of five in temperature (absolute) makes a big difference in heat leak.
and the factor of 6 difference is density is significant.
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You are dividing from the wrong side. For thermal conductance the difference between room temperature and storage temperature is what matters.
So 280/190 ~= 1.5 more heat leaking in for the same insulation. As I said, pretty close.
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Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane) so it suffers far less from chicken and egg problems. Once the infrastructure for that exists, hydrogen range extenders for light duty vehicles can piggy back on it. For when you want to tow your boat cross country.
For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too. For EV trucks to charge during mandatory breaks, you need multi-MW of charging and that will mean truck stops will need either massive grid connections or massive battery banks. The capital expenditure to build out EV trucking outside of short haul, frequent stop niches are equally as eye watering as hydrogen cost.
I agree short haul is best near term, but long haul right now assumes you use the same tractor on a trip. A trucking company could very well have spare tractors so driver pulls I, starts recharge and pulls of in different tractor. That then becomes a scheduling issue to minimize wait times and number of backup tractors. Trailers could also evolve to have batteries to extend range. If the costs of alternate solutions is less than that of current solution the industry will evolve. The challenge for hydrog
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Trucks can reasonably accommodate battery swaps, because the frame is easily accessible. Leasing access to charged batteries is especially reasonable for fleets. Heavy trucks and even some buses (though full frame transit buses are all but extinct) could easily use swapped batteries. This could make EV trucking a lot more feasible.
Unlikely. (Score:2)
hydrogen range extenders
Those aren't going to happen because it requires energy just to keep the hydrogen compressed.
The other thing is that you miss out on the big advantage requiring minimal amounts of maintenance that you get from battery EVs.
For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too.
This presumes that long-haul trucking will remain unabated. The truth is automation could replace truckers or trains could supplant them. Never say never.
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Yes, it requires energy to keep hydrogen liquid at ambient pressure (you don't let it pressurise, because then it becomes a supercritical fluid, for which all those scary "heats up while evaporating" scare stories are true, but which aren't actually relevant because you don't let it pressurise). So you fuel up what you think you will need for your trip and if a bit evaporates, so be it. It's just a range extender, the EV pickup truck hauling your boat will still have a battery.
Or maybe the truck fueling sta
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Of course the real answer to long haul trucking is none, electric trains are a fair better option, and the average motorist would be happy to see large trucks gone from highways.
Hydrogen is a promising research area (Score:2)
...but a LOT more work needs to be done
Compressed hydrogen is inefficient and liquid is nearly impossible to handle
Ammonia may be a good approach, but much work needs to be done
Solar production and solid state storage are excellent long term goals
The push to rush compressed hydrogen into production is driven by oil and gas companies, trying to appear "green" while maintaining much of their old infrastructure
Re:Hydrogen is a promising research area (Score:4, Interesting)
Liquid hydrogen is already the preferred method for distribution and storage, even when end use is gaseous. The hydrogen forklift industry has done the impossible in that regard it seems, or maybe impossible is a bit too strongly worded.
Ammonia accidents are pretty fucking horrible, I don't think it's viable to increase ammonia road transport by many orders of magnitude. Formic acid maybe. The problem is that on top of pure hydrogen, you need pure CO2 and the hydrogen is already expensive.
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Liquid hydrogen is already the preferred method for distribution and storage
Liquid hydrogen is the best of what limited research in an very tiny industry has come up with to date. It becomes wildly difficult to do at scale, which is precisely why the fossil fuels industry is looking into ammonia cracking as an alternative, despite the insane risks that ammonia present.
In reality there is no good way of doing this. One of the great things about hydrogen is we can make it anywhere we can get clean water. Hydrogen fuel stations are a fantasy that won't ever take off, the risk is too g
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In reality hydrogen forklifts are operating commercially.
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You seem to have missed a critical part of my post: Scale. There's a big difference to filling up a tank on a couple of forklifts and having hundreds of petrol station filling 10s of thousands of cars in every city.
Hydrogen in small scale is simple and relatively safe. Forklifts do not necessitate large trucks driving liquid hydrogen around loading and unloading large storage tanks in built up areas serving customers loading tanks cryogenically (to speed up the process because fuck knows waiting 15min to fi
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Truck stops aren't generally close to houses, nor are airplane ramps, nor are the docks for large ships. They are all as easily and safely reached and refueled by liquid hydrogen tanker trucks as the warehouses using hydrogen forklifts are now.
If it's safe, it's safe ... if not the warehouses should be blowing up.
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Making formic acid or ammonia, without using natural gas, requires CO2. So you trade easier handleability with even more expensive manufacture relative to hydrogen.
AFAICT (Score:2)
Re:AFAICT (Score:4, Informative)
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The Teflon coating does not "stop any of these effects", it gives you an engineering solution to the problem and a tank you can use for 15 years. It does not give you a tank you can safely use forever.
So, it's about as frequent replacement cycle as batteries in a BEV, at a hundredth of the cost, and with trivial recycling? Long live engineering solutions!
Some one has to be the adult in the room (Score:2)
Can we now please stop all those stupid social media posts about hydrogen being a BEV killer?
The shoe drops (Score:5, Insightful)
Another heavily subsidy wasted project (Score:2)
Law of Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
This is an illustration (as if another one was needed) of the well-known Law of Unintended Consequences [upenn.edu]. Policies ALWAYS have consequences, and given that the brightest people in society tend to go into business/industry rather than government, government policies are usually made by a mix of corrupt influencers and stupid politicians who together are either incapable or too lazy to see all the spin-off issues that their brightest new ideas will have.
How many Slashdotters remember the story posted here only
Re: Law of Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
Seemed obvious (Score:2)
Is it the year of the linux desktop? No, because there are Windows computers on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
Is it the year of hydrogen? No, because there are power lines on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
Charge against that windmill, Don...
I could _almost_ be tempted to believe hydrogen could become something for aircraft where it could be produced at the same airports where it is fueled without the need for a national infrastructure network.
You know, i
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The Toyota Mirai carries 5 kg of Hydrogen. This cell if ruptured and ignited once expanded into the air at the optimal H2/O2 mixture which occurs at 1 ATM and 25C at around a 6m hemisphere gives a 1.5 kiloton blast.
Let me get this straight. Are you seriously thinking that 5 kg of hydrogen carries the same amount of energy as 1500 000 kg of TNT? Here's a hint: when you're lying, at least make it *somewhat* believeable.
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You are right, it is 1.5 ton TNT, not kiloton (of unspecified units so I could stupidly defend with milligrams of TNT) -- but that is a big potential blast from a car wreck that you just cannot get from a liquid fuel. My fingers just typed kiloton from habit.
1.5 ton of TNT -- that's still a huge amount of explosive force. Far more than I want to be around.
I was at a New Year's Eve celebration where they lit off single sticks of dynamite. ... And in came the ambulances.
Hydrogen is explosive at STP. Gasoline is not. There are many, many good reasons the primary fuel of choice is gasoline for internal combustion. Ease and relative safety of handling are among them.
Re: 5kg H2 is a 1.5 Kiloton potential blast (Score:2)
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That's not right either. It's ~150kg. To be clear that is nothing to be scoffed at. It will still cause structural damage to every building in the street along with removing the car from existence, but your math was way off.
Actually the real issue with hydrogen is not the energy of the explosion, but it's ignitability (it will ignite, guaranteed) and it's heat of combustion. Together they insure that not only will a hydrogen cloud ignite but it will detonate, not just deflagrate like most other gasses in op
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Here's a hint. Hydrogen is so much lighter than air, it doesn't stick around to mix with it, and look for spark to set it off, it just immediately shoots straight up. Just like a hydrogen balloon if you're careless and
Re: 5kg H2 is a 1.5 Kiloton potential blast (Score:3)