Author Topic: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”  (Read 43893 times)

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Offline PlainName

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #300 on: March 29, 2022, 09:52:55 pm »
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I think there's some regulation that these pumping stations need to be monitored, that's why they don't activate immediately when you lift the nozzle.  Someone is probably checking CCTV somewhere, but you could serve ten petrol stations with one CCTV attendant pretty easily, so it may well all be remote.  Not certain but that would be my guess.

Could well be. I noticed the Tesco one has CCTV but they are pointing at the queues rather than pumps (which is not to say there isn't one aimed there, just that I can't see one). But I don't think the nozzle thing is right since the nozzle won't work until you've entered your card details (and had them accepted). IME there doesn't seem to be any delay but, of course, that could be due to them getting ready to hit the button while I've been fumbling my loyalty care and debit cards :)
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #301 on: March 29, 2022, 10:23:47 pm »
The pumps are not being enabled manually either way. It just takes time for the system to register what is going on.

What happens when you enter your debit/credit card on an unmanned station: the pump is enabled for a certain amount that is being reserved from your card. The typical amount I've seen is 150 euro (or less if there is less money in your account). The pump is then enabled to give out fuel up to that amount. When you need less than that amount, the remaining amount is credited and the final amount is being withdrawn from your account.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2022, 10:25:33 pm by nctnico »
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Offline emece67

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #302 on: March 29, 2022, 10:25:58 pm »
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« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 05:28:19 pm by emece67 »
 

Online tom66

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #303 on: March 29, 2022, 10:32:38 pm »
I wonder if, someday, I could trickle H2 into my car, H2 that I produced locally from my PV panels (or wind generator, or...).

H2 cars are 35MPa or 70MPa fuelled, so require equipment about the size of a car to just pressurise that.  Rather difficult to imagine that happening at home.

One method would be to charge up the small battery that most H2 cars have, if you didn't expect to produce much energy.  I seem to recall the Toyota Mirai has a 2kWh Li-Ion battery on board which is used to buffer the output from the fuel cell.  Fuel cells tend to be rather lethargic in ramping up production so the battery fills in the demand, and of course offers regen braking too.

...but then that's basically just a plug in hydrogen EV, which is a weird concept.
 
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Offline Miyuki

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #304 on: March 30, 2022, 07:21:04 pm »
I wonder if, someday, I could trickle H2 into my car, H2 that I produced locally from my PV panels (or wind generator, or...).

H2 cars are 35MPa or 70MPa fuelled, so require equipment about the size of a car to just pressurise that.  Rather difficult to imagine that happening at home.

One method would be to charge up the small battery that most H2 cars have, if you didn't expect to produce much energy.  I seem to recall the Toyota Mirai has a 2kWh Li-Ion battery on board which is used to buffer the output from the fuel cell.  Fuel cells tend to be rather lethargic in ramping up production so the battery fills in the demand, and of course offers regen braking too.

...but then that's basically just a plug in hydrogen EV, which is a weird concept.
35MPa is not a huge issue
Look at Scuba tanks, they are commonly pressured to 30MPa with a small portable unit
I know it works with air so it is a safer medium
But technically it is not an issue at all
 

Online coppice

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #305 on: March 30, 2022, 07:29:58 pm »
I wonder if, someday, I could trickle H2 into my car, H2 that I produced locally from my PV panels (or wind generator, or...).

H2 cars are 35MPa or 70MPa fuelled, so require equipment about the size of a car to just pressurise that.  Rather difficult to imagine that happening at home.

One method would be to charge up the small battery that most H2 cars have, if you didn't expect to produce much energy.  I seem to recall the Toyota Mirai has a 2kWh Li-Ion battery on board which is used to buffer the output from the fuel cell.  Fuel cells tend to be rather lethargic in ramping up production so the battery fills in the demand, and of course offers regen braking too.

...but then that's basically just a plug in hydrogen EV, which is a weird concept.
35MPa is not a huge issue
Look at Scuba tanks, they are commonly pressured to 30MPa with a small portable unit
I know it works with air so it is a safer medium
But technically it is not an issue at all
Have you seen the tanks in the Mirai and Nexo? They operate at 70MPa, rather than 35, but they are huge tanks with a small capacity. Hydrogen is much harder to deal with than air for scuba tanks. Those tiny hydrogen molecules leak through things that seal up tightly for air. The safety requirements are on a different scale, too. If an air tank blows up its dangerous, but leaks are mostly harmless. Anything that isn't just right with hydrogen is dangerous.
 

Online tom66

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #306 on: March 30, 2022, 07:49:56 pm »
35MPa is not a huge issue
Look at Scuba tanks, they are commonly pressured to 30MPa with a small portable unit
I know it works with air so it is a safer medium
But technically it is not an issue at all

Hydrogen is cryogenic at 35/70MPa.  That's nothing like air.

Have you seen the equipment at hydrogen stations?   The equipment is enormous - and expensive. Could it be reduced in size?  Almost certainly, but it is still not a trivial piece of equipment.  Not to mention the power consumption.  This source suggests a power consumption of 140-300kW for a compressor motor.  https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/58564.pdf  (pg 24)  Perhaps you could reduce that by reducing the hydrogen production rate, but it is still likely to be substantial.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #307 on: March 30, 2022, 07:58:30 pm »
35MPa is not a huge issue
Look at Scuba tanks, they are commonly pressured to 30MPa with a small portable unit
I know it works with air so it is a safer medium
But technically it is not an issue at all

Hydrogen is cryogenic at 35/70MPa.  That's nothing like air.

Have you seen the equipment at hydrogen stations?   The equipment is enormous - and expensive. Could it be reduced in size?  Almost certainly, but it is still not a trivial piece of equipment.  Not to mention the power consumption.  This source suggests a power consumption of 140-300kW for a compressor motor.  https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/58564.pdf  (pg 24)  Perhaps you could reduce that by reducing the hydrogen production rate, but it is still likely to be substantial.
But these installations are setup for large amounts of hydrogen. You can buy >2MW air compressors as well. It just depends on how much volume you need to compress in which amount of time. The report also lists costs per kg of hydrogen. Those are much more interesting but are likely outdated due to the age of the report. The high number is US $1.5 per kg which translates to about US $0.02 per km assuming travelling a conservative 80km (*) per kg of hydrogen.

* Toyota claims their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles travel 100km on 1kg of hydrogen. WLTP results for Mirai show 0.79kg per 100km.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 08:20:08 pm by nctnico »
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Online rstofer

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #308 on: March 30, 2022, 08:27:52 pm »
I view the fuel cell as the same as LPG (propane):  Fine for fleet use from a central service yard, not very practical elsewhere.  City buses, maybe taxis (if Uber doesn't wipe them out), other governmental vehicles - these will all work fine on a fuel cell.  I don't see the day when there will be fuel cell charging stations on street corners.

Even our grocery store has installed about a dozen charging stations.  I haven't been to the store since COVID started but one day I'll look into it.

With an 8 kW solar array, I was driving my Spark EV for $0.05/mile.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 08:29:57 pm by rstofer »
 
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Offline Marco

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #309 on: March 30, 2022, 08:42:58 pm »
If no other solution is found, I could see cryogenic hydrogen replace cryogenic LNG for long distance trucking.

Cryogenic LNG is a proven system, the increased losses and cooling requirements for hydrogen will make it more expensive, but it's still all in the same ballpark. If push comes to shove and fossil is plain banned the options are limited.
 

Online coppice

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #310 on: March 30, 2022, 09:17:46 pm »
But these installations are setup for large amounts of hydrogen.
Actually they are not. Try looking at videos on YouTube of people trying the hydrogen stations in California. They either arrive when things are very quiet, and fill up in 5 minutes, or they arrive when the station is busy, and have a long wait because it can take 20 to 30 minutes to fill each car when the system doesn't have time to recover between cars.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #311 on: March 30, 2022, 09:29:40 pm »
But these installations are setup for large amounts of hydrogen.
Actually they are not. Try looking at videos on YouTube of people trying the hydrogen stations in California. They either arrive when things are very quiet, and fill up in 5 minutes, or they arrive when the station is busy, and have a long wait because it can take 20 to 30 minutes to fill each car when the system doesn't have time to recover between cars.
And what kind of compressor is installed at such a station? Without numbers you can't make meaningfull comparisons.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online tom66

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #312 on: March 30, 2022, 10:30:55 pm »
Well, that source I linked suggests a production rate of 63kg/h for a compressor of 177kW.  If we assume every car is filled empty to full (the Mirai holds up to 5kg though an undisclosed amount is 'reserved'), then the station can do about 10-12 cars per hour without downtime.  I assume that if you want to have something close to a petrol station flow rate you'd need about 60 cars per hour, so you're looking at 1MW grid connections for the compressors -alone-.  That kind of makes the argument that superchargers will present grid connectivity issues a bit moot.  That's also ~15kWh of embedded energy per fill-up on compressor power alone, which surely further impacts efficiency.

I do think hydrogen has a good future in trucking, trains, longer-distance buses and possibly even aircraft;  big batteries for these applications are expensive, or for aircraft downright impractical.  For cars though, hydrogen has never made much sense.  There are only a few edge cases where it makes sense but the additional cost and infrastructure required just rule it out.    Above anything else the fact that only Toyota is really following the technology says it more than anything else IMO. 
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 10:34:05 pm by tom66 »
 

Offline emece67

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #313 on: March 30, 2022, 10:37:00 pm »
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« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 05:28:10 pm by emece67 »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #314 on: March 30, 2022, 11:09:06 pm »
I do think hydrogen has a good future in trucking, trains, longer-distance buses and possibly even aircraft;  big batteries for these applications are expensive, or for aircraft downright impractical.  For cars though, hydrogen has never made much sense.  There are only a few edge cases where it makes sense but the additional cost and infrastructure required just rule it out.    Above anything else the fact that only Toyota is really following the technology says it more than anything else IMO.

Hydrogen for aircraft *might* make sense, but I suspect it will only be practical to burn it rather than using a fuel cell to generate electricity. The latter might work in a light plane but I don't think it's going to scale up to the many megawatts required to propel an airliner. Hydrogen for cars is already dead and has been for years, the battle is already over and BEV is absolutely dominating the scene. As far as I know there are only a small handful of hydrogen filling stations in my entire country and all of them are located in California, a backwards place where political idealism and fantasy almost always trumps practical considerations.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #315 on: March 31, 2022, 12:46:01 am »
Well, that source I linked suggests a production rate of 63kg/h for a compressor of 177kW.  If we assume every car is filled empty to full (the Mirai holds up to 5kg though an undisclosed amount is 'reserved'), then the station can do about 10-12 cars per hour without downtime.  I assume that if you want to have something close to a petrol station flow rate you'd need about 60 cars per hour, so you're looking at 1MW grid connections for the compressors -alone-.  That kind of makes the argument that superchargers will present grid connectivity issues a bit moot.  That's also ~15kWh of embedded energy per fill-up on compressor power alone, which surely further impacts efficiency.
Cost wise the impact of compressing the hydrogen is minimal so efficiency doesn't matter here. As I wrote before: thinking in efficiency leads to nowhere. Think in cost per km instead.

When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #316 on: March 31, 2022, 01:07:58 am »
When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.

You're never going to have hydrogen on-site, it isn't something that is naturally occurring in pure form, you have to "make" it by extracting it from other compounds. It makes even less sense to use hydrogen for land based energy storage than it does to use it to fuel moving vehicles. At least with a vehicle energy density, weight and filling time matter to varying degrees, on land you're better off using a big pile of batteries, even if they're something bulky and heavy like lead acid.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #317 on: March 31, 2022, 01:49:02 am »
When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.

You're never going to have hydrogen on-site, it isn't something that is naturally occurring in pure form, you have to "make" it by extracting it from other compounds. It makes even less sense to use hydrogen for land based energy storage than it does to use it to fuel moving vehicles. At least with a vehicle energy density, weight and filling time matter to varying degrees, on land you're better off using a big pile of batteries, even if they're something bulky and heavy like lead acid.
You may think so but how are you going to get the batteries charged somewhere high up a mountain or in the middle of nowhere? Hydrogen can be delivered by truck everywhere as long as there is a road. Also hydrogen is cheaper for storage for periods over 8 hours compared to batteries. Looking at what is being developed and rolled out at the moment, hydrogen is going to play a big part in energy delivery and storage anyway.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online tom66

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #318 on: March 31, 2022, 07:42:35 am »
When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.

Convert hydrogen into electricity on-site - at an efficiency of 60% and with all associated costs of doing so - instead of using a grid connection directly?

Why?  Hydrogen as storage might make some degree of sense (e.g. large grid-scale storage of excess renewables), but grid connections are far cheaper, let someone else worry about doing the conversion. 

Cost per km, hydrogen will always be more expensive than electricity if hydrogen is produced from electricity.  Even when it's produced from natural gas it's about the cost of diesel currently (per km).
« Last Edit: March 31, 2022, 07:44:55 am by tom66 »
 

Offline Miyuki

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #319 on: March 31, 2022, 07:49:14 am »
When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.

You're never going to have hydrogen on-site, it isn't something that is naturally occurring in pure form, you have to "make" it by extracting it from other compounds. It makes even less sense to use hydrogen for land based energy storage than it does to use it to fuel moving vehicles. At least with a vehicle energy density, weight and filling time matter to varying degrees, on land you're better off using a big pile of batteries, even if they're something bulky and heavy like lead acid.
You may think so but how are you going to get the batteries charged somewhere high up a mountain or in the middle of nowhere? Hydrogen can be delivered by truck everywhere as long as there is a road. Also hydrogen is cheaper for storage for periods over 8 hours compared to batteries. Looking at what is being developed and rolled out at the moment, hydrogen is going to play a big part in energy delivery and storage anyway.
Also, it is "easy" to have months worth of energy in hydrogen
Batteries are good for small scale (phones, tools cars) or quick cycles, like day/night cycle
But for long-term storage, like weeks or months. Other methods like hydrogen or maybe flow batteries to some scale are needed.
There is no way to have a battery for 2 months worth of energy next to a house.
Also, there is no way for a truck or ship to have a battery when you want to replace high-efficiency ICE which is commonly over 40% and can reach over 50% efficiency for long hauls
 

Online nctnico

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #320 on: March 31, 2022, 12:01:40 pm »
When you have hydrogen on-site it makes no sense to have a big grid connection. Convert it to electricity on-site.

Convert hydrogen into electricity on-site - at an efficiency of 60% and with all associated costs of doing so - instead of using a grid connection directly?

Why?  Hydrogen as storage might make some degree of sense (e.g. large grid-scale storage of excess renewables), but grid connections are far cheaper, let someone else worry about doing the conversion. 

Cost per km, hydrogen will always be more expensive than electricity if hydrogen is produced from electricity.
No. If you look at electricity prices and public charging costs it is easy to see that the charging infrastructure costs make up for the majority of the costs. At a fast charger I need to pay about 80 eurocents per kWh. That kWh costs 6 cents or so to buy in bulk.

Looking at the plans that are in motion and what is being planned where it comes to hydrogen production by countries that have large deserts, it is too soon to claim anything. Keep in mind that a solar panel in a desert in North Africa or North Australia gets more than twice the amount of energy from the sun compared to a panel located somewhere in the UK or the NL. So theoretically a kWh from a solar panel in the desert costs half.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2022, 02:55:03 pm by nctnico »
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Offline james_s

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #321 on: April 03, 2022, 12:19:36 am »
Also, it is "easy" to have months worth of energy in hydrogen
Batteries are good for small scale (phones, tools cars) or quick cycles, like day/night cycle
But for long-term storage, like weeks or months. Other methods like hydrogen or maybe flow batteries to some scale are needed.
There is no way to have a battery for 2 months worth of energy next to a house.
Also, there is no way for a truck or ship to have a battery when you want to replace high-efficiency ICE which is commonly over 40% and can reach over 50% efficiency for long hauls

Why would you ever need to store 2 months of energy next to a house? Talk about an edge case! For emergency energy it's hard to beat liquid fuel, diesel can be stored on site for years and easily converted into electricity.

Ships? I don't think anything is going to replace oil for a very long time, and when you look at the whole cycle from producing hydrogen to turning it back into electricity the efficiency is abysmal.

Hydrogen is dead, dead dead. It was a stopgap that had a handful of people excited decades ago.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #322 on: April 03, 2022, 01:04:21 am »
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Ships? I don't think anything is going to replace oil for a very long time

Ships run on really dirty stuff though, don't they? They could improve massively and still use oil, albeit not the dead cheap almost unprocessed sort.

There have been some interesting wind-powered ships (or, at least, wind assisted). Again, not going to replace oil but it would cut down on its use, which is better than nowt.
 

Offline Marco

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #323 on: April 03, 2022, 01:12:10 am »
Ships? I don't think anything is going to replace oil for a very long time

Given the choice ... but lets say we arrive at a point where there's a trillion dollar liquid hydrogen market and some regulators interested in drumming up extra business for it, there's always a chance the choice will be taken away. Or maybe courts in some countries hold governments to environmental promises come hell or high water ... like is happening in my country with NOx emissions (the NOx emission limits are economically crippling, but the courts are holding the government to their promises).

Necessity is the mother of invention.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: “Battery EV” vs “Hydrogen Fuel cell EV”
« Reply #324 on: April 03, 2022, 01:40:51 am »
Given the choice ... but lets say we arrive at a point where there's a trillion dollar liquid hydrogen market and some regulators interested in drumming up extra business for it, there's always a chance the choice will be taken away. Or maybe courts in some countries hold governments to environmental promises come hell or high water ... like is happening in my country with NOx emissions (the NOx emission limits are economically crippling, but the courts are holding the government to their promises).

Necessity is the mother of invention.

But there never will be. Hydrogen isn't a fuel, you can't mine it, you have to produce it either by cracking hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water and neither process is efficient. The only way hydrogen even begins to make sense is if you have a massive surplus of cheap electricity.
 


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