General > General Technical Chat
the dark side of cobalt
tom66:
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on July 09, 2023, 04:21:12 pm ---All a waste of time anyway, batteries can never have the energy density to match fossil fuels, and in transport applications that really matters. If we want to get fossil fuels out of transport the only hope is hydrogen fuel cells (or hydrogen combustion engines), and the only way to achieve that is to build up the fuelling station infrastructure necessary. [...]
--- End quote ---
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a joke that no one is laughing at. And don't even get me started about hydrogen internal combustion. The emissions from NOx and the terrible efficiency, even worse than fuel cells, means that it makes even less sense.
Batteries make far more sense for electric vehicles.
If you do the maths on the infrastructure required for EVs you will see that if every passenger car switched overnight we'd need approx 15-20% more electricity to be generated. That isn't nothing, but it's also not ridiculous to expect the grid to grow by such a size by 2040 or so by which time the vast majority of cars will be electric.
Meanwhile if we produced truly green hydrogen from electrolysis the production method would require around 3x more electricity, plus another 10% of that to compress and distribute hydrogen. You also need to fill the country with hydrogen filling stations which are not trivial constructions. EV chargers (slow types) just need an AC grid connection, though it's not free it's not anywhere near as complicated as the infrastructure required for hydrogen.
tom66:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 10, 2023, 12:44:03 pm ---If the price of cobalt or political pressure of using it becomes a problem, then we will see shift to those others chemistries whenever their performance is sufficient. Tesla is already producing LFP cars too, which was considered to be too low on energy density just a few years ago, and their owners seem to be quite happy about them. They have less range than the NCA-based models but still a lot more than the earlier generation EVs.
--- End quote ---
Worth also noting that a Chinese manufacturer has just launched a sodium-ion battery car. Sodium is even more abundant than lithium. The energy density of the sodium-ion battery is said to be comparable to LFP. Early days, but a very interesting technology.
https://www.electrive.com/2023/04/17/chery-becomes-launch-customer-for-catls-sodium-ion-batteries/
fastbike:
Regardless of energy source, current levels of consumption critical resources of are unsustainable.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
The irresponsible mining of Cobalt is just a symptom of a dysfunctional economic system
AVGresponding:
--- Quote from: tom66 on July 10, 2023, 02:10:04 pm ---
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on July 09, 2023, 04:21:12 pm ---All a waste of time anyway, batteries can never have the energy density to match fossil fuels, and in transport applications that really matters. If we want to get fossil fuels out of transport the only hope is hydrogen fuel cells (or hydrogen combustion engines), and the only way to achieve that is to build up the fuelling station infrastructure necessary. [...]
--- End quote ---
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a joke that no one is laughing at. And don't even get me started about hydrogen internal combustion. The emissions from NOx and the terrible efficiency, even worse than fuel cells, means that it makes even less sense.
Batteries make far more sense for electric vehicles.
If you do the maths on the infrastructure required for EVs you will see that if every passenger car switched overnight we'd need approx 15-20% more electricity to be generated. That isn't nothing, but it's also not ridiculous to expect the grid to grow by such a size by 2040 or so by which time the vast majority of cars will be electric.
Meanwhile if we produced truly green hydrogen from electrolysis the production method would require around 3x more electricity, plus another 10% of that to compress and distribute hydrogen. You also need to fill the country with hydrogen filling stations which are not trivial constructions. EV chargers (slow types) just need an AC grid connection, though it's not free it's not anywhere near as complicated as the infrastructure required for hydrogen.
--- End quote ---
Please demonstrate the maths for this claim. I work for a local authority as a sparks and I have some knowledge of the difficulties we're facing in our plan to change the fleet to full EV; our infrastructure alone will require a very large (>£100m) capital investment to be able to handle this, and that's for just a few hundred vehicles.
nctnico:
Let's not go there again. EV zealots keep making bold claims and ignoring hydrogen is becoming the new oil rather quickly. Realistically there will be a surplus of hydrogen which is generated during the summer using excess electricity which would be unused otherwise. That hydrogen needs to be used somewhere and transportation is a good use case. Just sit back and wait for the outcome :popcorn:
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