I've just watched on the news that a hydrogen powered car is being tested. I'm wondering if that technology would work on trains. Wouldn't it also be cheaper since they could make their own fuel? Or am I misunderstanding anything?
Lone Geep
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You're behind the Times, The Railroads are already on it.
BNSF Railway and Vehicle Projects converted a GG20B to an experimental testbed, for the use of hydrogen fuel cells. The new locomotive is designated HH20B. The locomotive was publicly demonstrated for the first time on June 29, 2009, at Topeka, Kansas.[4][5] The locomotive, BNSF 1205, was built initially for the Canadian Pacific Railway, but was not delivered, due to the cancellation of the order. It was sold to BNSF in 2008, and shipped to the railroad's shops at Topeka, Kansas for conversion. The diesel generator set was removed, and the fuel cell power unit was installed in its place. Hydrogen storage is in a set of tanks installed in a heavily vented enclosure on top of the locomotive's long hood, above the batteries.[6] To date, it is the largest land vehicle on earth to be powered exclusively by hydrogen fuel cells.[7]
The locomotive, BNSF 1205, was built initially for the Canadian Pacific Railway, but was not delivered, due to the cancellation of the order. It was sold to BNSF in 2008, and shipped to the railroad's shops at Topeka, Kansas for conversion. The diesel generator set was removed, and the fuel cell power unit was installed in its place. Hydrogen storage is in a set of tanks installed in a heavily vented enclosure on top of the locomotive's long hood, above the batteries.[6] To date, it is the largest land vehicle on earth to be powered exclusively by hydrogen fuel cells.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Projects_HH20B#Fuel_Cell_Testbed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrail
Are there any results out yet?
lone geep I've just watched on the news that a hydrogen powered car is being tested. I'm wondering if that technology would work on trains. Wouldn't it also be cheaper since they could make their own fuel? Or am I misunderstanding anything?
The technology for using Hydrogen as an energy source for vehicles is still a long way from large scale commercialization. Storing H2 is one of the major issues (it is a "light element" and easily leaks from tanks.). The productionlarge amounts of Hydrogen from water is alo no a mature technology...
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
We need to determine the thermal efficiency of separating water to obtain hydrogen and then an engine using that hydrogen. I suspect that diesels and electric systems burning natural gas ihas better thermal efficiency.??
Stupid , stupid, stupid!!!!! There is NO way that hydrogen can be feasibly produced from water. It consumes more energy than it produces. Commercial hydrogen production is by reformation of methane. Therefore you are still dependent on a fossil fuel and again it is a dead loser in the energy sum total.
Start collecting Manure from Feed Lots and Confinement Farms trust me you will GET all the METHANE you will EVER NEED. Also Landfills Produce a Crapload of it and they even Burn it for Fuel to produce Power.
blue streak 1 We need to determine the thermal efficiency of separating water to obtain hydrogen and then an engine using that hydrogen. I suspect that diesels and electric systems burning natural gas ihas better thermal efficiency.??
The only reason to use hydrogen as a fuel is to use it to run a fuel cell.
A fuel cell takes hydrogen and makes water and electricity. (by magic - at least it seems that way to me....)
Fuel cells have >70% thermal efficiency (they are not heat engines and are not bound by Carnot efficiency). A diesel engine can do about 35% and a spark ignition engine about 25% thermal efficiency. (there are some tricks you can play to squeeze more out of the work out of the waste heat on a heat engine, like turbo compounding, but you are still bound by Carnot, the ratio of the max and min temps available)
So, making hydrogen by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is a fools errand. It costs you more to make the fuel than you can get back in the fuel cell. But, if you can break the carbon-hydrogen bonds in a methane molecule and live within the 40 pct point efficiency spread between fueling a heat engine and a fuel cell, you win!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
There seems to be some development efforts going on involving using Natural gas or even Diesel fuel as a source of Hydrogen to power fuel cells for locomotive use. Currently fuel cells are considerably more expensive than diesel engines per KW but the idea is that a fuel cell is so much more efficient that it would significantly reduce fuel consumption in the long run..
I recall reading that a CSX shareholder introduced a proposition at the RR's annual shareholder's meeting suggesting that the RR start a development program for using diesel fuel in fuel cells as a locomotive power source, but it didn't get far..
carnej1 The technology for using Hydrogen as an energy source for vehicles is still a long way from large scale commercialization. Storing H2 is one of the major issues (it is a "light element" and easily leaks from tanks.). The productionlarge amounts of Hydrogen from water is alo no a mature technology...
On the TV they made the hydrogen from water and solar power. But storing it would still be a problem if the technology would be used at locomotive terminals. Also I don't know how long it would take to make hydrogen and the solar panels would have the same problems as the ones used to make electricity for the grid. Thank you for your replies on helping me understand this. .
There is a lot of ongoing research in Hydrogen production and storage. Here is a link to the Dept. of Energy site:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/
As any engineer (civil, mechanical or chemical, not railroad) can tell you, there's a long, rocky trail between One-off experiment to see if we can make this work and Standard technology available everywhere and used by everybody. In spite of the best efforts of the H2indenberg Society, that trail is proving to have obstacles on it.
While I wish the experimenters well, I'm not going to be investing my money in hydrogen this year. Come back in a couple of decades and I may have a different opinion.
Chuck
Hi, LONE GEEP
Hydrogen rail vehicles are described, collectively, by the term of art "hydrail". Hydrail applies to locomotives, railcars, streetcars, mining locomotives and anything else that runs on steel wheels and rails and is powered via hydrogen, usually via fuel cells in combination with batteries (hydrogen hybrid).
Hydrogen is not a fuel but a way of storing and transporting energy from fossil or renewable sources. It lets stationary sources such as hydroelectric, photovoltaic and nuclear electrically power things that move: ships, trains (hydrail), cars and a few single-place planes.
Hydrail trains couldn't make their own fuel. If they had enough energy on board to separate water, it would be used to power the train directly.
There are several hydrail projects in progress around the world. Visit http://www.hydrail.org/conferences/49 to read about the July, 2012, 7th International Hydrail Conference at the Birmingham (UK) Centre for Railway Research and Education or visit http://www.hydrail.org for a general overview (the Appalachian State University website in Boone NC).
BNSF's hydrail locomotive, HH 1205, is the largest thing ever to run on land under hydrogen-carried power. There are several videos of it online.
Smart, smart, smart: Germany has a huge excess of wind turbine electricity during late night hours and converting it to hydrogen via electrolysis has proved an ideal way to store it. The main idea of hydrogen is to decouple realtime generation and consumption of electric energy. Without hydrogen technology, intermittent renewable sources such as wind, tide, hydro, PV, solar concentration, etc., would be much harder to integrate into energy systems such as the power grid.
There is so much off-peak excess wind energy in Germany that they are looking to use it for cryogenic removal of carbon dioxide from the air and then combining the carbon obtained with electrolysis hydrogen to make methane for distribution via natural gas mains. Efficiency is made important by scarcity. When the problem is excess...not so much.
Why would only fossil hydrogen be used when there are so many clean ways to produce it?
Stan T. Hydrail trains couldn't make their own fuel. If they had enough energy on board to separate water, it would be used to power the train directly.
to the forums. I didn't mean that hydrogen was made on the trains. The hydrogen car I saw on the news had a tank that was filled with hydrogen and then burned it and then produced water as the emission. What I meant was that at the locomotive servicing facility, there would be a hydrogen plant beside it or something like that.
Stan T. There is so much off-peak excess wind energy in Germany that they are looking to use it for cryogenic removal of carbon dioxide from the air and then combining the carbon obtained with electrolysis hydrogen to make methane for distribution via natural gas mains. Efficiency is made important by scarcity. When the problem is excess...not so much.
I cannot think of a more Rube Goldberg plan, from an engineering perspective, than using (expensive and intermittent) wind power to run a liquifaction plant in order to obtain the carbon dioxide (from air, where CO2 is at about 380 parts per million -- don't they still have coal-fired electric plants in Germany, where the CO2 can be gotten at much higher concentrations from the chimney?) and then reacting CO2 with electrolytic H2 to make methane for combustion?
I would like to think that, ahem, certain cultural factors, ahem, give me some insight into political and social reasons in Germany that trump the science, but then, the German I speak isn't understood until you get south of Maribor . . .
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
The real question about hydrogen fueled locomotives is not whether it is possible, but whether it is economically practical. The technology has been around for a number of decades, but there are cheaper ways of powering trains, e.g. putting up catenary.
As for liquefying CO2 as part of a process to make methane, I'm with Paul, it doesn't make sense.
- Erik
Erik,
The US capital cost of powering trains by catenary has reached about $10,000,000 per mile of track. In Europe, the cost of maintaining existing catenary is enormous, owing to endemic copper theft:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/06/theft-of-copper-costs-network-rail-millions-of-pounds
http://www.economist.com/node/21558606/print
Catenary power requires energy to be generated and consumed simultaneously, which rules out powering trains via off-peak energy. The cost of copper for substations and distribution plant to tracks has roughly quadrupled in the last four years and new copper demand from China, India and Brazil is likely to accelerate the price rise. The surcharge for increased security and replacement engineering, purchase and labor costs is on top of the commodity rise.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/copper-thefts-rise-to-an-alltime-high-2226773.html
The amount of accessible copper in the earth's crust is surprisingly small...and we've been extracting it for a long time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust
Rising public adversity to aerial superstructure has moved virtually every major railcar builder to design and market an expensive catenary-free intermittent charging alternative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRHXxrvddkA
The ability to expand rail service without resorting to catenary construction has been a prime driver in hydrail development.
Change is seldom driven by cheaper alternatives. The first transistors cost far more than vacuum tubes and flat screen displays were not cheaper than cathode ray tubes. Externalities—often societal (such as climate change)—are more often the cause. That's probably how (locally) smokeless catenaries came to be.
But hydrail's biggest driver may be timing: the ability to enable new intermittent, renewable, non-carbon energy sources, such as wind and sun, to propel trains.
Paul,
How should Germany use its excess, variable night wind power? I've heard the turbines don't "feather" gracefully.
Oh. Sorry, LG.
Electrolyzers near the point of fueling are a real option.
STEP AWAY FROM THE KOOL AID!
Hydrogen production by electrolysis is a -50% proposition. That takes the fuel cell from it's possible 70% to 20 %. The transportation and storage inefficiencies will take it to zero.
Hydrogen is not and will never be a practical fuel.
"Hydrogen is not and will never be a practical fuel." Agreed. It will never be a fuel at all. But copper is no longer such a bargain as an energy carrier either:
TDM, Is there a car builder (other than Bently and Studebaker) that agrees with your assessment ? A lot of R&D money has gone into H2 vehicles, both fuel cells and H2ICE* (not to mention trains , planes and boats). There must be a reason.
http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=23844
* http://askautomotive.blogspot.com/2007/08/bmw-reveals-hydrogen-seven.html
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2012-mercedes-benz-f-cell-instrumented-test-review
http://www.chrysler.com/en/autoshow/concept_vehicles/ecovoyager/
http://www.hydrogen-motors.com/fiat.html
http://fuelcellsworks.com/news/2009/05/26/made-in-china-volkswagens-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicle/
http://gm-volt.com/2012/08/22/gm-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicle-update/
There's lots of room for debate as to "when hydrogen," but "whether" ? ... not so much.
Stan T. The US capital cost of powering trains by catenary has reached about $10,000,000 per mile of track. In Europe, the cost of maintaining existing catenary is enormous, owing to endemic copper theft:
Stan,
The copper in the contact wire is around $50,000/mile, the messenger wire and supporting structures, substations and what-not probably add quadruple to sextuple that. There's also some cost for signaling changes and new locomotives. The really expensive part is improving clearances for the catenary, which includes highway and pedestrian overpasses, tunnels, etc.
I'd go with batteries for storage of intermittent power sources, Li-ion batteries have better than 80% energy storage efficiency (can be better than 90%).
The big number I mentioned is based on Charlotte's experience with the Blue Line. It's loaded to include some grade separation expense, the engineering needed to preempt galvanic interaction with subterranean utilities and a lot of other ancillary costs. Outside cities, where a lot of this doesn't apply, it could well be lower, as you suggest. And I've heard the actual contact wire can be an aluminum alloy, avoiding that much copper.
When CATS planned the Blue Line south segment, Charlotte's first (and very successful) light rail circa 2002, the planned electrification cost was $1.75 million per mile. Completion came in at between $6 and $7 million about five years ago. Since then, copper costs have risen sharply and—though the recession has held inflation to a minimum—material and labor costs have risen too. At the International Hydrail Conferences I've heard numbers higher than $10 M mentioned.
The amount and geographical distribution of hydrail R&D today suggests that a point will come when the 130-year-old complexity of external power will just not be worth it. If hydrail continues to be developed as a means of reducing diesel consumption and pollution, it seems likely to be tapped for electric train line extension to low-traffic routes as well.
A GE has shown, battery tech is advancing fast. But even with their new locomotive battery plant in Albany online, they are still looking at fuel cell hybridization.
Watch the movie "Who killed the electric car", one of the arguments made is that the H2 programs by the various manufacturers so far largely are PR efforts designed to impress the public and (more importantly) the government(s) without any real ability to bring such vehicles to market on a large scale.
I wonder if by the time the technical hurdles of storing H2 onboard vehicles have been solved, electrical energy storage systems (supercapacitators, advanced batteries) may be able to match hydrogen's energy density and capacity (in the sense of permitting vehicle range comparable to current fuels).
Both technologies are still a ways down the road(pun intended)..
From "Who Killed the Electric Car," take away the thought that GM's want of an attention span was the proximate cause of death.
If Apple had run away from the personal digital assistant market (instead of paying intense attention to the biopsy, as they did) we wouldn't be talking to Siri on iPhone 5s, or using Droids and Blackberries for that matter.
GM did the same with the Corvair instead rethinking and refining it toward a US version of the Porsche 914.
Prediction: Despite a cool reception, Japan will sprout even more Leafs and GM will not stay the course with the Volt...though they'll have to re-enter the P-IH market eventually.
Similarly, the US has been far too slow following-up on the 2009 DoD-funded BNSF HH 1205 hydrail locomotive. Look for China and South Africa to seize the initiative.
If GM gets involved... will they name their Hydrogen Powered Effort " The Hindenburg TOO" ?
Hydrogen ( gas or liquid) involved in any rail accident(incident) will create apoplexy in the Railroad Risk Offices.. (my Prediction)
Actually, the fact that hydrogen rises rapidly away from away from accidents (as it did in the Hindenburg, allowing 2/3 of those on board to walk away) is one of the primary attractions for railroad applications.
A few thousand gallons of diesel pooling and flaming from under a train wreck is not a pretty sight, as the propulsion engine diesel burning in the famous Hindenburg film illustrates.
Re that film, burning hydrogen makes no visible light. H2 easily ignites but doesn't explode unless confined and mixed with oxygen, re the other hoax.
"
Why would only fossil hydrogen be used when there are so many clean ways to produce it?"
The only reason that Germany and other European countries have all this wind and solar garbage is huge subsidies. If you have ever been there or have any knowledge of their climate you would know that Germany is one of the worst places in the world for solar energy. Face it , wind energy is a dead loser. It is only able to produce 35% of the time max, and the rest of the time it is a parasite, using energy to maintain the blade pitch controls, wind speed detection system, gearbox oil heater, and in the winter, blade deicers.
If you knew anything at all about the energy business you would know that any time you convert from one form to another there are huge losses. The electrolysis of water is a 50% loser. To then try to convert it to methane would be another loser. Then you have to store and transport it. All this crap with a world wide glut of natural gas.
I might point out that there is no such thing as fossil hydrogen.
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