Germany Unveils a Hydrogen-Powered Passenger Train (fortune.com) 199
An anonymous reader writes: The world's first CO2-emission-free train powered through hydrogen was unveiled this week in Germany. The Coradia iLint, created by French company Alstom, was presented at the Berlin InnoTrans trade show on Tuesday. The train's energy comes from combining hydrogen stored in tanks on the train with oxygen in the air. The energy is then stored in lithium-ion batteries. The train's only emissions are steam and condensed water. The train also has lower noise levels than diesel trains, emitting only the sound of its wheels on the track and any sounds from air resistance at even its highest speed of 140 kilometers per hour (about 87 miles per hour). The train has the ability to travel up to 800 kilometers (497 miles) and carry up to 300 passengers; it's the worldâ(TM)s first hydrogen passenger train that can regularly operate long journeys.
Oblig. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh the humanity!!
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http://trainoftheweek.blogspot... [blogspot.com]
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This one was just a switcher. German one is long distance train. Although the concept certainly isn't new.
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energy comes from combining hydrogen stored in tanks on the train
Thus confirming my theory: Germans Love Hydrogen.
hope they will not name it hindenburg.
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energy comes from combining hydrogen stored in tanks on the train
Thus confirming my theory: Germans Love Hydrogen.
hope they will not name it hindenburg.
If they continue the naming convention, this will be called the Gauck and is likely to be just as bad for Germany.
iLint (Score:2)
That can happen when you don't blink often enough.
It's missing the full picture (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently it is incredibly energy intensive to separate hydrogen from oxygen. What power plant is powering the separator? If it's anything but nuclear, hydro, solar or wind, then it's powered by whatever fossil fuel is doing the separation, and at a much lower efficiency than simply putting diesel fuel into a diesel-electric or directly powering an electric train by overhead catenary. In the end you're just centralizing the pollution.
If the separator is run by a non-fossil fuel source, then more power to them.
Re:It's missing the full picture (Score:5, Informative)
Thompson's calculations, based on a 2007 set of figures from India Rail, estimate that as much as three billion barrels of crude oil - or the equivalent of 214 million tonnes of CO2 - could be saved over one year by transitioning from diesel to hydrail.
"The two magic properties of hydrogen are the ability to store and transport it," Thompson says. "It's that utility of time and place which is unique to the hydrogen economy. And that's what you can't do with the existing power grid."
There's also an economic reason behind investing in windmills instead of diesel oil, as Busch explains: "We have fluctuations in wind and solar energy which gives us the chance to produce energy for very, very cheap."
Re:It's missing the full picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprise, surprise, the Germans had already thought about the objections that could muster the Slashdot crowd.
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No they haven't. This is an extremely inefficient use of "green" power, alternative storage methods would be superior to hydrogen
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nothing like the losses of sending green power to place that rips water apart and then transports/stores hydrogen
there are better ways to store wind and solar power, and you don't need to "carry" stored energy when you have electric train connected to grid
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Efficiency isn't everything. Generating excess electricity when you don't have a demand for it means you need some way of storing it, or you just dump it.
So now you need to figure out how to store all that energy until you can deliver it to the train when the train needs it; liquid fuels are very good at that. Even if producing it doesn't use the excess electricity efficiently it's a reasonable trade-off. I'm sure they considered batteries and wires, apparently they decided hydrogen is worth trying instead
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Transmitting power a few hundreds kilometers or a thousand kilometers away has a high enough efficiency I believe. It's the infrastructure that costs a ton.
You can electrify all train lines too, but that will cost some billions likewise. Billions that need to be spent for power delivery network upgrades elsewhere.
What I like about the idea is it's a "range extender" for trains and could be one of very few real uses for H2 as a fuel, made from useless wind power.
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Typical 765 kV line has 1.1% to 0.5% losses per 100 miles.
345 kV - 4.2%/100 miles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It can be done, but it isn't that efficient over thousands of km. And as you noted, infrastructure cost becomes more important than direct losses.
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In 6 months worth of storage ALL the Hydrogen would escape....I'll take the 2-3% of batteries any day over 100% for H2.
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You have no clue what are you talking about. Hydrogen can and is stored in underground caverns just like natural gas. It doesn't escape anywhere when using proper materials. Hydrogen usage in pipeline networks predates natural gas.
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That seems far better than trying to store electricity in huge batteries.
It may not seem that way if you do the cost comparison.
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Of course we would love to electrify those remaining routes that are mot yet.
However in the last decades traffic has increased dramatically. Human transport I mean.
All main tracks are obviously electrified. But plenty of rural areas are not. Those areas often only have a single track, instead two parallel tracks. So you have to balance if you shut down that single track to work in the electrification or if you keep it running, by Diesel or now perhaps in future by H2 or natural gas.
Bottom line it is a doubl
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Germany has plenty of solar and wind, which have a nasty tendency to give you plenty of power when you don't need it.
H2 production can be seen as way to store that energy, with a much better capacity than batteries.
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H2 is very inefficient compared to batteries.
This diagram explains it in detail...
http://cdn.greenoptimistic.com... [greenoptimistic.com]
Bottom line, only about 20% efficient compared to battery 69% efficient.
More detail here:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com... [greenoptimistic.com]
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If you'll read the references, you'll see that batteries are much cheaper. The equipment needed to convert surplus electricity to H2, compress it, store it, transport it and convert it back to electricity is much more expensive than batteries.
Re:It's missing the full picture (Score:4, Informative)
Regardless of the energy density, H2 is still massively inefficient as an energy storage medium so it doesn't make sense to run anything on it.
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The only advantage is that you can refuel faster than you can typically charge a battery, so it is attractive for a very small number of applications. For most transport batteries are better, and especially for trains where utility scale batteries make charge time irrelevant.
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It's a train, the idea that you carry the fuel required to power the train around on the train is shear nonsense.
Any modern train and track is overhead electric and if the line is not electrified the first job is *TO* electrify it. There is some third rail stuff mostly in the south east of England and even there they are looking at the costs and practicalities of changing to overhead.
The basics are carrying fuel on train is idiotic in the extreme.
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I think your diagram might be misleading for the Germans' particular use case.
Presumably, the transport/transfer phase here is where the hydrogen is taken to some kind of "filling station" where fuel cell vehicles will be fitted with fuel cells. It seems to me you can cut out some of these steps/losses when the vehicle you're filling up with hydrogen is itself a train, which is more than powerful enough to transport large volume of hydrogen all by itself. Build a line out to the the electrolysis plant and t
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They may be able to save a bit on the transport step if they can pull the train up to the H2 factory although you have to drive the train to the H2 factory. However, this only saves a few percent and still leaves a huge gap in efficiency between batteries at 70% and H2 at 20%.
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I was talking about the First Law of Thermodynamics: U_system = Q - W.
One way to put it is: In the case of a thermodynamic cycle of a closed system, which returns to its original state, the heat Q_in supplied to the system in one stage of the cycle, minus the heat Q_out removed from it in another stage of the cycle, plus the work added to the system W_in equals the work that leaves the system
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You should reread carefully the zerost law of Thermodynamics.
This is the one about energy conservation.
It basically says: The energy in a closed System is constant. [1]
In other words, it is not the same law as The law of conservation of energy[2]
1 and 2 have not many in common except the used words.
If we increase the energy of a system consisting of Hydrogen and Oxygen by separating molecules of water
Strictly speaking: we don't do that. The results end up in different systems. Hence TLoTD are unfit to descr
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And the process of splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen is well-understood: You just take an anode and a cathode and put them into water. As soon as you connect both to an electric energy source, Hydrogen b
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There are four of them, not just the Third. And also heat (Q_in, Q_out) is a form of energy, albeit not a very usable one.
Missing the excess factor (Score:2)
Now we compress it. the compressors suitable for it have 70-85% efficiency (adiabatic). Which means that of the energy used to compress it, 15-30% is lost
Which doesn't matter because remember how we are using excess electrical capacity anyway?
Then we store and transport it.
This is the part the battery people really miss on, because they basically assuming the cost of transporting giant batteries is free it would seem.
You simply are not factoring in the reality of the system at a whole at various stages for
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Currently it is incredibly energy intensive to separate hydrogen from oxygen.
No it is not
Why come pleople always up with such nonsense?
Regardles how you get your H2, Electrolysis or from CH4: it is more energy efficient than burning Diesel!
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Hydrogen is a waste product from many industrial processes, e.g. Platforming. Any refinery with a reformer but only a handful of hydrofiners are likely just pumping pure hydrogen into the air via their flaring system, or putting it to fuel gas if their burners can handle it.
Many refineries have excess hydrogen. Many air separation plants which feed the refineries which don't generate their own have a heck of a lot left over. For the uninitiated, in the oil and gas industry they burn a shitton of hydrogen be
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Practical electrolysis is up to 70 efficient. "Currently it is incredibly energy intensive to separate hydrogen from oxygen" - it is just incredibly uninformed scary-mongering, kind of the one Musk uses to denigrate competing technologies.
Re:It's missing the full picture (Score:5, Informative)
I'm german, and as such I don't want to be the nazi here, but MW is not a unit of energy, but an unit of power (or as we germans say "Leistung"). Use MWh instead.
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Do we somehow need to be to understand that H2 is not available free from any source?
H2 is produced currently by cracking natural gas (Methane), so it is a process which produces lots of CO2, and it is a process that would be better just put on the train. Wouldn't it be better to use the Methane to power the train directly? It has a higher energy content than the produced Hydrogen after all.
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Read post above, second paragraph beginning with "Oh and why not just use the electricity itself to power the vehicle?" Basically, it would be a physical burden and materially pollutive to bring electricity itself onboard, when renewable & free electricity can be used to create a more portable fuel.
Re: It's missing the full picture (Score:2, Informative)
You realize about half the railway lines in Germany already are electrified? In Switzerland, all of the electricity is carbon free (a mix of hydro and nuclear) and all the trains are electric
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Where did the poster say the power plant needed to be on the train? As far as I see, that is only something being added as a strawman argument.
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Weight isn't really a bad thing for a locomotive.
CO2-emission-free ? (Score:2)
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If you read the first word of the title, it says Germany. Germany is famed for their wind and solar power production.
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It's also famous for shutting down its nuclear plants and starting up its coal plants again.
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Even in a worse case scenario and none of the hydrogen was generated by renewables, you're still only producing pollution in one spot rather than spreading it around across the country. In one spot it is easier to scrub it to get the worst of it out of the environment, it is easier to turn the pollution into usable products, etc.
1.2units of nasty stuff at a powerplant might be preferable to 1 unit of nasty stuff pumped directly into the environment on the back of a train.
Only emissions are H2O?! Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
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How efficient is hydrogen really? (Score:4, Interesting)
OK. How efficient is hydrogen, really? Shout out to all of the chemistry majors out there who might answer this.
One of the reasons that fuels work, from my understanding, is that you start with a small number of molecule, combust them, and get a larger number of molecules with more heat. The heat increases the pressure, and the increase in the number of molecules increases the pressure.
Example: combustion of alcohol:
C2H6O +3O2 --> 3H2O + 2CO2
We start with four molecules on the left, and get five molecules on the right. Even if the reaction was not exothermic, we would still get a pressure increase good for pushing a piston.
Now, when we burn hydrogen, we get a decrease in the number of molecules (goes from three down to two):
2H2 + O2 --> 2H2O
So, yes, we get increased pressure due to heat production, but we get decreased pressure due to fewer molecules.
So, I guess that my question is: when burning a fuel, how much pressure created is due to the typical increase in molecules, and how much pressure is due to heat?
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Re:How efficient is hydrogen really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversion efficiency is not a big deal when you're using renewable sources; in those cases you're interested in capital investment efficiency (what you get out for dollar invested).
That's because wind or solar or tidal you don't capture simply goes away; the waste is 100% when you don't use it, so if you capture any of it, it's a win, so long as the money up front isn't too much.
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Right now the H2 in question is 'waste' from big chemical plants, that would burned otherwise.
However wind plant operators plan to produce H2 and feed it as supplement into the natural gas grid.
Of course with the transformation of Germany to 100% renewable energy production, production of H2 or other synthetic gases is better than shutting down power plants or disconnecting them.
That's the wrong way to think of it (Score:2)
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We were talking about the conversion efficiency of hydrogen.
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In such an reaction we don't really express stuff in molecules, but in 'mol mass'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And then comes Thermodynamics, Yay!
At same temperature, all gases with X molecules consume approximately the same volume (that is still Chemistry, .law of Avorogardo, or Avocado ... well, it is in the link above ;) ) So 2 * H2 + 1 * O2 -> 2 * H2O, we have 3 molecules on the left side and 2 on the right, so the volume is reduced by 1/3.
On the other hand, here now comes the thermodynamics, th
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Another thing, H2O is a lousy combustion product if you are building an ICE. The problem is that H2O has a very high heat of vaporization, 44kJ/mol, and it is nearly impossible to recover this heat. When you burn hydrogen in an ICE, you are spending a lot of energy essentially boiling water. You get 286kJ from burning a mole of H2 gas, but you lose 15% of that heat because you cannot condense the water vapor.
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If you read carefully, you might notice that these trains are electric, and that they use fuel cells to produce electricity that is stored in batteries and distributed from there. So no business with pressure etc. (But this is /., R'ing TFA is too much trouble....)
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You need an equation of state. Let's assume that we're dealind with ideal gas mixture so we get: P*V=n*R*T. R is a constant and since you ask about the pressure, I'll assume that you keep the volume constant, so V is also a constant. Now you need to write the equation down for the before/after case, say with subscript 1 for the reactants and with subscript 2 for the products:
P1*V=n1*R*T1 and P2*V=n2*R*T2. Now you divide them, cancel off the constants and you get: P2/P1=n2*T2/(n1*T1). Wikipedia tells me that
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OMG, I made a terrible mistake. That'll teach me to post such things late at night with a low blood sugar...
For the temperature, of course, you need the increase factor, not the difference! So there is T1=20 C=293 K and T2=3200 C=3473 K. So now properly we get T2=3473*T1/293=>T2=12*T1 (approximately).
So there you have it: Factor 12 pressure increase from the temperature and factor 0.67 pressure decrease from the molecule change. The temperature still wins.
Sorry about the confusion.
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The gas is not at Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP) -- so your volumetric calculations would have to depend on that. A mole of air takes up 22.4 liters while a mole of water is about 18 mL at STP -- since it's in liquid form. Now, if we take 1 mole of H2 and 1/2 mole of O2, we'd have ~32 liters of gas which would become 18 mL of water -- which is essentially a massive vacuum. ...but then again, no one stores H2 at STP.
That's awesome.. (Score:2)
Until you figure out that 95% of the hydrogen is produced from carbon fuels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
two problems (Score:2)
Two, They are using Note 7 recall batteries for storage!
Weird article (Score:2)
The world's first CO2-emission-free train powered through hydrogen was unveiled this week in Germany.
Note that they haven't built or sold any production units yet. Just some prototypes.
The train's energy comes from combining hydrogen stored in tanks on the train with oxygen in the air.
It's a fuel cell system [railwaygazette.com] so yeah, that's kind of how it works.
The energy is then stored in lithium-ion batteries.
The company that makes this train says nothing about Li-Ion batteries [alstom.com] being involved.
The train's only emissions are steam and condensed water.
Correct but misleading. The real emissions depend on how the hydrogen was produced. If they got it by cracking hydrocarbons then the real emissions are considerably nastier than just water.
Fun Train to be on (Score:2)
Bullshit (Score:2)
CO2-emission-free train
This is a total crock. You have to also look at how the Hydrogen is being produced. And not some theoretical but not real theory of how it could be made by electrolysis, but the real truth of how it is being made by a very dirty and wasteful process that breaks down natural gas and captures some hydrogen in the process. The truth of the matter is it would be much cleaner overall to just run the train on liquid natural gas. This Hydrogen bullshit is all smoke and mirrors with
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Why don't you read the summary and the linked article or just google for the topic and find better articles than making an complete idiot out of yourself? (*facepalm*)
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I used to think Slashdot was a tech news aggregating site, now I think it's just an overly complex idiot honey pot. I'm not entirely clear on the long term plan.
Long term plan clear to me (Score:2)
now I think it's just an overly complex idiot honey pot. I'm not entirely clear on the long term plan.
If you can't make money from rich technical people who are also idiots, you can't make money from anyone!
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You know what they say (Score:2)
Hydrogen is a stupid fuel to use (Score:3)
Ok, my chemistry is a long time in the past, but AFAIK hydrogen is a really stupid fuel to choose. It is the smallest atom possible; even H2, the usual form of hydrogen gas, is tiny. That makes it incredibly hard to contain. Also, none of our existing infrastructure can handle it.
If you are going to manufacture fuel, you are better off producing methane (natural gas, CH4). It does require a second reaction: After electrolizing water to produce H2, you then catalyze the H2 with CO2 to produce methane and water. So the overall process is more complex, but the result is not only much easier to store, we already have the infrastructure for transporting and storing methane.
This line from TFA is also a laugh: "operating costs will be similar to the operating costs of diesel units." Sure, except for the cost of building a completely new infrastructure to produce, transport and store hydrogen. Which doesn't count as "operating costs".
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Sure, except for the cost of building a completely new infrastructure to produce, transport and store hydrogen.
You mean something like a ... railroad? With trains bearing big tanks of hydrogen fuel on the tracks?
Them titles (Score:2)
So if I use a Tesla in France, then France introduced a new electric car right?
A clear case of not needed (Score:2)
Full disclosure: I thought hydrogen vehicles where dumb when I first
Cool, so when will they give this to China? (Score:2)
maybe but when the batteries go bad it can (Score:2)
maybe but when the batteries go bad it can jam up the line or maybe blowup if they cheap out on them.
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because there is no way to keep tabs on battery efficiency and safety?
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This is Germany, not Korea. I doubt Samsung will be involved.
If only... (Score:3)
maybe but when the batteries go bad it can jam up the line or maybe blowup if they cheap out on them.
If only there were some technology where we could have a train powered by electricity without the need for large batteries or hydrogen...
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Yes, it is called overhead wires :) Short distance trains use this technology for many decades. It gets too expensive over long distances.
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This sounds like BS to me. Most modern cars have engines that are so quiet that at higher speeds, you'll only hear the wind noise and tire noise if you're outside the vehicle. The tire noise is the biggest factor these days, not the engine, unless you have some big diesel engine or you've modified the exhaust.
It's only at low speeds (like in residential areas, 30mph and below) where you'll really notice the missing engine note on an EV.
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I wonder how we Germans have survived, given the shitload of electric trains running here.
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I know of one developer who was working on such a thing. Didn't call it ringtone- but it was a customizable sound that played in correspondence with the #of rpm of the car.
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I live near train tracks. Most of the noise comes from the whistle!!!
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A lot of secondary railroads all over Europe are not electrified, and that's where these diesel-powered Lint-trains show up. So that's the target market for these trains, not the main railroads.
And as said by others, there's a big problem with the fluctuations in energy output from wind and solar, especially in Germany. Instead of just throwing the energy away (like they do now), they could just as well use it to create hydrogen, even if it only has 50% efficiency.
That's why they're targeting the German mar
I mentioned it once, think I got away with it. (Score:2)
The Germans certainly didn't.
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Usually it comes from cracking Methane (natural gas), so yes, it produces copious amounts of CO2. The only way it wouldn't involve CO2 is nuclear powered hydrolysis.