Toyota Unveils Plan For Hydrogen Powered Semi Truck (rdmag.com) 163
New submitter omaha393 quotes a report from R&D Magazine: Toyota announced a new initiative on Wednesday aimed at advancing its work in vehicles powered by alternative energy sources. The automaker unveiled Project Portal, which is a novel hydrogen fuel cell system designed for heavy duty truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. A proof-of-concept truck powered by this fuel cell will be part of a feasibility study held at the Port this summer, with the goal of examining the potential of this technology in heavy-duty applications. The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks along with a 12kWh battery. Overall, the combined weight capacity is 80,000 pounds that will be carried over 200 miles.
omaha393 adds: "While hydrogen fuel has been criticized due to high cost of production and safety concerns, recent advances in catalysis and solid storage systems have made the prospect of hydrogen fuel an attractive commercial prospect for the future."
omaha393 adds: "While hydrogen fuel has been criticized due to high cost of production and safety concerns, recent advances in catalysis and solid storage systems have made the prospect of hydrogen fuel an attractive commercial prospect for the future."
Torque (Score:4, Informative)
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He said 'the vehicle' will produce the HP and torque.
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1. It's NOT a semi truck, it's called a 'Tractor'
2. Produce HP? No one tell Carly Fiarino, and Carly Whitman ! ! !
Re: Torque (Score:2)
Re: Torque (Score:2)
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Please Mr D form 63 learn to read.
The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks along with a 12kWh battery.
The vehicle produces horsepower and toque. It does so using a form of energy storage. What is in between is irrelevant to the sentence.
Sometimes pedantic can be so pedantic that they forget how to actually communicate properly.
Re: Torque (Score:2)
The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks...
And... no, it won't.
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The defined torque is a property of the motor design. Much smaller fuel cells could be used to produce a similar torque given a different motor design.
Actually, you could produce identical torque with no fuel cells at all, and no batteries: just connect the truck and its motor to mains power (through an appropriate power converter).
It's the motor that generates the torque using electricity; where that electricity comes from is irrelevant to the motor. It can be from fuel cells, a battery, or a Mr. Fusion f
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Hydrogen as an energy storage method is extremely inefficient [phys.org]. It is a distraction. Battery power with grid recharging is far more efficient and convenient.
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Thank you for your detailed and loquacious rebuttal. I bow before your eloquence.
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Fuck that, I want a hemi-truck!
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I need a full truck because I'm a hemi-sphere
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That, and who wants a semi truck? I'll wait for a full truck.
Yea but those cost more, especially when they start to get older and you have to buy those blue fuel additive tablets.
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This article gave me a semi.
I prefer my title. (Score:2)
Toyota Shows Off It's Semi for Hydrogen
They are certainly showwers. ;)
Scam (Score:2, Flamebait)
H2 is actually gaining (small) market presence (Score:5, Informative)
A couple years ago I'd have agreed with you, but a lot has changed.
Toyota unveiled a (admittedly very expensive) hydrogen-powered car that goes >300 miles on a charge and takes 5 min to refuel. Toyota, the largest auto manufacturer in the world, is probably not doing this as an empty gesture. They've announced they'll almost eliminate ICE cars from their lineup by 2050 and have yet to release an all-electric car (just plugin hybrids). They're working with Shell to provide fueling stations, of which there are >80 in Japan and 25 in CA right now, promising 160 in Japan within a couple years.
source: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/f... [toyota.com]
source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
Hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis of water or salt water from any source of electricity, including intermittent sources like renewables. The efficiency of electrolysis is very high today, approaching 90%.
source: http://www.h2fc-fair.com/hm14/... [h2fc-fair.com]
It's not a perfect answer, but it's looking a lot less ridiculous than it did a few years ago.
Re: H2 is actually gaining (small) market presence (Score:2)
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I hope that Hydrogen doesn't happen. Firstly, hydrogen is just a battery. The only advantage is that you can recharge your vehicle quickly. But with that convenience you lose a lot of efficiency compared to leaving everything as electricity. Converting electricity to hydrogen, keeping it cold in order to store and ship it, and then convert it back to electricity in a fuel cell is much less efficient than just transmitting electricity and storing it in a battery.
Secondly, for the near future most of our
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Now that is a ridiculous example (Score:2)
What are you hoping to achieve by using such an utterly ridiculous example?
I really hate it when people decide that their politics demands that they try to trick people.
Why can't we talk about the shiny space age technology instead of deciding to attack it because it could be used for something "green". The attack is not being "conservative" kids - it's bei
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Wow there, take it easy. This wasn't a political post, I'm simply discussing energy storage in the context of generating 100% of electricity from renewable sources and using algebra with order-of-magnitude thinking to show the magnitude of the solution needed. In any case, I'd like to know exactly why you believe my example is "utterly ridiculous."
It's not exactly clear how much storage would be needed to achieve 100% renewable energy. The more storage we have, the less generation capacity we need for cloud
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A suggestion that batteries (or insert any other "green" technology you with to attack instead) are useless because they cannot single-handedly supply a days worth of electricity for a nation the size of the USA is not ridiculous and not a politically motivated move?
So you are calling me stupid or gullible as well?
WTF is it with this political luddite shit. Something doesn't have to be the "one true energy" that can d
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A suggestion that batteries (or insert any other "green" technology you with to attack instead) are useless because they cannot single-handedly supply a days worth of electricity for a nation the size of the USA is not ridiculous and not a politically motivated move? So you are calling me stupid or gullible as well? WTF is it with this political luddite shit. Something doesn't have to be the "one true energy" that can do everything for it to be useful.
Relax for a minute, I'm afraid you're going to pop a vein. If you'll read my other posts in this topic, I think you'll find that I'm pretty positive with regard to "green" technology. I simply pointed out a potential advantage of hydrogen compared to batteries. I think you're getting offended over nothing.
Also ask a high schooler to tell you about electricity grids and time zones. Distributed generation capacity that can be turned on and off as required are vastly less lossy than any sort of storage, and since you have a grid the size of a continent that peaks are spread so storage isn't so necessary anyway. When New York needs power for an evening peak Texas isn't using a lot.
Instead of pretending you know everything, I suggest you read up on energy storage with regard to attaining high penetration of renewables. In every study I've read, the authors assert that we need much mu
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Yes you repeated the exact same FUD tactics where the item you despise is required to do something utterly beyond the realms of reason before it can be considered adequate.
It's kind of obvious what you are doing.
I suggested consulting with a high schooler. This is not a difficult topic at all and you don't need to have worked in the electricity industry like I did to understand it. You are either woefully ignorant or being
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Tell me then - when is there ever going to be a time when the entire USA needs to run off batteries?
Did I call you an idiot? Underhanded and maybe I should call you amoral, but idiot, no.
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Then stop fucking using it to pretend that something is useless unless it meets that unrealistic benchmark or you will be taken to task for the doubt you are spreading by cranky old bastards like me.
If you can't push an agenda without deception then perhaps you should only push it on political sites where that sort of underhanded shit is expected.
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It's a back-of-the-envelope type of calculation dealing with orders of magnitude. The order of magnitude approach to looking at scientific problems is a time-honored tradition, it is in no way ridiculous. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Taken to task? How exactly have you taken me to task? You said I made a ridiculous example (I've explained now several times why it's not ridiculous) and have made no effort to back your position. It's getting pretty obvious to me that you either don't know as much a
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As you well know, attacking any technology that could be turned to "green" ends. What's with playing dumb after setting such an utterly ridiculous benchmark in an attempt to fool the kiddies? You should be utterly disgusted with your deception.
My "position" is that there is no situation where the entire USA needs to run off batteries for an entire day so pretending batteries are useless because they do not fit that benchmark is deceptive behavior.
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Here: http://reneweconomy.com.au/muc... [reneweconomy.com.au]
"Graham says that the CSIRO modelling showed that at very high levels of wind and solar, a maximum of half a day’s average demand was needed for storage."
Looks like my order of magnitude approach was actually pretty close.
If you disagree, please offer something more than accusations of partisanship. I want facts. You keep saying you're an expert, well, present your numbers.
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But with that convenience you lose a lot of efficiency compared to leaving everything as electricity.
How do you carry a tank of electricity around in your vehicle without converting it to some other form? Did you invent cheap room-temperature superconductors and forget to tell anyone?
Re: H2 is actually gaining (small) market presence (Score:2)
How do you carry a tank of electricity around in your vehicle without converting it to some other form?
I can think of at least one way: don't light a cigarette while filling up at the pump.
Re: H2 is actually gaining (small) market presenc (Score:2)
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The reason for hydrogen is because it keeps the infrastructure in place. A big part of the auto industry is the oil industry. Did you really think the auto industry would alienate them?
Nothing really changes, still need gas stations and big companies rather than making oil make hydrogen. And guess what the best* way to make hydrogen is? Not from water but fossil fuels like NG.
Not to mention, a giant portion of the EV cost is battery which the auto industry lacks. Battery tech got better despite them not i
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It just requires the US and other regions to grow a pair and mandate standards that vehicles must comply with. CCS type 1 would be the natural choice and it would mean the likes of the proprietary Tesla charger (which Tesla doesn't even use in
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Hydrogen vehicles have too many of the same problems as petrol/diesel. The fuel has to be transported by another vehicle, for example. They also need complex systems, which means more maintenance and up front cost.
The major benefit is fast refueling, but that will be irrelevant in a few years. A self driving truck that stops for 30 minutes every 3 hours is no big deal. Better batteries will mean more range, but I bet that most trucks won't bother initially because within reason delivery time is not a big fa
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They also need complex systems, which means more maintenance and up front cost.
I don't think you realise just how simple a hydrogen fuel cell drivetrain is compared to a traditional engine. Effectively there are only two parts in addition to a traditional electric car and those parts have very few moving parts.
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A self driving truck that stops for 30 minutes every 3 hours is no big deal.
No, that is a huge deal. The vehicles are already running over the legal speed (I literally never see a tractor-trailer in California going less than 55, the legal speed limit for all vehicles while towing in this state) and drivers are already running at the absolute limits of the maximum hours they can legally drive per day in order to get cargoes where they are going in the same day. If you can't fill up in fifteen minutes, then you're costing them time they can't afford. You're also doubling to quadrupl
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Auto driving trucks stopping ever 300 miles for 30 min is not that bad.
1. Auto driving trucks don't need to sleep, and laws will most likely change to reflect that.
2. Current trucks take longer to fill their twin 70-150 gallon tanks.
3. Less parts to fail in electric autos, not just for a more reliable standpoint but there are laws for down time per truck regardless of driver.
On the flip side with their large tanks they could fill up once per day but the real limit is laws around drive and truck fatigue. Thi
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I agree that the fueling stop duration becomes less of an issue if you use automated trucks, but consider that those automated trucks are going to have to be programmed to actually follow the law and go 55 in California, unlike human drivers. You know California, where the food comes from?
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Yeah. For ENORMOUS energy input. As a laboratory curiosity. Nobody produces significant amounts this way. They use mostly reformation of natural gas and coal.
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Nobody produces significant amounts this way
Close to 5% of the world's production is currently done this way.
One of the main reasons for steam methane reforming or partial oxidation being the primary production method is that the primary consumer is an oil refinery which has the raw ingredients for both processes in spades.
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Hydrogen is just a dumb means to power vehicles. It's very hard to transport, very hard to contain, incredibly flammable, very hard to produce and all round just a terrible idea. Personally I think fuel cells have potential but only when they use ethanol as their input. Ethanol fuel cells still use hydroge
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Where are you getting 90% efficient electrolysis from? In the PDF article you linked, it says cell voltage efficiency is up to 90%, but that's not for the entire process. PEM electrolysis has a theoretical efficiency of 94%, but even the best projections are 74% in a decade or more. So again, where did you get "The efficiency of electrolysis is very high today, approaching 90%."?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] for PEM electrolyzers, "Ranges in 2014 were 43–67% for the alkaline and 40–67% fo
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How do you think every ounce of industrial hydrogen gets distributed today? How do you think they filled dirigibles for cross Atlantic transits in the 1930's? Osmosis? Sheesh.
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Nevermind that it's also (effectively) a fossil fuel since cracking water is prohibitive from an energy standpoint so they steam crack natural gas instead...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I can see California and China going for it for vehicles based entirely in cities.
Not every truck is on long routes.
I'd say every city that has some sort of industrial chemical production is very close to being able to supply it already. Hydrogen gas is produced as a precursor for a lot of things.
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That'd make a hell of a lot more sense than hydrogen too. LNG and CNG have both been used successfully in vehicles as an alternative fuel for a long time (I remember a big push to retrofit vehicles in Arizona with them back in ~2000, with hefty tax breaks). The main problem is the range isn't as good as gas/diesel, but it's still going to be better than stupid hydrogen, plus you can run it in existing engines with minimal modifications, and the storage tanks are a lot easier to construct and are safer.
Hyd
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As you wrote, hydrogen is very difficult to deal with currently and is likely to always be a bit more difficult than other choices, but it does still work at short ranges and it
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I'll go one better, if China got its head out of their 'collective' ass and went Automotive Fuel Cell, quick
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Technically, the same is true of petroleum, too. Just on a much longer time scale.
So, clearly, we need nuclear powered cars" [wikipedia.org], because the only true energy source is uranium!
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Bullshit! All energy except radioactive is solar. Even the core heat of the earth is related to the suns effects on the earth over is total life.
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Not true.
Fission is stellar, as you said, but definitely not solar, since solar implies it comes from Sol, our current star. The heavy elements came from other stars that are long-since gone.
Also, tidal power is not solar: it comes from the motion of the Moon around the Earth, which is basically just potential energy created by whatever particular process caused the Earth and Moon to come to their current state.
Also, you could make the case that fossil fuels are not entirely solar in nature, and are also "
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Bullshit! All energy except radioactive is solar. Even the core heat of the earth is related to the suns effects on the earth over is total life.
So is nuclear. Well stellar technically, not our sun exactly. But still from a star.
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Liquid and gas fuels are super useful. Their energy density and their transport over existing infrastructure make them super useful. Pipelines can carry anything.
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Pipelines can also leak & spill and you probably don't want to be transporting hydrogen gas by pipeline
Re: Scam (Score:2)
oh the humanity! (Score:4, Funny)
oh the humanity!
What are the benefits over electric? (Score:2)
Electric cars are become more common. Not just Tesla, but most car manufacturers are jumping in. Electricity is relatively cheap, ubiquitous and easy to make.
Why Hydrogen?
And why is nobody else but the Japanese car manufacturers even slightly interested in it?
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Because the Japanese think longer term than us.
Weigh your Tesla. It's 1000 pounds heavier than a Honda FCV. The hydrogen does cost more to make from electricity as opposed to putting it into your 1000 lb battery pack, but think about the long term.
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> Because the Japanese think longer term than us.
I am sorry, but your arguments made not a lick of sense to me.
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I am not surprised.
Re:What are the benefits over electric? (Score:5, Informative)
Why Hydrogen?
Hydrogen is a way of storing power that doesn't require a heavy, expensive, short-lived battery pack.
Of course, this was a much better argument back in the bad old days when batteries had horrible energy density, were insanely expensive, and didn't last very long.
Now that battery technology has improved quite a bit, batteries only somewhat suck and are only expensive instead of insanely expensive -- so the advantages of hydrogen over battery storage are smaller.
I expect that in the future batteries will continue to get better, and people will stop talking about hydrogen because there won't be any advantage anymore.
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> I expect that in the future batteries will continue to get better, and people will stop talking about hydrogen because there won't be any advantage anymore.
I am in agreement. The Japanese bet on the wrong horse and did not anticipate progress the battery industry has made and is making. Now they are just trying to beat that dead horse some more to see if they can get anything out of it at all.
Toyota has been going at this for quite some time. They still haven't produce a single hydrogen car for the
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Now they are just trying to beat that dead horse some more to see if they can get anything out of it at all.
Yes, that's exactly how a multinational conglomerate works.
Toyota Mirai (Score:2)
Actually they do have a hydrogen car for consumers; see https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]. Not exactly for the mass market yet though.
Just a nitpick though; I agree with your point.
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Toyota has been going at this for quite some time. They still haven't produce a single hydrogen car for the consumers.
No, they have. Their new vehicle comes as EV, PHEV, or as a Hydrogen vehicle. Of course, you can only buy it in California, but nobody outside of California is dumb enough to buy one anyway. And actually, you can only lease it. On the other hand, the lease deals are so good because they are so desperate to put asses in [driver] seats that if you actually use it as much as the lease will allow, you will wind up paying about $100/mo for the vehicle. That's because fuel is free. That's right, they're giving aw
Re:What are the benefits over electric? (Score:4, Informative)
Can we please kill this myth about batteries being short lived?
Tesla tested their old packs to 750k miles with 86% remaining capacity. Panasonic says they should do 900k to 80%, and with careful driving a million miles doesn't look unreasonable.
Taxi companies running Nissan Leafs with 200k miles report over 85% capacity remaining too. Considering the pack is zero maintenance that compares well with a petrol engine.
80% capacity is considered end of life, by the way, but in practical terms you could re use that battery in another vehicle or as a UPS for many more years.
That's with today's batteries. Future ones will be even better. Current warranties are usually around 8 years or 100k miles. Replacement Leaf batteries are around $4k but as far as I am aware no one has ever bought one. Even in the worst possible case, would you spend less than $4k maintaing a petrol engine over 8 years?
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Re-use? Why? Just continue using it normally. 80% capacity isn't EOL in the original application. Not even close. So your car takes 5 seconds instead of 4 to reach 100 km/h. So it only travels 240 km instead of 300 km. So what. That isn't anywhere near useless.
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It's "end of life" according to the manufacturer. You know, the company that really wants you to buy a new car from them after 3-5 years. So those "EOL" terms are always on the short side.
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I see Hydrogen as a perfect fit for home energy needs when / where renewable energy is not always available, and space is not as much of an issue.
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Add to that they have an average life of 2~5 years IF treated well.
Total fucking horseshit.
EV batteries last 10 years or more.
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And why is nobody else but the Japanese car manufacturers even slightly interested in it?
Because of observer bias. Here's is some interest from others:
BMW Hydrogen 7
BMW i8
Mercedes F-Cell
Audi A7 H-Tron
VW Golf Hymotion
Hyundai Intrado
Nissan TeRRA
Honda FCX
The Americans have been a bit quiet recently but that didn't stop them playing with:
Ford Focus FCV
GM Hydrogen4
The AFCC is a joint venture between Dailmer and Ford to develop H2 fuel cells for cars. They were targeting 2017 for a release of a H2 car, but that's dropped off the way side a bit.
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- Hydrogen can be stored in huge containers, which scales better than batteries
- Hydrogen can relatively easily be transported
- Production and/or disposal of the storage device may be more ecologically friendly (not sure about this)
Toyota is the technology leader in hybrid engines so they know a lot about electric cars. They may have their reasons why they think hydrogen is the future.
Like a bomb (Score:2)
And this'll hit the trucking industry like a bomb!
A Friend (Score:2)
Monster Truck (Score:2)
I need a monster truck that runs on crushed up Priuses.
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That's an argument against everything electric. Coal, petroleum, etc. Solar, geothermal and hydro are all compatible with hydrogen production. You just need more of it per mile. Then again, it's a hell of a lot lighter than batteries.
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As long as the lowest cost means of producing hydrogen starts with oil or natural gas, it is not a green fuel.
I'm not sure about that. It's somewhat akin to the argument about electric cars and where the electricity comes from. Is your electric car "green" if the electricity to power it comes from coal?
The advantage to something like this is your car is being powered by hydrogen. You can get that hydrogen from fossil fuels. You can get that hydrogen from water. You can get that hydrogen from the solar wind. However you can economically produce hydrogen--and that will change over time--won't matter to the car.
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If the entire object of the exercise is to cut down on smog in a city, then yes it is. Those coal fired plants have scrubbers, precipitators and exhaust out of very high stacks, so if they are located far enough away from the city streets it does solve the problem at hand.
If it's about carbon emissions instead of a
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That's not what I meant. They don't make vast quantities of hydrogen by splitting water with electricity. They make it by splitting the hydrogen out of oil or natural gas which is essentially the same thing that we're doing when we burn it in the car.
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Unfortunately, green brains tend to disengage before considering the big picture, and "hydrogen" will be pushed forward as an ideology, ignoring where it comes from.
Citation needed on the "green brains" bit. I don't think this push is coming from the environmentalists, it's coming from entrenched industry players who don't want to switch to electric vehicles. The smart environmentalists know that EVs are the real future, not hydrogen. Hydrogen is a stupid fuel; it's expensive to generate (and can't be mi
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I'm not sure about that. It's somewhat akin to the argument about electric cars and where the electricity comes from. Is your electric car "green" if the electricity to power it comes from coal?
While it's a valid point, you can't blame that on the EV. Also, they do become about 15% greener than a gasoline vehicle, at least in this country. And they could be even better; we can find out-of-compliance power plants (WRT emissions) as fast as we can pay people to sample them. If we forced them to correctly use their equipment (it costs money to run scrubbers, for example) then the EVs would be even greener. And that's not even taking into account the value of moving the pollution out of cities.
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But the oxygen gets released locally, while it is consumed globally, which would likely create local imbalances.
I think we'll still be able to breathe. But we may find ourselves moving water around the planet in a previously unforeseen way.
Let's do some algebra (Score:3)
OK, let's do some algebra.
The mass of the atmosphere is 5.15E18 kg, 20% of which is oxygen, or ~1E18 kg. A day's worth of grid storage for the US is ~11TWh. Hydrogen has an energy density of 33.3 kWh/kg. So 11TWh is 3.3E8 kg of hydrogen. Hydrogen is 1/16 the mass of oxygen, so an equivalent mass of oxygen would be 5.29E9kg, however one molecule of hydrogen is produced per 1/2 molecule of oxygen in water splitting, so the mass of oxygen generated would be half that, 2.64E9kg. So to make enough hydrogen to st
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It may be possible to use hydrolysis as a step in wastewater treatment, so municipalities could produce fuel instead of oil companies.
And a solar-to-hydrogen site could be done on a scale suitable for city buses, garbage trucks, etc. with the excess production sold to the public
But people are paranoid about governments running anything that looks like a business, and while it would be fair for the excess to be sold using an auction system, we'll probably end up with a privatized system that owns the equipme
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It may be possible to use hydrolysis as a step in wastewater treatment, so municipalities could produce fuel instead of oil companies.
It's really not feasible, because you need clean water. That actually underscores the problem with electrolysis. You've got to spend enough energy to make drinking-quality water to feed into the process so you don't damage your electrodes. But you can grow algae with dirty water, practically any water in fact. And then you can centrifuge or settle or otherwise separate the lipids using ambient energy (solar, wind, etc) and get out a feedstock for making biodiesel. And then you put the biodiesel into the tru
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It's really not feasible, because you need clean water.
Wastewater treatment is about clean water. Having mostly clean water but not fit for human consumption (potable) is perfectly viable for hydrolysis. Most wastewater treatment plants do not create drinking water, they process wastewater into water that can be safely released into the environment. The water goes into the local river, and out to the oceans (or in my home town's case, Lake Michigan). My Chem 102 paper was on the subject of wastewater treatment, so I have some familiarity of the subject. The key
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It's not just rich people being ripped off, it's taxpayers who are paying for the tax breaks and other incentives to push this crap technology.