Two Hydrogen Fuel stations Explode June 2019

Did anyone hear about this ? I didn't but you can be damn sure if this were two Teslas it would be all over the news.

https://electricrevs.com/2019/06/11/recent-explosions-shutdown-hydrogen-vehicle-refueling-in-norcal-and-norway/

Mickeroo

Yes, it got a fair bit of coverage at the time from what I remember.

I think I read that Hyundai gave a free replacement car to the one family that owned a Nexo in the vicinity of one of the stations.

I don't think I heard anything about it, don't remember if I did lol.

unkel

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't think I heard anything about it

The explosion was so loud, you could have nearly heard it in IRL, 10k km away

unkel

unkel wrote: »

The explosion was so loud, you could have nearly heard it in IRL, 10k km away

hmmmm that was bad, :rolleyes:

ELM327

Another reason why hydrogen is the fool of the future, not the fuel.

Sabre Man

All hydrogen stations in Norway are still closed. New ones with a different design are being planned.

For passenger cars, vans I don't see the need for Fuel Cells but for HGV's there might be no alternative as I can't see batteries being used for long distance trucks , trains, buses, planes etc, sure they will have batteries but they won't need the quantity that would be needed without the fuel cell.

Whether they have a fuel cell that can output such powers for hgv I don't know.

ELM327

Deleted User wrote: »

For passenger cars, vans I don't see the need for Fuel Cells but for HGV's there might be no alternative as I can't see batteries being used for long distance trucks , trains, buses, planes etc, sure they will have batteries but they won't need the quantity that would be needed without the fuel cell.

Whether they have a fuel cell that can output such powers for hgv I don't know.

Buses, trains run on defined routes and generally stop for hours overnight.
These would be easy to electrify.

ELM327

ELM327 wrote: »

Buses, trains run on defined routes and generally stop for hours overnight.
These would be easy to electrify.

City buses yes but I was talking longer distance.

If they can produce enough clean hydrogen I can't see why they shouldn't use it for HGV it would save carrying around big heavy chemical batteries.

ELM327

Deleted User wrote: »

City buses yes but I was talking longer distance.

If they can produce enough clean hydrogen I can't see why they shouldn't use it for HGV it would save carrying around big heavy chemical batteries.

If you carry 200kWh of electricity to complete your journey as a bus driver, you will need 600kWh of H2 to create that energy, and another 400kWh to make up for the lesser efficiency of travel using a hydrogen fool cell (due to lower thermal efficiency)

So that makes 200kWh of electricity or 1gWh of electricity to use H2. Which will be only refuelled at the depot anyway.

I know which method makes more sense!

galwaytt

Sabre Man wrote: »

All hydrogen stations in Norway are still closed. New ones with a different design are being planned.

why would you run H2 in Norway when the Govt pay you to buy EV ?

ELM327

The same (more) advantages were there for H2 cars.

pdpmur

The last paragraph of the article says the following in relation to hydrogen:

"Almost all gases cool when they expand rapidly but hydrogen heats up"

Can anybody make sense of this? It sounds to me to be contrary to the first law of thermodynamics (and probably the second one aswell).

Lumen

pdpmur wrote: »

The last paragraph of the article says the following in relation to hydrogen:

"Almost all gases cool when they expand rapidly but hydrogen heats up"

Can anybody make sense of this? It sounds to me to be contrary to the first law of thermodynamics (and probably the second one aswell).

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/61535

tldr: the sentence would be better written as

"At room temperature, almost all gases cool when they expand rapidly but hydrogen heats up"

pdpmur

Great, thanks for that.

ELM327

ELM327 wrote: »

If you carry 200kWh of electricity to complete your journey as a bus driver, you will need 600kWh of H2 to create that energy, and another 400kWh to make up for the lesser efficiency of travel using a hydrogen fool cell (due to lower thermal efficiency)

So that makes 200kWh of electricity or 1gWh of electricity to use H2. Which will be only refuelled at the depot anyway.

I know which method makes more sense!

It doesn't matter though if it's produced with renewables or Nuclear.

Joseph SEE

Apparently, it also takes a long time before you can fill up your car after the person before you. I've heard the waiting period is up to half an hour between fill ups. What's the point.

Lumen

Deleted User wrote: »

It doesn't matter though if it's produced with renewables or Nuclear.

Efficiency does matter since both renewals and nuclear produce harmful waste proportional to their electricity output.

Lumen

Lumen wrote: »

Efficiency does matter since both renewals and nuclear produce harmful waste proportional to their electricity output.

It's not that bad when it can be re-processed, ie, turned into glass in sellafield, that's actually not a bad was to dispose of the waste unlike other methods in the past.

So how do renewables produce harmful waste ?

If Bill Gates TerraPower project works then this will produce an amazing amount of clean emissions free energy, refuel once every half a century or more and can burn up existing waste and also emits a fraction of the waste of current reactor tech.

Nulcear is the future, I have no doubt in my mind, once there is a technological breakthrough in such reactor design like the one Gates is working on then there will be a massive uptake in Nuclear energy unlike we have never seen.

There is no other tech that can provide the needed energy in the future if we're to move from fossil fuels. Renewables will play a part but just imagine at peak wind production, out grid can take 65% renewable energy, no imagine we're to transport and heating on the grid ? including trucks, buses, trains etc. That's a hell of a lot more energy on the grid.

Perhaps in the future Hydrogen will heat our homes which could take a lot of the burden off our Grid, maybe the storage issue could be solved and no one would bad an eyelid having a hydrogen tank in the garden.

Gates reckons that a prototype is ready for construction after successful computer model simulation, most likely powered by his Azure Cloud computing platform at Microsoft. The Chinese were to build this prototype reactor but unfortunately this didn't happen due to the trade war between China and the U.S so Gates is trying to get funding from the U.S Government.

It's a shame there has been no real technological breakthrough in Nuclear tech in many years due to fears of accidents and Fukushima was the last straw for many but technology moves on, old reactors are being nursed along because funding for new ones can't be secured.

Here's just one advantage of the TWR reactor from WIki,

By using depleted uranium as fuel, the new reactor type could reduce stockpiles from uranium enrichment.[8] TerraPower notes that the US hosts 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium and that 8 metric tons could power 2.5 million homes for a year.[9] Some reports claim that the high fuel efficiency of TWRs, combined with the ability to use uranium recovered from river or sea water, means enough fuel is available to generate electricity for 10 billion people at US per capita consumption levels for million-year time-scales.

Gates knows the future is Nuclear.

ELM327

It's also wasteful.
Similar to how when gas in the US was plentiful (before 1973) they just went for power and speed, didnt care about efficiency at all. Now we can laugh at (or own, in my case) cars getting single digit MPG from 7 litre engines,,, but when that's mass transport it's super wasteful.

Much more efficient to generate 200kWh at off peak time for a bus than it is to generate 1gWh and travel the same distance.

Large bottle small glass

ELM327 wrote: »

It's also wasteful.
Similar to how when gas in the US was plentiful (before 1973) they just went for power and speed, didnt care about efficiency at all. Now we can laugh at (or own, in my case) cars getting single digit MPG from 7 litre engines,,, but when that's mass transport it's super wasteful.

Much more efficient to generate 200kWh at off peak time for a bus than it is to generate 1gWh and travel the same distance.

Efficiency increases throughout human history have driven overall higher gross energy usages.

A Model T is much less efficient than a Mondeo, which one do you think have burned more fossil fuels if you total it all up. Same for Edison's bulb versus LED's.

ELM327

Large bottle small glass wrote: »

Efficiency increases throughout human history have driven overall higher gross energy usages.

A Model T is much less efficient than a Mondeo, which one do you think have burned more fossil fuels if you total it all up. Same for Edison's bulb versus LED's.

A model T was more efficient than cars in the post war era until the late 70's in the US.
Surely you're not arguing that there was more fuel used in the 20's than the 60's or 70's?

Correlation is not causation.

Mickeroo

Large bottle small glass wrote: »

Efficiency increases throughout human history have driven overall higher gross energy usages.

A Model T is much less efficient than a Mondeo, which one do you think have burned more fossil fuels if you total it all up. Same for Edison's bulb versus LED's.

That is what's called a logical fallacy.

ELM327

Mickeroo wrote: »

That is what's called a logical fallacy.

Interestingly there is a similar correlation/logical fallacy in data between cheese consumption in the US and people accidentally dying by being tangled in their bedsheets

http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=7

drunkmonkey

Toyota are pushing full steam ahead with their Hydrogen town https://www.woven-city.global/

Hydrogen will probably dominate in the future, electric is looking more and more like a stop gap. If Hydrogen is going to be used in trucks, buses, trains we might as well just use it in cars and start rolling out the garages now so we're actually prepared for the future this time. Electric won't be able to compete on cost.

Round Cable

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Electric won't be able to compete on cost.

BEVs are cheaper to manufacture and they use 3x less energy to move, meaning they will always be 3x cheaper to fuel. This is why hydrogen has no future for small passenger vehicles.

liamog

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Hydrogen will probably dominate in the future, electric is looking more and more like a stop gap. If Hydrogen is going to be used in trucks, buses, trains we might as well just use it in cars and start rolling out the garages now so we're actually prepared for the future this time. Electric won't be able to compete on cost.

I don't really understand the great desire for Hydrogen powered personal transport, I much prefer the ability to plug in at home and have a full range, instead of driving to a filling station. Battery density has been increasing by around 6% per year since 2010. If the trend continues, the battery from a 2020 ID.3 Pro (58kWH) will be a 78kWh by 2025 (from 420km to 550km of range), prices have been dropping too, so even though the battery has more energy it will also be cheaper.

I see the future as Hydrogen for big transport, and batteries for small transport.

JohnC.

Am I correct (or maybe completely wrong) in thinking the hydrogen motor doesn't power the car directly, like an ICE? That it's basically an EV which has it's own onboard generator (the hydrogen fuel cell)?

liamog

Yes, you are correct, a hydrogen fuel cell generates electricity by combing hydrogen molecules with oxygen from the air.

KCross

JohnC. wrote: »

Am I correct (or maybe completely wrong) in thinking the hydrogen motor doesn't power the car directly, like an ICE? That it's basically an EV which has it's own onboard generator (the hydrogen fuel cell)?

Yea. The motor is just a motor like any other though.

Think of the fuel cell as the equivalent of the battery in a battery EV. Both generate electricity to "drive" the motor.

A battery needs to be recharged with electricity from the grid, the fuel cell needs to be refuelled by filling up with hydrogen at a filling station.

Lumen

Mickeroo wrote: »

That is what's called a logical fallacy.

I disagree, it's about elasticity of demand w.r.t price and convenience.

Electric cars are nicer to drive and cheaper to run and so will tend to be used more.

If we ever get self-driving electric cars the roads will be almost permanently gridlocked as people spend 3 hours being driven to the office whilst working in the back of the Johnnycab, have a couple of meetings, lunch, then go home again.

timsey tiger

liamog wrote: »

I see the future as Hydrogen for big transport, and batteries for small transport.

I did agree with this as I had understood that fuel cells were relatively bulky and not particularly suited to passenger vehicles. Then on the bbc saw this article about hydrogen fuel cell powered drones, which I guess means that the size constraints seem to be sorted.

However, I guess the economic factors are compelling bevs are just cheaper to run and have the head start. I can't see hydrogen winning this one. Anyway no industry is beyond dirty tricks who wants to buy a hindenburg that you won't be allowed drive in tunnels. ( I just made this up, based on reading something on the channel tunnel website about gas powered vehicles not being allowed, then generalised. This is the sort of sh1t we are dealing with)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50841104

Rafal

ELM327 wrote: »

If you carry 200kWh of electricity to complete your journey as a bus driver, you will need 600kWh of H2 to create that energy, and another 400kWh to make up for the lesser efficiency of travel using a hydrogen fool cell (due to lower thermal efficiency)

So that makes 200kWh of electricity or 1gWh of electricity to use H2. Which will be only refuelled at the depot anyway.

I did not know of the 1:5 ratio in energy requirements of hydrogen vehicles. Are you taking into account the cost of producing electricity too? Hydrogen can be produced by means other than electrolysis.

By the way, do you mean 1 MWh or 1 GWh? 1,000 kWh = 1 MWh. 1,000,000 kWh = 1 GWh (uppercase G, not g).

ELM327

Rafal wrote: »

I did not know of the 1:5 ratio in energy requirements of hydrogen vehicles. Are you taking into account the cost of producing electricity too? Hydrogen can be produced by means other than electrolysis.

By the way, do you mean 1 MWh or 1 GWh? 1,000 kWh = 1 MWh. 1,000,000 kWh = 1 GWh (uppercase G, not g).

I meant MWh in that case, I was sure it went the other way. Apologies.




Currently (and the only future proof renewable way) to produce H2 is by electrolysis. If you need electricity anyway then you expend the same energy to generate electricity for propulsion or for generating hydrogen.
Ergo.. instead of 1:3, it's 2:4 - allowing "1" as the constant to reflect energy spent generating electricity.

The 1:5 represents both additional costs of energy to create and burn hydrogen, as well as the less efficiency achieved by FCEV to BEV

Lumen

In Norway the EV:fast charger ratio is about 1:100 and ICE:filling station ratio is about 1:1500.

Assuming H2 cars need refuelling the same as ICE cars, that means H2 stations can be around 15x as expensive as a single DC fast charger and make sense commercially.

I've seen costs of $1m-3m for an H2 filling station, so let's pick the midpoint at 1.5m. Does a DC fast charger around $100k?

Pretty much.

DC fast Networked 50 kW One $28,401
DC fast Networked 150 kW One $75,000
DC fast Networked 350 kW One $140,000

Source: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_EV_Charging_Cost_20190813.pdf

So, in theory the costs of filling infrastructure (excluding the grid/tankers) ought to be cost competitive.

There are around 15,000 DC fast chargers on the Tesla Supercharger network alone, providing equivalent H2 capacity ought to only cost $1.5bn. That's peanuts to the fossil industry.

But are they going to do it?

liamog

That EV to fast charger ratio is very high, long term you'll need less rapid chargers per EV.

Assuming that an EV needs to be charged twice as often as ICE/H2 (half the range), then we need double the chargers, charging takes 6 times longer (30 mins instead of 5 mins), then we need 12x the chargers, but 85% of charging is done at home/work. So we need approx 1.8 times as many rapid chargers as we do fuel pumps.

So you're break even point is 1 H2 station at 1.5m versus 2 DC chargers at 750k each.

JohnC.

https://electrek.co/2020/01/16/vw-ceo-says-company-will-cut-work-on-fuel-cells-to-accelerate-battery-evs/

Now VW cutting fuel cell development and diverting that money to EVs and self-driving.

pdpmur

As an addendum to the comparison between Nokia and Apple, Iphone sales are declining and Apple is currently in the process of shifting emphasis towards being a services provider. So even the most successful companies have to keep reinventing themselves as competitors nibble at their heels.