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Could this beat BEV?

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hydrogen
2K views 15 replies 12 participants last post by  Craig Rogers 
#1 ·


Probably what the government have been waiting for. Eminently taxable. Will we now see more hydrogen stations appearing?
 
#4 ·
God, please no.

Not only is this even more inefficient than storing H2 using compression or liquification, ammonia is highly toxic.

You wouldn’t want to be around a fuel leak.

In this use case they transport it as ammonia yet still have to extract the H2 and then compress the gas.

They really can’t get out of thinking like fossil fuels.
 
#6 ·
You can create hydrogen by hydrolysis and water using electricity.
Electricity supplied via renewables when in surfeit. I understand there's at least one German plant doing this already.
Or you could have 3x as much electricity to put directly into cars "when in surfeit"and allow people to charge at home whilst asleep instead of at a filling station ata price higher than petrol (from what I've seen, the non subsidised price of H2 is approx 2x that of petrol on a per mile basis)
 
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#8 ·
We have 2 Hydro sites in wales - I have used one when I had a prototype car - it's just like LPG to me

Orkney makes so much of the from wave power they are converting their ferries to run off it - now that's progress
 
#10 ·
H2 is a very inefficient but very energy dense and very fast charging type of battery that is more dangerous than Li-Ion if there is a fire. Does that sound right? Did I miss any significant advantage/disadvantage?

The inefficient and potentially dangerous parts are there to stay, while the energy density is probably going to be hard to beat (there is maybe something about the conversion to usable energy with a size to power ratio) but the charging speed seems to be a short term advantage.

I can't see that replacing all batteries, but until the density (and to some extent charging speed) improve significantly, I can't help but wonder if that would make a good REX technology, so we can leave the H2 tank empty most of the time, but use it when we need/want to go far fast.
 
#11 ·
H2 is a very inefficient but very energy dense and very fast charging type of battery that is more dangerous than Li-Ion if there is a fire. Does that sound right? Did I miss any significant advantage/disadvantage?
Cost - h2 tanks and fuel cells are expensive compared to batteries

Longevity and maintenance - virtually no maintenance on batteries, fuel cells wear out fast
 
#14 ·
I can't see that replacing all batteries, but until the density (and to some extent charging speed) improve significantly, I can't help but wonder if that would make a good REX technology, so we can leave the H2 tank empty most of the time, but use it when we need/want to go far fast.
Just use petrol for the Rex . It already has a nationwide distribution network so we don't need to spend several billion pounds implementing an H2 network of filling stations*, petrol has a much denser energy footprint than H2, the technology is substantially cheaper (the fuel cell will cost a bomb so you might as well have a full scale one anyway and then it's not a Rex any more) and petrol doesn't need expensive and weighty tanks, plus you can keep it in a tank for months unlike than H2 which will leak away over time.

Indeed is it necessary to point out that a Rex that you leave the tank empty and only fill it when you go on a long journey requires the same sort of trip planning in advance as if you just had a pure BEV.

*spend a few % of that on a nationwide fast charger EV network instead. Job done.
 
#13 · (Edited)
I don't beleive it was "mostly" H2*, but even if it was, the fact it was used then is no more justification for using it now than we should start whitening bread with arsenic "because that's how they did it in the good old days"

* because if It was mostly H2 then there would have been explosions aplenty as it leaked out of pipes wholesale and as all the pipes disintegrated. AFAIK you can't put more more than 5-10% H2 into the current gas supply without hitting those issues
 
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