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Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

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Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#61

Post by fifteenforty »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #59
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best balanced overview of hydrogen's future I've seen has been the Hydrogen Science Coalition: https://h2sciencecoalition.com/principles/ Green hydrogen is desperately required to produce fertilizer cleanly, so it is a problem that must be solved. It also looks very promising in a couple of other industrial processes, like the production of steel. And that's about all we can say with any degree of certainty.

Why do fertilizer and steel require hydrogen in particular rather than just green-electricity-powered induction heating? Is the hydrogen meant to be a chemical component in the manufacture of fertilizer and steel rather than merely a heat fuel?

Correct. It’s not purely for heating.

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#62

Post by bombcar »

vitus wrote: post #35
Animats wrote: post #33

This is "filed a patent on", not "developed". They may just have a benchtop fuel cell model. Range here is mostly about installed tank size. A Greyhound bus can travel about 2k kilometers on one fill-up.

Exactly this. A modern sedan might get 40 miles to the gallon, but only has a tank of maybe 13 gallons (for a range of 500 miles / 800km). Meanwhile the bus gets "only" 6 mpg but has a 200-gallon tank to compensate.

Once tank size gets to a certain point (the "range" of the driver/passengers for example) the only reason to get bigger is to reduce refueling time or because of fuel availability limitations.

This is part of the reason super long flights aren't as common as might be expected, because it's often significantly cheaper to have a layover, even if the plane could actually do the flight in one go - having to carry the second half fuel for the first half is heavy (and the extreme version of this is the rocket equation).

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#63

Post by scythe »

vardump wrote: post #7

A thinly veiled advertisement for Kraftwerk Tubes, whose founder Sascha Kühn has at least once before completely failed to deliver. https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/allgemein/kraft... Google Translate link: https://www-businessinsider-de.translate.goog/gruenderszene/...

>It turns out that they have even quietly filed a patent for a hydrogen car that can drive 2,000 kilometers on a single tank.

It does not appear that this is an empirical demonstration, just a claim, so I'd say that your concerns are pretty reasonable.

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#64

Post by bombcar »

jandrese wrote: post #49
bpye wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, LPG stations are pretty much everywhere in both Canada and the UK as well.

I found it interesting how Canada uses LPG even though the winters get cold enough that LPG isn't usable. I lived in Alberta for a year and they had a warning that when it got below -40 the buses would not run. School was not cancelled when this happened, you had to find an alternate way to get there. They did helpfully remind you that exposed skin would freeze in about 5 minutes.

Diesel vehicles begin to fail at about -10ºC so -40º is an improvement there.

There are extreme temperature vehicles that can handle below -40º with tank heaters and other things, but my gasoline cars started just fine at -40º and they weren't even garaged.

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#65

Post by Tagbert »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #59
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best balanced overview of hydrogen's future I've seen has been the Hydrogen Science Coalition: https://h2sciencecoalition.com/principles/ Green hydrogen is desperately required to produce fertilizer cleanly, so it is a problem that must be solved. It also looks very promising in a couple of other industrial processes, like the production of steel. And that's about all we can say with any degree of certainty.

Why do fertilizer and steel require hydrogen in particular rather than just green-electricity-powered induction heating? Is the hydrogen meant to be a chemical component in the manufacture of fertilizer and steel rather than merely a heat fuel?

Fertilizer requires the production of ammonia NH4. That is one nitrogen bonded to 4 hydrogens. The nitrogen can come from the air but the hydrogen has to come from some other compound.

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#66

Post by bombcar »

Waterluvian wrote: post #60
tomxor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Jerrycans. Seriously. + you can easily swap back to arbitrary storage once you are finished with your rare 2000 km journey. For all it's issues, petroleum is extremely convenient in that it can be transferred and contained in such a low tech way with (relative) safety.

Sigh. This is the kind of obvious, simple, sensible answer that I feel silly not immediately considering. The only downside (shared by my initial thought) is that they aren’t collapsible. So that volume is committed even 1/4 way through my trip

Why can't they be? You want a fuel bladder: https://www.liquidcontainment.com.au/category/2/Fuel-Bladder...

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#67

Post by [deleted] »

Waterluvian wrote: post #60
tomxor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Jerrycans. Seriously. + you can easily swap back to arbitrary storage once you are finished with your rare 2000 km journey. For all it's issues, petroleum is extremely convenient in that it can be transferred and contained in such a low tech way with (relative) safety.

Sigh. This is the kind of obvious, simple, sensible answer that I feel silly not immediately considering. The only downside (shared by my initial thought) is that they aren’t collapsible. So that volume is committed even 1/4 way through my trip

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#68

Post by jxf »

Tagbert wrote: post #65
throwaway894345 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do fertilizer and steel require hydrogen in particular rather than just green-electricity-powered induction heating? Is the hydrogen meant to be a chemical component in the manufacture of fertilizer and steel rather than merely a heat fuel?

Fertilizer requires the production of ammonia NH4. That is one nitrogen bonded to 4 hydrogens. The nitrogen can come from the air but the hydrogen has to come from some other compound.

Dumb question: why can't the hydrogen also come from the water vapor in the air?

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#69

Post by bombcar »

gernb wrote: post #36

I've gotten used to the idea that it seems like if I get a solar roof and power system that I can charge my electric car during the zombie apocalypse, where as AFAIK, I can't easily create gasoline or enough hydrogen for a hydrogen powered car. Right?

You need a lot of solar to charge a vehicle but it is attainable.

You'd be better off with something like a M35A2 with the multi-fuel engine for actual apocalypse, because that thing can burn damn near anything you can find (you could run it for years on engine oil drained from mad-max style hulks). Someone may have even modified one to run on LPG also.

Re: Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

#70

Post by vardump »

maxfan8 wrote: post #41
gernb wrote: post #36

I've gotten used to the idea that it seems like if I get a solar roof and power system that I can charge my electric car during the zombie apocalypse, where as AFAIK, I can't easily create gasoline or enough hydrogen for a hydrogen powered car. Right?

Hydrogen is simple to produce if you have access to water and electricity. Gasoline is much harder to do, though.

If it's simple, why practically no one is doing it?

Last I heard, 99% of all H2 was produced out of methane. Perhaps it's a bit better now?

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