Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

mikeayles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 75 posts

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#51

Post by mikestorrent »

xbmcuser wrote: post #46
_carbyau_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enable 10-minute charging. I have a problem with the current physics of this. A car requires a LOT of energy to run. The electrical requirements "at the pump" are going to be pretty hefty for 10 minute charging. Unless: 1. Reduce capacity requirements. IE Cars evolve smaller and smaller until they are practically aerodynamically efficient go-karts. A trend opposite of current affairs.... 2. Charge for longer timefr…

2-3 min battery replacement is already a thing in China for trucks. The largest manufacture CATL is also pushing for safety and compatibility standards so all trucks can use all truck batteries in future. And for charging they are building charging stations with batteries that are charged slowly but can charge cars fast. The electricity revolution is just picking up pace

Trucks are a far cry from cars. There's a lot more space and specialized service facilities and maintenance procedures are the norm. Drivers are expected to understand far more about their vehicles.

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#52

Post by bastawhiz »

bloaf wrote: post #39

I'm not a fan of the way grey hydrogen was written off: That hydrogen is already being produced today by several different refinery processes, and then burned in a furnace because no one else wants it. So the right way to handle the carbon accounting isn't to assume that all the CO2 produced by the refinery processes count against the hydrogen produced, but rather that the energy that refineries get from burning the…

I don't disagree with your numbers, but "and then burned in a furnace because no one else wants it" is doing a lot of work.

Why does nobody want it? If it is being burned off because nobody wants it, then it effectively has less value after compressing and delivering it than the natural gas itself (or as you say, they'd be selling it and burning the natural gas instead).

The truth is, you can burn it off and save the cost and trouble of purifying and storing it (which also uses energy and produces carbon), especially when using it in fuel cells requires 99.99% purity. You couldn't just pipe it over to a data center or power plant.

It's worth considering also that not only is the hydrogen that would come out dirtier (because it's being replaced by natural gas), it's also making the natural gas dirtier, because you're burning methane instead of hydrogen to refine it.

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#53

Post by bastawhiz »

trhway wrote: post #48
timmmmmmay wrote: post #45

Hydrogen is so hard to handle that NASA never really figured it out; hydrogen leaks just delayed Artemis 2 last week. There's been about 70 years of trying to solve these issues for space launch and very little progress. It doesn't seem like it'll be easier trying to do this as the scale of every gas station?

The article skips that i think most realistic and plausible option - fuel cell using hydrogen extracted from the standard hydrocarbon fuel right on the truck. Thus hydrogen would be present only in the short path - from fuel splitter to the fuel call. The fuel cell has higher efficiency than ICE and having electrical engine works better for trucks than ICE too. Such setup is overkill, at least for near future, for re…

Onboard reforming has been explored and it's not great. The end-to-end efficiency is poor (In the end it's only about as efficient as just using a regular diesel engine, much harder to service, more expensive to maintain, and doesn't improve your carbon footprint at all. What's the point?

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#54

Post by bastawhiz »

credit_guy wrote: post #17

This analysis does not account for side benefit of the oxygen. If you split water to get hydrogen, then for every kilogram of hydrogen you get, you also get 8 kg of oxygen. Liquid oxygen is not an expensive commodity, its market price is about $1/kg, but in this context this makes a difference. For example, in the first infographic, the cost of green hydrogen produced today is listed as £16.97 which is about $23. If…

Does the cost of green hydrogen not already price this in? It would be crazy to go through the trouble of electrolysis and just vent the oxygen into the atmosphere

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#55

Post by adonovan »

dirk94018 wrote: post #8

Hydrogen has been the future as long as I have been paying attention to electric cars. There are many problems with it, including Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. It leaks through seals, embrittles metals, and has terrible energy density by volume. You either compress it to 700 bar (heavy tanks), liquefy it at -253°C (energy-intensive), or store it in metal hydrides (heavy, slow release). Solid state batteries are…

> Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. It leaks through seals, embrittles metals, ...

Second smallest, after monatomic Helium molecules (which have similar problems of storage, embrittlement, and leakage).

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#56

Post by RandallBrown »

mikestorrent wrote: post #50
_carbyau_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enable 10-minute charging. I have a problem with the current physics of this. A car requires a LOT of energy to run. The electrical requirements "at the pump" are going to be pretty hefty for 10 minute charging. Unless: 1. Reduce capacity requirements. IE Cars evolve smaller and smaller until they are practically aerodynamically efficient go-karts. A trend opposite of current affairs.... 2. Charge for longer timefr…

I like the idea of swappable batteries in theory, but in reality... well... that's a lot of logistics and a lot of potential for things to go wrong. Consider the swappable propane tank market, for instance; it's clear that returning cans need refurbishment and testing before you can give them back out to people. This implies it probably can't be just done on-site at a gas station. They also weigh an absolute ton, so…

Doesn't Nio have a few thousand battery swapping stations in China?

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#57

Post by idontwantthis »

dirk94018 wrote: post #8

Hydrogen has been the future as long as I have been paying attention to electric cars. There are many problems with it, including Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. It leaks through seals, embrittles metals, and has terrible energy density by volume. You either compress it to 700 bar (heavy tanks), liquefy it at -253°C (energy-intensive), or store it in metal hydrides (heavy, slow release). Solid state batteries are…

It's always been clear to me that Hydrogen is not the future, because the car companies that made hydrogen cars never tried to build a hydrogen fuel distribution system.

The main reason EVs are a thing is that Tesla built the supercharger network. The fact that Honda or Toyota didn't do that for Hydrogen is the reason it has not been a serious fuel alternative. And they probably didn't do that because they always knew the economics would never work out and were never serious about pursuing it.

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#58

Post by xbmcuser »

mikestorrent wrote: post #51
xbmcuser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2-3 min battery replacement is already a thing in China for trucks. The largest manufacture CATL is also pushing for safety and compatibility standards so all trucks can use all truck batteries in future. And for charging they are building charging stations with batteries that are charged slowly but can charge cars fast. The electricity revolution is just picking up pace

Trucks are a far cry from cars. There's a lot more space and specialized service facilities and maintenance procedures are the norm. Drivers are expected to understand far more about their vehicles.

I don't understand what you mean Nio the car manufacturer is already doing 100k+ battery swaps a day for passenger cars. I mentioned ev trucks as some mentioned that hydrogen would be easier / cheaper for trucks which I think is wrong as using explosions to move object won't be as cheap or maintenance free as using electricity to move magnets/motors.

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#59

Post by rob74 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #29
defrost wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path of most interest to many is Renewables -> bulk hydrogen as storage -> electricity grid. The bulk storage method of interest is dissolved salt caverns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160599

Bulk hydrogen makes a lot less sense than pumping water up a hill. We have thousands and thousands of sites throughout the country that would be great for pumped storage and require absolutely no advanced technology. They are buildable today .

I guess that with "throughout the country" you mean the US? There, building gigantic new pumped storage systems might work, e.g. somewhere on a mesa in a desert with few people living nearby (OTOH you need some source of water for pumped storage too, so a desert location is not really ideal), but in more populated locations (i.e. Europe) such a project would face opposition and interminable delays caused by all the NIMBYs living next to it.

Besides that: pumped storage is good for regulating short-term fluctuations (between day and night), not so sure about storing surplus renewable energy produced in summer to use it during winter, as the article proposes?

Re: The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck

#60

Post by defrost »

defrost wrote: post #31
idiotsecant wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulk hydrogen makes a lot less sense than pumping water up a hill. We have thousands and thousands of sites throughout the country that would be great for pumped storage and require absolutely no advanced technology. They are buildable today .

Location, location, location - there are many sites globally suitable for geological bulk hydrogen storage; the UK has had the Tesside site operational until recently since the early 1970s. They were built 50 years ago. (Slightly before today). Pumped hydrogen at Walpole is a great functional little project that eases the grid edge brown out problem. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45332157 ) Scaling that up t…

> Pumped hydrogen

== Pumped hydroelectric / pumped water

Post reply on HN