Fuel Cell Powered Japanese Trains on Trial in July

ScorpFromHell writes "As per this yahoo! news item, "East Japan Railway Co. is to conduct a test run of the world's first fuel-cell-powered train in July. The fuel cells, which generate power from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, will help reduce environmental pollution compared to the existing electric and diesel engines, the company said." But I wonder how much energy did it consume to produce those huge amounts of Hydrogen & Oxygen? Will it be lesser than the power generated by the reaction between them? In other words, can this technology be used by countries with not so deep pockets as Japan?"

Comments

Re:Good echnology applied at the wrong place

[martijnd]

I think you are looking at the wrong kind of trains -- the Japanese have lots of commuter trains connecting smaller cities, and literally millions of miles of track, don't think Tokyo, think outback.

These trains are actually more like busses, they have maybe 2-4 cars and run infrequencly, so electrifying these tracks doesn't make much economic sense; or is just downright ugly and expensive to maintain. They are mostly diesel powered (with the engines located below the passenger compartments, there is no seperate loc).

For these, replacing a noisy diesel engine with much quieter electrical ones makes very good sense.