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:Hum

[Spy der Mann]

I think that the GP poster meant to ask: Will the manufacturing process for these batteries produce less CO2 than the maximum usage of the trains with fossil fuels?

In any case, I think it's worth it. We've researched fossil fuels too much. It's time to research about alternative energy sources.

Good echnology applied at the wrong place

[Wayne247]

Seriously, what can be possibly better than electric trains? Unless your electricity comes from coal, in which case replacing the power station to something else, say nuclear, would make more sense.

Fuel cells are useful for energy storage. Perfect to, say, drive a car for a few hours, then dump some more into your energy storage, and drive back, in any direction. Also, they're good to bring energy to remote location. Setup a quick electricity generator in the middle of nowhere. But for trains? They go on tracks, so installing a few wires isn't too expensive or difficult, making the electricity transportation far more efficient trought wires than fitting fuel cells on every locomotive, and then carrying all that hydrogen and .. sheesh!

Really, i see this as the wrong match of a technology to a need.

Re:Good echnology applied at the wrong place

[fabs64]

Yeah I'm sure those quirky Japanese engineers didn't think of that! :-P

While you could be right, it's not like wired electrical trains are perfect, that wire infrastructure ISN'T simple to maintain, I witnessed that the other day when a train on my line ripped down the wires for 2 of the 3 tracks.
Also isn't power loss for DC over wires rather large? I'd think if you had an efficient way of storing and extracting that power to just carry it with the train it would be much better.
Also who knows, maybe one day all trains will become electric with this technology, even the ones in the middle of nowhere, I know that electricity had to be generated somewhere but those big power stations have a lot more potential to create clean(ish) energy than those dirty old diesel engine trains.

Re:Good echnology applied at the wrong place

[Wayne247]

Right, that wire infrastructure maintenance argument makes a good case, and add to that what the article states about "improving scenery", that might be the whole motivation behind the project.

Afterall, who says this has nothing to do with environmental goals and simply a way to get their train infrastructure deeper into rural areas while mainting their high level of reliability?

If a fuel-cell train goes down you can still use the track and route around that track portion (given you have enough tracks), but if you have a power line problem, then it might bring down a whole section of your train tracks for quite some time.

Re:Good echnology applied at the wrong place

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'll bite. I live in Japan and understand the issue a bit more, so here goes.

Seriously, what can be possibly better than electric trains? Unless your electricity comes from coal, in which case replacing the power station to something else, say nuclear, would make more sense.

Actually, the majority of all trains in Japan (which is a lot, since there is track laid EVERYWHERE) run off of electrical wires. Surprisingly, JR East (Japan Railway East) atleast, generates a majority of this electricity themselves. They don't buy it off the electricity companies. And even more suprising is that a majority of this power is actually generated by hydraulic power plants along the rivers, near the tracks. It't neither coal or oil, nor nuclear. (There may be a portion of nuclear generated power they buy from the electricity companies, but I don't have figures on hand.)

Fuel cells are useful for energy storage. Perfect to, say, drive a car for a few hours, then dump some more into your energy storage, and drive back, in any direction. Also, they're good to bring energy to remote location. Setup a quick electricity generator in the middle of nowhere. But for trains?

There are, however, rural areas where the infrastructure is not in place and they run on diesel engines. (Diesel generators, that is... the trains themselves are still electric-motor driven.) The diesel costs money. And pollutes. If they already have their own power plants, why not produce hydrogen and use it on the rural train lines?

They go on tracks, so installing a few wires isn't too expensive or difficult, making the electricity transportation far more efficient trought wires than fitting fuel cells on every locomotive, and then carrying all that hydrogen and...

Actually, you're blatantly wrong on that one. Installing a few wires is NOT cheap. It is actually very expensive. Much more expensive that using fuel cell technology, and that's why they're running on diesel right now. Just as a heads up, there are a few ailing economies, especially in the northern most island of Hokkaido, where they can barely break even to operate existing train lines. (A lot of them have closed operation because they couldn't break even.) Installing power lines is out of the question, and rising prices for diesel fuel isn't helping either. Fuel cell technology really would be plausible in these environments. Not to mention the fact that not having wires overhead makes for much better scenery. Unless a train passes, you don't even realize there are tracks there, from a distance.

On another note, Hokkaido's (the above mentioned island) trains are operated by JR Hokkaido, not JR East, and they have a few cool ideas worked out too to combat the issues on hand. One such train is a bus-train. Recently completed, it's a bus that has retractable train-wheels. This is nothing new, and many countries have worked on the idea, but previous ideas were to put retractable rubber tires on a train chasis, that turned out to be a nightmare. This is the opposite approach. The reasoning is that Hokkaido, unlike the rest of Japan, does not have a very centralized and concentrated population. It's much, much more spread out. Thus, trains are/were good for hauling coal and timber (which was why there used to be so many lines in Hokkaido, but since that industry is almost non-existant now they've closed down) but not terribly suited for human transportation.

With the average age getting higher and higher, more older people prefer mass transit over driving their own car. (It gets really cold, and is snow-covered in the winter, which contributes to the fact that Hokkaido has the 3rd most traffic accident fatalities of all prefectures in Japan.) However, just because you get to the station doesn't mean you can get home. Bus lines are having problems for the same reasons the train lines are having problems. So they combined two mass transit systems into one, and managed to keep the train AND

Re:Chemical Reaction?

[jbrader]

I don't think you should expect to be modded down for asking a reasonable and well thought-out question. Isn't that the whole point of having a discussion?

Some more details

[maggard]

The linked story is pretty short on details, Google has a lot more articles.

Summarized this is a test vehicle being used on a non-electrified line in a mountainous region. The advantages are less local pollution (which can be a significant issue in mountainous regions where diesel exhaust can linger or even concentrate in valleys) and no large capitol investment in line electrification & maintenance. A side benefit is the advantages of an electrical train without power lines intruding into the landscape.

As a regular user of urban commuter rail service this sounds like an interesting development. The cost of electrifying a rail line is prohibitive yet the all-electric engines are quieter and less polluting, a big sell in expanding service in urban & ex-urban areas. Technology like this could certainly quiet the complaints of many neighbors as well as improve the air quality near central stations.

Re:Chemical Reaction? - yes, and a very efficient

[Breakfast Pants]

I gotta call BS on this 95% number; where are you getting it, because it is way off from the numbers I have seen.

Re:Obey the Law!! (of Conservation of Energy)

[Forbman]

Except that at least in the case of Japan, they have a lot of neukular power plants. It could be that they siphon the hydrogen and LOX off of the liquid gas extraction plants next to a couple of steel mills that are relatively close to the rail yard.

Much like biodiesel from recycled french fry oil doesn't scale, this method may not scale either, but it's good to actually have one to see how it pans out in real-world service.

It's no different really than Union Pacific's experiments with gas turbine locomotives, or US and European experiments with steam turbine locos, closed-cycle steam locos, etc.

I think more interesting will be how GE Locomotive's hybrid diesel-electrics work out. If the battery pack had enough amp-hours to replace one locomotive from the consist as a large train tries to power up a mountain grade, then perhaps it'll really justify itself. Of course, it won't work out on lines with multiple grades right after another (Appalachians?), but up places like Cajon Pass it might be beneficial.

Is the efficiency of a power plant really so much better than your car?
Yes, from a thermodynamic perspective it is, as well as economy of scale-wise. The coal plant is running at a steady state, and the average car engine does not. The Otto cycle engine's advantage is its flexible power output curve, which is needed for cars, especially in urban driving. Supplant a smaller displacement Otto-cycle engine that meets the power needs of the car to cruise at 70mph on the flats with an electric assist motor (instant full torque) and battery pack, and you kind of get the best of both worlds without trying to make the gas engine too complicated (i.e., variable displacement, etc).

Re:hmmm

[ScrewMaster]

Mainly because no-one has actually come up with an alternative fuel source that's competitive with petroleum, not one that is sufficiently better than petroleum to make replacing the existing infrastructure economically viable. Remember, it's not enough that a new technology be only as good as what it is replacing ... it has to be substantially better in order to attract the investment required to switch over. Take hydrogen, for example ... our dear President keeps touting the "hydrogen economy" as a worthy goal. And maybe it is, but converting our vehicles and industrial processes to use hydrogen as a fuel instead of the various petroleum distillates currently in use would be a trillion-dollar effort, if it can even be accomplished at all. It would probably be cheaper to fight another World War.

What you really should be asking "why isn't the U.S. promoting research and development of alternative fuels capable of meeting the energy needs of a vast industrial economy that are compatible with existing power production facilities." That's a bit of a tougher nut to crack, and the answer won't something as simple as "hydrogen".

Energy mentioned - so the nuclear advocates came

[dbIII]

The greenies can have their wind

The greenies won't get their wind. The Chinese government who would most likely do nasty things to vocal greenies will be getting wind instead. Three GigaWatts is planned to be installed over the next few years for practical reasons - like a much shorter time to bring it into service than an experimental nuclear power technology. Wind may suck in comparison to a huge thermal plant, but the small unit size is an advantage if you want a short construction time or want to be able to put it anywhere.

Nuclear wants to be the one true energy monoculture - which is stupid when most of the installed plants are 1950's style economic white elephants and the newer designs like pebble bed lose the thermal energy economy of scale by having small safer units. It's a pity that the nuclear debate ranges between bare faced lies (too cheap to meter) and utter horror with little in between and so few agencies giving out real information. Find a real research reactor (clue - reasearch reactors in places like Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Israel, Nth Korea etc have a military bias) and listen to stuff that comes out of those places - they keep coming up with solutions to major problems that snake-oil salesmen trying to sell nuclear power pretend don't exist in the first place. A reasonable solution for waste storage has been worked out for a tiny fraction of the amount that was spent on advertising that nuclear power is "clean" and the stupid premise that if ash heaps at coal fired plants have traces of radioactivity then it's OK for nuclear power to spread radioactive waste about instead of constructively dealing with the problem.

Re:Rich People should do stupid, inefficient thing

[drinkypoo]

My understanding is that it's possible for ethanol production from corn stocks to be energy-positive but it takes expensive equipment. However, it's pretty well-known that there are other stocks from which ethanol can be generated that are more easily energy-positive. You're quite right about the fact that ethanol production from corn stocks in the US is currently just another farm subsidy, though.

Of course, if you're really going to be doing biofuel, you're better off doing biodiesel, which is definitely energy-positive, and which has significantly higher energy density than either ethanol or veggie oil - just thought I'd throw the veg in there to cover all the bases.

However, in any case, topsoil-based fuels are the completely wrong way to go. If we're going to do biofuel, we need to be growing the fuel stocks hydroponically. All farming leads to the depletion of topsoil one way or another, whether it's blowing away because it's not covered by the native grasses that protected it and let it get to where it was, or because of depletion due to a lack of rotation which I can see being a huge potential problem if you're growing crops so you can turn them into fuel. Topsoil is less than 40% mineral... Hell, IIRC, it's significantly less.

In my opinion, if you can't get the power from substantially low-impact sources like wind, solar, or tidal, then it should be nuclear, and breeder reactors should be used, because depending on who you believe, they reduce waste (or improve efficiency, however you want to look at it) by something between two and three orders of magnitude. Then the real issue is how to store and transfer that power. Hydrogen is a reasonable way to accomplish that, especially using fuel cells, provided you can keep the energy consumption and pollution down in the manufacturing process.

Re:no it's not worth it.

[DRM_is_Stupid]

Unlike cars, East JR trains already run on electricity, not gasoline, so I'm not sure how much the old electricity/hydrogen vs. fossil fuel argument is valid in this case. These battery powered trains can reduce daytime stress on the overall electrical system by charging their batteries during the night time, when electricity from the grid is cheaper. The company has done experiments with Li-Ion batteries before.

Re:hmmm

[NiteHaqr]

Because if the world moves away from oil, the US Economy is screwed - perhaps to the point of collapse.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar for details

Thing is, even if we do keep using oil at the rate we are now, if/when the Gulf states start trading their oil in Euro's instead of US Dollars this could still happen.

Iraq switched to trading in Euro's, 1st thing that happened when Iraq restarted oil production was the reversion to the Dollar - even tho this cost the Iraqi people 20% of the value of their oil.