Germany Unveils a Hydrogen-Powered Passenger Train (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The world's first CO2-emission-free train powered through hydrogen was unveiled this week in Germany. The Coradia iLint, created by French company Alstom, was presented at the Berlin InnoTrans trade show on Tuesday. The train's energy comes from combining hydrogen stored in tanks on the train with oxygen in the air. The energy is then stored in lithium-ion batteries. The train's only emissions are steam and condensed water. The train also has lower noise levels than diesel trains, emitting only the sound of its wheels on the track and any sounds from air resistance at even its highest speed of 140 kilometers per hour (about 87 miles per hour). The train has the ability to travel up to 800 kilometers (497 miles) and carry up to 300 passengers; it's the worldâ(TM)s first hydrogen passenger train that can regularly operate long journeys.

Comments

Re:It's missing the full picture

[tomhath]

Here's a better link. As I read it, the idea is to use extra electricity from intermittent power sources such as wind and solar to produce hydrogen, which can then be stored and transported to where it's needed. That seems far better than trying to store electricity in huge batteries.

Thompson's calculations, based on a 2007 set of figures from India Rail, estimate that as much as three billion barrels of crude oil - or the equivalent of 214 million tonnes of CO2 - could be saved over one year by transitioning from diesel to hydrail.

"The two magic properties of hydrogen are the ability to store and transport it," Thompson says. "It's that utility of time and place which is unique to the hydrogen economy. And that's what you can't do with the existing power grid."

There's also an economic reason behind investing in windmills instead of diesel oil, as Busch explains: "We have fluctuations in wind and solar energy which gives us the chance to produce energy for very, very cheap."

Re:It's missing the full picture

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm german, and as such I don't want to be the nazi here, but MW is not a unit of energy, but an unit of power (or as we germans say "Leistung"). Use MWh instead.

Re:How efficient is hydrogen really?

[hey!]

Conversion efficiency is not a big deal when you're using renewable sources; in those cases you're interested in capital investment efficiency (what you get out for dollar invested).

That's because wind or solar or tidal you don't capture simply goes away; the waste is 100% when you don't use it, so if you capture any of it, it's a win, so long as the money up front isn't too much.