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First Hydrogen-Powered Train Hits the Tracks In Germany (arstechnica.com)
"French train-building company Alstom built two hydrogen-powered trains and delivered them to Germany last weekend, where they'll zoom along a 62-mile stretch of track that runs from the northern cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervorde, and Buxtehude," reports Ars Technica. "The new trains replace their diesel-powered counterparts and are the first of their kind, but they are likely not the last. Alstom is contracted to deliver 14 more hydrogen-powered trains, called Coradia iLint trains, before 2021." From the report: The trains are an initial step toward lowering Germany's transportation-related emissions, a sector that has been intractable for policy makers in the country. But hydrogen fuel faces some chicken-and-egg-type problems. Namely, hydrogen is difficult to store, and making it a truly zero-emissions source of fuel requires renewable electricity to perform water electrolysis. The more common option for creating hydrogen fuel involves natural gas reforming, which is not a carbon-neutral process.
The advantages of hydrogen fuel cells are that -- unlike battery-powered vehicles -- refueling a hydrogen-powered vehicle is just as fast as a vehicle powered by fossil fuels. No sitting around and charging overnight is required. Trains tend not to be battery-powered when they're electric, however, because they're so heavy. Electric train systems tend to use catenary systems, with electrified cables providing electricity to the train. But over long distances, setting up an external electricity source can be expensive. Both trains have a reported range of 1,000km (621 miles) and can reach top speeds of 140km/h (87mph). Cost is unknown, although Alstom's press release says that Lower Saxony, the German state where the trains will run, supported the purchase of the 14 additional trains with $94.5 million.
The advantages of hydrogen fuel cells are that -- unlike battery-powered vehicles -- refueling a hydrogen-powered vehicle is just as fast as a vehicle powered by fossil fuels. No sitting around and charging overnight is required. Trains tend not to be battery-powered when they're electric, however, because they're so heavy. Electric train systems tend to use catenary systems, with electrified cables providing electricity to the train. But over long distances, setting up an external electricity source can be expensive. Both trains have a reported range of 1,000km (621 miles) and can reach top speeds of 140km/h (87mph). Cost is unknown, although Alstom's press release says that Lower Saxony, the German state where the trains will run, supported the purchase of the 14 additional trains with $94.5 million.
Overtakes China in one run! Way to kick the shit out of China!
Japan too!
Trains tend not to be battery-powered when they're electric, however, because they're so heavy.
That's one of the last things trains should care about. Steel wheels don't provide much friction when they have a low load.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I was intuitively assuming that most of trains, at least in Europe, run on electricity. But apparently they are building diesel-supporting locomotives even nowadays, although mostly as a backup under very specific conditions. I don't think that have ever traveled in a primarily-diesel-powered train.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The price is out for grabs. And no one is claiming it. I wonder why.
#Nuremburg'd
oh the humanity!
my ass. You still need to isolate and enrich the H2, which takes energy.. We need to consider total emissions for KJ output.
I thought the major problem with actually using hydrogen is that it tends to leak through the bigger atoms of the tank, turning metal brittle, and so upping the already considerable explosion danger. Did they fix that?
Also, how do you get that much hydrogen efficiently? Electrolysis from PV isn't all that great. Electrolysis from burning brown coal is really bad for forests. (See current day mining controversy in Germany, though not directly connected to hydrogen.)
Finally. Well done.
... but things get a bit more complex when they're wet or have leaves or snow on them. A heavier train can push through any crap on the railhead and get better grip whereas a lighter train can have more problems. This is most noticable in autumn when leaves on the line can be a serious problem.
Thats putting it mildly. Not only does it use a fossil fuel to obtain the H2 and require energy to run the process, it also ends up getting LESS energy out of the gas itself than if the gas had just been burnt directly.
Unless H2 is obtained from electrolysis using renewables or nuclear then its the complete opposite of a carbon neutral solution and is nothing more than a "We Need to do something, this is something, lets do it" style bandwagon for politicians to jump on.
> Electric train systems tend to use catenary systems, with electrified cables providing electricity to the train. But over long distances, setting up an external electricity source can be expensive
That is a germanic / scandinavian / italian specific problem, because they do not use the Kando-system (high voltage AC catenary fed at the national grid frequency). Countries which use the world standard 25kV (2x25kV) AC, 50 / 60 Hz traction system can electrify railways cheaply, regardless of varried terrain, density of traffic or there being single or multiple tracks. In detail:
Italian Railways uses 3000V DC, which requires expensive and maintenance heavy rectification substations every 10-12 miles or so. Meanwhile, the germanic and scandinavian countries (.AT, .CH, .DE, .NO, .SE) use the weird one-third frequency AC traction system, which requires a second national electric grid fed at 16.7Hz, running parallel to the normal national electric grid which provides high voltage 50Hz AC to consumers and industry. That system, originating from 1912 is as wasteful as it gets and only the wealthy, heavily industrialized and hydro resource rich countries can afford it and even them only barely. The USA had a similar 25Hz AC railway traction network but that disappeared by the mid-1970s.
The proper solution is the now world standard Kando-system, where railway traction directly uses single-phase AC, fed via maintenance free ZBD trasnsformers directly from the threads of 3-phase AC 50 or 60 Hz national grid. That was VERY difficult to implement before the advent of power-electronic semiconductors (high Ampere silicon diodes) circa 1961. But in 1928 Koloman von Kando built a 17-ton phase splitter rotor to realize the functionality onboard electric locomotives, but which required rod drive to the wheels, like those of steam locomotives, so the germans considered it obsolete and refused to adopt.
It was only implemented in Hungary from 1932, until the french railway started to adopt 25kV and experiment with in 1952 (first with mercury rectfication, then silicone diodes). Eventually the french fought to make 25kV 50/60Hz AC traction the codified railway world standard, but by that time the 16.7Hz AC posse were too entrenched to convert.
On the other hand, most of the 3kV DC traction countries converted at least partially, because DC just cannot provide enough juice for true high-speed rail, being limited to ~6 MW supply per feed section, while even the cheapest built 25kV AC network is capable of ~11MW. (The italians found that out about that difference the hard way with the first batch of their supposedly 300km/h capable Frecciarossa trainsets, eventually they went 25kV/50Hz AC for their HST network, while regional lines remain 3kV DC.)
When you become a scientists, you sign also the secret paper to ruin the USofA. I thought that was common knowledge.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
While it is not ideal, the door towards an ideal situation is now more open. The production of H2 is a separate problem, which can be solved separately. They're just not finished yet, but they are more ready for the future.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Did the train explode into a huge hydrogen-fueled fireball after it collided with the tracks?
The iLint in Lower-Saxony use currently hydrogen delivered from the Netherlands, but will switch to electrolysis and electricity from renewable sources. As northern Germany has a lot of electricity overproduction from renewable sources, this is a perfect fit to reduce CO2 emissions.
What could go wrong.
"The company did not elaborate on how the hydrogen fuel is supplied, and it did not respond to requests for comment."
So they may be using dirty hydrogen from fossil fuels. I have toured a German solar-powered electrolysis hydrogen production plant; one big enough to support a train would be a very substantial investment in size and money.
Not to mention the maintenance on fuel cells. PEMs are usually for small to medium installations, but there are issues with longevity of the expensive membranes. SOFCs are solid for applications that run continuously.
APK is a Nazi. Fuck him.
Don't name it Hindenburg ... or, perhaps maybe as that would make people aware of the potential risks of hydrogen gas.
That research is still going to be useful for the future. It seems though that it makes a lot more sense for, for example, ships. Electric trains not connected to the grid seem like a bit of a gimmick.
Ezekiel 23:20
Your intuition probably has you thinking Germany is the greenest major European country due to its investment in solar and wind. In actual fact France is the greenest large economy, by far, because nuclear.
That's only true if you define "green" as "not-fossil-fuel" or "not carbon emitting". Nuclear is comparitively "green" as far as carbon and particulates go but it's impossible to argue that it doesn't have it's own rather nasty and definitely not "green" waste products. Worse it unfortunately goes hand in hand with WMD development as well which is probably the more serious problem with nuclear. (save the sputtering retorts about thorium, etc - it's a problem we haven't resolved so far though I'm hopeful we will someday) It seems clear that the problems from dumping massive amounts of carbon into our atmosphere is the more serious existential threat so nuclear probably has the lesser downside but calling it "green" is somewhat misleading if you don't explain what you mean when you use the term.
I know the diesel trains can be very good for hauling massive loads of stuff.
Hydrogen is fantastic as it has no byproduct (if I recall, just water vapor?) but it's dangerous to contain and pretty sure it's very hard to make efficiently.
I saw someone splitting water into hydrogen using a solar panel setup long ago, although it's not cost effective at all vs most power sources, ignoring the efficiency standpoint, it's clean and unlimited. (to my knowledge, again)
Honestly not a bad idea, assuming it fully replaces diesel trains long term.
What about efficiency? Something in the back of my mind tells me that current hydrogen fuel cells are not very energy efficient when the entire process from power source to vehicle motion is considered. But that's not a rigorous analysis. Just something I might have read once.
No you have it right. Hydrogen fuel cells are quite efficient for the part of the process on the vehicle but the larger process of producing and distributing the hydrogen is wasteful and economically not competitive. Your options are primarily either some sort of energy intensive electrolysis or some sort of processing of fossil fuels where it is generally more efficient to just use the fossil fuels directly. While there are corner cases where hydrogen fuel cells make sense, in general there usually more efficient ways to deliver power.
I see hydrogen fuel cells as a good option to power things in cases where we are generating hydrogen as a byproduct of some other necessary process which does happen with some regularity. For example a lot of chemical processing flares natural gas as a byproduct which could in theory be captured and used instead of burned as "waste". This sort of limits the scale they can be used but it's still useful. Powering select trains might be a good application in some cases depending on how the hydrogen is sourced.
Interestingly, Trump is actually deporting real-life Nazis where President Bush and President Obama let him hang out in the US, even though the Nazi had been stripped of his citizenship. Yet somehow deporting real-life Nazis makes President Trump a Nazi? It's like on another thread where someone told me you can consider Hispanics white, and that is why Trump is racist for wanting to build a wall on the Southern border to keep white people out.
Bizzaro-land. But I guess that's par-for-the-course in hard-core US Leftist mentality!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In a few years time, the trains will go... BOOM BOOMBOOOM BOOMBOOBOBOOOM
caption : abused
Flintstones based power alternatives are not getting the attention they need to have a serious impact on carbon emissions.
Yabba dabba ding ding!
Unless H2 is obtained from electrolysis using renewables or nuclear then its the complete opposite of a carbon neutral solution
Even doing that is still wasteful for most applications. If you are already generating electricity from renewables or nuclear you are going to waste a lot of that energy processing H2 so most of the time it makes more sense to just use the energy directly and skip the H2 altogether. I think H2 makes sense for cases where the H2 is generated as a byproduct of some other useful process but it's kind of idiotic as a primary fuel stock in most use cases.
Yes, but the two sentences immediately before that already respond to that ...
Namely, if you can build the train to run on hydrogen, if you can solve the problem of making the hydrogen more cheaply/efficiency then you already have the train which can use it.
Sometimes in engineering, you have to focus on smaller parts of the problem, and then move on.
I assure you, they already know this, and TFS even mentions it.
So, congratulations, you've pointed out a limitation which is mentioned in the damn summary.
Well that's because you can't really prove that something isn't happening.
You absolutely can prove that something isn't happening and we do it all the time. It's called evidence of absence. Furthermore the concept you are confused about is proving a negative and the notion that we cannot prove a negative isn't universally true either.
Turning H2 via fuel cells into electricity and running an elecfric engine is 4-5 times as efficient than burning it in an ICE.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Satellites don't measure surface air temperature, which is most relevant for us. Here's a better graph: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis...
There are people already working on that problem.
https://www.gasworld.com/csiro...
The vision is to "export solar power" by producing ammonia and the converting the ammonia to H2 at or near the point of use.
... Hindenburg!
I know the diesel trains can be very good for hauling massive loads of stuff.
Just being pedantic but most of them are properly termed diesel-electric where electric motors drive the wheels and the diesel engine has no direct connection to the drive wheels. It just exists to drive a generator. You could seamlessly replace the diesel engine with a different power source (including hydrogen fuel cells) and it would function more or less identically.
Hydrogen is fantastic as it has no byproduct (if I recall, just water vapor?) but it's dangerous to contain and pretty sure it's very hard to make efficiently.
It is very clean once you get it in the fuel cell but the process of getting and transporting the hydrogen tends to be inefficient (electrolysis) or dirty (processing fossil fuels) so it isn't so great once you think about the whole system. Hydrogen isn't so much dangerous to contain as it is (comparatively) expensive and difficult.
Honestly not a bad idea, assuming it fully replaces diesel trains long term.
It won't replace diesel trains most likely because it's not economically competitive or efficient for the reasons mentioned above plus a few others not mentioned. There are corner cases where hydrogen fuel cells will make a lot of sense but it's hard to see a future where they replace diesel engines on a widespread basis in most applications including trains. That said I hope they keep working the technology because some interesting things are bound to come out of it one way or another.
Interestingly, Trump is actually deporting real-life Nazis where President Bush and President Obama let him hang out in the US, even though the Nazi had been stripped of his citizenship. Yet somehow deporting real-life Nazis makes President Trump a Nazi? It's like on another thread where someone told me you can consider Hispanics white, and that is why Trump is racist for wanting to build a wall on the Southern border to keep white people out.
Bizzaro-land. But I guess that's par-for-the-course in hard-core US Leftist mentality!
Well he hates foreign Nazis, but loves his home-grown Nazis, or at least thinks the are very fine people. Bu those are probably hard-core US Leftist according to your weird worldview.
You have to be careful about comparing energy here, though. If you want to compare total energy output (i.e., heat) then, yes, the hydrogen is worse than the natural gas.
But the metric we care about is natural gas input to mechanical work output. In one scenario, you have a natural gas-powered locomotive (do those even exist?), which will be limited to the Carnot efficiency of whatever heat engine you are using to burn the gas and get mechanical work (30%, maybe). Actually, it's probably worse than that, because the locomotive probably can't be directly powered by that heat engine - the range of torque and speed needed at different operating conditions is a terrible match for a gas turbine. Instead, most locomotives (including conventional diesels) burn fuel to run a generator, then have an electric powertrain for the wheels. So there is a further conversion step that will incur an efficiency hit. In all, you might be lucky to get 20% of the natural gas' original potential energy converted into mechanical work.
In the other scenario, you convert the natural gas to H2, then send that through a fuel cell to get electricity, then move the locomotive by an electric motor. The fuel cell is not limited by Carnot efficiency, and the electric --> work conversion in the electric motor has quite high efficiency (85%-95%). I do not have numbers in front of me, but I suspect that you'll find the hydrogen-fueled system gets more mechanical work from the natural gas input than just burning it in an engine.
The point is to try to make use of solar-electric. Trillions have been spent on solar-electric and now it can produce significant electricity - for a few hours, on sunny days. If the train only runs on sunny days you can just use wiring to connect the train to a the solar cells. If you want the train to run in the morning or evening, you're going to need a lot of batteries.
Musk didn't think of it.
It is just one part of a hydrogen based transportation system.
Of course, you start at the bottom and work up. The cleaner hydrogen production can start later when there is economic incentive to do so.
I'm a fat neckbeard Bernie fan, and take exception to your characterization.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The production of H2 is a separate problem, which can be solved separately.
I'm not sure it's that easy. As long as it is as inefficient and expensive as it is, it may not ever be cost-competitive with other technologies, like battery trains.
How many Jews can it carry?
In the good old USA there are plan now to come back to coal powered trains, just spoke with Amtrak representative and got the news; diesel powered locos will be refitted with the new generation of twin turbo coal fast track engines and as additional environmental measures those locos will be painted with a green self-cleaning paint.
there is no spoon
cmon just detonate those ICBMs already
"the range of torque and speed needed at different operating conditions is a terrible match for a gas turbine"
True, but you can use gas turbines to drive generators which is what is done on ships. Whether you could fit that into a loco is another matter.
But you may have a point here, though I'd be surprised if when tallied up the H2 is anything more than break even compared to using the gas direct because don't forget, H2 has to be heavily compressed to be stored which takes even more energy plus it leaks out no matter what container you use.
Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere.
So, yes they do. They also measure other altitudes, which the surface stations don't.
That's one train I'd not like to board, have they learned nothing from the Hindenburg?
Thats putting it mildly. Not only does it use a fossil fuel to obtain the H2 and require energy to run the process, it also ends up getting LESS energy out of the gas itself than if the gas had just been burnt directly.
Unless H2 is obtained from electrolysis using renewables or nuclear then its the complete opposite of a carbon neutral solution and is nothing more than a "We Need to do something, this is something, lets do it" style bandwagon for politicians to jump on.
I'm not saying Hyrdogen is a good or bad approach, but the advantage is, as with batteries, that the particulate pollution occurs far from the population centers, instead of right through the middle of it.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Did it explode?
#DeleteFacebook
...this much interest in hydrogen since the Hindenburg.
The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere.
Yes, I know. The problem is that the IR emissions from all the layers get combined. Pulling them apart requires a lot of modelling. And the lowest layer they tease out of the data is significantly thicker than the customary surface air temperature (1.5 meter above ground). Temperature gradient near the surface is very high, so it makes a huge difference whether you measure at 1.5 meters, or 150 meters.
Just electrify the tracks you crazy krauts.. It's cheaper, can be zero emissions if you use nuclear or renewable power. It's more efficient at zero emissions because electrolysis of water to get hydrogen is pretty inefficient to start with. AND (the best part) it doesn't require any new technology, dangerous fuels, new infrastructure to handle a new kind of fuel or any of the other stuff that prevents such stupid ideas from working.
What's the point of using "hydrogen" to fuel trains beyond the "cool" factor? Save the hydrogen fuels for things like trucks or maybe aircraft and leave the easily electrified stuff alone.
Wow. This is SOOOOOOO off-topic.
All nazi names hur hur german names all sound kraut haha.
This seems like one of the better uses for hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen cars/trucks have a distribution problem, where building thousands of fueling stations and transporting the hydrogen there is an expensive proposition. Whereas with hydrogen-powered trains, they only need to manage a handful of depots. Someone also mentioned shipping as a good candidate, since ports are also highly centralized (and close to a source of water).
Downside is a lack of economy of scale. Also, getting hydrogen via electrolysis it not tremendously efficient, although given that solar installation is outpacing energy storage, it might be a good way to use excess electricity (limits on transmission capacity notwithstanding).
Also, it's possible (though expensive) to capture carbon from a centralized source, while it's wholly impractical to do it for millions of vehicles.
The same is true for electricity- takes an energy source (possibly fossil fuel) to create, which means we get LESS energy than if we had burnt the fuel directly.
But all of this is irrelevent- electricity is a power *transport* mechanism not a power source. Just like H2.
I am not a sig.
If you could predict the climate with consistent accuracy and any sort of granularity you could also be a billionaire.
Just sayin.
While it is not ideal, the door towards an ideal situation is now more open.
That description better fits electric. When the grid is moved towards better sources, every electric vehicle improves. The same is not true of hydrogen vehicles. They depend specifically on improvements in hydrogen production.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Satellites don't measure surface air temperature, which is most relevant for us.
Actually they don't measure temperature at all, they measure microwave radiation at different wavelength - temperature is then computed by combining measurements from different time points at different angles.
Thanks for the info on Iceland. However even with "free" geothermal power H2 isn't so rosy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Iceland provides a good location to test the viability of hydrogen as a fuel source for the future; its population is only 320,000 people and over 60 percent live in the capital, Reykjavík. The relatively small scale of the country's infrastructure would ease a transition from oil to hydrogen, and abundant natural energy can be harnessed to produce hydrogen. Iceland is a participant in international hydrogen fuel research and development programs, and other countries are following the nation's progress. However, these factors also make Iceland an advantageous market for electric vehicles. Because electric vehicles are less expensive than hydrogen vehicles and four times more efficient, the country may switch to electric vehicles. Hydrogen cars were not expected to be mass-produced until at least 2015 and it will be faster to introduce electric vehicles. Iceland's 840-mile (1,350 km) Ring Road could be covered by 14 fast-charging stations.
Also note that H2 production in Iceland looks to me to be dying out -- even WITH cheap power.
- The production of Ammonia in 2002. Dead.
- HyFLEET:CUTE hydrogen powered buses massively subsidised by the EU? They still have a website but don't appear to have any buses running since 2009.
If you want to discuss cheap electricity from French Nukes, it's not cheap enough to rival H2 from Natural Gas nor are there massive amounts of unused capacity. The French Nukes are ageing needing more maintenance so EDF and Areva have been walking a tightrope for many years already on taking many offline to perform the needed maintenance for months/years while also keeping enough online to supply France's varying needs. Running those plants that are online at top capacity to make H2? Not happening: It'd just bring the plants into needing maintenance faster taking even more offline.
The only way to make H2 from electrolysis cheaper than H2 from Natural Gas is with a truly massive carbon tax, the mother of all carbon taxes, the carbon tax to end all carbon taxes... Soooo, unless this hydrogen powered train project is coming with a hidden massive carbon tax, it's going to be using H2 from Natural Gas and throwing as much if not more carbon into the atmosphere through the inefficiencies in the added steps as it would have had they just used liquified Natural Gas to power diesel engines. Yeah, really green... /sarcasm
Lastly, consider the source of the Natural Gas the germans will be reforming to get their H2: Russia. Germany should be taking steps to reduce their dependancy on Putin, not financing his next adventure while falsely claiming to be saving the planet.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
And so it continues. The never ending bollocks of 'Climatedot', every single fucking article is about 'climate change' in one way or another. And there IS no 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why they renamed it 'climate change'.
Climate change was the original ter from the 1950s and has been in continuous use since.
Temperatures were pretty flat from ~1979 to the big El Nino in 1998.
Learn what surface temperature is, and some statistics. Your assertion is nonsense.
Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere.
So, yes they do. They also measure other altitudes, which the surface stations don't.
No, they don't. To determine surface temperature at a point where there are no surface stations requires calibration of readings based on places where there are surface stations. In turned out that they had got this a little wrong and had underestimated warming.
No you couldn't.
Perhaps you meant weather?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, I meant climate. Rainfall patterns. Greening and desertification. Long term stuff, though even predicting things like droughts (~weather) well in advance would be profitable.
I wonder if their company emblem displayed on the front of the engine is Hitler giving the Nazi saluite?
That is interesting.
"In 2004, a federal immigration judge ordered that Mr. Palij be deported. But for years, American officials failed to persuade any country to accept a man born in what was once Poland and is now Ukraine, and who had served a murderous German regime."
2004. Trump had nothing to do with it. I would guess Bush didn't even have anything to do with it, but Trump certainly didn't.