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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.
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.
This might be true for locomotives, which mostly max out the load allowed on tracks to provide for maximum pulling power. But here, we have a light rail train for passenger transport, where acceleration is king, and a low mass requires less power to accelerate. Yes, if you have only half the weight, the amount of force you can put to the rails halves too, but because of the half weight, you get the same acceleration with half the force, requiring only half the power and half the energy to accelerate.
The price is out for grabs. And no one is claiming it. I wonder why.
Well, even the high speed German ICEs got rid of heavy locomotives quite a while ago. Starting with the ICE 3 series in ~2000 they switched to distributed motors, usually on every 2nd coach, and have passenger space from front to back all the way.
You can even have a peak over the engine drivers shoulder when in the first section of the front coach there (he can set the glass front between him and you to non-transparent though).
Germany was leading in the development of battery-powered electric trains. The Wittfeld battery EMU, of which 163 were built from 1907 were a great success. after a battery upgrade in the 1920s they had a range of 300 km.
From the mid 1950s, the series 515 battery EMU, of which 232 were built, was used on branch lines.
Both the Witteld and the 515 needed special infrastructure for charging.
The last battery EMUs were taken out of service in 1995.
Recently, there is growing interest in alternatives to Diesel and line electrification. This hydrogen-powered train built by Alstom is one of them. The other major European train makers (Bombardier, Siemens, Stadler) at the same time presented new battery EMUs this year. All of them presented working prototypes that are to be evaluated in passenger service on branch lines this and next year.
In 1930 five battery-powered electric shunting engines were built, and used on rail yards in Munich, the last one was taken out of service in 1961. The E80 was charged fromt he normal overhead electrification on electrified track sections. And the new battery EMU prototypes going into service this year also charge that way. This is quite useful for a common situation on branch line service in Germany: Trains go from a station in a city along an electrified main line for a few kilometres, then continue on a branch line.
... 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.)
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!
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.
That depends on line usage.
Sure, electrification has advantages, but it is costly, require time, and there will be people trying to resist.
In the end I think this has to be decided on a line-by-line basis. For a line with steep inclines with frequent trains and few tunnels, the benefits of line electrification should be worth it. For a line without such inclines, few tunnels, few trains, electrification might not be worth it; then the battery-powered train could be a good alternative to Diesel.
Disclaimer: I am am member of Bürgerbündnis Elztalbahn, which supports electrification of the Elztalbahn (no tunnels, AFAIR incline 1:100 on 12 km of the line, service to be upgraded to about 1 train per 30 min and direction throughout most of the day). There is an opposing group, the Elztalbahn Bürgerinitiative that fights against electrification; they tend argue that future battery- or hydrogen-powered trains make electrification obsolete.
Since the Diesel trains are mostly smaller DMUs on branch lines (EMUs typically on big long-distance and urban commuter trains), I'd assume that far above 90% of passenger-kilometers on rail would be by electric trains.
Since you asked about "rain electrification": Germany has far more thunderstorms than Britain or Ireland, but on a global scale it would rank below average. (map). But I currently feel too lazy to calculate the number of lightning strikes per rail passenger kilometer.
Our main train company, NS (Dutch Railways) has all their trains running on wind energy now.
But that doesn't work really well in Germany, where you have to lower the sails and masts every time you come to a tunnel or overpass...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Satellites don't measure surface air temperature, which is most relevant for us. Here's a better graph: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis...
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.
Your point is valid - most hydrogen is produced by steam reformation of natural gas, which releases CO2. Widescale production of hydrogen without substantial emissions (e.g., electrolysis powered by wind and solar) is still a long ways off
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that it's totally incorrect to refer to hydrogen as "zero emissions." There aren't any emissions from the release of that energy. That is, unlike a diesel locomotive, there are no tailpipe emissions. A pedant would say "well, then, they should clarify and say 'zero tailpipe emissions'", and they would be correct. But emissions from diesel locomotives - and other diesel emissions like trucks and container ships, are sources of substantial air pollution that is a hazard to human health. So switching to hydrogen still has benefits.
And, since you were curious about emissions per kJ output... I suggest having a look at this paper from 2014, comparing the total emissions of a gasoline car to a hydrogen fuel cell equivalent. It's not quite the same comparison as locomotives, but gets the point across. Per distance traveled, the fuel cell vehicle produces 34% fewer CO2 emissions per distance traveled if the hydrogen is sourced from natural gas. As the hydrogen source greens (i.e., electrolysis replaces steam reformation), the emissions drop further.
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.
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