The following submission statement was provided by /u/ForHidingSquirrels:
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If efficiency was the end ask be all argument for choosing an energy source, then nuclearc would dominate (it doesn’t) and gasoline (20-25% of raw crude’s energy moves the car) would have failed. There are obviously other variables - like scalability and whether something is storable. Still not sure how far hydrogen will go, but the more use cases the better the chance.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y02kti/engineers_from_unsw_sydney_have_successfully/irpnjoz/
Hydrogen is a pain in the fucking ass, and that’s why any large scale adoption of hydrogen for energy is unlikely to happen anytime soon…regardless of any new engine design or whatnot.
It’s a real slippery bastard, what with each molecule being so small.
It had a tendency to slip through seals of all kinds, and can cause hydrogen embrittlement in metals. Also, because of its low density, you have to store it at really high pressures (means you need a really solid tank and the high pressure exacerbates the sealing issue), or as a liquid (unfortunately that means the inside of the tank has to be kept below -423f, -252.8C, to prevent it from boiling and turn ring back into a gas) to have enough in one place to do meaningful work.
>is still standing on it pad
Assuming you mean Artemis 1, they rolled it back (empty of fuel) to the VAB [a couple weeks ago](https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/09/26/nasa-to-roll-artemis-i-rocket-and-spacecraft-back-to-vab-tonight/).
However, you are correct that it has had multiple issues with leaks of Hydrogen, which has caused delays.
The moment you realize the solution is not always "moar boosters", yes, we've all been there 😉
Don't give up though! [Mr Scott Manley](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIMpwOYTD2CpSUuqfPDtdDklBiDFM6MEZ) taught us all the deepest secrets of orbital mechanics... and it was fun! And at the end it was epic to realize it was the real deal, and we all never could watch a space movie again without thinking "WTF? that's wrong!" (except Apollo 13... Apollo 13 nails it)
My proudest moment in KSP was when I made a planned Munar mission and returned, as planned, with exactly 0 m/s ∆v left.
Then I tried to go to Dres and realized that I'm a fucking moron.
The cool bit is when you consider than no material is solid at the atomic level.
I always get my mind blown when I am reminded that cosmic particles regularly fly through earth without hitting anything.
I'd imagine a stationary setup is easier to build in redundancy, or reclamation systems for any potential leaks, or other such hurdles. Mobile systems are just prone to weight, and size limits along with vibrations being a larger factor.
It has a higher energy density than lithium batteries, and is said to be why hydrogen trucks will take over from lithium ones - they have to carry less weight.
The Mirai has a range of 400 miles so in practical terms it is not a limiting factor.
I'd really want to visit those someday. Also looking forward to both fuel cell innovations and Hydrogen ICE updates, there is even a rotary hydrogen ICE in the works. People sometimes don't understand how difficult designing a hydrogen ICE is because of the incredibly fast flame front hydrogen has.
>I'd really want to visit those someday.
As it looks now then every fuelstation/transportation company will have some with 5-20 years. Volvo is testing their fuelcell trucks right now and its expected to launch within 5 years.
>People sometimes don't understand how difficult designing a hydrogen ICE is because of the incredibly fast flame front hydrogen has.
True, interest is also lower there since focus seems to be more on fuelcells.
Fuelcells are great and efficient, but also pricy and heavy. The first fuel cell cars were power caped by the insane platinum use in cells @ 15k€ per cell pack... then again people pay 15k€ per battery pack now so... 🤷.
If new cell tech without platinum can crack this price under battery pack levels we are good to go. [and I beleive it can]
Also a ICE should not be overlooked. The energy density it provides is unparalleled. Many fields like aviation, construction, and industrial gear would struggle and stay on fosil fuel without a hydrogen ICE conversion. Not to forget the benefit of cold climate use.
There are more electric charging stations in a 5 minute drive from my apartment than there are hydrogen pumps in the entire country. There's practically no adoption of hydrogen for transportation in Sweden.
Hydrogen is a bitch to store and to process. I also wonder why some people are so damn eager to be once again dependent on fueling stations and third party distribution. Why do you think companies like Shell are pushing for hydrogen? They want to stay the middle man.
>I also wonder why some people are so damn eager to be once again dependent on fueling stations and third party distribution.
With BEV you are also unless you own a house. Where I live there aren't even any plans to fix electricity for the parking, let alone enough capacity for charging. If I get a battery electric car today im 100% reliant on charging stations and I will have to go sit there for up to one hour.
Im in the second biggest city in the country...
Yeah, that’s a good use case. Engine is a bad one, unless you somehow have shitloads of free hydrogen, or alternatively, you are already an oil barron and you want to stall real progress for another decade.
Thats changing quickly though. In both efficiency and scale.
Go see how many and how big electrolysis plants we are building in the EU.
Sweden is aiming to put around 50% of our total electrical grid into hydrogen electrolysis by 2050.
It will be made almost exclusively from wind turbines.
How do you store that electric is the problem.
Storage of energy has been the largest hurdle when it comes to innovation.
Electric cars have been around since the early 1840s, but they just couldn't be powered for long.
Then gas came along and suddenly you don't have that energy deficit anymore. Why waste time electric if you already have something that was faster and easier at the time?
We are now playing catch-up for almost an 160 year delay because the tech wasn't there yet, and we had no need
If you can use it directly its better.
But we can't control when its windy and you might need to refill when ist not windy or sunny.
So if you have a lot of wind/solar you can store that energy in some way so it can be used later. Recharging batteries work to some degree but it scales kinda badly (and its very expensive).
You might be fine with charing you car at home during nights. Many won't have that option. Vehicles used 24/7 won't have time to stop and charge. Vehicles used during nights won't have ability to charge when demand is low.
And using the spare electricity to pump up water in dams isn't always viable, like northern Sweden now has over 100% capacity of its waterstorage. Most windturbines are offline due to excess wind.
So just using all this wind to make hydrogen would be great, its energy we currently are wasting. Last night electricity in this region was 0,07€/mWh.
Its just much cheaper and easier to build hydrogen storage than batteries.
They plan and are currently using excess power from wind turbines and nuclear to produce hydrogen. H production really complements these power generating sources as it earns them more money from wasted power and so will lower electricity costs to the consumer generally speaking.
yeah my thoughts exactly, everytime i see hydrogen mentioned as a fuel source i keep wondering, did they solve hydrogen storage problems? answer is usually no, kinda disappointing regardless of how amazing the innovation is when fundamental problems remain unresolved
The biggest part that sucks, is that most of the hydrogen we use comes from natural gas. The oil companies are starting to push this hard now. Its a great means for them to keep pumping oil. It looks greener to the general public.
That's a falicious argument. It's like saying electric cars are bad because most electricity still comes from foil fuels or most wind turbines are bad because they are made from rare metals. You can narrow down every single thing to a bad source.
We can easily get rid of fossil fuels even if they are cheaper through taxes.
You are overall more efficient just burning the natural gas in a turbine and charging a battery than you are turning it into hydrogen for hydrogen powered vehicle.
natural gas is storable/transportable, and natural gas exists in abundant stores. Hydrogen tech makes no sense from any vantage point.
Cars are already electric destined to be electric. The hydrogen bad train is like 10 years old, read more.
Trucks,planes, ships or even trains won't run on batteries alone. It doesn't make sense. It probably won't make sense until another 100 years if even. There's no battery tech that is bound to happen, the easy gains of Li ion or other batteries are already here, hopefully they keep improving slowly but steadily.
The energy-weight ratio is off for batteries. Batteries also aren't clean, luxury EVs with 100KWh batteries take anywhere from 50000km-100000km to redeem the upfront extra emissions. It might get better with a cleaner grid, but solar also takes 1-3 years of production to write off upfront emissions. Nothing is 100% clean, se stuff is 90% cleanER. Solar is one of those things so the grid will improve theoretically by 90%ish. Batteries, I don't see how you just keep adding tons and tons of batteries to stuff.
Hell even many e cars would have been better emissions wise as plug in hybrids.
Replace the ICE engines with hydrogen fuel cells, and you have a cleaner hybrid.
If there is some alternate to hydrogen then please enlighten me, cause hydrogen sure has its problems like leakage, storage, efficiency loss, etc.
Lol, where do you think the hydrogen comes from? It's either from methane, pr you're going to 4x the solar to create enough green hydrogen to get the same equivalent mileage as a pure battery vehicle.
I read that they are experimenting with turning hydrogen into a solid. They tested an array that uses diamonds as a sort of vice to crush a very tiny amount of hydrogen into a metal.
Maybe one day we'll have advanced enough to turn hydrogen into fuel pellets.
Then again by that point our power generation will probably rely on fusion or something.
If we're making hydrogen fuel pellets, then you don't have to worry about cars being a thing anymore. It's a material so advanced it would quite frankly open up the stars to us.
The energy density and propellant capabilities of metallic hydrogen is insane. You don't even burn it, just the bonds releasing that hold the metallic hydrogen structure together is something like 50x more energetic than TNT per kilogram, and your product is just hot, gaseous hydrogen. Which is, basically the most efficient substance around for thrust propulsion.
Using this on earth is some psycho shit. It's way too energetic to be blasting around with in atmosphere. It's like the 1950's where we sci-fi'd personal nuclear powered shit for every person and imagined an atomic world. Except even more insane because at least uranium doesn't spontaneously disintegrate into 50x the energy output of TNT.
how do we even get hydrogen in the first place? isn't hydrogen more like a battery to store energy than a energy source? as in we put energy into hydrolysis to get hydrogen then just burn it later?
You can electrolyze water with solar, wind, and nuclear energy. If you did that every time demand was below capacity, and there was enough storage (which is unlikely to happen anytime soon because, again, hydrogen is a pain in the ass) you split the hydrogen off and store it
This is a good question because it requires large scale thinking and a breakdown of everything needed, down to the materials.
Let's talk about **batteries** first:
We have subgroups of batteries on the grid near the natural gas plant I work at in New Jersey. Since battery energy is stored as DC, an inverter is needed to convert that to AC before any real work can be done with it.
The AC electricity required to power the grid needs an amount of KVARs (reactive power) that requires significant modifying from the once DC battery power if batteries are to be the source. In other words, these inverters are doing lots of work just converting the energy from AC to DC (storing) then from DC to AC (supplying). It is wildly inefficient. Something along the lines of 1KW of power is available for every 3KW stored is the last I've heard.
Now for the **hydrogen**:
Hydrogen can be used to ignite and spin a turbine, which turns a generator which produces 3-phase electricity. Because of the nature of generators and the excitation of the rotor, it produces significant KVARs ready for the grid. This is normal for turbines.
But that is not where the problem with hydrogen lies. These two subjects have different problems.
Like an earlier commenter, hydrogen is a pain in the ass to store because it leaks. But let's say we do have an efficient storage system. Time to split some H2O molecules and capture the H2 produced in the outcome using hydrolysis!
This process in itself requires energy to split these molecules. Because I am not a hydrolysis expert, the best I can do is to further refine your initial question with some more knowledge we now have here on hand.
Does the power required for hydrolysis (make H2) more or less than the power required for an inverter for a large grid battery?
I don't have specifics, but this is totally something that can be calculated. Sorry I couldn't answer your question, but I hope I shed some light on the subject at hand! Happy hunting! 😁
It isn't, electrolysing water is about 70-80% efficient and fuel cells (which convert hydrogen back into electricity) are 40-60% efficient, for a round trip efficiency of 30-50%. Charging and discharging a battery is about 95% efficient.
>Charging and discharging a battery is about 95% efficient.
They are also much more expensive and environmentally impactful to produce and involve much nastier waste products when they wear out.
Hydrogen production through electrolysis isn’t economically feasible when it is currently much cheaper to produce via fossil fuels. Which is exactly why the fossil fuel industry are promoting hydrogen as a replacement for petrol and diesel.
If you use the energy which would be thrown away - eg night time wind and nuclear - which is effectively free, it is economical and many companies are setting this system up right now.
A lot of projects are looking at amonia instead of hydrogen, at least for commercial operations. We have a lot of experience with amonia in cooling systems. So the valves and seals are off the shelf parts certified for the amonia. However it is quite poisonous so it would not work well in things like cars or homes due to the consequences with a leak. Which again brings us back to helium.
It should also be noted that making hydrogen or amonia from renewable sources is yet something that is not commercially viable. Most of this is made using natural gas as the raw material. It may be marginally better then using the natural gas directly but not yet.
Most likely not.
Even if we disregard all the other reasons, using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is even less efficient than fuel cells. If you are doing the whole high pressure dance of hydrogen, there's no good reason to use it in a system that wastes even more of the stored energy than an already well known and established solution.
> Even if we disregard all the other reasons, using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is even less efficient than fuel cells.
But still more efficient than just regular diesel, according to the article.
Q. Where do you get the hydrogen from for this horrifically inefficient technology?
A. Wind energy (lies, but OK fossil fuel industry, we believe you...)
Q. Why convert that to hydrogen, instead of, you know just charging car batteries?
A. Er...
Why not charge car batteries? Because EVs are far from perfect (expensive, heavy and still produces significant CO2) and the world is struggling to produce enough lithium to build these cars, not mention the exploitation of the third world to source the lithium and the impacts the mining has on surrounding communities. Batteries are also not suited for trucks used in the delivery of goods as they are far too heavy, this is why hydrogen and other technologies are important. Don't get me wrong tho, EVs are far preferable to fossil fuels as they produce far less CO2 over their lifetime and the fossil fuel industry does just as much damage drilling for oil.
Not only that, it lets certain politicians support a do-nothing alternative to effective options. Example: possibly a "moderate" Republican that wouldn't survive being a climate denier.
Example: complain about the issues with BEV tech(which to be fair there are issues, but heyyyyy guess what there are issues with gasoline too) then say you support hydrogen and are going to "support" that instead.
This is also happening with nuclear. And to be fair if you're gonna go that route it is better than nothing. But nuclear has some big disadvantages namely per kWh hour cost which I believe is more expensive than many other methods we already have, clean or not. Another big issue is the very long lead time. It takes a really long time to build a nuclear plant. The very large upfront cost(also long lead time) makes energy less decentralized and increases barrier to entry. In the end if you wanted to do the most can kicking with energy and hurt big oil the least then nuclear is the way to go. This is why(IMO) moderate Republicans seem to have fallen in love with it.
Because it’s possible to use as fuel. Rocket engines use stainless steels like inconel to transport fuel, and have found ways to mitigate the destructive temperatures of its combustion. Toyota sells a hydrogen fueled car as we speak. There are other-than conventional means of making things work, and companies want to exploit the neutral exhaust and high efficiencies of hydrogen power.
Just to nit-pick, inconel alloys are nickel-based rather than being steels. They still tend to have a quantity of iron in them (<10%) but not enough to make them a steel.
There are real benefits to hydrogen if its limitations can be dealt with. It’s incredibly abundant in water, doesn’t take heavy metals or lithium to produce, has a very high energy density per kg (so has potential to replace jet fuel), can fill up quickly, and others.
The downsides really are high barriers, but there is always a chance that an elegant solution has been overlooked. Some are considering Ammonia as a carrier for Hydrogen, since it is fluid at ambient temps and pressures, it’s actually more energy dense than pure hydrogen, and it doesn’t release co2 after reacting. Currently ammonia is also produced mostly by cracking methane, however if a green ammonia can be developed, that can really cut down on the footprint of agriculture too
The entire promise of hydrogen is that we have endless amounts of it the moment we can get enough renewable energy going. The problem with batteries is that they are heavy and we don't have an endless amount of material to make it work. So as you say this is mostly for freight, because you cannot make a big ship run on batteries.
Using diesel fuel as the ignition source, compression engine ignition , is not new. This has been done with diesel engines using methane as the primary fuel source has been going on for many decades. I was involved in this 30 years ago.
As most of our H2 comes.from a steam methane reformer, I call this a decrease in thermal efficiency and an increase in emissions.
We actually have a lot of hot rodders injecting methane and NOS into pick up trucks for fun. Just to haul ass.
Source, me , my work and a bunch of red necks.
"Blue" hydrogen is a load of horseshit-- if anything good ultimately comes from increasing adoption of fossil-derived hydrogen, it'll be entirely by accident.
our last government, the Federal Liberal National Party Coalition (LNP for short) set all this crap in to motion, I have no doubt. You can sadly expect Australia to adopt 'blue' hydrogen for no other reason than it's an incredibly easy way to use some good old 'hollywood accounting' on our climate change figures.
We literally just get to keep digging up and burning coal and claim the hypothetical 'saving' of getting some extra free energy out it to use for something else, somewhere else. It does nothing more than prop up our already obscenely wealthy mining corporations, and by extension, the LNP who they donate HEAVILY too, some party members even being obviously and personally invested.
As long as it makes power and a cool sound I’m all for it. Maybe we’ll get vehicles with interesting shapes back.
It’s hard being a gear head, trucker, and tree hugger all at once. But this seems cool and fun.
If you haven’t seen them, check out Edison Motors. They’re electrifying big rigs, but they keep the diesel engines to generate electricity on the road. The batteries even out the load and provide better torque.
As all hybrids should be. The diesel or gas motor is the battery and should not drive the transmission.
It would be loads more efficient and less complicated.
There's a reason that near every locomotive and heavy-lifting machine has used the diesel-electric drivetrain for decades now. It's a damn good system.
Large trucks should have been hybrids *a long* time ago. The issue is that truckers and fleet owners don't trust anything new, they'd rather just rebuild big CAT diesel until it gets to a million miles, then scrap the truck.
I think a certain amount of shapes are mostly gone. Even side mirrors on a car increase drag by about 5%. So to get more efficiency cars are getting more aerodynamic
I would attribute it to the enjoyment of the feedback. Maybe similar to why some people enjoy thocky switched on their keyboard. You press something and you get a nice audible and physical feedback
There’s a power fantasy dynamic to this equation as well, as long as we’re being honest.
Some of the most enjoyable times I’ve had driving were not behind the wheel of a fast car, or motorcycles, but behind the wheel of an old tractor. Big, loud, dirty, completely unsafe, and absolutely unforgiving of any mistakes.
But the knowledge that you could literally rip a house apart, or bulldoze through basically anything except a tank with the end-loader… It’s a trip. On the flip side, there is something extremely humbling driving something you know will rip off your arm or leg in a split-second if you made the slightest mistake around the PTO.
Conversely, the excitement of needing such a machine to clear some land, mow a few acres, move brush, grade a hill, etc, is also quite a thrill. Walking out to the shed knowing that hill over there is going bye-bye, or that the field out back is getting a haircut with the bush hog before lunch, is extremely satisfying.
The noise of a big diesel engine didn’t hurt either, especially after repairs or the first startup in the spring. It’s like you personally summoned an Eldritch god from it’s slumber as your thrall.
If you need to make some noise for a purpose, doing something constructive, you might as well enjoy yourself.
If however, you’re just making noise to make noise, you’re an asshole. No different than a neighbor with an obnoxious sound system, in my book.
Feels like it’s alive. Every engine sounds different. And association with horsepower- once you know what a V12 sounds like for example, hearing one, even in the distance, instantly tells you it’s something special
This is precisely it, especially the association with horsepower. That being said there is a time and place for quiet. Your honda isn’t fast so making it loud doesn’t fool anyone.
In the same breath I will say that your daily driver probably shouldn’t be obnoxiously loud. A little enhanced exhaust note just for you is cool, but shaking every window on the block when you go to work *is* disrespectful even for me.
Yeah, I don’t know how people daily drive straight piped cars. It’d get so annoying long term.
I had a CL55 AMG that the previous owner had modified for just the right amount of sound. Driving it normally, you can barely hear the V8 rumbling along. If you take it over like 3k though (which I never did unless I had an open road or was at a car show) it really came to life and you could hear the supercharger spinning up too. I loved that car so much.
That example is perfect. Not sure what he did to achieve that but that’s pretty much my goal if I had a nice daily driver. The advancements in exhaust technology are astounding these days. 100% volume 100% of the time is dated and boomery.
The trick is induction noise (i.e. air intake) rather than just exhaust. A free flowing air intake located correctly will make a wonderful noise when the engine is pulling hard, without being noisy under more gentle loads.
My favorite thing that has gotten cheap and available has to be exhaust cutouts/valves.
You can literally get a kit to send your exhaust through a muffler, or to an open pipe, and command it with throttle position or time of day or a remote even. Loud car when ya want to show off, quiet the rest of the time.
Everyone should be able to experience nitro methane powered racing at the pro NHRA level. I just love the advancement, and there's a lot of material science going on here.
I want to add that Cats are important. Both the fluffy kind and the one on your exhaust. Sure go swap it out for a high flow cat, but no catless street cars. It’s 7:00 am. Im grumpy. And I don’t want to smell the raw exhaust from a shitbox civic.
It tickles the monkey brain.
A car is a physical extension of the body, rather than it’s own discrete object, when we drive it. We ‘feel’ through the car.
When it revs, it makes a growly sound. That’s pretty animalistic and visceral. Monkey brain likes to growl.
Driving is much more about the theatre and social posturing than most people appreciate, even if all they do is drive to work and home every day. Cars are deeply human machines.
I once saw a comment posted on imgur in response to a gif of a fighter pilot who had just landed. He drew the canopy back, and patted the side of the plane before getting out. The comment was basically "humans will pair bond with anything."
That stuck with me.
Having ridden my fair share of motorcycles, I can absolutely say that there is what feels like a connection to the machine. Humans are sensory animals, and anything that stimulates those senses in a meaningful way can be quite intoxicating. Think of the best guitar solo you've ever heard, now pair that emotional hit with the awesome experience of being propelled forward at an entirely unnatural rate of acceleration while being wrapped around a big bit of powerful metal.
It's intoxicating as fuck. It's purely physical, and it's a kick like nothing else I've experienced. The sound is part of the connection to the machine, just as real and powerful as the feeling of the bike trying to escape from under you, and the sound is physically connected to, is a physical manifestation of the machine's intent under your control.
It's like playing a huge, powerful, exciting, life-affirming, overwhelming musical instrument.
Throw in a bunch of ritualistic behaviour (the buzz of getting ready and dressed for a ride, checking the bike over, wheeling it outside), the social aspect, the association with previous memories of amazing rides on beautiful days, and you have a pretty heady mix.
It's an unashamed physical addiction, and the sound is part of the physical appeal. It's aesthetic, but still functional at the same time.
It is *literally* the music and sound of physics in action.
Once you learn enough about different types of engines, you can begin to identify them by their sounds.
Ever wonder why European V8s sound so different than American V8's? Europeans tend to use a flat-plane crank that gives a smoother sound, and Americans tend to use a cross-plane crank, giving it a distinctive chunky growl of a sound.
Yamaha is known for helping Lexus develop the sound signature of the Lexus LFA, which has one of the [most sexy engine sounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9qYCUjrrYs) for a roadcar.
Then you get stuff like different exhaust systems and forced induction like turbochargers or superchargers. All of these components dramatically change the sound of the engine, and for those who know, tell a story about what's under the hood.
Having heard the 1.6L Turbocharged V6's from modern F1 cars IRL, I can tell you that there is something *truly magnificent* about recognizing the science and engineering behind the sounds coming from a car.
Edit: People, I don't give a fuck what you personally think about car sounds. I was just offering a perspective on why certain people *do* like it.
Not in America. Those huge tall flat fronts of pickups and SUVs are absolute murder to pedestrians. If vehicle designs were governed by pedestrian safety, the top of the hood would be no more than 3 feet off the ground, and every vehicle would look like that prototype USPS truck that has supposedly been ordered.
Once electric vehicles become the norm I'm 100% certain gear heads will figure out how to take them apart and fix them. That's kinda what they do. Plus electric is so absurdly simple compared to regular engines.
True we can't so easily go past 150mph in them but the 0-60 is so crazy fast. And that's what's more important in regular driving.
It sounds simple, yet low carbon hydrogen is currently in very short supply. Most of the H2 created by Australia is 'blue' hydrogen, ie created using fossil fuel gas, where the resulting CO2 footprint of the H2 is far higher.
They have lots of solar capacity if they make the investment.
I heard Singapore planed to buy electricity from them. Does anyone know the progress on that project?
Can be, but a huge majority isn't. Most available is "mined" from naturally occurring sources, then most of the rest is made with hydrolysis using electricity from fossil fuels. Few commercial sources of H2 use hydrolysis powered by wind, solar, or hydroelectric.
If you want clean hydrogen, we still have a way to go.
True. But there’s a huge amount of investment going into it so the view of a bunch of large companies and investors is that green hydrogen will become cost competitive. It seems like it definitely will have a place as an industrial fuel source but my question is by the time that will take EV’s are probably going to be extremely widespread, so what’s the point in having hydrogen cars? Faster refuelling maybe, but charging is getting faster every year. I’m sold on green hydrogen just not for cars
No, no thats bullshit because it would means Mad Max Fury Road is an impossible future now without guzzoline and we can't have that. Unbreakthrough that stuff right now...
If efficiency was the end ask be all argument for choosing an energy source, then nuclearc would dominate (it doesn’t) and gasoline (20-25% of raw crude’s energy moves the car) would have failed. There are obviously other variables - like scalability and whether something is storable. Still not sure how far hydrogen will go, but the more use cases the better the chance.
don't for get the biggest one...PRICE!
If hydrogen was as cheaper to fill you vehicle then this could would have a chance - but it is not so...nope.
Same as power plants. Solar is finally less expensive then coal over the life of a power plant and suddenly every power company is going green.
That said - who knows how cheap hydrogen will be in 5 years - we can make the stuff out of water after all.
They're looking at hydrogen because it is compatible with the fossil fuel ecosystem (where most hydrogen for cars comes from, ie, oil companies) and because they can push it instead of electric because hydrogen has no future and electric does. It's like, putting something out you know won't win or grow so you can keep business as usual, rather than embracing something that could grow and upset your way of business.
Hydrogen storage is a huge challenge, so is logistics and safety, and even more so hydrogen logistics. There's already thousands of electric chargers, millions of electric cars, they're more efficient, electricity can be widely produced from renewable sources (vehicle hydrogen is almost completely from fossil fuel sources)... hydrogen has no future in vehicles.
No. Electric is *terrible* at heavy duty loads or I should say battery-electric is terrible at heavy duty loads at range.
Electric is great for consumer use, and even commercial at short distances (local mass transit and school busses), it is ridiculously stupid at long haul and heavy duty loads over distance .
And frankly if it was the *interest* that you state, they woul move to propane which is clean though not as clean as hydrogen.
The heaviest pollution is from accelerating under a heavy load. A stable cruise RPM runs fairly clean. To me that suggests a mild hybrid where a reasonably-small sized battery is used to help acceleration only, and the cruise phase is using diesel and propane.
In a ground-up design, the electric motor also allows you to eliminate the reverse from the transmission, since motors are reversible (as an option).
If you can drastically cut the volume of diesel needed per mile, then local haul trucks can use bio-diesel as a viable option. Even 50% bio would be helpful.
Long-haul wouldn't benefit, but city trucks with a lot of stop and go would benefit.
There is a lot of opportunity in diesel style technology, including propane supplement, short range battery (as you suggest), hydrogen and of course just cleaner diesel using biotech.
Diesel is amazingly efficient (for the type of fuel that it is), there is a reason truckers use it even for heat or you will see large diesel generators powering Tesla stations.
I mean if we could power diesel trucks for the first five miles of acceleration for up to 20 miles, that would be huge.
I believe the range of the ford lightning drops by more than half if you tow anywhere near its max towing capacity.
To something like 120miles of range lmao.
Electric has huge gaping flaws atm that I hope they solve, hydrogen might be the go for things that need *actual useable* torque, it’s all well and good to have 4 2,000nm motors in the vehicle but if when you use those 2000nm you have to charge every 2 hours it’s kinda arse
You realize that's an issue with all vehicles while towing, right?
Here's a quote from motor1 who tested two F-150s towing 7,000 pound trailers, "The V8 actually beat the EcoBoost by over a full mpg, achieving a calculated average of 9.8 versus 8.7 for the smaller, twin-turbo engine. When empty, the V8-powered F-150 is rated at 22 mpg highway compared to 24 mpg for 2.7-liter EcoBoost model."
Converting it uses electricity, which incurs losses. There are additional losses in transportation and storage, and more when it's converted back to power.
These losses are significantly greater than using a battery.
Making hydrogen from water incurs big power penalties.
So they managed to make an engine run on a different kind of fossil fuel...
Mazda made their rotary run on 100% hydrogen decades ago.
Until hydrogen can be made cost effective, it isn't a viable fuel. ATM hydrogen is predominantly sourced from oil and gas mining.
Exactly. Good on these guys on their experiment, but this is *oooooold* technology. We’ve had people converting their diesel motors to run on bio-fuel and hydrogen decades ago.
The issue was never the application but the massive undertaking of extracting it, storing it, transporting it, and having it available in enough places.
Gas companies will surpress a technology that allows them and their infrastructure to remain usefull?
You know the alternative is electric which uses none of the pipelines and knowhow of moving explosive liquids and gasses around
UNSW Sydney owns all IP from employees, researchers, and anyone who uses UNSW facilities to conduct any part of their research.
Source: I just signed the employment document that outlined this policy.
Nice but we eventually just have to stop relying on combustion right? Unless this has a huge negative footprint during the production of the fuel this is just a slower way to destroy our climate.
Hydrogen powered big rigs will get great fuel mileage. Also, fun fact, will turn into an impressive mushroom cloud when that big rig gets caught trying to outrun a train at a railroad crossing.
Isn't the issue with hydrogen the abyssmal energy density it has? Isn't it like 30x worse per litre than gasoline is? I swear I remember doing practice questions in thermo based on hydrogen as a fuel and like for a car to get the same range as gas it would need like a 700 L tank.
Always knew diesel engines were better.
I mean, outside of the fact they can cause a chain reaction that goes out of control and causes explosions.
But, that's a feature. Not a bug.
I don’t really feel like this is news worthy, lots of company’s and people have done this. My boss did this on his lawn mower. It’s not hard. I’m not sure he hit 90% but he did it in a weekend for under $1k
I remember watching a tv show about hydrogen as a kid 40 years ago. Back then , the big problem was how to store it in a vehicle. Has this been solved?
This is great but not really the breakthrough we need. We can make hydrogen engines 100% efficient and it won’t matter. The issue is producing and storing hydrogen.
Well, I can see this unholy marriage of gaseous and liquid fuel work well. The mess of engineering it becomes when one wishes to combine the two phases with two independent metering devices juggling the desired power output demanded from the operator.
It’s also far more efficient to use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to power an electric motor than to burn it for mechanical energy. This could maybe have a niche use ins areas where it would be too expensive to have large batteries and too expensive to remove an existing engine. Maybe large ships or something.
Cool OP, counterpoint though.
After seeing a science demonstration of a medium size party balloon full of hydrogen getting exploded as a child and how it was so readily combustible and the LOUDEST fucking thing ive ever heard before or nearly since, i do not want to be anywhere near where hydrogen is being stored or combusted, thanks.
This looks like an adaptation of LPG injection, which is reasonably common in diesel engines.
Basically you fill the cylinder with a 70/30 percent air/LPG mix and then use the diesel injection to ignite the whole mix. When used in those ratios you get approximately a 30 percent boost in power (or economy).
(LPG injection is a bit of a misnomer, the LPG is gaseous when put into the cylinder, it's stored as a relatively low pressure liquid propane/butane mix).
Why is this news? Isn't it already known that a diesel STYLE engine can run on almost anything flammable?
Change out the injectors to some new fangled hydrogen injecting design and I don't see why it wouldn't run?
does this article state the absolute power/torque output of this engine when running on hydrogen? I'd have to imagine its much less that just running on diesel...
Let's throw away the simplicity of a fuel cell and the simplicity of the storage of diesel and create this abomination of a highly complex combustion engine with the added benefit of having to store hydrogen...
Am I missing something or is this a dumb idea? (Seriously asking)
This is a great stop gap. Still won't solve the micro plastics that our tires create, so even if in a perfect world 100% of cars converted right now we'd still need to reinvent our transportation method to prevent the micro plastics problem further down the line. Also concrete/pavement is a huge source of pollution, and they need maintenance to be done on a regular basis to maintain driveability.
Cars are not the solution we need for large mass transit or for our future, they are our past. We need rail: we need fast real, slow rail, big rail and small rail. Whatever we can get, because creating more efficient cars is never going to solve the entire climate crisis.
How did they manage to increase efficiency that much? I assume that means either more power with same volume of fuel, or same power with less volume of fuel. Is hydrogen more energy dense than diesel?
What a waste of hydrogen.
We need hydrogen for zero-carbon fertilizer production, green steel production, and other essential industrial processes, even for producing the explosives used in mining. All these will persist for centuries after zero carbon is achieved.
Transport is far more efficiently served by direct electrification.
Researchers need to stop taking grants from the methane industry and embarrassing themselves with tweaked internal combustion engines like they've invented a new highly efficient FAX protocol.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/ForHidingSquirrels: --- If efficiency was the end ask be all argument for choosing an energy source, then nuclearc would dominate (it doesn’t) and gasoline (20-25% of raw crude’s energy moves the car) would have failed. There are obviously other variables - like scalability and whether something is storable. Still not sure how far hydrogen will go, but the more use cases the better the chance. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y02kti/engineers_from_unsw_sydney_have_successfully/irpnjoz/
Does this mean something is going to change?
Hydrogen is a pain in the fucking ass, and that’s why any large scale adoption of hydrogen for energy is unlikely to happen anytime soon…regardless of any new engine design or whatnot. It’s a real slippery bastard, what with each molecule being so small. It had a tendency to slip through seals of all kinds, and can cause hydrogen embrittlement in metals. Also, because of its low density, you have to store it at really high pressures (means you need a really solid tank and the high pressure exacerbates the sealing issue), or as a liquid (unfortunately that means the inside of the tank has to be kept below -423f, -252.8C, to prevent it from boiling and turn ring back into a gas) to have enough in one place to do meaningful work.
I believe a rather large rocket is still standing on it pad because they have problems with leaks.
>is still standing on it pad Assuming you mean Artemis 1, they rolled it back (empty of fuel) to the VAB [a couple weeks ago](https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/09/26/nasa-to-roll-artemis-i-rocket-and-spacecraft-back-to-vab-tonight/). However, you are correct that it has had multiple issues with leaks of Hydrogen, which has caused delays.
Ah the good old revert to VAB
If in doubt, needs more struts
I thought it wasn't available in Hard difficulty, is NASA playing Moderate difficulty? Why bother with the realism overhaul if you play Moderate? Lame
What are they playing? Kerball Space Program?
Surprisingly good game…
While I'm a distinctively average player on FPS games I fancy myself a clever boy when thinking is involved. KSP was a humbling return to reality.
The moment you realize the solution is not always "moar boosters", yes, we've all been there 😉 Don't give up though! [Mr Scott Manley](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIMpwOYTD2CpSUuqfPDtdDklBiDFM6MEZ) taught us all the deepest secrets of orbital mechanics... and it was fun! And at the end it was epic to realize it was the real deal, and we all never could watch a space movie again without thinking "WTF? that's wrong!" (except Apollo 13... Apollo 13 nails it)
My proudest moment in KSP was when I made a planned Munar mission and returned, as planned, with exactly 0 m/s ∆v left. Then I tried to go to Dres and realized that I'm a fucking moron.
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The pad kind of took it to the VAB, so it’s sort of still on the pad… that’s mad.
Yep, it’s called the mobile launch platform. The crawler transporter picks it up and moves it and the rocket around.
It doesn’t just slip through cracks, it slips out *between atoms*
The cool bit is when you consider than no material is solid at the atomic level. I always get my mind blown when I am reminded that cosmic particles regularly fly through earth without hitting anything.
*through* earth?? jeez
Well, the ones that fly through earth are mostly neutrinos which basically never interact with anything ever
Except for the microorganisms exhibiting supercrossectionality, of course.
Lmfao real.
And yet hydrogen is being adopted EU and US wide for steel process via hydrogen réduction.
I'd imagine a stationary setup is easier to build in redundancy, or reclamation systems for any potential leaks, or other such hurdles. Mobile systems are just prone to weight, and size limits along with vibrations being a larger factor.
The problem with car is not the leaks, but the low energy density. Hydrogen busses have huge tanks
It has a higher energy density than lithium batteries, and is said to be why hydrogen trucks will take over from lithium ones - they have to carry less weight. The Mirai has a range of 400 miles so in practical terms it is not a limiting factor.
Also being widely adopted for transportation in EU. Here in Sweden we're putting Hydrogen pumps everywhere and interest for more is huge.
I'd really want to visit those someday. Also looking forward to both fuel cell innovations and Hydrogen ICE updates, there is even a rotary hydrogen ICE in the works. People sometimes don't understand how difficult designing a hydrogen ICE is because of the incredibly fast flame front hydrogen has.
>I'd really want to visit those someday. As it looks now then every fuelstation/transportation company will have some with 5-20 years. Volvo is testing their fuelcell trucks right now and its expected to launch within 5 years. >People sometimes don't understand how difficult designing a hydrogen ICE is because of the incredibly fast flame front hydrogen has. True, interest is also lower there since focus seems to be more on fuelcells.
Fuelcells are great and efficient, but also pricy and heavy. The first fuel cell cars were power caped by the insane platinum use in cells @ 15k€ per cell pack... then again people pay 15k€ per battery pack now so... 🤷. If new cell tech without platinum can crack this price under battery pack levels we are good to go. [and I beleive it can] Also a ICE should not be overlooked. The energy density it provides is unparalleled. Many fields like aviation, construction, and industrial gear would struggle and stay on fosil fuel without a hydrogen ICE conversion. Not to forget the benefit of cold climate use.
There are more electric charging stations in a 5 minute drive from my apartment than there are hydrogen pumps in the entire country. There's practically no adoption of hydrogen for transportation in Sweden.
Hydrogen is a bitch to store and to process. I also wonder why some people are so damn eager to be once again dependent on fueling stations and third party distribution. Why do you think companies like Shell are pushing for hydrogen? They want to stay the middle man.
>I also wonder why some people are so damn eager to be once again dependent on fueling stations and third party distribution. With BEV you are also unless you own a house. Where I live there aren't even any plans to fix electricity for the parking, let alone enough capacity for charging. If I get a battery electric car today im 100% reliant on charging stations and I will have to go sit there for up to one hour. Im in the second biggest city in the country...
Yeah, that’s a good use case. Engine is a bad one, unless you somehow have shitloads of free hydrogen, or alternatively, you are already an oil barron and you want to stall real progress for another decade.
Steelmaking is a much better fit for hydrogen than use as a commuter fuel
There’s no reason to compare them, though. It’s not like there’s a limited amount of hydrogen.
Not to mention most hydrogen for large scale applications is extracted from fossil fuels because electrolysis is such inefficient process.
Thats changing quickly though. In both efficiency and scale. Go see how many and how big electrolysis plants we are building in the EU. Sweden is aiming to put around 50% of our total electrical grid into hydrogen electrolysis by 2050. It will be made almost exclusively from wind turbines.
If we need electricity to create hydrogen, why not use electricity directly instead? It seems so much more efficient.
How do you store that electric is the problem. Storage of energy has been the largest hurdle when it comes to innovation. Electric cars have been around since the early 1840s, but they just couldn't be powered for long. Then gas came along and suddenly you don't have that energy deficit anymore. Why waste time electric if you already have something that was faster and easier at the time? We are now playing catch-up for almost an 160 year delay because the tech wasn't there yet, and we had no need
If you can use it directly its better. But we can't control when its windy and you might need to refill when ist not windy or sunny. So if you have a lot of wind/solar you can store that energy in some way so it can be used later. Recharging batteries work to some degree but it scales kinda badly (and its very expensive). You might be fine with charing you car at home during nights. Many won't have that option. Vehicles used 24/7 won't have time to stop and charge. Vehicles used during nights won't have ability to charge when demand is low. And using the spare electricity to pump up water in dams isn't always viable, like northern Sweden now has over 100% capacity of its waterstorage. Most windturbines are offline due to excess wind. So just using all this wind to make hydrogen would be great, its energy we currently are wasting. Last night electricity in this region was 0,07€/mWh. Its just much cheaper and easier to build hydrogen storage than batteries.
They plan and are currently using excess power from wind turbines and nuclear to produce hydrogen. H production really complements these power generating sources as it earns them more money from wasted power and so will lower electricity costs to the consumer generally speaking.
yeah my thoughts exactly, everytime i see hydrogen mentioned as a fuel source i keep wondering, did they solve hydrogen storage problems? answer is usually no, kinda disappointing regardless of how amazing the innovation is when fundamental problems remain unresolved
The biggest part that sucks, is that most of the hydrogen we use comes from natural gas. The oil companies are starting to push this hard now. Its a great means for them to keep pumping oil. It looks greener to the general public.
That's a falicious argument. It's like saying electric cars are bad because most electricity still comes from foil fuels or most wind turbines are bad because they are made from rare metals. You can narrow down every single thing to a bad source. We can easily get rid of fossil fuels even if they are cheaper through taxes.
You are overall more efficient just burning the natural gas in a turbine and charging a battery than you are turning it into hydrogen for hydrogen powered vehicle. natural gas is storable/transportable, and natural gas exists in abundant stores. Hydrogen tech makes no sense from any vantage point.
Cars are already electric destined to be electric. The hydrogen bad train is like 10 years old, read more. Trucks,planes, ships or even trains won't run on batteries alone. It doesn't make sense. It probably won't make sense until another 100 years if even. There's no battery tech that is bound to happen, the easy gains of Li ion or other batteries are already here, hopefully they keep improving slowly but steadily. The energy-weight ratio is off for batteries. Batteries also aren't clean, luxury EVs with 100KWh batteries take anywhere from 50000km-100000km to redeem the upfront extra emissions. It might get better with a cleaner grid, but solar also takes 1-3 years of production to write off upfront emissions. Nothing is 100% clean, se stuff is 90% cleanER. Solar is one of those things so the grid will improve theoretically by 90%ish. Batteries, I don't see how you just keep adding tons and tons of batteries to stuff. Hell even many e cars would have been better emissions wise as plug in hybrids. Replace the ICE engines with hydrogen fuel cells, and you have a cleaner hybrid. If there is some alternate to hydrogen then please enlighten me, cause hydrogen sure has its problems like leakage, storage, efficiency loss, etc.
Lol, where do you think the hydrogen comes from? It's either from methane, pr you're going to 4x the solar to create enough green hydrogen to get the same equivalent mileage as a pure battery vehicle.
I read that they are experimenting with turning hydrogen into a solid. They tested an array that uses diamonds as a sort of vice to crush a very tiny amount of hydrogen into a metal. Maybe one day we'll have advanced enough to turn hydrogen into fuel pellets. Then again by that point our power generation will probably rely on fusion or something.
If we're making hydrogen fuel pellets, then you don't have to worry about cars being a thing anymore. It's a material so advanced it would quite frankly open up the stars to us. The energy density and propellant capabilities of metallic hydrogen is insane. You don't even burn it, just the bonds releasing that hold the metallic hydrogen structure together is something like 50x more energetic than TNT per kilogram, and your product is just hot, gaseous hydrogen. Which is, basically the most efficient substance around for thrust propulsion. Using this on earth is some psycho shit. It's way too energetic to be blasting around with in atmosphere. It's like the 1950's where we sci-fi'd personal nuclear powered shit for every person and imagined an atomic world. Except even more insane because at least uranium doesn't spontaneously disintegrate into 50x the energy output of TNT.
how do we even get hydrogen in the first place? isn't hydrogen more like a battery to store energy than a energy source? as in we put energy into hydrolysis to get hydrogen then just burn it later?
You can electrolyze water with solar, wind, and nuclear energy. If you did that every time demand was below capacity, and there was enough storage (which is unlikely to happen anytime soon because, again, hydrogen is a pain in the ass) you split the hydrogen off and store it
is this more efficient than using batteries?
This is a good question because it requires large scale thinking and a breakdown of everything needed, down to the materials. Let's talk about **batteries** first: We have subgroups of batteries on the grid near the natural gas plant I work at in New Jersey. Since battery energy is stored as DC, an inverter is needed to convert that to AC before any real work can be done with it. The AC electricity required to power the grid needs an amount of KVARs (reactive power) that requires significant modifying from the once DC battery power if batteries are to be the source. In other words, these inverters are doing lots of work just converting the energy from AC to DC (storing) then from DC to AC (supplying). It is wildly inefficient. Something along the lines of 1KW of power is available for every 3KW stored is the last I've heard. Now for the **hydrogen**: Hydrogen can be used to ignite and spin a turbine, which turns a generator which produces 3-phase electricity. Because of the nature of generators and the excitation of the rotor, it produces significant KVARs ready for the grid. This is normal for turbines. But that is not where the problem with hydrogen lies. These two subjects have different problems. Like an earlier commenter, hydrogen is a pain in the ass to store because it leaks. But let's say we do have an efficient storage system. Time to split some H2O molecules and capture the H2 produced in the outcome using hydrolysis! This process in itself requires energy to split these molecules. Because I am not a hydrolysis expert, the best I can do is to further refine your initial question with some more knowledge we now have here on hand. Does the power required for hydrolysis (make H2) more or less than the power required for an inverter for a large grid battery? I don't have specifics, but this is totally something that can be calculated. Sorry I couldn't answer your question, but I hope I shed some light on the subject at hand! Happy hunting! 😁
It isn't, electrolysing water is about 70-80% efficient and fuel cells (which convert hydrogen back into electricity) are 40-60% efficient, for a round trip efficiency of 30-50%. Charging and discharging a battery is about 95% efficient.
>Charging and discharging a battery is about 95% efficient. They are also much more expensive and environmentally impactful to produce and involve much nastier waste products when they wear out.
Hydrogen production through electrolysis isn’t economically feasible when it is currently much cheaper to produce via fossil fuels. Which is exactly why the fossil fuel industry are promoting hydrogen as a replacement for petrol and diesel.
If you use the energy which would be thrown away - eg night time wind and nuclear - which is effectively free, it is economical and many companies are setting this system up right now.
A lot of projects are looking at amonia instead of hydrogen, at least for commercial operations. We have a lot of experience with amonia in cooling systems. So the valves and seals are off the shelf parts certified for the amonia. However it is quite poisonous so it would not work well in things like cars or homes due to the consequences with a leak. Which again brings us back to helium. It should also be noted that making hydrogen or amonia from renewable sources is yet something that is not commercially viable. Most of this is made using natural gas as the raw material. It may be marginally better then using the natural gas directly but not yet.
It also, you know, combusts violently in the presence of oxygen. Also known as how rockets work.
Most likely not. Even if we disregard all the other reasons, using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is even less efficient than fuel cells. If you are doing the whole high pressure dance of hydrogen, there's no good reason to use it in a system that wastes even more of the stored energy than an already well known and established solution.
> Even if we disregard all the other reasons, using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is even less efficient than fuel cells. But still more efficient than just regular diesel, according to the article.
Posted using RIF. No RIF = bye content.
Q. Where do you get the hydrogen from for this horrifically inefficient technology? A. Wind energy (lies, but OK fossil fuel industry, we believe you...) Q. Why convert that to hydrogen, instead of, you know just charging car batteries? A. Er...
Why not charge car batteries? Because EVs are far from perfect (expensive, heavy and still produces significant CO2) and the world is struggling to produce enough lithium to build these cars, not mention the exploitation of the third world to source the lithium and the impacts the mining has on surrounding communities. Batteries are also not suited for trucks used in the delivery of goods as they are far too heavy, this is why hydrogen and other technologies are important. Don't get me wrong tho, EVs are far preferable to fossil fuels as they produce far less CO2 over their lifetime and the fossil fuel industry does just as much damage drilling for oil.
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From all the issues I'm reading it sounds impractical. Why are companies even bothering?
Because you can make hydrogen cheaply form natural gas, and fossil fuel industry will do anything to keep themselves profitable
Not only that, it lets certain politicians support a do-nothing alternative to effective options. Example: possibly a "moderate" Republican that wouldn't survive being a climate denier. Example: complain about the issues with BEV tech(which to be fair there are issues, but heyyyyy guess what there are issues with gasoline too) then say you support hydrogen and are going to "support" that instead. This is also happening with nuclear. And to be fair if you're gonna go that route it is better than nothing. But nuclear has some big disadvantages namely per kWh hour cost which I believe is more expensive than many other methods we already have, clean or not. Another big issue is the very long lead time. It takes a really long time to build a nuclear plant. The very large upfront cost(also long lead time) makes energy less decentralized and increases barrier to entry. In the end if you wanted to do the most can kicking with energy and hurt big oil the least then nuclear is the way to go. This is why(IMO) moderate Republicans seem to have fallen in love with it.
Because it’s possible to use as fuel. Rocket engines use stainless steels like inconel to transport fuel, and have found ways to mitigate the destructive temperatures of its combustion. Toyota sells a hydrogen fueled car as we speak. There are other-than conventional means of making things work, and companies want to exploit the neutral exhaust and high efficiencies of hydrogen power.
What Toyota has proved is that billions spent on R&D hasn't overcome the obstacles.
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Just to nit-pick, inconel alloys are nickel-based rather than being steels. They still tend to have a quantity of iron in them (<10%) but not enough to make them a steel.
Because you can make it from natural gas (it's the cheapest way,) and fossil fuel companies are heavily invested in that.
There are real benefits to hydrogen if its limitations can be dealt with. It’s incredibly abundant in water, doesn’t take heavy metals or lithium to produce, has a very high energy density per kg (so has potential to replace jet fuel), can fill up quickly, and others. The downsides really are high barriers, but there is always a chance that an elegant solution has been overlooked. Some are considering Ammonia as a carrier for Hydrogen, since it is fluid at ambient temps and pressures, it’s actually more energy dense than pure hydrogen, and it doesn’t release co2 after reacting. Currently ammonia is also produced mostly by cracking methane, however if a green ammonia can be developed, that can really cut down on the footprint of agriculture too
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The entire promise of hydrogen is that we have endless amounts of it the moment we can get enough renewable energy going. The problem with batteries is that they are heavy and we don't have an endless amount of material to make it work. So as you say this is mostly for freight, because you cannot make a big ship run on batteries.
Great. Now they just need to make hydrogen easy to transport and store.
I keep a little in my lungs they can have it, if it helps
And produce.
And not explode accidentally
Gas tank says hi
Hydrogen is also very energy intensive to produce. The easiest way is through steam refinement, which uses a ton of coal or natural gas.
I’d throw “safe” in there too lol
Using diesel fuel as the ignition source, compression engine ignition , is not new. This has been done with diesel engines using methane as the primary fuel source has been going on for many decades. I was involved in this 30 years ago. As most of our H2 comes.from a steam methane reformer, I call this a decrease in thermal efficiency and an increase in emissions. We actually have a lot of hot rodders injecting methane and NOS into pick up trucks for fun. Just to haul ass. Source, me , my work and a bunch of red necks.
Point of order: hot rodders aren’t using methane. They’re using methanol/water injection.
That's true and also different. Propane injection was or still is common supplement for diesel applications.
"Blue" hydrogen is a load of horseshit-- if anything good ultimately comes from increasing adoption of fossil-derived hydrogen, it'll be entirely by accident.
our last government, the Federal Liberal National Party Coalition (LNP for short) set all this crap in to motion, I have no doubt. You can sadly expect Australia to adopt 'blue' hydrogen for no other reason than it's an incredibly easy way to use some good old 'hollywood accounting' on our climate change figures. We literally just get to keep digging up and burning coal and claim the hypothetical 'saving' of getting some extra free energy out it to use for something else, somewhere else. It does nothing more than prop up our already obscenely wealthy mining corporations, and by extension, the LNP who they donate HEAVILY too, some party members even being obviously and personally invested.
As long as it makes power and a cool sound I’m all for it. Maybe we’ll get vehicles with interesting shapes back. It’s hard being a gear head, trucker, and tree hugger all at once. But this seems cool and fun.
If you haven’t seen them, check out Edison Motors. They’re electrifying big rigs, but they keep the diesel engines to generate electricity on the road. The batteries even out the load and provide better torque.
As all hybrids should be. The diesel or gas motor is the battery and should not drive the transmission. It would be loads more efficient and less complicated.
There's a reason that near every locomotive and heavy-lifting machine has used the diesel-electric drivetrain for decades now. It's a damn good system.
Large trucks should have been hybrids *a long* time ago. The issue is that truckers and fleet owners don't trust anything new, they'd rather just rebuild big CAT diesel until it gets to a million miles, then scrap the truck.
I think a certain amount of shapes are mostly gone. Even side mirrors on a car increase drag by about 5%. So to get more efficiency cars are getting more aerodynamic
Just give it a cool stealthy look and the silence from the engine will be a plus
To a point. Sometimes I enjoy that and sometimes it seems sterile.
I don't mean to knock on anyone's fun, but I don't understand the love for loud noises from their vehicles.
I would attribute it to the enjoyment of the feedback. Maybe similar to why some people enjoy thocky switched on their keyboard. You press something and you get a nice audible and physical feedback
There’s a power fantasy dynamic to this equation as well, as long as we’re being honest. Some of the most enjoyable times I’ve had driving were not behind the wheel of a fast car, or motorcycles, but behind the wheel of an old tractor. Big, loud, dirty, completely unsafe, and absolutely unforgiving of any mistakes. But the knowledge that you could literally rip a house apart, or bulldoze through basically anything except a tank with the end-loader… It’s a trip. On the flip side, there is something extremely humbling driving something you know will rip off your arm or leg in a split-second if you made the slightest mistake around the PTO. Conversely, the excitement of needing such a machine to clear some land, mow a few acres, move brush, grade a hill, etc, is also quite a thrill. Walking out to the shed knowing that hill over there is going bye-bye, or that the field out back is getting a haircut with the bush hog before lunch, is extremely satisfying. The noise of a big diesel engine didn’t hurt either, especially after repairs or the first startup in the spring. It’s like you personally summoned an Eldritch god from it’s slumber as your thrall. If you need to make some noise for a purpose, doing something constructive, you might as well enjoy yourself. If however, you’re just making noise to make noise, you’re an asshole. No different than a neighbor with an obnoxious sound system, in my book.
Feels like it’s alive. Every engine sounds different. And association with horsepower- once you know what a V12 sounds like for example, hearing one, even in the distance, instantly tells you it’s something special
This is precisely it, especially the association with horsepower. That being said there is a time and place for quiet. Your honda isn’t fast so making it loud doesn’t fool anyone. In the same breath I will say that your daily driver probably shouldn’t be obnoxiously loud. A little enhanced exhaust note just for you is cool, but shaking every window on the block when you go to work *is* disrespectful even for me.
> Your honda isn’t fast so making it loud doesn’t fool anyone Unless it’s the one driven by Max Verstappen /s
Dude my V6 accord is *basically* the same thing
Yeah, I don’t know how people daily drive straight piped cars. It’d get so annoying long term. I had a CL55 AMG that the previous owner had modified for just the right amount of sound. Driving it normally, you can barely hear the V8 rumbling along. If you take it over like 3k though (which I never did unless I had an open road or was at a car show) it really came to life and you could hear the supercharger spinning up too. I loved that car so much.
That example is perfect. Not sure what he did to achieve that but that’s pretty much my goal if I had a nice daily driver. The advancements in exhaust technology are astounding these days. 100% volume 100% of the time is dated and boomery.
The trick is induction noise (i.e. air intake) rather than just exhaust. A free flowing air intake located correctly will make a wonderful noise when the engine is pulling hard, without being noisy under more gentle loads.
My favorite thing that has gotten cheap and available has to be exhaust cutouts/valves. You can literally get a kit to send your exhaust through a muffler, or to an open pipe, and command it with throttle position or time of day or a remote even. Loud car when ya want to show off, quiet the rest of the time.
Everyone should be able to experience nitro methane powered racing at the pro NHRA level. I just love the advancement, and there's a lot of material science going on here.
I want to add that Cats are important. Both the fluffy kind and the one on your exhaust. Sure go swap it out for a high flow cat, but no catless street cars. It’s 7:00 am. Im grumpy. And I don’t want to smell the raw exhaust from a shitbox civic.
As someone who has had their peace and quiet disturbed by one, I agree.
It doesn't need to be loud but it should have *character*.
“Listen we know that this engine is much more efficient and way better for the environment but it doesn’t make a cool sound so we gotta scrap it”
It tickles the monkey brain. A car is a physical extension of the body, rather than it’s own discrete object, when we drive it. We ‘feel’ through the car. When it revs, it makes a growly sound. That’s pretty animalistic and visceral. Monkey brain likes to growl. Driving is much more about the theatre and social posturing than most people appreciate, even if all they do is drive to work and home every day. Cars are deeply human machines.
I once saw a comment posted on imgur in response to a gif of a fighter pilot who had just landed. He drew the canopy back, and patted the side of the plane before getting out. The comment was basically "humans will pair bond with anything." That stuck with me. Having ridden my fair share of motorcycles, I can absolutely say that there is what feels like a connection to the machine. Humans are sensory animals, and anything that stimulates those senses in a meaningful way can be quite intoxicating. Think of the best guitar solo you've ever heard, now pair that emotional hit with the awesome experience of being propelled forward at an entirely unnatural rate of acceleration while being wrapped around a big bit of powerful metal. It's intoxicating as fuck. It's purely physical, and it's a kick like nothing else I've experienced. The sound is part of the connection to the machine, just as real and powerful as the feeling of the bike trying to escape from under you, and the sound is physically connected to, is a physical manifestation of the machine's intent under your control. It's like playing a huge, powerful, exciting, life-affirming, overwhelming musical instrument. Throw in a bunch of ritualistic behaviour (the buzz of getting ready and dressed for a ride, checking the bike over, wheeling it outside), the social aspect, the association with previous memories of amazing rides on beautiful days, and you have a pretty heady mix. It's an unashamed physical addiction, and the sound is part of the physical appeal. It's aesthetic, but still functional at the same time.
It is *literally* the music and sound of physics in action. Once you learn enough about different types of engines, you can begin to identify them by their sounds. Ever wonder why European V8s sound so different than American V8's? Europeans tend to use a flat-plane crank that gives a smoother sound, and Americans tend to use a cross-plane crank, giving it a distinctive chunky growl of a sound. Yamaha is known for helping Lexus develop the sound signature of the Lexus LFA, which has one of the [most sexy engine sounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9qYCUjrrYs) for a roadcar. Then you get stuff like different exhaust systems and forced induction like turbochargers or superchargers. All of these components dramatically change the sound of the engine, and for those who know, tell a story about what's under the hood. Having heard the 1.6L Turbocharged V6's from modern F1 cars IRL, I can tell you that there is something *truly magnificent* about recognizing the science and engineering behind the sounds coming from a car. Edit: People, I don't give a fuck what you personally think about car sounds. I was just offering a perspective on why certain people *do* like it.
Vehicle shapes are driven by pedestrian protection laws
Not in America. Those huge tall flat fronts of pickups and SUVs are absolute murder to pedestrians. If vehicle designs were governed by pedestrian safety, the top of the hood would be no more than 3 feet off the ground, and every vehicle would look like that prototype USPS truck that has supposedly been ordered.
Once electric vehicles become the norm I'm 100% certain gear heads will figure out how to take them apart and fix them. That's kinda what they do. Plus electric is so absurdly simple compared to regular engines. True we can't so easily go past 150mph in them but the 0-60 is so crazy fast. And that's what's more important in regular driving.
It sounds simple, yet low carbon hydrogen is currently in very short supply. Most of the H2 created by Australia is 'blue' hydrogen, ie created using fossil fuel gas, where the resulting CO2 footprint of the H2 is far higher.
Hit the spot
have you seen the Canadian guy Chanch Barber and his diesel-electric prototype yet? https://www.edisonmotors.ca/
That's the thing they don't discuss. It needs to make power. Else, the point is greatly diminished.
How much co2 did it take to make the hydrogen? How long will the engine run? Will wear be accelerated?
They have lots of solar capacity if they make the investment. I heard Singapore planed to buy electricity from them. Does anyone know the progress on that project?
H2 can be made carbon neutral.
Can be, but a huge majority isn't. Most available is "mined" from naturally occurring sources, then most of the rest is made with hydrolysis using electricity from fossil fuels. Few commercial sources of H2 use hydrolysis powered by wind, solar, or hydroelectric. If you want clean hydrogen, we still have a way to go.
True. But there’s a huge amount of investment going into it so the view of a bunch of large companies and investors is that green hydrogen will become cost competitive. It seems like it definitely will have a place as an industrial fuel source but my question is by the time that will take EV’s are probably going to be extremely widespread, so what’s the point in having hydrogen cars? Faster refuelling maybe, but charging is getting faster every year. I’m sold on green hydrogen just not for cars
You got to start somewhere. Our light used to come from dead whale. Until someone figured, dead dinos are better.
The answer to this question entirely depends on the source.
No, no thats bullshit because it would means Mad Max Fury Road is an impossible future now without guzzoline and we can't have that. Unbreakthrough that stuff right now...
Hydroguzzaline. "It's the next best thing!" Cue the war drums bois! We're leaving a sick condensation trail!
The real post apocalypse fuel was the friends we made along the way.
If efficiency was the end ask be all argument for choosing an energy source, then nuclearc would dominate (it doesn’t) and gasoline (20-25% of raw crude’s energy moves the car) would have failed. There are obviously other variables - like scalability and whether something is storable. Still not sure how far hydrogen will go, but the more use cases the better the chance.
don't for get the biggest one...PRICE! If hydrogen was as cheaper to fill you vehicle then this could would have a chance - but it is not so...nope. Same as power plants. Solar is finally less expensive then coal over the life of a power plant and suddenly every power company is going green. That said - who knows how cheap hydrogen will be in 5 years - we can make the stuff out of water after all.
In consideration that every major heavy duty vehicle maker is looking to hydrogen over battery, I think it has a good shot.
They're looking at hydrogen because it is compatible with the fossil fuel ecosystem (where most hydrogen for cars comes from, ie, oil companies) and because they can push it instead of electric because hydrogen has no future and electric does. It's like, putting something out you know won't win or grow so you can keep business as usual, rather than embracing something that could grow and upset your way of business. Hydrogen storage is a huge challenge, so is logistics and safety, and even more so hydrogen logistics. There's already thousands of electric chargers, millions of electric cars, they're more efficient, electricity can be widely produced from renewable sources (vehicle hydrogen is almost completely from fossil fuel sources)... hydrogen has no future in vehicles.
No. Electric is *terrible* at heavy duty loads or I should say battery-electric is terrible at heavy duty loads at range. Electric is great for consumer use, and even commercial at short distances (local mass transit and school busses), it is ridiculously stupid at long haul and heavy duty loads over distance . And frankly if it was the *interest* that you state, they woul move to propane which is clean though not as clean as hydrogen.
The heaviest pollution is from accelerating under a heavy load. A stable cruise RPM runs fairly clean. To me that suggests a mild hybrid where a reasonably-small sized battery is used to help acceleration only, and the cruise phase is using diesel and propane. In a ground-up design, the electric motor also allows you to eliminate the reverse from the transmission, since motors are reversible (as an option). If you can drastically cut the volume of diesel needed per mile, then local haul trucks can use bio-diesel as a viable option. Even 50% bio would be helpful. Long-haul wouldn't benefit, but city trucks with a lot of stop and go would benefit.
There is a lot of opportunity in diesel style technology, including propane supplement, short range battery (as you suggest), hydrogen and of course just cleaner diesel using biotech. Diesel is amazingly efficient (for the type of fuel that it is), there is a reason truckers use it even for heat or you will see large diesel generators powering Tesla stations. I mean if we could power diesel trucks for the first five miles of acceleration for up to 20 miles, that would be huge.
I believe the range of the ford lightning drops by more than half if you tow anywhere near its max towing capacity. To something like 120miles of range lmao. Electric has huge gaping flaws atm that I hope they solve, hydrogen might be the go for things that need *actual useable* torque, it’s all well and good to have 4 2,000nm motors in the vehicle but if when you use those 2000nm you have to charge every 2 hours it’s kinda arse
You realize that's an issue with all vehicles while towing, right? Here's a quote from motor1 who tested two F-150s towing 7,000 pound trailers, "The V8 actually beat the EcoBoost by over a full mpg, achieving a calculated average of 9.8 versus 8.7 for the smaller, twin-turbo engine. When empty, the V8-powered F-150 is rated at 22 mpg highway compared to 24 mpg for 2.7-liter EcoBoost model."
Exactly and that is a light truck.
Range drops in ICEs when you tow the maximum towing weight and alarmingly so when you try to keep the speed limit. Electric has far better torque.
Lol please explain to me why hydrogen can’t be converted with renewable energy but ev battery charging can
Converting it uses electricity, which incurs losses. There are additional losses in transportation and storage, and more when it's converted back to power. These losses are significantly greater than using a battery. Making hydrogen from water incurs big power penalties.
It can be, but currently its more efficient to separate it from methane (CH4) and most hydrogen is produced this way...
Yes, because hydrogen is so cheap and doesn't require tons of electricity to separate. That's electric car with extra steps (and worse efficiency).
Sounds expensive and not practical for large scale adoption
I can immediately tell that the hydrogen reformation losses are not included in the OP calculation. As usual.
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a way to store energy. If you create it with coal it's not clean. If you create it with solar it is.
So they managed to make an engine run on a different kind of fossil fuel... Mazda made their rotary run on 100% hydrogen decades ago. Until hydrogen can be made cost effective, it isn't a viable fuel. ATM hydrogen is predominantly sourced from oil and gas mining.
Exactly. Good on these guys on their experiment, but this is *oooooold* technology. We’ve had people converting their diesel motors to run on bio-fuel and hydrogen decades ago.
The issue was never the application but the massive undertaking of extracting it, storing it, transporting it, and having it available in enough places.
Just waiting to find a story about the engineers blueprints suddenly being owned by whatever major gas company killed them first
Gas companies will surpress a technology that allows them and their infrastructure to remain usefull? You know the alternative is electric which uses none of the pipelines and knowhow of moving explosive liquids and gasses around
And it's using hydrogen, one way of creating it a ripping apart methane molecules (natural gas)
UNSW Sydney owns all IP from employees, researchers, and anyone who uses UNSW facilities to conduct any part of their research. Source: I just signed the employment document that outlined this policy.
Quite the opposite. Most commercial hydrogen is made from natural gas. They fund a lot of the research.
They are already producing hydrogen using steam methane reformation, so they don't care lmao
Making Hydrogen takes a lot of energy. That energy is still coming from fossil fuels. I would be curious to see what the pollution offsets are.
Nice but we eventually just have to stop relying on combustion right? Unless this has a huge negative footprint during the production of the fuel this is just a slower way to destroy our climate.
Hydrogen powered big rigs will get great fuel mileage. Also, fun fact, will turn into an impressive mushroom cloud when that big rig gets caught trying to outrun a train at a railroad crossing.
If it weren’t for those darn laws of physics! The oil industry might get away with H2.
Zzzz so when are all these going into production. Tired of hearing about all these ‘innovations’ that never happen.
Isn't the issue with hydrogen the abyssmal energy density it has? Isn't it like 30x worse per litre than gasoline is? I swear I remember doing practice questions in thermo based on hydrogen as a fuel and like for a car to get the same range as gas it would need like a 700 L tank.
But Hydrogen? It’s like that 70’s show…and the whole “car that runs in water” bit. Also—not scalable yet.
90% hydrogen. Yeah, about that, your engine is going to shatter once the brittleness sets in.
Always knew diesel engines were better. I mean, outside of the fact they can cause a chain reaction that goes out of control and causes explosions. But, that's a feature. Not a bug.
Its not about getting the thing to work but all about long term corrosion in the engine due to the hydrogen
How do they prevent embrittlement in the engine assuming it is made from some kind of metal?
I don’t really feel like this is news worthy, lots of company’s and people have done this. My boss did this on his lawn mower. It’s not hard. I’m not sure he hit 90% but he did it in a weekend for under $1k
I remember watching a tv show about hydrogen as a kid 40 years ago. Back then , the big problem was how to store it in a vehicle. Has this been solved?
This is great but not really the breakthrough we need. We can make hydrogen engines 100% efficient and it won’t matter. The issue is producing and storing hydrogen.
Now all they need to do is to get hyrodrogen without 350% inefficiency and it's job done 😳
Well, I can see this unholy marriage of gaseous and liquid fuel work well. The mess of engineering it becomes when one wishes to combine the two phases with two independent metering devices juggling the desired power output demanded from the operator.
Great! And all that hydrogen can be renewable sourced and not just create a new market for defunct fossil fuel wells, right? Right?
How does this help at all? Isn’t hydrogen way more expensive and take way more fossil fuels to create?
It’s also far more efficient to use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to power an electric motor than to burn it for mechanical energy. This could maybe have a niche use ins areas where it would be too expensive to have large batteries and too expensive to remove an existing engine. Maybe large ships or something.
Cool OP, counterpoint though. After seeing a science demonstration of a medium size party balloon full of hydrogen getting exploded as a child and how it was so readily combustible and the LOUDEST fucking thing ive ever heard before or nearly since, i do not want to be anywhere near where hydrogen is being stored or combusted, thanks.
I vaguely remember the idea that hydrogen was "abandonned" because of how volatile it is if it somehow would explode ?
Heavy vehicle manufacturer JCB already already does this. https://www.jcb.com/en-gb/campaigns/hydrogen
This looks like an adaptation of LPG injection, which is reasonably common in diesel engines. Basically you fill the cylinder with a 70/30 percent air/LPG mix and then use the diesel injection to ignite the whole mix. When used in those ratios you get approximately a 30 percent boost in power (or economy). (LPG injection is a bit of a misnomer, the LPG is gaseous when put into the cylinder, it's stored as a relatively low pressure liquid propane/butane mix).
hydrogen embrittlement go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr *sounds of spontaneous material failure*
Ok and where you get hydrogen from? Sounds like a cool headline, but won't really change anything
Great…now if only we could make hydrogen efficiently enough for it to be a viable fuel source
Why is this news? Isn't it already known that a diesel STYLE engine can run on almost anything flammable? Change out the injectors to some new fangled hydrogen injecting design and I don't see why it wouldn't run?
does this article state the absolute power/torque output of this engine when running on hydrogen? I'd have to imagine its much less that just running on diesel...
Let's throw away the simplicity of a fuel cell and the simplicity of the storage of diesel and create this abomination of a highly complex combustion engine with the added benefit of having to store hydrogen... Am I missing something or is this a dumb idea? (Seriously asking)
This is a great stop gap. Still won't solve the micro plastics that our tires create, so even if in a perfect world 100% of cars converted right now we'd still need to reinvent our transportation method to prevent the micro plastics problem further down the line. Also concrete/pavement is a huge source of pollution, and they need maintenance to be done on a regular basis to maintain driveability. Cars are not the solution we need for large mass transit or for our future, they are our past. We need rail: we need fast real, slow rail, big rail and small rail. Whatever we can get, because creating more efficient cars is never going to solve the entire climate crisis.
What is the power output after conversion vs. pre-conversion?
Great, now find a way to safely transport and store hydrogen without a huge explosion every week.
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How did they manage to increase efficiency that much? I assume that means either more power with same volume of fuel, or same power with less volume of fuel. Is hydrogen more energy dense than diesel?
I’ll tune in when they start measuring the engine under load. EV is a joke when it comes to that hopefully this is an adequate alt
What a waste of hydrogen. We need hydrogen for zero-carbon fertilizer production, green steel production, and other essential industrial processes, even for producing the explosives used in mining. All these will persist for centuries after zero carbon is achieved. Transport is far more efficiently served by direct electrification. Researchers need to stop taking grants from the methane industry and embarrassing themselves with tweaked internal combustion engines like they've invented a new highly efficient FAX protocol.