Are hydrogen tanks superior to batteries?

[Martin Williams]

Again with your wishful thinking.

Compression is not instant. Have you ever used a compressor? It takes time to build up the pressure after using it lowers the pressure. 10,000PSI is extremely high pressure. Compressors get hot - because they have energy losses.

Martin, you obviously think that it should all work just the way you want it to. Reality is though - it does not. Have fun all by yourself in your fantasy world.

Build up the pressure in what? And where is it getting the gas to do it from?

I don't think you know what you are talking about, but by all means, explain. Perhaps it will turn out to be a misunderstanding.

There are, by the way, thousands of high-pressure compressors running continuously in the world, thanks to the invention of - cooling! None of them need to relax with a beer to cool off as you seem to imply!

 

[bwilson4web]

The problem is that this is no longer entirely clean in that CO2 is emitted. . . .

It is a feature since affordable hydrogen from steam reformulation releases substantially more CO{2} to pay for all of the inefficiencies. But if you insist on electrolysis H{2}, then charge batteries and be done.

Sources:
http://www.hybridcars.com/december-2017-dashboard/
http://www.hybridcars.com/january-2018-dashboard/
http://www.hybridcars.com/february-2018-dashboard/
http://www.hybridcars.com/march-2018-sales-dashboard/

Fuel cell sales are about two orders of magnitude lower, 1/100th, than the PHEV and light diesel sales. Their recent rate of growth is self evident. It turns out the Honda Clarity fuel cell vehicle is splitting that market with the Toyota Mirai.

Group           03/15/18 02/15/18 01/15/18 12/18/17
Total Hybrid       28518    24900    22017    32187
Total BEV          14480     8344     6085    14959
Total PHEV         10882     8152     5800    10190
Total Diesel       10688     8156     6733     9920
Total Fuel Cell      204      416      270      297
Total Efficent     64772    49968    40905    67553
Total Auto Sales 1646888  1297439  1151832  1595793

There is good evidence that BEV sales from one manufacturer will soon not be supply limited:

Group     03/15/18 02/15/18 01/15/18 12/18/17
Model 3       3680     2600     1900     1050
Model S       3200     1100      900     4800
Model X       2500      900      700     3400

BTW, I am not tempted since our plug-in hybrids are EV around town and have affordable and even superior gas performance on the highway. There are too many energy losses with H{2} to make it cost competitive:

There are, by the way, thousands of high-pressure compressors running continuously in the world, thanks to the invention of - cooling! None of them need to relax with a beer to cool off as you seem to imply!

The compressor heat is one of several energy losses that makes H{2} too costly.

You may wonder how the fuel cell skeptics have so much information at hand. It seems the Department of Energy has done the heavy lifting:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/46612.pdf

This is just one of several gems found at:
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov

In my case, sales are derived from mapping of the dashboard reports from www.hybridcars.com. What this brings is the early trends by looking at the last four months, 1/3d of a year, of vehicle sales. A year-by-year summary is too coarse and does not provide useful information. A month-by-month whether the previous month or previous year is too small of a sample set. There is more to be gained by looking at the past four months to detect trends early enough to know what is going on:

• hybrid, plug-in, and diesels - solid growth after the December end-of-year bump.
• BEV - it looks like Elan's "manufacturing h*ll" has turned the corner as all three models are showing substantial growth in March.
• fuel cell vehicles - there was a Honda Clarity burst with its release but now it just eats Miria sales. It is a market that has hit a reality wall.

Bob Wilson

 

[Martin Williams]

I looked at plugin sales over the first three months of 2016 to 2018 and got the following:

2016 - 27647
2017 - 41921
2018 - 55267

Much bigger figures of course but much slower growth too. Are plugins approaching saturation I wonder?

 

[bwilson4web]

I looked at plugin sales over the first three months of 2016 to 2018 and got the following:

2016 - 27647
2017 - 41921
2018 - 55267

Much bigger figures of course but much slower growth too. Are plugins approaching saturation I wonder?

The last four months suggests hybrids, plug-ins, and diesels are showing steady growth. There had been speculation that plug-ins were eating hybrid sales but the near parallel sales trends suggest that is not the case.

We switched in 2016 from hybrids to plug-ins to meet our requirements and never looked back.

Bob Wilson

 

[Martin Williams]

The compressor heat is one of several energy losses that makes H{2} too costly.

If you use a high differential pressure electrolyser, you don't actually need a compressor anywhere. In production the electrolyser is supplied with water at low pressure and electricity. It vents the oxygen, and generates hydrogen directly at high pressure - well in excess of 70MPa. After dewatering, this goes directly to a storage tank.

This can be transferred directly to the vehicle, at 70MPa or 35MPa as you choose.

Is this really feasible?

Yes.

Honda have developed what they call a 'smart filling station' The whole lot fits into a single container roughly 3 metres by 2 by two high., and demonstrated it working from solar panels. I guess it works OK and supplies hydrogen with no further need for any external energy apart from sunlight. No doubt it could be easily adapted to work from windmills or the grid or even all three.

You can read about this in the Honda R&D Technical Review No 29 if you're interested. Other editions have articles on the development of the electrolyser.

Pretty obviously, this can be made to work in a centralised production facility where it could be used to supply a fleet of road vehicles to supply filling stations. Or adapted for home production. The simplicity of the system is very attractive. Nobody wants a compressor yammering away if it can be avoided.

These are early days, but it is good to see the technology being developed and substantial improvements being achieved. I really think this is something of a game changer. You might even be able to put one in your car one day, and then you'd have a 'plugin hydrogen' vehicle for those that are happy to fiddle about with cables and chargers.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

The problem is Musk, not hydrogen.

Another example of the irrational wishful thinking of fool cell fanboys: That FCEVs would have been fine if Elon Musk had not invented the term "fool cell car"! The way some of those fanboys write, you'd think that Thermodynamics and the Laws of Physics didn't exist before Elon invented them!

Personally, I read about how ridiculously wasteful, horribly inefficient, and absurdly expensive it is to run a fuel cell EV years before Elon invented the term "fool cell". That is one of the many things I learned on TheEEStory forum. Altho the focus of the discussion there eventually turned out to be a claim without foundation -- a sham -- I still learned a lot from years of participation in those discussions.

I also learned to spot those who prefer wishful thinking to science, facts, and reality. On TheEEStory forum, there were a few hardcore Believers (we capitalized the "B") in the E-Cat, a "free energy" (aka "perpetual motion") scam. Believers who insisted it was real despite all the evidence that promoter Andrea Rossi is a serial con artist with no ability to invent anything, and despite repeated claims over several years that he was gonna start selling the E-Cat commercially; claims which never went anywhere, because he was (perhaps still is) running an investment scam, which would have fallen apart if he had actually tried to sell his worthless device.

Here on InsideEVs, it's Believers in fool cell cars. Thankfully, we've seen the ranks of those dwindle over the past few years. For most people, reality eventually sets in. This leaves only the few stubborn die-hards who are, in effect, scamming themselves.

* * * * *

The title of this thread asks "Are hydrogen tanks superior to batteries?"

As has been amply shown, to the satisfaction of all except those very few practicing delusional wishful thinking, the answer isn't merely "No", but "Hell no!"
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[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Honda have developed what they call a 'smart filling station' The whole lot fits into a single container roughly 3 metres by 2 by two high., and demonstrated it working from solar panels.

It would be interesting to see what the output is, in terms of kg of H2 per hour, from a given surface area of solar panels. My "napkin math" shows that if you wanted to power a Tesla Supercharger with solar power and without using any storage batteries to buffer the energy, then you'd need something like 1-2 football fields' worth of solar panels per Supercharger unit. Using electricity to power a car is something like 3-1/2x to 4x as energy efficient as H2 used to power a fool cell car, so you'd need 3-1/2x or 4x as much area of solar panels for the H2 fueling station. How much area would that actually require? Well, let's just say that very very few H2 fueling stations would have enough adjacent empty acreage available, to have sufficient room to install a large enough solar farm to generate H2 that rapidly using solar power alone!

And in an earlier post, Martin claimed 6000 (not a typo -- six thousand!) fool cell cars could be fueled in 24 hours from one single dispensing unit! That has to go down as one of the most mind-bogglingly ridiculous assertions from any fool cell fanboy, ever! And that is saying quite a lot.
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[bwilson4web]

If you use a high differential pressure electrolyser, you don't actually need a compressor anywhere.

Press releases: https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/news_events.html

Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/article...rts-innovative-small-scale-hydrogen-refueling

. . .
In the spirit of this collaboration, DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office is proud to announce that SimpleFuel, winner of the $1 million H2 Refuel H-Prize, is exporting one of the world's first hydrogen refueling appliances to Japan.

With this first U.S. export of cutting-edge technology innovation to our long-time hydrogen collaborator, Japan, the H-Prize showcases how federal prizes can be used to incentivize American entrepreneurs to accelerate technology advancement. The H2 Refuel H-Prize competition successfully challenged America's innovators to deploy an on-site hydrogen generation system to fuel hydrogen vehicles, which can be used in homes, community centers, small businesses, or similar locations. SimpleFuel's home scale refueling appliance can provide a 1-kilogram fill to vehicles in 15 minutes or less at 700 bar using hydrogen produced via electrolysis, with a cost-effective design that minimizes setback distances and reduces the physical footprint of the system. SimpleFuel is a collaboration of three companies: IVYS Energy Solutions (Massachusetts), McPhy Energy N.A. (Massachusetts), and PDC Machines (Pennsylvania). This approach complements the conventional retail fueling stations currently being funded by states and the private sector.
. . .​

More technical details: https://insideevs.com/ivys-simple-fuel-hydrogen-station/

. . .
Simple Fuel station as an easy, relatively affordable (if you’re a fleet operator, any way) box that can pump compressed hydrogen fuel into your vehicle while only needing a power source, a water inlet, and a vent mast exhaust pipe. If you’ve got those things – and the $250,000-$300,000 that a Simple Fuel station costs, depending on options – you’re good to go.

IVYS President and CEO Darryl Pollica told InsideEVs at the MovinOn sustainable mobility conference in Montreal today that the Simple Fuel station is better for fleet use than a commercial retailer. That’s because the biggest capacity station can only make – through electrolysis – 10 kilograms of 700-bar H2 a day. That’s enough for a lot of hydrogen forklifts, but only around two hydrogen-powered passenger cars. The Honda Clarity, for example, needs 5.46 kg for a full tank.
. . .
To figure out how much time it takes to produce a kg of hydrogen, you can just do simple math. So, for the machine that makes 10 kilograms of hydrogen a day (all of these numbers will be based on the top-of-the-line, 700-bar, 10-kg unit, the SF-70-10), it takes 2.4 hours to make one kilogram of H2. That kilogram requires a total of 68.4 kWh of electricity to make. About 55 kWh are needed to electrolyze the water, and the rest is used for compression and operating features. Lastly, a kilogram of hydrogen needs just under a gallon of water (3.8 gallons, or 14.4 liters). And that’s RO standard (reverse osmosis) water in this case.​

So that would require $6.84 of electricity in Huntsville AL, $0.10/kWh, to make one kg of compressed hydrogen. That would fully charge our Prius Prime 10.7 times, ~267 miles, and our BMW i3-REx 3.75 times, ~270 miles. In the Honda Clarity fuel cell, 1 kg provides ~67 miles of range.

Both of our cars have gas engines so to go 67 miles:

• BMW i3-REx - (67 / 40) * $2.75 (premium) ~= $4.60
• Prius Prime - (67 / 56) * $2.50 (regular) ~= $2.99
• Honda Clarity fuel cell $6.84

Even gasoline is cheaper than hydrogen generated from a home unit fed into a Honda Clarity fuel cell. So the capital cost:

$300,000 - list price for home hydrogen generator
$ 60,000 - list price for Honda Clarity fuel cell vehicle
$360,000 - total capital cost

That $360,000 would buy: +10 new Prius Primes; +7 new BMW i3-REx, or; +18 used BMW i3-REx (eBay prices.)

With a Honda Clarity FCV, you get less but you can't pay more.

Bob Wilson

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Battery car enthusiasts seem blind to the fact two thirds of people in Europe will not buy a plugin because they can't plug it in at home!

Sadly, it is true that many EV advocates seem blind to the reality that culture changes to accommodate new technology. It is inevitable that as the EV revolution progresses, more and more parking places everywhere will have EV slow chargers installed beside them. Or under them, if and when wireless charging becomes the standard, as I suspect will happen.

One thing is certain: It's far easier and far less expensive to run electrical power that last 50-100 feet or so from a building to the curb, or to upgrade the power lines currently used only for street lights, than to build ridiculously expensive H2 fueling stations everywhere at a cost of $1 million per ~84 fool cell cars! (12 cars filled per day, with each fool cell car refueled once per week, means $1 million per (12 x 7 =) 84 cars. And that assumes all the H2 fueling stations are always open and always have enough fuel available, which in practice they don't.)
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[Martin Williams]

It is inevitable that as the EV revolution progresses, more and more parking places everywhere will have EV slow chargers installed beside them. Or under them, if and when wireless charging becomes the standard, as I suspect will happen.

What a pity you cannot apply such enthusiasm to Hydrogen filling stations. I note your cheery optimism over the vast cost of providing millions of charging points and the cabling infrastructure to supply them, in particular, your dismissal of the cost - and inefficiency - of wireless charging.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

What a pity you cannot apply such enthusiasm to Hydrogen filling stations. I note your cheery optimism over the vast cost of this...

You don't seem to grasp that this is a losing argument for you, Martin. You keep harping on the cost of upgrading the infrastructure to support switching all gasmobiles to BEVs, while demonstrating invincible ignorance over the numerous and clearly established facts showing that it would be far, far more expensive to install infrastructure to provide similar support for FCEVs.

But if you want to continue showing that you're a science denier, and continue to beat your head against this particular wall, then by all means continue to do so!

in particular your dismissal of the cost - and inefficiency - of wireless charging.

Cost and inefficiency are both losing arguments for fool cell fanboys. If wireless charging was three times as inefficient as it is, BEVs would still be significantly more energy efficient than fool cell cars!

So I'd be happy to see you lose that argument, too.
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[Martin Williams]

Musk opining on hydrogen is not to be taken seriously. He has far too much staked on its failure to be worth listening to on the subject.

I think the importance of the high-pressure differential electrolyser is the fact that it reduces the capital cost of the equipment needed to produce the gas. It will also reduce the need for maintenance there which is important too. That it saves energy is another rather less important benefit.

If you plan to produce hydrogen when intermittent power happens to be in excess and available, you need to have low capital cost plant. It will be used only part time. One expects the cost of energy at times of use to be low anyway. Increasingly in Europe it is given away free and there have been cases of countries paid to take it!

Another plus is that it will reduce the cost and maintenance requirements of home hydrogen production systems bringing them closer to mass production.

 

[Martin Williams]

Bob. I can't work out whether this simple fuel station uses an HP differential electrolyser or a compressor. Perhaps you know?

 

[Martin Williams]

...numerous and clearly established facts showing that it would be far, far more expensive to install infrastructure to provide similar support for FCEVs.

That's the point, Pushmi. I have yet to come across anything of this sort. Indeed rather the reverse. You are going to have to provide about 150 million of these charging points, and to boost the grid by between 50 to 100% to supply them.

Current estimates for the minimal number of H2 filling stations required in your country are around 20,000 At $3 million each thats $6 billion. 150 million charging points at - say - $500 each will cost $75 billion.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Musk opining on hydrogen is not to be taken seriously. He has far too much staked on its failure to be worth listening to on the subject.

A science denier trying to cast aspersions on someone with a degree in physics, like Elon Musk, comes across as painfully obvious desperation.

I think the importance of the high-pressure differential electrolyser is the fact that it reduces the capital cost of the equipment needed to produce the gas. It will also reduce the need for maintenance there which is important too. That it saves energy is another rather less important benefit.

Ah yes, your "Efficiency isn't important" delusion. Energy efficiency is always important, as it's a major factor in cost.

Now, it may be possible to reduce the amount of energy wasted in compressing H2 gas, by using some sort of "high differential pressure electrolyser", altho since this is the first I'm seeing anything about it, one rather suspects it's not very practical for one reason or another. If it was practical, then why isn't it mentioned in articles about the science, tech, and economics of using H2 to power fuel cell cars?

But let's set that aside, and indulge a fool cell fanboy's wishful thinking here. What I can't ignore -- since I'm not a science denier -- is that H2 gas compressed to 10,000 PSI contains appreciably more energy than uncompressed H2 gas. That extra energy has to come from somewhere, "high differential pressure electrolyzer" or not. It is, again, energy which the H2 supplier will have to pay for; Mother Nature isn't going to provide it for free. To ignore this would be to deny the reality of thermodynamics. That is unfortunately common among fool cell fanboys, but those of us who prefer to look at things as they really are can't simply handwave away the real-world limits imposed by thermodynamics.
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[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Current estimates for the minimal number of H2 filling stations required in your country are around 20,000 At $3 million each thats $6 billion. 150 million charging points at - say - $500 each will cost $75 billion.

You count funny.
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[Martin Williams]

Nobody - except you in yet another straw man attack - is claiming that energy needed to compress the gas is magically eliminated by a HP differential electrolyser. What IS being claimed is that it is less inefficient than a compressor, and quieter, and simpler, less expensive, and needs less maintenance.

If you wish to argue against points made only by yourself feel free to do so, but I would ask you respectfully not to ascribe such nonsense to me.

As to whether energy is a major factor in cost or not, I would point out that how major it depends on what the cost actually is. In terms of the cost of renewable energy it is - at most - the cost of the turbines or solar panels that produce it divided by their lifetime and the annual output. Wind turbines are getting less expensive - per unit output - as their size increases. Wind is already the least expensive form of power with the exception of solar. Solar is still rapidly declining in cost thanks to economies of scale, improved production methods and it seems probably that the trend will continue as methods other than silicon are developed.

At best it is free. It can - depending on the agreement made with the supplier - cost less to give it away (or even pay people to take it) than to pay the producers for not supplying it! This often happens in countries in Europe.

So if you set up a hydrogen production plant to utilise free power, it is going to be idle for a lot of the time, so the capital cost of it is very important. Much more important than the cost of the energy you use because that is zero. The HP differential electrolyser is very important indeed here. The plant can be as simple as an electrolyser and a tank, with some simple water extraction system interposed between them.

Apologies if you have difficulty following this argument. I have tried to make it as simple as possible. If it still baffles you, I suggest you avoid taking quotes from it, posting them out of context, misinterpreting them and then demolishing your own arguments against them. This gets us nowhere.

 

[Martin Williams]

You count funny.
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Not really. I looked at H2USA.org and they claim that 68 are sufficient for California to support an initial population of 20,000 vehicles there. Extrapolate that across the nation and you get a lot less than even 20,000.

In practice, I expect to see a lot more being developed as private companies see the financial opportunities, and FCVs continue to grow in popularity. I see no reason for the cost of the gas itself not to drop dramatically and many reasons why it should, ranging from economies of scale to home production.

 

[Martin Williams]

I've just read a piece in a local rag about a proposal by a train manufacturer - Alsthom - to run some tests of a hydrogen-powered train on a line I frequently use myself, between Liverpool and Chester.

I can see the attraction of course. We have many lines in the UK which are not electrified and these are currently served by diesel trains. Using hydrogen would save the enormous cost of providing third rail or overhead power. The line they propose trying it on is already electrified, so I imagine they are planning on using conventional power as back up on what must be a prototype.

The line is part of a local transit system which is deep underground for a significant part of the journey. I'm less enthusiastic about the use of hydrogen trains underground for obvious reasons, but the system has a history of using quite inappropriate power sources. When the line was opened some 180 years ago, they used STEAM. Legend has it that the smoke on the platforms was so thick that commuters recognised their trains by the smell! Perhaps Alsthom is hoping the tough-minded commuters will not be too worried by the odd detonation from leaking hydrogen!

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Nobody - except you in yet another straw man attack - is claiming that energy needed to compress the gas is magically eliminated by a HP differential electrolyser. What IS being claimed is that it is less inefficient than a compressor, and quieter, and simpler, less expensive, and needs less maintenance.

If you wish to argue against points made only by yourself feel free to do so, but I would ask you respectfully not to ascribe such nonsense to me.

Here is what you originally wrote, Martin:

If you use a high differential pressure electrolyser, you don't actually need a compressor anywhere. In production the electrolyser is supplied with water at low pressure and electricity. It vents the oxygen, and generates hydrogen directly at high pressure - well in excess of 70MPa. After dewatering, this goes directly to a storage tank.

This can be transferred directly to the vehicle, at 70MPa or 35MPa as you choose.

Is this really feasible?

Yes.
​

Now you are claiming you were not implying that this eliminates the need to provide more energy to compress the gas during generation?

Don't pee on our legs and tell us it's raining.

Once again, Martin, you undercut your own arguments by resorting to sophistry. If you actually had any winning arguments, you wouldn't need to keep doing that.

Apologies if you have difficulty following this argument. I have tried to make it as simple as possible.

Speaking of sophistry... You do yourself a discredit here. Admittedly your attempts to obfuscate the facts with irrelevancies have not been successful, but it's not for lack of trying on your part!

So if you set up a hydrogen production plant to utilise free power, it is going to be idle for a lot of the time, so the capital cost of it is very important.

That's right! Congratulations on making a point that's both relevant and true. I think that's a first for you in this thread?

But for some reason, you won't admit the same point applies to the cost of energy which must be supplied to generate and compress the H2, and more energy to compensate for losses during storage, transport, re-storage, and dispensing. You keep asserting that energy efficiency is irrelevant since -- according to you -- energy from solar power is free. Yes, Mother Nature does provide us with solar energy for free. However, installing and maintaining solar farms is not! The land on which solar farms are built generally isn't free, either.
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