The Problem With Hydrogen Trains...
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- čas přidán 20. 04. 2023
- Hydrogen Trains are commonly promoted by advocates for the environment who want to reduce humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels and our emissions. However there is some question of whether they are a good idea, and if they could actually prove a net negative to our carbon emissions on this planet, and ultimately do more harm than good. We will look at a few examples of Hydrogen trains that are currently in use, and then look at why far fewer have been adopted than some climate advocates would want.
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Just because a railroad is switching to hydrogen power doesn't mean that they have to destroy their existing stock, nor does it mean that their hydrogen production is necessarily harmful. A prime example of this is Canadian Pacific (now CPKC, RIP KCS and CP) who recently converted three of their diesel locomotives, each at least 30 years old, and retrofitted them with hydrogen fuel cell technology, with their hydrogen supply being produced by zero emissions solar power. This is an approach many railroads can take to properly emit this cleaner form of energy without electrification. Yet, for one reason or another, the implementation and continued research of alternative fuels remains expensive due to the overwhelming subsidies given to oil and other fossil fuels, which makes alternatives, just like the rail industry, severely underfunded and neglected, which makes them unfavorable in the public eye. This is why it's essential now more than ever to raise awareness of the inherent efficiencies of any form of rail transport, which is what we youtubers are trying our best to do. Keep up the good work, and continue to correctly inform the public of the various aspects of railroading.
Hello there.
Most hydrogen produced today is done by direct chemical conversion to hydrogen from fossil fuels, not by electrolysis. With electrolysis systems that are around and are taking electricity from the dirty grid, those are specifically built to produce chlorine gas and hydrogen is more of a co-product if not a by-product.
I'm fairly certain this was related to hydrogen... It could have been battery trains I'm thinking of though.
Anyway, Germany's DB published a report not too long ago saying that, actually, over the period of ~20-30 years (I can't remember the actual figure), this type of propulsion was significantly more expensive than simply electrifying the line to 25kv AC...
This is because, while the capital costs of electric trains are really expensive, their operational costs are ridiculously cheap. Much cheaper than any other form of propulsion.
As a German I can say, the German government is stupid but the transportation system is way better than in the USA
The same goes for diesel, but the upfront capital costs are why it's more economical on a profit-loss basis to go with the more expensive long-term option. Hydrogen doesn't need to be as cheap as a EMU, but as cheap as a DMU.
This! Over the long term it is far cheaper to just electrify a line. Both hydrogen and diesel trains/cars/etc. are more expensive to both purchase and run. But over the short term, it's much cheaper to buy a self-contained, diesel train-like package than to electrify. So the politicians will opt for the quick and dirty solution that gives them something to point at when voters ask what they have done for them. The alternative would be to try to sell the voters on a massive infrastructure investment project that might not show concrete results for a decade or more.
This is basically the problem - it's political. In terms of costs it's basically impossible to argue that electrification is overall more expensive. It is very clearly much cheaper than the hydrogen or battery train bandaid.
One big error in this video.
The most common process to produce hydrogen is not electrolysis.
It is actually steam refracturing. This is where we take natural gas, methane, and superheat it to force the carbon atoms and the hydrogen atoms apart. The superheating is done by burning natural gas to heat up water to create steam. The steam is what then seperates the hydrogen and carbon.
This method counts for over 90% of all hydrogen manufactured today.
This is the main reason why fossil dual companies love hydrogen and are pushing it so much. It still lets them take a seat at the table.
Unfortunately, it's terribly wasteful. The fuel still has to be shipped to stations that will be used to fill the trains or vehicles, using more hydrogen, in a perfect hydrogen society.
And hydrogen Combustion is also the biggest waste of money that anyone could ever invest in. Your engine will have to be bigger to pull the same load, due to Hydrogen containing less power per molecule than say diesel or gasoline. Also, your fuel tanks would have to be twice the size they are on a normal diesel train to get the same mileage.
Even hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have this problem. If you look at the range of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle you will notice that it is hardly any more than a Tesla.
This is all due to the size of the hydrogen tanks in those vehicles. You will need much bigger tanks to compete with the same range as a diesel.
Hydrogen Combustion is being pushed by legacy engine manufacturers such as Cummins, MTU, Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar, for the same reason as the fossil fuel companies, to keep a seat at the table. Unfortunately it is very inefficient, and allows these companies to cheaply modify engines instead of investing in fuel cell technology.
One last thing, Hydrogen storage is not the same as existing gasoline and diesel storage. Hydrogen has to be stored under high pressure to make it worthwhile for storage, transportation, and use in hydrogen tanks in vehicles. Since it is a gas, it takes up alot more room than liquid does, hence the need for pressurized storage. The logistics of installing high pressure tanks in every fuel station is just impractical and would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Probably the same as electrifying the whole rail network.
Nice video, but you left so much out.
Hi, do you have links to studies that mention these allegations ?
Exactly. I am from India and I see so many people bad mouthing EVs here and say Hydrogen is the future. I cannot help but laught at it. Their argument is that even electricity comes from thermal power plants. So no use of EV and they conclude future is hydrogen. But what they completely fail to understand is that even electrolysis of water to generate needs electricity and even that has to either come from fossil fuels or renewable energy. Upon that electrolysis is a bit inefficient. So instead of wasting energy here and then transport fuel, it can directly be used to charge the battery. But the propaganda is very strong against EVs. Many people believe the non existent hydrogen future.
@@shas312Well you are right but Hydrogen is future because of 3 main reasons
1.Hydrogen is available infinitely not only in our world but all over the universe.
2. They don't need infrastructure like electric trains
3. Speed of refueling a hydrogen power engine is same as a diesel power.
So you are right that indirectly to produce H2 we currently require fossil fuel, so we need to use renewable method to produce H2
Whether it is burning water to produce hydrogen or burning diesel, both are emitting a lot of CO2. So what's the advantage?
Who posted this an oil company
Kuching City in East Malaysia has been using Hydrogen Bus since 2019. Sarawak going to become the first country in the world to use ART using hydrogen power in 2025
Japan Railways East (or JR East) is testing HYBARI, which is a Hydrogen-powered train developed by Toyota and Hitachi. We have rail-lines that aren't electrified and are currently using diesel-powered trains. JR has plans to slowly replace them with Hydrogen-powered trains in the future.
You should really mention green hydrogen production! A recent review determined it was cheaper in the long run too. I personally think we all need to promote the positives if we want to reverse climate change as green hydrogen has real potential as a future green power source for railways.
Who funded this thing ? It completely failed to mention that the hydrogen can be produced 100 % by carbon-free `sustainable' technology as Alstom does regularly. Fuel cell trains are the perfect solution to all emission problems in the transportation sector.
This is probably another pro battery guy
3:51 9.3kg based on what? Coal-powered electricity? Gas powered? Greenpower? Think you need to provide multiple figures or clarify.
Why use hyrdogen when you can just use electric...? If they're concerned about the climate then they can just make sure they use sustainable energy sources.
Because making and storing hydrogen may be cheaper than making batteries.
@@beringstraitrailway To be specific, I'm referring to Electric Motor trains not battery electric trains.
Electric Motor trains get power from overhead wires and are much better than Battery Electric trains and Hydrogen trains because:
1. Hydrogen is extremely wasteful and costs a lot of money to produce.
2. Battery electric trains have... batteries. Batteries are terrible for public transport and should never be used unless absolutely necessary- you can see why just by looking at battery-powered cars which cause a lot of problems.
@@beringstraitrailway, Why do we need battery in the first place? Whats wrong with trains powered by overhead power lines? Why not just electrify all the tracks?
@@shas312isn't it obvious? Cost
Electrifying railways cost almost as much as building new tracks and sometimes even more. How do you electrify a large railyard or urban railway line that has no space in-between tracks for electricity poles. Or low tunnels and bridges. They need to be rebuilt. That costs so much money.
In North America maintain electric power grid is very expensive specially with labour cost
I think we need to improve the ways that we make hydrogen and also find ways to store it easily so it won't be risky for explosions because it's super flammable. I hope the ways of producing hydrogen will be greener and drive down the price so it can be adopted easily and be integrated into our existing infrastructure.
There is no long A in flammable.
Hitachi italy in tge past 3 years built their 1st hybrid train, call "hitacy blues" or HTR 312, battery disel and catenary, battery for entering and exeting a non eletrified station to lower the air pollution in the city, disel for non elettrified railway, catenary for eletrified lines,
1. Slow transition. Continue to use diesel engines but stop building new diesel engines.
2. Use wind and solar energy to generate hydrogen.
3. Generate hydrogen near the user. Avoid long distance transportation.
In the real world, almost all the hydrogen is generated from fossil fuels and via a process that is much more environmentally damaging than simply burning the fossil fuels. Given the incredible political influence of the fossil fuel lobby, I don't see how transitioning to hydrogen avoids this current fossil fuel hydrogen generation method continuing to be the main method into the future.
Do you think that BP and Shell will just allow the "hydrogen revolution" to slip through their fingers? This is literally the whole reason why they are pushing hydrogen so much right now.
Hydrogen could be made using nuclear power plants
Or hydro if near a dam.
Or with a simple local power station like a wind turbine and some solar cells right at the gas station. All you need is distilled water and electricity to produce hydrogen
No more electrical cables hanging over railway of Deutschland, how much it's saved money ?
Hydel power is the only pure eco friendly energy. As such, the already existing hydel power plants are to be increased its output by whatsoever innovations to be adopted viz, circulation of the momentum water, increase in the number of electricity generators, increase in the capacity of the hydel power dams by cascading walls, manufacturing of large huge PERPETUAL ENERGY IDEAS that will produce pure energy. Energy from non.conventional methods too are vividly cost effective! By adopting electric generators to whatsoever Speed transportation upon railways, highways and automobiles and building electricity grids for tapping & distribution of power from various such sources will certainly make success, unique and different!
Where did you go??????
If you consider production alone, surface renewable PV panels and wind mills became significantly cheaper than gas with uncertain or expensive LNG supply due to Ukrainian war and even can compete well with coal BUT what kills it not the free of charge abundant sun and wind but the variable seasonal and unpredictable nature of this clean power requiring massive storage of energy. The energy storage in chemical batteries is not very durable and economical, high cost of lithium copper Aluminium and manufacturing represent all massive amounts of mining and industrial grey energies stacked on. Maybe only the new small and heavy salt batteries for domestic storage (they are inefficient but domestic heat can be used for use) are slowly becoming cost effective and durable for 15 years and are also easy to recycle, and are reconditioned without polluting wastes. Also the uploading of clean surface power to the grid for storage and better load match is rather expensive with hydro storage evaporation and doubling power line and distribution losses from production to storage and then from stored lake to load. Electricity production closely matched demand because electricity storage is basically uneconomical and surplus night power is discounted and wasted. It also does not make economical sense to transport with losses clean energies like wind and sun which are present all over…and with small amount of water, a local production of green H2 is one of the better solution to produce, store, use and sell clean energy anywhere. Since anyone can produce it with no big economy of scale, a dynamic market may exists. A rather highly competitive market can be developed with the right political decisions which does not yet exist with current monopolistic supplies of energy at the gas station, gas meters and kWh meter and enjoying a huge cost to retail price harvested gap. Such a clean energy process also allow a competitive fair trade market and tax free process to be implemented with the same access to market for the smallest auto producers to the biggest energy consumer. Also note that a local green H2 process inefficiencies often presented as huge economic drawback ( video stating that problem is cost…) are in fact mainly high enthalpy heat and pure oxygen for welding or medical usage with a good market value which reduce the cost of all three products while current O2 production uses much energy and so, globally, H2 is a threat for all those existing and non or slow converting industries and green H2 is often criticised with well funded lobbying power.
diesel is almost non-flamable.
The main problem with hydrogen train is India couldn't manufacture them. Thus they are not good as far as any Indian news channel is concerned.
Hydrogen trains are the goat 🐐🐐🗿
Video needs work. Caltrans (Amtrak California) and Canadian Pacific (CPKCS) are looking at converting existing diesel-electric locomotives to hydrogen fuel cells. Producing hydrogen from surplus off-peak wind power at night addresses carbon emissions and cost of production of hydrogen. Florida East Coast Railway has a locomotive fleet powered by LNG, very similar to hydrogen, tank cars are used as fuel tenders. Major issue with hydrogen is its fuel density, range is greater than batteries but less than diesel.
Caltrans is doing no such thing. They are testing a very limited number of Stadler FLIRT hydrogen trains. They're not converting anything. They are just doing a pilot. Ultimately, Caltrans wants to electrify all the lines it has control over via catenary. They are studying hydrogen as a stopgap until they can do that. But it's not like they are banking on it replacing actual electrification.
Environmental lunatics...
The only way we can affordable produce hydrogen is with nuclear power.
But then why would we want to use hydrogen as a battery medium instead of just electrifying the rail lines and calling it a day?
@@TohaBgood2 My thought exactly. But politics in some cases takes weird decisions.
@@TohaBgood2if the track too long it will be very expensive
@@widodoakrom3938 Nope. This has been calculated a million times. It's cheaper overall to electrify, but it requires a massive short term investment that only pays off in a couple of decades. Consequently, the politicians always want to go for the easy way out.
@@TohaBgood2 china built hydrogen locomotive bcs they wants to built Eurasian railways can't rely on diesel or electric locomotive hydrogen locomotive is the best options
I have not heard any hydrogen combustion train. It is fuel cell. It is electrochemical process. This vidoe is absolutely misinformation.
You can always generate hydrogen in a nuclear reactor..........or use the process heat from a reactor....