Hydrogen takes electric power to produce so it in it self is not a primary sorce of energy. But Hydrgen is more of a carrier of electrisity and as a gas it is ealy trasportable and it is easy to store. What is the issue is how the electrisity is gernerated by coal,oil,nuke,solar,hydro,wind,wave,human power ect.
What needs to be looked it here is that with Hydro and solar and wind the generartion is not always at a constant and having batterys to store the energy that is needed is impratical. Hydrogen offers a aleternive to batterys and Pumped storage resorvers to generate electrisity. Hygrogen-Deasal electric Locomotives off the ecomnomys of scale not possible in automobles in that that in a train you can store the “Fuel” in tank cars behind the train in almost unlimted quetintys since Hydrgen takes up more cubic feet then Gasoline which gallon for gallon and cubic feet per cubic feet is the most portable fual today.
Very interesting, but Hydrogen has a small problem,it is very unstable and is one of the kings of combustability. The Germans tried the use of hydrogen in the transportation business back in the 30’s. The Hindenberg pretty much says all that needs to be said about its uses and the hubrus of thinking that the element is easily worked with. Your thoughts with this in mind would be welcomed in the forum. Much has happened since 1936, Something new in this subject area would be interesting.
It would be dangerous (as piouslion pointed out), to use liquid hydrogen as a fuel source. It would be safer to use water and the engine could an atomic converter that breaks down the water molecules and combusts them safely.
It would be safer to use water and the engine could an atomic converter that breaks down the water molecules and combusts them safely
Atomic conveter eh??[?][?][?][:)]
Something like that. I know they exist but probably got the name of the thing wrong. I know the technology is there for sure.
I doubt you would see an internal combustion engine fueled by Hydrogen. LP and LNG haven’t found a home in RR motive power, and both are readily available.
You are more likely to see hydrogen used to power fuel cells, which will generate electricity to turn the traction motors. I have no idea how many fuel cells it would take to equate with a common road engine or switcher.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/ Has some information on fuel cells. I didn’t dig in very deep, but it does appear that there is a lot of information there.
Thanks for bringing this up in its own thread. I was getting ready to address the laughable misinformation in the “AAA” thread, but it’s better here.
The point about using hydrogen as a kind of analogue to pumped storage is an interesting one, which is not often mentioned in the ‘energy carrier’ debate. However, I know of no present plan to use reversible dissociation and hydrogen storage in the electric-power industry – there are much better alternatives, notably superconducting storage facilities and more flexible generating facilities that are efficient over a wide range of partial loads.
Keep in mind that electricity is certainly not the source of all carrier hydrogen, and not all methods of hydrogen production need to use more energy than the hydrogen provides as a transportation fuel. There are interesting future possibilities for ‘semiconductor’ photodissociation of water, perhaps in conjunction with photovoltaics, which essentially use a free input (insolation) to produce hydrogen gas.
A critical difficulty, however, for hydrogen-engine schemes is that the energy density of hydrogen gas as an engine fuel… and for all intents and purposes as a fuel-cell fuel for large applications like locomotives… isn’t sufficient for practicality. Note that I’m talking about pressurized hydrogen at ambient temperature here. I’m also not considering any added effect of the inert nitrogen in combustion air (which is a primary absorber/re-emitter of hydrogen-oxygen combustion energy). Not that there isn’t plenty of power – just that you need lots of expensive and heavy pressure vessels for a comparatively tiny amount of total heat…
First lesson, children: Hydrogen at normal temperatures is a gas. It also has a very low gram molecular weight, which means that for a given gauge pressure there is restricted heat content. Do not mistake high energy of reaction for good fuel value! Meanwhile… has anyone actually asked how much a “tank car” capable of hol
Being a believer in the possible I see that deep thought and wide opinion are still practiced among the members of the forum. That was good information tree I was not aware that so much progress had taken place in fuel cell development. It does look promising for use with future generations. Overmod has given much information about the constraints that are currently in place for this technology and I for one do see his point(s). It is here that the lessons of history can be constructive. As many of you remember Rodolph Diesel got his first patents for his engine in the latter days of the 19th century. It was almost 50 years befor this technology was acceptable and portable enough to be used on the railroads. Fuel cell technology is still mostly in the lab with some opportunities in stationary and high security situations applications. With this in mind, think of how great it is that us folks in the forum can talk about its possibilites for the future while the rest of the world still thinks that the dirty little lie called Kyoto is the only way to cure ourselves of everything that is wrong with the world. But this thread is about the technology of the possible not the theology of depressed dissapointment with a world that has stopped thinking of anything but gloom, doom, and destruction of any good and hopefull thing . [^][8D][:)][2c][swg][tup] THIS IS A TOPIC THAT RAILROADING: ITS FRIENDS PARTICPANTS AND ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES THAT ARE A PART OF THE FORUM CAN KNOCK AROUND A BIT, WHO KNOWS, SOMEONE JUST MIGHT BE CLOSE TO A BREAKTHROUGH IN THIS TECHNOLOGY JUST WAITING FOR SOME ENCOURAGEMENT FROM A BUNCH LIKE US. SHE(HE) MIGHT JUST BE ON LINE WITH US
I have heard of hydrogen being stored within a solid material matrix, does anybody know of this?
I have also read that practical materials for the storage of hydrogen are difficult to find because hydrogen atoms are so small that they infiltrate any material over time and can make metals become brittle.
A fuel cell might be practical for a green goat application, but that’s a yard switcher. What about a road locomotive?
What if hydrogen could be “combusted” with carbon to form hydrocarbons?
Which would be more potent-liquid propellent (water) or a solid propellent (fuel cells) for the purpose of using hydrogen combustion?
Overmod-
Boy, facts sure do get in the way of a good arguement!
Not really related, except the saftey issue…AirProducts and BN got about 2/3 of the way toward running a pair of spark ingnition SD40s on liquified nat’l gas somewhere around 1990 when there was a big price differential between nat’l gas and diesel. The thought of a natural gas fuel tender wasn’t very comforting, though. About the only thing safer to haul around than good old #2 is water…
jruppert – the hydrides Overmod mentioned are the solid matrix type of storage. They can be made to work. As he noted, however, they do very interesting things in contact with water (you really don’t want to be there) and are costly – and, worse so far, not proven.
One thing to keep firmly in mind here: you can never, ever, get as much energy out of a process as you put into it. What this means in this context is that unless you are creating the hydrogen using a renewable or nuclear energy source, you will use more fuel and create more pollution using hydrogen as an intermediate energy carrier than you would have had you used the fuel directly. This is set out in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is one of the best-proven laws of all modern science.
If you plan to use electricity somewhere in the chain, the most efficient way to do it (for railroads) is with electrified lines, and there might be a good deal to be said for powering the existing electric railroads and transit lines with a relatively non-polluting source of electricity; unfortunately, the only one of those of which I am aware is politically impossible.
In non-electric territory, I’m with Don… the only thing safer to haul around than good old #2 is water, which latter doesn’t burn too good. It’s very very hard to beat a modern diesel locomotive for overall transportation fuel efficiency (pounds hauled per mile per unit input of energy at the mine/well/wind farm/what have you).
I think the most feasible solution for the future is… hybrid diesel electric locomotives. I’ m not talking about the green goat (a very good idea of course), but about a new generation of hybrid road locomotives. I think it will all depend on the developement of “ultracapacitors”, extremly compact units capable to store and release huge amounts of energy in short time intervals.
Currently, ultracapacitor makers are trying to figure out how to make those things at a reasonable cost.
In the end, hybrid diesel locomotives would be very similar to current AC locomotives, except for the ultracapacitor and (probably) the lack of dynamic brake grids. Dynamic braking would store energy in ultracapacitors for later. No fuel conversion needed (still using the safe diesel fuel) and full compatibility with conventional diesels would be very easy.
Here’s a link to an article from TRAFFIC WORLD concerning UPS testing a small number of fuel cell powered trucks…
LC
Fuel cells and hydride storage are now off-the-shelf items. The company mention in the above link was manufacturing generators using them in 2002 IIRC. NASA had fuelcells in space craft in late 60’s. They are less expensive now, but not cheap. UPS is probably factoring in a PR factor to justify them or else the are getting help from “an interested party.”
Large capacitors are nasty beasts. If you short one out your world may suddenly end. One the size of your coffee mug can easily kill you. Ask your friendly neighborhood radar technician. Not likely you would want to carry one around in a vehicle that was subject to collison and derailment. Also, the capacitor would be very large.
A city bus, unlike a locomotive, spends a lot of time slowing down and stopped picking up passengers and waiting for traffic signals, so the engine in the hybrid power plant has time to recharge the storage device. Locomotives are the opposite, except maybe in switching service.
A lot of people have no idea of the physics behind some things and expect a “break through”, similar to the changes in the computer in the past 50 years, that will give them a 1000KVA power source in a suit case.
I’d say piouslion is on the right track. I think any use of a fuel cell in a railroad locomotive application is a minimum of 20 years away. There are just too many unknowns at this point like material costs and performance.
There goes the fuel tax revenues the gov’t. collects! Don’t think they would like that too much (the gov’t. that is). This kinda reflects on an earlier post about providing more mass transportation, via the railroad. And, someone had commented a public official had stated “we don’t want to do anything that would reduce our fuel tax influx”.
That made me think. Then, I once remembered we were going through a drought one summer. The Water Dept. told everyone to conserve water, they even ran ads telling you that when you took a shower, soap up, turn off the water, when you’re done lathering up, then turn the water back on to rinse.
Well, everyone did what they could to save water, and, it worked!! Then, our Water Works Dept. raised the fees for our water bill because they weren’t selling as much water! Bobble Heads !!!
I just love it when great minds run together. I do hope that a fine active mind gets the encouragement to pursue this potentialy great breakthrough.
Duh! I was thinking of some way to produce a hydrocarbon fuel when I suggested combusting carbon and hydrogen. Even though it was a half hearted suggestion, I should have seen that’s only the reverse of regular combustion! So how can energy be gained - duh!
I think this subject came up before, only the question was different. If you ask me for my uniformed opinion, I think some type of synthetic diesel fuel is the best bet, because then existing engine technology can be used.
I suppose if you want to look at the big picture, then take a step all the way back. The fossil fuels we are using are concentrations of energy from millions of years occuring at a natural density being used in a few moments at an accellerated rate. In effect we are robbing time. If all the fossil fuels were completely gone, to store the same amount of energy in the same way would take millions of years, no? Of course, us humans are smarter than that, we’ll just collect energy somewhere else right? Hmmmmmm.
I am not predicting doom and gloom when I say this at all, because such values are truelly relative. I think that when the advantages of fossil fuels are gone, we will still have energy sources, but none that release energy at rates we are currently accustomed to. Currently, the paradigm of dialy existence is mass consumption supports mass production, and I believe that in the future, this will have to change to high quality in small quantities.