[Joe367]

I don't understand the argument that hydrogen cars were neglected. The largest manufacturers like Toyota and Hyundai have been making hydrogen powered cars for so many years now. Even if there were same number of hydrogen filling stations as electric charging stations, people won't consider buying hydrogen cars over electric.
Hydrogen should be limited to large commercial vehicles.

I've shared this video before in another thread, this is not even the first generation of Toyota Mirai and there's serious lack of space because of the fuel cell and hydrogen tank.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=N1dveN6O...FKnqUNN09eVWZ2

[TheStoryweaver]

I used to read a lot about this debate in past. I studied a few articles and there is one chart that shows the energy conversion efficiency. There is a wide gap of energy efficiency when EV’s are compared to Hydrogen and ICE.
As per my analysis, Hydrogen is best suited for heavy industries and public transport ( like buses for city travel) and not cars.

In 2023- Govt announced investments into green hydrogen for industrial purposes link -https://carboncredits.com/indian-government-announces-new-green-hydrogen-project/#:~:text=The%20mission%20was%20approved%20by,Green %20Hydrogen%20and%20its%20derivatives

[Cresterk]

Since this thread is picking up some steam, did some digging and found this. An interesting read :

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydro...cam-alex-grant

[PreludeSH]

With many battery technologies being researched, EVs will be the future. Hydrogen solves energy storage when needed for big applications. Big Oil will never have the same success as it is now and will also shape future political landscape.

[proton]

Originally Posted by SKC-auto

Li batteries are recycled and 95% of the materials can be extracted today. What you said as a fact is not even true, except for the probable use of neodymium magnets in electric motors( also used in Hydrogen and hybrids) there are zero rare earth materials in an EV.

Thanks for this information re: advances in recycling

Rare earths, like neodymium and samarium cobalt, used in super efficient magnets for motors in turn used in EV's, are rare not because they don't exist abundantly, but because the extraction is so difficult, and the yield is small. In the past ten years, the academic world has produced about 100 PHd holders in the tech, and they are all in: China! No one has a viable, sustainable, rare earth extraction technology that they have!

Originally Posted by jeroen

Sorry, but that is just not true. Yes, hydrogen atoms are small, but we can make containers that hold them without any leakage for decades. See my earlier post, plenty of hydrogen application already at an industrial level. Very few refineries or artificial manure plants work without hydrogen these days. No leaks.

We have buses driving through towns and villages. No leaks. We have barges sailing through our canals and ocean-going vessels crossing oceans, hydrogen-powered. No leaks.

Hydrogen is being used in industrial and other large scale applications where the leakages are minimised by less or no mobility. Personal vehicle applications with high mobility and vibration means increases in leakages through loosening, along with more heat, compression and embrittlement, making more costly high quality leak proofing even more expensive.

My source is on an international advisory board, and has seen demonstrations of both hydrogen based fuel cell and IC engine prototypes, given by the companies that are pushing for hydrogen adoption. The heat alone generated in the engines would melt normal fossil fuel based equipment. In spite of the extra cost, governments are seriously considering the geopolitical implications and advantages of hydrogen. Since this is unpopular with cost conscious laymen, this is restricted news, and my source must remain confidential.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by proton

Hydrogen is being used in industrial and other large scale applications where the leakages are minimised by less or no mobility. Personal vehicle applications with high mobility and vibration means increases in leakages through loosening, along with more heat, compression and embrittlement, making more costly high quality leak proofing even more expensive.

I can guarantee you that a barge, ocean going vessel, busses and trucks vibrate more than your ordinary average car. It is no problem

Originally Posted by proton

My source is on an international advisory board, and has seen demonstrations of both hydrogen based fuel cell and IC engine prototypes, given by the companies that are pushing for hydrogen adoption.

The heat alone generated in the engines would melt normal fossil fuel based equipment..

He/she might be on an advisory board but clearly demonstrates no knowledge on this very topic. Hydrogen, due to its properties, burns with less heat compared to petrol, diesel or LPG. As I mentioned here in the Netherlands we are looking at using it replace our natural gas fired home boilers/central heating. And as I mentioned just about any standard home boiler central heating apparatus can run, without modification, run on hydrogen. You don’t even need a different burner.

When it comes to engines, again a simple google search will show you plenty of hydrogen engines about in all those application I mentioned before. These are normal ICE, but of course modified/designed to run on hydrogen rather than diesel or petrol.

To date, none have melted! You might want to have a word with your source and bring him up to speed on the thousands of hydrogen engines currently in use. And I mean hydrogen engines. So engines burning hydrogen instead of petrol, diesel, or LPG.

Just a few teasers:

From Cummins, a worldwide renowned engine manufacturer:

https://www.cummins.com/news/2023/06...ic%20compounds.

You, and maybe your advisory board friend might have heard of this engine manufacturer too, Caterpillar.

https://www.cat.com/en_GB/by-industr...yAAEgLTa_D_BwE

The list goes on and on.
None of the. Report melting engine!

Jeroen

[ram1kv]

The ability to create green energy at home and charge BEV with no regulatory intervention will drive the electric vehicles' sales forward (pun intended) much quicker than the Hydrogen competitors. Given the reduction in price of BEVs, one thing that the manufactures must do to improve sales IMHO, is to introduce buy back schemes, where one can get a discounted, brand new BEV after exchanging your current one.

[EV Fan]

The Hydrogen lobby is deceptive enough to hide some of the crude facts about hydrogen production. Something that our members have Brilliantly unveiled.

Originally Posted by SKC-auto

After all these subsidies H2 sold at 36$/kg, Honda giving a 30,000$ fuel card to sell one H2 car.

Originally Posted by Shresth_EV

The moment this dawned on me I realised why we have EVs all the way from ₹10L to ₹10cr but very few FCEVs and almost all big cars.

Originally Posted by Omkar

Another way to produce Hydrogen is through electrolysis, which needs a high amount of electrical energy.

So adding another overseen cost – the cost of water

• Highly purified water (“UltraPure Water - UPW”), required for generating hydrogen from electrolysis.
  The first round would be the municipal treatment, the energy consumption and water losses for which, are well known.
  But for producing UPW, even further energy and water losses are applicable.
  9kWh/m3 to generate cold UPW, and 92kWh/m3 for hot UPW (SEMI guidelines/ideal scenario)
  50% water is wasted further to generate UPW for electrolyser input.
  The semiconductor industry is a good example of the huge energy and water demands of generating UPW. Their impact on the local public and ecosystem is under scrutiny in quite a lot of places.

• Low purity water or raw water for the processes.
  The "low purity water" requirements for the industrial processes are conveniently ignored as it is highly variable. These values are usually on the higher side and since these are continuous/process oriented, they are indicated in terms of m^3/hour.

The cost of obtaining - 1 kg of hydrogen from this 9 Litres of UPW, at the first stage upstream.

The hidden costs/subsidies for provision of water (the raw material for hydrogen) seemed to have always been downplayed, while calculating, cost for hydrogen. But the impact of raw materials for battery tech have to be always accounted.

While Hydrogen may be explored for high energy intensity requirements where electricity/storage tech may not seem cost effective for now. But equal investment & effort should also be made in electricity/storage tech as Hydrogen solutions are Capital intensive and one of the most inefficient.

For private transportation it seems almost unacceptable in terms of efficiency, all in the name of so called perceived convenience of "faster fill time" .

As for me, i am better off with EV's and localized charging points. I can put up with the inconvenience of longer filling time of EV (usually end up using that same time to fill up my tummy as well.)

A Few reads:
Semiconductor Fab Consumption data
Water Treatment for Hydrogen Generation by Electrolysis

[electric_eel]

Originally Posted by EV Fan

The Hydrogen lobby is deceptive enough to hide some of the crude facts about hydrogen production. Something that our members have Brilliantly unveiled.

Till you pointed it out, I had not thought of this aspect but then one can quote some thing like this https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-new...rogen-seawater. The hydrogen folks do not realise one important thing: Just because some thing is possible does not mean it is feasible (at scale).

- Is it possible to make hydrogen at home ? Yes. Can you make it to feed your car No unless you are the transport minister (actually I am curious where he gets his hydrogen from) or head of toyota.

- Is it possible to have an ICE running on hydrogen ? Yes. But the efficiencies are going to be really bad. The only purpose for an ICE using hydrogen as far as I see is to make the already bad Fuel Cell look efficient. All engines ultimately cannot out perform the Carnot engine and no amount of innovation or money is going to make hydrogen ICEs come any where close to the humble electric motor

- Is it possible to use existing pipe lines to carry hydrogen for home heating. Yes if you retrofit everything. Might as well use heat pumps.

The electric motor is efficient, rugged and low tech. The heat pump is probably slightly more complicated than an air conditioner and that is it. The grid system is complicated but I can assure you no where as complicated as the pipe dream called hydrogen pipe lines. And low tech is great tech.

[shashanka]

I still believe that EVs are more of a stop gap till a more stable, longer term solution comes up. Battery technology is still looking at Lithium as the state of the art. Unfortunately lithium availability is low and no large scale deposits have been reported yet. This makes the batteries (and thus the car itself) more expensive and puts the price of the car still beyond the reach of the mass consumer.

Hydrogen faces it's single most daunting challenge in it's non-free-availability in nature, But hopefully the ADANI wind & solar farm is set to produce 30 GW of power when production is fully underway.. It is the largest of its kind in the world (the site itself is larger than the city of Paris) and would go some way in meeting the country's hydrogen requirements.

The safety issues regarding hydrogen (storage, transportation and infrastructure needs) are there. But like all engineering issues these will hopefully be overcome sooner rather than later. We all know the fire hazard and reported incidents in Li-powered EVs. But these too are being overcome. To me, in the longer run, it will be of interest to see which breasts the tape convincingly - the hydrogen ICE powered vehicle or the Fuel Cell powered one

[SuperGirl_Dad]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Sorry, but that is just not true. Yes, hydrogen atoms are small, but we can make containers that hold them without any leakage for decades. See my earlier post, plenty of hydrogen application already at an industrial level. Very few refineries or artificial manure plants work without hydrogen these days. No leaks.

We have buses driving through towns and villages. No leaks. We have barges sailing through our canals and ocean-going vessels crossing oceans, hydrogen-powered. No leaks.

Dear Jeroen, Maybe the other member is not giving the full details - lets not dismiss their concerns. Hydrogen may not leak as such observed in any other gas cylinder, but they can diffuse into metals. This can cause embrittlement of the metals leading to sudden failures. The tanks themselves may not be fully vulnerable, but the associated metal plumbing are prone to this.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I can guarantee you that a barge, ocean going vessel, busses and trucks vibrate more than your ordinary average car. It is no problem

When it comes to engines, again a simple google search will show you plenty of hydrogen engines about in all those application I mentioned before. These are normal ICE, but of course modified/designed to run on hydrogen rather than diesel or petrol.

To date, none have melted!

Maybe melting of engines is a bit blown out of proportion here, but there is definitely a concept called high temperature hydrogen attack . It can result in catastrophic failures. These are very much active areas of research and lot more needs to be understood.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by SuperGirl_Dad

Dear Jeroen, Maybe the other member is not giving the full details - let's not dismiss their concerns. Hydrogen may not leak as such observed in any other gas cylinder, but they can diffuse into metals. This can cause embrittlement of the metals leading to sudden failures. The tanks themselves may not be fully vulnerable, but the associated metal plumbing are prone to this.

So tell me. How do all this barges, ocean going vessels, busses, trucks and some regular cars not have their plumbing suffer from leaks?

Originally Posted by SuperGirl_Dad

Maybe melting of engines is a bit blown out of proportion here, but there is definitely a concept called high temperature hydrogen attack . It can result in catastrophic failures. These are very much active areas of research and a lot more needs to be understood.

Ebrittlement and high-temperature hydrogen attack are two completely different things.

High-temperature hydrogen attacks came into play long before the industry started using Hydrogen on a large scale. It was something that became apparent when we started using super-heated steam in boiler applications. When you use pure hydrogen rather than H20, the problems are somewhat more pronounced.

It is a very well understood phenomenon, that has been addressed for decades by using various alloys. It is a non-issue.

If you make a weld, you look at the materials you need to weld and the substance inside the pipe. That determines the welding technique and the welding materials. The same is true for any component, seal or coupling.

We did away with lead in our fuels. Initially, it created quite some problems and damage to engines. New engine design and metallurgical advancement solved it. No lead in fuel is a non-issue for ICE-powered cars. We never talk about it. I am of an age when non-leaded fuel was introduced, so I remember the fuss and the problems.

In terms of its relevance for hydrogen today, embrittlement and HT hydrogen attacks are out there with the Blimps! Something that keeps popping up on the Internet but has no bearing, none whatsoever, on current hydrogen application. Designers and Engineers know how to deal with it.

Many of the initial problems with Hydrogen have been sorted for decades. You would not think so when reading this thread.

This thread demonstrates two things;

The first one I already mentioned in my initial post. You need to look beyond the current limitations of a technology. All the remarks made by our esteemed members on why Electric/battery is so much better than Hydrogen would have applied less than 20 years ago when comparing ICE to EV. So comparing the status quo of one technology to another is rarely going to give you new insights. It is the proverbial, bitching and moaning about something new. If anything it shows that battery technology has come a long way in the last 20 years. People are now defending it, rather than attacking and ridiculing it!

The other thing is the complete lack of visibility of the current state of hydrogen applications beyond the regular car industry in our forum. Including the current state of engineering of hydrogen-based propulsion systems.

Will we ever see mass hydrogen-powered cars? I don't know. My personal opinion is that for various reasons battery-powered vehicles are a limited option. It's a gap filler at best. An important gap-filler, but its not the ultimate solution for our environmental challenges.

As I have mentioned in other similar threads I don't believe the global energy transition is going to be a one-for-one transition. We are going to need a vast range of different solutions to make up for everything we do with oil today. I have also mentioned that I believe this means we (the public) are likely to have to change our thinking and behaviour considerably.

The debate about whether hydrogen or batteries are better is, I believe, the wrong debate. It is comparing two different technologies, with different development cycles and maturity in different applications. You need to start on what your propulsion requirements (or maybe mobility) requirements are and work your way down from there. Why does everybody need a car? Certainly, inside large cities, a well-developed public transport system is likely to be much more efficient in terms of cost and environmental impact.

Jeroen

[TorqueAddict007]

I own a Tata Punch EV that gives me 270 kms of range per full charge at home, given how much I pay for electricity, it's around 1 rupee per km of running. I really fail to see how Hydrogen infrastructure can ever become cheap enough to be as cheap as this. Be it FCEVs or Hydrogen ICEs, there's no way for me to refill Hydrogen at home. Look at it purely from an economic perspective, why would I, or for that matter, any other customer want to take a chance with Hydrogen and its fallacies, when we already have a viable alternative to ICEs in the form of BEVs.

What is the advantage Hydrogen offers over BEVs anyway? It's definitely not cheaper than home charging, and it will need massive, monumental economics of scale to ever be as cheap as home charging. And DC fast charging is also going to soon become faster, more reliable, and more accessible. Batteries are continuously offering more range along with lower charging times. In a place like India itself, where EV adoption is well behind the global average, small EVs like the Punch EV and Tiago EV are blowing their ICE competitors out of the water in terms of city use. What is going to happen when EVs that can offer 400 kms of range in 100-10 at highway speeds, offer much faster charging speeds and public charging infrastructure matures more. That day is maybe a decade away and it'll become a fight for survival for even ICEs, so hydrogen is not even going to be in the contest here.

Most companies, consumers and goverments are pivoting towards EVs, which will become a dominant force in the PV segment. The only place hydrogen has a shot left is CV segment, but even there, fully sustainable fuels such as ethanol or even mass produced carbon neutral synthetic fuels have a better chance of success than hydrogen does. Maybe aviation too. But the same arguments can be made against use of hydrogen in aviation as well. Green, cheap hydrogen has always been a very nice dream, but a 1000 km solid state battery that charges in 20 mins is far more likely to happen than a cheap, effective, actually feasible Hydrogen powered, mass produced car, which isn't just an advanced production grade prototype.

[wocanak]

Originally Posted by TheStoryweaver

I used to read a lot about this debate in past. I studied a few articles and there is one chart that shows the energy conversion efficiency. There is a wide gap of energy efficiency when EV’s are compared to Hydrogen and ICE.
As per my analysis, Hydrogen is best suited for heavy industries and public transport ( like buses for city travel) and not cars.

In 2023- Govt announced investments into green hydrogen for industrial purposes link -https://carboncredits.com/indian-government-announces-new-green-hydrogen-project/#:~:text=The%20mission%20was%20approved%20by,Green %20Hydrogen%20and%20its%20derivatives

This is a very interesting chart, have couple of thoughts

1. I wonder if all the factors pointed out by many members here are taken into account for the H2 efficiency, i.e. clean water input, repressurization at fueling station, etc.
2. It would be interesting to see what would be efficiency for Power-to-CNG, if that comes close to H2, then at least the existing vehicles and infrastructure in many countries will get reused.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Many of the initial problems with Hydrogen have been sorted for decades. You would not think so when reading this thread.

Okay, then what in your view is holding back Hydrogen cars today, it has been 10 years since Mirai was launched, why have they not gained much traction as compared to EVs in the last 10 years.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The first one I already mentioned in my initial post. You need to look beyond the current limitations of a technology. All the remarks made by our esteemed members on why Electric/battery is so much better than Hydrogen would have applied less than 20 years ago when comparing ICE to EV. So comparing the status quo of one technology to another is rarely going to give you new insights. It is the proverbial, bitching and moaning about something new. If anything it shows that battery technology has come a long way in the last 20 years. People are now defending it, rather than attacking and ridiculing it!

Again Hydrogen cars have had at least 10 years to improve, how much longer will they need to overcome the limitations? Also much before the Mirai, there has been efforts towards Hydrogen fuel, I remember a major push during George Bush's term ~20 years ago. It is not like Hydrogen fuel technology has not had the time or investments.

One difference in approach I see is EVs don't care which materials are used in battery or motor, so they are not fighting against fundamental physics. But for the other side Hydrogen is fixed, this makes it hard if not impossible to overcome the limitations as at times you are fighting fundamental physics (e.g. the energy efficiency)

[SuperGirl_Dad]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

So tell me. How do all this barges, ocean going vessels, busses, trucks and some regular cars not have their plumbing suffer from leaks?

Leaking and diffusion into metals are not the same. Please read my previous post for clarity. So the parts are never changed in any of the hydrogen using mode of transport? If we can compare the life of such parts then we can get an answer.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Ebrittlement and high-temperature hydrogen attack are two completely different things.

Of course they are different. Again please see my previous post for clarity.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

High-temperature hydrogen attacks came into play long before the industry started using Hydrogen on a large scale. It was something that became apparent when we started using super-heated steam in boiler applications. When you use pure hydrogen rather than H20, the problems are somewhat more pronounced.

It is a very well understood phenomenon, that has been addressed for decades by using various alloys. It is a non-issue.

In terms of its relevance for hydrogen today, embrittlement and HT hydrogen attacks are out there with the Blimps! Something that keeps popping up on the Internet but has no bearing, none whatsoever, on current hydrogen application. Designers and Engineers know how to deal with it.

Jeroen i respect you for your views but these are some definitive claims and it is not entirely correct. Sadly, it is not a well understood problem yet. For high temperature hydrogen attack engineers use so called Nelson curves. These are highly empirical in nature.

Please see the Tesoro report. The accident occured in 2010 not few decades back. Some verbatim from the attached link:

"The Nelson curves are predicated on past equipment failure incidents and are plotted based on self-reported process conditions that are ill-defined and lack consistency”

“The CSB has learned of at least eight recent refinery incidents where HTHA reportedly occurred below the carbon steel Nelson curve”.

Lot of research is happening to study this phenomenon.

Even if the mode of transport (in this case cars, busses, barges etc.), may be safe to operate as is, the overall infrastructure - refineries, pipelines, storage tanks - theres a lot more understanding needed for safe operation.