hydrogen boat with UK fuel cell completes testing

[nealeST]

9 minutes ago, agg221 said:

What you really need is a converted TCO tar boat with hydrogen in the tanks.

Would that be one of these? 

[agg221]

1 minute ago, nealeST said:

Would that be one of these? 

 

Yes, although that one was originally horse-drawn so if you revert it to original propulsion you need a rather different form of fuel! Spey is a good one to look up for an example.

6 hours ago, Heartland said:

At the heart of this discussion is the viability of Hydrogen as a means to reduce the carbon contribution to transport. Birmingham University was quite active in developing the technology and I recall a trade show at the NEC when the fuel cell was being developed and also the lack of noise when a vehicle using a fuel cell was brought into a hall.

 

It would seem that the fuel cell technology is still developing and the boat in Yorkshire is a representation of the advances. But in the search for a carbon neutral transport network the advances still have limitations. The increased use of batteries of the Lithium-ion type has the unfortunate incidence of combustion associated with it as the recent fire on a bus in London demonstrated. There are now experiments with a battery using Sodium instead of Lithium  which are being trialled.

 

So there is still the reliance on the fossil fuels that have been the means of supplying petrol and diesel even though there have been pledges for eradication in the future.

 

As to the carbonization process that made town gas, that was done in retorts and may be there might be a modern innovation where hydrogen can be extracted from the products of carbonization, as coal is still available, and done in such a way that all useful by-products can be separated and used accordingly. 

 

Transporting hydrogen gas can be an issue, as noted, and it is rate limiting step in the wider use of hydrogen, so are there other means of propulsion that can be harnessed in the future?  

Kevin Kendall at Birmingham ran a very active group on hydrogen transport. Rex Harris was working on hydrogen storage at the same time, although the route he went down was not very scalable. Kevin has retired and Rex has died, so whilst the publications stand, most of the know-how has been lost.

 

Fuel cells have been under development for well over a century. Early in my career I clearing out a lab before a move and found a poster from 1953 showing a fuel cell powered tractor. One of my sardonic colleagues said 'Fuel cells, the power of the future. Always have been, always will be' but they kept him gainfully employed until he retired.

 

One option under serious consideration is liquid ammonia as a source of hydrogen for use on ships. It has the advantage of being relatively easy to transport (no more difficult than LNG) but it does have a limitation in that it produces NOx emissions in use. There is a piece of political signposting to watch - what does 'net zero' get suffixed with (because at the moment the answer is nothing). If it becomes 'net zero emissions' which is the ultimate aspiration then that is a very hard target but there is an intermediate of 'net zero carbon' which is a much less aggressive target. This allows NOx emissions, which allows the use of liquid ammonia and also hydrogen combustion which is far less expensive to implement.

 

None of the above addresses the question of where the hydrogen comes from, but there are several answers to that, some more palatable than others; some short-term, some medium, some long to the point of being nothing more than aspirations at this point.

 

 

Alec

 

[TheBiscuits]

22 minutes ago, agg221 said:

None of the above addresses the question of where the hydrogen comes from, but there are several answers to that, some more palatable than others; some short-term, some medium, some long to the point of being nothing more than aspirations at this point.

 

 

You do rather seem to be avoiding @IanD's main point of concern.

 

It's all technically feasible, but it uses between 2 and 4 times the energy input compared to the useful energy output.

 

Does it make more sense to charge the batteries 4 times using the same input power or to fill the hydrogen fuel cell once?

 

The only sensible use of Hydrogen as a fuel is to convert it to Helium, but that's called fusion ... and has been thirty years in the future for the last 80 years or so!

 

Personally I don't believe we'll get there unless we figure out how to control gravity, so our nearest useful fusion reactor is about 92 million miles thataway! ☀️

 

 

[Captain Pegg]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo47 said:

My understanding is also that it is misleading to say that steel can be made in an arc furnace. All the arc furnace can do is melt existing steel scrap and put it into a more suitable form for re-use. Unless the scrap is of high quality, specifically that it does not contain non-ferrous metals, it will be more prone to rusting than steel made from iron ore, as the non-ferrous metal content will be liable to form centres for electrolytic corrosion. The use of recycled steel was I think the cause for the poor body life of certain japanese cars in the 1960's, as well as the Vauxhall Velox's reputation as a rust-bucket. 

 

There are steels and there are steels, in that the quality of the iron ore can have a significant effect on the quality if the steel. Swedish steel is generally of high quality because the ore from which it is made has beneficial properties and can be used to make steel with a consistent performance. Recycled steel which in practice will almost inevitably have been made from scrap from different sources, will be unlikely to exhibit such a consistent quality.    

 

It's different for Aluminium, where melting aluminium ore in an arc furnace is the well-established method of manufacture. However, it does require a lot of electric power, and so tends to be made where cheap hydroelectric power is available. 

 

 

Whatever the method of production and wherever it’s done the material from which steel is made is some form of contaminated iron. Be it carbon and sulphur in pig iron from a blast furnace or the rust and foreign bodies in scrap. In any case blast furnaces are charged with scrap to aid the smelting process.

 

Steel making is mostly about removing the unwanted stuff and if that can’t be done then making sure it’s encapsulated in a form where it isn’t detrimental to the performance of the product is the next best thing. That is achieved by the addition of alloying elements.

 

The idea that steel made from scrap is inferior is a myth that seems to stem from ignorance of how steel is made.

 

To the best of my knowledge the electric arc furnace process is relatively new and there are only two major producers in the UK. Not sure any 1960s Vauxhalls would have used it. 

 

 

 

[agg221]

2 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

 

You do rather seem to be avoiding @IanD's main point of concern.

 

It's all technically feasible, but it uses between 2 and 4 times the energy input compared to the useful energy output.

 

Does it make more sense to charge the batteries 4 times using the same input power or to fill the hydrogen fuel cell once?

 

The only sensible use of Hydrogen as a fuel is to convert it to Helium, but that's called fusion ... and has been thirty years in the future for the last 80 years or so!

 

Personally I don't believe we'll get there unless we figure out how to control gravity, so our nearest useful fusion reactor is about 92 million miles thataway! ☀️

 

 

You are correct, I have not addressed this. I have started by trying to address misconceptions and questions where the answer is a clear-cut fact. I do not find these posts particularly easy to write for various reasons and I also do not overly enjoy it when there is either no interest in reasoned discussion or pointless sniping from the sidelines as some posters seem to want to do. Bluntly, it's my time spent typing them and I find myself thinking I would be better off spending the time doing something more worthwhile like working on bits of my boat. However, then there is polite, reasoned engagement and I find myself pulled back in to engaging with it because that is actually an enjoyable way to spend my evening.

 

The simple answer to the energy cost question is that today, building a hydrogen powered narrowboat as a commercial proposition doesn't add up, but there are a lot of things which don't add up to start with, although they are technically feasible. But if you break down the top level challenge into individual steps, you can sometimes attack costs in one part of the chain that brings the cost down to the point where it meets a niche need. That provides a commercial return, so you move from something which is purely investment to something which can sustain an amount of commercial re-investment, and slowly you chip away at the barriers and it snowballs as each cost reduction unlocks some more niche applications until sometimes there is a breakthrough and the whole thing adds up for mass application.

 

Two specific examples, one well known, the other very niche but I know it very well from the inside. The first is solar power. Bequerel discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839 and the first patented cell design was in 1888. The first commercial cells were launched in 1955 but it was too expensive for general use so pretty much the only application was in space. They first became generally available in the 1980s but only in ultra-low power devices such as calculators and later watches because they were so expensive per W and as late as 2006 photovoltaics were regarded as too expensive for domestic installation and people installed solar thermal on their rooves instead. Then there was a step change with dedicated PV silicon foundries, cutting the cost and some significant changes in efficiency of low cost cadmium-free materials and suddenly the average boat owner can cost effectively install a few hundred watts of solar just to top up the batteries. The second is much less visible to most people as it does not have a domestic application but it relates to a particular welding technology invented in 1992 at the place where I currently work. It worked really well for aluminium, was good for copper but not cost-effective for steel because the equipment could only make a metre of weld before a very expensive component had to be changed. We worked at this around the edges through various research grants to find out why. They would generally be titled 'investigation into welding of X' and would often fail, but we would know more at the end of each grant - sometimes what not to do, sometimes which direction to go with the next project. Eventually we established what a suitable material to make the component from would be, but there was nobody who could actually make it. Roll on a decade of no activity because there was no route forward and a company built some equipment to make parts for the mining industry that happened to be in the right material and the right size. That was game-changing. We engaged with them about making the component and they agreed to have a go (around a heads of terms for a commercial licencing agreement which I was involved in thrashing out). The first ones we tested achieved over 50metres and we can now regularly do 100metres. That is game-changing for the shipbuilding industry and probably within a decade there will be a saving of years of time and tens of millions of pounds in building a large ship, which will also be more energy-efficient into the bargain.

 

I am sure some people will feel inclined to snipe at the above examples. What has that got to do with a hydrogen narrowboat? The point is, sometimes when you break the question down, you find there are good reasons why something is fundamentally not possible - it would break the laws of physics, in which case don't waste your time trying, but sometimes you find it is a matter of cost, as it is with hydrogen, and often those costs come down over time, sometimes through deliberate work on the problem, sometimes through developments in other fields which can be transferred in. It can sometimes be a chicken and egg question and public funding is part of getting over that phase, known as the 'valley of death', though often not in a single step.

 

I am happy to offer thoughts on where the gaps for hydrogen currently are, what is currently going on to address them and what that might mean if anyone is interested, but I do recognise that these would be predictions and may well not turn out that way so equally happy to go back to building my under-counter storage locker instead.

 

Alec

Edited January 15 by agg221

[john.k]

The electric arc furnace is over 100 years old .........as old as electric power generation ......interesting to note in the 60s and 70s ,car makers considered a car should not last longer than four years .......to this end ,they developed and used rapid rusting  body sheet steels .......aided in no small measure by assembly methods that turned out cars with lots of bare steel where it couldnt be seen.

[Captain Pegg]

7 hours ago, john.k said:

The electric arc furnace is over 100 years old .........as old as electric power generation ......interesting to note in the 60s and 70s ,car makers considered a car should not last longer than four years .......to this end ,they developed and used rapid rusting  body sheet steels .......aided in no small measure by assembly methods that turned out cars with lots of bare steel where it couldnt be seen.

The technology may be but I don’t think the process has been used to make steel in any large volume in the UK until relatively recently. I don’t think it’s the reason Vauxhall cars were crap. That’s got far more to do with protection, or lack thereof.

 

Anyway it’s not what this thread is about.

[IanD]

11 hours ago, agg221 said:

You are correct, I have not addressed this. I have started by trying to address misconceptions and questions where the answer is a clear-cut fact. I do not find these posts particularly easy to write for various reasons and I also do not overly enjoy it when there is either no interest in reasoned discussion or pointless sniping from the sidelines as some posters seem to want to do. Bluntly, it's my time spent typing them and I find myself thinking I would be better off spending the time doing something more worthwhile like working on bits of my boat. However, then there is polite, reasoned engagement and I find myself pulled back in to engaging with it because that is actually an enjoyable way to spend my evening.

 

The simple answer to the energy cost question is that today, building a hydrogen powered narrowboat as a commercial proposition doesn't add up, but there are a lot of things which don't add up to start with, although they are technically feasible. But if you break down the top level challenge into individual steps, you can sometimes attack costs in one part of the chain that brings the cost down to the point where it meets a niche need. That provides a commercial return, so you move from something which is purely investment to something which can sustain an amount of commercial re-investment, and slowly you chip away at the barriers and it snowballs as each cost reduction unlocks some more niche applications until sometimes there is a breakthrough and the whole thing adds up for mass application.

 

Two specific examples, one well known, the other very niche but I know it very well from the inside. The first is solar power. Bequerel discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839 and the first patented cell design was in 1888. The first commercial cells were launched in 1955 but it was too expensive for general use so pretty much the only application was in space. They first became generally available in the 1980s but only in ultra-low power devices such as calculators and later watches because they were so expensive per W and as late as 2006 photovoltaics were regarded as too expensive for domestic installation and people installed solar thermal on their rooves instead. Then there was a step change with dedicated PV silicon foundries, cutting the cost and some significant changes in efficiency of low cost cadmium-free materials and suddenly the average boat owner can cost effectively install a few hundred watts of solar just to top up the batteries. The second is much less visible to most people as it does not have a domestic application but it relates to a particular welding technology invented in 1992 at the place where I currently work. It worked really well for aluminium, was good for copper but not cost-effective for steel because the equipment could only make a metre of weld before a very expensive component had to be changed. We worked at this around the edges through various research grants to find out why. They would generally be titled 'investigation into welding of X' and would often fail, but we would know more at the end of each grant - sometimes what not to do, sometimes which direction to go with the next project. Eventually we established what a suitable material to make the component from would be, but there was nobody who could actually make it. Roll on a decade of no activity because there was no route forward and a company built some equipment to make parts for the mining industry that happened to be in the right material and the right size. That was game-changing. We engaged with them about making the component and they agreed to have a go (around a heads of terms for a commercial licencing agreement which I was involved in thrashing out). The first ones we tested achieved over 50metres and we can now regularly do 100metres. That is game-changing for the shipbuilding industry and probably within a decade there will be a saving of years of time and tens of millions of pounds in building a large ship, which will also be more energy-efficient into the bargain.

 

I am sure some people will feel inclined to snipe at the above examples. What has that got to do with a hydrogen narrowboat? The point is, sometimes when you break the question down, you find there are good reasons why something is fundamentally not possible - it would break the laws of physics, in which case don't waste your time trying, but sometimes you find it is a matter of cost, as it is with hydrogen, and often those costs come down over time, sometimes through deliberate work on the problem, sometimes through developments in other fields which can be transferred in. It can sometimes be a chicken and egg question and public funding is part of getting over that phase, known as the 'valley of death', though often not in a single step.

 

I am happy to offer thoughts on where the gaps for hydrogen currently are, what is currently going on to address them and what that might mean if anyone is interested, but I do recognise that these would be predictions and may well not turn out that way so equally happy to go back to building my under-counter storage locker instead.

 

Alec

The terrible round-trip efficiency with hydrogen *is* the laws of physics in action. The high cost is because building a system like this which deals with ultra-high-pressure flammable gas is inherently more costly than batteries and some cables, and there's no such thing as a cheap fuel cell either due to the materials and construction techniques used.

 

Every way you look -- cost of all parts of the system, feasibility, scaleability, and efficiency --- batteries win over hydrogen, because it's not really a "fuel", it's just energy storage, and it's one of the worst ways to do this because most of the energy is thrown away.

 

No amount of sexy new technology can over-ride the laws of physics, as Scotty often told Captain Kirk... 😉

Edited January 16 by IanD

[MtB]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

Every way you look -- cost of all parts of the system, feasibility, scaleability, and efficiency --- batteries win over hydrogen, because it's not really a "fuel", it's just energy storage, and it's one of the worst ways to do this because most of the energy is thrown away.

 

 

And of course, increases the amount of entropy in the universe, an irreversible process. 

 

 No doubt everyone will say that doesn't matter, but they said that about fish in the sea when I was at skool. I was taught there were so many it was an effectively inexhaustable supply of food and fishing would be the solution to all food shortages. Jeez! 

[john.k]

Toyota and the Saudis are spending billions on a 'hydrogen economy' for Japan .........Toyota is still family owned and controlled ,so dont need to worry about yankee politics or asset stripping by US trusts ..........Toyota have ammonia fuel cells in production.....and extensive research on metal hydride fuel storage for vehicles.

[Pluto]

12 minutes ago, john.k said:

Toyota and the Saudis are spending billions on a 'hydrogen economy' for Japan .........Toyota is still family owned and controlled ,so dont need to worry about yankee politics or asset stripping by US trusts ..........Toyota have ammonia fuel cells in production.....and extensive research on metal hydride fuel storage for vehicles.

The firm was originally called Toyoda and made hand looms. They sent one son to England to study textile machine making with Platt Bros of Oldham in the mid-1920s. He developed an automatic loom, and the money made from the patent income allowed them to establish a car factory.

[IanD]

25 minutes ago, john.k said:

Toyota and the Saudis are spending billions on a 'hydrogen economy' for Japan .........Toyota is still family owned and controlled ,so dont need to worry about yankee politics or asset stripping by US trusts ..........Toyota have ammonia fuel cells in production.....and extensive research on metal hydride fuel storage for vehicles.

And it's all a dead end which Toyota can't admit because of loss of face having been backing hydrogen for years... 😉

 

(for the Saudis it's all an attempt to preserve their fossil-fuel markets by claiming it can be used to make "green" fuels).

[Ronaldo47]

    I was under the impression that the proposals to use hydrogen were based on the assumption that surplus green energy that would otherwise be wasted, would be available to power the inefficient methods of hydrogen production. That is the rationale for the hydrogen-powered scottish islands ferry experiments: the island generates more green energy than it is possible to export. 

    Given that the proposed switch to heat pumps and electric cars means that the grid is going to have problems keeping up with demand, plus the proposals  for battery banks to maintain the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, which would soak up spare off-peak generating capacity, is there going to be much surplus electricity available  at a cheap enough price to make hydrogen production on a large scale viable economically? 

Edited January 16 by Ronaldo47
typos

[Mike Todd]

3 hours ago, IanD said:

The terrible round-trip efficiency with hydrogen *is* the laws of physics in action. The high cost is because building a system like this which deals with ultra-high-pressure flammable gas is inherently more costly than batteries and some cables, and there's no such thing as a cheap fuel cell either due to the materials and construction techniques used.

 

Every way you look -- cost of all parts of the system, feasibility, scaleability, and efficiency --- batteries win over hydrogen, because it's not really a "fuel", it's just energy storage, and it's one of the worst ways to do this because most of the energy is thrown away.

 

No amount of sexy new technology can over-ride the laws of physics, as Scotty often told Captain Kirk... 😉

But that is also true with fossil fuels, solar etc. We only capture a small proportion if the energy supplied but as it is 'free' we don't mind. Timescales are also important. A method that converted 99% of the input eg solar, gravity, or whatever,  would not be much help if it took a 1000 years to produce a litre of fuel.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, Mike Todd said:

But that is also true with fossil fuels, solar etc. We only capture a small proportion if the energy supplied but as it is 'free' we don't mind. Timescales are also important. A method that converted 99% of the input eg solar, gravity, or whatever,  would not be much help if it took a 1000 years to produce a litre of fuel.

Where does this "free" energy come from?

 

Renewable sources cost money to build and run, and you can look at this two ways -- if all the energy is renewable, using hydrogen means we need 3x as much renewable energy as with batteries. In reality we still have a mix of renewables and fossil fuel energy sources, all the renewable energy is used, and the rest is topped up from fossil fuel -- so that's where the extra energy wasted by using hydrogen comes from.

 

Either way an energy storage method (hydrogen) which needs 3x as much input as another one (batteries) is just plain dumb, for cases where you can use batteries like cars and narrowboats... 😞

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo47 said:

    I was under the impression that the proposals to use hydrogen were based on the assumption that surplus green energy that would otherwise be wasted, would be available to power the inefficient methods of hydrogen production. That is the rationale for the hydrogen-powered scottish islands ferry experiments: the island generates more green energy than it is possible to export. 

    Given that the proposed switch to heat pumps and electric cars means that the grid is going to have problems keeping up with demand, plus the proposals  for battery banks to maintain the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, which would soak up spare off-peak generating capacity, is there going to be much surplus electricity available  at a cheap enough price to make hydrogen production on a large scale viable economically? 

Probably not in the UK. we have a very high population to renewable resources ratio but lots or other countries are much better off with solar and wind, even some with thermal.

[IanD]

2 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

    I was under the impression that the proposals to use hydrogen were based on the assumption that surplus green energy that would otherwise be wasted, would be available to power the inefficient methods of hydrogen production. That is the rationale for the hydrogen-powered scottish islands ferry experiments: the island generates more green energy than it is possible to export. 

    Given that the proposed switch to heat pumps and electric cars means that the grid is going to have problems keeping up with demand, plus the proposals  for battery banks to maintain the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, which would soak up spare off-peak generating capacity, is there going to be much surplus electricity available  at a cheap enough price to make hydrogen production on a large scale viable economically? 

 

This is true for a few isolated small-scale renewable energy sources (so doesn't matter in the big picture...), but not for the large-scale solar/wind farms which are all connected to the grid.

 

Right now there are some occasions (e.g. high winds at night) when renewable energy has to be thrown away, and will be fewer in future because the energy storage/peak shaving problem *has* to be solved to enable the majority of grid power to come from renewables. There are plenty of proposals on how to do this, mostly much more efficient -- typically at least double -- compared to using hydrogen.

 

Last question -- no.

 

The post above noting that Saudi Arabia and Toyota are all in favour of hydrogen tells you everything you need to know about who is promoting hydrogen and why -- along with all the analyses from other car makers and even truck makers like Scania who have concluded that it simply doesn't make sense and EVs are the way forward for most applications.

Edited January 16 by IanD

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo47 said:

    I was under the impression that the proposals to use hydrogen were based on the assumption that surplus green energy that would otherwise be wasted, would be available to power the inefficient methods of hydrogen production. That is the rationale for the hydrogen-powered scottish islands ferry experiments: the island generates more green energy than it is possible to export. 

    Given that the proposed switch to heat pumps and electric cars means that the grid is going to have problems keeping up with demand, plus the proposals  for battery banks to maintain the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, which would soak up spare off-peak generating capacity, is there going to be much surplus electricity available  at a cheap enough price to make hydrogen production on a large scale viable economically? 

Probably not in the UK. we have a very high population to renewable resources ratio but lots or other countries are much better off with solar and wind, even some with thermal.

[IanD]

35 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Probably not in the UK. we have a very high population to renewable resources ratio but lots or other countries are much better off with solar and wind, even some with thermal.

There's an echo in here... 😉

[agg221]

12 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

    I was under the impression that the proposals to use hydrogen were based on the assumption that surplus green energy that would otherwise be wasted, would be available to power the inefficient methods of hydrogen production. That is the rationale for the hydrogen-powered scottish islands ferry experiments: the island generates more green energy than it is possible to export. 

    Given that the proposed switch to heat pumps and electric cars means that the grid is going to have problems keeping up with demand, plus the proposals  for battery banks to maintain the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, which would soak up spare off-peak generating capacity, is there going to be much surplus electricity available  at a cheap enough price to make hydrogen production on a large scale viable economically? 

There are certainly some places where green hydrogen from electrolysis of water looks to be a viable option. In the short term, the worked out Rough gas field is being developed as a hydrogen storage facility to use the surplus power from the North Sea offshore wind turbines. The facility can store around 54 billion cubic feet of gas which equates to around 10TWh of hydrogen. With a production efficiency of around 33%, that handles about half the 60TWh of annual production potential which is currently not generated from offshore turbines because it falls out of sync. with demand (2021 figures).

 

There are other potential sources too. So called blue hydrogen is controversial, but if energy demand/cost goes high enough then the Liverpool Bay fracking projects may get progressed (currently under exploratory development under the name HyNET). The plan would be to extract gas and convert it to hydrogen through methane steam reforming, then separate the CO2 and pump it back into the field. This is nominally 'zero emissions' as the CO2 is not released into the atmosphere.

 

The UK has invested heavily in nuclear, with Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C sequenced for construction in quick succession. Nuclear fission does not like being ramped up and down to meet demand, so again there will be surplus electricity within the daily cycle.

 

Storage of surplus electricity as electricity is nearly 3x as efficient as using it to electrolyse water to hydrogen. However, for that to be viable you need a storage medium which is scalable and lithium batteries simply aren't due to lack of cobalt. For context, annual production of cobalt is around 200,000 tons, most of which comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo which is morally difficult to say the least. New reserves have been discovered in less controversial locations which currently produce around 50,000 tons of that total. These are stated to be scalable but best estimates indicate that they could achieve around 300,000 tons annually, taking the total to 450,000 tons. The cobalt which is currently produced isn't sitting around doing nothing - it is being used, so you would reckon on an optimistic 300,000 tons annually available for battery manufacture. For context on what that would achieve, it isn't even enough to meet the 350,000 tons needed annually to switch global car production to EVs. To match the Rough field alone as electrical storage you would need 100,000 tons of cobalt to make the batteries.

 

On a different point, @MtB, something I was going to address from early on in this thread is the idea that hydrogen is difficult to contain because it is very small.

 

Surprisingly, it isn't that small. The misconception arises because hydrogen is the smallest, lightest element but it is found as a molecule H2 rather than a single atom and because of the difference in the bond structure the bond between the atoms is long compared to that between carbon and hydrogen, making the molecule larger. The kinetic diameter of a hydrogen molecule is around 290picometres (pm) whereas methane is 380pm. Water is only 265pm. What that means in practice is that keeping hydrogen from leaking out of most domestic gas plumbing is no more difficult than it is for natural gas.

 

There is a mechanism by which hydrogen can travel through metals in a way that methane can't, but it is not very quick and certainly would not create a detectable leak rate at domestic pressures.

 

Alec

 

 

Edited January 17 by agg221

[Francis Herne]

3 hours ago, agg221 said:

lithium batteries simply aren't due to lack of cobalt. For context, annual production of cobalt is around 200,000 tons, most of which comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo [...]

The overwhelming majority of batteries being produced for grid usage are now LFP chemistry with no cobalt content at all. It's a lot cheaper, and the lower energy density and C rate are unimportant for storage applications.

 

Even many electric car models are moving to LFP in standard trim, with NMC batteries an expensive option for extra range and/or performance.

 

I expect sodium-ion batteries will be popular for grid storage - viable prototypes exist so likely  in the next few years. Flow batteries would be ideal and a lot of money's being spent on R&D, but probably further off.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

4 hours ago, Francis Herne said:

The overwhelming majority of batteries being produced for grid usage are now LFP chemistry with no cobalt content at all. It's a lot cheaper, and the lower energy density and C rate are unimportant for storage applications.

 

Even many electric car models are moving to LFP in standard trim, with NMC batteries an expensive option for extra range and/or performance.

 

I expect sodium-ion batteries will be popular for grid storage - viable prototypes exist so likely  in the next few years. Flow batteries would be ideal and a lot of money's being spent on R&D, but probably further off.

Cheaper and adequate tends to beat more expensive and superior in the market nine times out of ten, with the more expensive and superior relegated to niche products. Over time the extra development effort put in to the adequate mass market technology often ends up making it technically superior to the initially and theoretically better, but more expensive option, which  is starved of research funds.

[Mike Todd]

23 hours ago, IanD said:

Where does this "free" energy come from?

 

Renewable sources cost money to build and run, and you can look at this two ways -- if all the energy is renewable, using hydrogen means we need 3x as much renewable energy as with batteries. In reality we still have a mix of renewables and fossil fuel energy sources, all the renewable energy is used, and the rest is topped up from fossil fuel -- so that's where the extra energy wasted by using hydrogen comes from.

 

Either way an energy storage method (hydrogen) which needs 3x as much input as another one (batteries) is just plain dumb, for cases where you can use batteries like cars and narrowboats... 😞

Perhaps I should have added a smiley to my post, as I was trying to stimulate a wider consideration. You are perhaps a little too close to the immediate situation to see a broader perspective. By and large, physics/chemistry does not change but the economics are continually doing so. If we actually reach 'peak oil' and the drop in supply pushes prices sky high, then the relative efficiencies can become much less relevant if they are the only serious option available. The only alternative is that a large part of the world has to be told to go back to a primitive pre-oil lifestyle and that would not be popular!

 

One of the current complications is that oil supply predictions have not ben fulfilled - as the quote from the Birmingham project shows - by now we should be running out!

 

When I described other sources as 'free' I was not especially referring to the retrieval or conversions costs but the global impact of running out - the advocates of battery solutions do seem to ignore the impact of very finite supplies of certain rare substances. Of course, solar energy (eg) is not infinite (as some assume)  but timescales are well beyond current human perceptions.

[Ronaldo47]

More than 20 years ago I went to a lecture organised by what was then the IEE, on oil well drilling. It explained how it is possible to steer the drill bit to make holes that changed direction, making it possible to drill holes that start vertical and end up with horizontal ends.  The lecturer mentioned the doomladen reports that occasionallly used to appear in the press of the "only 20 years' supply of oil left" type,  and explained that this was because they were prospecting for new sources on a rolling 20 years window basis, as there was no point in looking for more sources than that. 

[agg221]

The big challenge with battery (and any other energy) storage is energy density. Performance is measured as Wh/kg which is a direct measure for most transport applications but is also an indicator for £/Wh, although the two are not directly linked.

 

Agreed that LFP is now developing fast (partly due to certain patents ending) but at the moment it only achieves half the Wh/kg. In a car that roughly equates to half the range, which fits with the Chinese model of car ownership for local travel but less well in the West where longer ranges are expected and range anxiety is a real problem. When you are less driven (if you will excuse the pun) by range and more by price then it comes down to whether using twice as many batteries is cost-effective.

 

You hit a different problem when you go the opposite way and increase energy density, which is BoP and battery management systems . When a cell fails in a lead acid battery it can get hot and release hydrogen but there is very rarely severe damage beyond the battery itself hence relatively limited BoP and no BMS. When a lithium cell fails it can catch fire. The intensity is low enough that the design of the battery is allowed to be such that the fire can propagate but the probability is high enough that a BMS is required. If you increase the energy density further with sodium cells then I am not yet sure what level of control will be mandated. If it requires reasonable prevention of flame spread between cells then the net energy density may not increase significantly when you factor in the volume and weight of containment, and the cost will also inevitably be negatively impacted. I can’t yet estimate what the net effect will be.

 

 I should perhaps mention that I am not a fanatical zealot with regard to hydrogen, or any other technology for that matter. I have worked on parts of many different energy technologies, including batteries, and have no vested interest other than a potential consumer wanting a cost-effective source of energy for personal applications. I just prefer to work from facts rather than personal prejudices.

 

Alec