Hydrogen Powered Narrowboat

[Idunhoe]

The Guardian - Monday 16 June - carries a short report about nb Ross Barlow powered by a hydrogen fuel cell - Is this the future?

[Scotty]

snip:

Canal boat charts way to greener ships

 

Meandering along the Birmingham to Worcester canal, the narrowboat Ross Barlow seems an unlikely weapon in the battle against global warming. Yet according to Rex Harris, the scientist who converted the pioneering zero-emissions canal boat, it could offer a way to green the world's shipping industry.

 

The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, is expected to call today for shipping to be included in emissions trading schemes, and to highlight cleaner options, including hydrogen. She will tell a meeting of the UN's International Maritime Organisation that more must be done to tackle emissions from shipping, and will call for improvements such as slowing down ships to maximise fuel efficiency and for more research into hydrogen fuel cells for power. Her intervention comes after the IMO said earlier this year that carbon pollution from the world's merchant fleet was almost three times greater than previously thought, and had reached 1.1bn tonnes of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas. It is predicted to rise by 30% by 2020.

 

The Ross Barlow runs entirely on hydrogen, so its only direct emission is water. The hydrogen is converted to electricity in a fuel cell, which is used to either power the boat's electric motor or charge a back-up battery. Although every leading car manufacturer has produced a hydrogen vehicle, the Ross Barlow breaks new ground in the way the hydrogen is stored. There is no high-pressure gas or liquid on board - a nagging safety doubt over most existing hydrogen vehicles. Instead, the boat holds its hydrogen in a metal powder. A plaque on the side of the boat boasts it is the first of its kind in the world.

 

Harris said: "We think the technology would work on a larger scale, and that you could think about doing something similar on cross-channel ferries and inland waterways. Road travel has got most of the attention so far, but shipping produces a lot of dirty emissions and we need to find a replacement for fossil fuels." He added that the shipping industry was uniquely positioned to exploit his canal boat's brand of clean power. The powder store - known as a metal hydride - could offer safer and cheaper use of hydrogen, but is much heavier than simply squashing lots of the gas into a bottle, as is typically done.

 

This has crippled hydride use in cars, but for ships, the extra weight could be an advantage. "Ships need ballast to keep them stable," Harris said. "We took out tonnes of concrete blocks when we converted this canal boat."

 

The Ross Barlow, named after a Birmingham University postgraduate student who worked on the project but was killed in a hang gliding accident in 2005, keeps its hydride powder in a series of metal cylinders at less than 10 bar pressure. Reducing the pressure slightly frees the hydrogen from the powder and allows the gas to be channelled to the fuel cell. When all the hydrogen is exhausted, the powder store needs to be recharged with the gas. With colleagues across the UK and in Switzerland, the Birmingham team is now focusing on building a hydrogen canal boat from scratch. The Ross Barlow is a converted British Waterways maintenance vessel. Harris says a purpose-built craft could be four to five times more efficient.

 

So could we soon be sailing across the Atlantic on a hydride-power ship? "New York's a bit of a step at the moment," he said. "I'm thinking more of Wolverhampton."

[grahoom]

http://www.hydrogen.bham.ac.uk/protium.htm

 

[Peter Reed]

Witchcraft?

[Ernie]

Mark my words – it will all end in tears !!!

 

DIESEL RULES OK

[NB Alnwick]

Mark my words – it will all end in tears !!!

 

DIESEL RULES OK

 

I bet steam will make a comeback yet . . .

[PeterF]

Mark my words – it will all end in tears !!!

 

DIESEL RULES OK

Hindenburg anyone

Edited June 16, 2008 by PeterF

[Yoda]

I've seen that dammed stupid woman who sails around the world captaining this hydrogenated vessel. Actually when they get the fuel cells working, it will be another step to using cargo boats. Perhaps it might be possible to use the wind, one day?

[Bob the welder]

I've seen that dammed stupid woman who sails around the world captaining this hydrogenated vessel. Actually when they get the fuel cells working, it will be another step to using cargo boats. Perhaps it might be possible to use the wind, one day?

hi. has anyone thought of compressed air engine ???

[Rick-n-Jo]

Various researchers seem to have been tinkering with metal hydride storage and fuel cell technology for about 30 years now, so it's obviously not so easy (or cheap).

 

This is not a new source of energy, it's a method of storing it - like a battery. Do you notice how all the upbeat reports tend to avoid the crucial question "Where do you get the hydrogen from?" Fossil fuels? Renewables?

[PeterF]

This is not a new source of energy, it's a method of storing it - like a battery. Do you notice how all the upbeat reports tend to avoid the crucial question "Where do you get the hydrogen from?" Fossil fuels? Renewables?

You have raised the key question here, current industrial scale hydrogen production plants use natural gas, LPG or light oil (naphtha) as the feed and also consume a lot of fuel. I know a fuel cell is more efficient than an IC engine but not sure it offsets the inefficiency of creating hydrogen in the first place and whilst the boat does not emit CO2, hydrogen plants are a large point source of CO2, the feed is a hydrocarbon, you only want the hydrogen, where does the carbon bit go. The only way this works is if the hydrogen is generated from renewables such as by electrolysis of water from wind power or from biomass as the feedstock.

[Chertsey]

I have to say, that article was the first time it's been explained so that I can actually understand it.

[jake_crew]

Its funny how the Hindenberg disaster remains stuck in the public conciousness. The problem with the Hindenberg wasn't the hydrogen.

 

It was the dope loaded with aluminium powder used to tighten the fabric cover. This is the same material as solid rocket fuel (eg space shuttle boosters).

 

This was set light by a spark created when the ship docked - due to poor earthing procedures (it had just flown next to a thunder cloud).

 

Once the fabric caught light, everything else ignited including the diesel engine fuel. In comparison the hydrogen burnt in a couple of seconds.

 

Most people were killed beacuse they elected to jump out from high in the air.

 

 

 

But has already been said - where does the hydrogen come from ? An oft quoted answer is electrolysis of water by nuclear generated electricity. Easy then !!!

 

 

 

I think a horse is a much more efficient bio-fuel converter.

Edited June 19, 2008 by jake_crew

[Roger Gunkel]

Its funny how the Hindenberg disaster remains stuck in the public conciousness. The problem with the Hindenberg wasn't the hydrogen.

 

It was the dope loaded with aluminium powder used to tighten the fabric cover. This is the same material as solid rocket fuel (eg space shuttle boosters).

 

This was set light by a spark created when the ship docked - due to poor earthing procedures (it had just flown next to a thunder cloud).

 

Once the fabric caught light, everything else ignited including the diesel engine fuel. In comparison the hydrogen burnt in a couple of seconds.

 

Most people were killed beacuse they elected to jump out from high in the air.

 

 

 

Sorry to follow you off topic, but you touched on a pet annoyance of mine with the Hindenberg and hydrogen.

 

As you neatly summed up - hydrogen was nothing to do with the cause, but I've long wondered about the anti hydrogen obsession caused by it.

 

I think it is perhaps due more to the horror of people dying in front of the camera, both burning to death and jumping to their deaths that fixates it in peoples minds. I watched a plane crash documentary on the Teneriffe collision wher over 500 people died in two 747s. It always seems so impersonal when there is a ball of fire and nothing much left. Airship travel was extremely safe compared with other air travel of the day, I wonder if we would be so comfortable with airliners if we witnessed hundreds of people dying engulfed in an inferno of aviation fuel, rather than whats left afterwards.

 

A modern giant airship built with the latest materials and powered by modern engines would be incredibly comfortable, spacious and safe and would use a tiny fraction of an airliner's fuel. As we all know with boats, a tiny amount of energy is used to move it in relation to its weight. An airship floating in air, bouyed by hydrogen or helium would be even easier to move ton for ton, whereas most of the enormous energy used in an aircraft is just to keep it in the air. The other great thing about the hydrogen keeping an airship aloft, is the fact that it is re-used every time it flies. No crashes from engine malfuctions, it can stop anywhere in an emergency while repairs are carried out. The huge size of the outer envelope could even be partially made of flexible solar panels perhaps allowing for electric propulsion. We could have an answer to the enormous pollution caused by air travel, not just from emissions and energy wastage but also removing noise polution and the need for huge runways etc.

 

Well thats what I think, so sorry again for going off topic.

 

Roger

[carlt]

I think the idea is great, Roger, but can only be envisaged by those of us used to "boaty time" where the world spins that little bit slower.

 

I think, before too long, everyone will be forced to live at a more leisurely pace, in order to reduce our oil addiction. Some of us will be more prepared than others, though.

[John Orentas]

"As you neatly summed up - hydrogen was nothing to do with the cause, but I've long wondered about the anti hydrogen obsession caused by it."

 

So a few million cubic metres of Hydrogen is really quite nice? I don't think so, try telling that to some of the paranoid folk on this site who tremble with fear at the very mention of the relatively benign LPG.

 

The hydrogen was the fuel that burned and melted several hundred tons of aluminium and other material in a matter of a minute or two.. If hydrogen has one saving grace it is it's rapid burning which accounted for the relatively high percentage of survivors from the Hindenburg, the violent thermal convection took all the hot gasses vertically up into the atmosphere, many of the people directly below the inferno amazingly escaped unscathed..

 

Perhaps the best lesson to be learnt is that no more large airships were ever built and the existing ones were scraped.. Non rigid airships may have some sort of future carrying specialist freight but competing with jumbo jets carrying 400+ passengers at 500 mph...... Never!

[Roger Gunkel]

Perhaps the best lesson to be learnt is that no more large airships were ever built and the existing ones were scraped.. Non rigid airships may have some sort of future carrying specialist freight but competing with jumbo jets carrying 400+ passengers at 500 mph...... Never!

 

Perhaps the best lesson to be learnt is that if you tell enough people the wrong information for long enough they will believe it.

 

Not everybody wants to travel everywhere at 500mph, unless they want to make the experience as short as possible. There is a big growth in cruise ships because the ship and the journey is all part of the experience. Judgements based on technology from 70 years ago is not the best way forward, neither is basing it on two accidents, Hindenberg and R101, both of which were nothing to do with the hydrogen and together killed less people than virtually any one of the hundreds of airliner crashes we have seen since.

 

If you are concerned about people fearing highly inflammable gases, perhaps you have sounded the death knell of the petrol powered car!

 

Airships were way ahead of the technology to make them successful, but the technology is here now. When a company like Boeing sees it eventually, we wll all see the benefits.

 

Roger

[John Orentas]

Hi Roger,

 

I somehow don't think we will see eye to eye on this one.

 

"Hindenberg and R101, both of which were nothing to do with the hydrogen and together killed less people than virtually any one of the hundreds of airliner crashes we have seen since".

 

Perhaps a better way of expressing the relative safety statistics:

 

Take all the people who ever travelled on an airship and all the people who ever travelled on an airliner.. Compare the percentages that reached their destination.

[Roger Gunkel]

Hi Roger,

 

I somehow don't think we will see eye to eye on this one.

 

"Hindenberg and R101, both of which were nothing to do with the hydrogen and together killed less people than virtually any one of the hundreds of airliner crashes we have seen since".

 

Perhaps a better way of expressing the relative safety statistics:

 

Take all the people who ever travelled on an airship and all the people who ever travelled on an airliner.. Compare the percentages that reached their destination.

 

Hi John,

 

I don't think its a question of seeing eye to eye, but rather a different but interesting viewpoint.

 

Statistics can say whatever you want them to, for instance if you compared the number of people killed in aircraft accidents up to the Hindenberg and those killed in airship accidents in relation to passengers carried you would probably find a more accurate correlation. Not having any figures, its all hypothetical, but my point is that modern aviation is generally very safe, based on modern technology and I am equally certain that modern airships would be at least as safe and quite probably more so, as they would be under less stress aerodynamically and mechanically.

Dirigible airships have been flying all over the world since WW2 in many different roles and I can find absolutely no evidence at all of anyone being killed in a crash. I also found that up until the Hindenberg, no fare paying passenger had ever been killed in an airship accident, which was certainly not the case with conventional aircraft at that time.

 

With a considerable number of airship projects under way at present, including one in the States for 186 passengers, I would be surprised if funding isn't put up over the next decade for major development previously unthought of.

 

Roger

[John Orentas]

The basic problem with the Hindenburg was that the USA would not sell Helium to Germany at that sensitive time in history, had they done so or had Helium been available from another source I am sure airships would have limped along for another couple of decades..

 

But the fact remains that building gigantic balloons and pushing them through the air at any kind of respectable speed, is and probably was then yesterdays technology.. Ever hear about the airship that took an unplanned trip to Norway?

[Roger Gunkel]

Yes John you are correct about the lack of helium for the Hindenberg and I also agree that the airship would have died in passenger form by the 50s. That I feel would have been more to do with the public interest and excitement over the new jet engines, speed and sexiness of air travel. The airship was very much associated with lumbering slowness and old technology, plus it was heavily linked to Germany. The defeat of Germany and death of the Hindenberg prior to the war, was very much a closing chapter at that time.

 

However we are in a new age, where fuel guzzling aircraft and non green technology are the new villains. Speed is not a major requirement to everyone who travels outside of business, particularly transporting large payloads, tourism, shorter distance flights etc, etc. When you add to that the ability to float in one place for long periods of time, land anywhere for humanitarian relief or point to point load distribution etc and massively unprecedented fuel economy, it all starts to look more attractive.

 

Have a look at developments already underway like the Aeroscraft ML866 and the Skycat, due to start a world tour this year.

 

I think that the Airship that blew away to Norway is a great story from the past, unlike the Jumbo that fell from the sky onto Lockerbie.

 

If you want further convincing that old past it technology can be brought up to date with new materials and a new awakening of public interest, have a look at some of the Victorian clockwork toys, then have a think about Trevor Baylis and the massive growth recently from his laughed at clockwork radio. You can't blink without someone introducing yet another clockwork torch, lantern, radio, mp3 player, mobile phone charger.They are certainly green and I would be lost without my wind up torches - I love 'em.

 

Maybe its time for us all to slow down a bit and think outside the box.

 

Roger