Die Grundlagenwissenschaft dahinter Wasserstoffbrennstoffzellfahrzeuge (HVCs):
Wasserstoff -FCVs arbeiten, indem Wasserstoffgas in Elektrizität umgewandelt wird, wodurch nur Wasserdampf als Nebenprodukt emittiert wird.
Mein Verständnis dieses Prozesses ist:
- Wasser wird unter Verwendung von Elektrizität in Wasserstoff und Sauerstoff aufgeteilt. Wenn dieser Strom aus erneuerbarer Energie bezogen wird, wird der produzierte Wasserstoff bezeichnet "grüner Wasserstoff."
- Das Wasserstoffgas wird im Fahrzeug gespeichert und in eine Brennstoffzelle eingespeist, die mit Sauerstoff aus der Luft reagiert, um Strom zu erzeugen, um den Motor des Fahrzeugs zu lohnen.
- Dieser Prozess gibt nur Wasserdampf aus, was ihn zu einer umweltfreundlichen Alternative zum Transport fossiler Brennstoffe macht.
Sowohl die Deutschlands Rwe als auch die Totalerergies Frankreichs haben sich verpflichtet, ungefähr 30.000 Tonnen (33069,339 Tonnen für US -Amerikaner) grünem Wasserstoff zu liefern. Reuters Green Wasserstoffversorgung Deal
Es scheint viel Interesse und Potenzial für die Verwendung von Wasserstoff als saubere, erneuerbare Energien zu geben. Es gibt auch einige Herausforderungen. Einige dieser Herausforderungen umfassen, dass die Produktion von grünem Wasserstoff derzeit teurer ist als herkömmliche Methoden und die Tatsache, dass die Elektrolyse und die anschließende Energieumwandlung in Brennstoffzellen zu Energieverlusten führen.
Einige Fragen, die ich dazu habe, sind:
- Was sind in naher Zukunft die vielversprechendsten Anwendungen für Wasserstoffenergie?
- Welche Rolle sollte (oder sollten) Regierungen bei der Erleichterung des Übergangs zu einer Wasserstoffwirtschaft spielen und wo sollte Investitionen angewiesen werden, um die Auswirkungen zu maximieren?
- Was würden einige Argumente gegen Wasserstoffbrückenkraft sein?
Could Hydrogen Be the Future of Clean Energy?
byu/Upstairs-Budget-8730 inFuturology
26 Kommentare
Short term: No.
Long term: Maybe, but probably not.
hydrogen is extremely hard to store is like the biggest argument against it
no. ev’s are far more efficient and you don’t carry a bomb around with you.
problem is, market is going to choose the path of least resistance and for hydrogen the easiest and cheap way to mass produce hydrogen is [from Natural Gas](https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming) instead of electrolysis… which completely defeats the „green“ part of this whole equation.
personally i think hydrogen is going to be a big part of the solution for electrifying planes and cargo ships but not so much passenger vehicles
Fuel cell keeps popping up but never delivers in situations like this. I remember there was a real buzz around it in the late 90s early 00s.
It has it’s uses but cars just seems unlikely.
Hydrogen does not like being only hydrogen. It really, really, REALLY wants to bond with many other elements and will do so any chance it gets. Combine that with the fact that it’s a really small atom and that make’s it very hard to contain and it also has a tendency to damage the vessels that contain it. On top of all of that, fuel cells require the hydrogen to be stored at immense pressure to work at all. Very high pressure on a system that is actively being eaten alive by the material it’s trying to contain does not make for a very robust system. This effects every part of the infrastructure that touches the hydrogen from the generation to the transport to the storage and finally the consumption. All of that combined with the massive inefficacies of turning electricity to hydrogen and then back again makes battery storage a much cheaper, safer and more viable solution over fuel cells.
I don’t think so. I think hydrogen is important to a number of industries, and there’s likely some industrial applications where it isn’t easily or feasibly replaceable, and into those areas you may see a growth of green hydrogen (but green hydrogen exists at a miniscule level in terms of commercial use.)
But as a baseline fuel to power vehicles, power generation etc–no, hydrogen just doesn’t make much sense as a major focus for that stuff.
For stuff like container ships and long-haul flights? Sure, but not soon. For personal vehicles/trains/power generation? No.
Check out „white hydrogen“. It could be a big deal.
No.
Think about it.
You could take the energy an internal combustion engine produces, and use it to store pressurised air, and propel your car with that.
Or you just use the engine’s energy directly.
You have efficiency losses at every step of conversion, so by adding the extra steps to the process, these are much less efficient than EVs.
No, not for energy.
We need hydrogen for other purpose so I would assume that the green hydrogen will be use there instead.
Hydrogen has been talked about as a potential fuel for the future since at least the 1990s, and none of the major problems with it have been adequately resolved. Until we can meet the current demand for actual electricity with clean sources, there is no point in using electricity to create hydrogen, we are better off just using the electricity for things electricity is needed for.
For land based transport, it seems like battery electric has already won the commercial market for road vehicles, and electric trains have existed for nearly 150 years.
What is left is ships and aviation. The challenge with hydrogen is that it is a real pain to store and handle. Where weight is an issue in aviation, it looks like some other kind of synthetic fuel with storage and handling characteristics closer to liquid fossil fuels will be a better overall solution: keep the heavy and expensive stuff on the ground, and make an easy to use fuel to actually take into the air.
For maritime use, hydrogen may have a use, but an alternative synthetic fuel approach may prove more viable, in the same way as for aviation.
The one potential niche for hydrogen that has potential is for grid scale energy storage: make hydrogen when there is an excess of green electricity and store it until there is a deficit of green electricity generation. There are a number of technologies besides hydrogen under investigation, but realistically until we are in a situation of having a green energy surplus and the economics of scaling them becomes established, we won’t know for sure which of the potential technologies is going to win out.
Hydrogen is not a replacement for other renewable energies but an alternative to batteries. But it is far less efficent as you lose 70% of the energy that you put in during the production process. With batteries you lose only around 30% and their efficiency is increasing.
Nevertheless there are use cases for hydrogen like aviation.
Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTbiMGl0mts&t=5058s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTbiMGl0mts&t=5058s) (The guy is a leading scientist in the field, German audio)
Hydrogen cars are way less efficient that battery EVs. And what problem do they solve that can’t be solved with battery EVs? And you need a special filling station to fill up a hydrogen car.
Hydrogen car:
1. Generate electricity
2. Use that electricity to make hydrogen
3. Transport that hydrogen to filling stations (we don’t have this infrastructure, it needs to be built)
4. Pump the hydrogen to cars
5. Cars turn the hydrogen to electricity which is then used to drive the wheels.
EV:
1. Generate electricity
2. Transmit that electricity to car chargers using existing power lines
3. Chargers pump that electricity in to the battery in the car
4. Cars turn uses the stored electricity to drive the wheels
“ There seems to be a lot of interest and potential for using hydrogen as a clean, renewable energy”
Hydrogen is not a source of clean energy. It’s a medium for storing energy.
From what I’ve glanced presently hydrogen is not likely to replace batteries, but rather it is a good candidate for some specific application where batteries are ill suited, namely aviation, heavy trucks, ships, and industrial applications that require lots of heat, such as smelting.
Short answer? No. Long answer? Nooooooooo.
FCV are just BEV with extra steps. At this point in time battery tech is so mature that hydrogen has no place in the game.
>What are the most promising applications for hydrogen energy in the near future?
Continue to be fused in the Sun and give us light.
>What role should (or shouldn’t) governments play in facilitating the transition to a hydrogen economy, and where should investment be directed to maximize impact?
Most of energy is from the Sun already, no need to intervene.
>What would some arguments against hydrogen-fueled power be?
Hydrogen will end! Heat death of the Universe is coming. Let’s save some for a ~~rainy~~ cold day.
Transporting hydrogen was the biggest issue I could find when I researched this 5 years ago. So much loss of efficiency either driving to a hydrogen station to fill up or transporting hydrogen to a hydrogen station for it to be worth it over EVs
If it’s useful as a way to store power that could be interesting, I know that there was a few people who were worried about the price of lithium going up because of scarcity, but afaik we’ve got a bunch and we haven’t even needed to start properly recycling stuff.
Potentially I can imagine it supplementing an energy grid, producing hydrogen off peak and then on peak using it to handle spikes in usage
If it can captured, transmitted, metered, sold and burned; yes.
Not for cars but probably for energy storage and transportation.
Some industrial processes crave high heat or hydrogen as a precursor. Upgraders from biomass to replace oil make sense. So I am sure hydrogen is part of the future of energy but I don’t think it will replace ev cars. Nothing right now is better than an EV car for 90% of all transportation needs.
Ice cars still dominate for reasons I will summarize broadly as political and cultural.
Hydrogen powered cars have been around for a long time. The technology has existed for decades and has worked well in operation.
This doesn’t mean it was a good choice for widespread adoption. It would require a massive change to out infrastructure to be able to store and deliver the required hydrogen to drivers. We take for granted what a massive undertaking it was to build out our system of gas stations and they would all need to be updated to use hydrogen. Electric cars on the other hand don’t have this problem They tap into the electric grid which is already built out. Everyone can charge their cars at home and setting up charging stations just requires a connection to the grid.
It’s just an easier lift to get the infrastructure in place for electric cars.
>When this electricity is sourced from renewable energy, the hydrogen produced is termed „green hydrogen.“
[Virtually all hydrogen in the world currently comes from fossil fuels](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/07/hydrogen-clean-fuel-climate-crisis-explainer). And even if we were actually using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen in any meaningful quantity, there’s just no getting around the fact that [EVs are far more efficient than hydrogen fuel cell vehicles](https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Global-LCA-passenger-cars-jul2021_0.pdf). EVs are simply more efficient and better for the environment as a result. And none of that is even getting into the fact that the hydrogen infrastructure has had a decade to get off the ground and simply failed to do so.
I work at an assembly plant for one of the „big 3“ auto makers and all of our mobile equipment is run on hydrogen. They can be used longer than battery or propane, and they only take 1 minute to refuel, and the only byproduct is water. I don’t see why it couldn’t be upscaled to automobiles, but I don’t know the economics of producing hydrogen
It’s not the most efficient fuel. Storing it has its share of issues and also affects performance.
As it is now, there’s a place for it, but it’s a limited one until any major breakthroughs happen.
Probably. The French WEST Tokamak maintained fusion for more than 22 minutes last month. I know the old joke is that fusion power is always 20 years away, but there’s lots of reasons to be optimistic at this point. It’s exciting to think that we may have cheap, clean and sustainable power millennia to come. And right here, right now… Well, in 20 years.
I see a lot of opinion based answers here. Working in the hydrogen business as an engineer I’d like to give a bit more context to what and why rather than just „nooo“.
Also I will do this in the context of green hydrogen for the purpose of energy transition.
Efficiency: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) are significantly more efficient as there are H2 losses in electrolysis, storage and in usage, e.g. internal combustion engines (ICE, similar to conventional engines) and the more efficient fuel cells (FCEV, fuel cell electeic vehicle). Other alternatives like synthetic fuels need again significantly more energy than hydrogen while biofuels from e.g. plants are not scalable for decarbonizing as they require farmland.
Charging/refueling time and range: Currently, batteries need long charging times and have limited range. This could change with battery technology in development, but that is not a given. FCEVs have fueling times and range comparable to conventional fuels.
Safety: To *all of these*, conventional fuels, batteries and hydrogen, there is risk of fire and explosion!! Conventionals have a lower risk of explosion. Batteries actually pose a significant risk because they can have a thermal runaway and they don’t need air to burn, which makes handling these risks a lot more complicated. For hydrogen, the most likely case is fire, as for explosions you need a O2 H2 mixture to be ignited. This requires accumulation of H2. However, having a leak the hydrogen is more likely to ignite itself on a sharp edge or even due to the pure pressure difference as it is usually stored at high pressures 200-900bar. A drawdown is that H2 fire is mostly invisible. And it’s different for liquid again. Personally, I feel as safe in a hydrogen car as in any.
Energy density: H2 is a lot lighter than battery storage. When Biodiesel weighs 244 kg, for the same energy you need 200 kg of bio CNG (compressed natural gas), 83 kg of H2 or !6250! kg battery. So especially when a lot of energy is needed (trucks, ships, trains, planes), batteries with the current technology are doing the job.
Available infrastructure: for passenger cars, quite readily available. For H2, in Europe it is possible to go to a lot of places but a severe challenge during trip planning. Basically no infrastructure available for trucks on both technologies.
Feasibility: As for trucks (and ships and planes) I think battery electric has even bigger challenges to overcome than hydrogen (especially energy density), and for the latter they are already huge. Both need substantial extension of the electric grid, even more so for the pure electric solution. Hydrogen’s biggest problems are that scaling effects and market activation only come with a certain amount of infrastructure available (production, logistics/distribution, demand/off-take) which requires substantial subsidies, quite a bit of the technology is already on the market but still more in a prototype state and it needs a lot and cheap energy, as it is more inefficient compared to battery electric. BEVs have their own challenges to overcome: Bad charging times especially for higher amounts of energy and bad energy density.
Looking at the grid, the biggest differentiator is that for H2, the energy production can be decoupled from the consumption. For BEV when charging, the energy had to be produced that exact same moment. This I think will be a deciding factor in the future, as this is the biggest drawback of renewable energy: The production is not predictable and energy needs to be stored. Ah yes, and money. H2 needs significant investments for a minimum infrastructure while for battery electric the general grid is in place and you can do smaller investments by extending and upgrading it.
We will see where it goes. I don’t have a preference, I just see the enormous cost everywhere. And I don’t like undifferentiated views and „nooo“-cryers. Happy to discuss.