Thread: CSIRO and Hydrogen fuel breakthrough

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

From the article:

Noticed that Mick. Also the production forecasts which must give Tesla share holders shivers

https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/new...ev-sales-surge


Given the free or green production possibilities to make Hydrogen (then stored as ammonia), Refueling taking a few minutes, economy increase and ease of building making Hydrogen rather than a battery revision/ rebuild for my D3 in 5 years a possibility Batteries are not the only option and clearly do not have some of these benefits. Several batteries types end of life issues are yet to be properly considered.

One aspect I think interesting is if fuel cells are efficient enough to be used as a large scale store of wind, solar and hydro energy/power. If so the CSIRO storage break though may also be a electricity generation break though as well. ( will hurt my investments in the other green fuel- Uranium _ my tin foil hats on again )

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Market – Forecast 2023 | MRFR

Acouple of points -

1. Despite the discussion on fuel cells, unless I am mistaken, both the demonstration vehicles have conventional ICE engines, which, not surprisingly, run better on hydrogen than on petrol. It is unclear if the ammonia to hydrogen conversion occurs in the vehicle, but unless it does, this new development will be, in my view, less than earth-shattering.

2. Today, about three quarters of all ammonia is made from hydrogen produced from natural gas. As costs stand today, electrolysis is hopelessly inefficient.

From a quick Google:
Hyundai Australia confirms 2018 on-sale date for hydrogen fuel cell cars - Car News | CarsGuide

Toyota Has Three Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars In Australia Right Now | Gizmodo Australia

I wonder how lossy these two new processes are for a fuel that is already severely inefficient to produce? Not to mention the inefficiencies of establishing an entire planet's worth of infrastructure to distribute hydrogen and of shipping/trucking the fuel around the world (as ammonia or otherwise).

I was discussing with another engineer just today the increasing need for inefficiency to keep economies functioning. Computers have replaced a great many jobs; bank tellers, checkout staff, any number of production lines and food processes. We have more people than ever and less things to do. What happens to the truck drivers and ship crews when we're no longer shipping fuel, or the mechanics when cars only need 20% of the work they used to, or petrol station owners, or anyone in the petroleum industry? That's the only reason hydrogen makes sense as a fuel; something hugely inefficient to provide jobs. An entire pointless industry. Like propping up our failing mining sector.

Thankfully BEVs will prevail.

Electricity is the highest grade of energy we've found and we're already very good at generating and distributing it extensively, efficiently and cheaply. I really can't understand any part of the push for fuel cell vehicles - besides the aforementioned job creation.

The only advantage of fuel cell vehicles (over electric) is rapid refuelling. It seems to me likely that this will gradually become less of an advantage as battery electric vehicles improve - batteries being the key factor.

perhaps I should point out that our current energy systems rely heavily on long distance transport of energy, mainly by sea - for example, Australia exports very large quantities of coal, LNG and crude oil, and imports very large quantities of refined petroleum products.

If you look at past history, jobs have disappeared throughout recorded history, yet the average working week has increased in recent years, despite slightly less than full employment. Consider, for example, the difference in crewman days per tonne of cargo shipped, say, to and from Australia, in a five thousand tonne freighter travelling at maybe 8kts a hundred years ago compared to a thirty thousand tonne container ship today travelling at 25kts or an eighty thousand tonne oil tanker travelling at round the same speed.

Or the numbers employed on running a frequent passenger rail service over much of the country compared to today's attenuated service - where are all the station staff etc, let alone train crews?

Other jobs that used not to exist have appeared, none (or very few) specifically to provide employment, and although we are mostly working longer hours than we did a few years ago, looking back over my career, our actual working hours over our career have decreased very markedly. When I was at the start of my working life, most of my contemporaries left school and started work at fifteen, maybe fifteen percent went on to finish highschool - in year eleven, not twelve. University education was attempted by no more than about 3% of Australians.

Then, when I started work, nobody got more than two weeks annual leave. Ten years later, I got three weeks. Long service leave was almost unheard of, available only to senior employees after working for governments or major companies for 15-25 years. Sick leave was generally not available to most employees. And none of the special leave opportunities such as maternity leave etc were even dreamt of.

Many occupations have mandatory periodic retraining etc. All of this adds up to absorb most of the labour savings that have come from computerisation, containers etc etc.

While existing industries tend to get propped up to 'maintain employment', it is very rare for entire industries to be introduced simply to provide employment. And over the 250 years since the start of the industrial revolution, there is little evidence to show it is needed.

Whats the cost to the environment as a total?
Cost to produce said ammonia membrane?
Like power, transport and all the environmental costs in production, transport and storage.

Using pertol as a measuring stick?

Not sure how it works exactly (it's still in development and would be patented up the wahzoo), but I'd bet it's many, times greener than petrol.
The supply chain is still there with petrol- shipping from the saudis, refining in singapore, shipping to a terminal, trucking to the fuel stations...
So probably on par with what's needed for the ammonia/hydrogen model... potentially with some savings as the ammonia production inputs of hydrogen and nitrogen are found around the world, not just in certain geographies like oil and gas.

The key key difference is the ongoing carbon pollution from carbon based fuels as opposed to the byproducts of water vapour from hydrogen based fuel.

Originally Posted by Toxic_Avenger

The key key difference is the ongoing carbon pollution from carbon based fuels as opposed to the byproducts of water vapour from hydrogen based fuel.

As JD has alluded to, Hydrogen is a hydrocarbon-based fuel - you're just ignoring the first step. Good summary here. You can of course produce Hydrogen at great expense without producing carbon dioxide, but at that stage you're far better off just using batteries. You're far better off just using batteries in all cases.

Hydrogen as a sustainable fuel is a joke, not as bad of a joke as calling uranium a green fuel, but it's up there.