The high use lines should have catenaries, so that let's say 90% of a railways tons per miles is electrified and then the low use lines of the system can use diesel. This can be reduced over time. It likely would make more sense to have locomotives which could charge batteries from the catenary sections of the mainlines, then go off onto the non-catenary sections and then return to the catenary sections. The switching/shunting locomotives tend to not be moving cars 90% of the time and require a lot of power for an initial push, so a smaller diesel engine can charge batteries most of the time and then use the diesel engine and batteries for the shove. The overall amount of combustion from idling is reduced.
The 90% is way to high and batteries are far heavier than a fuel cell so you are carrying more dead weight for a lot of the journey killing the efficiency benefits of batteries anyway
@@suryasainath708 How do you define "revolutionize rail travel"? Even if hydrogen-fuel-cell-trains would really catch on, they wouldn't change the way of rail travel substantially. No harmful emissions in operation is nice, but no "revolution of rail travel". Even if there was no alternative like "normal" electric trains with overhead wires.
@@johnarnehansen9574like Overhead lines with nuclear base-load. Experimentation, Consistent and common construction and creation will bring cheaper costs to building in bulk. But there always has to be the first to take the largest Cost and risk.
Water isn't the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel cell or any kind of more propperly named in physics textbooks thermal cell devices - heat is the other byproduct.
The really ironic thing is that those polluting steam locomotives still put out less CO2 per passenger-mile than if the same number of people drove Teslas powered from an LNG plant.
@@TheHoveHeretic ....I knew I should have bookmarked that site. I saw it ages ago. It was talking about Union Pacific's 844 hauling a fully-loaded excursion train. Unfortunately, I'm very busy for the next week/10 days. After that, I'll have the time to sit down and do some research (and re-searching). Give me a little while. You can do the research too, you know.
There is a power line right above the train track in every place that actually cares about trains. Why carry around your feul as dead weight and waste energy to produce and transport hydrogen when this is na solved problem for about 100 years.
because electrifying railways is expensive, and for some reason people prefer to have a cheaper installation even if it means that the operation cost will be higher (electrifying a railway is very expensive but that usually makes it less expensive to operate on the long run, though people usually do not see the second part)
@@BJHolloway1 The advantage of the battery trains is that they don't need any additional diesel or hydrogen infrastructure as they always have overhead lines at one or both end stations and travel parts of their routes under OHL.
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is merely a chemical battery, and a rather inefficient one. Hydrogen powered trains, planes, and cars is a Green dream that will *never* become a reality. It would be grossly irresponsible to expose the general public to the dangers of hydrogen (think Hindenburg). If you don't understand why, you need to study chemistry, thermodynamics, and engineering.
True, Hydrogen energy density makes it terrible fuel, for distributive methods like say car But a train with it's fixed infrastructure may actually make sense. Compared to cars, Train energy use isnt' all that bad. Rail accounts 8% worlds motorized passenger travel, but uses 2% of worlds transportation energy. Using widely plentiful electricity to make hydrogen. Advantage of the hydrogen train. - Carries it's own fuel supply, thus is not dependent overhead wire/third rail. Thus maintaining hundreds/thousands miles added infrastructure besides tracks eliminated. Hydrogen only needs to be stored in tanks and depending range, train can top off. - Hydrogen is flammable, but it is non-toxic So if it ignites or breaches your only byproduct is water. - Hydrogen storage solutions and fuel cell take place atop the train. So should it's fuel contents explode or rupture they occur away from the passengers.
that's why experiments in germany with hydrogen-trains are getting stopped. battery powered trains (lithium titanate) are just more efficient. and the best part is, that such a train can charge on the main line that has power lines and when the train branches off on a track that is without power lines, it runs on battery. back on the main line, it can recharge.
@@BJHolloway1 It didn't help that the doping compound for the canvas covering on the _Hindenburg_ was not much different than that of solid rocket fuel. That's why when the airship exploded, the canvas covering burned off *REALLY* fast.
Green Hydrogen production is a highly inefficient way to store energy and carrying hydrogen ad a fuel adds weight to trains, not to mention the much greater complexity and cost of the trains. Grid-connected electric trains are far more efficient and flexible to utilize multiple clean energy sources. Hydrogen only makes sense for niche applications and will never succeed on a mass scale for trains. Fundamentally, the technology is inefficient.
I think hybrid hydrogen-electric trains will probably become more common sooner than people realize.. Especially in areas where infrastructure is lacking... Which is MOST of the world...
Those who have the money to invest in this promising future don’t see the real danger. Is not wars, is not us, is our planet. You don’t have sides in what’s coming if anything changes in the world. If they can’t feel the danger they surely won’t waste a penny. Is really sad.
The fundamental problem in using hydrogen for transportation, is transportation. The delivery of hydrogen to where it is needed. The reason that 98% of all hydrogen produced in the world from methane is because it is easy to transport, or produce, methane using fossil fuels. This is why the fossil fuel industry is spending billions to promote hydrogen. They already own the hydrogen production market! Currently every hydrogen delivery point for vehicles has a methane to hydrogen production facility built in. Only very small amounts of hydrogen can be stored in high pressure vessel on site and it is impossible to make them completely leak proof. The hydrogen molecule is small enough to leak through stainless steel storage tanks! This is why NASA keep filling their launch vehicles right up until immediately before they lift off. For those that dream about hydrogen powered personal vehicles, I have one word. Hindenburg.
If the motors are high speed, why did the train only average 38 mph? Look, hydrogen may play a role in the short term merely because building out catenaries and developing denser batteries will take some time. It's really inefficient compared to electricity so it's doubtful as a long term solution.
I believe Stadler is looking at building hydrogen-fueled trains for several commuter rail systems in the USA. One likely possibility: the eBART route just west of Antioch, CA, where the Stadler GTW train sets could be upgraded to hydrogen power.
I don't think hydrogen is practical for trains. Trains run on fixed paths, so just electrify everything you can (90-95%), and use battery powered locomotives on the lowest traffic lines where even hanging the wire would be too costly.
The only reason not to electrify rail is cargo transport. Massive amounts of electicity are needed to make Hydrogen. Since we have yet to even eliminate most of fossil fuel power generation then why use that green power to make Hydrogen when it can electrify a rail line
Hydrogen is only a storage mechaism. So emissions need to be considered in every step, including the making of hydrogen. There are few ways of obtaining hydrgoen without dreating undesirable emissions.
So much bullshit 🤦 Hydrogen trains will never play a big role for trains. It's just too expensive compared to battery trains. And if you have trains running every 30 minutes or more it's always worth it to use overhead catenary
They are cheaper than battery trains have far longer ranges and refuel faster making them perfect for trains unlike batteries which are heavy and have a low energy density while taking ages to recharge, all the efficiency benefits will also be lost due to the extra weight so hydrogen does have a future and it battery ones that won’t outside of light rail
@@rhysrail well look at how many hydrogen trains are failing in daily operations in Europe! Hydrogen trains are much more expensive to operate than battery trains, because producing green hydrogen takes a lot more energy than charging a baterry with the same capacity. And it's often difficult to even install a hydrogen filling station, because it's not available everywhere. Yes they have a higher range, but it's still easier to install overhead wires for a small portion of a line to recharge the batteries of BEMUs for longer routes. And no, BEMUs are not that much heavier than hydrogen trains, because it makes no sense to put so many batteries on a train to have the same range as a battery train. Afterall: If you have 2 trains per hour or more on a railway line it's always worth it to just install overhead wires, like they did for Caltrain. The operating costs are lower than with a hydrogen train
@@nicolasblume1046 hydrogen trains are more expensive due to lack of research and economies of scale, there is also the fact we are facing very high energy prices currently due to a to quick change to renewables Hydrogen filling stations can be built as would battery ones need to be You can’t recharge them for a short section, it takes roughly an hour to charge them if you base it off cars and going 80 miles per hour that means you will need 80 miles of track which is a lot of electrification to just get double the distance if your lucky, that makes it incredibly impractical and expensive and that’s without consideration the fact it puts extra strain on the wires having to draw over triple of the amount it uses and impossible for large trains, and then for freight it’d debatable whether you could even fit in enough batteries before going over the max weight and airflow requirements Are you basically saying you won’t put many batteries in it to make it lighter and cheaper but will have far less range? That means you will have 80 miles of line to recharge still (batteries take the same time to charge whether there’s 1 or 1000) but only like 40 miles of unnelectrified tracks making it basically pointless and you would be better electrifying it
@@rhysrail the main reason why producing hydrogen is far more expensive than charging a baterry is simple physics. The process of producing green hydrogen just takes far more energy. The possible anount of improvent is very limited
@@nicolasblume1046 both parts of that are wrong, the reason it’s far more expensive is because electricity is expensive otherwise it would just be a bit more and secondly it’s not even physics as we can produce it more efficiently with better technology as all it is is splitting water to put it back together, in theory it could be 100% efficient, obviously it won’t be but it can get as close to it as possible like with batteries And yes the process requires a lot of power but hydrogen also has a high energy density and it really isn’t that much at 20% which as I’ve already said would be traded off in the extra weight and even more traded off on the extra infrastructure required
Main methods are electrolysis (i.e. hydrogen separated by passing a current through water), which is clean but currently expensive, or by the same polluting methods used to refine oil ('brown' hydrogen, though the fossil fuel industry prefers 'blue' ... for some odd reason).
Should we focus our resources towards generating electricity, electric train work, very efficient and Hydrolysis is energy consuming process, gas reforming processes to generate hydrogen are not very efficient and defeat the purposes of pushing the decarbonization agenda.
So to sum up, it ain't viable, it's more dangerous and most likely will have higher pollution index in the long run and probability be unreliable. Hey not to worry, I'm sure a few millionaires will get richer 😑
The cleanest energy available is from the eather, tesla proved that and an african inventor has produced a car, speedboat,and a helicopter too name a few that runs off static electricity
hydrogen fuel cell by standler . Colorado usa 1741 miles in 46 hours blue hydrogen fuel and green hydrogen fuel powered. Electric current passing through Water electrolysis in us Germany uk developing hydrogen fuel train
This kind of system would only help to replace equipment for maintenance shunting and allowing electric locomotives to go on small spur track.
I agree
Yes and that is many places
The high use lines should have catenaries, so that let's say 90% of a railways tons per miles is electrified and then the low use lines of the system can use diesel. This can be reduced over time. It likely would make more sense to have locomotives which could charge batteries from the catenary sections of the mainlines, then go off onto the non-catenary sections and then return to the catenary sections.
The switching/shunting locomotives tend to not be moving cars 90% of the time and require a lot of power for an initial push, so a smaller diesel engine can charge batteries most of the time and then use the diesel engine and batteries for the shove. The overall amount of combustion from idling is reduced.
The 90% is way to high and batteries are far heavier than a fuel cell so you are carrying more dead weight for a lot of the journey killing the efficiency benefits of batteries anyway
"Can Hydrogen-Powered Trains Revolutionize Rail Travel?"
No.
Yes 😂, let's meet after 20yrs.
@@suryasainath708 How do you define "revolutionize rail travel"?
Even if hydrogen-fuel-cell-trains would really catch on, they wouldn't change the way of rail travel substantially. No harmful emissions in operation is nice, but no "revolution of rail travel".
Even if there was no alternative like "normal" electric trains with overhead wires.
Green Hydrogen transport is the epitome of burning cash while wasting more than half the available energy
There's always the possiblity of Nuclear power plants for electrification of railroads?..
@@johnarnehansen9574like Overhead lines with nuclear base-load. Experimentation, Consistent and common construction and creation will bring cheaper costs to building in bulk. But there always has to be the first to take the largest Cost and risk.
Water isn't the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel cell or any kind of more propperly named in physics textbooks thermal cell devices - heat is the other byproduct.
The really ironic thing is that those polluting steam locomotives still put out less CO2 per passenger-mile than if the same number of people drove Teslas powered from an LNG plant.
Are you able to provide anything by way of evidence to back that up?
@@TheHoveHeretic ....I knew I should have bookmarked that site.
I saw it ages ago. It was talking about Union Pacific's 844 hauling a fully-loaded excursion train. Unfortunately, I'm very busy for the next week/10 days. After that, I'll have the time to sit down and do some research (and re-searching). Give me a little while. You can do the research too, you know.
@@TheHoveHeretic There is this thing called the internet , it can help you look up what you require .
You cannot compare car and train. Trains are always cheaper. MPG/person due to larger capacity. Hydrogen technology is currently work,in progress
There is a power line right above the train track in every place that actually cares about trains. Why carry around your feul as dead weight and waste energy to produce and transport hydrogen when this is na solved problem for about 100 years.
because electrifying railways is expensive, and for some reason people prefer to have a cheaper installation even if it means that the operation cost will be higher
(electrifying a railway is very expensive but that usually makes it less expensive to operate on the long run, though people usually do not see the second part)
@@junovzlaThe weight issue can be further address through the use of lighter weight construction materials. Like carbon fiber.
@@onlinesavant what weight do you mean?
@@onlinesavantnever knew they used carbon fiber as a fuel source 😂
@@junovzlaalso it’s not always cheapest long term if there arnt enough trains using the route such as branch lines and most freight lines
Sadly, fuel cells have an efficiency of
Please recall that not everywhere is blessed with huge, soggy mountains.
@@TheHoveHeretic Germany does it with wind and photovoltaic. Would also work in Britain and Ireland
DB tested these units in our region. They worked well but DB ended up buying diesel Hybrid units in the last couple of years.
@@BJHolloway1 The advantage of the battery trains is that they don't need any additional diesel or hydrogen infrastructure as they always have overhead lines at one or both end stations and travel parts of their routes under OHL.
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is merely a chemical battery, and a rather inefficient one.
Hydrogen powered trains, planes, and cars is a Green dream that will *never* become a reality.
It would be grossly irresponsible to expose the general public to the dangers of hydrogen (think Hindenburg).
If you don't understand why, you need to study chemistry, thermodynamics, and engineering.
True, Hydrogen energy density makes it terrible fuel, for distributive methods like say car But a train with it's fixed infrastructure may actually make sense. Compared to cars, Train energy use isnt' all that bad. Rail accounts 8% worlds motorized passenger travel, but uses 2% of worlds transportation energy. Using widely plentiful electricity to make hydrogen. Advantage of the hydrogen train.
- Carries it's own fuel supply, thus is not dependent overhead wire/third rail. Thus maintaining hundreds/thousands miles added infrastructure besides tracks eliminated. Hydrogen only needs to be stored in tanks and depending range, train can top off.
- Hydrogen is flammable, but it is non-toxic So if it ignites or breaches your only byproduct is water.
- Hydrogen storage solutions and fuel cell take place atop the train. So should it's fuel contents explode or rupture they occur away from the passengers.
Depends entirely on the method of hydrogen separation.
that's why experiments in germany with hydrogen-trains are getting stopped. battery powered trains (lithium titanate) are just more efficient.
and the best part is, that such a train can charge on the main line that has power lines and when the train branches off on a track that is without power lines, it runs on battery. back on the main line, it can recharge.
Hydrogen was not directly responsible for the Hindenburg disaster. Pleanty of literature out there along with TV programmes.
@@BJHolloway1 It didn't help that the doping compound for the canvas covering on the _Hindenburg_ was not much different than that of solid rocket fuel. That's why when the airship exploded, the canvas covering burned off *REALLY* fast.
Green Hydrogen production is a highly inefficient way to store energy and carrying hydrogen ad a fuel adds weight to trains, not to mention the much greater complexity and cost of the trains. Grid-connected electric trains are far more efficient and flexible to utilize multiple clean energy sources. Hydrogen only makes sense for niche applications and will never succeed on a mass scale for trains. Fundamentally, the technology is inefficient.
I think hybrid hydrogen-electric trains will probably become more common sooner than people realize.. Especially in areas where infrastructure is lacking... Which is MOST of the world...
9.3 kilograms (kg) of CO2 produced per kg of hydrogen production. One kilogram of hydrogen is the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline
That’s horrendous
Cool video. Also, you should check White Hydrogen :) Apparently, we have some where I live, in France
Those who have the money to invest in this promising future don’t see the real danger. Is not wars, is not us, is our planet. You don’t have sides in what’s coming if anything changes in the world. If they can’t feel the danger they surely won’t waste a penny. Is really sad.
The fundamental problem in using hydrogen for transportation, is transportation. The delivery of hydrogen to where it is needed.
The reason that 98% of all hydrogen produced in the world from methane is because it is easy to transport, or produce, methane using fossil fuels. This is why the fossil fuel industry is spending billions to promote hydrogen. They already own the hydrogen production market!
Currently every hydrogen delivery point for vehicles has a methane to hydrogen production facility built in. Only very small amounts of hydrogen can be stored in high pressure vessel on site and it is impossible to make them completely leak proof. The hydrogen molecule is small enough to leak through stainless steel storage tanks! This is why NASA keep filling their launch vehicles right up until immediately before they lift off.
For those that dream about hydrogen powered personal vehicles, I have one word. Hindenburg.
If the motors are high speed, why did the train only average 38 mph?
Look, hydrogen may play a role in the short term merely because building out catenaries and developing denser batteries will take some time. It's really inefficient compared to electricity so it's doubtful as a long term solution.
A bold statement. Perhaps you'd care to Google "Dionysius Lardner".
Stops
High speed is 250 km/h. If you have so many stops, it averages under 60, there's no point.
I believe Stadler is looking at building hydrogen-fueled trains for several commuter rail systems in the USA. One likely possibility: the eBART route just west of Antioch, CA, where the Stadler GTW train sets could be upgraded to hydrogen power.
Why doesn't your presentation discuss the newest form of nuclear energy that can run electrolysis at a competitive cost?
I don't think hydrogen is practical for trains. Trains run on fixed paths, so just electrify everything you can (90-95%), and use battery powered locomotives on the lowest traffic lines where even hanging the wire would be too costly.
For metros and intercity yes maybe maglev is better for intercity
1KG of Hydrogen costs $7.46 🤨
The only reason not to electrify rail is cargo transport. Massive amounts of electicity are needed to make Hydrogen. Since we have yet to even eliminate most of fossil fuel power generation then why use that green power to make Hydrogen when it can electrify a rail line
Why was the Hydrogen-Powered train that runs east of Quebec City not mentioned?
Hydrogen is only a storage mechaism. So emissions need to be considered in every step, including the making of hydrogen.
There are few ways of obtaining hydrgoen without dreating undesirable emissions.
So much bullshit 🤦
Hydrogen trains will never play a big role for trains.
It's just too expensive compared to battery trains.
And if you have trains running every 30 minutes or more it's always worth it to use overhead catenary
They are cheaper than battery trains have far longer ranges and refuel faster making them perfect for trains unlike batteries which are heavy and have a low energy density while taking ages to recharge, all the efficiency benefits will also be lost due to the extra weight so hydrogen does have a future and it battery ones that won’t outside of light rail
@@rhysrail well look at how many hydrogen trains are failing in daily operations in Europe!
Hydrogen trains are much more expensive to operate than battery trains, because producing green hydrogen takes a lot more energy than charging a baterry with the same capacity.
And it's often difficult to even install a hydrogen filling station, because it's not available everywhere.
Yes they have a higher range, but it's still easier to install overhead wires for a small portion of a line to recharge the batteries of BEMUs for longer routes.
And no, BEMUs are not that much heavier than hydrogen trains, because it makes no sense to put so many batteries on a train to have the same range as a battery train.
Afterall: If you have 2 trains per hour or more on a railway line it's always worth it to just install overhead wires, like they did for Caltrain.
The operating costs are lower than with a hydrogen train
@@nicolasblume1046 hydrogen trains are more expensive due to lack of research and economies of scale, there is also the fact we are facing very high energy prices currently due to a to quick change to renewables
Hydrogen filling stations can be built as would battery ones need to be
You can’t recharge them for a short section, it takes roughly an hour to charge them if you base it off cars and going 80 miles per hour that means you will need 80 miles of track which is a lot of electrification to just get double the distance if your lucky, that makes it incredibly impractical and expensive and that’s without consideration the fact it puts extra strain on the wires having to draw over triple of the amount it uses and impossible for large trains, and then for freight it’d debatable whether you could even fit in enough batteries before going over the max weight and airflow requirements
Are you basically saying you won’t put many batteries in it to make it lighter and cheaper but will have far less range? That means you will have 80 miles of line to recharge still (batteries take the same time to charge whether there’s 1 or 1000) but only like 40 miles of unnelectrified tracks making it basically pointless and you would be better electrifying it
@@rhysrail the main reason why producing hydrogen is far more expensive than charging a baterry is simple physics.
The process of producing green hydrogen just takes far more energy.
The possible anount of improvent is very limited
@@nicolasblume1046 both parts of that are wrong, the reason it’s far more expensive is because electricity is expensive otherwise it would just be a bit more and secondly it’s not even physics as we can produce it more efficiently with better technology as all it is is splitting water to put it back together, in theory it could be 100% efficient, obviously it won’t be but it can get as close to it as possible like with batteries
And yes the process requires a lot of power but hydrogen also has a high energy density and it really isn’t that much at 20% which as I’ve already said would be traded off in the extra weight and even more traded off on the extra infrastructure required
Thanks!
How do you make the hydrogen.
Main methods are electrolysis (i.e. hydrogen separated by passing a current through water), which is clean but currently expensive, or by the same polluting methods used to refine oil ('brown' hydrogen, though the fossil fuel industry prefers 'blue' ... for some odd reason).
Should we focus our resources towards generating electricity, electric train work, very efficient and Hydrolysis is energy consuming process, gas reforming processes to generate hydrogen are not very efficient and defeat the purposes of pushing the decarbonization agenda.
How much CO2 produces the holy smoke you are spending in this video?
The stupidest idea that was ever brought about
Stop saying “advancements”. You sound ignorant. The word is “advances”.
So to sum up, it ain't viable, it's more dangerous and most likely will have higher pollution index in the long run and probability be unreliable. Hey not to worry, I'm sure a few millionaires will get richer 😑
Sounds like an Ad for Klaus Schwab! lol
Batteries are absolutely filthy worse than burning coal.
They aren't worse for the atmosphere and than burning coal, but they are worse for the land that they are sourced from and dumped into.
Alternative fuels like Hydrogen and Biofuel are the future.
The cleanest energy available is from the eather, tesla proved that and an african inventor has produced a car, speedboat,and a helicopter too name a few that runs off static electricity
bs
hydrogen fuel cell by standler . Colorado usa 1741 miles in 46 hours blue hydrogen fuel and green hydrogen fuel powered. Electric current passing through Water electrolysis in us Germany uk developing hydrogen fuel train