Green Hydrogen: The Solution for Dirty Diggers?!
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- What happens if you can't get a battery big enough or don't have access to charging infrastructure? JCB has been investigating hydrogen combustion and hydrogen fuel cell technologies for the iconic backhoe loader. The question is, is hydrogen combustion a truly sustainable and workable solution to clean up these dirty diggers? We sent Robert and Helen to find out!
Timestamps:
00:00 Any excuse to play in a digger
01:10 Hydrogen Combustion?!
05:07 We went to the factory
08:30 Refuelling?
10:44 How does it work?
13:18 How efficient is it?
16:30 Hydrogen Infrastructure
18:24 What did Robert and Helen think?
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#JCB #hydrogen #electricvehicles #EVs #cleanenergy #battery #Digger #Tractor #hydrogen #sustainability 
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Harry Metcalfe talked to JCB a few months ago and came to the conclusion that what JCB are working on could be very applicable to farmers, too, for very similar reasons to mining and construction.
Makes sense: very high power machinery with very high usage rate.
JCB make lots of farm machinery.
I agree. I think a economic apparatus for hydrogen production from local renewable power is the last piece missing from this puzzle, or is that already available?
They could make their own fuel 🤪
Tractors for farming have a lot more down time and are mostly parked by a grid connection. I would have thought that batteries are a better solution for that use case.
I didn't think I would be swayed for why they decided to use hydrogen in a combustion engine rather than a fuel cell arrangement, but after listening to the gentleman in the blue suit I can totally understand where he's coming from and appreciate his reasoning. It's not the greenest solution, but it is night and day better than diesel alternatives and I am in favor of anything that is an improvement and can be useful and practical.
Fuel cells are heavy and dust could be a problem. Batteries are a closed system; no dust can come in. Chemicals go back and forth, and current flows, but with fuel cells, air and hydrogen must enter from outside the cell (not going back and forth) and dust could enter with air.
Also, JCB dealers in places such as India appreciate having a repairable engine instead of a fuel cell.
Looks like JBC is leading the pack on HCE there has to be military and long haul application via land and sea.
Trains, ships and submarines use diesel electric hybrid configurations.
Transport trucks use diesel.
There doesn't seem to be a really good reason why these larger machines need to be BEV other than infrastructure.
We're killing the planet waiting on the ultimate technological breakthrough when a simple solution has been around for 50 years.
Sure maybe not as efficient as a fuel cell will be but we can have HCEs now vs ?????
@@Moses_VII fell cells can be maintained and repaired whether you're in India or elsewhere.
If you think catalytic converter thefts are bad, wait till you put a brick of platinum in your digger and leave it overnight on a job site .... (Fuels cells use Platinum as the catalyst)
Hydrogen is a dead end, green hydrogen can never be cheaper than batteries.
Very pleased to see that you've finally got to see what JCB are up to.
I agree, they’ve been naively averse to hydrogen in previous videos, but for heavy plant there’s a good case to be made, provided the hydrogen is green. Using excess capacity from wind turbines to electrolyse hydrogen, rather than just shutting them down, is one way.
We need an independent test on NOx pollution coming out of these.
JCB doesn't belong to Volkswagen :D
Fair. Although if they are running it so lean that the combustion temperatures are lower, as Ryan Ballard said around the 13:00 mark, that should result in low NOx.
@@bimblinghill doestn make lean combustion making it run hoter?
@@andreas4687 To a certain level of 'lean', yes. However if you lean out still further the temperature drops, which seems to be what they're saying.
@@bimblinghill makes sense. just watched that part 😅 1:100 is way leaner than any petrol or diesel. they are around 1:14 afaik.
Another great episode. Can we please see more of Helen C. testing / asking the tricky questions…..
Interesting video. Great to have Helen ready to ask the difficult questions about the science and engineering without the company just presenting marketing fluff.
Except for being slightly clueless about the location of the combustion chamber.
@@bobbabaluba I expect she was just dumbing it down for us simpletons.
She did not cover the corrosion / embrittlement risks... Hydrogen is not easy stuff to deal with
As much as the use case for Hydrogen ICE power may be valid, I think JCB primarily wants to keep making ICE engines for a good few years to come, retuning on their R&D investments, keeping factory Jobs and service revenue streams secure. It makes good business sense.
Exactly. They have a vested interest in continuing the production of a basic technology (IC Engines) where they already have a lot invested.
As musk has said a few times "People do not change their minds, they just die" (said with respect to extending the human lifespan)
@@emmajacobs5575
I think they're living in reality and not la la land with electric unicorns.
That may well be true, but in fairness JCB have invested in exploring all avenues (BEV, FCEV etc) and are proposing the technologies that they think will make most sense for each use case. They did explain why fuel cells would be problematic and batteries are simply not practical in the heavier applications. It has to be remembered that construction equipment has a very tough life, and in many cases durability is perhaps even more important than fuel cost, because downtime and delays in construction cost serious money.
@@enemyofthestatewearein7945 But battery electric vehicles have almost no moving parts, and they do not need to deal with combustion: no high heat, no high pressures, no extreme heat cycles, no soot. They require almost no maintenance, are extremely durable, and the only "downtime" is charging, which is a design and infrastructure problem and not a "downtime" problem. And charging with these hydrogen combustion vehicles is not any better with their measly 1kg per minute pressure equalization.
The explanation of why they cannot do electric was shallow and dishonest. These are people from the combustion engine department of JCB trying to keep their old jobs, and their old way of doing things.
Ever since I consulted for one of the biggest automotive suppliers, and had to deal with the people who had survived endless restructuring rounds and who also had not bothered to leave themselves, I have been a huge proponent of Universal Basic Income. All bigger organizations are full of people clinging to dead end jobs until retirement, irrespective of how unhappy they are with that job, and these people are always holding back progress, as progress threatens them and their "position". UBI would take away a large part of the impetus for this, and both innovation and efficiency would be vastly increased. The social aspect of UBI is almost a bonus, a side-effect. Or another way to put it is what Elon said.
Having watched Harry's farm on this system around 9 months ago i was wondering if you were going to discuss this. I'm glad you have and im glad youve mentioned Nox emissions as it wasnt talked about before.
Thank you
Very clever to keep the combustion temperature down to prevent NOx production.
Indeed. I'm surprised that you can do that and still get better-than-diesel efficiency, but if they really have done that then 'good job'. Does indeed seem like a system that could work well. I guess the next question is how much does it cost? I'm guessing the catch is that hydrogen cost a lot more per litre than diesel at the moment.
I like the tacit admission that at some point fuel cells are going to be robust enough that they are the answer, but the cool thing is that if & when that ever happens, all the infrastructure that supports this will still work!
If they are saying that from the head gasket down, these hydrogen engines are the same as their diesel engines, you can see a market for retrofit kits. 'Buy a new hydrogen backhoe from us, & we will sell you up to 10 conversion kits for your existing JCB equipment at cost of manufacture. Buy 2, have up to 20.
@@xxwookey The headline figure is this: while a filling station for hydrogen cars is still ~4 times more expensive per mile travelled than diesel, supply arrangements for hydrogen buses put the cost per mile about at price parity with diesel. If you've got something like a bus depot, you can negotiate a contract with a hydrogen supplier for regular deliveries, then they can invest in production and transport for the stuff. Buses (and off-highway vehicles) also normally use the lower pressure of 350bar - reducing energy loss from compression and lowering the demands on gas hardware - which helps.
As for the nitty-gritty, I think we all know that the options on the menu are 'grey' hydrogen from steam reforming methane, 'blue' hydrogen from steam reforming and carbon capture and 'green' hydrogen from electrolysis of water. Grey hydrogen dominates, but physics and economics say that there's nothing stopping green hydrogen from beating it, as long as the electrolysers are reasonably-priced and the rest of the facilities needed (pipework, compressors etc.) are reasonably-priced too. At the top level, electrolysers are still dominated by engineering costs, rather than materials costs. Batteries are the other way around, with materials dominating the cost, but increasing the volume of electrolyser production allows the engineering cost to be 'spread' between more units. Moreover, as more companies get more total units out there, further product generations of electrolysers won't need as much engineering work or up-front tooling. The cost of electrolysers *will* fall if volumes rise.
Even finer detail: the dominant hydrogen electrolyser technologies are proton exchange membrane (PEM) and alkaline electrolysers. Solid oxide systems and anion exchange membrane systems are looking promising in the lab, but aren't in serious production. PEM has higher upfront cost and higher efficiency (lower running cost) and alkaline electrolysers have a lower upfront cost but poorer efficiency (higher running cost). PEM electrolysers have been proposed for on-site production at filling stations and small site installations. Alkaline electrolysers have been proposed for centralised electrolysis facilities, potentially co-sited with onshore wind farms, solar farms and incoming high voltage feeds from offshore facilities and interconnectors. It looks like it's going to be difficult to get small-scale PEM facilities to be profitable, and the most serious projects I've been looking at are for large-scale alkaline electrolysis hubs. These would suit the proposed tanker systems for off-highway applications nicely: a handful of regional hydrogen hubs around the country, refuelling tankers for projects in the area. Initially, green hydrogen buses, trucking, chemical processes, steelmaking and off-highway sites would only be viable near hubs, but rising demand would stimulate rising supply and possibly good national coverage.
@@fat_biker I hope they will licence this tech so other diesel or aftermarket manufacturers can make their own conversion kits.
I suspect the running lean had a lot more to do with avoiding detonation than NOx. Handy side effect though.
JCB are pushing forward in some great ways - (hard) hats off to them ! Facing facts, making difficult decisions and comeing out on top. What a team. Steam exhaust and local fuel production - tick, tick - every bit as powerful as the diesel engine - tick. Minute nox levels... What's not to like??
It's funny. I work in fire rescue service in Melbourne Australia. In 2006, we were asked to look at BMW 7 series hydrogen cars from a rescue perspective in case there was an accident while they were driving here in a test capacity to try and convince our oil company loving government they should use hydrogen. BMW said they had been working on hydrogen for 30 years at that time and these cars were a well presented product. Of course our government didn't like them and they had to be shredded after use. When people say hydrogen cars either fuel cell or combustion engine I just laugh and recall that event. However with JCB doing this to heavy diggers given the remoteness of power etc. Brilliant 👏 👍 😀
Brilliant video. Thank you.
Hydrogen, whilst limited, has its use cases, and this is definitely one of them
It's one of the most used resources... Used industry everywhere.
Limited? Are you nuts? Hydrogen is the most abundant resource in the world
Thankyou enjoyed this very much.
Great episode. How about a follow up with all the solar and wind powered Hydrogen plants in the UK.
Too slow green proccess, fastest way to producing electric is build hydrogen steam turbine generator, if goverment can build canal and pump water from sea canal they can make infinity cycle of hydrogen steam turbine generator, electrolysis + steam turbine or steam engine is most powerful option.
What an interesting episode. Fantastic content, well done FC team and well don JCB!!!
Great video. We need more approach & different options also other than EV. Greatly produced also for general audience.
This is absolutely amazing. Hopefully, it is just as easy to repair in the field if something goes wrong.
I'm sure it will it's still an internal combustion engine with a few modifications to work on hydrogen, of course
I think it was the program's from Orkney (or Shetland, I can't remember) where they generated so much from their renewable sources, mostly wind, that the excess was used to split water, and the H2 stored in HP cylinders. Instead of seeing turbines turned off because there's no need for their electricity, it would make sense to use that in the same way. You can even pull the water out of the atmosphere.
This is a first step on what could become a very widespread technology,. Large freight trucks, watercraft, with VAWT's to make the "fuel", to old Diesel/Electric trains reengineerd to run on these power plants.....the potential is enormous.
How much diesel (or hydrogen) do you think it takes to get that physical, compressed, chilled hydrogen from Orkney to say a building site in Newcastle? Now, instead, build a high voltage DC interconnect from Orkney to the UK grid, and push that excess power into the grid, and, at the building site in Newcastle, have a smart charging battery station use that excess power to charge swappable batteries for the shift the next day (Volvo are making inroads here). Turning electricity you can push around wires at the speed of light into a physical product you have to carry on a truck and maintain complex storage conditions for .... I don't get it ... it just doesn't make any sense. In reality, hydrogen is not made at scale from renewables and is made from fossil fuels. 75 million tons a year. And it's a pain to handle. It's mostly used un refining and chemical industries, it makes no sense to turn a flywheel when you just use a reliable brushless electric motor.
The economics of turning excess electricity into hydrogen are already sketchy today.
LiFePO4 battery production will scale up massively in the next 1-3 years, and the cost will drop significantly in that timeframe (production cost is already well below 100usd/kWh on the cell level today). The cost to dot MW scale grid level LiFePO4 batteries around the whole of the UK should be less than 100Billion GBP, spread over 10ys, for a whole day worth of grid level storage (the .uk uses less than 1000GWh on average per day).
To put this 100B number in some context... Hinkley Point C costs 23Billion GBP. Germany decided to support hydrogen with 9B EUR over 10ys starting in 2020. Germany also just approved 100billion EUR extra in military expenditure for 2022 alone.
Also, the uk has just over 32M cars. If 30M of them have a 50kWh battery in 10 years time, you have 1.5d worth of electricity stored in them.
There will be no excess electricity that can be 4x wasted with hydrogen. And if we do have excess electricity still, we will find other, more useful, uses for it.
Love this, and also love the idea that it's feasible to manufacture hydrogeon locally rather than importing it and refining it from thousands of kms away. Is the next step, hydrgeon ICE UTEs and ICE cars?
9:10 By my calculations 1kg per minute is equivalent to charging at about two megawatts, or about 800kW effective if you assume combustion efficiency of 40%.
Good observation. I appreciate what JCB are doing for the short term. They have demonstrated that it works, is relatively easy to implement and is a lot cleaner than diesel. Good on them, start building plenty of those engines! But batteries will beat it soon enough in capacity, simplicity, maintenance and with time probably cost and even weight. Infrastructure is a thing, but this solution is quite expensive in infrastructure and by necessity electricity will be everywhere soon enough.
@@BasketKees Yeah, I think it's a medium-term solution at best but they can maybe get a decade or two of life out of it.
Yes, but you have already lost 60% in the electrolyser and transportation, so it depends on if you are measuring input energy or not. Battery swap seem more versatile to me, the swap would be faster than the H2 fill, and make the charging time less critical, stack the empties up near-site and recharge them, much less diesel spent transporting energy than will be needed to truck hydrogen around, and battery charge / discharge is 90% efficient compared to hydrogen from water at around 33% round trip. (Fuel Cell) - not sure about combustion efficiency, but I'm fairly sure it's even lower than the fuel cell.
@@brushlessmotoring I wasn't commenting on the viability of the system; it was merely an observation on the rate of transfer of useable energy vs battery charging. I tend to agree with JCB though that batteries are impractical in this use case, at least for the moment.
@@davidf2281 I agree too, I just don't see how hydrogen is more practical, and I really take issue with the unchallenged claim it's zero carbon - it isn't.
Love your work 👍
Interesting and well done, Helen is excellent with technical explanation; however JCB was not forthcoming on technical facts. Efficiency numbers, power and fuel requirements, cost and carbon footprint of fuel, and lifecycle cost of ownership.
Great video from Fully Charged again.
WoW interesting one keep up a good work JCB
Ok great but some points to consider...
1. the only reason H2 has more energy density is the compression liquidifcation process on the tanking side using energy...need to be included as x more energy on production side
2. it will still have Nox there is only 21% oxygen compared to 78% Nitrogen, the odds are not in their favor...we don't need another diesel gate....get measurements on real life use...
3. certainly cleaner than Diesel ⛽️ but compare the entire systems of electric especially localised solar to charge battery swaps please...
cheers
4. Tons of moving hot bits which need maintenance. The one advantage a fuell cell has over direct combustion is less maintenance, not-near zero maintenance like with pure batteries, but less.
Hydrogen does not liquefy at any pressure at normal temperatures. Even liquid hydrogen (which you need cryogenics for) has low energy density compared to liquid hydrocarbons, roughly a quarter that diesel. When you include the necessary pressure tanks you can halve that again.
People frequently say hydrogen has high energy density as specific energy (energy per unit weight) and energy density proper ( energy per unit volume) are often conflated in common speech. Hydrogen has high specific energy, not energy density.
Programs like Fully Charged Show should be Airing on the BBC
Still need to solve the green part of the hydrogen fuel problem but good that these exist and hopefully be ready by time it is
This sounds like a great achievement, hope to see this commercially available sooner than later!
The key point here is that JCB’s equipment tends to work in an environment where fuel is delivered to the machine so I doesn’t matter what the fuel is, the process is the same. Given that you use Hydrogen made sustainably and that they burn it at a low enough temperature to avoid creating NOX what does it matter how they turn the fuel into mechanical energy? Good on JCB. Good on Full Charged for publicising it.
Except, there is no green hydrogen at scale, there is a small amount for greenwashing purposes, but its very expensive, in reality Hydrogen is a fossil fuel with remote CO2 emissions, it looks cleaner, but the atmospheric result is the same as burning diesel onsite. Never expected Fully Charged to promote fossil fuel burning.
There is no green hydrogen available until the grid is already 💯 % green
The same is true of electrification (BEV).
Moot point.
Wow blown away by this, attempts for hydrogen combustion engines haven't been all that good till now e.g. Toyota and BMW. Good to see JCB seem to have cracked the code to getting the combustion just right. This would be ideal solution for long distance trucking, shipping, diesel rail too.
Excellent video. I was aware of JCBs work in this area for some time now :)
Well done 👍
Really impressed with this episode. I had no idea you could burn hydrogen and only emit steam. What a great combo of presenters. 👍👍👍
Surprising video and if we remember that only 5 years ago BMW was showing off H2-burning 7 Series prototypes that have now completely vanished, I am assuming JCB et el will soon enough switch to BEV. Volvo are doing it and it seems for their diggers etc charging can be supplied at remote locations in the form of large battery packs on lorries/trucks. But I remain open to this working out.
'i am assuming that JCB....will soon enough switch to BEV'
You appear to have made this assumption based on NOTHING AT ALL!
Except, perhaps, your own dogma!?
There appears to be no current KNOWN battery technology/support infrastructure/charging system/operating practices etc etc etc which will allow these machines to become EVs!!!
So, tell me - HOW......... ???
@@andymccabe6712 Battery swaps after 6 hours for a second battery that was charging for 5. Needs about 200kWh packs, can go inside the counterweight. The problem with hydrogen is it still emits CO2 when made, this doesn't solve anything that matters to Fully Charged, the only green part of that digger was the paint.
We make 75 million tons of hydrogen every year from fossil fuels, with CO2 emissions, for processes that actually use hydrogen like making ammonia and refining oil, the idea we would waste green hydrogen on something than can be done with a battery and electric motor is daft, use the green hydrogen (what little there is of it) for processes that actually need hydrogen. Running a hydraulic pump with an electric motor makes far more sense than a hydrogen combustion engine and all the complexity involved there. You would spend more diesel trucking the hydrogen in than you would have spent digging using diesel.
It is fantastic that they have made these. It will be fantastic to see things like this make it into things like planes and boats.
I remember the BMW attempts that had this High Pitch sound that was not great. So it is nice that they found a way to make it work and keep it green.
Niagara Falls is about to build a Green Hydrogen plant using Hydro electric power to produce Hydrogen.
The really beautiful part of a combo of Fuel Cell and H2ICE is it is the same fuel. Meaning you can as a company produce your hyrdogen where ever and have Fuel Cell for urban area with noise limits or for small machines. While still having the big H2ICE around for industrial scale and or long term use.
excellent, clever engineering at its best
This the right way to go with heavy machinery. BMW tried this with their cars but the car would look ugly and would be huge. The crash test would be a nightmare scenario as well. This is a good thing Fully Chaged have reported on here.
Thank you JCB and Fully Charged. We act like reducing fossil fuel usage is just some luxurious thing we are doing to improve the environment for our children. Nope! We are past peak oil and running out of fossil fuel quickly. The price of fossil fuel from this point forward will grow exponentially and cause starvation. We need to hurry up the switch over while we still have enough oil to power the switch over.
Unfortunately this is not the solution you hope it is, 75 million tons of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels every year with millions of tons of CO2 emissions as a result, these machines, in a commercial setting, will be using CO2 emitted hydrogen, no business will be buying green hydrogen (made from renewable electricity though an electrolyzer) for idealogical reasons (even if some consumers might pay 2x more at the pump to feel good).
The more I'm reading about Green H2 internal combustion technology and its potential, the more I'm convinced that this is the best alternative to fossil in practically all uses beyond the private car. You simply cannot replicate equivalent diesel fuel-carrying capacity with batteries in HGVs, buses, trains, boats, earthmovers and tractors.
Even for car-engined commercial vehicles such as taxis and delivery vans, EV power still has too many limitations compared with diesel despite some two decades of battery R&D and one false dawn after another. For urban quietness if nothing else, battery/H2 ICE hybrid can be the answer.
For JCB to have cracked the huge NOx nut is a brilliant breakthrough. UK government now must be brought on-side so that investment in Green H2 infrastructure can really take off. After some 150 years, internal combustion tech is well understood and it seem can keep getting better. Better the devil we know! What's not to like?😀
Nicely done, team. (Wicked jacket, Helen.)
As long as the source of Hydrogen is not grey H2 this makes sense - and frankly, given that Gas prices are so high now then Green hydrogen will become competitive. If we can also see the emergence of quality local hydrogen electorlyzers and storage for Farmers then this is a viable and practical emerging solution..As far as batteries go; legitimate argument there to use them but in this use case (i.e Farm/Construction Machinery) battery tech isn't quite there yet in terms of capacity per weight. So, this does look like a legitimate and valid use case for hydrogen and the build out of local infrastructure for individual farmers/county councils to power their heavy machinery "under their own steam" Hydrogen is not the answer for Cars, but it can be a solution over the next 15 years to decarbonise heavy machinery - frankly I'm glad to see this emerging. Next time you see a Diesel tractor pulling a load, think about the amount of expense and carbon occurring. That could be avoided with green hydrogen. The farmer saves money. The environment is better for it. So we absolutely need practical solutions and this fits that brief. This is a good thing to emerge..Good on JCB..I hope they have success with this
Well done JCB, thinking about the problem and coming up with great sollutions.
excellent
I can't believe they manage to pull off the ability to make that engine a little more efficient than actual diesel!
Fully Charged I am so glad you are on board with hydrogen combustion this technology really needs to be recognised as a green transport solution.
I feel we've long past hydrogen being useful in cars but this seems a reasonable idea. Especially if they can generate the hydrogen on site.
Yeee
Unfortunately JCB have signed a contract to bring their hydrogen from Australia! Yep ... beggars belief.
Hydrogen is perfect for semi trucks and heavy industry machinery like this.
@@nikumeru You can only assume hydrogen to be "perfect for semi trucks" if you never bothered to make some simple calculations regarding the logistics. H2 for any kind of ground transportation is absolutely useless and will loose the cost comparison against anything by a long shot!
Equipping a service area with DC charging facilities for trucks requires only 1/4 of the investment compared to the hydrogen nonsense. On top of that only 1/4 of the electrical energy is consumed for DC-charging vs (green!) H2-refilling. Additionally the argument of distribution of the electricity consumption throughout the day to relieve the grid does not take place either, because the electrolyser draws as much electricity the whole day as the DC charging park does in its peak hours! Against this background, every kilometre driven with hydrogen will ALWAYS cost at least 4 times as much as with battery electric vehicles.
The long version:
For trucking companies, time = money, so the truck should ideally be on the road all day and only have to charge at the legally mandated break.
So let's assume 9 hours @80km/h on average, i.e. 720km.
Mercedes quotes a consumption of just over 100kWh/100km for the eActros, but 1. 20 ton truck 2. partially loaded 3. distribution traffic (medium average speed) and 4. in optimal weather. I will assume 200kWh/100km for 40-tonne semi truck, realistic average load, motorway speed and average weather for the year.
*This means that a 40T truck must have 1440kWh of battery on board* to be able to replace current diesel trucks in all situations.
If we further assume 200Wh/kg of gravimetric energy density at pack level, then the battery *weighs 7 tonnes* according to the current state of the art. However, I am confident that the weight of a battery of this capacity can be halved by 2030. There are many approaches (e.g. solid-state, sodium-ion, battery as a structural support).
In order to charge the battery during the legally mandated 11-hour rest period, it must be charged with an average of 130kW.
Now imagine a typical service area at night with 20 to 100 parked/resting trucks. This means that a power supply of 2.5 to 13 MW must be available only for the trucks at peak hours at each individual service area. Since there will also be the need to quickly charge a truck with the upcoming 600kW charging stations, e.g. because there are two drivers on a truck, I would easily add 50% to this, i.e. around 4-20MW.
And now imagine the hydrogen nonsense:
A tanker truck carries around 400kg of hydrogen.
Let's take a hydrogen energy density of 33kWh/kg, conversion losses of 70% in the fuel cell in the truck and also the above-mentioned energy requirement per driving shift of 1440 kWh of electrical energy as a basis.
For this 1440kWh of electrical energy we need 2060kWh of hydrogen on board, which corresponds to 62kg.
And FYI: The tanks for this amount of hydrogen also weigh around 1.5 tonnes, based on a tank weight of 150kg for 6kg of hydrogen in the Mirai and Nexo.
*According to this back-of-a-napkin maths there has to be a hydrogen tank truck for every 6 refuelled fuel-cell 40-ton semi trucks!*
*Small service areas would therefore need 4 hydrogen tank trucks every evening, larger service areas need 17 of them ... EVERY EVENING!!!*
This means that the hydrogen MUST be produced locally, which is why the 50% production losses must be added (electrolysis, pumps for high-pressure storage, ...). This would mean that a service area with 100 parking spaces would consume around 412 MWh per day just for the 100 trucks refilling before resting for the night! In order to produce the hydrogen over the 24 hours, the service area must be equipped with a power supply of AT LEAST 17 MW and operate around the clock just to fuel 100 trucks! All this must be done with maintenance-intensive and error-prone hydrogen cryo-equipment worth probably €10-20 million Euros (1 million € per filling station plus the electrolyser with tanks holding least 500 kg of hydrogen to cope with the evening rush) with many single-point-of-failures! To provide hydrogen to all the trucks during the day you can double all the above ... investment AND power connection AND ongoing power and maintenance cost ...
As you see ... there is no benefit for hydrogen in semi trucks, just cost ... and lots of it!
Short- and medium-haul semi trucks will move to battery-electric, just because it will make sense financially.
Long-haul semi trucks will stay with diesel for quite a long time ... and that is okay ... the CO2 per tonne per km with a properly utilised semi truck isn't that bad and they only make up a very low single-digit percentage of the traffic related CO2 anyway. The amount of GHG emitted building the neccessary infrastructure to convert them to H2 wouldn't amortize for decades compared to running them with diesel ... at that time the right batteries are long available!
@@glockmanish Lovely calculations and all that, and might even be true ?
We'll see if you're right in the years to come.
I'm very glad she asked about NOx, because I was about to. Very cool that they thought about this and handled it very efficiently.
But no hard numbers unfortunately.
@@MrAdopado Yeah. "Eliminated as a problem" basically just means that they passed a safety threshold.
Hi Fully Charged, please also look into the Dutch company called DENS, they make hydrogen containers for buildingsites to charge all the electric equipment (including big ones) because there typically is no infrastructure for charging. It would need a refill every couple of weeks.
They don't store hydrogen as gas but as formic acid.
An interesting point indeed.
It's amusing to read the punditry ... there appears to be no acknowledgement that R&D continues apace.
JCD is but one developer, who's to say another outfit's research might not go further?
Maybe a hydrogen generator to charge battery electric plant machinery would be a better solution all round.
@@androo4519 Based on how much energy they pump into that digger, and how long it runs, a battery power'd digger would need to be permanently connected to a 50kW connection... and/or have a 1 megaWatt battery, and somehow managed to charge it in the ~2hr of downtime each machine gets (given the vid says they typically operate 20-22hr / day on big sites)
So they store hydrogen by attaching it to carbon. Where does that carbon come from? What happens to it after the hydrogen is severed from it. Whole point of all this tech is to decarbonise!
@@mentality-monster Carbon attached to oxygen is a problem (because it becomes light enough to rach upper atmosphere. Pure carbon, however, is not an issue, as it's heavier than air and thus stays at ground level.
Or so I understand it.
Love the explanation on running lean to not form NO compounds.
This just reniforces the idea that there isn't only one way to clean up transport/construction although some would have you believe because it doesn't suit their particular viewpoint.
Rather walk by a hydrogen powered construction site than a diesel one for sure!
I'm happy Robert has been giving the Hydrogen perspective a voice with this and the Fully Charged Show podcast. Just nice to see him be willing to go out and look at the use cases for Hydrogen and if they work.
As long as he doesn't ask too many questions about where the hydrogen came from.
This is super cool. It's exciting to see financial interest pushing conservation. I've never understood why industry didn't jump at the opportunity to save $ by investing in clean energy when energy is such a huge chunk of operating expenses. This tech partially converts the operating expense to a capital expense. That's huge news. Earth shaking news. Good for JCB. I hope it's not a gimmick!
It's a gimmick.
With the way the states is attacking diesel fuel, if forced to go zero emissions, hydrogen ICE is the only way I would willingly switch my fleet. Good job JCB!
Bravo JCB! This is what we need the world to start thinking about alternatives to gas and diesel powered vehicles.
Incredible Engineering!!!!!!!!!
I’m an excavator operator and these technologies can’t come fast enough
So good to see developments being made to heavy machinery.
The first question should be "What fraction of total yearly GHG comes from diggers? Is it significant?
Internal combustion engines have efficiency problems with hydrogen, but if this company figured out how to do that and because this makes it a lot more cheaper than fuel cells than that's a big win win!
This is fabulous. Rather than reinventing the entire wheel they managed to merely have to fix a flat tire. That's the difference between making a whole new system and just retooling a few parts on existing equipment and infrastructure. Since the engines have the same formfactor, they can swap out to existing equipment as retrofits is amazingly great. Some muckety-muck in some big organization or government ought to give JCB a big award, a huge pat-on-the-back and lots of free advertising for this accomplishment.
If the hydrogen production could be modular and transportable, it could show up on site of any new big construction job.
brilliant vid FCS team - thank you - as a massive hydrogen cynic even I'M won over by the use-case and their excellent engineering to solve it - very proud of JCB - well done
Compelling arguments. Now we need to see actually green hydrogen production.
Very very interesting...small step towards lorries, van's and even long range cars and not to forget cruise ships etc....
Wouldn’t battery swap stations make sense for these sorts of applications? Biggest obstacle i could see would be ingress and contaminants working their way into quick-disconnect battery coolant lines. Thoughts?
Battery swaps happen daily in warehouse machines today. I don’t buy that this isn’t viable for BEV construction gear.
@@richardfranks2831 The total kWh usage for a swap station would be staggering ... it would be charging batteries 24/7 and would need excellent grid infrastructure. In that sense no comparison to a warehouse with a few electric fork lifts. You would also be effectively multiplying the battery costs if a machine needs a couple of packs a day.
@@MrAdopado But you know that the power usage for an on-site electrolyzer to produce the hydrogen would be around 4 TIMES as much?!
From Volvos own site I can see that a typical excavator usually used in urban areas consumes between 15 and 20 Liters Diesel per hour. This translates to 150 to 200 kWh. From all the comparisons of ICE vs electric I have senn I adopted the efficiency factor of 5 ... which means that ICE engines consume aroung 5 times the kWh in fuel compared to an electric engine to do the same work. This means that it needs around 30 to 40 kW on average. For trucks there are already 400kWh battery packs in production. So the excavator could run for 10 to 13 hours straight on a single charge. So I wouldn't think that this is any problem.
Providing the excavator with 200 liters of diesel every day isn't any more of a logistical nightmare than having a charged battery available every day.
The battery module would be so huge that you could simply include the cooling loop for it in the module. That way only the electrical connection would be needed.
@@glockmanish I make 1L of diesel turned into work (so, reduced by the combustion engines 20% efficiency) as equivalent to 2kWh of electricity from a battery turned into work by a 90% efficient electric motor. So, 15L per hour of diesel is 30kW (per hour) resulting in a swappable 200kWh pack lasting a 6+ hour shift and then being swapped for an onsite or near-site re-charged replacement faster than the H2 refilling would take at 1kg/min. I think our sums are in the same ballpark, but I don't know if you are taking the engines (in)efficiency into account and only looking at the potential chemical energy of the diesel. (Same calc's for Hydrogen combustion, also terrible, fuel cells are better, but not great). Battery swap seems the only way to go to not result in CO2 emissions that cost more than the Diesel you are trying to replace. The whole endeavour seems like a foolish pursuit.
We need to more production.👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👍
This makes real sense.
That's wondeerful. Good old British innovation!
Bobby saying ‘look at the pouring on that’ is every Dad ever who has paused to cast his eye over building site.
I always used think , Why can’t we use hydrogen gas directly in combustion engine , like we use CNG vehicles in India . Glad to see this is already exist and innovative idea actually working . As long as hydrogen is green and cheap , it’s most optimal way to go green as it’s doesn’t require much change in Engine technology .
More power to this. Much more power.
Amazing. Very impressed by the relatively small changes required. I would expect that combustion of hydrogen is less efficient that a PEM cell, but look around today and you see that the most efficient solution to energy is at the confluence of cost and efficiency. By utilising existing designs and changing a fraction of the engine, the delivered cost will be low, easily offsetting 'losses' in efficiency. Consider also the ruthenium etc. metal savings as well! Plus you can deliver you product to customers quickly. I think these will become more popular that the additional cost of battery, cell and management systems, which formerly made hydrogen power more expensive. Now if they can scale up for long distance trucking, I can see the more complex designs falling by the wayside. The complex designs for trucks only make sense when hydrogen is $6-10 per kg (now); but when it falls to $2 per kg, combustion heavy trucking fleet solutions will make economic sense and will become more popular. But what about ammonia power and combustion...?
It's a good start as long as they continue with developing the fuel cells.
I'd like to see them solve the CO2 emissions from the hydrogen production. 75 million tons of hydrogen are produced every year, and 99% of it emits CO2, I can't think why you would want to make the fuel cost to building sites 10x more expensive than diesel (Green Hydrogen requires a lot of electricity to make) when you could rent them 200kWh cheaply charged swappable batteries and use onsite or near-site power to recharge them and not have to truck hydrogen from refineries on the coast where the hydrogen is actually made. Volvo has the right idea, JCB appears to be having it's Toyota moment. I have no idea why Fully Charged is covering them, clearly the green paint on the wheels has him fooled, I don't know what Helen's excuse is, because she is definitely smarter than this.
can the tech be retro fitted to existing JBC units?
I cannot believe no one is asking the question. How is the hydrogen made?! It takes an incredible amount of energy to produce hydrogen. Lots of “natural” gas is burned. It’s all fair and well hydrogen can be made on site, but tonnes of gas need to be burned in order to produce it. Will there also be a giant inefficient carbon capture machine on site?! Until we can actually make “green hydrogen” the use of blue hydrogen has been proven to have higher total emissions than just burning diesel. Robert has mentioned this more than once in his podcasts... what on earth is going on?
Yup they will just start using blue hydrogen, look how clean we are blah blah blah just don't ask how we make hydrogen.
@@timscott3027 Exactly! I just can’t believe Robert didn’t even mention this.
We still love you, Helen and Robert.
:-)
New Holland's methane and biomethane seems like a better approach. Natural Gas infrastructure is already all over the place and production directly from organic material is far easier than it is for hydrogen.
I’m sure there’s a little NOx, but this is an excellent technology to use now. Maybe in 10 years fuel cells or batteries will improve and we won’t burn stuff, but this is so much better than burning diesel.
Hope to see more innervation like this.
This is great and I really want it to work, there is however a big but. That purpose built refuelling unit is not viable for travelling to multiple sites that are more than a few miles apart.
There needs to be a solution that's roughly the size of an IBC that can go in the back of a pickup or be towed as a bowser, that is capable of filling the equivilent of at least 400 litres of diesel and can be refilled from a bulk tank at a base site.
I don't know if it's possible, but if they can pull it off the end of diesel plant machinery won't be far behind.
Great video and well done for featuring it! it is interesting and a point well made about practicality with these big machines and batteries. as someone who runs a fleet of trucks and road tankers we have been thinking where are we heading in 24hr a day working vehicles. hydrogen could make sense even if it a stepping stone away from diesel awaiting newer tech in the future. I think it needs thinking about and debating.. when you go to order a new truck and there is a 2 Yr waiting list now, and then that massive investment has to earn its keep for at least 10 yrs, all of a sudden its 2034! so again commercial vehicles need focus....
The case against fuel cells in polluted/dusty areas is one I've heard about before due to buses in China. I hope hydrogen combustion engines are a stopgap to full electric trucks. But major respect for getting rid of the NoX.
I think it's going to be an absolute game changer, let's remember these engines are doing far more work than a car engine with what seams to be little or no impact on the environment. I can see the haulage industry looking further into this as well, from there side you wouldn't need expensive batteries and you would need to increase the weight of the vehicle doing the pulling, which would impact on costs off repairing roads and infrastructure and the costs to the load space. More weight in what you are using to pull or tow the weight, would mean less weight on what you could pull, meaning that the load space would be more expensive.
We fans of Robert's brilliant 'Scrapheap Challenge' days miss his internal combustion impressions. What's the world coming to when a mighty JCB only goes "mmm"...🙃
It has less Hydrogen per molecule than Ammonia (H2 rather than NH3 - apologies; I don't have suffixes in YT comments), but is cleaner and safer, provided that a way to stop it leaking out of the storage containers can be found.
Great idea love the moving forward etc. But if running a small business site and need like 3 machines only do i then have to buy the re fuelling truck as well and god knows how many hundreds of thousands? Does the fuelling truck run on the same or is that diesel?
If there was more of a hydrogen infrastructure it would make sense for vans and pick-ups too.
Good work JCB 👌👍
Is there any info on how much it costs to operate?
there was no numbers trown out to tell us how much you will safe compared to what the industry uses now.(makes me a bit worried it will not be good)
So plz tell me more if you know anything.
As long as these things will really be running on GREEN hydrogen they look like an incredibly good step forward...
They won't be green hydrogen, unless the site operator wants to pay 5x for the fuel they he needed to. Green hydrogen is expensive to make, it requires 3x the electricity it would need to do the same work if you just charged a battery, it will always be cheaper to make black hydrogen from methane with CO2 emissions until carbon taxes survive successive governments (liberals might implement them, but conservatives will repeal them). JCB are following Toyota down a hydrogen hole, encouraged by the fossil fuel industry - I understand why this happens, I just don't understand what Fully Charged is doing covering CO2 emitting green washing.
@@brushlessmotoring This is exactly what I was afraid of, and yes, what are they doing promoting such green washing nonsense..?
Still a lot of questions to be answered here and JCB might well be heading into a dead end if what I've read elsewhere is true. But their arguments are persuasive even if as usual on Fully Charged we only get their side of the thing and no journalism as such. This channel is a bit of an easy touch in that sense. For instance, that tank of hydrogen can fill the tractor six times but he didn't say how long the tractor will run on one fill up. Or how much each full up costs. Or what the source of the hydrogen is. And we never even got to hear the engine start up or run and a million other things. If I was an investor I'd be very cautious about this company indeed.
The frustrating part for me is that fully charged hasn't been a soft touch on green washing or VW diesel gate or disingenuous press on EV's ... and yet, as you say, a complete free pass on a lot of important questions, I expected non EV channels to regurgitate JCB's press pack (e.g. Harry Garage) but I really expected better of Helen and Bobby, I would ague they just should have said no to this one. 75 millions tons hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels every year, we don't need to waste the tiny amounts of green hydrogen on applications that are better suited to a battery and motor, or, probably in this case, sticking with diesel - I'd be curious what the volume of emissions is for this type of machinery, my gut says they will spend more diesel transporting the hydrogen that they will save - because that wasn't a BEV or H2 powered delivery truck ....
I will always be sceptical of hydrogen while the vast majority of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels.
True. The danger is that they use this to continue using fossil fuels, but more stealthily.
@@EugeneLambert exactly or they will use a limited amount of the cleaner hydrogen to leave the more vital processes to fall back on the less green or down right nasty stuff.
In an open market the effect of one user affects the others.
A view of the whole market must be taken into account when assessing the efficacy of one particular technology.
Interesting episode, having bought two houses on new build developments and living next to diesel machines for three years,I would much rather they were Hydrogen or EV rather than diesel. Would also be a good solution for ambulances.
I think ambulances are a great application for hydrogen fuel cells. They're vehicles that need to be always ready, and on a busy day won't have the time even to rapid charge. Moreover, hospitals have diesel backup generators that could be replaced with fuel cells, and they're heavy users of high-purity oxygen, so on-site electrolysis would see better utilisation than somewhere like a fuel station. Maybe a plug-in hydrogen solution, like Stellantis' medium vans, so they can use electricity on slower days to keep the cost down
You have to be practical, things that run for long periods, including trains I guess, need this time of technology. Well done JCB!
Trains are better off electric
Trains are mostly electrified. Trains that run on lines that are not fully electrified yet should come with big enough batteries that they can charge up while in stations or while they are on a track with electricity.
love that what JCB is upto
Batteries are a much more efficient use of electricity than creating and burning hydrogen. There may be situations where batteries can't currently be used for plant, but hopefully they will become fewer, as their is little sign that we'll get a general hydrogen distribution system, so JCB could struggle sourcing it
Hydrogen can burn very lean because it can tolerate a wider range of fuel/air ratios than any other fuel.
What's the CAD software at 4.36?