My Q4 e-tron is 2200 kg, and a similarly specced Q5 is 1900 kg even though it's a larger car. I'm just saying you should add a 15% efficiency loss on the BEV example because the energy density just isn't quite there, and as such, EV's are intrinsically heavier than ICE vehicles at the moment.
Even then, it's an overwhelming advantage for the BEV, but just putting it out there for accuracy.
I'm already an EV convert, you don't have to sell it to me.
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Hydrogen does have its place in transportation, but it won't be for passenger cars.
Hard to electrify use cases like long-haul transport, container ships, airplanes and freight trains will likely be powered by hydrogen.
Hydrogen is too hard to transport for long haul trucking, not energy dense enough for air planes or ships. I think hydrogen sourced e-fuels and methanol will play a role instead
Hydrogen is too hard to transport for long haul trucking, not energy dense enough for air planes or ships. I think hydrogen sourced e-fuels and methanol will play a role instead
Cummins already has an retrofit for a truck engine.
CP is already testing a locomotive.
You don't like hydrogen as a solution, that's clear.
But make no mistake, the use case is there and smart people are working on it.
__________________ It's only game. Why you heff to be mad?
Cummins already has an retrofit for a truck engine.
CP is already testing a locomotive.
You don't like hydrogen as a solution, that's clear.
But make no mistake, the use case is there and smart people are working on it.
There may be smart people working on it, but no one is smarter than me. /s
I can see locomotives because the fueling depots would be easy to maintain and load via rail. China sells thousands of fuel cell large trucks already, albeit mostly in specific use cases. ZeroAvia already has some small hydrogen planes in the air. But all of these companies could save some money by hiring me to consult on their projects and just say no
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The only thing I find biased is the fact that batteries are much heavier than hydrogen or a fuel tank.
Sure you can get 95% energy to the car, but if you need twice as much energy as a similar car then you lose some as well.
That’s not the only bias.
The very first line in the hydrogen column is wrong. Solid Oxide Electrolyzer Cells are on the market with 80-85% efficiency.
Again, I’m not saying that passenger vehicles won’t inevitably be electric.
The point I’m really wanting to get to is that I just wish people would stop talking like there has to one all encompassing solution. Because there are places where hydrogen will win and places where electric will win.
Edit: should point out that’s not the only other one there… transmission/storage losses for electric at 5% is low. Closer to 8-15%, and will depend on how long you are transporting it, and how long you are storing it for.
Last edited by Murph; 09-19-2023 at 08:28 AM.
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If we just synthesized combustion fuels where the hydrogen is being produced, it would be a very simple thing to put those volumes into already existing infrastructure with minimal disruption and greater environmental benefit.
Working out how to power those processes is far more achievable than fighting against physics on energy density issues, ensuring safety for general population users, and re-building all of the storage, distribution and utilization equipment.
Why we have to do trial and error on obviously unworkable concepts continues to baffle me.
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Originally Posted by Biff
If the NHL ever needs an enema, Edmonton is where they'll insert it.
If we just synthesized combustion fuels where the hydrogen is being produced, it would be a very simple thing to put those volumes into already existing infrastructure with minimal disruption and greater environmental benefit.
Working out how to power those processes is far more achievable than fighting against physics on energy density issues, ensuring safety for general population users, and re-building all of the storage, distribution and utilization equipment.
Why we have to do trial and error on obviously unworkable concepts continues to baffle me.
This is the Holy Grail and lots of people working on it, but again it comes down to costs and physics. This is the likely pathway for aviation in my opinion, however it's not likely to work for other transportation options. You're taking raw electricity, then losing to convert to hydrogen, then losing a lot more to convert to "drop in fuels" (around 50%). Then you burn it and get 40% at best of that energy to actually move. One study found you'd need land the size of the Czech Republic entirely covered in wind and solar just for aviation.
In a world where we need every kilowatt of renewable electricity to replace current fossil fuel generated electricity, I'm not sure where this excess would come from.
This is the Holy Grail and lots of people working on it, but again it comes down to costs and physics. This is the likely pathway for aviation in my opinion, however it's not likely to work for other transportation options. You're taking raw electricity, then losing to convert to hydrogen, then losing a lot more to convert to "drop in fuels" (around 50%). Then you burn it and get 40% at best of that energy to actually move. One study found you'd need land the size of the Czech Republic entirely covered in wind and solar just for aviation.
In a world where we need every kilowatt of renewable electricity to replace current fossil fuel generated electricity, I'm not sure where this excess would come from.
You're so bang on with this. Check out a study called "The Missing Link" by TerraPraxis for a solid analysis of producing drop-in fuels with a 100% renewables powered system. The fuel price required to make it viable is unaffordable, the emission displacement is disappointing, the land use requirements are staggering. You can tell by just doing the math, so it frustrates me to no end to see deals like the one we are putting Atlantic Canada through to supply ammonia to germany with wind power. You KNOW that is just going to either outright fail and not deliver 1 kg of product, or will be a gas-driven project with a slight fuel saving from the wind output and a product that sells for a substantial premium over market. The only time that works is when you have legitimate inventory shortages everywhere else, and a customer who is able to pay. Germany is running out of the ability to pay, it is an obviously bad deal. Why do it at all?
Electrolysis for hydrogen generation is a major limiting factor and not one that I endorse, personally. If hydrogen generation is the goal, I prefer putting high temperature steam out of a fission powered steam generator as a thermal watt, feeding a well understood process like steam methane reformation. Is it perfect? No, but it represents a massive 70% emission reduction and a BIG saving on cannibalizing your methane feedstock as the energy supply. Solid oxide electrolysis cells would also fall into this category.
There are also other thermochemical tools that are ready to take the step to working at scale. Things like high temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE), pyrolysis, cu-cl cycle, and maybe a half dozen others.
The challenge of paying the energy bill is equally real for getting very pure CO2 or CO syngas out of the atmosphere, ocean or post-combustion exhaust steams at source. Be it for CCUS or synthetic chemical production.
This is the danger of simple, feel-good mental short cuts like the "sun and wind are free" and "electrify everything". Electrolysis units are so inconsistent from one make to another, and we are already struggling to keep the electric grid fed with high exergy product with our demand profile TODAY. Putting the demand of growth + EVs + heat pumps + hydrogen generation + data centre expansion + carbon capture on THAT system, and it is clearly doomed to fail from a physics perspective AND an economic perspective. We are already living through it trying to do the "easy" part.
Breaking the dilemma requires thinking about the kW(e) and the kW(th) as distinct, not equivalent and substitutable. It requires applying the correct tool to the correct application. Some uses match well with electric work units, others match better with thermal work units.
It requires recognition that being efficient everywhere means being efficient nowhere, and ultimately creates incentives to overproduce. Our job as a dissipative structure in the universe is to increase entropy overall. We think of our body and civilization as a highly complex self-organizing system that violates the laws of thermodynamics until we start to die, but if you zoom out just a little, you can see that we are extremely effective at taking something as organized as a long chain alkene or a uranium atom, and disorganizing it through combustion or fissioning. This is an internally consistent process, and one that affords our expanding comfort and mastery over the assaults of our environment.
Tell me how it makes sense to start with a diffuse, disorganized thing like solar irradiance or wind, and then organize it into a useful thing like electricity, and then use that electricity to create other more highly organized structure, hoping to not waste a drop in the process? This is INCONSISTENT with the biophysical laws that we have proven time and time again. Of course things are not working for our societies or our physical well being, the exergy in the system is being consumed by something that is NOT US. Is the goal to have a flow of electrical current, or a stable and prospering biosphere?
Renewables start out with a huge handicap. By their very nature, they will struggle to contribute meaningful net exergy to a human electric grid. Exergy exchange is the only currency that really matters, and our economics do not measure or discuss this concept whatsoever. Our currency is a proxy for future energy consumption at best, but is subject to manipulation, discounts future value to zero, hence we get very poor decision-making tools at our disposal.
Fossil fuels as a source are also reaching the point where we are getting less and less net output every year we keep going. They are a different sort of battery that charges on a VERY long timescale.#We've almost spent that charge, and need to have a better way to recharge it! And yes, it will be a "wasteful" process to do so, but that does not matter so long as you are feeding it all with a sufficiently potent supply.
We cannot count on the exergy bounty of geologically sourced fossil fuels anymore, and renewable electricity cannot replace what they used to offer. They just can't. We can contract or exit as a biophysical entity in the system, or we can start to put fission to work like the rest of the universe seems to have managed to figure out. That might get us to the place where we really understand gravity and spacetime and can put those physics to work for us properly. But we have to survive long enough and have enough excess exergy in our hands to even have that chance!
My point is that the fission reaction is 1,000,0000 times as energetic as a combustion reaction, and that combustion reaction is 100x as exergic as animal calorific conversion of food to effort. It is also extremely consistent with creating a net increase in entropy overall. If you can move the needle on the 3% of the possible energy that we capture from fissile fuels today, that's where you find the excess exergy that can feed all of these "wasteful" processes and activities downstream, including those we have yet to imagine or discover, and including the buildout of luxury goods like solar & wind + BES systems.
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Originally Posted by Biff
If the NHL ever needs an enema, Edmonton is where they'll insert it.
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-snip-
The challenge of paying the energy bill is equally real for getting very pure CO2 or CO syngas out of the atmosphere, ocean or post-combustion exhaust steams at source. Be it for CCUS or synthetic chemical production.
-snip-
Just curious since you bring this up, is there any need to get very pure CO2 for CCUS? Seems it wouldn't matter too much to have some other gases mixed in if they just get stuffed underground, but maybe there are practical reasons. I understand for industrial applications you'd probably need it more pure.
Except, and I re-iterate, there is no one silver bullet. The species has not wrapped its head around the enormity of the task of replacing hydrocarbons as the primary source of energy at the pace which is required. All sources of lower emission power will have to be pursued and will all play a role.
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Just curious since you bring this up, is there any need to get very pure CO2 for CCUS? Seems it wouldn't matter too much to have some other gases mixed in if they just get stuffed underground, but maybe there are practical reasons. I understand for industrial applications you'd probably need it more pure.
Anything less, and you'll need to build your distribution system with very high diameter pipe. Getting it to a liquefied state allows you to work with smaller diameter pipe, which makes a huge difference for stainless steel.
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Originally Posted by Biff
If the NHL ever needs an enema, Edmonton is where they'll insert it.
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Anything less, and you'll need to build your distribution system with very high diameter pipe. Getting it to a liquefied state allows you to work with smaller diameter pipe, which makes a huge difference for stainless steel.
What SeeGee is getting at is that gas turbine exhaust is mostly nitrogen and only 3-4% CO2. You need to get rid of that nitrogen to cut volume/compression requirements.
Semi-related, was designing an amine scrubber for a CCS system with tight space limitations and did start asking questions like, “what if I only get 90% of the CO2, is that enough?”
Outside of nitrogen, you need to get rid of contaminants like water, otherwise corrosion can start getting nasty.
I found this to be an interesting video and thought some you of might enjoy it. The video talks about South Australia's move to a renewable energy grid. It seems South Australia has some similarities to Alberta's grid. Namely, a lack of hydro power and limited interconnectivity to neighbors. I suppose a key difference being our winter season.
