Hydrogen-powered train makes UK maiden journey

A hydrogen-powered train has travelled on Britain’s rail network for the first time.

more…

Tau.Neutrino said:

Hydrogen-powered train makes UK maiden journey

A hydrogen-powered train has travelled on Britain’s rail network for the first time.

more…

> A hydrogen-powered train has travelled on Britain’s rail network for the first time. The prototype, called the Hydroflex, made a 25-mile round trip through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, reaching speeds of up to 50 mph.

> Its next phase is to move the hydrogen tanks, fuel cell and battery out of a carriage and stash them underneath the train. The aim is for the train to start carrying paying passengers by the end of 2021.

Fuel cell, yes.

> Is the hydrogen tech ‘revolution’ hope or hype?

Good question. I’ve never been sure. I’ve generally preferred methane fuel cells to hydrogen. Methane is easier to store, burns cooler in a fuel cell, contains a high proportion of hydrogen.

JCB has an excavator powered by hydrogen.

> The compendium of vehicles powered by hydrogen now stretches from diggers to micro-taxis, trucks, boats, vans, single-deck and now double-decker buses – and even small planes.

And a train.

> So at last, the long-awaited hydrogen revolution is here. Or is it? Back in the early 2000s, backers of hydrogen thought it would dominate the clean automobile market.

• hydrogen power needed a new infrastructure, whereas rival battery cars could be charged off the near-ubiquitous electricity grid.
• high-powered batteries at that time were already well-advanced for other uses such as computers, but hydrogen was not.

> So hydrogen lost the head-on battle for the motor car. But now it’s back in the frame for the sort of transport, industry and heating tasks that batteries are struggling to fulfil.

> Take our large mechanical digger, a prototype from JCB. The big digger would need a battery weighing five tonnes, and take hours to refuel. Hydrogen on the other hand, is lighter than air and takes minutes to fill a tank. Lorries fall into the same category as diggers – sometimes the battery would be as heavy as the payload. The same applies to buses, and the Bamford family says it has orders for 80 double-deck buses from its Wrightbus factory at Ballymena in Northern Ireland.

> Past fears of hydrogen tanks exploding have been addressed by the advent of tanks lined with Kevlar.

Comment. That may work. Hydrogen embrittlement rules out tanks of pure metal, but Krvlar may be immune to the problem.

> the first test flight of an electric plane in the UK at Cranfield University recently was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Germany is racing ahead with a network of filling stations and a hydrogen train.

> So it looks as though hydrogen has finally made it. But not so fast… because it’s by no means trouble-free. Currently almost all the hydrogen sold in the UK is produced by splitting it from natural gas.

Good. But IMHO there’s no reason not to use the natural gas intact in the first place. By avoiding splitting methane into carbon dioxide and hydrogen you greatly improve cost efficiency.

> split hydrogen from water using a fuel cell. The process is wasteful because it involves turning electricity into a gas, then back into electricity – a two-step shuffle dismissed by Tesla car chief Elon Musk as “staggeringly dumb”. “Fool cells”, he calls them.

Agree.

> Trials are already underway using hydrogen blended into natural gas at Keele University.

Interesting.