Hydrogen Fuel Cell Locomotive

Historic Artemis I moon mission launch

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/11/16/brevard-county-parks-packed-ahead-of-artemis-moon-mission-launch/

Artemis will get a few more miles out of its hydrogen than the train...

This will be interesting to watch.

There seems to be many, many logistical issues to overcome in order to make this a standard (as opposed to the Diesel engine and generator now the well established standard).

The investments made by CN to this experiment do indicate a real commitment to reducing emissions.

The EMD SD40 locomotive is rated at 3,000 hp (2,200 kW). This is on the low side of average power for the tens of thousands of Diesel engine locomotives on the rails today. It’s going to require a lot of of H₂ to make this viable.

One current producer of pink H₂ that I checked produces on the order of kg per day. Gotta step it up.

Well it seems to me this is a natural, the train company owns a lot of the land along the rail lines, and the means to transport anything along the rail route, so they can deploy all the materials they need to build the infrastructure at cost and build out the fueling points along the routes at strategic locations....seems a lot easier than for say trucking for example, or sea transport, although for sea transport the hydrogen source may come directly from the sea, and then fueling really wouldn't be a problem....

Many different locomotion schemes have been tried over the two odd hundred years of train evolution.

Wood fired steam, coal fired, then oil fired. Turbines, both steam and gas were tried. Then electric traction motors, with turbines spinning generators, gas and Diesel engines also used as prime movers - remote energy sources too, transferred by (usually) overhead lines.

This is an experiment. Can it work? Sure, probably, yeah... every iteration so far has had drawbacks and advantages; if the good overcame the bad then it was opted into by willing participants.

An inconvenient truth here is, government regulation says (to rail operations) “Change your methods, reduce emissions or you are out of business.”. Before everyone busts my hump, I say this mostly for the shock value knowing full well it is an exaggeration, it is a broad brush, technology likely exists that will likely be adaptable to this end. Point here is, in the advantage/disadvantage weight distribution, this disadvantage is pretty heavy. Experience tells me a carrot as incentive will move the cart along better than beating your donkey’s ass with a stick.

Time will tell.

Well it seems to me that sooner or later diesel fuel will become too expensive, or indeed run out altogether from traditional sources, so will we wait to the last minute? or make the choice to adapt now and work out the bugs so rail travel remains relevant?

You are absolutely right but it is not much of an exaggeration, if at all.

..."A single 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor could produce more than 150,000 tonnes of hydrogen each year.

Ten nuclear reactors could provide about 1.5 million tonnes annually or 15% of current hydrogen produced in the United States."...

150,000 tonnes of hydrogen = 330,693,393 lbs

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/could-hydrogen-open-new-markets-nuclear

..."An FCEV can drive about 28 miles (45 km) on 1 lb (0.45 kg) of hydrogen. The cost per mile of running hydrogen cars is therefore currently almost twice as high as that of battery-powered vehicles charged at home."Dec 5, 2019

330,693,393 lbs times 28 miles = 9,259,415,004 miles....miles driven per year by around 650,000 people...

"On average, Americans drive 14,263 miles per year according to the Federal Highway Administration."Sep 21, 2022

"There were a total of 275,913,237 vehicles registered in the U.S. in 2020, including 105,135,300 automobiles."

...around 26 million tons of hydrogen for all the cars.... = ~175 nuclear plants...

"As a collective, American drivers cover 3.2 trillion miles each year, enough to take nearly 5,000 trips to the moon and back".Sep 21, 2022

https://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/how-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-work.html#:~:text=An%20FCEV%20can%20drive%20about,powered%20vehicles%20charged%20at%20home.

Ammonia to hydrogen...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201118141718.htm

..."There are 93 commercial nuclear reactors operating in the United States at 55 locations in 28 states. The majority of nuclear reactors are in the eastern portion of the U.S."Apr 4, 2022

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/map-of-nuclear-power-in-the-us-see-where-reactors-are-located.html

"How large does a 1 gigawatt solar farm have to be?

A good rule of thumb is that it takes 5 acres per MW peak for a solar farm. Note that includes spacing, roads, inverters, everything. Actual farms vary from about 4 acres to 9 acres per MW.

Thus 5000 acres would be a good guess at the area needed for a 1GW solar farm."

175 times 3 = 525 times 5000 acres = 2,625,000 acres = Delaware + Rhode Island or about the size of Yellowstone Park....

Cost of 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant ~$5.4 billion...continuous

Cost of 1 gigawatt solar pv power plant ~$3 billion...intermittent

These are all the other inconvenient truths.

Please forgive the tardy response; had an issue. Got it handled.

So... can these reactors electrolyze the steam to isolate H2 and not reduce energy produced? Restated, is it gonna take all of the generated power to make this 150 thousand tonne? The .gov site doesn’t say. I have a guess.

Numbers in other posts are for American automobile consumption or H2. Throw in some freight trucks, thousands of locomotives, some lawn mowers and weed whackers, and who knows how many millions of tons of water traffic. Then, run the column down for Canada, Germany, France, India, Spain...

As Chief Brody said to Quint:

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

We can multiply these figures times 4 for a rough idea of how much additional energy we will need, this is in addition to the generating capacity we already have, and for homes and businesses and industry that continue to grow we need to take that into account...so it will take everything we have to build all this additional capacity which includes nuclear, fossil fuels, solar, wind, all need to continually expand along with the technological capabilities to make it work....there is no one size fits all approach that will work....

I’ve said it before here at CR4, and here I go again:

What it will take to really make electric vehicles practical is this -

[Cannot get an image of the Mr. Fusion home energy reactor to stick. https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion]

Bigger better batteries won’t cut it. Supercapacitors? Nope. Burn something that has been converted from one thing to another three or four times? Nothingburger.

The LynDoor Industries version of the Mr. Fusion has not panned out as well as we had hoped - never really worked very well... okay, never worked at all, and never will.

Where are we (the big we, as in humankind) in the developement of something like this?

I think the equivalent of a small nuclear powered vehicle, which would involve converting the heat into electricity basically, could be replaced with the fuel cell that converts hydrogen directly to electricity, and has heat as a waste product...

...a technology that converts heat to electricity directly is not efficient enough to use as yet, so more work on this tech needs to be done, with that we may be able to achieve something around a 65% efficiency, combining the fuel cell with waste heat conversion...

...then we might be able to develop a less efficient fuel cell using an easier to handle fuel, such as ammonia, or indeed something else...so in effect the cars would be nuclear powered, just not directly, it's the fuel that is produced by nuclear power, solar power and wind power...

Step into the future....

"Hyperion supercar

Featured snippet from the web

The XP-1 is touted by Hyperion to be the first hydrogen-powered "supercar" and has a top range of 1016 miles, assuming that 55% of the driving is city and 45% is on the highway."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_XP-1#:~:text=The%20XP%2D1%20is%20touted,45%25%20is%20on%20the%20highway.

Hyperion XP-1 Is a 221-MPH Hydrogen-Powered Hypercar

The XP-1 is claimed to go from zero to 60 mph in 2.2 seconds, but it's really a hook for a much bigger story: hydrogen infrastructure.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33572419/2022-hyperion-xp-1-hydrogen-hypercar-specs/

Looks as as though a Mr. Fusion may be peeking over the event horizon:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-to-announce-fusion-energy-breakthrough/ar-AA15ahiG

This is, without a doubt, the game changer in energy technology... when it can be harnessed.

Yeah, but they've been saying just ten more years for the last forty years.

Yep... any day now you can get this working at your kitchen table.

My somewhat cynical self says this is just balloon juice mixed with some wishful thinking, sprinkled with pixie dust, and served up with a bowl of rainbow soup.

Germany has hydrogen powered trains...

German railway firm ushers in new era for hydrogen trains

" They now have six hydrogen-powered trains running regularly between different cities in the region, replacing conventional diesel trains in the process. Thanks to a fuel cell, the trains can drive completely emission-free."

Ha ha , except the hydrogen is being produced by coal, at least for now...

Nice wrap...Who's a pretty train?

https://www.dw.com/en/german-railway-firm-ushers-in-new-era-for-hydrogen-trains/a-64070343

When you're spending the People's money, the sky's the limit.

..."What's the cost of a wind turbine in 2021? $1,300,000 USD per megawatt. The typical wind turbine is 2-3 MW in power, so most turbines cost in the $2-4 million dollar range. Operation and maintenance runs an additional $42,000-$48,000 per year according to research on wind turbine operational cost."Aug 7, 2021

"How many wind turbines do I need for 1 GW?

There are of course cost reductions from needing to install fewer turbines – today, it takes less than 100 turbines to generate 1 GW from a wind farm at sea. With a 12 MW turbine it will take only 83 turbines and with a 15 MW turbine only 66, and so on."...

So about $4 billion per gigawatt equivalent cost for intermittent wind turbines...

https://weatherguardwind.com/how-much-does-wind-turbine-cost-worth-it/#:~:text=What's%20the%20cost%20of%20a,on%20wind%20turbine%20operational%20cost.

The irony just struck me...

So, we have a ‘Green Energy’ locomotive pulling a string of rotary dump cars loaded with coal.

While quantity/volume obviously fluctuates, coal (in USA) averages about 20% of rail traffic.