Brought to you by Cosmos Magazine and The Echo
Hydrogen-powered trucks could help to lower emissions and yield cheaper power on aging electricity grids, according to a team of Canadian researchers.
Modelling from the University of Waterloo showed that plugging these vehicles into the grid at rush hours could help to smooth demand in the province of Alberta.
The researchers presented their findings at the 2023 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference on smart energy grid engineering.
“Canada’s power grids need to be upgraded,” says research lead Dr XiaoYu Wu, a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.
“But the price of Alberta’s power grid is much higher than other provinces. Most power is supplied by fossil fuels which results in high carbon emissions.
“The need to rapidly adjust generators to meet fluctuating demand is one of the reasons that the grid price is unstable and volatile. This creates the potential for clean energy storage to flatten the demand and price of electricity.”
The researchers looked at “fuel cell electric vehicles”: vehicles powered by hydrogen. Hydrogen produces no greenhouse gas emissions when burned, and it can be made in a zero-emissions way, making it a promising alternative fuel for heavy vehicles that aren’t suited to full electrification.
The researchers modelled how electricity demand and pricing might change if these trucks were plugged into hydrogen refuelling stations during peak hours, using their fuel cells to provide electricity for the grid. Truck drivers would be paid to rest during this time.
Their modelling found that this would lower vehicle traffic and reduce energy use at peak times, as well as making electricity cheaper and cleaner.
“Hydrogen fuel cells offer advantages over other fuels like batteries which require more investment and pollute more when you dispose of them,” says Daniel Ding, a graduate student at Waterloo.
“Our preliminary findings show that using existing fuel cells in electric vehicles of the future can decrease costs on the grid.”
Wu adds that this scheme could also be an incentive for adopting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, as drivers would be paid while resting.
Is this article written by an AI? It really makes little sense, as its headline is supposedly about Hydrogen powered trucks, and then thrown in the middle a subheading “Do electric vehicle batteries explode?” with no info regarding this at all. Note: EVs are 10x less likely to catch fire than petrol powered cars, EVs don’t really explode anyway, like petrol cars can. They are also 20x less likely to catch fire than Hybrid vehicles.
All of the grid support possibilities re Hydrogen fuel cell trucks, could just as easily be provided by pure battery EVs, but at FAR less cost with the inefficiency losses of making the Hydrogen PLUS the losses of having trucks sitting there not doing their day job. Why use trucks anyway? Use everyone’s personal EV cars that are just sitting there parked most of the time, and pay people for the use.
Hydrogen sounds nice, its combustion creating just water and Oxygen. But the only way to currently make Hydrogen cheaply is from burning fossil fuels. You “can” use green electricity to produce it, but it is really expensive. It is FAR more efficient and FAR cheaper to just put that green energy straight into a EV battery using our existing electrical grid.
It’s very simple. A Canadian with a Chinese name is trying to get Canada to destroy its power grid and trucking infrastructure even more than Castro Jr already has, because he is thinking of what is good for Canada, because he is totally Canadian, and he is worried about Canada’s ability to compete with countries like…China for example. It’s all pretty straightforward, regardless of any involvement by Distilbert.
Looks to me like a typical piece of green propaganda, they aren’t improving the standard at all.
I am all for hydrogen, a great fuel, however is there existing production at present to supply the vast quantities needed for heavy vehicles?. I certainly hope there is, EV’s in this area would be a greater failure than the passenger vehicle farce. Go hydrogen.
It doesn’t have a useful energy density unless it is liquified, and even NASA has trouble with that.
Same story with LNG, current problems with hydrogen will be overcome, Toyota, Porsche, Hyundai are working on it.
Actual, no. It’s the physical limits that are the problem. Hydrogen bonds are low energy, and dihydrogen is the smallest molecular. Fuel cells are 90+% efficient, so not much more can be squeezed out. Most importantly, as with EVs, you can’t easily transport the fuel in your hand. Even Dr Porsche himself couldn’t solve it.
Maybe the answer could look like something I have witnessed, a small battery sized container with stainless steele plates evenly spaced apart with the surface ruffed up, scratched to make the surface area greater, a positive and negative battery terminal connected to it from a battery source. A caustic solution is added to the container which covers the s/s plates, the power is turned on from the battery and wollah!, a thick stream of hydrogen streams from a hose connected to the top of the container. The gas would have to go through a water bath to wash away the caustic as it would not be friendly to engine cylinder heads or cylinders bores. Just a suggestion, a vehicle with this setup would not require a holding tank, it would run on hydrogen produced as you drive. People allegedly do run their vehicles with this method.
We covered electrolysis in year 9 chemistry. We even electroplated 10c pieces in copper from a 2c piece while we were at it. Once prac is done, we then were made to learn about activation energies, and why you lose energy from the system even when the reaction is commutable. This is fine for stationary applications, if you can handle the infrastructure cost of such a low energy density fuel, but it’s the storage and handling that makes it impractical for transportation by truck or pipline. It’s very different to LPG, and even LPGs handling problems made it impractical in cars.
As I said Christian, there is no need for hydrogen storage if it is produced and used while driving
As I said Christian, there is no need for hydrogen storage if it is produced and used while driving..
That only works if you violate the second law of thermodynamics. If that ‘water powered car’ thing actually worked, the concept would be ubiquitously known and everyone out here would have all their equipment running that way.