[TusharK]

Ashok Leyland and Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) have unveiled what is claimed to be India’s first hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (H2ICE) truck at the India Energy Week in Bangalore.



Ashok Leyland had been developing the H2ICE heavy-duty truck in partnership with RIL over the past year. It is based on a conventional diesel engine. The company claims that it would help quicker migration to cleaner energy sources at a relatively lower cost.

The H2ICE truck uses hydrogen as fuel to power a conventional internal combustion diesel engine. The truck is equipped with two large tanks to store hydrogen. The performance is said to be on par with diesel ICE trucks and is said to have “near-zero emissions”.

Unlike most hydrogen-powered vehicles, which use fuel-cell technology to generate electricity, Ashok Leyland’s truck has an internal combustion engine that is powered using hydrogen instead of diesel.

Source: The Hindu

Link to Team-BHP News

[kosjam]

In the interest of getting the tech quickly to market, using ICEs for hydrogen operations might be a good first step, but the fact that these trucks will still produce harmful NOx emissions makes it imperative that they remain only a first step and fuel cell technology is brought in to replace ICEs in future variants.

These trucks will also probably see point to point operations, on major routes only, depending on the range delivered per full tank up of the hydrogen storage tanks.

[guptad42]

What a waste of money, time and energy.

I can understand Reliance wants to push hydrogen. Oil & Gas needs hydrogen for refining and petrochemicals. Currently they use highly polluting, dirty hydrogen. Trying to figure out cheaper green hydrogen is a necessity for them. It is also a desperate way for oil & gas sector to elongate the life of their complex engineering skills and trillion$ of existing assets.

But promoting hydrogen in road transport is nothing more than an Oil & Gas marketing scam, often using govt grant money for support. With the anti-EV Toyota for company. and even that Toyota is being forced to change its tune by the market.

Hydrogen is not a primary fuel. It's only an inefficient store - a bad battery.
Counting from generation of renewable electricity - conversion to hydrogen - storage & transport - use as fuel in a fuel cell, you get less than 30% efficiency.
Replacing the fuel cell by internal combustion as Ashok Leyland has done means cutting it further by half. This thing will have less than 15% efficiency.
Whereas a well-designed battery electric vehicle routinely exceeds 80%!
In other words, if the 'near zero emissions' claim is true, this truck will need 5 times more renewable energy as an equivalent battery electric version to travel the same distance!

This is probably funded with a govt grant for clean energy research. We should stop wasting taxpayer money on such programs. The Oil & Gas industry, including Reliance, is swimming in cash. Let them spend their own money on making hydrogen viable.

Yes, we may not have the battery energy density today. But it's getting there fast, and is not a fundamental hurdle like hydrogen's science and economics. As a recent example, cheap Li02 based chemistry is showing capacities around 700 Whr/kg in real prototype cells (not simulations), with promise to potentially touch 1KWhr/Kg. That's about 4 times more than today's large scale production cells.

[OffRoadFun]

Hydrogen is a waste, whether green or "fossil" derived.


Here is what Elon Musk had to say about Hydrogen run vehicles:


“The efficiency of electrolysis is … poor,” he told the Financial Times. “So you really are spending a lot of energy to ... split hydrogen and oxygen. Then you have to separate the hydrogen and oxygen and pressurize it — this also takes a lot of energy.”

“And if you have to liquefy … hydrogen, oh my God,” he continued. “The amount of energy required to … make hydrogen and turn it into liquid form is staggering. It is the most dumb thing that I could possibly imagine for energy storage.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/tesl...y-storage.html

[karthikg87]

I think it's premature to write off Hydrogen fuel cell tech for transportation. Elon musk is an authority on fuel cell tech but in fact the opposite. He has an interest in the tech that competes against it.

Imagine what's going to happen in 15 years time when all the millions of electric vehicles running today and sold tomorrow are ready to kick the bucket and none has yet figured a way to efficiently recycle those expensive batteries.

It's an argument as good as recyclable plastic bags vs cloth bags.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by karthikg87

Imagine what's going to happen in 15 years time when all the millions of electric vehicles running today and sold tomorrow are ready to kick the bucket and none has yet figured a way to efficiently recycle those expensive batteries.

Re-use and recycling of old EV batteries is already an existing and rapidly growing industry in all western countries. Raw material recovery is very high up to 98%.

What is interesting that used EV batteries are used in other application before they are being recycled too. So really very effective and efficient! What it might need in certain countries to make re-use and recycling according to certain standards mandatory. But even in a country that has no such recycle laws as the USA, the recycling industry has already taken off.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/jessica-dunn...es-recyclable/

Jeroen

[OffRoadFun]

Originally Posted by karthikg87

I think it's premature to write off Hydrogen fuel cell tech for transportation. Elon musk is an authority on fuel cell tech but in fact the opposite. He has an interest in the tech that competes against it.

Imagine what's going to happen in 15 years time when all the millions of electric vehicles running today and sold tomorrow are ready to kick the bucket and none has yet figured a way to efficiently recycle those expensive batteries.

It's an argument as good as recyclable plastic bags vs cloth bags.

The efficiency of electrolysis is maximum at around 75% as of today whereas charging efficiency of Li battery is close to 100%. Right at onset, Hydrogen has disadvantage.

I am skipping cost of segregation and liquifying Hydrogen and Oxygen (which are not trivial).

Coming to "engine" converting stored potential energy to mechanical energy, hydrogen fuel cell efficiency is 60% at most whereas an electric motor can be upto 95% efficient at converting electricity into kinetic energy.

Without even going into further, hydrogen fuel cell only half as efficient as Li battery + electric motor when it comes to "charging" and running the vehicle.

Can it take off? May be yes but for that electricity cost will have to come down drastically as electrolysis cost is a major portion of H2 cost. Liquification and transportation are other big challenges.

[Tifosi2306]

People here quoting Elon Musk like he is the God of everything, calling Hydrogen 'Dirty' like all the electricity currently used to power EVs is coming straight from sunlight. I think people need to have patience to 'Wait and Watch' before choosing and jumping onto anti 'X', anti 'Y' media battleships and risk making a fool out of themselves.

[joshtronic]

Hasn’t BMW been pursuing similar technology since a few years now? It cant be all terrible since they have electric going for them as well.

[SKC-auto]

Originally Posted by Tifosi2306

People here quoting Elon Musk like he is the God of everything, calling Hydrogen 'Dirty' like all the electricity currently used to power EVs is coming straight from sunlight. I think people need to have patience to 'Wait and Watch' before choosing and jumping onto anti 'X', anti 'Y' media battleships and risk making a fool out of themselves.

Quoting him does not make him a god, though he is an engineer and very good at it. He would have started an Hydrogen car company instead of an EV company if the physics is better for hydrogen cars.

We are hearing Hydrogen hype before the Nissan Leaf launched, still only 2 cars(Mirai & Nexo) to buy in only 3-4 countries(only in California state in US). EVs are selling in millions, Hydrogen cars in few thousands.

The same scene repeating when it comes to trucks, EV trucks are selling in several thousands compared to few hundreds of hydrogen trucks(fuel cell + h2ice).

Yet how many years do we need to wait? Battery tech will also improve in the next 10 years.

This is about H2 ice truck, not fuel cell truck, the effeciency of H2 ice truck is atleast 8x less than an EV truck, that means the running cost for EV truck is 10₹/km compared to 22₹/km for diesel and 80-120₹/km for H2ICE. Good luck, most will use EVs for shipping needs because it is cheaper.

[shashanka]

Originally Posted by TusharK

Ashok Leyland and Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) have unveiled what is claimed to be India’s first hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (H2ICE) truck at the India Energy Week in Bangalore.........

Thanks Tushar for this timely post. There are too many posts and clips pushing the hydrogen-fuel cell bandwagon. And one can’t help feeling that vested interests may be doing some of the pushing too! The fuel-cell core technology is held tighter than Fort Knox by a few western companies (led by Ballard Corp. of Canada). And subsidiaries/licencees for manufacturing fuel cells under licence (with China being the biggest) have signed contracts and agreements which make it impossible to transfer core technology.

So following this route would make a miniscule part of the industrial world cosmic rich with the rest of the world paying licencing fees/royalty till the cows came home. The prospects for a green, pollution-free world with equitable distribution of resources doesn’t seem too bright, does it?

[Tifosi2306]

Originally Posted by SKC-auto

Quoting him does not make him a god, though he is an engineer and very good at it. He would have started an Hydrogen car company instead of an EV company if the physics is better for hydrogen cars.

We are hearing Hydrogen hype before the Nissan Leaf launched, still only 2 cars(Mirai & Nexo) to buy in only 3-4 countries(only in California state in US). EVs are selling in millions, Hydrogen cars in few thousands.

The same scene repeating when it comes to trucks, EV trucks are selling in several thousands compared to few hundreds of hydrogen trucks(fuel cell + h2ice).

Yet how many years do we need to wait? Battery tech will also improve in the next 10 years.

This is about H2 ice truck, not fuel cell truck, the effeciency of H2 ice truck is atleast 8x less than an EV truck, that means the running cost for EV truck is 10₹/km compared to 22₹/km for diesel and 80-120₹/km for H2ICE. Good luck, most will use EVs for shipping needs because it is cheaper.

A quick visit to wikipedia will show that Electric cars have been in existence since 100 years and yet it is only the last decade where we have seen good adoption.

Battery tech evolved faster obviously because of the various applications of a battery (cell phones being the biggest).

All I am saying is, we can debate which tech is better for the sake of it without any conclusions or appreciate the fact that there are alternative methods (some more efficient than the other) being thought about and introduced much faster and with involvements from companies like Reliance. No doubt we have Tata on the other end being successful with its EV range. People need to be given credible choices and not forced to use or abandon a particular one, be it Fossil fuel ICE, H2ICE, EV.

[SKC-auto]

Originally Posted by Tifosi2306

People need to be given credible choices and not forced to use or abandon a particular one, be it Fossil fuel ICE, H2ICE, EV.

Fuel cell was invented in 19th century too, the batteries did not have the energy density needed for a car until last 20years. There is still lot of scope for battery chemistry improvements, the theoretical energy density is 10x the current batteries.

On the contrary there is very little scope for improvement in the hydrogen vehicle( fuel cell or h2 ice), because we are already compressing H2 to 10000psi, cannot compress more. As others have stated h2 is a kind of storage battery which is very ineffecient.

In most countries the subsidies apply to both EVs and FCEV, none of the tech is forced, yet FCEVs are not selling, how could you sell h2 ice which has even less efficient than fuel cell.

[Tifosi2306]

Originally Posted by SKC-auto

Fuel cell was invented in 19th century too, the batteries did not have the energy density needed for a car until last 20years. There is still lot of scope for battery chemistry improvements, the theoretical energy density is 10x the current batteries.

On the contrary there is very little scope for improvement in the hydrogen vehicle( fuel cell or h2 ice), because we are already compressing H2 to 10000psi, cannot compress more. As others have stated h2 is a kind of storage battery which is very ineffecient.

In most countries the subsidies apply to both EVs and FCEV, none of the tech is forced, yet FCEVs are not selling, how could you sell h2 ice which has even less efficient than fuel cell.

Electricity was invented in 1700 and first battery in 1800
We can go on. Agreed BEVs are the immediate future, H2ICE could be a stop gap for some applications, Fuel Cells could be the next step. Everything seems impossible or at the limit till something is invented, created and the boundaries are pushed further.

The way I see it, FCEVs and BEVs will co-exist for the next few decades with each having their own applications. FCs could be used in long haul vehicles (trucks and buses), BEVs being used for short range personal use PVs.

Hopefully all towards genuinely clean environment cause which none of the technologies seem to be convincingly meeting yet.