Team-BHP - Building a Hydrogen Supply Chain using Renewable Energy

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Originally Posted by srishiva (Post 4316824)

...Storing the gas at high compression makes it difficult relative to the gasoline we have today.

Yes that can be a challenge but in larger scheme of things not a surmountable one.

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Originally Posted by GTO (Post 4316862)

...I don't think hydrogen will come to cars in a big way as pure electric power will. Hydrogen is expensive to store, expensive to transport, is less efficient and there is simply no infrastructure.

Yes, the jury is still out on that. However, it can come to other use caess for example like the one demonstrated by Hama Wing.

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The single largest advantage of hydrogen cars over EVs is that you can fill them up quickly. But it's only a matter of time before we see faster charging for EVs & more manufacturers offering battery swaps. Not to forget, EV driving ranges are significantly increasing every year.

Yes, faster re-fill times and also for battery the underlying reliance is on Lithium (as of now) and the dependency on China and Lithium being the new oil is still a factor that justifies exploring various alternatives rather than focus on just one type of alternate technology.

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Generating hydrogen from water electrolysis is good, but I don't believe it's possible for mass production, at least not for most countries.

Actually, I was pleasantly surprised when we were informed that Japan is consciously taking steps towards becoming a Hydrogen society and reduce dependency on oil as they import almost all of their oil from other countries. Right now what are seen as baby steps can become full fledged strides over some time.

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I frankly feel that Toyota focussed too much on hydrogen fuel-cells and missed the boat on EVs. Of course, Toyota is hugely resourceful and will thus catch up quickly.

100% agree. However, they are smart enough (& resourceful also) to realize that they can't put all eggs in the Hybrid basket and need to diversify and keep with with the direction in which market is moving. Smartly, they are now focusing on technologies that they think will be suitable for different markets (EVs, PHV, HV, FCV).

I also think over time, it might be possible that vehicles could be manufactured with an architecture framework that is agnostic to power source and will require minimal changes to change from one fuel type to another.

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Originally Posted by zavegur (Post 4316871)

... So basically this project does- wind to electricity to H2 to electricity. Not sure what level of losses happen during this conversion. Would be an interesting topic to discuss and deliberate, particularly on the cost benefit of having the complete infrastructure in place for this sort of an output.

We did ask on the power loss during several energy conversion steps. It was acknowledged but the exact number was not shared. However it's a known limitation.

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Originally Posted by carmayogi (Post 4317229)

Faster EV charging helps, but hydrogen has a place for larger applications such as rail, local power stations, etc. Fuel cells are getting much much better quickly. There's a strong future for this type of energy production.

Yes, that is one area that it seems Japan govt is focusing on rather than just vehicles.

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As far as Toyota and EV is concerned, there is almost no worry for them. They are building electric cars with hydrogen as the power source. Battery technology is sort of open source - even you and I can build a Tesla battery using 18650 cells from LG or any other supplier - there are hundreds of videos on YouTube. Since Toyota already knows electric motors, software, braking, etc they can simply swap one source for another and in a matter of weeks produce a full electric car.

Yeah, that's what I had in mind when I say that in future we could have vehicles built with this "type of power source" architecture in mind.

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Originally Posted by nit787 (Post 4317373)

Being in the same industry line, I would like to share my view. Compared to EVs, hydrogen not only will reduce "Lag" time of charging, but also eliminates need of battery. Of-course, it will be replaced with cylinders but those are well designed. Also, no need to maintain them as battery packs need to, with reducing efficiency. It is similar to LNG which gets transferred from Vapour--> Liquid --> Vapour phases from end to end utilisation.
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+1.

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Originally Posted by Thermodynamics (Post 4318297)

....I have worked closely with people who research this field extensively, according to them, the viability of Hydrogen as a medium to store energy is challenging, because of one important reason "Safety". It is literally carrying a bomb in your boot....

As per Toyota engineers, this is solved for. Both the safety aspect & the diffusion of hydrogen through storage tanks. Well, the Mirai car is there in market for some time now and there are also plans to have FCV buses before 2020 Tokyo Olympics.