Hydrogen-powered train makes UK maiden journey

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-54350046

by aries1980 • 6 years ago

76 67 6 years ago

bbc.co.uk

dazbradbury• 6 years ago

Seemingly on the same day as:

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/bus-ele...

1st October was a good leap forward for transport in the UK!

rwmj• 6 years ago

How do they store the hydrogen? Just big pressurised tanks? Also be interesting to see how they refuel the train, because I imagine that small hydrogen molecules are difficult to confine, while the gas is so diffuse that it must take ages.

Edit: I found a better link which has more technical details:

https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/hydroflex-hydrog...

A total of 20kg of hydrogen is stored in four high-pressure hydrogen fuel tanks whose pressure is regulated and maintained at 8.5 bar by the pressure drop regulator.

The fuel cell unit is powered by hydrogen from the tanks, while oxygen is sourced from ambient air. The fuel cell converts the mixture and generates pure water and electricity up to 100kW. Electricity generated by the fuel cell will be sent to the lithium-ion battery pack.

dn3500• 6 years ago

20 kg of hydrogen is about 2400 Mj. The Class 319 has 1 MW of motors. So the hydrogen fuel will run the train for 40 minutes at max power. Maybe 3 or 4 hours in typical use?

20 kg may not seem like a lot, but hydrogen has three times the energy content of diesel.

Xylakant• 6 years ago

It sounds as if the train has a battery pack as well, so it will recover breaking energy. Trains are uniquely suitable to energy recovery since they have mostly predictable acceleration and deceleration curves.

tremon3• 6 years ago

Keep in mind that trains expend a lot of their output power only during takeoff. Maintaining a constant velocity requires relatively little power, and with regenerative braking some energy may be recovered (the primary reason for the Li-Ion cells between the power source and the motor).

I don't have any numbers on this, high-power electronics was never my field. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if cruising power was less than 10% of max engine power.

TylerE• 6 years ago

Not unusual for trains to be at 50-75% throttle even at cruise. No getting around v^2

A lot of this is just due them being relatively underpowered since acceleration isn't usually a priority. For instance the BR Class 319 mentioned up thread has 1300hp to move over 120 tons - and the aerodynamics of a barn.

hannob3• 6 years ago

I'm very skeptical whether it makes any sense to use hydrogen on a train.

We know since many decades how to run trains on electricity. It's an established technology. It seems hydrogen trains are a cheap excuse for places where infrastructure is lacking and train tracks haven't been electrified. Except it's not cheap, because physics dictates using hydrogen will always be much less efficient compared to direct electricity use, as it includes an additional conversion step.

I think developing hydrogen infrastructure is important for sectors where no other alternatives are available. For sectors were established technologies for electrifiation already exist - not so much.

gsnedders5• 6 years ago

There's plenty of train lines in the world that see very few trains, maybe only one an hour, where the business case for electrification is much weaker. Many of these lines are already questionable from a business case point of view which can deter anything that would increase infrastructure costs, and if hydrogen trains can approach the operational cost of electric trains then there's a clear business case for them.

hannob3• 6 years ago

if hydrogen trains can approach the operational cost of electric trains

That's exceptionally unlikely. You go from "use electricity to run a train" to "use electricity to run an electrolyseur, fill hydrogen into hydrogen tanks on the train, use hydrogen to power a fuel cell to generate electricity, use that electricity to run a train".

owenversteeg4• 6 years ago

Yep. The trains in the article (Cuxhaven-Bremerhaven) go once per hour. That entire region of Germany, and the area of the Netherlands that borders it, has an enormous amount of trains running on a 1x/hourly schedule. Groningen-Leeuwarden, Groningen-Delfzijl etc etc. All running (diesel-electric) Stadler FLIRT trains, which have taken the world by storm.

The political decisions in these less populated regions are similar to small town politics in two ways: the budgets are tiny (aka no money for electrification) and a fairly small group can push things through if it fits their agenda. For those reasons I think these hydrogen trains could totally become popular for less densely populated areas like this.

pjc50• 6 years ago

The fixed cost and time consumption of electrification is quite high.

I'm not sure about hydrogen specifically, but just as steam trains had a coal+water "tender" behind the engine, it seems not unreasonable to have a "battery" car on a train. Whether that's a tank of H2 or just a boxcar full of 18650 cells (anyone care to do the maths on that?)

Gibbon12• 6 years ago

I tried doing the math a few years ago. I did another search and up popped this.

http://www.brooklynrail.net/science_of_railway_locomotion.ht...

Which has the comment: At the same speed, same load (GCW) and on level ground, any steel wheeled railway vehicle is 24.6 times more energy efficient than any large rubber tire road vehicle, regardless of the type of power source.

My hand wavy argument would be, to go 300 miles a passenger car needs 33% (guess) of it's weight to be batteries. But a truck is probably 2-2.5 times more efficient. So would only need 33% / 2.25 (split the middle between 2 and 2.5) or 15%.

If a 4000 ton train is 25 times more effecient than a truck as started above then. 15%/25 is 0.6%.

So the battery for a 4000 ton train would weigh 4000 * 0.6% -> 24 tons.

Seems to pencil out to me.

globular-toast3• 6 years ago

Overhead lines are an eyesore and third rails are dangerous. I wouldn't consider electrification the be all and all for railways. It comes with tradeoffs like anything else.

ben_w2• 6 years ago

I’ve never understood the aesthetic argument given the railways themselves — and indeed major roads — are something I find extremely ugly.

tremon3• 6 years ago

Passenger service is usually high-usage enough that the cost of electrification is worthwhile. But many freight-only lines still use diesel, even in areas where a majority of the rail net has been electrified, because little-used supply tracks lack an incentive to electrify them. If we can replace those diesel lines with hydrogen, that's a win.

Also note that the motors themselves are electric, so when this train is running on an electrified section, it could still use the overhead lines. Not sure if modern diesel engines offer that same option (i.e. if the diesel is purely used as a generator for an otherwise electric engine).

tobylane• 6 years ago

Yes, all the diesel train engines are diesel-electric, and on some routes they use bi-mode (eg electric London to near Bristol, diesel-electric to Cardiff) trains.

MLR• 6 years ago

Something like 60% of the UK rail network is unelectrified and recent electrification projects have been ruinously expensive, we need something to fill in the gaps and hydrogen definitely has potential.

gsnedders5• 6 years ago

Something like 60% of the UK rail network is unelectrified and recent electrification projects have been ruinously expensive, we need something to fill in the gaps and hydrogen definitely has potential.

It's not as bad as is often made out; with relatively few exceptions (GWML most prominently) most recent electrification programmes in the UK haven't been too much above European norms.

In general, the reasons why costs have been higher in the UK are:

* other countries having fairly constant ongoing electrification work leading to availability of skilled staff (versus massively spikes of electrification, then nothing for a decade or more),

* many more structures (e.g., overbridges, tunnels) close to the limits of the loading gauge and hence more structures work needed

* track access being more difficult in the UK (in general prolonged closures are harder to get approval for), and

* operators being compensated for service disruption.

At this point the UK really just needs an ongoing programme of electrification, as we now have high-quality modern off-the-shelf parts for most needs approved and in use on new projects, and we have designs that meet the requirements of almost all current routes.

Also worth bearing in mind is the recently announced Scottish Government plan to decarbonise rail in Scotland by 2030, which includes electrifying all the major lines in Scotland. (A few won't be, and hydrogen trains have been mooted for them, but these are mostly lines with a few trains per day where the business case for electrification is always going to be weakest, especially combined with them often being in the most challenging terrain.)

fyfy18• 6 years ago

Have there been any experiements (on a long distance route) to have battery packs on trains that are fast-charged at stations? In the UK a lot of routes are at least partially electrified, and EV chargers have proved it is fairly easy to supply a few hundred kilowatt electric supply to urban areas.

I know there are trams that work like this, but I'm wondering if the tech could be scaled up to trains.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acumulador_de_Carga_R%C3%A1p...

zenlot• 6 years ago

And it's a good way to justify ever increasing train prices in UK.

progfix• 6 years ago

because physics dictates using hydrogen will always be much less efficient compared to direct electricity use

You have to look at the whole system (and life-cycle) and not just compare single trains. I assume people with enough insight and expertise did the math and they don't just try this tech out for fun.

EDIT: Also looking at the video, the giant transformators you usually have in a Lok aren't there. That weight difference already could make hydrogen competitive.

gsnedders5• 6 years ago

Note that hydrogen-powered trains have been in regular passenger service in Germany for a couple of years now: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/17/germany-...

A bunch of the questions I saw asked about hydrogen on the UK rail network was the comparatively large size of the hydrogen tanks needed, and whether packaging of tanks of sufficient size was going to practical.

hannob3• 6 years ago

Please note these trains have a dirty secret: They run with hydrogen made from fossil gas.

hef198983• 6 years ago

The hydrogen source might change pretty soon, so. There are a ton of initiatives right now aiming at green hydrogen, all over Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East.

laurencerowe• 6 years ago

Battery-powered trains are also being developed and likely a more cost effective solution. https://www.railtech.com/rolling-stock/2020/07/09/over-400-b...

owenversteeg4• 6 years ago

wire-free range of 50 kilometres

Yep, there's your problem...

Look, I love lithium batteries as much as anyone, but the range really is a huge problem. If you take a look at the real world places that the existing diesel locomotives serve (on non-electrified lines) you have a lot of places where you're basically using one or two trainsets to go back and forth a rural line. They usually don't sit in stations for more than a minute or two, maybe 5-10 mins at each end. If each one is out of service to charge for 30 minutes once an hour, you're either demolishing the schedule or adding significantly more trainsets ($$$$).

ant6n• 6 years ago

Many lines connect rural to less rural places. As the train will get closer to the less rural place, it will start running under the wire. At the rural end of the line there can be a dedicated charging station for layovers. This way, there are plenty of opportunities to charge the trains.

In Germany, a very high percentage of Diesel Services could be replaced by trains having about 50km of autonomy - and for the rest it would be possible to fill the gaps using only a relatively small amount of electrification.

martythemaniak• 6 years ago

I'm extremely skeptical of hydrogen trains. First, we all know that hydrogen cars are never going to take off because of the massive success of batteries. But as production of batteries ramps up, prices will fall and power densities will increase in a virtuous cycle. Adoption of battery cars (already widespread) drives the adoption of cargo vans, people movers and pickup trucks (a multitude of models shipping next year), but it doesn't stop there. BYD, Tesla, Daimler and others are working on battery-powered semis and buses, and once you're there, you're basically in train territory.

Think about a train - one expensive, custom, bespoke, finicky engine and 100 dumb cars. Why not make mass-produce 100 cars with batteries and motors built in, reusing the same cells or packs that you use in cars, van, picks, lorries, etc.

The fixed nature of train routes also means you can electrify parts of it strategically (ie, a few km around a station to help a train accelerate) and rely on a mix of battery and overhead lines.

At this point hydrogen still seems possibly usable for ships and long-distance planes - short-haul planes will be electrified in the coming decade due to the same mass production that will drive EV adoption.

ngcc_hk• 6 years ago

Unlike battery you carry only 1/2 the weight of the fuel as you burn them whilst battery is dead weight even drained. Hence airline considered that more.

Just wonder why hydrogen car is so under the radar. All E except a few advertisements or waiting.

Hydrogen-powered train makes UK maiden journey

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