Hydrogen Refueling Station explodes in Norway - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: station240
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 12:45:21 pm
content: https://interestingengineering.com/hydrogen-fueling-station-explosion-halts-fuel-cell-car-sales-by-toyota-hyundaiQuoteOuch, that's completely demolished.These stations for refueling Hydrogen cars go almost no use in Norway, there are very few of them, and barely any cars either.It's really another alternative technology that isn't any way better than alternatives (pure EV, hybrid, petrol).

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 12:47:06 pm
content: One year old news and already discussed on this forum.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 08:20:18 pm
content: Hydrogen is dead for cars.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 08:59:47 pm
content: Hydrogen is simply too complicated and too difficult compared to the (many) alternatives.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 11:12:31 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on June 27, 2020, 08:20:18 pmHow can something that hasn't been alive be dead? The reality is that hydrogen offers a good way for the big oil companies to keep making money from fossil fuels and thus protect their investments. And hydrogen is cheaper to store and transport compared to electricity. Chances are high (80%) we'll see the demise of electric cars this decade in favour of hybrids (running on bio-fuels) and hydrogen. The hydrogen infrastructure will be necessary anyway for trucks & busses so it doesn't make any sense to have an electric charging infrastructure in parallel.For example: Nikola Motor Company got valued at over US $20 billion almost overnight. Their product? Hydrogen fuell cell trucks. Well, they didn't sell a single unit yet. Try to convince people again that hydrogen has no futureIf you'd follow the news you would have noticed everything and everyone is going for hydrogen nowadays.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 11:21:47 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 27, 2020, 11:12:31 pmIt's very expensive/difficult to transport and store. The only place where it's less expensive to store is within cars compared to batteries. Electricity is way cheaper/easier to transport.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2020, 11:24:38 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on June 27, 2020, 11:21:47 pmNot over long distance. Try transporting electricity from Australia to Europe for example.See this article on shipping hydrogen from Australia to Japan as part of a pilot project:https://newatlas.com/marine/kawasaki-worlds-first-liquid-hydrogen-transport-ship/There are obstacles to overcome and improvements to make for sure. But that is true for any new technology. Investments in hydrogen are huge though so expect rapid progress.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 12:33:42 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 27, 2020, 11:24:38 pmAs you cannot liquefy it at reasonable temperature, it's very lame. As lame as transporting electricity over a very long distance, there is no rational basis to do so.Also:QuoteSuper energy efficient. Converting with less than 30% efficiency. 3 tonnes of hydrogen contains the same amount of energy as 45 tonnes of brown coal and you need to spend 160 tonness of brown coal to produce it. Green as fuck.Quote

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 02:09:23 am
content: Brown coal is better used for producing soil amendments, which can then support growing trees that sequester carbon.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 02:54:59 am
content: Hydrogen was a good idea as a stopgap, it was never a fuel, it's a battery of sorts which had a far higher energy density than lead-acid. You can use electricity to crack water to get hydrogen and you can burn the hydrogen back into water using a fairly conventional ICE to extract the energy, it made sense at the time. Battery technology has improved greatly though as well as electric motors and the electronics to drive them. The pure EV is a mature mainstream product now that is mass produced by numerous manufactures and has achieved widespread use (though I know a few are not encumbered by reality and pretend this is not the case). I think it's pretty clear that the foreseeable future is a mixture of pure EVs and fossil fuel/electric hybrids. EVs serve those needing short to medium range commuters and city cars while hybrids meet the needs of those needing longer range or who lack convenient charging facilities at home. Old fashioned pure ICE cars and trucks will also be with us for many more years too however I expect them to steadily become more of a niche product.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 03:12:20 am
content: sorry but why are we shipping hydrogen half way around the globe? Ive got bucket loads of the raw ingredients about 20 foot from here,out the tap in my kitchen.As for the explosion,bit of a knee jerk reaction,the uk didn't stop the use of oil based fuels when buncefield, milford haven or grangemouth went pop in a much more spectacular way.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 03:19:52 am
content: Stored energy is dangerous, there's simply no way around that. If you can pack enough energy into a car to propel it for a decent range and extract that energy quickly enough to do the job then you can have a spectacular unintended release of that energy under the right circumstances.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 04:16:39 am
content: I can across this work being done in Australia (and elsewhere). Clearly some work has been ongoing to solve the varieous issues.https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/csiro-demonstrates-ammonia-to-hydrogen-fueling-system/That website seems to have wide coverage of activities involving the conversion and storage of Ammonia as a medium for transporting Hydrogen.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2020, 09:38:02 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 28, 2020, 12:33:42 amYou have to see the big picture here. I wrote it before and I'll write it again: on paper Australia has a huge opportunity to become a large hydrogen producer from solar energy. There is a stable government and lots of sun & space for large amounts of solar panels. But you have to start somewhere. If there are no customers for the hydrogen then it makes no sense to invest in solar. It seems the pilot project serves to gather a customer base for hydrogen in order to get the ball rolling. Australia's number 1 export product are fossil fuels. If that goes away they have a big problem so either way Australia has to make sure they change to a different market before it is too late.Quote from: james_s on June 28, 2020, 02:54:59 amYeah right. Meanwhile the entire world is switching to hydrogen. Over here they are currently doing trials with trains on hydrogen (instead of diesel) and when the natural gas piping system is maintained/upgraded every new valve and coupling they use is suitable for hydrogen.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2020, 02:16:17 pm
content: How can there have been a "massive explosion" if the building is still standing?I would have expected there at least be a big hole in the ground with flattened trees around it.It looks more like a small incident.HVDC can be transported economically over quite long distances. Not yet from Australia to Europe, but from the Sahara to Europe seems feasible with current technology. In South America there are already some 2000+km HVDC lines, and China built a 3200km HVDC line in 2019.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 08:25:22 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 28, 2020, 09:38:02 amPeople are continuing to work on a number of aspects related to hydrogen fuel cells and there have been a lot of demo fleets, but hydrogen is very much *not* currently taking over the world, certainly not for vehicles. If anything it is receding, Nikola motors or not. It isn't clear given their efficiency and capital cost if they can ever even in principle be cost competitive with today's BEVs, especially when powered by renewable hydrogen rather than fossil fuel sources.

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 08:53:06 pm
content: The damage does not even look that bad. Well possible that just a compressed gas cylinder was mechanical rupturing. Storing hydrogen often used high pressure and this alone is quite a danger. The stored hydrogen it usually not mixed with oxygen, so it would not explode. Light hydrogen is not that likely to form really explosive mixtures even with a leak.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 09:00:31 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on July 07, 2020, 08:25:22 pmAmongst the many downsides with EVs there are two very relevant ones where it comes to hydrogen: 1) range & charging times are not going to improve that much so an EV can match that of an ICE car in the coming decade. 2) Hydrogen infrastructure (which is needed anyway for heavy/long range transport anyway; so it is basically free for cars to use) is much cheaper compared to EV charging infrastructure. Just look at Toyota; if you read carefully all the cars they call electric are either hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell based. We'll see what the future brings but the way things are going EVs are heading in the direction of micro-cars for short city trips.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 10:45:40 pm
content: I know very well what the supposed advantages and disadvantages of FCV vs BEV and I certainly could debate the relative value of those points or how reasonable the assumptions underlying them are. I just see little to no evidence that the industry is as a whole is actually moving towards mass market FCVs or strong fuel cell adoption in any other industry for that matter. Your statement that "anyone watching the news sees how this is going" doesn't seem to have any bearing in reality, and one company with zero products doesn't really change that -- especially when they are hedging their bets on both pure FCVs and BEVs (which makes sense: all FCVs have a BEV inside them). The idea that BEVs will meet their demise at the hands of FCVs in this decade is a totally outlandish timeline.

author: JohnG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 11:36:03 pm
content: Batteries are getting cheaper a lot faster than hydrogen storage systems.If better means of transporting and storing hydrogen are not found, it won't go far. Huge pressures, low volumetric storage energy density, scaling cryogenics to production levels, special alloys and materials, low production efficiency, etc. Different schemes trade these off, but they all need some serious invention and/or cost reduction to solve. Fuel cells and electrolyzers that do not use expensive precious metals are not high volume production by anyone. And, it will leak into the smallest gap, including grain boundaries in many materials, and this gets worse under pressure.If they find a good, transportable storage medium (CH_4 and NH_3 come to mind), and low-cost, high efficiency methods to convert them, maybe it will go somewhere. This is still far from production, though.Please note that making 10 000 cars at a huge loss is not even close to high volume production. 18650 cells alone are already a multi-billion USD$ annual industry, and while lithium supplies may be limited, for sure they are not as limited as platinum or palladium.JohnEDIT: forgot to add, that is a pretty lame explosion. I don't even see an empty crater!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 01:50:18 am
content: I've seen literally hundreds of BEVs, I've ridden in half a dozen of them, I've driven at least three of them, I personally know at least 5 people who own them. They are mass produced mainstream products that are already widely deployed.I've seen exactly zero FCVs, maybe they'll be commonplace some day but I see absolutely no evidence of that. It's quite obvious that barring some kind of unforeseen technological revolution the next 20 years or so will be dominated by ICE/electric hybrids and BEVs. This doesn't take any kind of guesswork, one need only look at what's on dealer lots and roads around the world today.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 02:26:53 am
content: no dealer lots for my BEV. wish I could give rides to friends, maybe with the bio hazard filter on and real masks. 3.5 years with no crawling under for fluid changes, having to see a dealer shop. Unfortunately my ICE Honda Element will likely outlive me. Drive it once in a while to blow out the leaves and chipmunks.Ugh, oil change soon, worst filter in the world to change. Dealer would probably "miss" it.Too old to go for a second BEV.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 02:55:10 am
content: Quote from: jh15 on July 08, 2020, 02:26:53 amIt seems to me the battery is the big weak point in a BEV, sooner or later (hopefully later!) it will "go"... and that is likely going to be a traumatic financial event similar to a blown engine or transmission in an ICE car, maybe worse!

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 03:26:44 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 08, 2020, 01:50:18 amI've seen exactly one BEV, at least in the modern sense.(it was the little "Lotus clone" Tesla roadster.)When I visited the UK many years ago, they had large numbers of "milk floats"------little lead acid battery operated trucks used by milkmen for home delivery of that product.I have ridden in a FCV----------a bus operated by Transperth, the local public transport setup.They ran several of these for some years for "evaluation", but eventually decided the problems were too much to go for a whole fleet of them.There are a lot of Hybrids around, & I have ridden in one which was a taxi.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 04:59:52 am
content: Maybe it's regional? The Seattle area is crawling with Teslas, Leafs, Kia Souls and others. I see them every day, or rather I did pre-Covid when I was still going places. If you live out in the sticks I'd expect to not see them around, they're city, suburb and commuter cars. They are absolutely mainstream here and have been for >5 years now.Most of the buses here are battery electric hybrid. I do worry about the batteries in EVs but I thought hybrids were going to be dropping like flies when they hit 8-10 years old too however I was wrong and that hasn't happened. My partner has a 2002 Prius that is still going strong on the original traction battery, that's 18 years old now and has WAY outlasted my expectations. I don't know if pure EVs will manage that however the Tesla roadster came out in 2008 and the model S in 2012 so there ought to be some reasonable data on long term reliability by now.I found this from 2015, that was 5 years ago and the number I see around has increased very noticeably since then.https://insideevs.com/news/326818/plug-in-electric-car-registrations-by-county-in-state-of-washington/At that point there were 7,259 EV's registered in King County which is the region surrounding Seattle, increasing to 18,154 just a year later according to another source. It's very clear looking at the map that EVs are clustered around the cities along the I-5 (freeway/motorway) corridor and Spokane on the eastern side of the state.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 08:48:42 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 08, 2020, 04:59:52 amEV sales are very regional indeed. There is a saying amongst stock traders: past results are no guarantee for the future. Nokia mobile phones where mainstream too at some point and nobody could ever imagine a world without Nokia mobile phones. In Europe there is a massive roll-out of hydrogen fueling stations going on with Germany, Denmark, Austria and Switserland in the lead. EV sales in France and Germany are minimal; people just don't buy them because EVs lack the range needed for those countries. In the Netherlands I see a lot of EVs but as soon as I cross the border the number of EVs drops to zero.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 10:43:15 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 08:48:42 amEV sales are driven by various tax / subsidy policies by the government, which can vary from country to country. E.g. in Scandinavia it has been very favourable financially to buy an EV... so, surprisingly, people did!

author: uer166
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 08:23:17 pm
content: Passenger EV car sales globally in 2019: 2,200,000, and ramping up quickly with Model Y and continued Model 3 production.Hydrogen car sales globally in 2019: 7500, or a whopping 0.3% of EV sales.What are you guys even talking about. Hydrogen vehicles make absolutely no sense for many engineering reasons (round-trip energy efficiency, storage, shortages that caused Toyota to give out loaner ICE cars in California). Even ignoring all that it's clear where the world is headed, and after driving (including long road trips) many EVs, there is no competition here, EVs are here to stay, which is a good thing! The grid already exists, and yes it is mostly good enough as-is since 95% of charging is destination charging anyway. Or course there's some slight regional differences, but the market overall has spoken, really it was over for Toyota's hydrogen endeavors as soon as Model S was released 8 years ago.I'm honestly surprised that anyone (impartial, not including oil/gas companies) would even consider hydrogen as a viable alternative to lithium batteries as storage.Refs:https://insideevs.com/news/397240/hydrogen-fuel-cell-sales-2019-7500-globally/https://insideevs.com/news/396177/global-ev-sales-december-2019/

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 10:09:45 pm
content: And you go on refering to the definition of biased websitesTalking about fake newsFor starters: the number of 2.2 million cars includes plug-in hybrid cars.Disqualifying or underestimating the oil & gas companies is a big mistake. That is a multi-trillion dollar business and they aren't going down without a fight. Hydrogen does offer range and ease of refueling. In comparison an EV is just a crutch no matter how you sugar coat it (for example: in Germany EV owners are becoming less satisfied with their EVs mostly due to charging issues). Hydrogen is a good way for the oil & gas companies to make money until they squeeze the last bit of coal, oil and gas from the ground.And you also need to consider things like backwards compatibility. If you buy an EV now then how can you be sure you can buy a new battery in 10 years from now? And can you still charge it at every charger or is the charging system on your car too outdated in 15 to 20 years from now? Hydrogen is much simpler; it is very unlikely they are going to change the filling coupling. It works to refill in 5 minutes and doesn't need improving.The EU is going to put much more effort into hydrogen in the upcoming years:https://ec.europa.eu/info/files/research-and-innovation-key-driver-hydrogen-strategy_en

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 10:48:59 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 10:09:45 pmIt offers none of those. Range sucks because hydrogen is hard to store and good luck finding where to refuel it. Say 2020 Toyota Mirai range is lower than LR Tesla model 3, at higher price and much worse performance. Also hydrogen fueling stations have some huge throughput problems. They simply are not able to fuel several cars in a row. Not to say with electric car you never need to visit a charger unless you make a long trip as you can charge it at home.

author: uer166
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 10:52:50 pm
content: The source is both pro-EV and pro-hydrogen, not sure what you mean by biased? It is literally just the sales numbers, not sure how can you claim that a number is "fake news", it's much more objective than your anecdotes.Not disqualifying or underestimating oil companies, they will grasp at straws trying to keep up, which is why there is so much (misdirected, IMO) investment into H2. Talking about backwards compatibility is laughable, I can charge my car from any outlet: Shcuko/NEMA, almost any common voltage from 100 to ~280V."Hydrogen is much simpler" lmao, cryogenics, high-tech materials, extreme pressures. I hope I'm not feeding a troll here.From your own document: "H2ME deployed 29 hydrogen refuelling stations and 325 vehicles", I'm sorry but this is a less than a rounding error in EV world, even disqualifying all range-extended EVs. In one week the Tesla factory down the road probably made around 4000 pure EVs.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:03:43 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 10:09:45 pmHow can you be sure that you will be able to buy a replacement for a degrading fuel cell?https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73011.pdfQuote

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:10:50 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 08, 2020, 10:48:59 pmYou have to start comparing apples with apples here. EVs have been on the market for nearly 15 years already and in the beginning they suffered from the exact same problems. More hydrogen fuelling stations will be rolled out. Throughput problems are easy to solve; just add more outlets just like a regular gas station has more pumps to service more customers simultaneously. Hydrogen cars aren't mass produced yet so ofcourse the price is higher but when production numbers increase, the price will go down.Quote from: wraper on July 08, 2020, 11:03:43 pmFrom the same document:technology advancement should allow fuel cell stacks to meet the target in 2–4 years.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:15:03 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 11:10:50 pmSomewhat mass market-ish Tesla model S is available since 2012, Toyota Mirai since 2014. I don't see a huge difference in release years but I see a huge difference in infrastructure and number of cars made. Even if you take numbers for EV from a few years back to make comparison even, the difference is staggering.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:24:23 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 11:10:50 pmBut Tesla promises a million mile battery. Current batteries are not bad either.EDIT: BTW their target still sucks

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:29:00 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 08, 2020, 11:15:03 pmTesla's Roadster is from 2008. You have to compare first 'production' car with first 'production' car and not a random model.And Tesla's million-mile battery still needs time to charge and fine grained infrastructure. In the Netherlands the grid already has capacity problems with charging EVs at the street level in some places. How is that different compared to limited throughput of a hydrogen filling station? At least fitting a hydrogen filling station with an extra pump sounds a whole lot easier to me compared to opening kilometers of street to replace the grid wiring. A German study from a few years back already showed that hydrogen infrastructure is 4 times cheaper compared to that for electric cars. You are severely underestimating the complexity and costs (transport, grid upgrades and storage) of a true mass scale use of electric cars. If you look at scalability and the possibility of using renewable energy (IOW the big picture) then hydrogen definitely holds better cards. EVs are ahead right now but they will hit a wall at some point.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:44:44 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 11:29:00 pmTesla Roadster was a niche car assembled basically in a shed. Not at a real production plant from a real car manufacturer. Also I can argue that Hydrogen powered buses were transporting passengers since at least 2004.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Buses_route_RV1

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:49:52 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 08, 2020, 11:29:00 pmAgain you ignore all other non existing infrastructure needed for Hydrogen production and delivery. Also filling stations are nor that simple, nor cheap to build.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 06:08:42 am
content: Quote from: uer166 on July 08, 2020, 10:52:50 pmKeep in mind you're arguing with a religious zealot of sorts who fervently believes that EVs will never catch on, despite the inconvenient fact that they already caught on years ago and are widespread mainstream mass produced products today. It's like debating with a flat earther, facts are meaningless, we've been through all this before in countless threads, you'd think I'd know better than to get sucked into it.Maybe hydrogen has achieved some widespread adoption in some parts of the world but I can say with certainty that it's stillborn in the USA. I've never seen a hydrogen filling station and am not aware of any that exist at all in this state. I was unable to find much information but apparently there are a whopping 33 of them throughout the entire nation with most in California. Due largely to our mature hydroelectric infrastructure in the Northwest we enjoy abundant electricity at some of the lowest prices in the world likely contributing to the enormous popularity of EVs here. The battle is already over in this country and EVs and gasoline/electric hybrids won, already achieving critical mass. Hydrogen cars remind me of lamps like the VU1 ESL bulb that arrived on the market a decade too late, touting efficiency half that of the LED bulbs that had already achieved widespread use. The ESL bulb was great compared to incandescent and hydrogen cars compared very favorably to the anemic and temperamental lead-acid and brushed motor powered EVs of 10-15 years ago but technology marches on.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:42:45 am
content: Hydrogen seamed like a good idea back then but its simply unpractical.Yes you can produce hydrogen with zero emissions by spiting water using sunlight, but its cheaper to make it from fossil fuels, so most hydrogen ends up coming from there. So regardless if the car burns it in an engine or feeds it to a fuel cell, its still just gasoline with extra steps.And those 'extra steps' are particularly annoying ones too, worst of all being storage. Yes hydrogen gas has a really really good weight to energy ratio, BUT that is not including the weight of the insanely high pressure tank required to hold it squeezed down into a more reasonable volume. To make things worse strong tanks are more spherical in shape, so it can make it difficult to integrate into a car (Or take the extra weight penalty of a long thin tank). To alleviate the high pressure issues somewhat they like to use a 'chemical sponge' to suck it up and store it more densely with less pressure, but these chemicals also have weight and are similarly nasty stuff as batteries (The stuff even catches fire if it comes contact with air)But what about storing electricity?Its also a pain in the ass involving heavy hazardous containers called batteries. So why is it any better? Its even heavier and more expensive than a hydrogen tank. So from the point of view of the car it is even worse! Well... on the other hand getting the energy into the car is much much easier. All that is needed to fill'er up is to plug the car into the electrical grid, no intermediate storage needed, no trucks needed to transport it, no expensive equipment needed to pump it in. Once the electricity is in then the car can turn it into motion with very little loss to heat.But what about range? 300km on a charge is pathetic.Yes the range is not quite there and filling up a EV is a lot slower. But with the new fast charger infrastructure you can get most of a charge in 30 minutes. Just relax for those 30 minutes, take a bathroom break, get a coffee and by the time you get back to the car its ready for another 250km.But making electricity also makes CO2!Yes but almost all the energy is turned into turning the wheels on the car. Very little is lost to conversion processes and transport. Besides not all electricity is dirty. For example here in Slovenia of all the electricity we produce 55% of it is carbon neutral (Hydro, Solar, Nuclear) and only 26% comes from coal plants. As opposed to 95% of all hydrogen in the world being made from fossil fuels.Yes electric cars, hybrid cars...etc still have a way to go. For that reason im not going to replace my diesel burning car any time soon. But so far electric looks like our best bet for the year 2040

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 08:31:34 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 09, 2020, 06:08:42 amThat is a good display on knowing yourself. Thanks for clarifying!Unlike many I have done actual research & calculations on the amount of energy needed, available renewable energy sources, environmental impact, availability of materials, real costs of ownership, political situations, etc. Based on that research (not opinion!) a mass scale implementation of EVs is just highly (80%) unlikely. The handfull of EVs that are around now are not a sign of what is to come; your opinion is based on anecdotal evidence and probably fed by hype as well. Ofcourse you can continue with cherry picking & micro-engineering solutions for one little aspect but the big picture is just different. Let's just see what happens in the next decade and go from there.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 12:52:26 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on July 09, 2020, 07:42:45 amThe actual range is closer to twice of that unless you buy cheap or drive mad.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 12:52:41 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 09, 2020, 08:31:34 amIf some kind of technological leap makes it much cheaper / more efficient to use hydrogen as a fuel, mankind would find a way to make it happen. But it is probably fair to say we are not there yet?Meanwhile, in 2020, it seems a hybrid or plug-in hybrid is still a very good solution, probably more practical/ less hassle overall than a pure electric vehicle. A hybrid (even a plug in hybrid) passes the "wife test" here, but a pure electric does not. Hydrogen? Fuggedaboudit!

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 01:09:39 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 09, 2020, 12:52:26 pmYes you can get 600km in a good electric car too, but 300km is a fairly common bar that most cars can do. Also not every car is a Tesla that can use the ridiculously fast proprietary chargers, so other car brands are going to have a tough time filling up the larger battery size models in 30 minutes as the standardized fast chargers are normally not as fast as the Tesla ones.Its not perfect yet, but hey there is still plenty of dinosaur juice left in the mean time.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:01:08 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on July 09, 2020, 07:42:45 amEveryone I know who has an EV charges at home. They pull into the garage, carport or driveway and plug in the cord as they get out, it's a simple habit much like plugging in one's smartphone before bed. That's the main feature they all rave about, no more having to go out of their way to stop and get gas, instead just plug in the car when they get home and it's always full and ready to go in the morning. For a commuter car it's a total non-issue, provided the car has enough range to make the round trip to your job with enough left over to go to the grocery store or whatever. They've been doing this for years now, it's not some hypothetical thing that might work, it's actual been there, done that, present day real life.It's only the facts that I already have an old car that I very much like and that I don't commute by car that keeps me from getting one myself. If I could plug a hose into my car at home that would trickle gasoline into the tank filling it up overnight instead of ever having to go to a gas station I'd be all over that.

author: JohnG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:32:45 pm
content: In my last job with a large industrial conglomerate, there was a period of time when an intensive amount of work went into the "hydrogen" economy. The conclusion was that hydrogen is great by itself, but it is really, really expensive if you want to move or store it in large amounts, so it's niche applications only if you want your business to survive. All the technical issues have been brought up and rehashed over and over, so review this thread and others if you are not aware of them.Existing infrastructure for natural gas is for the most part not suitable for hydrogen. It already leaks too much, and it will leak H2 a lot more readily than methane. Embrittlement is a serious concern, and many pipelines, valves, joints, etc. would need replacement with more expensive ones. So much so that a lot of research has go into mixing H2 and CH4 for pipeline transport of H2, but the amount of H2 is a small fraction of CH4, and then you need separators, etc. Most gasoline stations do not have big enough natural gas pipelines to support automotive fueling, anyways, and this leads to tanker trucks. Any gas station that is converting to H2 needs new and extremely expensive storage tanks, and if you need tanker trucks, you will need to replace the existing tanker trucks with far more expensive ones. The upshot is that the existing infrastructure cannot safely support hydrogen without inspecting, upgrading, and replacing most of it with a much more expensive infrastructure.Methane, LPG or CNG could be done at a much lower cost, but the benefit of these over gasoline is not enough to get a lot of attention.Fuel cells have their own issues. Expensive materials, susceptibility to degradation from pollutants (they use air, unless you suggest having LOX tanks to go with the H2 tanks). Filters and air cleaners need maintenance, differing humidities affect performance, etc. They also tend to have a narrow operating range of power compared to batteries, due to issues with gas flow through the stack among other things at the low end, and cost at the high end. This means they need to be paired with a battery to be practical for the wide load range of a vehicle. They need pumps, cooling systems valves, purging systems, etc.And, they still need all the same power converters whose size depends on primarily on peak traction power, so the only savings is in the size of the battery. You still need all the rest of the power electronics, and even more controls.While this can all be solved technically, e.g. the $60 000 Toyota, it's really expensive.Batteries also have the advantage of having a huge application space outside of the automotive industry (portable electronics), so automotive companies can take advantage of much of this R&D at low cost to themselves compared to fuel cell technology.On the other hand, there is always the possibility of a breakthrough in fuel cells, though it seems to me that most of the work left is really the long slog through the muck of incremental improvements and cost reduction. That's just MHO, though. Maybe a better route would be flow batteries, which are like a fuel cell anyways. And, if we all move to fleets of autonomous cars, then refueling time becomes a significant benefit because it keeps you on the road and making money.Fuel cell research has been for the most part a great way to burn money, but there may be an exception on the horizon:https://www.plugpower.com/. They have managed to grow a lot, and once in a while, they make a profit. Hard to tell if they will last, or it's just a big bubble.Cheers,John

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 08:51:16 pm
content: Methane and CNG have similar storage problems as hydrogen, just not quite as bad. They both have low density and can't be practically liquefied at room temperature, so very high pressures are used to store it in a reasonably compact way.But LPG does not have this problem and did catch on in a lot of Europe. Here in Slovenia id say about 1/3 of gas stations offer LPG so it is not difficult to find. A lot of the reason is that the infrastructure is simple. All they need is a regular household propane tank (some houses use propane for heating) and an existing propane truck that fills these tanks. It only takes a few atmospheres of pressure to hold it liquefied at ambient temperature and once liquefied has only slightly less energy density than gasoline. The actual pump at the gas station is slightly different since it needs to handle fuel under pressure, but the liquefied gas can be moved around with normal low pressure liquid pumps much like gasoline. Tho almost no car brands actually make cars that work on LPG, but it costs about 1000€ to retrofit a LPG system to a car (tho fitting it to a diesel engine is pretty tricky, so best to stick to gasoline engines). But why would anyone retrofit this to there car? Well the price of LPG is about 1/2 the price of gasoline. So if you drive a decent amount you can recoup the retrofit cost in a year and from then on save about half on fuel costs for the rest of the cars lifespan. So it makes a lot of financial sense to do it and this is why there are a lot of LPG burning cars on the road here. Its also slightly better for the environment regarding emissions (but car owners don't care about that). I did drive a LPG powered car for a fair few years and it works.Now i ended up with a diesel and the fuel costs for that are reasonably good since they get better mileage and diesel tends to be a good bit cheaper per liter here (Well with the recent events gasoline is really cheap too now). And this is the reason why i don't want an electric or hydrogen or whatever powered car right now.I don't really have anything to gain from going to a different fuel. Sure electricity is cheaper but i can't buy a electric car(new or used) for anywhere near the price i can get a used mid class good condition dinosaur juice powered car. The upfront cost would outweigh the long term savings in my case, i don't care if i need to fill up at a gas station here or there (Its pretty quick and always along the way). Sure i do find an electric car pretty cool (especially if it has a good bit of oomph in its motor) but not enough to be willing to fork over this much money for that privilege.So why did electric cars catch on in for example Norway? Well you can buy them with no tax, they cost almost nothing to register and electricity is even cheaper there. So people can actually save money by buying an electric car, so they do.

author: JohnG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:54:38 am
content: True, methane and CNG are nearly the same. Also true that storing in liquid form is very expensive. But in gas form, I believe they have about 2-3x energy per unit volume, and you can use much cheaper materials for the pressure vessels vs H2. Still a problem though, and NH3 might be better in that respect (assuming that you are using it as a means to store and transport H2.LNG is much easier to store and transport as you point out, but at least in the US, it's often a mix of compounds. Fine for a combustion engine, though.John

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 05:38:35 am
content: Yes CNG is not as bad as hydrogen to store but it is annoying enough to make fuel tanks pretty big in cars and makes gas stations for it more complicated (Special high pressure connectors, stiff unwieldy high pressure hoses, high pressure compressors to shove the gas into the tank etc..) all while not really making much financial sense here due to the high price of CNG. As a result there is a total of 5 CNG pumps in the whole country and even those are always empty apart from the occasional bus that fills up there (Since a lot of buses ware converted to run on CNG in order to be more eco friendly)Oh and on the topic of alternative fuels. Ethanol also caught on in some parts of the world (like Brazil).Its also supposed to be better for the environment since it produces less emissions when burned and even process growing plants to make it consumes CO2. So it is a quick way of making existing gasoline cars a lot more eco friendly. But then again it also uses crops from farmland that could otherwise be used for food, while just 'making more farmland' also has some bad ecological impacts in other way.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 07:27:17 am
content: Quote from: Berni on July 10, 2020, 05:38:35 amIndeed and we won't see the end of ethanol either. I have been following making 3rd generation bio-fuels (ethanol) for a several of years as well. The US has subsidised 10 to 20 companies to turn agricultural waste (IOW: using the part of the plants that serve no purpose in order to prevent having to grow plants specifically for fuel) and from those companies only 2 or 3 succeeded to get an industrial scale process going. It is logical many people will say it is hard or even impossible. The same goes for hydrogen; it is not easy and only a hand full of companies have succeeded to acquire the expertise & technology. Still the fact the Toyota has a production model (Mirai) tells me they are confident that hydrogen is both financially en technically viable at some point. BMW is to follow soon (Germany wants to have an infrastructure which supports 60000 hydrogen cars by 2022):https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/bmw-group-news/artikel/BMWi_Hydrogen_NEXT.htmlhttps://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/how-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-work.htmlThe bottom line is that it is extremely difficult to replace fossil fuels in an economically viable way because fossil fuels are quite cheap and the technology around them has been so perfected over the last century.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 07:42:32 am
content: I don't think I'll ever own a Hydrogen car and I'll avoid hydrogen ships if I can. This is why:Scares the shit out of me.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 08:08:04 am
content: Mhm H2 does love to go boom.But then again i am also kinda scared of the massive lithium batteries in electric cars. Once it gets damaged in a car crash and starts burning the thing really burns like there is no tomorrow. Firefighters are still not quite 100% sure how to properly handle electric car fires.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 08:25:01 am
content: Which, accidently, is only going to get worse. Everybody is racing towards even higher energy density, which only means more "boom" capacity.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 10:46:01 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 10, 2020, 08:25:01 amIn that case you should put your ICE car away too... fossil fuels have a crazy high energy content per weight / volume. Because hydrogen is used more efficiently there is actually less energy in a hydrogen car compared to an ICE car. Another thing to consider: like fossil fuels hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. So putting out an hydrogen fire in a garage is just a matter of closing the doors to cut off the oxygen supply.Quote from: Berni on July 10, 2020, 08:08:04 amYup. The Dutch government body which deals with safety regulations is suggesting to put EV charging stations next to the exits of underground parking garages. Otherwise the fire department can't get to the cars at all. They also warn that a lithium fire from en EV can cause permanent structural damage to the building above because it burns so hot (IOW: the building might need to be torn down after an EV fire). Based on that I assume there will be severe restrictions on underground charging and parking of EVs in the future.

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 11:33:10 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 10:46:01 amGot a reference for that? It's interesting because petrol/diesel/interior plastics/tyres/etc. can all burn plenty hot enough to cause structural damage. Perhaps they're worried that a battery fire can burn hot in low-oxygen conditions that might suppress the temperature of a normal car fire, or something like that. Certainly if I look up "lithium battery fire temperature" I see numbers around 600 C, which is a temperature easily achievable by burning hydrocarbons. In fact we know normal car fires get this hot because it's common for aluminium parts to melt. Perhaps the implication that "normal" car fires can't cause structural damage is false, and they're simply worried about EV fire proability.In concrete buildings structural damage from fire is rare (steel framed less-so), Grenfell Tower burned very hot with conventional fuels for an extended period of time and is still structurally sound. Itcouldbe refurbished and reoccupied, though for obvious social and political reasons it almost certainly won't be.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 11:37:56 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 10:46:01 amThe two graphs up there illustrate the point of how much easier hydrogen is to ignite. Not only is it happy to burn in a wide range of concentrations in air but also needs just the smallest of sparks to light it.Combining this with the high pressures, this makes leaks easier to happen and due to it being odorless means a leak is likely to go unnoticed for a long time. Yes you could add a stinky chemical like they do with propane, but the tiny hydrogen can slip trough tighter gaps and the chemical would reek havoc on fuel cells. So its likely for a leak to reach an sufficient ignition source and burst into flames. Once the high pressure tank ends up in the fire then the pressure inside rises until it explodes violently since it also carries a lot of mechanical energy in the form of pressure (Tho this is a problem with LPG too).Yes gasoline carries a ton of energy inside of it, but its pretty reluctant in accidentaly forming explosive mixtures in air and needs a good bit of effort from a spark to actually ignite. The difficulty of getting gasoline to light is well demonstrated in one of the old mythbusters episodes about gas station explosions.For example this is what a tank failure on a CNG powered bus looks like(They typically mount long cylindrical tanks on the roof for buses):

author: Fred Basset
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 12:34:49 pm
content: OK, that video got my attention alright. I was thinking the safeguards were better than they clearly are. Hydrogen gas has the smallest molecule and so is incredibly good at finding any gaps anywhere. It is one thing to learn these things, but another to see what happens. There is no way you can see that and not be scared. It went so quickly that it seems like there would be small chance of survival.I had originally intened to say something like, thinking seriously about hydrogen fuel, the solution would seem to be not to transport it at all. If we could develop electrodes that can produce hydrogen quickly and scale that up, then you could have a fueling station that could perhaps store solar-generated electricty in underground batteries, and that the hydrogen could be produced on demand. Maybe taking 3-5 minutes ideally, but longer if necessasy, just as long as it was quicker than recharging batteries.This video has changed my mind. I would not feel safe in a hydrogen car, not unless they could be made a lot safer than that. Auto shut-off valves inside the tanks that cut in when there is a sudden pressure drop possibly? (and that would be just for a start).Thank you very much for this, I have learned a lot! You have informed my opinion and changed my views quite a bit.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 12:37:49 pm
content: Quote from: Fred Basset on July 10, 2020, 12:34:49 pmWell, the video shows a CNG (compressed methane) bus, not a hydrogen bus!The hydrogen tanks in a Toyota Mirai are litterally bullet proof! Also a big difference between hydrogen and hydro-carbon gasses like CNG is that hydrogen rises up quickly because it is less dense than air. Contrary to hydro-carbon gasses /fumes which sink to the floor.The bottom line is that you shouldn't allow yourself to be lead by FUD. Otherwise the discussion gets superficial like the war of the currentshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 12:55:37 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 12:37:49 pmThe vast majority of what natural gas contains is lighter than air.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:10:14 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 10:46:01 amI was referring to the poster just above me, so Lithium. Where there's a major drive to have them more energy dense (obviously), which is "yay" but in my book also "uhoh". If you are sitting in a diesel powered car (like mine) that's on fire I'd be happy to grab a fire extinguisher and come to your rescue. If you're sitting in a Tesla then, you know, it was nice knowing you.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:17:54 pm
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 10, 2020, 01:10:14 pmNot only Tesla catches fire way less often than ICE vehicles, fire propagates slower. Also there were only two Tesla model 3 which caught fire ever (model with the largest number of cars made) and that only happened after heavy crashes.BTW lithium batteries are nowhere near in energy density compared to fossil fuels.

author: Fred Basset
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:48:31 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 12:37:49 pmI took it at face value, a mistake. You are right, if that was hydrogen, then it would have been rising in the air more than it was wouldn't it? I am not familiar with these busses, so had believed the title.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:57:18 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 10, 2020, 01:17:54 pmI know.QuoteDoes it? Do you have a source for that? Genuinly interested.QuoteI'm well aware. That's not my point. My point is that you *can* put out a petrol fire but you *can't* put out a lithium fire.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:00:07 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 10, 2020, 01:17:54 pmThe primary problem is that you can't turn a battery fire off. On top of that a battery fire also produces a lot of toxic fumes. Both make it hard to extinguish an EV on fire which in turn causes a lot more collateral damage (including the building due to prolonged exposure to high temperatures). Fossil fuel / hydrogen fires OTOH can be dealt with by simply shutting off the oxygen supply.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:08:43 pm
content: Quote from: richard.cs on July 10, 2020, 11:33:10 amThis is an extensive report (in Dutch) about fire risks of electric cars in underground parking garages and suggestions to mitigate the risks & prevent collateral damage:https://www.ifv.nl/kennisplein/Documents/20200709-IFV-Brandveiligheid-parkeergarages-met-elektrisch-aangedreven-voertuigen.pdf

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:12:22 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 02:00:07 pmAs if ICE car on fire does not. There is a lot of plastic of other stuff to burn.QuoteOnce building catches fire, it does not matter. And ICE vehicles are well known for igniting while idle and setting houses on fire.QuoteYour argument is simply lame. Lithium batteries don't have all needed to support combustion. It needs external oxygen as well.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:29:58 pm
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 10, 2020, 01:57:18 pmYou can put out both and in both cases vehicles won't be salvageable.QuoteBattery is burning, cabin does not catch fire. Also Model 3 and Y battery have fire extinguishing compound all around the sells.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:50:20 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 10, 2020, 02:12:22 pmWell, unless lithium batteries suddenly need oxygen to discharge you are terribly wrong. If you make something hot enough (with electric current for example) there will be a chemical reaction between c.q. chemical decomposition of whatever is in the neighbourhoord. The bottom line is that lithium batteries contain energy (when charged) and when things go wrong that energy gets released in the form of heat. A lot of heat means there is a fire and that will happen with or without oxygen in case of lithium batteries.And you are wrong about being able to put out a lithium battery fire quickly; in case of EVs the vehicles need to stay submerged in special containers for several days before they can be handled safely. One of the solutions proposed in the report I linked to is to have EVs parked at the lowest floor of an underground parking garage so it can be flooded with water in case of a fire. Needless to say all cars will be fubar if that happens.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:58:27 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 10, 2020, 02:12:22 pmEh? Pretty sure a Lithium battery fire brings its own oxygen?

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:09:07 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 12:37:49 pmCNG is mostly methane so it is also lighter than air. And even the low pressure LPG tanks are literally bullet proof. And they do have shutoff valves in case the line gets ripped off.Also to be fair this sort of sudden explosive failure of a CNG tank is very rare. Even if the tanks are exposed to fire they will typically blow a safety valve before the tank has a chance to rupture. Here is yet another CNG bus video that demonstrates this safety venting:https://youtu.be/CX8RUR-WgAY?t=52These are all common problems with hydrogen, CNG or LPG. Just that due to the low pressures involved with LPG the tank explosions are much less violent. Its very rare to happen but it did happen somewhere in russia on video:https://youtu.be/5-nOPvXiIWQ?t=33Given that it is Russia the LPG install was probably done half assed with questionable quality parts to cause this failure. I hope the two guys in that car made it out with no hearing damage, but otherwise not hurt at all.That is not to say gasoline cars are perfectly safe. I seen a diesel bus spontaneously catch fire in front of me. All it takes for it to happen is something like a servo pump hose springing a leak and spraying oil over a hot exhaust pipe and you got a fire going.Its just that dealing with the results of a fire in the case of Hydrogen, CNG, LPG, Lithium.. etc powered cars tend to be trickier. Its not just a problem exclusive to Hydrogen, but still safety is a point against it when comparing it to gasoline. I did drive a LPG car for many years and i realize getting into a fire situation would be a very bad time, but its such a rare thing that it never bothered me.EDIT:Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 10, 2020, 02:58:27 pmYep lithium batteries do contain oxygen since its parts of the chemistry. The oxidization of lithium is where the energy comes from. Tho the flames you see shooting out of lithium batteries are not the burning lithium, its actually the volatile boiling electrolyte that squirts out and catches fire in contact with air. So the failiure mode tends to be that damage to the cell causes an internal short between the plates of the battery, this shorted area gets so hot that it melts the battery guts and sends the rest of the battery into short circuit and this then gets hot enough to burst and barf burning electrolyte everywhere.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:16:08 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 12:37:49 pmWhile true, this doesn't really improve the situation that much. Actually you can shoot at this kind of tanks and you'll just punch a hole into them. However, then hydrogen will shoot out of this hole at roughly the speed of sound and mix with the air around it. Then it just needs the tiniest of spark and "kaboom".As a side note, what also frightens me a bit about hydrogen is the whole refueling situation. Of course the industry will come up with super-gastight, super-safe refueling stations and I'm sure they will work good enough when new and properly serviced, but look how a typical petrol station looks after a few years.Same is true for the cars of course. Even here with our permanent technical inspections of cars, there were some LPG/CNG explosions in the last years and there were product recalls in 2016 and 2017 for several VW models with older CNG tanks after cars exploded during refueling. Again, these tanks were certainly working well when new. After ten years or so, this was obviously no longer the case.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:35:01 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on July 10, 2020, 03:16:08 pmNo. The fire / explosion is still limited to the supply of oxygen.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:40:27 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 03:35:01 pmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:49:48 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 03:35:01 pmYes and there is about 5 to 15 kg of oxygen inside a garage.Not that it matters since even with non optimal mixtures in the vast range of usable combustible ratios that H2 can work in has the flame front travel rather quickly. As a result the ignition is less of a Wosh and more of a Boom. This much air is plenty of oxidizer to make a sizable bang, easily blowing the garage door away like a paper bag in the wind. Now with the door (And possibly a wall or two) out of the way it has access to all the oxygen it wants.Tho to be fair LPG would likely do a similar thing even with its slower flame front speed, but at least you would smell that stinky mixed in chemical before it happens(If it even finds its very picky fuel/air ratio at a location of a sufficiently energetic ignition source).

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:07:51 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on July 10, 2020, 08:08:04 amIt's some combination of let it burn to the ground and lots and lots of water. Water won't necessarily stop the fire but it will absorb the heat and keep it from spreading. I don't think this is a serious problem.The real problem with battery fires isnt that they are particularly worse than gasoline fires it's that they can start slowly. In some ways this is good: an EV in a crash leading to a fire will likely give you more time to safely exit the vehicle. But the threat is that it can cause a fire hours later while the car is parked or being towed. That is probably the reason people are concerned about underground carparks: not that gasoline fires are better but that gasoline cars rarely catch fire while parked unless they are a Ferrari. Also poorly designed or installed chargers can cause fires, so that would be a concern with underground parking with EV chargers. Not really the fault of the car but a risk that doesn't exist with gasoline cars. I know Tesla updated their cars to detect wiring resistance and limit current draw if there is a weak connection. I assume other manufacturers do this as well.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:08:15 pm
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 10, 2020, 08:25:01 amTo be fair, a tank of petrol also contains a frightening amount of energy and we happily zip around with one.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:27:43 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 03:35:01 pmDid you cut the oxyhydrogen experiment in school? As others pointed out, the air around us has plenty of oxygen for a pretty solid detonation. As long as the volumetric percentage of hydrogen is between 18% and 76% (which is a pretty wide range), the slightest spark will result in a hell of a bang. And this is why even experimental physicists have great respect for hydrogen. It's hard to contain, it needs very little ignition power to ignite and if ignited, it will almost always explode (and not just burn) when mixed with air (unless the percentage of hydrogen is below 18% or above 76%).

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:37:30 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on July 10, 2020, 04:27:43 pmKeeping the concentration of hydrogen low is easely achieved through a ventilation system. Which usually is already installed in underground parking garages.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:52:18 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2020, 04:37:30 pmWhich doesn't really change a thing about your original reply ("no") being plain wrong or hydrogen being much more dangerous than gasoline or even LPG/CNG.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:58:42 pm
content: Hydrogen scares the shit out of me. I have the background for this fear. ATEX/IECEX has a classification for gasses. Hydrogen goes into the most severe class, meaning that the least amount of electrical energy required to ignite it. You can ignite it with with a 50nF capacitor charged to 50V, short it out in a hydrogen air mixture -> boom. There are only a few materials that scare me that much. The other is ethylene oxide.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 05:09:33 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on July 10, 2020, 04:52:18 pmThere is a difference between creating the perfect environment to make something go 'bang' and making sure such a situation can't happen. You are trying to prove hydrogen is more dangerous compared to an LPG/CNG leak by saying that the mixture for hydrogen is less critical. I'm saying that with the current measures taken in parking garages it doesn't matter because it is already taken care of by design of the parking garages (which allow LPG/CNG). It is a non-issue.Also do some math on the amount of hydrogen. A Toyota Mirai contains at most 5kg of hydrogen. At 1 bar that is 60 cubic meters. In order to fill a parking garage to 18% you'd need a garage which is smaller than 333 cubic meters. 333 cubic meters is a room of 8.5 by 13 by 3 meters. That is the space needed for 4 parking spots in a garage and some space in between to drive in & out from a parking spot.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 05:30:55 pm
content: The sort of garage in my example was assumed to be an above ground single or double car garage attached to a house, commonly having no ventilation what so ever. So about 30m3 of air in there weighing in at about 39kg so if 20% of that is oxygen that works out to about 8kgTho the small single level underground garage at work doesn't have any active ventilation. It just has a few mesh covered shafts on the edges running to the outside, relying on the outside breeze to push a bit of air trough. but there are monoxide alarms fitted.Sure LPG can do some serious damage if ignited in an closed space, but hydrogen takes things to a bit of a higher level due to burning way faster, being way less picky about its combustible air/fuel ratio, taking much smaller of a spark to ignite and being hard to detect due to having no smell and normally no stinky smelly chemicals mixed in. But yeah one should be careful with any sort of highly energetic fuel. And this is not the reason for the slow adoption of hydrogen, the real issue is storage and expensive technology to handle and use it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 04:54:41 am
content: Quote from: Berni on July 10, 2020, 05:38:35 amCNG works well for fleet vehicles. Before my dad retired he was working for the port authority and mentioned that they had lots of trucks and also equipment like forklifts that run on CNG. They have a compressor on site that fills the equipment and none of it is stuff that requires a great deal of range.Propane is also popular, there aren't many propane powered passenger cars in this part of the world but when I was a kid at least all the school buses ran on propane and the garbage and recycle trucks in my area are propane too. My friend has a propane generator and I've been really impressed by how clean it runs, oil that would be black in a gasoline engine still looks like honey after the same amount of run time.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 04:59:29 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on July 10, 2020, 04:08:15 pmI've personally witnessed at least 3 or 4 cars fully engulfed in fire, a friend of mine got very lucky when his caught fire due to a fuel leak at the carburetor (this was in the 80s) and he had a fire extinguisher in the car. I saw a good sized motorhome engulfed once too. Stored energy is dangerous no matter what form it's stored in. Liquid fuel powered cars burn up on a very regular basis. They contain lots of other flammable materials too but the fuel is a common way for it to start.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 06:53:13 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 12, 2020, 04:54:41 amTransperth buses in Western Australia have mainly used CNG for years, although there are still a few diesel buses around.The range required is not small, as Perth is a very "spread out" city, & over time, has devoured a lot of previously "country" communities.CNG is a "no-brainer" for Western Australia, as we have large reserves of natural gas, & State governments of both parties have stuck firm to the commitment that a fairly large percentage of the output of gas fields is to be used in this State.Apart from some coal, & renewables, most of the State's electrical power comes from natural gas, so electric vehicles, including the city train network, are ultimately powerd from Natural gas.