First hydrogen trains

[Did67]

That should not make us ignore the major news of the day: oil production is reaching record highs and prices are rising. Clearly, like any drug addict, we always need more. Even if he knows it ends at the morgue !!!!

[Ahmed]

We will have to force on the speeches of "fight against RC" and "carbon-free economy" to ward off reality!

[moinsdewatt]

First trip aboard the Alstom hydrogen train

Olivier Cognasse Factory New the 18 / 09 / 2018

Report The first hydrogen trains produced by Alstom at its Salzgitter plant began circulating on Monday September 17 between Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven with passengers.


First day of operation for the Alstom hydrogen train.

This is a world premiere taking place on the other side of the Rhine in Lower Saxony. CO2-free, sky-blue, silent, hydrogen-powered trains run on a small single-track line in the Low Saxon countryside.

In Bremervörde station, a station transforms the liquid hydrogen of a tanker truck supplied by Air Products. A truck is enough to keep the two trains running for one month. Pipes and machines compress the hydrogen that reaches the train connection.



Hydrogen is stored on the roofs. Fuel cells turn oxygen and hydrogen into electricity. Under the two wagons, batteries are recharged by recovering energy on braking. In a quarter of an hour, the train is full of energy for the day. There are two round trips a day, about 600 kilometers.

The green hydrogen expected from 2021

Two trains will run on this line until 2021 in commercial service. These are the two prototypes converted into pre-series that have been approved. But in less than three years, the industrialist Alstom will have to deliver 14 new Coradia iLint trains to the organizing authority, LNVG.

The French manufacturer is for the moment largely ahead of this technology. Some people do not believe and rely on super batteries, but the hydrogen train is already ready to fill a gap. Replace polluting diesel trains for this technology.
In France, 41% of the network is not electrified, against 38% in Germany and even 62% in the United Kingdom. "We started from the observation that a considerable part of the network is not electrified", explains Stefan Schrank, project manager. He also mentions an economic criterion with the medium and long-term increase in the price of diesel, without forgetting the environmental constraints. "Currently, gray hydrogen can reduce CO2 emissions by 45%. With green hydrogen, it will be less 100%."

When the 14 new Coradia iLint trainset will be delivered in 2021, the current station will be replaced by a larger one and Linde will supply hydrogen. It should be green and it will take about three quarters of an hour to recharge each train that will perform four to five round trips a day. The gaseous hydrogen will be injected into the trains from a steel container about 12 meters high, near the tracks still in Bremervörde station. With a full, the trains will have a total autonomy of 1 000 kilometers.

France wants to homologate a train in 2022

On the quay of the small Bremervörde station, and all along the route, at each stop, the inhabitants came to see this curiosity to take a picture of it. Accustomed to a rather noisy train, they were surprised by his silence. This project started four years ago has already passed the main stages. Other German Länder are interested in regional transport, such as Lower Saxony and the operator of the EVB network, but also Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and France, whose government wants the train is approved in 2022. And if the trains are produced in Germany, the Alstom site in Tarbes designed the power train.

https://www.usinenouvelle.com/article/p ... om.N742669

[moinsdewatt]

But what is the interest of using hydrogen as a substitute for fuel? Hydrogen is made from methane, with a very poor energy efficiency, or electrolysis (and the yield is even worse, especially since in Germany electricity is very carbonaceous); it would be infinitely easier to use methane directly ...

All this strongly smacks of the com 'operation, without tail or head ... Even an economic argument hardly holds up: creating from scratch a "hydrogen" network and logistics is obviously very expensive ...

The aim is to use the surplus electricity of the wind turbine and / or German solar PV when this occurs in order to make the H2 by electrolysis.
the H2 is storable.

[sen-no-sen]

It's nice to make trains that run on hydrogen, but perhaps it would have been smarter to extend the electrification of the French rail network and stop closing secondary lines before!
The management of SNCF is simply catastrophic, it's simple we do the opposite of what should be done.
The "hydrogen sector" is a real sea serpent it will not have a future as long as we do not produce in mass, that is to say not before the mastery of fusion, it is therefore anything but a solution short term.

[Bardal]

But what is the interest of using hydrogen as a substitute for fuel? Hydrogen is made from methane, with a very poor energy efficiency, or electrolysis (and the yield is even worse, especially since in Germany electricity is very carbonaceous); it would be infinitely easier to use methane directly ...

All this strongly smacks of the com 'operation, without tail or head ... Even an economic argument hardly holds up: creating from scratch a "hydrogen" network and logistics is obviously very expensive ...

The aim is to use the surplus electricity of the wind turbine and / or German solar PV when this occurs in order to make the H2 by electrolysis.
the H2 is storable.

Are you sure this is what is happening? The final efficiency is in this case very bad: 0,5 for electrolysis, 0,8 for compression, 0,5 for the fuel cell… 4 kWh thrown out the window for 1 kWh in the end… Germany is rich !!! And I did not count the "sides", nor the investment, nor the logistics.
But I am especially afraid that this hydrogen is produced by cracking methane, as it is done in 90% of cases ...

[Did67]

Currently, it is! [produced by cracking - interview of a project manager at Alstom]

[moinsdewatt]

Germany is ALREADY confronted with the problem of overproduction of electricity from wind and solar PV.

and in case of overproduction the prices of electricity in the spot market collapse or even become negative.

That is why the manufacture of hydrogen must be looked at.

[izentrop]

With the ENR, we put the cart before the horse and here as elsewhere, this story of hydrogen is based only on financial calculations.

To regulate momentary overproductions, it would be more judicious to create preferential hourly rates to charge electric car batteries for example, to offer preferential prices to households that would be equipped with batteries for example, but for that we are not yet loans.

[Bardal]

Germany is ALREADY confronted with the problem of overproduction of electricity from wind and solar PV.

and in case of overproduction the prices of electricity in the spot market collapse or even become negative.

That is why the manufacture of hydrogen must be looked at.

Yes, we understood, but for the moment, this situation of overproduction is very marginal, and concerns only a small scale of electricity production; it only exists because it is more expensive to shut down coal plants than to sell at "negative price". This absurd situation arises only from the absolute priority given to "green" energies for access to the network. It is this legal-administrative situation which induces this artificial "overproduction", not a hypothetical availability of free energy ...

It is not therefore a question of energy storage, but rather the search for a means of evacuating an artificial surplus of production -production which is very emitting of CO2 and of various deleterious pollutants - by wasting the 3 / 4 ...

Note the absurdity of the situation:

- we develop at great expense its intermittent and fatal energy (500 billion euros committed in Germany on these 10 last years)

- We maintain, and for good reason, the carbon production means to cover the periods when these intermittent energies do not provide (it is more than 70% of the production) and some nuclear power stations.

- we are still investing (not a straw: a production line of hydrogen, a distribution network and machines capable of burning this hydrogen) to dispel, pure loss, 3 / 4 surpluses induced by this absurd situation artificially created. ..

Are we not going to stop this silly story one day?

ps What do we want to prove with these hydrogen trains? That we can produce electricity with hydrogen? But it's been more than a century that we know this !!! In fact, today these trains are an economic and ecological absurdity (they emit twice as much GHG as if they were running on coal); tomorrow, they will be-perhaps-less harmful ecologically, but they will remain an economic absurdity).

We are really living a great time ...