The world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here

[Caribbeans]

Source: CNN

CNN 24th August 2022

The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday.

Fourteen hydrogen trains powered by fuel cell propulsion will exclusively run on the route in Bremervörde, Lower Saxony. The 93 million euro ($92.3 million) deal has been struck by state subsidiary Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LVNG), the owners of the railway, and Alstom, builders of the Coradia iLint trains. The Elbe-Weser Railways and Transport Company (EVB), which will operate the trains, and gas and engineering company Linde, are also part of the project.

The trains, five of which which debut Wednesday, will gradually replace the 15 diesel trains that currently run on the route, with all 14 running exclusively by the end of the year. Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 4.5 kilos of diesel.

The trains are emissions-free and low-noise, with only steam and condensed water issuing from the exhaust. They have a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles), meaning they can run for an entire day on the network on a single tank of hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station has already been established on the route. The trains can go at a maximum of 140 kph, or 87mph, though regular speeds on the line are much less, between 80-120 kph...more

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/coradia-ilint-hydrogen-trains/index.html

---

[Caribbeans]

1. RELATED: Linde Inaugurates World's First Hydrogen Refueling System for Passenger Trains

August 24, 2022 / Linde (NYSE: LIN; FWB: LIN) today announced it has inaugurated the world's first hydrogen refueling system for passenger trains in Bremervörde, Germany.

Linde's hydrogen refueling system, which it built, owns and operates, will refuel 14 hydrogen-powered passenger trains, enabling each train to run for 1,000 km emission-free on a single refueling. It has a total capacity of around 1,600 kg of hydrogen per day, making it one of the largest hydrogen refueling systems ever built.Linde's future-ready hydrogen refueling system has been designed and constructed with the ability to integrate future on-site green hydrogen generation. The new hydrogen trains will replace existing diesel-powered trains.

"Linde is committed to making a significant contribution towards decarbonizing transport in Europe," said Veerle Slenders, President Region Europe West, Linde. "We are proud that Linde's innovative technology plays a key role in supporting this project and establishing a blueprint for cleaner public transport systems around the world." ...more
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1857151/linde-inaugurates-worlds-first-hydrogen-refueling-system-for-passenger-trains

[Diamond_Dog]

2. This is great!

Too bad we can’t have nice things like this in the USA because of Republicans who call anything new or innovative “wasteful spending”.

I remember my mom talking about the noisy, dirty trains when she was a child and they lived in southwestern PA. She said if you spent any time on the platform you’d have to brush coal dust off your clothes.

[werdna]

3. This is a BFD gamechanger; huge win in the effort to reverse CC/GW! n/t

[Evolve Dammit]

4. BFD. Germany is rocking solar too, for last 2 decades; 90 plus percent of residences.

[Lonestarblue]

5. Great news for the environment. The US train system is such an embarrassment.

People hate flying these days for many reasons, including multiple flight delays and being crammed into tight seats with no leg space. By comparison, many of the trains in Europe are comfortable and deliver you right into city centers. Even though Amtrak seats are more comfortable than economy airline seats, Amtrak is slow. I wish we had the train systems of France and Germany.

[tanyev]

8. +1

And here in Texas, an efficient train system between the big cities would make so much sense. Even when flying was easier, the trip from our house to the airport area could easily take an hour, then there was the time leaving our car at Park N Fly and transport to our gate, plus trying to get to the airport at least an hour before the flight. All of that for 30 minutes in the air. I would happily trade all that for a 2-3 hour train ride.

[nomads]

37. As well as many other countries...

Especially Spain. Spain tends to get overlooked in this area but Spain is actually a big player in High Speed Rail:

Alta Velocidad Española (AVE)[a] is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to 310 km/h (193 mph).[2] As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE service runs, is the longest HSR network in Europe with 3,622 km (2,251 mi)[1] and the second longest in the world, after China's.
[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE|


Per capita, it has the longest HSR network in the world. Spain also exports a lot of its train technology. I have ridden on this network in the past and will be taking a bullet train to Madrid next month. Such a wonderful, fast, comfortable and quiet service.

[Lonestarblue]

40. Lucky you. I love Madrid--and other parts of Spain.

My favorite small city is in northern Spain—San Sebastian. I need a return trip there someday!

[edhopper]

6. What happens

when we run out of hydrogen?

[Duppers]

38. 😁

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Where do they get the hydrogen? Also, another link

NEWS

German train line switching fully to hydrogen

Date 24.08.2022
Author Mark Hallam

A local train route in Germany is becoming the first to run a fleet of hydrogen-powered trains. Hydrogen could be a zero-emissions rail solution on quieter lines where electrification is too expensive.

{snip}

Why not just electrify the line?

Most major rail lines in Europe and Germany are being converted to run using electricity.

However, on less-used local lines, the high costs of electrification cannot always be justified. These costs can become particularly prohibitive if obstacles like tunnels and bridges require alterations to allow for clearance. Electrifying train tracks requires either a third line, uncommon on more rural routes, or overhead cables.

{snip}

Hydrogen — electric alternative with no charging times

{snip}

But there are still drawbacks with hydrogen. While it is the most abundant element on the planet, it is almost always mixed up with others — most recognizably with oxygen to form water. Extracting pure hydrogen remains expensive and requires power. And for now, the cheapest way to do it still involves using fossil fuels. But the costs of using excess renewable energy to extract hydrogen have been falling rapidly, and the expected increases in fossil fuel costs could soon make the method more attractive.

This does however mean that the rail and public transport sector will have to compete with demands from heavy industry, the automobile sector, and others, all looking to tap into the nascent power source in the coming years.

{snip}

[mitch96]

10. ". Where do they get the hydrogen?" That was my first question...Is it fossil fuel derived?

then it does not make much sense.
On the other hand if the green house gas from producing hydrogen is LESS than using diesel for the engine then it does make sense to me. I wonder if someone has run the numbers for this comparison. I'll put on my "research hat" and go looking.
m

Note: first pass thru the google machine I find
" 9.3 kilograms (kg) of CO2 produced per kg of hydrogen production. One kilogram of hydrogen is the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline, which produces 9.1 kg of CO2 when combusted."
So it initially looks like it's a wash. Same carbon output as gasoline when you add in how the hydrogen is produced.
Now if it's "green" produced hydrogen this a good thing..yes? Less green house gasses b/c green hydrogen production has less CO2 when manufactured..I guess.
Feel free to add/subtract/correct my assumptions.
m

"https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/06/estimating-the-carbon-footprint-of-hydrogen-production/?sh=52daa04b24bd"

[Bob_in_VA]

19. Your research is incomplete

While it would be a wash if the trains used gasoline, they use diesel. Diesel, generally, is more "dirty" than gasoline both in CO2 production as well as particulates. Using gallons/pounds instead of kilograms, non-ethanol gasoline produces about 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning a gallon of gasoline whereas about 22.38 pounds of CO2 are produced by burning a gallon of diesel fuel.

You're right that "green" produced hydrogen would be a very good thing... and Germany has been a leader in renewable energy production and use on an utility scale. So, without having seen the hydrogen generating/storage facility used, I would guess that there is some form of renewable energy used in the production.

Another aspect of this is, assuming the hydrogen is produced locally, the energy and pollution savings of not having to extract, refine and transport the diesel fuel from wherever it comes from to the German railway.

[mitch96]

25. " While it would be a wash if the trains used gasoline, they use diesel" The article only refered

to gasoline as the carbon emitter and I went with that.
m

[yonder]

23. As gasoline, diesel, etc. is refined from crude oil, I'll throw in another variable:

It takes energy to power the drilling, extraction and transport/storage phases of crude oil production as well as the refining process itself and again transport/storage of the refined product. I wonder how those costs are considered in the overall picture?

[progree]

12. Thank you. An extremely very important crucial question

From the OP article

Extracting pure hydrogen remains expensive and requires power. And for now, the cheapest way to do it still involves using fossil fuels. But the costs of using excess renewable energy to extract hydrogen have been falling rapidly, and the expected increases in fossil fuel costs could soon make the method more attractive.

But for now ... it's apparently fossil fuels. In the U.S., almost all is produced with natural gas
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydrogen/production-of-hydrogen.php
https://www.google.com/search?q=hydrogen+production+in+the+U.S.

[eggplant]

13. Everyone forgets this question.

Same with electric cars. The electricity has to come from somewhere. Typically it is coal or gas fired generators, which simply moves the pollution away from the vehicle, but doesn't eliminate it.

[tinrobot]

15. It moves it away and also reduces the amount of pollution

Even if your electric car is powered by coal, it's still more efficient and less polluting than burning gasoline. There are a number of studies on that.

Plus, that same car can be recharged with cleaner power tomorrow. Just plug it into a different source. You can't do that with a gas car.

[eggplant]

31. True, but the immediate environmental cost of buying a new car...

...that has to be manufactured, along with the rare earth materials to build the battery, mean they are starting at a huge deficit in terms of the environment. This argument can go back and forth, without a clear resolution. The problem is much larger than how cars are powered.

[Hortensis]

34. Sure it is, though it's not true that people forget that electricity

has to come from somewhere. Development of sustainable energy sources to power new technology is always is a fundamental consideration these days. Fortunately large minds are working on these problems all over the planet.

[tinrobot]

35. All new cars have an environmental impact.

The solution to that is banning cars completely.

But if we do make cars, EVs win on manufacturing as well. Fewer parts, simpler to build, and the batteries can be recycled.

[NullTuples]

36. We're closing in on it here in California.

On May 8th, California produced enough renewable electricity to meet 103% of consumer demand. That broke a record set a week earlier of 99.9%. And we've got plenty of room to keep adding more capacity. What we need now is a way to store it for nighttime; currently we still need natural gas fired power plants and our one nuke power plant. But five or six years ago we were nowhere near this level!

[honest.abe]

29. Many green ways to make hydrogen such as splitting water with solar, wind or wave energy.

Think of hydrogen as an electricity storage medium replacing those expensive lithium batteries which are getting more expensive by the day as lithium is becoming scarce.

[Joinfortmill]

9. Cool. Love trains.

[Bayard]

11. How did the U.S. get left behind on this?

I would think private companies would be working on similar, even if the last administration wasn't interested.

BIG for Germany!

I would like to see a translation of this word though: Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft

[mahatmakanejeeves]

14. People have been looking into it.

Full disclosure: I tried Google, as I'm not too familiar with any research or production.

I'm not trying to be snarky; just pointing out that I'm no expert.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fuel+cell+locomotive+usa

H2@Rail Workshop

Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office

Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office H2@Rail Workshop

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT's) Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) H2@Scale Initiative, DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office held the H2@RailSM Workshop March 26–27, 2019, in Lansing, Michigan.

The meeting convened a diverse group of representatives (from government agencies, academia, original equipment manufacturers, rail operators, national laboratories), including international experts, who are participating in hydrogen rail applications.

{snip a whole bunch of engineering stuff}

alternative fuels

caterpillar, BNSF and chevron agree to pursue hydrogen locomotive demonstration

DEERFIELD, Ill/ FORT WORTH, Tex./SAN RAMON, Calif., Dec 14, 2021 — Progress Rail Inc. (Progress Rail), a Caterpillar Inc. Company (NYSE: CAT), BNSF Railway Company (BNSF), and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (Chevron), a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX), today announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to advance the demonstration of a locomotive powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

{snip}

January 25, 2022 Locomotives

CP’s Hydrogen Locomotive Powers Up

Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor

Canadian Pacific (CP) on Jan. 24 shared via Twitter a video of its fully painted hydrogen fuel cell-powered linehaul freight locomotive (H20EL), which the railroad said has run under its own power.

CP reported that its Hydrogen Locomotive Program team is now preparing to field test the HSOEL, which stands for Hydrogen Zero Emissions Locomotive.

Watch the locomotive video below:

Link to tweet

{snip}

[Duppers]

39. Regional transport company

& luck today.

[RocRizzo55]

16. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands

The entire passenger rail system has been running on wind power for several years now. Not as big as Germany, but ahead in some ways.
Oh, and many of the buses run on reprocessed deep fryer oil.
https://www.ns.nl/en/about-ns/sustainability/climate-neutral/green-energy-for-train-bus-and-station.html

[NNadir]

17. What a waste, as Europe has electric trains.

Using electricity to make hydrogen is an impossibly dumb idea.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

18. Note that these trains will be running on lines that are not worth the cost of electrification.

Last edited Wed Aug 24, 2022, 12:53 PM - Edit history (1)

So why not use diesels? I can't answer that.

[NNadir]

20. As Europe is dependent on dangerous fossil fuels, as dirty as it is...

...a diesel is probably less noxious than hydrogen.

An ideal solution for any diesel engine, requiring only minor infrastructure changes is DME, ideally with the source of primary energy being nuclear.

The world leader in DME diesel technology is in Europe, Volvo trucks. It's a relatively short distance from there to here.

Diesel engines are notoriously dirty when fueled with dangerous petroleum products. Ironically with DME, the might well be the cleanest internal combustion engines known.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

21. That went over my head. I'm acronym-challenged right now. What's DME? NT

[NNadir]

22. Dimethyl ether, the wonder fuel that can basically replace...

...all dangerous fluid fossil fuels, natural gas, LPG, gasoline, diesel fuel with only minor infrastructure changes.

Its critical temperature is higher than the boiling point of water meaning it is easily liquefied, stored and shipped, and it's atmospheric lifetime is about 5 days, meaning it has effectively no climate forcing potential. It is also a useful refrigerant. It's primary industrial use right now is ironically to have replaced CFCs in spray cans.

In a sane world, we'd consider it a no brainer but after a half century of idiotic rhetoric we're still talking about ripping out all the world's infrastructure to satisfy the silly thermodyamic nightmare fantasy of hydrogen.

[caraher]

26. What "feedstocks" can be used to make DME?

Everything I know about DME I've learned this morning. The Alternative Fuels Data Center page on DME says

Although dimethyl ether can be produced from biomass, methanol, and fossil fuels, the likely feedstock of choice for large-scale DME production in the United States is natural gas. DME can be produced directly from synthesis gas produced from natural gas, coal, or biomass. It can also be produced indirectly from methanol via a dehydration reaction. DME is not commercially available in the United States.

So would the idea for net zero carbon DME as a transportation fuel be to use biomass? What constraints are there on that (in particular, can just about anything be used, or would biomass --> DME just be corn ethanol all over again)?

It is odd how much fixation there is on hydrogen, which has a lot of terrible properties for a transportation fuel and is not a very efficient way to convert electricity into motion. Some of the hype probably comes from being able to say that the only tailpipe emission is water.

[NNadir]

27. DME can produced basically from any carbon source and hydrogen.

Notably it can be, and often is, produced via the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. Personally, I think the best ultimate source of carbon dioxide would be seawater, a superior matrix to direct air capture. Pyrolysis of "waste" biomass is another potential source.

As for hydrogen, the best source in a pure thermodynamic sense is thermochemical cycles, in particular because of its accessibility to continuous flow processes the SI (sulfur iodine cycle), my personal favorite and surely the most studied cycle. Electrolysis is and should remain a non starter, except in cases where electricity is a side product of exergy recovery.

Industrially DME is currently made by the dehydration of methanol, making it a two step process from the hydrogenation of carbon oxides. Much work appears in the literature on one step direct DME synthesis, an issue being carbonization of the one step catalyst. About 20% of the world's hydrogen is dedicated to the production of methanol, regrettably using dangerous fossil fuels as the source of both hydrogen and carbon oxides.

The late great Nobel Laureate, George Olah, wrote a magnificent review of the closed carbon dioxide cycle in 2011. I can share the reference later as I am working and not at my home computer. Interestingly, Olah, then in his eighties and still trying to save the world, wrote an interesting paper showing that the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide to DME required the presence of catalytic carbon dioxide. This sort of blew my mind at the time.

[honest.abe]

30. I guess the main issue is scaling this up to provide a large enough supply to make a difference.

Seems a long way from being practical as a replacement for gasoline and diesel.

[NNadir]

32. Well Volvo/Mack are very serious about it. Really the problem is the belief that nothing can or...

should change.

The word for this attitude is "conservative."

I would think that the ideal first adopters would be municipal waste companies, which are already running their trucks on dangerous natural gas because of landfill gas access. Reforming municipal trash would be an excellent tool for making DME.

The Chinese are scaling DME, but unfortunately they, like pretty much everyone else, make hydrogen from dangerous fossil fuels, almost certainly coal. This makes coal a transportation fuel, but it is worse for the environment than coal itself.

This fact, coupled with the second law of thermodynamics, is why the hydrogen fantasy, after nearly half a century or ever more tiresome hype which never actually dies, from Governor "hydrogen Hummer" Arnold Schwarzenegger to this nonsense about hydrogen trains, is nonsensical.

DME is more or less "drop in" in LPG, liquified natural gas, and dangerous natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

A DME/methanol economy doesn't happen because of the disastrous marketing of batteries, and the useless wind and solar industries, as being "green," something they are not even close to being.

Neither DME nor hydrogen are primary energy however, and without clean primary energy - of which there is only one and only one example, nuclear energy - both are useless. Coal, gas, or oil as primary energy to produce DME is as wasteful and as obscene as hydrogen.

[Bob_in_VA]

24. I can

It's less polluting. See my response to #10.

What is often missed in these discussions about fossil fuel costs versus renewables costs are "externalities". The issues often revolve around "what's the cost of X versus what's the cost of Y?" This question, as often as not, disregards costs not directly associated with X or Y. For instance, coal was for years considered to be the cheapest form of fossil fuel, in large part because many factors intrinsic to coal mining and coal usage weren't added into the price of a ton of coal. Things like the shortened lives of coal miners due to "black lung" disease or the pollution generated by burning coal. Had just the costs of ameliorating the pollution been added to the price of coal, coal would have been priced out of the market decades ago. Instead those costs were passed on in the form of higher taxes levied against everyone.
For decades, the New England area suffered from something called "acid rain". "Acid rain" forms when sulfur contaminated coal is burned. The effluent includes SO3, which, combining with water vapor in the atmosphere, creates sulfuric acid. Now, did the coal mining companies and the coal burning utilities step up to the plate and accept responsibility for this, paying to ameliorate this problem? No, not until the Federal government forced them to. Instead, the New England states were forced to use their tax dollars to try and ameliorate the situation caused by someone else.
This just one example of externalities. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other examples for anyone interested in doing the research.

[orthoclad]

42. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs

is the operative motto of US (and global) industry.

I've seen dead forests in Shenandoah National Park from acid rain, btw.

It's easy to hide the sources of socialized costs in the background noise. Meanwhile, poor people have to put up with cancer, contaminated water, disease, and death. It takes a major effort to trace a cause of death to the emissions of a particular plant. So the taxpayers get stuck with cleaning up the mess while the exploiters laugh all the way to the bank.

[Caribbeans]

28. Answering your questions about our hydrogen trains research - University of Birmingham

As for "Where do you get the hydrogen?"

China has an idea

Imagine 20-30 of these in Arizona or Nevada- powering trains, trucks, buses - Hydrogen can power anything that moves. Including drones and boats. A bit more research and we will have affordable salt water electrolyzers and since 2/3 of the earth is covered with salt water, ocean freighters can pull up to a H2 island, fill up with clean H2 and sail on to the next pod.

It's the biggest energy revolution in at least 100 years. And it's clean.

[NNadir]

33. Cheap marketing videos do not change the fact that hydrogen in China is filthy, made from coal.

As is the case in all of these evocations, so called "renewable energy" is lipstick on the coal pig.

[orthoclad]

41. We have a choice of lithium or hydrogen

to store surpus renewable power, using existing, proved technologies.

Lithium is a hazardous material requiring extensive mining and refining processes; the associated metals like cobalt are also iffy. Lithium has already become a conflict mineral, for example: the coup in Bolivia was largely driven by lithium mining interests.

Hydrogen is abundant. It will be impossible for corporate interests to monopolize it. Using it for power, either by combustion or fuel cell, produces only heat and water as waste products.

Currently, it's cheaper to extract H from fossil material, so-called "blue" hydrogen, but extraction of H from water by electrolyis (which produces oxygen as "waste" ) is improving steadily. (edit: the "cheapness" is calculated by ignoring externalized costs like pollution and disease)

Compare the many hours it takes to recharge a lithium battery to the minutes it takes to refill fuel cells. This is much more agreeable to the USian instant gratification mindset. Also, ships and planes are not well-suited to carrying and recharging a large mass of batteries. Combustion engines can be adapted to burn hydrogen.

We're in the process of locking into a lithium economy, which is very friendly to the extraction/mining corporations; lithium, albeit reusable, is much like fossil materials.

I say we should invest capital into hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen-burning steam boilers. We can use fossil-sourced "blue" hydrogen temorarily to boost the economy of scale for H-using fuel cells and have an installed transportation stock ready for large-scale "green" H.

Hydrogen is an ideal solution to the storage of renewable energy for when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine.

(btw, I drive a PHEV recharged from solar panels, with a relatively small lithium battery, adequate for my current driving regimen. Lithium has it's place, but can you imagine the tens of millions of tons of lithium we'll need to electrify the US transport fleet and the millions of hours of recharge time?)

I like H!

[Dysfunctional]

43. Glad they didn't name it the Hindenburg.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

44. Hindenbahn, maybe. NT