Opel Begins Production And Deliveries Of Hydrogen Vivaro Van
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Green Car Congress.
This is the first paragraph.
Opel has begun production of the hydrogen fuel cell variant of the Vivaro van, and has delivered the first one to the German manufacturer of premium domestic appliances, Miele. The hydrogen fuel cell vehicle will perform daily field service in the Rhine-Main region.
We need more hydrogen filling stations in the UK, so we can use vans like these.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Locomotive From Canadian Pacific To Roll Out Before 2022
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
This is said.
The hydrogen fuel cell locomotive consists of an SD40-2F, which was converted to run on H2 power and is therefore nicknamed the H2 0EL. The company is calling it a “hydrogen zero-emissions locomotive”, and it will be operating under its own power before the end of this month, according to Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel.
Note that the SD40 locomotive is a diesel-electric locomotive of which 1286 were built around 1970.
Canadian Pacific have made this video, which was kindly pointed out by Alan.
The video seems to indicate that the converted locomotive will be able to continue to do the same duties as the original diesels, which have a power output of 2,240 kW.
Interestingly, power output seems to be of the same order as that of a Class 66 locomotive, so could a similar conversion by used with these locomotives?
When It Comes To Buses, Will Hydrogen Or Electric Win?
The title of this post, is the same as that of this evcellent article on WIRED.
The WIRED article is a serious comparison between the merits of battery and hydrogen-powered buses.
The writer of the article talked to two people, who should know.
- James Dixon, who is a Research Fellow in the Transport Studies Unit and Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University
- Neil Collins, who is Managing Director of Wrightbus.
I think the philosophy of Wrightbus with four basic zero-carbon buses could be right.
- Streetdeck Hydroliner FCEV – A hydrogen-powered double-deck bus.
- Streetdeck Electroliner BEV – A battery-powered double-deck bus.
- GB Kite Hydroliner FCEV – A hydrogen-powered single-deck bus.
- GB Kite Electroliner BEV – A battery-powered single-deck bus.
This surely is a basis for satisfying customers, who like to buy what they feel is best for their networks and passengers.
This paragraph from the Wired article, illustrates how terrain and climate might favour one bus or the other.
Still, hydrogen may be a better option in a city with lots of hills, like Hong Kong, where it’s also very warm and humid, says Collins. “That’s going to be a problem for electric buses, because the cooling and the hills are just going to drain the batteries,” he says. “But if the city is relatively flat, and the journey times are relatively short, and it’s not either significantly warm or significantly cold, battery electric can do a very good job.”
In addition, you wouldn’t choose hydrogen buses, if supply of hydrogen was difficult.
Could this be why Jo Bamford, who is the owner of Wightbus, has established a company to help bus operators with the transition to hydrogen. I wrote about it in New Company Established To Help Transition Bus Fleets To Hydrogen.
I have also heard stories of garages in city centres, where it is not possible to get enough power to charge a garage full of battery buses. Some of these garages are in residential areas, which perhaps may not welcome tankers of hydrogen going through to supply the buses with hydrogen.
Perhaps, the solution for garages like this is to relocate the garage to a site, which fulfils one of these conditions.
- Good connections to the motorway and trunk road network, so that hydrogen can be brought in by truck.
- A high-capacity electricity supply to either charge battery electric buses or generate hydrogen using an electrolyser.
Buses would operate according to this daily cycle.
- Buses would either be charged or refuelled with hydrogen overnight.
- They would position to a convenient place to start their daily diagrams.
- At the end of the day, they would return to the garage.
Note.
- Battery-electric buses may need to be topped-up during the day.
- Hydrogen buses with their longer range should be able to service routes further away.
- Routes would be arranged, so that hydrogen buses would not need to be topped up.
The big advantage of a remote bus garage is that the city centre site could be redeveloped to pay for the new buses and garage.
Siemens Gamesa Partners On Offshore Wind-to-Hydrogen
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on renews.biz.
This is the first three paragraphs.
Siemens Gamesa has signed a memorandum of understanding with Strohm to collaborate on the development of offshore wind-to-hydrogen infrastructure.
The partnership will focus on the advancement of hydrogen transfer solutions that will look to improve the decentralized green hydrogen concept, whereby green hydrogen is generated in each turbine generator and transported to shore by a subsea pipe.
In this concept power cables are replaced by a pipe infrastructure used for storing and transferring hydrogen.
Thermoplastic composite pipe (TCP) will be used.
Andrew Forrest, AGL Partner To Explore Hydrogen Option For Hunter Valley Coal Plants
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on abc.
This is the first paragraph.
Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest said hydrogen would eventually “dwarf” the coal industry as he announced plans to develop a green hydrogen hub in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.
I wish Forrest well with this venture, because if he makes a success of it, it could form a model for lots of other places in the world.
He’s certainly a man on a mission.
Zero-Carbon Emission Flights To Anywhere In The World Possible With Just One Stop
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from the Aerospace Technology Institute.
This is the first sentence of the press release.
Passengers could one day fly anywhere in the world with no carbon emissions and just one stop on board a concept aircraft unveiled by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) today.
These three paragraphs describe the concept.
Up to 279 passengers could fly between London and San Francisco, USA direct or Auckland, New Zealand with just one stop with the same speed and comfort as today’s aircraft, revolutionising the future of air travel.
Developed by a team of aerospace and aviation experts from across the UK collaborating on the government backed FlyZero project, the concept demonstrates the huge potential of green liquid hydrogen for air travel not just regionally or in short haul flight but for global connectivity. Liquid hydrogen is a lightweight fuel, which has three times the energy of kerosene and sixty times the energy of batteries per kilogramme and emits no CO2 when burned.
Realising a larger, longer range aircraft also allows the concentration of new infrastructure to fewer international airports accelerating the rollout of a global network of zero-carbon emission flights and tackling emissions from long haul flights.
These are my thoughts.
The Airframe
This picture downloaded from the Aerospace Technology Institute web site is a visualisation of their Fly Anywhere Aircraft.
Some features stand out.
The wings are long, narrow and thin, almost like those of a sailplane. High aspect ratio wings like these offer more lift and stability at high altitude, so will the plane fly higher than the 41,000-43,000 feet of an Airbus A350?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it does, as the higher you go, the thinner the air and the less fuel you will burn to maintain speed and altitude.
The horizontal stabiliser is also small as this will reduce drag and better balance with the wing.
The tailfin also appears small for drag reduction.
The body is bloated compared to say an Airbus A 350 or a Boeing 777. Could this be to provide space for the liquid hydrogen, which can’t be stored in the thin wings?
The fuselage also appears to be a lifting body, with the wings blended into the fat body. I suspect that the hydrogen is carried in this part of the fuselage, which would be about the centre of lift of the aeroplane.
The design of the airframe appears to be all about the following.
- Low drag.
- high lift and stability.
- Large internal capacity to hold the liquid hydrogen.
It may just look fat, but it could be as radical as the first Boeing 747 was in 1969.
The Engines
I suspect the engines will be developments of current engines like the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB, which will be modified to run on hydrogen.
If they are modified Trent engines, it will be astonishing to think, that these engines can be traced in an unbroken line to the RB211, which was first run in 1969.
The Flight Controls
Most airliners these days and certainly all those built by Airbus have sophisticated computer control systems and this plane will take them to another level.
The Flight Profile
If you want to fly any aircraft a long distance, you generally climb to a high level fairly quickly and then fly straight and level, before timing the descent so you land at the destination with as small amount of fuel as is safe, to allow a diversion to another airport.
I once flew from Southend to Naples in a Cessna 340.
- I made sure that the tanks were filled to the brim with fuel.
- I climbed to a high altitude as I left Southend Airport.
- For the journey across France I asked for and was given a transit at Flight Level 195 (19,500 feet), which was all legal in France under visual flight rules.
- When the French handed me over to the Italians, legally I should have descended, but the Italians thought I’d been happy across France at FL195, so they didn’t bother to ask me to descend.
- I flew down the West Coast of Italy at the same height, with an airspeed of 185 knots (213 mph)
- I was then vectored into Naples Airport by radar.
I remember the flight of 981 miles took around six hours. That is an average of 163.5 mph.
I would expect the proposed aircraft would fly a similar profile, but the high level cruise would be somewhere above the 41,000-43,000 feet of an Airbus A 350. We must have a lot of data about flying higher as Concorde flew at 60,000 feet and some military aircraft fly at over 80,000 feet.
The press release talks about London to San Francisco, which is a distance of 5368 miles.
This aircraft wouldn’t sell unless it was able to beat current flight time of eleven hours and five minutes on that route.
Ground Handling
When the Boeing 747 started flying in the 1970s, size was a big problem and this aircraft with its long wing may need modifications to runways, taxiways and terminals.
Passenger Capacity
The press release states that the capacity of the aircraft will be 279 passengers, as against the 315 and 369 passengers of the two versions of the A 350.
So will there be more flights carrying less passengers?
Liquid Hydrogen Refuelling
NASA were doing this successfully in the 1960s for Saturn rockets and the Space Shuttle.
Conclusion
This aircraft is feasible.
Ryse Hydrogen Is Now Ryze Hydrogen
Jo Bamford’s company Ryse Hydrogen is now called Ryze Hydrogen.
I have changed this blog to use the new spelling as I suspect Ryse clashed with the name of a computer game.
Lhyfe’s Green Hydrogen To Power Deutsche Bahn Trains
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Renewables Now.
This is the first paragraph.
Deutsche Bahn AG has agreed to source about 30 tonnes of green hydrogen from French producer Lhyfe from 2024 onward to power its trains as the German railway operator seeks to reach climate neutrality by 2040.
The electrolyser will be built at Tuebingen.
In Can The UK Have A Capacity To Create Five GW Of Green Hydrogen?, I said the following.
Ryze Hydrogen are building the Herne Bay electrolyser.
- It will consume 23 MW of solar and wind power.
- It will produce ten tonnes of hydrogen per day.
The electrolyser will consume 552 MWh to produce ten tonnes of hydrogen, so creating one tonne of hydrogen needs 55.2 MWh of electricity.
I suspect that in my quote above from the article on Renewables Now, that the Tuebingen electrolyser will be producing thirty tonnes of hydrogen per day or just under 11,000 tonnes per year.
In that case it would be three times the size of the Herne Bay Electrolyser.
Australian Mining Giant Looks To Canada For Green Hydrogen Projects
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Globe And Mail.
These are the first two paragraphs.
An Australian mining giant has signed agreements with three Canadian Indigenous nations to determine the viability of building green hydrogen projects as the company attempts to reinvent itself as a supplier of clean renewable energy.
Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) sees Canada as potentially one of the largest sources of renewable energy in the world and is hoping to develop multiple large-scale green energy projects here.
The article indicates quite a lot about the future direction of FFI.
I certainly think the company is going the right way.
Thoughts On The Cambo Oil Field
There is an article in The Times today which is entitled Sturgeon Faces Backlash After Shell Pulls Out Of North Sea Oilfield.
I have been following the technology of Carbon Capture and Use and some very good ideas have come forward in the last couple of years.
- Carbon dioxide is becoming increasingly important in the growing of flowers, salad vegetables, soft fruits and tomatoes in greenhouses.
- At COP26, Australian company, Mineral Carbonation International won an award for their process that turns carbon dioxide into building materials like blocks and plasterboard.
- A big investment was also made recently in an Italian company, who are using the properties of liquid and gaseous carbon dioxide to store energy.
- Carbon dioxide has for years made a good fire extinguisher, which can’t be said for some chemicals currently used.
- I suspect that some clever chemists are working on using carbon dioxide to create sustainable aviation fuel.
If the number of ideas for the use of carbon dioxide continues to increase, I can see gas-fired power stations being built, that are also used to produce much-needed high-quality carbon dioxide.
It should also be noted, that many like me, live in houses that are unsuitable for the fitting of heat pumps at an economical cost.
So we must wait for better technology or for hydrogen to be piped into our houses.
In the meantime, we will have to rely on gas. Or freeze!
I don’t know whether Cambo will produce any gas, but if it doesn’t, I can’t see much point in developing it.
Perhaps, Shell would prefer to develop a gas field.
The Anonymous Widower 