Hydrogen locomotive

Imagine if we somehow could run trains on electricity, that would be even better

They already do, they just have a diesel generator to make the electricity
- Guessing that replacing that with a large battery that charges at night is unreasonable due to the torque needed? You'd probably need a battery larger than a train engine to be able to even do a few stops and starts. Which is why electric trains are wired all the time.
  If someone knows for sure I'm super curious!
- Even better, we could also put cables above the train and connect them to an even bigger diesel generator located somewhere close to the railway. That would make the locomotive lighter and the energy production more efficient. Better yet, replace the diesel with uranium and you can easily power many trains.
- Show me disel here
I don't know about Poland but I know about France (I would guess we're not so far appart on this point).
While 95% of railways are electrified, those last 5% are not very worth it to invest in, because really low traffic and hard to operate (eg. in mountains). I've already heard of compromises, like hybrid locomotives that can run on battery for more than half the line and rely on diesel for the remaining.
- hard to operate (eg. in mountains).
  In Soviet Union Caucasus was electrified first for this exact reason. Without electrification it was too hard to operate.
all trains, even the speed trains, in france run on electricity for who knows how many decades.
same trains go to great Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and maybe some other countries too.
source of the electricity is debatable though. France produces a great majority of its electricity from nuclear since the ww2 trauma.
- Oh you mean debatable because it's one of the cleanest, cheapest, and safest sources of electricity we have?
  Which allows France a degree of energy independence which has helped it not suffer the same amount of pain other countries have now that they're having to kick the cheap Russian gas addiction?
  And through huge cross-border interconnects it allows France to sell electricity to neighbouring countries at a huge profit?
  Nuclear is not always the answer, but as France has shown, as long as you invest in reliable infrastructure and don't put it in earthquake/tsunami-prone areas, it can be a huge positive for your country.
  And you don't have to rely on antagonistic petrostates for to power your homes with gas, or on strip-mining huge swathes of land by equally-antagonistic China for rare-earth metals for your wind turbines/solar panels/battery storage.
Not trying to start a fight or anything, but don’t we still ‘need’ to burn a lot of coal to fuel electricity? Renewables haven’t gotten close to pushing the necessity of coal away yet, no? Why not alternatives like this in some places to offset the need for electricity?
- Hydrogen doesn't exist randomly in a well or something it has to be created by using electricity - and that transformation is very inefficient if you then use the hydrogen in an inefficient way to power an engine instead of just using the electricity directly
  That argument that energy is coal-heavy actually counts against hydrogen...
  Hydrogen powered stuff only makes sense when electric isn't an option like for planes that just can't carry heavy batteries
- The issue to me in term of effeciency is that the production of hydrogen needs electricity, the movement of it needs electricity, the storage and pumping of it needs electricity, and so on. I'd rather see all that electricity in the process simply be moving the vehicle. Though lugging batteries along is an issue in it's own.
- Nuclear is the energy source that scares everyone but that is actually the most viable option to power the world until renewable becomes the dominant one.
  Thorium has been the best solution all along but it can't be weaponized so countries have been ignoring it for decades until recently
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAemz1v7dQ

While it may not be the best option, is it not good that somewhere is at least trying it?

As long as it’s not widespread adoption, it seems like a good idea to at least trial these sort of things on a small scale to properly determine the real world application, even if the conclusion is just “yeah, it shit”.

No! If it doesn't immediately solve the issue completely without any drawbacks it must be scrapped and no one should work to improve it!
Best regards,
Every conservative party (and their corporate sponsors).
- Most of the supporters of hydrogen trains are the Oil & Gas lobby, a traditionally conservative group. It's another, "Technology will save us from climate change!" scheme, which will allow unabated oil extraction to continue so we can make hydrogen fuel.
- https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=V-quSEb-Q5WKHY4z
This train is being trialed by an oil subsidiary so I think there is more than a little greenwashing going on here. The vast majority of hydrogen is "blue", i.e. it's manufactured from fossil fuels, so there is no environmental benefit to this. Even if it were "green", i.e. made from water and renewable energy, the same power used to make the hydrogen, store it, transport it, turn it back to power could charge 3 or 4 battery powered trains or tenders - a tender could mean a smaller locomotive hooks up to however many battery tenders it needs for its route or switches them out in the yard.
- Honestly all this feels like the railway's Dieselization 100yrs ago. When the end of steam powered engines was drawing near, coal hauling railroads and Baldwin Locomotive in the U.S. tried all kinds of whacky and hilariously inefficient engine designs, just to keep the ol' ways alive... none of these worked out - everyone who stuck to it lost hugely. Viz. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_and_Ohio_class_M-1
- The environmental benefit of blue hydrogen is that it doesn't put CO2 into the atmosphere. This is better than burning the hydrogen carbon gas it was produced from.

Hydrogen probably has some niche uses but there are some things that proponents like to gloss over.

It's not green since most of it is produced from fossil fuels. It's also disgustingly expensive even compared to fossil fuels. I'd note that the company Orlen Koltrans which is funding this train is a subsidiary of an oil company PKN Orlen so yeah.
Even if it were green (e.g. water electrolysis from renewables) it takes something like 3-4x the energy to produce, store, transport, and convert back to energy as just charging a battery.
Regardless of how it's made hydrogen also contributes to global warming - if any hydrogen leaks or escapes during fueling or venting, it promotes the methane production in the atmosphere.
It can and does go kaboom. e.g. this hydrogen powered bus has seen better days.

All said and done, I think it's crazy to even bother with the tech unless its so niche it cannot be done some other way. Japanese automakers & oil companies looking to do a bit of greenwashing have been the major proponents of hydrogen and that should say something. Also the fact that hydrogen has been a miserable failure in areas where it has been piloted.

In the case of trains it seems more sensible to manufacture biodiesel or synthetic fuels than this. It's certainly safer to transport and store. Perhaps existing trains can be converted relatively easily. Or electrify the train line or stretches of it. Batteries would be an option too - a train might simply hook up to a fresh battery tender and off it goes. Or some kind of hybrid solution that can source power from overhead lines and/or diesel and/or battery. Or even put solar on carriages to reduce fuel consumption during daylight operations. All these things seem more viable than hydrogen.

Biodiesels arent more efficent, a huge waste of land and destroying the local environment through monocultures, pesticides and fertilizers.
The most reasonable solution would be to fucking electrify the train tracks. It is a train god dammit. It runs on tracks and the track aint running anywhere else.
- Biodiesels are still better than diesel and the stuff can be manufactured from seaweed, algae, any biomass really. It doesn't have to be a monoculture. It doesn't even have to be 100% biodiesel either - start blending it in. I agree electric motors and electrification are the ultimate outcome but the rail industry has a lot of lines and a lot of locomotives and and you want progression over time with options for battery, power lines or diesel, potentially all 3 on the same line in different parts. It might take decades to transition. It's certainly not hydrogen, that's for sure.
- A whole lot of misinformation about biofuel here. Manufacturing biofuels does not require significant changes to current agriculture practices. Most biofuel is made from byproducts that would be burned as waste otherwise.
- I can appreciate the electrification push for passenger vehicles. Good luck moving frieght with electric.
Green hydrogen is being produced at scale.
So what, renewables are infinite
That’s overblown
You think the toxic (deadly) lithium thermal runaways that can’t be stopped are somehow better? No. They are worse and a deadly underground carpark disaster waiting to happen.
Not enough lithium in the world to supply the global suv market let alone compete with other markets and let’s not forget that the rest of the transport market…Lithium batteries are yet again another finite mined resource with the same problem as dinosaur juice.
Rail lines won’t be electrified, they are barely being maintained as is!
- You think the toxic (deadly) lithium thermal runaways that can’t be stopped are somehow better? No. They are worse and a deadly underground carpark disaster waiting to happen.
  Yup, all those trains waiting to explode in carparks. Nor are we developing better batteries that don't have these problems. Nope, just leaving things exactly as they are.
  Not enough lithium in the world to supply the global suv market . . .
  Even if lithium was our only battery option, this is just plain wrong. People misunderstand what "reserve" means in mining. It's not the amount of something that's available to be mined. It's the amount that is available profitably under current economic conditions. Both better technology and other shifts in the market mean more reserves "magically" open up.
  Oceanic lithium mining may already been commercially viable, and the amount of lithium we can get from that is basically unlimited. On the lab side, there's a promising string-based evaporation method, which would substantially reduce costs and environmental footprint--exactly the sort of tech that makes more reserves open up. It still needs to be demonstrated at scale, but the strings involved don't use any exotic materials or have any difficult production.
- Not really. There are plans for hydrogen plants. The vast majority is "blue". Secondly what are the chances that an oil company is going to make green hydrogen?
  The renewables aren't the problem. The cost of capturing energy is the problem. If hydrogen takes 3-4x the energy then that's 3-4x the land with 3-4x the solar and/or windfarms at 3-4x the expense. Do you not see the problem?
  No it isn't. Scientific studies suggest the impact on the atmosphere might 12x worse than releasing CO2.
  Lithium isn't the only battery material. Nor I daresay even if it were, that the safety risk is anywhere near as bad as driving a train with a hundreds of kgs of hydrogen on board
  Lithium isn't the only battery material. There are numerous battery chemistries in existence. It might even be that some less dense chemistries like sodium ion would be viable.
  Which is why I clearly I suggested a progressive approach. Switch from diesel to biodiesel, start building hybrid trains where the motor and tender are almost separate things and where the source of power can be 2 or 3 potential inputs - diesel, electrification, battery. And where rolling stock can use solar to reduce consumption further.
The hydrogen propaganda machine is spamming lemmy. It's not green technology until fossil fuel companies don't benefit from it
I agree hydrogen has a lot of challenges, but as you said, it does have niche uses, and I do see some places (Steel Arc Furnace) where it could make an impact IF driven by green energy. Not really disagreeing with you persay but you are downplaying Hydrogen a bit in my opinion.
We are still finding new ways to utilize it both in the electrolyzer and in chemical synthesis so there is more ground for us to cover in the near future I feel like (opinion).
I'm not sure a train is the right place though... yeah.
One use case for hydrogen is sea amd aircraft. H2 has a very high power density. Sea abd aircrat can't use batteries because they woukd take all tge space for people and cargo.
- It's more complicated than that. Hydrogen has a higher energy density than gasoline on a mass basis (i.e. 1 kg of hydrogen is about 3x the energy density of 1kg of gasoline). But for volumetric density the situation is reversed - 1Kg of hydrogen takes 4x the space of 1kg of gasoline. So you're not really saving anything by using hydrogen.
  On top of that gasoline is a liquid at atmospheric pressures and can flow into any nook and cranny of your aircraft. Most aircraft will store fuel in the wings and under the fuselage. If you use hydrogen you have to store it in heavily reinforced pressurized tanks, preferably spheroidal, cylindrical, toiroidal in shape. That means you're looking at putting some honking great cylinders on your aircraft and there is no convenient place to do it. They'll either have to be mounted on struts or in the body somewhere.
  I don't think batteries will find much application in aircraft until solid state batteries come along. But there are some high density batteries appearing for aviation applications (drones, taxis etc.) and just like with gasoline they can be incorporated pretty much anywhere in the structure of the aircraft.
It's not green since most of it is produced from fossil fuels.
Dear Faust, it's them again. Them who say "electricity is not green since most of it is produced from fossil fuels"
It's also disgustingly expensive even compared to fossil fuels
Hydrogen is mean of storage, not source
it takes something like 3-4x the energy to produce, store, transport, and convert back to energy as just charging a battery.
Ehhh. 60% efficiency means 1.6x the energy to produce. And battaries are transported too.
In the case of trains it seems more sensible to manufacture biodiesel or synthetic fuels than this. It's certainly safer to transport and store. Perhaps existing trains can be converted relatively easily. Or electrify the train line or stretches of it.
Electrify? Yes! Everything else? Meh.
Or even put solar on carriages to reduce fuel consumption during daylight operations.
Small area, create drag, may be even energy-negative. Worse idea than hydrogen storage.
I personally see hydrogen as a great energy dense storage solution to utilize excess generation from solar/wind/etc.
But we're a long way off from that, so it seems the consensus is that if anything, hydrogen research should primarily be in preparation for a time when it could be utilized reasonably. That may be 20-30 years out, or more. Idk.
- Actually, we're not a long way off from that. Hydrogen production facilities utilizing (excess) renewable electricity output are under construction as we speak. For example, a large project in Kazakhstan (which has large stretches of windy, sunny and empty steppes) is aiming to be online in 2030 with 30 GW of production going towards green hydrogen.
- There's a ton of options there besides hydrogen. Flow batteries are far more efficient than hydrogen, and there's no particular barrier to mass production at this point. Then there's anything from flywheels, other battery chemistries that are too heavy for EVs, or just pumping water uphill.
  We need options there today. We want to be on 80% renewables by 2030 in industrialized countries, and that will require some kind of storage solution. Fortunately, we already have quite a few.

Why, Poland, why? You have elecrified network, why?

German Lower Saxony recently halted developments of a hydrogen locomotive fleet, arguing that electric battery ones are cheaper to operate https://qz.com/the-dream-of-the-first-hydrogen-rail-network-has-died-a-1850712386

Nonetheless, Alstom and Siemens remain fixed on the production of hydrogen-fueled trains https://news.europawire.eu/siemens-mobility-successfully-tests-hydrogen-powered-mireo-plus-h-train-in-bavaria/eu-press-release/2023/09/16/15/35/04/121944/

Why the fuck?

Trains don't run on diesel directly. They use diesel generators to drive electric motors that actually move the train. How those motors are powered is relatively irrelevant. This just replaces the diesel generators with hydrogen fuel cells...I think. I don't read Polish well. Or at all.
- But how about replacing the diesel with fucking electrified rail network?
- A lot of them do, but there are also ones with mechanical or hydraulic transmission.
European politicians like hydrogen for some reason. Inefficiencies don't matter, they are used to those.

electified probably is better but we will let it be i guess

I think entire Poland network was elecrified during Soviet era. Not sure whathappened to it.

I cannot understand the future use case of hydrogen locomotives. Who even funded this thing.

Big oil and gas fund it. Main source of hydrogen right now is from oil drilling.
Why not?
Batteries can't keep nearly as much power in a space as burnable fuel can, it's just physically impossible because the oxygen you add to fuel gives it a far higher energy density where batteries need the oxygen built in.
Something like a locomotive also needs an absolute shit ton of power to pull the trains they pull, so you're going to have a lot of difficulty and it's going to be pretty expensive running high voltage lines across these railroads.
Hydrogen, because of railroad can easily control the infrastructure and fill up a train, run it right away, and refill it at its destination, could actually be a pretty viable option
- There are zero sources of green hydrogen in the foreseeable future and railways can be electrified. Small runs that aren't electrified can use batteries. There is a zero use case for a leaky fuel that we source from creating CO2 like hydrogen. The idea of using wastefully using electrolysis to something we can deliver power directly to is ludicrous.
  Edit: I can think of ONE use case, and that's maybe logging locomotives that will never be electrified.
- You got any idea of the energy density of Hydrogen? On a per m3 basis, batteries hold a lot more energy.
  BTW, hydrogen doesn't get burned.
- you’re going to have a lot of difficulty and it’s going to be pretty expensive running high voltage lines across these railroads.
  It's worked just fine for the past century
Fills up in a comparable time span as diesel locos, and the hydrogen storage would be much lighter compared to equivalent battery storage. No need for an onboard AC/DC generator for the traction motors too, as would be the case if it was diesel powered.
To me it seems like an ideal diesel loco replacement
I assume it will be hauling cargo, not passengers...
- It's a very dumb solution to things that run on tracks and can be directly electrified. It's mindbogglingly silly.
- Weight is usually a feature for locomotives, which are sometimes ballasted for extra traction.
  Occasionally you see extra-lightweight engines designed for light infrastructure-- often putting the same guts on more axles to lower the load, but it's rare.
  Modern locomotives also use AC traction motors, with sophisticated computer controls to generate an AC product suitable for the desired speed and torque. Even modern diesel-electric designs have alternators and AC internals. Yes, some old electric engines were huge rectifiers on wheels, but that's no longer necessary.
  Electrification is a very "capitalism won't let us have nice things" problem; it's a 25 year commitment to infrastructure and new engines before it pays full benefits (higher reliability, simpler equipment, higher horsepower per unit, using dynamic braking to return power to the grid)

Would this be a viable option for cruise or cargo ships as well?

The only real green option for oceangoing cargo ships at our current technology would be nuclear plants. Since small nuclear plants generally require highly enriched uranium suitable to making bombs, I don't foresee it being an option, however.
- Nuclear cargos exist. Or at least existed. URSS then Russia had one for reach a port in the north. It was an ice-breaker.
- Or back to wind.
- Idk how expensive these reactors are tho. The US Navy operates dozens in their fleet between CVNs and SSBNs, but that dwarfs the rest of the world.
- Thorium Molten Salt reactor can't be used for weapons because it's no fissable so it can't have a chain reaction that creates explosions
  https://ulstein.com/news/ulstein-thor-zero-emission-concept
Not a very good one.
Hydrogen density is too low, there is more hydrogen in things like ammonia or methanol. All of these are potential solutions to fossil bunk fuel or LNG, but all have issues and there is no clear winner yet.
- Okay rowing it is.

Is there an English version of the article?

I think people can and should build a system that extracts Hydrogen from Water and expels Oxygen as a byproduct, how about that?

You mean like electrolysis? That's already in use, and has been in use for a very long time.
If you meant something new that doesn't require a bunch of energy input, then yeah, that would great.
- It's also a tiny part of the market, because it's literally 25x the cost of turning methane into hydrogen.
  Current electrolyzers are also much less energy efficient than batteries. It's not an unsolvable problem, but battery tech is currently much more affordable than green hydrogen infrastructure. And an electrified third rail is a much better idea for trains.
Great idea.

Oh, the humanity.

We need more of those and everywhere

No we need electrification of the fucking train tracks, the efficiency of hydrogen is absolutely unreasonable, especially for trains.
- A part of the network is difficult to electrify and it cost a lot. So H2 still a good alternative.exoerinentation since 2016 show that it is successful. In France there is 1415 km electrified, the small network is representing 15 000 km. You ser the point ?
Then you'll have to create a hydrogen distribution network. Please remember as you're doing that -The main danger with hydrogen is what is known as BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion). Because hydrogen is gaseous in atmosphere
- Storage and transport of H2 is a big deal because of the unique properties (very low transition temp/very high pressure for liquid). That generally means for a non-pressurized, non-cryogenic storage it has to be combined into another molecule and then catalyzed back out, real time, for use. And, of course, the ignition ratio range (4%-75% in air) means that it's very easy to accidentally ignite a H2 leak; substantially easier than most other fuels, though this is mitigated by it's density and ability to disperse in an unenclosed area.
  Production is theoretically energy efficient as you can create it with hydrolysis, but the cheapest way of producing it, by far, is cracking of methane, which requires a high temperature process to create. It may not produce a high volume of CO2, but it perpetuates the cycle of exploration and extraction of gaseous hydrocarbons and the related environmental dangers and downsides.
- No it's not stored as liquid BLEVE is not a concern here, but there is plenty of issues with explosivity and very high preasures which can be 300-500 bar (~atm) depending on the application.