{"id":54470,"date":"2020-07-30T13:20:10","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54470"},"modified":"2020-07-30T13:20:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T18:20:31","slug":"heavy-duty-hydrogen-fuel-cell-trucks-a-waste-of-energy-and-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54470","title":{"rendered":"Heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks a waste of energy and money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2020\/heavy-duty-hydrogen-fuel-cell-trucks-reduce-emissions-but-are-a-waste-of-energy-and-far-from-commercial\/\">Heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks a waste of energy and money<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/energyskeptic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Figure-9.1-Heavy-truck-PEM-hydrogen-fuel-cell.png?resize=438%2C721\" alt=\"FCEV Heavy truck: PEM hydrogen fuel cell on-board reforming. U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Program, Estimated for 2020. Source (DOE 2011).\"\/><figcaption>Figure 1. FCEV Heavy truck: PEM hydrogen fuel cell on-board reforming. U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Program, Estimated for 2020. Source (DOE 2011).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Preface<\/strong>.\u00a0 Hydrogen fuel cell trucks are incredibly inefficient. Turning hydrogen back into electricity with\u00a0<strong>a fuel cell is only 24.7 % efficient<\/strong>\u00a0(.84 * .67 * .54 * .84 * .97) as shown in figure 1. There are multiple stages where energy is lost due to inefficiencies at each step: Natural gas upstream and liquefaction, hydrogen on-board reforming, fuel cell efficiency, electric motor and drive-train losses, and aerodynamic\/rolling resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since fuel cell electric trucks are terrible at acceleration, they always have a second propulsion system, usually a battery, making them orders of magnitude more expensive than an equivalent diesel truck, $1,300,000 versus $100,000 respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hydrogen is not a renewable, since 96% of hydrogen is made from natural gas using natural gas, but at least it can be made cheaply around the clock that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hydrogen generated with solar power could only be made 10 to 25% of the time (the capacity factor) when the sun is up, and electrolysis of water is so expensive it is only made for applications that require extremely pure hydrogen, mainly NASA.&nbsp; The amount of space rebuildable contraptions like solar and wind take up is a problem as well. To use wind power to produce 700 Terrawatt hours of hydrogen would require wind turbines taking up 40,154 square miles (Ford 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hydrogen pipelines are too expensive to build at length, since they are corroded and embrittled by hydrogen.&nbsp; Yet delivery would require a $250,000 canister truck weighing 88,000 pounds (40,000 kg) delivering a paltry 880 (400 kg) of fuel, enough for 60 cars and just a few trucks. A diesel truck can carry 10,000 gallons of gas, enough to fill 800 cars. The hydrogen delivery truck cannibalize much of its energy: over a distance of 150 miles, it will burn the equivalent of 20% of the usable energy in the hydrogen it is delivering (Romm 2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks a waste of energy and money Preface.\u00a0 Hydrogen fuel cell trucks are incredibly inefficient. Turning hydrogen back into electricity with\u00a0a fuel cell is only 24.7 % efficient\u00a0(.84 * .67 * .54 * .84 * .97) as shown in figure 1. There are multiple stages where energy is lost due to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11836,11859,29150],"class_list":["post-54470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-hydrogen-fuel-cells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54471,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54470\/revisions\/54471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}