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
Comment on Hydrogen locomotive
bioemerl@kbin.social 1 year agoWhy 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
LaggyKar@programming.dev 1 year ago
bioemerl@kbin.social 1 year ago
For what? Trolleys?
Go look at the weight of an average coal train and remember that most of these railways go through some of the most criminal regions of the country with lots of burnable forest land running around the tracks
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
Just because the US never electrified it's train infrastructure after the obsoletion of the steam engine doesn't mean other folks didn't. Many trains straight up use their diesel engines as electric generators for electric motors.
LaggyKar@programming.dev 1 year ago
For what? Trolleys?
For most trains in Europe. For example I can mention the Iron Ore Line in north Sweden which has 8600 trains. Which isn’t as heavy as some of the coal or ore trains around the world, but it’s at up to a 1% incline.
GenEcon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
bioemerl@kbin.social 1 year ago
As we move into green energy we're going to have an excess of power at times that we don't need it, and there's going to be many use cases where stuff like electrolysis, even though it's wasteful, is ultimately well worth it because power will be cheap to free during those times of day.
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
Not in my lifetime, that's for sure. We currently supply nearly all agricultural hydrogen from oil cracking, for example. There may be a future where wastefully using hydrogen makes sense, but it's not anytime soon.
bioemerl@kbin.social 1 year ago
California literally already has the problem of excess energy on occasion, and it's only going to get worse and worse as time passes until we create some sort of magical low cost energy storage solution.
Hydrogen is created from fracking now because we live in a fossil fuel world right now, but eventually as we're forced to move away from it you're going to have to have high energy density systems, and hydrogen is one of the few fairly reliable ways to do that.
Zink@programming.dev 1 year ago
If hydrogen ever becomes a real thing, maybe for using green energy in remote areas where electric isn’t feasible or economical, maybe the cost to waste some peak solar/wind to generate hydrogen via electrolysis will somehow make sense cost-wise.
zout@kbin.social 1 year ago
Electrolysis is wastefull, but so are internal combustion engines.
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
That's not what folks should seriously be comparing this to. You can run electric wires directly over the damn rail and feed a train off the grid. That's where money should be going everywhere 20 years ago.