Hydrogen powered aircraft.

[Ian]

2 minutes ago, RFguy said:

and shortly, fusion. 

I suspect everyone who's alive now will be dead before fusion can be implemented profitably. If you want to go Nuclear there are many simpler avenues to explore which look quite attractive.

There's a nice brief by a former fusion scientist. Not very optimistic unfortunately.

https://fusion4freedom.com/former-fusion-scientist-on-why-we-wont-have-fusion-power-by-2040/

 

[RFguy]

remember Joh BP's fusion  >> hydrogen car ? ROFL

Yes, fusion is coming ....but....only we're only now sustaining reactions on a device that looks like the CBD of a medium sized city...

Just keep burning zee gasoline.  Certainly for 1 hour , 2 up  circuit trainers, batteries are already there.

 

 

[Ian]

Some Japanese car companies, especially Toyota are doubling down on non-battery technologies even though the rest of the market appears to have moved on.

https://www.guideautoweb.com/en/articles/61894/toyota-chief-scientist-s-latest-remarks-on-evs-fuel-controversy/

14 minutes ago, octave said:

Refueling seems to be much like filling a LP gas car.

But the fuel isn't liquid, it's a compressed gas with the same volume penalty.

15 minutes ago, octave said:

In 2021 there were just 38 registrations of Hydrogen cars

So about a couple of million dollars of infrastructure per vehicle, the investors must be really lining up for this opportunity.

 

Hydrogen is just a difficult technology which is glossed over by people who see it being made by solar panels and water. I keep thinking that I'm missing something here but I haven't found it yet.

It appears to be mostly marketing hype, and when you dig a little deeper it appears to be the fossil fuel companies pushing the Hydrogen pipe dream by creating a niche that requires more of their product. One day you'll be able to use green hydrogen but in the meantime here's a bucket of brown hydrogen.

 

[spacesailor]

We Are missing something! .

Bring back that cheap CNG.

Most IC motors will run with it & the same infrastructure as LPG without the NOX problems. 

Someone got Rich by giving it away !.

All those BEV oponents will be happy, not paying $100s of 000s to buy a Tesla. 

spacesailor

[onetrack]

Spacey, Australia's natural gas was only given away in stupid contracts with fixed prices during the era of low global energy pricing and lower demand for natural gas.

The number of fixed price LNG and CNG contracts is now minimal, as energy companies producing natural gas now have vastly increased global demand and pricing, for any form of energy.

Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely we will ever see cheap natural gas again.

 

One thing we shouldn't turn our back on is LPG. We have huge resources of LPG, and massive infrastructure in place to deliver it. But the Govt seems intent on ensuring that LPG is killed off.

The simple fact remains that LPG is a clean burning fuel, and using it results in lower carbon emissions and longer engine life.

[Ian]

LPG is a plane could be interesting. Refueling might be an issue.

There have been a few turbine engines over the years converted to run on it.

[onetrack]

I can't see where LPG is viable as a fuel for any aircraft. It has an energy density that is about 60% of petrol, but it does weigh only 2/3rds the weight of petrol. However, the need to have a tank to compress LPG to turn the gas into liquid is a big weight penalty. I guess you could install a carbon fibre tank, if you were dead set on using LPG in an aircraft.

 

But the big problem with LPG is its poor low temperature performance, once the temperature gets down to about 3° to 5°, you find your LPG engine doesn't like starting, due to the poorer volatility of LPG at low temperatures.

Cold air being taken into an aircraft engine at height would very likely make your LPG engine baulk. I guess carb heat would address the problem, but the fact remains LPG volatility is poor as compared to petrol.

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, Ian said:

Unless something changes dramatically FCEVs have lost the market. It appears that battery vehicles have won and the people pushing the alternate technologies have lost.

 

Not at all. I'm doing an analysis of the current Greens Policy for the coming election where they start with the statement that Australia has one of the worst takeups in EV in the world, which is not true. I estimate the Greens budget to achieve what they want is about 6.5 trillion dollars per year, and that's coming out of our pockets, not theirs.

Out of around 270 Countries I'm looking at quite a lot  introduced a few EV and then turned their back on them. The market share in Japan has been declining year by year and they were one of the first into the market.

A second group is giving lip service to battery electric vehicles (BEV) by reporting all forms of vehicle with some electric power, so hybrids which don't do much for CO2 reduction are included.

These countries and the industries and "experts" pushing BEV are in addition, only quoting numbers of vehicles produced, so countries like USA and China look like they are leaving us in the dust, however when you go and get actual figures and actual markets and use what the auto industry has always used to judge success; market share, it's a vastly different story.

The change this year is that countries are beginning to quote BEV market share as BEV market share. This is showing that PHEV (Hybrid) share is declining in most of these countries, probably because it doesn't do either job well.

The countries on the chart below are the ones who have openly quoted 2021 market share. There's another group which have only produced figures for half year 2019, so it's a work in progress to pull vehicle numbers from market sectors and calculate the market share from total production which is a well established figure around the world.

5%market share is about the minimum for a viable auto industry business so some of these countries are shaky.

The UK look to be in trouble because it went out on a limb and set a cutoff date after which ICE cars will not be produced, and 11.6% market share indicates they don't have the ability to do it. It would have needed to be above 50% to succeed.

[octave]

6 minutes ago, Ian said:

But the fuel isn't liquid, it's a compressed gas with the same volume penalty.

The range of A Toyota Mirai is 402 miles (12.4 pounds of hydrogen)  I think the cost of hydrogen is too much and at least in this country the distribution network is miniscule.  

 

  I totally agree with your point about green vs brown hydrogen although there are several green hydrogen plants in the planning stage and a potential export market.   

Overseas there are service stations that produce there own hydrogen on site by electrolysis.    

 

The hydrogen fuel station in Altona uses electrolysis.  

 

There are commercially available hydrogen fuel cells for home use.  They take your unused solar power and electrolyze tap water and then use it to power a fuel cell thereby acting as a power storage battery.   This would suit me although the cost/benefit   does not make it economically viable for me at this stage but it is getting ever closer.

 

In Europe hydrogen is being added to town gas in a process called blending.   Most countries have quite a low limit but  it can be up to 20% with existing infrastructure.   This is actually being trialed at a  Keele university in Britain and I believe is distributed to 100 houses as well as the university campus. Also I believe a trial in NSW.

 

Getting back to aviation though a hydrogen powered aircraft did in fact crash land during testing and was substantially damaged fortunately no injuries and no leakage or fire.

 

When it comes to larger aircraft it is interesting to see what Airbus and Boeing are up to A tour of the Airbus A380 hydrogen engine test aircraft

 

For aviation and hydrogen it is very much early days but given 66 years between Kitty Hawke and the Sea of Tranquility I will be fascinating to see how aviation evolves in the next decades.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

 the Govt seems intent on ensuring that LPG is killed off.

The simple fact remains that LPG is a clean burning fuel, and using it results in lower carbon emissions and longer engine life.

The government did kill it off. No one was able to design an engine that could meet our Particulate and NOx limits.

 

Interestingly there is no emission standard for CO2 in Australia because it can't be measured, output is varied by the standard of the fuel used.

Edited April 21, 2022 by turboplanner

[turboplanner]

49 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

I estimate the Greens budget to achieve what they want is about 6.5 trillion dollars per year, and that's coming out of our pockets, not theirs.

 

Suffered some brain fade; the figure is 0.625 trillion, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Here at the farm, we have installed a shed containing a diesel generator. And as you guys said, the cost of its  power is 3 times what we pay for mains. So it is there as a standby.

Alice Springs used to have a power station with big diesel generators, these days it has turbine driven generators.

I guess the cost is subsidised, many other things are.

But I still hanker for living off the grid with solar, wind and batteries. The power would seem to be free, so it would be much more enjoyable than the mains stuff.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Once, at Alice Springs, I lived with solar water heating and I just loved a big hot bath, being a cheapskate and knowing the hot water was "free" helped a lot.

[turboplanner]

12 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Here at the farm, we have installed a shed containing a diesel generator. And as you guys said, the cost of its  power is 3 times what we pay for mains. So it is there as a standby.

Alice Springs used to have a power station with big diesel generators, these days it has turbine driven generators.

I guess the cost is subsidised, many other things are.

But I still hanker for living off the grid with solar, wind and batteries. The power would seem to be free, so it would be much more enjoyable than the mains stuff.

You can, and a few do, but you have to forget air conditioning full lighting, appliances, drills, welders, and angle grinders. 

 

In fact you could pick up a cheap system around Edenhope and the South East because the whole are moved from kerosene lamps, kerosene fridges and candles to 31 volt gen/battery sets powered by Ronaldson Tippet or Lister engines. In fact there was one version available which allowed you as much consumption as you wanted. Turn on a switch in the middle of the night and you would hear the Lister start up to make up for any battery drain, start welding and the Lister would start up again. When you'd forgotten to run the engine and the batteries went flat there was no radio or TV or lights for about an hour so it was back to candles. I'd suggest if you asked any property owner around Edenhope if he would sell you his old 32 volt system, he'd say YOU CAN HAVE THE XXXXXXX THING!!!!!!!.

[Ian]

With hydrogen fuel the logistics at airports would be a huge issue. For example KLAX used about 50M Barrels a year which is about 26 million L a day.

Currently at LAX there are multiple airport feeds from offsite storage allowing multiple fuel companies to distribute fuel via an underground fuel network which is pumped into planes

There also need to be the ability to unload fuel, hydrogen especially would need to be offloaded to keep it cool.

The whole system would need to operate at cryogenic temperatures in all sorts of weather conditions.

You'd also need to operate this system in parallel with existing fueling systems for a significant period of time.

But the challenge would be the handling of a potentially explosive mixture compared to a relatively inert one in the quantities required in close proximity to thousands of passengers would be difficult. So you might force refuelling to be conducted in an area away from passengers.

It just sounds hard and dangerous. More likely that a synthetic carbon neutral fuel will be developed which can use the same infrastructure.

 

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, Ian said:

With hydrogen fuel the logistics at airports would be a huge issue. For example KLAX used about 50M Barrels a year which is about 26 million L a day.

Currently at LAX there are multiple airport feeds from offsite storage allowing multiple fuel companies to distribute fuel via an underground fuel network which is pumped into planes

There also need to be the ability to unload fuel, hydrogen especially would need to be offloaded to keep it cool.

The whole system would need to operate at cryogenic temperatures in all sorts of weather conditions.

You'd also need to operate this system in parallel with existing fueling systems for a significant period of time.

But the challenge would be the handling of a potentially explosive mixture compared to a relatively inert one in the quantities required in close proximity to thousands of passengers would be difficult. So you might force refuelling to be conducted in an area away from passengers.

It just sounds hard and dangerous. More likely that a synthetic carbon neutral fuel will be developed which can use the same infrastructure.