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Featured Toyota and Kenworth Team up to Create a Fuel Cell Regional Semi

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by drash, May 15, 2024.

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  1. Mr.Vanvandenburg

    Mr.Vanvandenburg Senior Member

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    TX has a lot too. Gov likes to give pardons, so I guess he gets one. But I’m sure there are a million excuses for the debt.
    I’m just talking about regular folks driving, then they die of cancer and there’s a funeral and that’s the end of them. Breathing in tailpipe gas for decades definitely doesn’t prevent cancer.

    TX is doing well too. Gov gets a pardon. Debt by State 2024
     
    #21 Mr.Vanvandenburg, May 19, 2024
    Isaac Zachary likes this.
  2. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    FCEV with big buffer battery isn't new. Nissan did it with an eNV200 ethanol FCEV test mule in Brazil. They left the Leaf sized battery in place, while taking out the charger. In their case, it was to allow the use of a smaller, cheaper fuel cell. A fuel cell REx if you will.

    Is Toyota going with liquid hydrogen, or sticking with high pressure gas for these trucks? With the ideal refueling rate for a gaseous hydrogen car in mind, it will take something like 30 minutes to refuel one of these. That makes no charger for the 200kWh battery even more of a shame. Even with just charging overnight, you could add at least 50 miles of range for the next day.
    The logic was actually that not changing consumer behavior for refueling would make adoption easier. Getting such fast fills from hydrogen just ended up taking a lot of hardware for a lot of cost. Cheaper for gas stations to install chargers along side the gas pumps.

    It could work for places using hydrogen for grid storage. Grid batteries aren't going to cut it for using solar in places with a monsoon season. Maybe making some excess for local truck or bus fleets wouldn't be a big added cost. Same with locations of other hydrogen production hubs.

    While the niche part helps with infrastructure, it doesn't for the FCEVs. The main hurdle there to lower prices is manufacturing scale. Niche plus making a lot doesn't mix.

    We need more green hydrogen, and even blue and pink. We use hydrogen for many things. Like growing food. So we need cleaner sources to come online in order to shut down the dirty ones we are using.

    News about clean hydrogen development isn't all good for hydrogen transportation. When you have green hydrogen, converting it into methanol, methane, diesel, and gasoline doesn't take much more effort. With distribution systems already in place for those, the added cost of making them is acceptable vs making hydrogen infrastructure at the scale needed for it to take their place.
     
    #22 Trollbait, May 19, 2024
  3. drash

    drash Senior Member

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    They're sticking with compressed. Main reasons cost and energy usage: takes approximately 1.47 kWh/kg to compress H2 to 880 bar (refueling pressure) plus an additional 0.15 kWh/kg to cool the hydrogen to -40ºC for fast refueling. Compare that with liquifying hydrogen. Even large scale H2 liquifiers require 10 kWh/kg for liquid hydrogen. So if they get it out of research and go for active magnetic regenerative liquifiers, they might be able to get LH2 down to 7 kWh/kg. Still over 4 times less efficient.

    Now all that brings up additional questions, 880 bar is for refueling about 3 light vehicles with about 12 kg, then the compressor has to turn back on for the 4th light vehicle. At what pressure do they need for refueling 50 kg? They are targeting a 20 minute refuel, not too much of a stretch compared to a diesel semi which can take around 15 minutes to refuel 300 gallons, but recompressing for 880 bar takes about 20 minutes. They'll have to use multiple high pressure storage tanks that only require a slightly higher recompression at the point of sale. To be fair they will probably use industrial compressors which may be slightly more efficient for the semis but at an enormous cost. These H2 truck stops won't be the typical $1M H2 filling stations. The current H2 stations are not exactly paragons of reliability either.

    Looks like you'll need your own substation for either but yes much cheaper for chargers. It would also seem to make a lot more money for the gas stations than even gas.

    Again the ugly toll that compression requires may make the FCEV untenable although much lower compression is needed for inline ground mounted fuel cells. They can tie the two together by using multiple rather large high compression storage tanks. Those have their own issues as noted above as well as expecting a product loss of about 10% per month.

    I doubt they'll ever get rid of H2 reformation from Nat Gas. It's just too easy and convenient because most of it is on-site.
     
    #23 drash, May 19, 2024
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