JCB develops hydrogen combustion engine and outlines plans for the future of propulsion

Try reading up on data about hydrogen as a fuel it will open your eyes that it is not the answer.

There'll be places where hydrogen works, probably in a fuel cell rather than a combustion engine though, and construction is one of those places as air-quality becomes more of a concern in urban areas.

There are other liquid fuel options, like bio (or biogas as mentioned above) or synthetic fuels (efuels) = the only thing that we can be sure of is that they will be a lot more expensive than current fossil diesel/kero).

As for renewable electricity, offshore wind has a reliable load-factor in the UK (for a renewable) and is getting cheaper. I think we'll end up with a lot more small modular fission reactors though. i think I remember that fusion was 40 years away when I was at school and it's still still 40 years away today, but I suppose we were also told that there was only 30 years of oil left.
 
Tidal power has huge potential but it would be easier to get 10 Hinkley C's built than it would to get anyone to agree to letting you build a tidal barrage to install the turbines. The UK has some excellent tidal estuaries which would generate power for the next 100 years with utter reliability but the political will to do it does not exist and any such project would be swamped by environ-mentalists instantly.

I am not convinced hydrogen is the long term solution to powering machinery or heavy vehicles. Obtaining it is a serious problem and storing it is nearly as bad. Liquid fuels of someone kind are the obvious answer and their carbon neutrality will depend on how they are produced in the first place.

Regarding radioactive wastes, almost every country in the world uses radioisotopes for a variety of reasons so will require a dedicated store for these materials even if they never had a nuclear power or weapons program. I think future generations would understand that we have carefully stored some radioactive materials in an isolated mountain somewhere rather than totally fudge the atmosphere and oceans by continuing along the fossil fuel route, after all, the volume of radioactive wastes to be stored is very small compared to the volumes of waste products generated by other human activities.

Newer reactor designs burn or otherwise transmute all actinide wastes to the point that virtually all their waste materials will be safe within a few centuries. That kind of commitment is well within the grasp of current human technologies.
 
Tidal power has huge potential but it would be easier to get 10 Hinkley C's built than it would to get anyone to agree to letting you build a tidal barrage to install the turbines. The UK has some excellent tidal estuaries which would generate power for the next 100 years with utter reliability but the political will to do it does not exist and any such project would be swamped by environ-mentalists instantly.

I am not convinced hydrogen is the long term solution to powering machinery or heavy vehicles. Obtaining it is a serious problem and storing it is nearly as bad. Liquid fuels of someone kind are the obvious answer and their carbon neutrality will depend on how they are produced in the first place.

Regarding radioactive wastes, almost every country in the world uses radioisotopes for a variety of reasons so will require a dedicated store for these materials even if they never had a nuclear power or weapons program. I think future generations would understand that we have carefully stored some radioactive materials in an isolated mountain somewhere rather than totally fudge the atmosphere and oceans by continuing along the fossil fuel route, after all, the volume of radioactive wastes to be stored is very small compared to the volumes of waste products generated by other human activities.

Newer reactor designs burn or otherwise transmute all actinide wastes to the point that virtually all their waste materials will be safe within a few centuries. That kind of commitment is well within the grasp of current human technologies.

Im not really sure about hydrogen in any form of transportation either, but it’s being seriously looked at buy several manufacturers now, even a few cargo ships (testing methanol and ammonia for them too).

As you say, the storage is tricky and inefficient and hasn’t really improved for 20+ years, electrolysis has got much better and cheaper though.

I think much of this depends on aviation, long-haul jets are going to need liquid fuels going forward, and that will probably drive the sustainable liquid fuel production to some extent.
 
Im not really sure about hydrogen in any form of transportation either, but it’s being seriously looked at buy several manufacturers now, even a few cargo ships (testing methanol and ammonia for them too).

As you say, the storage is tricky and inefficient and hasn’t really improved for 20+ years, electrolysis has got much better and cheaper though.

I think much of this depends on aviation, long-haul jets are going to need liquid fuels going forward, and that will probably drive the sustainable liquid fuel production to some extent.

Methanol and ammonia make a lot more sense than hydrogen in many ways. The fact engine manufacturers are naturally trying to drop hydrogen in as a replacement makes me laugh as they are clearly trying to avoid having their technologies they have spent billions on being killed off by something else.

Electrolysis is hideously inefficient and requires some serious electricity to carry it out. The numbers involved will be out of this world if you want to do it with PV and wind power as the scale of fossil fuel consumption is insane even for a little country like the UK. If hydrogen is the selected option then it would be a lot easier to produce it using process heat from nuclear reactors but this is technology no one has yet managed to scale on an industrial level. Can you imagine nuclear power being the same scale as the fossil fuel industry today?
 
Methanol and ammonia make a lot more sense than hydrogen in many ways. The fact engine manufacturers are naturally trying to drop hydrogen in as a replacement makes me laugh as they are clearly trying to avoid having their technologies they have spent billions on being killed off by something else.

Electrolysis is hideously inefficient and requires some serious electricity to carry it out. The numbers involved will be out of this world if you want to do it with PV and wind power as the scale of fossil fuel consumption is insane even for a little country like the UK. If hydrogen is the selected option then it would be a lot easier to produce it using process heat from nuclear reactors but this is technology no one has yet managed to scale on an industrial level. Can you imagine nuclear power being the same scale as the fossil fuel industry today?

Electrolysis has got fairly good recently, it's the compression and/or liquefaction of the hydrogen where the real losses come in, especially if it needs to be expanded and recompressed for purification - for fuel cells.

Ford and BMW were playing with H2 compression about 20 years ago, the couldn't fix the NOx issue at the time.
 
Electrolysis has got fairly good recently, it's the compression and/or liquefaction of the hydrogen where the real losses come in, especially if it needs to be expanded and recompressed for purification - for fuel cells.

Ford and BMW were playing with H2 compression about 20 years ago, the couldn't fix the NOx issue at the time.

Hydrogen is a pants molecule to use as a form of energy howsoever you want to paint it. What improvements have been made in electrolysis? The yield and energy in vs that out was still pants from what I have read recently. Generating electricity is a hideously inefficient process (40% would would be good going in anyone's book), using that electricity to then generate hydrogen is going to be painfully bad once you go and burn it in an internal combustion engine which sends half the energy involved straight out of the exhaust.
 
Aside from anything else, Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the known universe. As I understand it, if you put it in a steel tank, it's so small that it simply seeps out through the steel, never mind any loose connectors or rubber seals etc. That makes transportation and storage incredibly difficult, which might just as well be substitued for "incredibly expensive".

I think electric is the way everything is going to have to go, with maturing battery technology gradually permitting electrification of larger and larger vehicles.
 
Aside from anything else, Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the known universe. As I understand it, if you put it in a steel tank, it's so small that it simply seeps out through the steel, never mind any loose connectors or rubber seals etc. That makes transportation and storage incredibly difficult, which might just as well be substitued for "incredibly expensive".

I think electric is the way everything is going to have to go, with maturing battery technology gradually permitting electrification of larger and larger vehicles.

What, you don't want to pay 10 grand for a fuel tank
 
Aside from anything else, Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the known universe. As I understand it, if you put it in a steel tank, it's so small that it simply seeps out through the steel, never mind any loose connectors or rubber seals etc. That makes transportation and storage incredibly difficult, which might just as well be substitued for "incredibly expensive".

I think electric is the way everything is going to have to go, with maturing battery technology gradually permitting electrification of larger and larger vehicles.

Basically, a hydrogen molecule is two hydrogen atoms and one pishy bond between them. That is your lot. Hydrocarbons, by contrast, can be lengthy and contain multiple chemical bonds giving them great energy density per unit volume.
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
Hydrogen is a pants molecule to use as a form of energy howsoever you want to paint it. What improvements have been made in electrolysis? The yield and energy in vs that out was still pants from what I have read recently. Generating electricity is a hideously inefficient process (40% would would be good going in anyone's book), using that electricity to then generate hydrogen is going to be painfully bad once you go and burn it in an internal combustion engine which sends half the energy involved straight out of the exhaust.
And "Blue Hydrogen" seems to be a total fossil fuel industry scam
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I read an article a year or so back where some professor was proposing a scheme to dam up the Scottish lochs and use the in and outflow of sea water to generate enough hydroelectricity for the whole of the U.K. with some spare to export. Something like that. Can’t find it now. Was it higher water on one side of U.K. flowing through on tides through turbines?
 

vantage

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembs
I read an article a year or so back where some professor was proposing a scheme to dam up the Scottish lochs and use the in and outflow of sea water to generate enough hydroelectricity for the whole of the U.K. with some spare to export. Something like that. Can’t find it now. Was it higher water on one side of U.K. flowing through on tides through turbines?
Oh my god! That may give the poisoned dwarf enough income to declare independence!:facepalm:
 

Robin2020

Member
Livestock Farmer
I work on development of diesel injection systems for heavy duty goods vehicles. Direct hydrogen injection is the future in this field. A development race is on, now that the decision has been made. Exciting stuff.
 
I work on development of diesel injection systems for heavy duty goods vehicles. Direct hydrogen injection is the future in this field. A development race is on, now that the decision has been made. Exciting stuff.
Do you reckon it’ll actually become mainstream? I’m still sceptical about where this will be used. Is it cryogenic storage or just high pressure?
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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