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Note I wrote as someone who is heavily invested in BMN and believe in VFRB's future as one of the solutions for time delay energy storage, but as a professional engineer I also believe in horses for courses. VFRB's are not the right horse for transport. https://www.wartsila.com/insights/article/successful-tests-pave-the-way-for-ammonia-as-a-future-marine-fuel and also https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/marine-sector-looks-to-ammonia-to-decarbonize-shipping
I think there are better alternatives for shipping, using ammonia and either a fuel cell or directly in a marine IC engine. Ammonia will have a much higher power density than VRFB's and can be produced from e.g. solar power. I wouldn't be investing in that idea. VRFB's for static energy storage yes.
Tesla and Plug & Play EV batteries... now what have I heard about catalytic convertors being targets for thieves, imagine if all they had to do was unplug it and pull it out?
Some interesting facts about EV's and fires:
1) they seem to be more liable to fires than internal combustion engines are https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2020/11/27/vehicle-fire-data-suggests-higher-incident-rate-for-evs
2) Tesla’s recommendation is to fight a Tesla Energy Product fire defensively. The fire crew should maintain a safe distance and allow the battery to burn itself out. Water spray has been deemed safe as an agent for use on exposed Tesla Energy Products. Water is considered the preferred agent for suppressing lithium-ion battery fires.
3) According to Simon Kirsopp, watch manager at Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue, it is not always that simple: ‘Letting a fire burn out can not only have an impact on the surrounding environment, property, and people, but in many cases this just isn’t feasible. We have to think about the impact on the wider economy. Letting a fire burn out could mean closing a road for up to eight hours. It is estimated that for every minute a road is closed, it has a £1m impact on the local economy. Once the fire has been successfully put out, the problem for the fire brigade is not over. Electric vehicle fires are known to reignite hours, days or even weeks after the initial event, and they can do so many times. Just because the fire is burned out at that moment, there is no way of knowing if it will reignite in the back of the pick-up truck or in the storage grounds.'
I won't be jumping on the EV bandwagon just yet.
@Tagware re fire incident statistics, I have been unable to find any clear data on the incident rates, particularly separating petrol, vs diesel vs hybrid, vs EV so I don't know where you get your categorical statements from, my suspicion is that diesel cars will have the lowest fire incidences as diesel is nowhere near as flammable as petrol and needs a wick to actually burn freely unlike petrol whose vapours can ignite, however I have found this article from the UK car fleet organisation https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2020/11/27/vehicle-fire-data-suggests-higher-incident-rate-for-evs
Oh, and another thing, on a battery perhaps the best thing is to increase the internal short circuit to remove the stored energy as quickly as possible, whilst still keeping the fire under control, so yet another argument that perhaps water is not such a stupid idea.
@Tagware. Yes conventional wisdom for house fires etc is you do not use water on electrical fires, for a start in order not to electrocute yourself... however battery fires are not the same, for one they are lower voltages, they are dc, and the battery short circuit creates a huge amount of heat in itself with no oxygen needed.... the conventional argument of using powder, CO2 or HCF's etc on electrical fires is to exclude oxygen and put the fire out that way.
On EV's Powder will exclude the oxygen to a certain extent, but do nothing about removing the source of extreme heat, the short circuit,.
CO2 and HCF's would not work well in open areas where the gas will escape, and also do nothing to remove the source of heat, the short circuit.
Water does remove the heat quite effectively, and as the voltages are not so high there snot the risk of electrocution, so perhaps the Fire Service are not being as stupid as you credit them.... but the source of heat remains, the short circuit, and that is why they tend to reignite.
@Tagware.. Ooh just under 1000 cells in Tesla's latest, isn't that great, only 1000 to keep at optimum temp and current loads all the time.
As for your comment about Ammonia and it being the most wasteful use of energy, perhaps you are yet again looking at the current main process which converts hydrocarbon gas using steam, and yes it generates a lot of CO2. However solar power is the cheapest form of power out there, and places like KSA (Saudi) have it in abundance, so wasting a bit of virtually free and completely green energy is neither here nor there. As I said in one of my previous posts they are already in joint ventures with various companies to create giant solar farms to produce ammonia for transport use, they aren't waiting for oil to no longer be in use.
As for fires, I would expect Tesla, a manufacturer of them, to claim they are safer. However lets just assume for arguments sake that there are about the same number of fires in each type, what do you do if you have a fire in a battery EV....
The services have two main options, let the fire burn out or extinguish it.
Many EV manufacturers actually advise for a controlled burn i.e allow the vehicle to burn out while you focus on protecting the surrounding area.
According to Simon Kirsopp, watch manager at Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue, it is not always that simple: ‘Letting a fire burn out can not only have an impact on the surrounding environment, property, and people, but in many cases this just isn’t feasible.
‘We have to think about the impact on the wider economy. Letting a fire burn out could mean closing a road for up to eight hours. It is estimated that for every minute a road is closed, it has a £1m impact on the local economy. We have to think of business continuity, social arrangements and the effect on local businesses, sometimes closing a road just isn’t an option.’
So the second option, to extinguish the fire – this also comes with its own set of problems.
‘Putting out an EV fire uses around 1,125 litres of water per minute. We have to consider the water runoff. When water is used to treat a fire, it can become contaminated because it absorbs certain quantities of soot or chemicals that are common when anything burns, using such vast amounts of water it is very easy for this contaminated water to enter drainage systems. Once the fire has been successfully put out, the problem for the fire brigade is not over.
Electric vehicle fires are known to reignite hours, days or even weeks after the initial event, and can do so many times.
Not only does this pose a safety issue, but it also poses a legal issue: ‘Recovery firms are increasingly concerned about dealing with electric vehicles. There is no way of knowing if it will reignite in the back of the pick-up truck or in the storage grounds. This poses a legal challenge in terms of whose responsibility is it, and as a fire department it is hard to make the final call, just because the fire is out, it doesn’t mean it won
Ammonia is already widely transported by ships. There are risks just as there are with oil and LNG tankers, but I suspect the crew of an ammonia carrier are a lot more careful, just as I imagine they are on LNG carriers.
I don't disagree about the blending to the gas supply, but in reality by 2024 there won't be many DMG's running yet either. That will be the start of them really expanding, but it will still be relatively early days.
I am merely trying to dispel the idea that Tagware was promoting that hydrogen powered vehicles are dead ducks, I do not think they are. I think they have a very valid future and PHE is an obvious choice to be part of it.
Remember you can either make ammonia from hydrogen and air, or make hydrogen from ammonia, so it goes both ways, thus if you have hydrogen powered cars and no ready source of hydrogen nearby, you can easily tanker in ammonia and convert it to hydrogen. One of the main problems hampering hydrogen vehicles is refuelling facilities. PHE is one solution, converted 'green' ammonia another one, so you can resolve the refuelling point problem by green solutions in multiple ways.
The point about ammonia is that it provides an impetus to the wider use of hydrogen and thus more of a market, and that in itself means there would be more point to PHE's ability to produce the stuff. After all not much point in producing it if there wasn't a market.
And also google ammonia in the hydrogen society
As for the NOx issues, we already deal with them in diesel cars by using adblue, so clearly not insurmountable.
And you can use ammonia in a fuel cell. try googling that.
Googling ammonia as a shipping fuel gets this as the first 'snippet' with plenty of other hits. Ammonia has an advantage as it contains no carbon, so can burn in an engine without emitting carbon dioxide. By early 2024, Man Energy Solutions plans to install an ammonia-ready engine on a ship. The first models will be dual-fuel, able to run on traditional marine gas oil as well.
Also google ammonia from solar power the first snippet is "The biggest problem associated with solar power is intermittency. The problem is ensuring energy supply after the Sun has gone down. ... Ammonia can be produced decentrally from renewables (or cheap power) via Proton's NFuel units and this ammonia can be converted into power when needed via ammonia generators" and there are other hits you can read up on.
@Tagware. I really do suggest you read up on Ammonia as both a direct fuel and as a means of transporting Hydrogen (it is easily disassociated into Nitrogen & H2) before you continue to lambast me. It eliminates the issues you mention regarding having to always pressurise (note the UK spelling ;) hydrogen to utilise it. Yes we may have to use pressurised hydrogen in the actual cars, but to move it from production location to point of use you can utilise ammonia as an intermediary step. Even in cars there continues to be work on alternative ways of storing it other than as a pressurised gas, so who knows. I do feel the best means of transporting hydrogen is an area in which the UK govt has yet to cotton on, and agree with you they are missing a trick in that respect, but so are you.
@Tagware You clearly didn't read everything I wrote "What are we trying to do? Use less oil. Why would shipping Ammonia using Oil to move the ship be a good answer?" Where did I say the ship would be powered by Oil, I clearly stated on a number of ocassions that shipping companies were looking at Ammonia as a fuel source... So the green product they transport is also the same fuel they use... No CO2 issues at all.
As for my mobile phone, it gets charged using an old fashioned slow charger, and only contains a couple of cells, not thousands to individually manage like a car one does.
I think the point Tagware was trying to argue (and I disagree with) was that Hydrogen based transport will never take off because of the poor efficiency and therefore high cost of it's production. The presumable result of this (I assume his less than clear argument was) would be 0 demand for hydrogen, and thus it would be pointless for PHE to produce it.
I do not believe that will be the case, there are enough arguments for hydrogen powered vehicles for them to become a viable alternative to battery powered ones, at least in certain circumstances. In reality it doesn't matter if that only ends up a minority percentage, it will still be more than enough to utilise all the hydrogen that you can get from waste and more. I am also in agreement with others views that getting rid of waste is in itself an argument for PHE's process, although I don't actually support the view that the energy you can produce from it is truly 'green' as generating energy from the syngas will produce CO2 (that's what happens when you burn methane and carbon monoxide). So although no CO2 is generated in the process of producing the syngas, using that gas to generate power does create it. But in this case I think it is justifiable and easily offset by other green energy producers.
Oh, and in regards to my point about having enough renewables to mitigate the efficiency issue of hydrogen cars, yet again that links back to my point about how ammonia should be part of the cycle. You can produce it in desert locations near the sea where sunlight and water abound and because it is a highly dense form of energy storage it can be easily and cheaply transported by ships to where it is needed, much as oil is currently, with the fuel for shipping being the same fuel it is transporting, a completely CO2 free product. And guess what, Saudi Arabia is already partnering with various companies to develop exactly that sort of infrastructure.
@tagware
You keep wittering on about high mileage not being an issue and offer 100 miles a day as being proof. Get a grip, that is easily within a batteries capability for one charge and therefore does not require regular high charge rates. My point was that if you are regularly charging at high charge rates as necessitated by really high mileages such as those done by trucking or salesmen (to whom 100 miles is a walk in the park) or other long distance transport vehicles such as trains, then batteries will not last long. There is therefore a valid need for alternative forms of energy storage such as hydrogen or ammonia to hydrogen. You are merely stuck on the battery philosophy as being the only solution the same way you argue O&G is stuck on petrol or diesel.
You quote Amazon and UPS as examples of high mileage vehicles to prove that batteries are capable of it. These companies chose EV's deliberately because the daily use for an URBAN delivery driver is well within the capability of a battery, so they do NOT need fast charged and can be charged overnight, thus the batteries will last a long period as intended.
You have clearly not looked into my comment about ammonia being a valid form of energy storage. If you did you would find that there are a number of major companies looking into it at the moment particularly for shipping use, and once ammonia becomes a viable and recognised alternative EV and CE fuel source people will realise it is also a major link to the hydrogen economy, which you are naysaying on the basis that batteries are the be all and end all for EV's. I have never said that batteries don't have their place, they do, but they are not the answer to everything. Although personally I do not fancy being in an accident with an EV being involved as there is no safe way to discharge the huge amounts of energy the battery contains. Oddly enough I would have no such problem in a hydrogen fuelled vehicle because it dissipates so quickly and becomes harmless extremely rapidly unlike a battery which remains dangerous for days.
So that feeds onto my final point, as I have repeated above, I do not say batteries don't have their place, but they do have significant downsides in producing them from an environmental point of view, and your argument that they can be recycled is irrelevant if there aren't enough old ones around to recycle, so until then there is a simply enormous environmental issue in producing billions of them for the first time use in the billions of vehicles that are not currently EV's. The hydrogen economy issue is as you yourself have pointed out an issue of efficiency not environmental other than where that energy comes from. As I pointed out if the energy that is used to produce the hydrogen is from renewable sources the efficiency issue is not really a problem as long as you have enough of it.
In any case if you are such a naysayer of the hydrogen economy, why are you here?
As for being recyclable, I would agree with you, if we actually had enough of them in service already to be a significant input, however with just a tiny few percent of current vehicles being EV, there is a HUGE amount of first time production to get through before recycling is even a viable alternative.
And they get to charge them overnight on a low charge.