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Hydrogen

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sptrawler said:
Good points @Value Collector .
It would actually enforce rest breaks, which isn't a bad thing. It would put the onus on the trucking companies to better schedule, rather than putting the onus on drivers, to meet ridiculous schedules.
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I've noticed on the highways, some of the big B-double rigs have drivers in tandem. They generally appear to be of the subcontinental persuasion.
 
Dona Ferentes said:
I've noticed on the highways, some of the big B-double rigs have drivers in tandem. They generally appear to be of the subcontinental persuasion.
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Yes a lot of the long haul trucks in W.A are triples or quads, this is where I personally think the energy density of batteries becomes an issue, but who knows what will be the end result. It is just fun to speculate, I'm sure people like Lindsay Fox are number crunching.
Australia is a big country, with lots of long empty miles to cover, the further that you can go without stopping, the lower the transport cost and the better the ROE of the prime mover.

The thing is, at the moment very often smaller vehicle transport the goods to a collection point, where the goods are then loaded into the trailers and assembled for collection by various sized prime movers, depending on weights, routes and distances.
So the long haul prime movers, actually may be completely different than the local transport prime movers, IMO that would make sense, battery operated trucks delivering produce to collection/distribution locations, where there may also be refueling facilities for both battery and H2.
The way we do things may have to change completely in a lot of processes, no one said going fossil fuel free, was going to be easy or one size fits all.
It is interesting times.





 
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Dona Ferentes said:
I've noticed on the highways, some of the big B-double rigs have drivers in tandem. They generally appear to be of the subcontinental persuasion.
Click to expand...
Even so, they still need to pee, so 30mins charging every 8 hours wouldn’t be a burden.

I am driving from Sydney to Brisbane today, passing loads of trucks that are just sitting parked at rest stops, they could be charging during that rest.
 
Value Collector said:
am driving from Sydney to Brisbane today, passing loads of trucks that are just sitting parked at rest stops, they could be charging during that rest.
Click to expand...
Likely taking the mandated breaks and doing their logbooks. So much monitoring (point -to-point, plus speed cameras) there's little opportunity to fudge the reports.

And likely to get tougher. (Thanks google)

Big Brother is watching you: 'Machine learning' cameras to be installed in NSW

Images of heavy vehicles are taken by the cameras, which then classify the type of vehicle in transit and the type of cargo being transported.
bigrigs.com.au
 
Teslas plan is to eventually have autonomous trucks following a lead vehicle in convoy.
 
This breakthrough in hydrogen generation using straight seawater would reduce costs substantially.

Green hydrogen straight from the ocean: Adelaide researchers crack new method​

Researchers from the University of Adelaide, along with international partners, have successfully used seawater with no pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen. The team did this by introducing an acid layer over the catalysts in situ. “We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100% efficiency… using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser,” University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao said.
January 31, 2023 Bella Peacock

Given the ocean’s vastness, it is considered a natural feedstock electrolyte.
Image: Professor Richard Manasseh

Share​


University of Adelaide researchers have led an international team to the discovery of a method in which ocean water has been used in a commercial electrolyser to efficiently produce green hydrogen.

“We used seawater as a feedstock without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desalination, purification, or alkalisation,” Associate Professor Yao Zheng, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Chemical Engineering said. The team simply filtered the seawater, which came from the Huanghai Sea in China, to remove solids and microorganisms.

“The performance of a commercial electrolyser with our catalysts running in seawater is close to the performance of platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionised water,” Zheng added.

The discovery addresses concerns about water scarcity that have lingered around green hydrogen discussions, with the researchers noting the ocean is an “almost infinite resource,” accounting for 96.5% of the earth’s water reserves, but has proven challenging due to the complexities of the water’s profile.

The team’s solution boils down to adjusting the local reaction environment of the catalyst, which they did by introducing an acid layer on its surface which captured problematic ions and reduced the formations of solids which can block the electrode.

Green hydrogen straight from the ocean: Adelaide researchers crack new method

Researchers from the University of Adelaide, along with international partners, have successfully used seawater with no pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen. The team did this by introducing an acid layer over the catalysts in situ. “We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen...
www.pv-magazine-australia.com
 
So RMIT has come up with another simple, cheap, scalable way to extract hydrogen from seawater. Hopefully.

From sea water to hydrogen — no desalination required​


Monday, 27 February, 2023




Researchers from RMIT University claim to have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from sea water, skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Their method has been detailed in a lab-scale study published in the journal Small.

....“Our method to produce hydrogen straight from sea water is simple, scalable and far more cost-effective than any green hydrogen approach currently in the market.”

The new approach, devised by a team in RMIT’s Materials for Clean Energy and Environment (MC2E) research group, uses a special type of catalyst developed to work specifically with sea water. Their study focused on producing highly efficient, stable catalysts that can be manufactured cost-effectively.

“These new catalysts take very little energy to run and could be used at room temperature,” Mahmood said.
PhD candidate Suraj Loomba added, “While other experimental catalysts have been developed for seawater splitting, they are complex and hard to scale.

“Our approach focused on changing the internal chemistry of the catalysts through a simple method, which makes them relatively easy to produce at large scale so they can be readily synthesised at industrial scales.”

Mahmood said the technology has promise to significantly bring down the cost of electrolysers — enough to meet the Australian Government’s goal for green hydrogen production of $2/kg, to make it competitive with fossil fuel-sourced hydrogen.

With a provisional patent application having been filed for the new method, the RMIT researchers are working with industry partners to develop aspects of their technology. The next stage in the research is the development of a prototype electrolyser that combines a series of catalysts to produce large quantities of hydrogen.

From sea water to hydrogen — no desalination required

A new method to produce hydrogen straight from sea water is said to be simple, scalable and far more cost-effective than any green hydrogen approach currently in the market.
www.labonline.com.au
 
Hydrogen powered excavators and wheel loaders are now out on the market.
This video from this years CONEX in Las Vegas has a quick walk around of a static machine from around the 11 minute mark.
It uses Hydrogen to generate electricity for the unit.
The guy says the limiting factor is the lack of Hydrogen refuelling options, but they seem to think these refuelling options will arise over time.


mick
 
Good morning
For mine, provides a good summary on how Hydrogen is produced.
Note couldn't quite 'web capture' in one cut ):


Kind regards
rcw1





 
Big spread on the ABC website about the market for Hydrogen in South Korea and the opportunities for JV with Australian companies.
Hydrogen will be an esential component of carbon free manufacturing

Korea's demand for Australian hydrogen has never been higher. Is it the start of a new mining boom?

As South Korea edges closer to being solely powered by renewables come 2050, the manufacturing industries of Australia's third-largest trading partner believe hydrogen gas is the answer to help reach its target.
www.abc.net.au
 
Queensland regional airline to trail hydrogen.

Queensland airline Skytrans unveils plans for Australia’s first hydrogen-fuelled plane

Hydrogen is a ‘truly sustainable solution’ for aviation which has so far been hard to decarbonise, says aircraft maker Stralis
www.theguardian.com
A Queensland airline has announced plans for what it claims will be Australia’s first hydrogen-electric aircraft.

The airline, Skytrans, which operates out of Cairns and flies to Cape York and the Torres Strait, says the first plane will be in the air by 2026.


Skytrans chief executive, Alan Milne, said the project would allow the carrier to “lead the nation” in reducing the environmental impact of the aviation industry and would help Skytrans become a completely net zero airline by 2050.

Skytrans has said it will work with aircraft company Stralis to retrofit a 19-seat Beech B1900D-HE. The converted plane will have a range of 800km, seat 15 people, and will initially operate at similar costs to conventionally powered aircraft.

“What’s quite unique about this project is it’s looking to develop a powertrain that can be retrofitted,” Griffith University researcher Dr Emma Whittlesea said.
 
Even better if the old BE1900 has reached the time limit on the turbines and blades and need to be refitted anyway.
mick
 
moving from the trials, the money now seems to be thinking batteries may deserve the big spend needed:

One of the world’s most bullish advocates for hydrogen, Fortescue Metals Group, now believes batteries will beat hydrogen in the race to provide clean power to mining trucks. Australia’s biggest iron ore miner, Rio Tinto, agrees.

Carbon free “green” hydrogen has been touted for several years as the most likely way to wean trucks and locomotives off carbon intensive fuels such as diesel because the batteries needed to power such heavy vehicles were thought be too large to make economic sense.

But a shift to lighter batteries has brought batteries back into consideration, and Fortescue’s director of decarbonisation, Christiaan Heyning, said batteries would win the battle for trucks in the next decade.

“We do believe that certainly this decade, batteries in trucks are going to be the most favourable solution, maybe not in every single haul, but for most haul routes,” he told the Energy and Mines Australia Summit in Perth on Wednesday.

“The biggest reason for that is if you don’t use direct electrification … it would need to have hydrogen. Hydrogen requires triple [the] amount of power to do it, so you need a lot more generation capacity, a lot more land disturbance, and more transmission, so there’s a lot of inefficiencies."
 
From Business Australian , it would seem that the reality has caught up with some of the hype.
Mick
 
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