Why JCB thinks that hydrogen is the best alternative to diesel for heavy machinery.

[Ken]

There is enough easier fish to fry why not just stick with diesel and Euro6 tech for the small amount of use we are taliking about.
Lets concentrate on the easy 99.9%.

[Galahad]

I'm struggling to see through the greenwash of the latest JCB announcement.

The deal is worth "billions" - but JCB's total turnover is only £4 billion a year. Maybe it has the potential to become part of a deal that will contribute to a market that is forecast to be worth "billions" in years to come.

FFI seem to be a company that manufactures equipment that can be used to build a plant to produce hydrogen and also kit to build engines to consume hydrogen - but do they actually manufacture the hydrogen itself? Do they have plans to?

If any of it materialises it looks to be a long way in the future.

[AE-NMidlands]

I have skimmed back through this thread and I can't see that anyone has pointed out that JCB has got a lot invested in internal combustion engines:
https://www.jcb.com/en-gb/products/engines I don't think they are simply rebadging engines from other makers, so perhaps they want to continue to make money on their investment for as long as they can. As has been said elsewhere, H2 is a distraction to prolong the life of the engine-producing companies.
Almost all ICEs but especially diesels are a problem in that they produce noxious gases. You only have to be alert to the smell when you are near one. I am very sensitive to acid gases, like NO2, so I notice it very often. Catalytic converters are a fig-leaf because they don't get up to temperature most of the time in the UK climate.
My other objection to H2 as a fuel is the very poor round-trip efficiency. It only makes sense if you need to mop up massive surpluses of renewable electricity, or it is a genuine by-product of another industrial process.
A

[Tinbum]

Jcb started making their own engines when Caterpillar bought Perkins. Reason is obvious.

[Stan]

This article is about the owner of Fortescue Metals, good and bad.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... een-energy

[Mart]

I watched this vid about electric buses / secondary life of batts etc - and something jumped out at me, and made me think of this old thread.

Quick waffle - since this thread I've seen more about HICE, especially the huge volume of H2 when transported, around 8-12x that of petrol, since H2 has a good energy density, but not a good volume density. But HICE doesn't have much better efficiency through an ICE. [Note - HFCV do, which are around 50% efficient when converting H2 to leccy. But this doesn't include all the downstream losses of producing and transporting the H2.]

So the thought / discussion on here, revolved around getting H2 to site, or leccy to site. My personal thought was that leccy may be available on site, but if not, then a source to charge transportable batteries will be closer in most examples, than the nearest source of H2.

Back to the vid - Well ..... watching it they mentioned their large transportable batteries. They say how they are used for things like outside events already, but then mention construction sites. After that point, construction sites get mentioned repeatedly. They seem to be concentrating on the need for diesel gennies to run leccy demand, but the obvious leap (for me) would be to use these very large transportable batts, for charging BEV construction vehicles too. Certainly seems like a good/viable business model to me.

Notes - They do suggest, just as an example, that currently if necessary the batt could be backed up by a diesel gennie, pointing out that it can run at peak efficiency, whereas most site gennies have to be oversized for peaks, so run inefficiently most of the day. But my thoughts are more on cycling these large batts (if on site leccy isn't available/big enough), so no diesel gennies are needed.

Also, this is yet another example of where I think I'm being clever, and imagineering a solution, only to find that the real World is many, many steps ahead of me. Fun times.

Batteries, Buses & A Brilliant Business Model

[Mart]

I guess it's double decker bus day, as I've just found another similar solution from an article that came out yesterday (I wonder when number 3 will pop up):

Designwerk Unveils Megawatt Charging System For Electric Trucks

Swiss based Designwerk Technologies has announced a new Megawatt Charging System for heavy duty trucks that can provide up to a megawatt of power. The new charging system will allow those heavy vehicles to recharge their batteries up to 6 times faster than is possible with a 350 kW charger — the current fast charging standard for automobiles. On its website, the company says “lowering emissions from heavy trucks is of central importance for the energy transition and the achievement of climate targets. The aim is to increase the proportion of low-emission or zero-emission means of transport. For this, we need advanced charging infrastructure for heavy duty vehicles.”

The demonstration facility is intended to highlight ways in which a high capacity charging network and security of supply can go hand in hand. “We install Second Life e-truck batteries in our charging containers as a buffer to cope with peak demand. This not only eliminates the need to expand the grid, it also means that the battery system should be able to feed renewable electricity back into the grid,” Dettwiler says. Similar to bidirectional charging, electromobility can therefore be incorporated into supply solutions. Demonstration systems at Galliker Transport AG, Käppeli Logistik and Murg Flums Energie will prove that this works.

The Designwerk Megawatt Charging system fits inside a conventional shipping container, which allows it to be easily transported to where it is needed. Its principal characteristics are:

Fast charging of heavy e-trucks in 45 minutes
Transportable and flexible utilization concept
Conformity with the worldwide standard MCS
Energy buffering reduces grid connection costs
Further use of decommissioned traction batteries

[Stan]

Harry is invited back to JCB to see progress on the hydrogen engine. It could go into production by the end of 2023.
Don’t shoot the messenger.

[Stan]

This video follows on from the above on and is the same until about 18 mins. There onwards, Harry is looking at working hydrogen machines on site.

[Mart]

Thanks Stan, interesting, and no intention to shoot the messenger. But here are my thoughts on the latest vid.

Started off well, I found the first half interesting. Wasn't sure about the casual way H2 was being talked about, but I'll come back to that. They addressd the NOx issue. I don't pretend to understand it, but the suggestion didn't seem to be managing NOx levels lower, but implied little NOx through appropriate combustion ..... I suspect I was mis-understanding that.

Then we got to the second half, when Lord Bamford (LB) took Harry (and us) for a ride!

First off, did that H2 truck sound noisy, or was it just me, with a BEV bias?

Now onto the fun bits, which I was so shocked at, I'm hoping it's simply because of my lack of knowledge, and others can correct me, and explain where I'm going wrong, as it seemed their chat, and then Harry's later comments were, dare I say, complete and utter garbage.

LB was simply throwing out criticisms of BEV's, with I suggest unreasonable negativity. He talked about BEV cars having a tonne of batts. Well, Lithium ternary batts are now at about 250Wh/kg, so a 60kWh battery would be around 240kg. Obviously there will be more kit, not just batts in the battery pack, but far from his extreme negativity. Most BEV's now are moving to LFP batts, certainly at the smaller range end, where the lower efficiency (volume and energy to mass) is less important, but let's use those figures, so around 150Wh/kg, which for a 60kWh batt would be more like 400kg.

Battery tech is improving, so I'm not convinced that the weight is too bad. It's simply a thing, but not as bad as made out.

But sticking with weight, where exactly do these two guys get the cheek to mention batt weights, without mentioning H2 fuel tank weights. A 4-6kg H2 tank weighs about 100kg. Looking at a relatively short range H2/battery truck (only a smaller rigid, not a max size HGV), it has a 216 kWh battery, a range of 248 miles, but 7 H2 fuel tanks, so they alone weigh around 700kg, or the weight of ~175kWh of Li-ion batts.

Hyundai Hydrogen fuel truck


Then we have the problem that this is HICE not HFCV, so its efficiency will be much lower. Fuel cells can reach about 50% efficiency converting H2 to leccy, but HICE is little more efficient than ICE. So 20-30%. That may be OK for heavy plant, but they were talking about H2 for cars and trucks, and that it's being overlooked .... nope, it hasn't. At HICE efficiency, most of the volume of the car would need to be fuel tanks. Engineering Explained has done an excellent vid on this, in response to news that both Toyota and BMW ICE engines had been converted to HICE, for research.

The Unfortunate Truth About Toyota's Hydrogen V8 Engine


They also talked about the UK, unlike most countries, seemed set against H2. I don't think that's true. The UK like most countries is looking into H2, but (dare I say), like all H2 experts, has concluded that it's a no-no for road transport. Again I'll get back to this. Also in the UK, we have now seen some H2 stations close down.

I may be wrong or conflating issues here, but on another thread I mentioned how Tesla superchargers seem to cost around $45k, whilst I've heard that a H2 fueling station costs about $1m. I suspect that cost is for a station with multiple pumps (4?), rather than for a H2 pump, but the cost is staggering.


Now to the main issue. H2 itself. Throughout the vid they were very relaxed about the green H2 side, seeming to suggest it needed little explanation, and would simply be easily available. That's why I got annoyed. LB did mention that India has loads of sun (PV potential), and JCB have a large production plant there.

Can we make green H2, yes of course. Can we move it, not really. It's an absolute pig to shift. That's why over 90% of H2 consumption in the World takes place where H2 is produced. Pipes are hard, H2 wants to escape. Transporting H2 is tricky as it is not energy dense by volume. To truck the equivalent of a petrol tanker would take 8-12 tube trailers. They can carry about 400-500kg of H2 each, or to put it another way, the weight of the truck and trailer differs little between full or empty. Not only do you have the added expense of needing more trucks/trailers (in ratio to petrol/diesel), but you also have the 8-12x expense of drivers, and the fuel consumption of those trucks, creating a vicious circle.

Will we produce H2 from excess RE, personally I suspect we will, but it will be at the later end, when other more efficient / economic solutions have first been deployed*. H2 (and CAES) offers vast storage potential, into the 10's and 100's of TWh's, but that doesn't mean it's viable for transport, even heavy plant. Producing it on site at a CCGT powerstation makes sense. You use the leccy connection to bring in the excess, then burn the H2 on site for leccy gen. This does not automatically mean that green H2 will be available for road use. Step one is displacing current H2 consumption for fertilizers, with green H2.

They also talk about the expected falling costs in the price of H2, with suggestions it could reach $1/kg and be cost competitive with diesel. Nice plan, but LB later talks about how the idea (and work by Rolls Royce) on SMR's is being missed/wasted, suggesting to me, that he is looking at the possibilities of H2 (and SMR's) rather than the realities.

Even if H2 can be made cheap, that would require extremely cheap green leccy, so any improvements in the cost of HICE, won't be improvements in the cost comparison of HICE v's BEV's. Speaking of which ....

..... how much green leccy will we need for this HICE?

Well, BEV's are about 3x more efficient than a HFCV. That's to say that for a given amount of leccy leaving the powerstation (let's say 1kWh), they will after losses (transmission, charging and mechanical) apply about 75%, or 0.75kWh to driving the wheel.

For a HFCV, you have the same losses, plus the electrolysers, the compression/cooling of the H2, the transportation then pumping of the H2, then the fuel cell itself (~50% efficiency), meaning approximately 25%, or 0.25kWh will drive the wheels.

Now, moving to HICe, we will have the same losses before the engine (fuel cell) of the HFCV, but then we have ICE efficiency of around 25%, thus making it half the efficiency of a HFCV, so roughly 6x less efficient than a BEV.

This is important, since the primary fuel cost of a BEV, and a HICE / HFCV is the same thing, green leccy. So even assuming that the extremely expensive electrolysers are free, you'd still get a fuel cost of ~6x more for a HICE.


I hope I've been fair here, and please correct me on the data, efficiencies, assumptions etc, as LB seems like a very clever guy, so maybe I'm missing something critical. I suspect 'they' believe that the leccy for green H2 will cost almost nothing, being at the end of demand for RE leccy excess, maybe that's the thought?

But I really can't see any justification for the negativity that LB had for BEV's, nor the, dare I say, ignorant comments Harry made towards the end, claiming that BEV's would obviously cost far more than HICE. But BEV costs are falling, and again this seems to ignore, entirely, the cost of the fuel, something ignored/missed throughout the vid ... unless I missed it, and therefore shame on me.


Hope this is fun, it's not really a rant. Good thing to explore all options, but HFCV's and HICEV's, have not been ignored, they have been researched.


*I say H2 production will be at the later end of storage. I don't mean in time, as H2 is already being used as a storage medium. I mean after other simpler and more efficient storage solutions for any given location/scenario have been maxed out.