Fuel Cell Powered Trains on the Rails In Japan
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04. 5.06
Much of Japan's fabulous rail system is electrified, but for those routes still running diesel-electric locomotives the NE-train is coming. The diesel generator is replaced with two 65 Kw Hydrogen powered fuel cells and a hydrogen tank to power the motors and it stores regenerative braking energy in batteries. Pollution? the Google translation (below the fold) says, "as for the excreta just the water"
via ::Akhabara News
Making the hydrogen the large air oxygen combine, generates electricity JR east Japan to develop the worldwide first train which loads the " fuel cell ", on the fourth, it understood that the test vehicle completes soon. Doing test travelling destined for utilization, you collect the data. According to the authorized personnel, as for the test vehicle one formation. It loads two fuel cells of 65 kilowatts, it says travelling at speed per hour hundred kilometer is possible. You remodel the hybrid test train " NE train " which combines the Diesel generator and the storage battery which the same company developed in 2003. It is the shape which loaded the fuel cell in place of the Diesel generator. The practical vehicle of the NE train from around the summer of 07, is introduced into the small sea line of the non- electrification which runs Nagano and Yamanasi both prefecture. It loads the hydrogen tank to the test vehicle. It supplies the hydrogen to the fuel cell and reacts with the oxygen, it designates the electricity which occurs as power. The electricity which is left over and the electricity which is given out at the time of the brake are accumulated by the storage battery, become auxiliary power source. The fuel cell not to occur if the process which makes the hydrogen which becomes the fuel is made another, with itself two carbon oxide which make causing of terrestrial warming (the CO2), as for the excreta just the water. Also energy efficiency is high. Original Page in ::Fuji Sankei News
That's very cool technology! But where do they get the hydrigen, and how clean is the process to produce it?
Hydrogen is produced with the use of electricity, so technically it could be produced from the power of a wind farm or some form of hydro or solar power. Of course it could also be produced from fossil fuel burning or nuclear power.
Um, no it isn't. It's usually produced by stripping the hydrogen atoms off of methane. You *could* make with electrolysis (I've done it at home), but it's not efficient enough to compete with the chemical process.
So, how are they really doing it?
Anon - thanks for that info. I've long thought that the obsession over hydrogen as a "clean, renewable fuel" seemed off, since my understanding was that it used natural gas (production of which seems to have peaked) to create the hydrogen. Now if we could create enough hydrogen through enectrolysis using hydro, wind, and even nuclear power that'd be a different story.
Does anyone have more info on this? I admit my understanding of this issue is cursory at best.
surely this would be better than the terrible immisions produced by petrol. As long as we could use hydro electricity, etc. http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/hydrogen/report_6-2002/22869.html
You can also produce prodigious amounts of hydrogen from coal using IGCC or plasma technology. This is proven and IGCC is in commercial use right now. You can take high sulfur coal, and out you get sulfide compounds which are used for other products, lots of hydrogen, and some CO2, which you can pump back into the ground because it is emitted in concentrated form. Why we are not focussing on this for energy independence is beyond me.
You can also get hydrogen out of plasma reactors by burning garbage - these things burn at 7000 degress and produce glass, co2, burnable gas (used to generate hydrogen) and lots of heat. Again, sequestration and hydrogen output.
IGCC sucks! Thermoenergy's TIPS technology is going to blow it away! People will soone see.