Sci-Fi Civilian Vehicles, Equipment and Technology

The short answer is no, and the long answer is hell no. Hydrogen is an absolutely awful gas to work with in almost every conceivable way, but it is also just all-round terrible for pumping. Every single problem you have with natural gas transport is just turned up to 11 for hydrogen. The density is garbage, which means you need way more energy per cubic meter to pump it, and it's tiny so either the infrastructure is way more expensive to avoid leaks, or you are just pumping water through a sieve. Watertight and airtight are concepts Hydrogen doesn't consent to and happily ignores.

It's way, way more efficient to build power lines to wherever you need hydrogen and produce it on-site, than it is to produce hydrogen near your electricity and then hope to pump it to wherever you need it. Especially since this still also gives you flexibility with your power supply for non-hydrogen uses, as using hydrogen for energy storage is also just an absolutely awful, atrocious energy-destroyer.

The only way this scheme makes sense is if next to your hydroelectric dam you also have a bunch of chemical industry that needs the hydrogen.

Pumping hydrogen is an extremely terrible idea that is only entertained by a desperate oil and gas industry.

Edited by devak on Feb 26th 2024 at 9:10:20 PM

It almost makes more sense to pour water into a vehicle and run the hydrogen fuel cell in reverse.

I never said anything about pumping it anywhere.

To your list I'd add almost anything where we currently use a diesel electric generator. Railway travel springs immediately to mind. Due to power loss issues a lot of long haul rail is not electrified and powered by diesel-electric engines and swapping them for hydrogen fuel cells is probably one of the more straight forward applications (there are also some edge cases like Japan's new mag-lev Shinkansen that uses onboard power generation to reduce friction).

Also portable power generation in times and places where you can't plug into a grid and for reasons of space, weather or insolation (or combinations thereof) simply deploying solar panels and batteries isn't going to cover your needs.

Possibly marine shipping as well, at least as a stop-gap/back-up while other technologies are developed.

We already have prototype container ships powered by batteries, and you can just as easily haul a battery pack into a mine; heck, we do that today. You sure as hell don't want to run a diesel generator down there! A hydrogen fuel cell doesn't help either since it also consumes oxygen... although you get drinkable water out of it, so I suppose you won't die of thirst.

As for homes, battery backup is already a thing: you can buy Powerwall or another brand, set them up, and your home can be mostly off-grid and self-sufficient for days or weeks at a time — especially if you have solar as well.

There are only a very few applications where we need a combustible fuel source.

I'm thinking more emergency where the grid itself might be disrupted and you might not be able to get stuff like medical supplies reconnected before they're batteries run dead.

Or stuff like music festivals that might be sighted some distance from the nearest grid connection and a trailer with a fuel-cell generator and bunch gas tanks would be faster to set up and move off than filling the same trailer of solar panels, setting them up, keeping them clean and then dismantling them and packing them up.

Its not a solution for everything but there are times and places where even if its not the better option, it may be the easier or simpler option.

Solar + battery is already proven to work in those situations. It's only really a concern if you have multiple days of poor weather on top of all the other problems, and in that case, sure, bring a generator along just in case.

Also wind. There's a lot of off-the-grid DIY wind turbine setups if only because it's so simple to set up.

Climate and weather extremes are one of those common applications where combustible fuel is best.

As we saw with Polar Vortex January 2024 edition, batteries and electric only systems perform very poorly in extreme cold. Diesel turns to gel but that’s a relatively solved issue with heated and insulated fuel tanks. Pure electric vehicles barely operate at all if left out away from shelter.

But gasoline and other non-diesel fuel systems operate in such conditions without much issue.

It’s not without their own issues but there’s one scenario where solar panels and batteries are less desirable.

(Now see, my impression is that during the Texas winter, it was actually natural gas powered installations that had serious problems. While batteries and the like fared much better. Granted, wind and solar can have problems during "dark doldrums" as we call them in German)

That's correct. During the infamous Texas winter when the grid failed, you could tell where people had solar/batteries installed in their homes because they were little islands of light among acres of darkness. There were anecdotes about people inviting their neighbors over to stay warm.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 29th 2024 at 8:59:19 AM

Batteries would actually work better in the cold. As things warm up they tend to lose conductivity and this gets complicated by things warming up as electricity pushes through them. However, if the outside temperature is cold enough the circuits will stay nice and frosty and that'll make your electronics that much more efficient.

That's not completely true. Electronics may suffer lower signal loss due to resistance when they are cold, but batteries use chemical reactions that are strongly affected by temperature. The kinds we use work best at "room temperature" and get much less efficient when very cold (or very hot).

Home backup batteries, like Powerwall, are typically installed in interior spaces, which are climate controlled, and when they're installed outside, they have heating circuits to keep them at optimal operating temperatures.

Electric vehicles have a reputation for working poorly when it's very cold, but so do internal combustion vehicles. All you have to do is pre-heat them and they're fine.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 29th 2024 at 9:26:06 AM

It was a number of things. The natural gas installations were supplemental power and couldn’t keep up. Especially since a significant portion of the Texas electric grid was powered by windmills located in the panhandle and Llano Estacado regions (the west), the regions that suffered the worst freezes.

With the windmills out of the equation the gas supplement couldn’t keep up which led to cascading effects.

Only diesels or if the battery is dead. (Which even new and charged batteries can struggle in extreme cold.) As long as you can get a spark, a gasoline engine will work anywhere on Earth in any weather. Gasoline, avgas, jet fuel, propane and more all work just as fine at -40 as they do in summer temps.

Basically any fuel where it hasn’t frozen or solidified due to cold temperatures as long as it is readily ignitable works better than a pure electric battery system in such conditions.

The worst that’ll happen with some of them in the cold is they can operate a bit slowly at first until the lubricants get moving. Or it’ll be dead because the battery is dead. That’s all.

The battery can't deliver as much power to crank the engine because of chemistry changes, the viscosity of the oil increases, ice can freeze metal parts together and contaminate the fuel, belts and hoses become more brittle.

Seriously, dude. It's not just about burning the gasoline.

For an electric vehicle, you power on the electronics and tell it to warm up the battery. As long as it's not completely dead, it'll raise itself to operating temperature and you're fine. Just needs enough juice in the battery to begin with.

If it's been sitting cold for hours or days and you try to hop in and go without a warmup cycle, you might have problems. Same goes with a gas car.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 29th 2024 at 12:20:23 PM

We should note that the Natural Gas power plants suffered the most since trace amounts of water vapor ended up condensing and freezing in the pipes, leading to clogs. The icing on the windmills was also unusual as wind turbines have been used in colder places like Sweden throughout the winter. For the most part, the whole Texas mess has been blamed on ERCOT skimping on winterizing the power infrastructure.

Well yes, Batteries do have a lower limit for optimum temperature but a battery's entire functional range is lower than combustion engines. If we're competing for cold weather performance the Battery is going to stand up better than then ICE.

Also the only reason the texan power grid suffered in the first place is that it's deliberately isolated from the rest of the grid

"Climate and weather extremes are one of those common applications where combustible fuel is best. "

Cough*nuclear*cough

^ Good point. Nuclear is best of all in terms of “always on” energy.

We don't use RT Gs nearly as much as we should.

Biggest problem with using an RTG for anything other than super remote environments is that they have plutonium. You don't want your car getting stolen by agents from rouge states.

We really need something that works well as RTG fuel but is shit as reactor fuel.

Umm, yeah. Nobody's putting nuclear power sources into consumer hands. Maybe in the far, far future, but considering how poorly the average individual maintains their stuff, there's no way any regulatory authority would permit it.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 2nd 2024 at 6:25:00 AM

Nuclear Micro-reactors

Small Modular Reactors

There are cheaper options out there.

I could see fusion getting into consumer hands once technology gets far enough to where it can be easily produced. Mainly because it's theoretically much less dangerous than fission nuclear power. Essentially, instead of melting down, it's more likely to simply crap out.