India’s first hydrogen-powered passenger train, said to be the longest of its kind in the world, reached 120 km/h during a test run on the Jind–Sonipat route in the state of Haryana. The train consists of 10 railcars, has a capacity of up to 2,600 passengers, and still needs to complete compliance procedures before entering commercial service.
This is about 75mph and not terribly impressive for a train.
There’s a reason we used to have lighter than air mass travel but we don’t now, and that reason is the extreme destructive power of hydrogen.
I don’t see a giant balloon filled with hydrogen here.
Believe it or not, petrol and diesel have a high ignition point but crucially require plenty of oxygen to ignite and plenty of fuel to keep burning, and a small flaw in the airtightness of a vehicle or engine won’t cause a disaster.
Not so hydrogen. Hydrogen is a tiny tiny molecule compared with hydrocarbons, and oxygen is very small compared with hydrocarbons. A tiny flaw in a hydrogen vehicle or engine can allow oxygen to spread quickly in the gas, and hydrogen burns freely, rapidly and readily at even tiny doses of oxygen or tiny doses of hydrogen.
Brand new vehicles and pipes are lovely and undamaged and airtight. But vehicles bump around, and time takes its toll. Massive boom, but later.
This has never happened to a modern hydrogen vehicle. Hydrogen is lighter than air so any leaks do not form a sustained fire risk.
Hydrogen leaks into any steel casings slowly interacting with the carbon molecules found inside steel alloys, making any pipes or tanks brittle
You do not have to make pipes with exposed steel.
It’s definitely FINE.
Permanently.
I’m sure.
Very safe.
It’s especially fine if there is no ceiling or roof under which any leaking hydrogen can collect, and no steel pipes or other materials that hydrogen can react with and embrittle.
Feel free to go on the hydrogen vehicles as much as you like.
I shan’t, but that’s just me and physics and history.
You do you.
Don’t worry about any sort of increasing rate of hydrogen explosions since the Hindenburg disaster.
I won’t.
I’m sure NASA wrote literally over 1000 pages about safety in hydrogen systems for shits and giggles. It’s surely safe for public transport, much safer with all that oxygen and heat around instead of in the cold vacuum of space.
The world uses 100 million tonnes of hydrogen per year. The death rate is extremely low for how much we use of it. You are much more likely to die from gasoline or electrical fires.
This is like pointing out that you are much more likely to burn yourself cooking than arc welding. It’s true, but it tells you absolutely nothing about how safe arc welding is. Nothing at all.
The vast majority of hydrogen is used in oil refineries and most of the rest is used in the chemical industry, with plenty of safety manuals and safety processes, and members of the public aren’t allowed anywhere near the operating controls, exactly because it’s extremely volatile.
Almost zero hydrogen is used in domestic or public settings. There’s a reason for that.
Again, NASA wrote over 1000 pages on how to deal with hydrogen safely.
Also, the vast majority of hydrogen is produced from hydrocarbons. It’s carbon free at the point of use, like electricity is, but unlike electricity there’s next to no sustainable production. Battery safety and capacity are coming on in leaps and bounds. (China is developing newer batteries using less rare elements but with greater capacity and much greater charging speed.)
Hydrogen will always and forever be extremely dangerous.
There are tens of thousands of hydrogen vehicles in consumer hands. Deaths from major fires or explosions is basically zero. It is effectively proven that hydrogen is safer than gasoline.
Count me out. No way am I traveling in one of them. It’ll get worse as they get older. Embrittling takes time.
It’s like you never read my post. Holy poor use of statistics, Batman!