Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Etc., Hydrogen, Manufacturing/Plants, Transportation Alternatives
Hellenic Navy gets its first hydrogen-powered submarine from Air Products
What's cooler than a nuclear-powered submarine? That's right, a hydrogen-powered sub. Air Products (Est. 1940) has a lot of projects in the fire, but the late breaking news is that they have supplied the first hydrogen power plant for a submarine in the Hellenic (read: Greek) Navy.
While still needing to refuel every few weeks - as opposed to not requiring refueling for the life a nuclear vessel - it's better than the diesel-powered subs which require recharging the batteries after a few days. Obviously, it's loads cleaner than diesel power, not to mention lacking the eventual nuclear waste of the other alternative. Interestingly, because the operation of the hydrogen submarine is so quiet, it is virtually undetectable. It makes you glad that they are being open about the fact they have this new vessel, rather than letting us find out in a more unpleasant way.
In the last ten years, Air Products has built 70 hydrogen fueling stations for various uses across the world, laying claim to over 33,000 hydrogen refuelings thus far. They also have their fingers in the LNG (liquified natural gas) market as well.
[Source: Air Products]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hamster 8:46AM (7/16/2007)
Please explain the push towards Hydrogen. This company burns Natural Gas to make hydrogen when it could have burned less fossil fuel by running the submarine on NG.
It costs 1 million dollars to run your house on hydrogen. It costs 25000$ of PVs plus batteries for backup to run on electricity.
It takes 6 times more electricity, millions of dollars of more money and more space to run a hydrogen car than an all electric one. It takes 10 minutes to recharge an electric car.
What is the push towards Hydrogen except that fossil fuel is burned at the Hydrogen production plant rather than in an ICE engine?
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Tim 10:06AM (7/16/2007)
Hamster- It's all about maintaining customers through addiction. They know we can't economically produce, compress, store and transfer H2 at home and that's why they are so afraid of the vastly superior "Electron Economy".
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beelzabush666 11:25AM (7/16/2007)
the big reason we're not doing everything with batteries is that the batteries don't yet exist!
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Mike Z 12:43PM (7/16/2007)
The anti-hydrogen people run on auto pilot whenever these stories are posted. The story was about a hydrogen fuel cell sub, which is better than a diesel sub and cheaper than a nuclear sub. How the hell this has to do with addicted is beyond me.
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Tim 1:45PM (7/16/2007)
Mike Z- It's called programming. They are hoping if they repeat "hydrogen fuel cells are good" often enough, people will belive it. If you live in a farm long enough, you no longer smell the BS.
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Mike Z 1:50PM (7/16/2007)
Uhh a hydrogen sub makes a helluva lot of sense, 'programming' or not.
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pkuhl 5:26PM (7/16/2007)
The reason Tim and myself and all the other wisely anti-hydrogen fuel cell guys speak up everytime, is because if we don't, readers will start to believe the bogus hype regarding hydrogen fuel cells for cars. Yes, a hydrogen sub may make sense for a sub that cannot manage with current battery technology and for some reason need to be deployed today.
If we took all the money spent on making hydrogen work and made a better battery instead, we would be way ahead in efficiency and on the road to real clean technology.
1) Hydrogen is very ineffient. That inefficiency makes it dirty since gobs of energy are used to produce it and much of that energy is dirty: coal, nuclear, natural gas.
2) They can make it from water and natural gas. Well we hope only water since the natural gas is a shrinking commodity.
3) Many fuel cells require expensive rare materials such as platinum. Sure, spend gobs of money solving that but you could have just made a better battery and be far more efficient.
4) Subs have little to do with cars and shouldn't be on this forum anyway.
5) And so on...
EV all the way:
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf
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Chris M 3:53AM (7/17/2007)
Hey, if the Greek Navy wants to squander their nations funds on a bad idea, so be it. However, I think they'll find that H2 is such a bulky fuel, it is not a good choice for powering submarines with limited space. There are much more compact, cheaper and easier to handle fuels available.
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Chris 3:22AM (3/12/2008)
hey, heres a thought, why not have the sub run on the outside water that makes it float? have the system power electric motors by use of hydrogen fuel cell? (suck in water from front, send it through filtration, and then seperate atoms to make h2 and use oxygen for air to breathe/combustion of hydrogen, while h2 is used for combustion to generate electricity for ship system and motor by storing electric power in advanced batterys, water from combustion is sent out back of ship) and if your thinking that this won't work, just try it on your own. (maybe as a back up, have the surface area of the top half of the sub layered with water proof solar cells...laws of thermodynamics and other reasons like that)
i think that the sub would probuly stay at see for as long as it is needed (3 months, 6 monbths before the back up is needed)
also, you guys are right when it comes to batery technology, the original inventer of the rechargible battery already has something that could power a car for 400km/charge. that alone is good enough to look into.
but, meh... i'm just a 16 year old that looks at the world from a differant point of veiw. not to mention if someone was to eopen there own electric car company up here in british columbia, canada, possibily, vancouver, they could maybe own the market because they would have nothing to lose.
(also, do you guys know your being screwed by health insurance just like that from our own car insurance?) but thats a whole nother topic on its own that i don't wanna be scolded for, but thought i should have told people...(just watch "Sicko" and you'll know what i mean)...also, raise your hand if anyone has ever watch "who killed the electric cat?", amaizing stuff, USA is powered by oil, yet oil is what is ruining the world, damn... the world has to change, starting with USA.
(ps, you can quote my words for what ever purposes, as long as you tell the truth and stick true to the meaning of my post - its time for change to a more efeciant world with electric cars and hydrogen for ships)
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