Hi my name is Alex Burrows I'm the Director at the Birmingham Centre for
Railway Research and Education. I'm joined by Stuart Hillmansen; Stuart
do you want to say a bit about yourself. My name's Stuart I'm a senior lecturer
here at the University and I've been developing hydrogen fuel cell trains
over the last few years. And you may have noticed last week we had a big launch of
Hydroflex which is the UK's first hydrogen powered train it got a lot of
attention in the world's media which is a hugely exciting development
It's been covered by many news outlets including the BBC, Mail Online and others
That was launched at rail live which is a big UK rail show which takes place in
Warwickshire at the Quinton Rail Technology Centre. Now we've been asked a
few questions about the hydrogen train I think a lot of people have seen a bit
about it and want to find out more and we've had some questions so we're going
to answer a few of those today. Stuart we're going to start off talking about
why all of a sudden are hydrogen trains all over the news quite simply.
That's a really good question a lot of people people have been asking that and
there's a number of factors here if I just talk through there some of the
technical aspects and then maybe you can talk about the political and social
framework. So fuel cells over the last few years have been developed and been
shown to be proven to be robust and operating in several different sectors
so the bus industry for example have been using fuel cells and there are a
number of bus companies currently in operation around around the world and in
the UK. So the fuel cell is now a mature technology. Coupled with that is the fuel
tank system; that also is now mature and readily available and we use those
products in our Hydroflex demonstrator, So that's only a relatively recent
development that they've reached the level of maturity and robustness that
would be appropriate for the railway system and that's happened and at the
same time, if hand over to you Alex, is that there's been a political move to
decarbonise the rail industry. Well that's right so the government have
been very clear they want to see diesel trains or diesel only trains
off the rail network in the UK by 2040 now that's only 21 years away which in
rail terms is not very long given trains have a life
of around 30 to 35 years. In addition to that we're seeing much greater focus on
air quality on emissions and on the impact of climate change and you're
seeing with a number of cities including here in Birmingham the introduction of
ultra low emission zones as well as research onto air quality which is
showing stations like our station Birmingham New Street just up the road
the actual air quality for passengers and staff is not good and there needs to
be a change there needs to be a focus on the railway moving away from a reliance
on diesel engines and towards electric trains using energy from not just
overhead wires but from alternative sources where
at the moment only diesel trains can go. Which leads on to another good question
where is the hydrogen coming from Stuart? That is another really good question
and it's one that comes up a lot when when we talk to people and talk to
the public about this and it's a really really valid point. Hydrogen isn't an
energy source that's available naturally so you can't go and dig it out of the
ground we have to create it from from something and the beauty about hydrogen
is is it's a very common element and it's available in lots of different
forms so we're able to create it from energy sources and from renewable
sources so it's what's known as an energy
vector so we need to put energy in to create the hydrogen and then we can use it
in the train and create electricity and run the train's traction systems. That
leads on to another important point about hydrogen is if you're using
electricity to produce the hydrogen why don't you use the electricity directly and
that's true the most efficient way of powering a train is via overhead line
and directly into the train and then that leads on to another question
why don't you do that for the other parts of the network and maybe Alex you
can describe our network and why we can't do that everywhere. That is a
really important point so at the moment around 35% of the UK's railway network
has overhead wires, in addition in other small parts around London has a
third rail, another rail which carries
electricity alongside the two running tracks which also provides electricity as a
source into the trains. Now the problem with electrification it's got a bit
expensive recently we've had a few issues as an industry with delivering
cost effects for electrification and that has made the government reticent to
invest significant capital sums on putting more overhead wires in so we're
at this kind of halfway house where we know we want a greater more
electrified network and we want to a cleaner network for sure but we can't afford
the cost of electrifying more parts of the network and so we're seeing a move
towards what's called discontinuous electrification where trains will be
expected to run under the wires using the electricity from overhead wires to
power themselves but then there'll be elements of the journey where they will
then move across to being self powered which is currently using diesel engines
and so if you're interested in the railways that you may have heard of bi
mode trains which are both diesel and electric trains and we're seeing a lot
of those being introduced. I think what we're trying to do here is to create
that alternative to those diesel engines so hopefully at some point in
the near future we can switch out diesel engines for hydrogen
technologies that they will be completely clean but quite simply you
are not going to see a fully electrified railway network in the UK certainly in
our lifetimes simply because it isn't cost-effective to do so you are not
going to be able to invest that kind of capital expenditure on putting wires up
in very remote branch lines and far north of Scotland far west of Wales and
down in the southwest, it isn't economically viable so we need some kind of
alternative and that's what this is going to be. But just going back to that
earlier question then I know I've heard lots around the difference in green and
brown hydrogen it's something you could build on for us. Yes, so hydrogen can be
produced in a 100% renewable way using renewable generation like wind
turbine solar and so on that electricity is then fed through an electrolyser and
the input to that is water and the output is then hydrogen and oxygen.
That hydrogen then can be used as the the fuel for a hydrogen fuel cell train.
If you notice I've not mentioned fossil fuels at all in that so it is possible
to make hydrogen with zero fossil fuel input - that's defined as
green hydrogen it's not relying on fossil fuels at all and we can
then produce a mobile fuel which is possible to power autonomous rail
vehicles in the future. So that's the long-term vision for this and given that
now we have a very high proportion of renewables in our electricity generation
we have times in our energy system we're curtailing wind energy so we're
not using all the electricity that we're producing that means it's quite
cost-effective to use that energy to produce the hydrogen at a cost which is
competitive for the rail industry and will allow the rail industry to power their
trains without having to significantly change the pricing policy probably
virtually zero impact on the cost of running a rail vehicle. Then there's a
short-term step in between that so you can produce hydrogen from natural
gas and that's how most hydrogen is produced currently worldwide that then
also produces carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide that's produced from steam
methane reforming is a very very high purity carbon dioxide
you've probably drank it in your fizzy drinks so it's used for fizzy drinks and
other processes, food packaging and all sorts of stuff like that but
ultimately it gets released into into the atmosphere.
You could also capture the carbon dioxide and sequester it and then that would
give an intermediate somewhere between green and brown hydrogen. So the great
thing about hydrogen it's got lots of options for its production and
ultimately can be produced using zero fossil fuels and be completely zero
carbon. So hydrogen can be completely green it's really a choice and depending
on the source of energy to provide that. Ok fantastic but the costs we've
had questions about the costs of producing hydrogen and then the
cost of installing it onto trains. I mentioned earlier the cost of
electrification is huge and we're looking for that middle step and is this
realistically cost wise, we're getting to a better point aren't we in
the affordability sense. Yes so ultimately fuel cells aren't significantly
more expensive than the diesel engines they replacing so diesels in rail
vehicles are fairly expensive and fuel cells will be a comparable price so
it's not necessarily going to increase the cost of a vehicle. The fuel cost may
be a little bit more than diesel is right now but one thing that's in the
favour of a fuel cell vehicle is we've moved away from combustion and
combustion has got a theoretical upper limit on its efficiency, so has a
fuel cell but because a fuel cell is using a different mechanism to produce
the energy it's ultimately more efficient. And fewer moving parts.
Yes, fewer moving parts and good reliability it's also
potentially very very quiet and will give the customer a similar experience to
riding on an electric train. Which is an important thing - diesel train, as well as
the emissions - they are slower more expensive to maintain and run by comparison.
A couple of questions we've also had one was around there's a hydrogen train been introduced
in Germany called the Coradia iLint, there are a couple of them actually running in commercial operation and we
were asked a few times last week why don't why don't we just bring them to
the UK. Now there's a simple answer that. One advantage we
have in the UK is the railway was invented here it was introduced here far
earlier than many other countries but unfortunately the advantage of being the
first mover was then lost by having smaller infrastructure so our bridges
and tunnels are actually narrower and lower than tunnels and bridges in
France, Germany across across the rest of Europe. So sadly a German train cannot
get onto the UK network and it certainly wouldn't survive very long if it did as it would
have its roof ripped off which would be very unfortunate and that's why
we can't do that we have to develop from scratch a UK solution to UK standards
I'm afraid so we've had to develop the train from scratch here haven't we.
Yep that's right. So I think that's all the questions
we've got for now, if you have any more questions please do drop into the
comments below we'll certainly we can come back and answer some more questions at
some point. We're hoping that Hydroflex will be out too for public display
again in the near future. Actually do you want to talk bit around the next phase of the
project Stuart. Yep so at Rail Live if you've seen some of the footage from the
demonstrations there we ran the train at quite a modest speed and as an
electrical engineer interested in traction we're quite keen on
going faster so we have installed a lot more power in the train than was
on display at Rail Live and the next stage is to increase the speed
that we're running the train at first on a test track which we'll do in the
coming months and then we've got a plan to take it onto the
mainline network and that process is really exciting for us - there's lots
of things we need to consider about running on the mainline network. It'll
be the first time hydrogen has been used on the real railway so there's lots of
safety case considerations we need to go through so we'll be busy doing that in
the near future, so we're really excited about about doing. So it's
an exciting time for our work developing hydrogen trains and if you have any more
questions please do let us know. Thank you