[HN Gopher] Overhyping hydrogen as a fuel
___________________________________________________________________
Overhyping hydrogen as a fuel
Author : samizdis
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-11-16 11:36 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| squaredot wrote:
| Last year I read the following post regarding the application of
| hydrogen on ground transportation, simple and insightful. It
| basically explains why it doesn't make sense to use it for that
| particular application.
|
| https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/11/hyd...
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| This isn't a good argument to be honest. Sure, it won't save
| the climate, this is a problem of energy generation. We will
| always need more than yesterday so we need to look at how we
| can generate it.
|
| The main disadvantage of hydrogen is that it is very difficult
| to store. It is the smallest element and simply diffuses
| through almost everything. The efficiencies of energy
| conversion of hydrogen are quite good for that matter.
|
| But BEV (how the author calls them) have major disadvantages as
| well. Infrastructure needs are unfulfilled, the recycling is
| maintenance intensive, ...
|
| It is still more environmental friendly to drive that 10 year
| old used tincan than to buy a new electric car. Advantage here
| is that you don't have local polution, much cleaner city air
| etc.
|
| But neither hydrogen cars nor BEV will save the climate.
| defrost wrote:
| > The main disadvantage of hydrogen is that it is very
| difficult to store.
|
| > It is the smallest element and simply diffuses through
| almost everything.
|
| The people currently most serious about the immediate
| expansion of green hydrogen supplies (by a significant factor
| over current global production) are not looking at storing
| hydrogen for export | transport | storage, they're looking at
| ammonia - three hydrogen and a nitrogen.
|
| eg:
|
| [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/forrest-promises-to-convert-
| firs...
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Yeah, I guess it will probably end in it being stored in
| some compound that can be directly used. Looks like a
| promising project.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Infrastructure needs are unfulfilled
|
| But infrastructure is currently being built out for that.
| There are very few places in the US (lower 48) that you can't
| drive a BEV to and back. For some of the remote ones you will
| need to plan your route around chargers, but you can get just
| about anywhere. For more dense areas you can just wait until
| your battery is getting low to start looking. It isn't like
| gas where you can wait until you are "running on fumes"
| before starting to look for a charger, but it isn't a big
| deal.
|
| Hydrogen is far behind - maybe it will be built, maybe it
| won't, I won't predict the future. What I can tell you is if
| you buy a hydrogen car today you will have to buy the place
| to fill it at the same time, and you have to assume you will
| never go out of range.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Hydrogen also has a lot of problems that make it expensive
| for car use. But the real problem electric cars have to
| beat is battery and resource life cycle. You can charge
| your car now but think about how it would look like if even
| 30-40% of people would need to charge at the same places.
|
| Problem is there is very little incentive for anyone to
| invest in energy infrastructure. That is a problem
| affecting EVs, but also a problem that needs to be solved
| anyway.
| tinco wrote:
| > It is still more environmental friendly to drive that 10
| year old used tincan than to buy a new electric car.
|
| No it isn't, what do you base this on? Production of a new
| electric van takes a limited amount of CO2, and the CO2 saved
| while driving it compensates for that within a couple of
| years. I don't know how this rumor still persists.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| I'm interested in this calculation. Do you know of some
| data to support it?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Interactive web app that calculates this for various
| vehicles.
|
| https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore
|
| Note the customisation options that let you choose a
| state for the electricity mix, miles driven per year and
| so on.
| epistasis wrote:
| I would go so far as to say it's a sunk cost fallacy to run
| the old carbon emitting car even one more mile.
|
| There is no savings to be had by waiting to convert to an
| EV, the total emissions are always going to be higher if
| you drive the polluting car rather than switching today.
| jnwatson wrote:
| That's demonstrably false. Each EV is an immediate ~13k
| kg hit on CO2. Average ICE passenger car is .4 kg CO2 per
| mile. Even if you have a source of zero carbon energy to
| power the EV, that's 32500 miles of driving an ICE before
| you break even on CO2.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| So every car that does more than 32500 comes out ahead,
| which is basically all of them.
|
| Youd need to commit to keeping the car for over a decade
| while only doing 3000 miles per year, then blowing it up
| out of spite to fail that.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Only if the electricity is net zero carbon though (and,
| really, only if the generation of that low-carbon
| electricity somehow is related to driving the car and
| wouldn't have been generated anyway).
| jnwatson wrote:
| Right, if you live in West Virginia, it is entirely
| possible to never have a break even point, as in, it will
| never save CO2 to buy an EV.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You could always move somewhere energy generation isn't
| so dirty especially as its probably also effecting your
| air quality not to speak of the employment options.
| merb wrote:
| such comparsions are mostly stupid, since there are too
| many factors that would make it really hard to analyze.
| i.e. as long as cars are produced the 13k kg hit on co2
| will be made no matter if you buy it or not, your old ice
| car will probably be resold and probably to somebody that
| can than save co2 emissions per mile, not every
| electricity is green, your old card was probably produced
| with more co2, it depends if you upgrade/downgrade/keep
| your car class, it depends how you drive (and if you ever
| driven an ev, you will see that its easier to drive it
| economically), and so on.
|
| of course the plain numbers might make sense on paper but
| not on the real world.
| shagie wrote:
| https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
|
| Note the "choose a state" and compare Wyoming or West
| Virginia for a regular hybrid car (e.g. Prius or Insight)
| to an EV... and that is quite different than if you pull
| up California, Oregon, or Washington.
|
| In WY and WV, the plugin hybrids have a larger carbon
| footprint than a regular ICE hybrid car (Prius or
| Insight).
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| It depends how much running around you do and how much CO2
| the energy mix where you live generates. For someone doing
| a few thousand miles per year it could easily be the case
| that a new car would never pay off the additional CO2
| emissions during it's manufacturer.
|
| Of course you can then make argument that they aren't doing
| enough mileage to justify having their own car in the first
| place.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I drive maybe 1500 miles per year and if I calculate in
| petrol usage for the next 10 years where a car wasn't
| produced for me, it will use less CO2 overall.
|
| Since I live where the electric grid is already at the
| limit, my options to install a charger are limited as well.
| I could use 230V 16A to maybe charge it very slowly...
|
| Batteries also degrade with age and we will have to see how
| a used car market will look like. I have a car for luxury
| only since my work is a few hundred meters away.
|
| If you buy a new car anyway, an EV would be a good choice
| provided you have the means to charge it. Many people in
| the cities don't have that option. But it wouldn't be too
| helpful if you replace your current car just for the sake
| of it.
| zizee wrote:
| 1500 miles a year is a huge caveat to your earlier
| prouncement. Of course if you drive rarely^, an existing
| ICE vehicle could result in less emissions than building
| an entirely new EV.
|
| ^Average annual KMs driven by Europeans is 12k, Americans
| average 15k Miles a year.
|
| https://short-fact.com/how-many-miles-does-the-average-
| europ...
| rapsey wrote:
| What this article does not address is however the solar problem
| of producing too much in the summer and too little in the
| winter. Using the solar energy from summer to produce hydrogen
| to use in the winter or at night sounds like a complete
| solution to me.
|
| Maybe not for cars or heating, but for powering the grid.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't mind if it's used to siphon off energy; basically
| make it a chemical battery that is easily stored, relatively.
| But I'd rather it be sipohoned off into more immediately
| usable and scalable storage, e.g. by pumping water up into
| reservoirs. And batteries, close to where it's being
| produced, but those are costly.
| ajross wrote:
| That's "hydrogen as storage", and as such it sits on the
| efficiency curve quite a bit below batteries and pumped
| hydro. It's something worth building out if we can find a way
| to make it work on a balance sheet, but right now we have
| cheaper ways to solve that problem.
|
| Also, recognize that lots of grid load is more flexible than
| you think. Running smelters and foundries preferentially in
| the summer is a very doable thing.
| rapsey wrote:
| Efficiency is not the only factor. There is also cost and
| availability. You can't build pumped hydro just anywhere. I
| have no idea what the cost is compared to lithium batteries
| though.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Also the cost of lithium may rise as more vehicles start
| using Li-ion batteries, but price of hydrogen storage
| will likely remain the same
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's contrary to conventional economics -- costs fall
| as production increases.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think causality works better the other way - production
| increases as costs fall.
|
| Edit: LegionMammal has the right words, demand curve.
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| I think the reason hydrogen storage costs won't fall much
| is because the cheapest technology (metal tanks) have
| already benefited from economies of scale. The parts that
| make them suitable for hydrogen storage specifically will
| get cheaper, but it's unlikely that there's a lot of low
| hanging fruit for manufacturing the tanks themselves.
| There could be a breakthrough in metal hydride storage or
| cryogenic storage that could reduce costs, but I'm not
| too optimistic. I think the most likely scenario is that
| most electrolyzed hydrogen is converted to methane for
| storage and use. Methane is much easier to convert to
| liquid and much more energy dense, which helps with
| storage costs.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Lithium prices should fall dramatically in the future as
| production increases.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| And the rest of metals? Nickel, copper?
| ajross wrote:
| Storage batteries are moving rapidly toward a LiFePO4
| chemistry that doesn't require rare resources. You can
| buy cars (even Teslas) and home batteries with them
| already.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Only a matter of time before phosphorus becomes as
| expensive as nickel or copper and you are back on the
| beginning with lack of materials for batteries.
|
| > Earth's commercial and affordable phosphorus reserves
| are expected to be depleted in 50-100 years and peak
| phosphorus to be reached in approximately 2030.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| How is this contrary to conventional economics? Using the
| most basic model of supply and demand, EVs becoming more
| popular would shift the demand curve to the right, since
| more people would want to buy Li-ion batteries at any
| given price. We would expect the market equilibrium to
| shift both upward and rightward, increasing both quantity
| and price. It might only shift only one way or the other,
| if supply is particularly elastic or inelastic. But it
| definitely wouldn't cause a decrease in price by itself.
| ajross wrote:
| This is predicated on the assumption that Lithium is a
| scarce resource with new new sources available. In fact
| the opposite is true: Lithium is pervasively available
| almost everywhere[1], the problem is that it's expensive
| to extract and requires a bunch of processing facilities
| be built.
|
| So you'd absolutely expect Li supply to grow along with
| demand and push prices _down_ due to economies of scale.
| And that 's exactly what we're seeing.
|
| [1] Basically, go find a salt deposit -- that's a dried
| up ocean, which is the best concentrator we can find for
| Lithium compounds.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The effects of experience curves vary widely between
| different industries. For semiconductors, it's huge. For
| mining, not so much. Battery costs are only 25%
| manufacturing. So at this point, battery supply is
| rapidly becoming a resource extraction problem.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The scale effects in mining are very significant. Big
| mines are a lot cheaper per tonne than little mines.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Then why is cost up 10x over the last two years?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Price is up 10x. Cost hasn't changed.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Cost is literally another word for price - I'm not sure
| what you're trying to convey by trying to distinguish the
| two. When a battery manufacturer goes to buy a ton to
| lithium, the cost they have to pay has indeed increased
| 10x.
|
| The price of extracting a ton of lithium from the ground
| may be the same, but it's not enough to keep up with
| demand. Which is why the cost of lithium on the market is
| skyrocketing.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Price is up because it takes 18-24 months to produce
| lithium on the margin. The primary source of lithium is
| solar concentrated brine, so today's supply is peak Covid
| planning decisions.
|
| The people that had the guts to invest in lithium
| production in the middle of Covid when the price was in
| the tank, are currently harvesting that lithium and
| getting a massive payday.
|
| Price will come back down.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| This is no longer a question of economic axioms, but of
| the facts on the ground. How do we know that the scale
| effects relative to lithium mines as they stand today
| will be sufficient to offset the price increase
| inherently caused by the increased demand? Do you have a
| source for this?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The increased demand only causes a temporary increase in
| price. Lithium is a commodity, and for commodities price
| == marginal cost.
|
| The marginal cost for lithium is about 1/10th of the
| current price, so the price of lithium will eventually
| fall.
|
| Of course "eventually" could be a long time away...
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| That is not necessarily true for minerals, which are
| mined not produced.
| ajross wrote:
| > You can't build pumped hydro just anywhere.
|
| No, but electrical grids can efficiently transport energy
| across continent-scale distances, so it doesn't really
| matter. It's true, that stored hydrogen only needs to
| beat "electricity from the nearest dam" and not local
| generator numbers, but that's still a tall order.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > No, but electrical grids can efficiently transport
| energy across continent-scale distances
|
| That doesn't matter. E.g. in Europe most natural location
| for pump storage are already used as such. I guess you
| could build some in Asia, I am not sure. We would just
| have to trust russia to transport our electricty back and
| forth. Good idea /sarcasm
| rapsey wrote:
| Sure but how many of these locations are there? You don't
| just need a hill, you need large amounts of water
| available. Not to mention the construction is definitely
| not cheap or fast.
|
| I mean there is a shit ton of land available in say Spain
| for solar+hydro plants. No matter the lower efficiency,
| you could build enough to power Europe.
| shagie wrote:
| What If We Covered the Sahara With Solar Panels? -
| https://youtu.be/62ASvupr8Zg
|
| The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa -
| https://youtu.be/7OpM_zKGE4o
|
| One of the difficult problems with extremely large solar
| projects is the infrastructure to move the power. In a
| lot of these cases, the space to build solar is large
| areas of land that no one uses... which means that
| there's not much infrastructure to build the solar power
| plants, and then not much infrastructure to move that
| power back to places where people live.
|
| Yes, there's a lot of land that could be used for solar.
| Moving the enough power to power all of Spain (or all of
| Europe) based on solar requires some very impressive
| transmission lines.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well there's also this thing called "roofs" and there is
| collectively a lot of them.
|
| While the economic efficiency of massively distributing
| your solar collection across residential and commercial
| buildings is less than a grid scale, at the same time you
| get far more resilience with all the buildings having
| local energy generating capacity in disaster situations.
| It also alleviates the total amount of energy the grid
| needs to transport (especially for home/business charging
| of EV vehicles), so grid development/maintenance costs
| will stay sane.
|
| Not that grid scale isn't important. Heat pumps, home
| geothermal, residential solar, grid solar, wind, battery
| storage, pumped hydro storage, and whatever else works
| will be necessary. Hopefully synthetic fuels / algae
| fuels / aluminum air batteries / next gen nuclear / grid
| geothermal can also all contribute.
| pfdietz wrote:
| As I stated above, the cost of inefficiency is proportional
| to the number of charge/discharge cycles.
|
| For seasonal storage, efficiency is 365x less important
| than for diurnal storage. Minimizing capital cost is the
| primary concern.
| zardo wrote:
| > Also, recognize that lots of grid load is more flexible
| than you think. Running smelters and foundries
| preferentially in the summer is a very doable thing.
|
| It's doable, but it requires that production capacity has
| been overbuilt and turns all the roles at the foundry into
| seasonal work.
| Retric wrote:
| The energy efficiency is so unbelievably terrible it's a very
| poor option for balancing the grid even if it wasn't also
| more expensive than batteries.
|
| People talk about hydrogen for transportation because you can
| refuel quickly, using expensive fuels is already the norm,
| and it's much lighter than batteries. But, it's so expensive,
| inefficient, and difficult to store that there needs to be
| vast technical progresses before it's viable. Hydrogen would
| be fairly viable if it was 1/4 as expensive, fuel cells cost
| 1/4th as much, and the energy density was 4x as high by
| volume. At which point we could start scaling producing, but
| batteries are viable today and we are already scaling
| production.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Yeah, the key to any practical use of hydrogen is a massive
| massive infrastructure buildout. Fundamentally, a hydrogen
| infrastructure is competing with the power grid, which has
| a century of investment and already exists.
|
| It competes with battery technology/economics, which is in
| roughly a 10% year on year improvement curve, a curve that
| will have to flatten at some point but has been doing 10%
| for better than a decade and with 140 wh/kg sodium ion /
| 200 wh/kg LFP / emerging solid state + lithium sulfur techs
| will probably continue.
|
| So if hydrogen is claiming:
|
| - IF we resolve the research barriers and core engineering
| to a basic state - IF we invest billions/trillions in
| infrastructure - IF that is built in 10 years (which would
| be a miraculous human achievement)
|
| ... THEN we ... might ... in theory ... be price
| competitive with the current day grid + batteries.
|
| OK, what about a world where batteries are half or a third
| of the cost in 10 years, which is what the long term trends
| suggest with year-on-year improvements?
|
| All the nuclear and hydrogen stories are being hyped hard
| over the last couple years, because those behind those
| technologies aren't stupid and see the curves in
| alternative energy and storage and EVs: economic armageddon
| at an industry wide level for the nuclear, oil/gas, and
| others.
|
| The coal industry was a preview for their industries. They
| know it's a losing battle, but like other fading
| industries, the execs hold on tooth and nail to get their
| bonuses/retirement/payouts. The organizations have real
| economic inertia, and investing in things that slow down
| the transition allows the companies to make more money
| longer.
|
| At least the economics of wind/solar/batteries are working
| so strongly in favor of a transition. Otherwise write the
| requiem for the human race.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The power grid will never be able to compete with
| hydrogen (or other liquid fuels). The laws of physics
| simply aren't on the side of using the electric grid for
| fueling.
|
| Imagine a truck stop where you can have 10-15 semi trucks
| filling up 300 gallon tanks every 5 minutes. We're
| talking megawatt-hours of energy to every roadside fuel
| station. And there are in excess of 10 million semi-
| trucks and over 40,000 truck stops in the USA. This isn't
| even getting into more demanding applications, like
| aviation, where the energy demands are an order of
| magnitude greater (The electrical equivalent of fueling a
| single Boeing 747 with 65,000 gallons of JET-A in under
| an hour is ludicrous)
|
| Unless you build hundreds of nuclear reactors, invent
| superconducting power lines, come up with battery
| technology that's 100 years in the future, or tell
| everyone that the 21st century is cancelled, this is all
| impossible for the grid. At least on paper, hydrogen can
| solve this problem if we can figure out how to generate,
| store and transport it properly.
| rapsey wrote:
| 70%-80% electrolysis efficiency is unbelievably terrible?
| There are many factors such as cost, time to market and
| availability. Batteries require lots of mining of materials
| and have a limited lifespan.
| scythe wrote:
| Fuel cell efficiency is worse than electrolysis
| efficiency, about 50%. Even the worst batteries beat
| that.
| rapsey wrote:
| How about cost and availability.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| How many cycles do those batteries work with that
| efficiency? How environmentally friendly is mining
| Lithium in China and transporting it around the globe?
| How much CO2 does the transport of those
| minerals/batteries produce? How do we get rid of old
| batteries? One huge advantage of producing hydrogen or
| methane out of thin air with excess energy from truly
| renewable energy sources is, that we don't have to
| procure and transport source materials, and that it can
| be stored.
| Retric wrote:
| Producing and distributing hydrogen requires significant
| infrastructure that releases vastly more CO2 than moving
| lithium around for EV's. I think you got blinded by
| thinking of hydrogen as green but it doesn't magically
| show up.
|
| Also, moving lithium around releases negligible CO2, an
| EV battery only needs 15 pounds of lithium and lasts 25
| years. You can work out the exact number based on
| specific origin and destinations but it's on the order of
| driving an ICE 1 to 10 miles. Which shouldn't be
| surprising because boats are very efficient, lithium is
| light, and cars weigh a lot.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Lithium in China? What does that matter?
|
| Lithium comes from a lot of places. The largest Lithium
| exporter in the world today is Australia. Multiple South
| American countries are also towards the top of the list.
|
| A lot of lithium "mining" is digging up desert salt
| deposits or skimming salt brines from salt lakes. Some of
| that still isn't "perfectly" environmentally friendly,
| but compared to extracting most any other sort of mineral
| it is one of the environmentally friendliest we extract.
|
| Lithium is the third element on the periodic table and
| the third most common element in the universe. Admittedly
| a lot of the planet's Lithium is in compounds/salts that
| sometimes need to be chemically broken down and that has
| more environmental impacts than the mining processes. So
| there is that, admittedly. But a lot of it is
| electrolytic just like the "advantageous" hydrogen
| processes people seem to love.
|
| Lithium is not a rare or heavy mineral. It's the next
| fatter cousin of Hydrogen.
|
| > How do we get rid of old batteries?
|
| Recycling. Plenty of companies have already answered this
| question. Lithium is highly reclaimable from all existing
| Lithium-based battery formulations.
| [deleted]
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Wait till you hear about the efficiency of
| petrochemicals...
|
| "In other words, even when the engine is operating at its
| point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat
| energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 65-80% of
| total power is emitted as heat without being turned into
| useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#:~:text
| =in....
| whatshisface wrote:
| Hydrocarbons would also be a bad alternative to batteries
| for grid energy storage.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Dispatchable energy sources already compete with grid
| storage, in fact they have been dominant for the last 100
| years.
| gambiting wrote:
| Sure, but producing 1kWh worth of petrol doesn't require
| 1kWh of energy. Producing 1kWh worth of hydrogen through
| electrolysis always requires more than 1kWh of energy,
| it's just pure physics. Even if the process was 100%
| efficient through magic, it's still a stupid thing to
| rely on for producing hydrogen.
| jameshart wrote:
| > producing 1kWh worth of petrol doesn't require 1kWh of
| energy
|
| ... so long as you don't count the 1kWh of photosynthesis
| that was done by a bunch of ancient plankton to rip CO2
| molecules apart and build hydrocarbons instead.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well yes, of course. But it's not energy that we have to
| spend now, unlike with hydrogen.
| jameshart wrote:
| Digging the oil out of the ground and burning it very
| much 'spends' it.
| gambiting wrote:
| I meant the energy that was originally used to create oil
| in the first place. You don't need to add any more,
| because oil, unlike hydrogen, already exists.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Batteries are >95% efficient round trip.
|
| Hydrogen is: 70% Gibbs Free Energy Efficiency, 70%
| electrolysis efficiency, 50% fuel cell efficiency, 93%
| compression efficiency = 23% round trip efficiency.
| _hypx wrote:
| A fuel cell is a battery. It has the same fundamental
| efficiency as any other battery. Of course, this is not
| how it works in the real world, but people who cite
| "efficiency" are usually greatly exaggerating how it
| works. Most batteries cannot reach 95% efficiency,
| especially if they need to store energy for long periods
| of time. Round trip efficiency of hydrogen will beat any
| ICE doing the same thing, and with heat recapture will
| basically match a li-ion battery. In situations where li-
| ion is poorly suited, such as cold weather or long-term
| storage, hydrogen will often be more efficient.
| Retric wrote:
| Fuel cells are only useful for automotive applications,
| on the grid you want combined cycle gas turbines which
| are cheaper and more efficient. That still only gets
| round trip efficiency to about 25%.
| kergonath wrote:
| > on the grid you want combined cycle gas turbines which
| are cheaper and more efficient
|
| You don't want gas turbines anywhere near the grid. It is
| a terrible strategic choice besides the obvious
| ecological effect.
| Retric wrote:
| You are thinking of natural gas fueled turbines, you can
| also burn hydrogen in gas turbines. If that hydrogen was
| produced domestically via electrolysis using clean
| sources there isn't any strategic issues.
|
| Also, from a strategic perspective burning domestic
| natural gas and burning natural gas from a different
| country are very different things. Europe becoming
| dependent on Russian natural gas was stupid, but America
| burning it's domestic natural gas is mostly just an
| environmental issue.
| sauwan wrote:
| Electrolysis only half of the round trip.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The efficiency argument is a huge canard for the
| applications for which hydrogen makes sense. The "cost of
| inefficiency" is proportional to the number of charge-
| discharge cycles. For annual seasonal leveling, the cost is
| very small compared to diurnal storage.
|
| Hydrogen critics also say "just overbuild the renewables
| instead". Apparently, dropping excess power on the floor
| giving an efficiency of its use of ZERO is to be preferred
| to making hydrogen with it at efficiency great than zero.
| jansan wrote:
| For large projects Hydrogren will probably be attached to
| nitrogen to produce ammonium. Technology to handle ammonum
| has been availble for about 100 years now, and while it has
| its drawbacks (it is toxic), using ammomium solves a lot of
| issues.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Batteries don't have acceptable energy density for use in
| aircraft and transoceanic shipping. It's not that hydrogen
| is better than batteries for a sedan. It's that you'll
| _never, ever_ fly across the Pacific in a battery powered
| airliner.
| janef0421 wrote:
| For transoceanic shipping, direct use of nuclear power is
| more efficient. It also enables higher speeds more
| consistently and increases operational flexibility. The
| main cost is increased capital expenses, which should pay
| for themselves due to reduced cost of operations, and
| increased crew costs, which should reduce as nuclear
| operations become a standard part of the training of
| mariners. There are also some issues around governance,
| but those are fairly malleable.
| [deleted]
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| *With current battery technology
|
| We have no idea what batteries may be possible in the
| future. It may be a decade or a hundred years, but one
| day that may very well be possible.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| A battery powered plane is possible in the same vein that
| a fusion powered plane is possible - it's not at all
| possible with current technology and anything in the
| foreseeable future.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| There are battery electric "regional commuter" two-seater
| planes on sale today. There's a 9-seater prototype that
| has completed short hop test flights [1]. Right now
| almost all of that is short-hop, but the excitement in
| that growing industry is that may disrupt the economics
| of even long range jet flights before long. (Not just
| "foreseeable future" but "sooner than you think".) (The
| efficiencies of battery electric for planes is apparently
| really interesting: that battery motor full torque access
| apparently a game changer for some types of flight
| dynamics. Or so I've heard.)
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/largest-
| electri...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > The aircraft flew at more than 100 mph to an altitude
| of around 2,500 feet, made a few turns and then landed
| after 28 minutes
|
| This isn't going to disrupt any kind of airline traffic.
| Battery energy density needs to improve by at least an
| order of magnitude - probably two - before it has any
| significant aerospace application outside of drones.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Already practical for some applications but needing work
| to more, even possibly a lot of work, is still a vast
| difference from "never in the foreseeable future".
|
| Regional planes that only travel 30 minutes to an hour
| and do so cheaper and more efficiently than gas/diesel
| equivalent planes can still massively disrupt the big
| passenger airlines. It used to be that the airlines had a
| wider mixture of 30 minute/1 hour flights on smaller
| commuter planes to smaller "regional" airports before the
| economies of scale of jet engines pushed everything
| bigger (fewer flights below 1 hour in distance; more
| "hub-and-spokes" centralization; etc). A return of cheap,
| efficient short 9 or so passenger commuter flights could
| massively disrupt _today_ 's passenger airlines and their
| logistics, not just tomorrow's.
|
| If electric efficiencies _also_ manage to scale to the
| bigger flights, who knows what will happen, but it is
| something to watch that there 's already practical
| disruption implications even _before_ scaling it up that
| big.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| No, it's not practical for any application - at least
| none besides drones. A 737 has 150-200 seats, this would
| entail 17 separate 9-seater electric planes - each of
| which needs its own pilot - to substitute one regional
| jet. Ticket price would have to be extremely high just to
| fulfill the labor cost of operating the aircraft, because
| of this high staff to passenger ratio. There's also no
| mention of how long it took to recharge these batteries
| after the 30 minute flight - a plane that needs to sit
| for several hours to recharge between each 30 minute
| flight is not going to yield a return on investment.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| As if we'll ever have a transatlantic voyage in a craft
| held aloft by hydrogen
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It's been built before:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155 Ships have
| even less of an issue with storing hydrogen since mass is
| less of an issue (building lightweight enclosures for
| liquid hydrogen is a challenge).
| nanomonkey wrote:
| I assume this is a joke as the LZ127 and Hindenburg made
| hundreds of trans Atlantic trips.
| legulere wrote:
| The solution to the PV problem is wind power. Wind generally
| blows more during the night and winter. That's much cheaper
| and more efficient than generating and storing hydrogen and
| then turning it into electricity again.
| ballooney wrote:
| No it isn't the solution.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
|
| You need something else for those hours/days/week(s).
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| Where's the difference that makes it feasible for powering
| the grid, but not for powering vehicles?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Where 's the difference that makes it feasible for
| powering the grid, but not for powering vehicles?_
|
| Energy density. For the fuel alone, volumetrically.
| Altogether, massively as well.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| Isn't H2 energy density much better than Li-Ion
| batteries? I don't understand why it's not applicable to
| transport if so.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Isn 't H2 energy density much better than Li-Ion
| batteries?_
|
| By weight, hydrogen and oxygen creates 20x more chemical
| energy per kilogram than lithium-ion batteries [1]. (It's
| comparable to gasoline and air.) By volume, uncompressed,
| it has far less. Once compressed, we have to take into
| account the weight of the containment tanks, the weight
| of the fuel cell and the energy lost in converting
| hydrogen to electricity, an output batteries directly
| provide, a combination which negates that specific energy
| advantage.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density_Extended
| _Refere...
| rapsey wrote:
| Cars require a large infrastructure to be in place. EVs use
| the power grid. Much faster and cost efficient to build
| large Solar+hydrogen power plants and drive EVs.
| danielheath wrote:
| To power vehicles, you would need fuel stations all around
| the country with hydrogen-fuel equipment.
|
| To power the grid from excess solar, you need a hydrogen-
| burning generator at the site of the electrolysis plant.
| bamboozled wrote:
| _To power vehicles, you would need fuel stations all
| around the country with hydrogen-fuel equipment._
|
| Why does this keep coming up? Who cares about this
| specific point? If there is demand, people will build the
| fuel stations, like we did with gas and oil?
|
| I get there are other harder problems with Hydrogen, but
| worrying about infrastructure seems strange?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| To summarize, IF you get the practical engineering
| resolved, IF you get all the consumer products designed
| and ready for manufacturing, and IF you get a de minimis
| infrastructure to scale from, that's ... 15 years?
|
| Hydrogen infrastructure, if what we're talking about is
| on the scale of current ICE cars, can't "organically"
| compete, and won't "organically" develop. It has no
| chance without a massive government investment/buy-in on
| a decade long scale. It needs huge investment for each of
| the big IFs I outlined above.
|
| Look at the cost curves of solar / wind / batteries for
| the last 10 years, and consider that there are numerous
| technologies about to be rolled out that will improve
| those at the same or better rate and the overall
| industrial scaleout / economies of scale isn't close to
| being done.
|
| Hydrogen is marketed these days with "hey it will cost X
| and that is (theoretically / lies damn lies and
| accounting) competitive with wind/solar/batteries (which
| exist and we KNOW what they cost) price today.
|
| But there is absolutely no chance of hydrogen being cost
| competitive in general power transmission/carrier,
| transportation, etc in 10-15 years. Heck in 5 years it
| likely won't.
|
| So the hydrogen people are praying that their lobbying +
| fortune would produce some boondoggle subsidy to build
| this out, and then the government would limp it along due
| to the sunk cost fallacy.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| The editorial seemingly misses some other issues with hydrogen
| production. Other issues I've seen are:
|
| - Water availability for hydrogen production: a recent article I
| saw was "Green hydrogen revolution risks dying of thirst"
| https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/green-hydrogen-revolut... -
| touches on water availability in South Australia, and areas
| depending on desalination
|
| - Energy availability for hydrogen production: Recently heard
| Europe would still have to import hydrogen ( e.g. Germany would
| have to import 70% of hydrogen ) :
| https://youtu.be/9Y6BvCVKC_E?t=2063 - The Great Simplification
| interview between Nate Hagens & Sebastian Heitmann
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Not enough attention is being paid to Japan's contrarian "red
| hydrogen" strategy.
|
| This entails using a novel helium cooled fission reactor to
| generate very hot (950C, 1750F) process heat that is then fed
| into an Sulphur-Iodine cycle hydrogen plant to create very cheap
| hydrogen without any feedstock but air and water.
|
| Beyond fuel, hydrogen can be used to replace coal in iron
| smelting, Haber-Bosch fertilizer, and other chemical processes
| that require hydrogen made today via fossil fuels.
|
| They already have a 30MW pilot reactor in operation, and are just
| about to turn on the S-I hydrogen plant. Could be a very
| interesting addition to global energy mix.
|
| Strategy: https://www.csis.org/analysis/japans-hydrogen-
| industrial-str...
|
| Reactor: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japanese-
| gas-coo...
|
| S-I Process:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur%E2%80%93iodine_cycle
|
| Video (hypey): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uTZWaJU6ho
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yeah, a chemical cycle involving vaporizing and decomposing
| sulfuric acid at 850 C is totally credible. Yes, let's avoid
| turbines and instead make our equipment out of ... tantalum? /s
|
| The maximum thermodynamic efficiency of this cycle is 50% (and
| likely will be lower). This is not much better than making
| electricity with the reactor and driving electrolysers. And
| when the levelized cost of energy from renewables is very low
| (especially for the surplus energy that could be fed into
| electrolysers as needed) it's hard to see how this scheme
| competes. Yes, it doesn't have turbines, but it does have all
| sorts of high temperature chemical reactors that must survive
| corrosive conditions.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| There is a reason we run nuclear reactors at 400C rather than
| 1000C. I wish scientists could be called out for lies of
| omission.
|
| "A novel nuclear reactor which operates just below the
| temperature where our most exotic alloys mechanically fail".
| kergonath wrote:
| > There is a reason we run nuclear reactors at 400C rather
| than 1000C.
|
| There are several reactors design that work at high
| temperature, HTGR are not new.
|
| > A novel nuclear reactor which operates just below the
| temperature where our most exotic alloys mechanically fail
|
| We have plenty of materials that can withstand higher
| temperatures than that, both refractory alloys and ceramics.
| Do you know the temperature in an aircraft engine? If weight
| is not a factor, plain old tungsten melts at 3400degC.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I had never before considered, but how do they melt/cast
| tungsten? How do you get temperatures that hot in a
| controlled way, when basically nothing is solid anymore.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_metallurgy
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Melting tungsten in atmospheric conditions is not really
| useful. You start with tungsten oxide as a gas and it
| reacts with hydrogen and tungsten powder precipitates
| out. The powder is then heated and compressed to form a
| polycrystalline billet (sintering).
|
| Technically speaking, the first step in tig welding
| aluminum is to melt the tungsten and it forms a little
| ball. It is not hard to reach the required temperature.
| You can just put a lightbulb filament in 220 socket and
| it will melt the tungsten in a split second. That being
| said, a crucible of molten tungsten is not a thing.
| robocat wrote:
| > HTGR
|
| https://atomicinsights.com/chinas-high-temperature-
| reactor-p... has a summary of the past experimental
| reactors (skip half way down to the heading "Brief high
| temperature reactor history"), and explains some of the
| reasons past reactors have failed to be commercialised.
|
| It also explains one central problem with using gas: "Even
| with higher temperatures and higher efficiency, each core
| can produce 1/10th of the electricity of light water
| reactors, but [China's] HTR pressure vessel is described as
| 'the world's largest and heaviest pressure vessel.'
| Pressurized gas has a far lower capacity to move heat than
| pressurized water.".
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=high-temperature+gas+reactor
| kergonath wrote:
| Well yeah, they did not displace PWRs (the heat capacity
| issue is one of the reasons why molten salt and sodium
| fast reactors were investigated). But the problem is not
| the lack of high temperature materials (which is false).
| HPsquared wrote:
| Steam at 950degC and helium at 950degC are very, very
| different when it comes to corrosion and safety.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And vaporized sulfuric acid decomposed to SO2 + O2 + H2O at
| that temperature... how do you think that compares?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's that the pressure of water either in liquid or
| supercritical form gets too high.
|
| Material issues for fast and/or high temperature reactors are
| not trivial but don't look insurmountable. 1980s literature
| seemed to think fast reactors could be longer-lived than
| LWRs, LWRs look longer lived today than they did back then.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I imagine a reactor operating at 1000C is built almost
| entirely on graphite and ceramics... But I have no idea how
| they plan to use it with water, as graphite doesn't behave
| well on those temperatures with water around. (Maybe there is
| a heat exchanger at some point that makes failures on the wet
| side safe.)
|
| It certainly looks possible. You will probably end up needing
| some amount of metals on the hot portion, but they can be
| minimized to a very large extent. Cheap, on the other hand,
| is not a property I would guess from that description.
| jandrese wrote:
| "Very cheap" is definitely on the "I'll believe it when I see
| it" category.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Yea, totally. I'm saying it's a strategy, not a reality haha.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The high cost of Gen 3 nuclear power is largely due to the
| very large steam turbine and heat exchangers that are
| required if you are using water as a working fluid, coolant,
| and moderator.
|
| From the 1950s to the 1990s the interest in fast reactors has
| been in the 60x better fuel economy and reduced waste
| problem. (e.g. less radioactive than the uranium ore in 1000
| years) It was believed back then that a fast reactor coupled
| to a steam turbine would have a higher capital cost than an
| LWR. There also was a lot of concern that it takes a lot of
| uranium or plutonium to form a critical mass and that would
| be an expense.
|
| Recently fast reactors and other high temperature reactor
| types are of interest because getting rid of the water could
| allow miniaturizing the whole system and get the cost
| competitive with natural gas not to mention solar and wind on
| the days that solar and wind feel like supplying power. The
| stockpile of plutonium in spent fuel is getting bigger and
| bigger every day and the public seems entirely uninterested
| in throwing away 98% of the energy content of the spent fuel
| away in a place like Yucca Mountain. Thus high-quality
| fissile material seems a lot less scarce than it did in the
| EBR I - Superphenix era.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Does it make sense to invest in a hydrogen powered vehicle
| company?
| ben_w wrote:
| I think that depends entirely on what you think will happen to
| battery prices, and if you mean _road_ vehicles or _all_
| vehicles.
|
| Because aircraft have extreme energy density requirements, I
| don't expect chemical[0] batteries to ever replace combustible
| fuel.
|
| If you think the battery prices will remain roughly where they
| are now, then sure it makes sense to invest in hydrogen road
| vehicles; but if you think that battery prices will reduce
| substantially, then I don't think it does make any sense to
| invest in hydrogen vehicles.
|
| Why? Because although BEVs are (IIRC) a net cost saving over
| their lifetime, even at current battery cost, the purchase cost
| is too high for most people (the Sam Vimes Boots theory of
| socioeconomic unfairness comes to mind), but if batteries get
| much cheaper then poor people will also be able to afford them
| and hydrogen road vehicles won't have a market to serve.
|
| [0] There's a whole bunch of interesting storage ideas which
| right now are basically just sci-fi, but unless you wish to
| invest a few tens of millions in fundamental research on
| nuclear isomers or if you can use quantum tricks to dynamically
| alter phosphorescence half lives from weeks to hours and back,
| don't.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > If you think the battery prices will remain roughly where
| they are now, then sure it makes sense to invest in hydrogen
| road vehicles;
|
| No it doesn't. Electric cars are already beating Hydrogen
| vehicles on price. And Hydrogen vehicles don't make a profit,
| they lose lots of money. while Tesla has a 30% automotive
| margin on their EVs.
|
| Also, batteries will certainty get cheaper. Even if the
| materials don't get cheaper, production and an density
| improvements will make them cheaper. We know pretty well what
| standard batteries will look like 5 years from now because
| the product cycle is so long.
|
| And the problem you mention is equally solve by people taking
| on bigger loans and paying more interest instead of paying
| for gas.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Electric cars are already beating Hydrogen vehicles on
| price.
|
| Aim for where the ball will be, not where it is. But also
| don't take your eye off it.
|
| > Also, batteries will certainty get cheaper.
|
| While I share this opinion, my certainty is only at the
| level of "yeah, sounds likely", which is not appropriate
| for a discussion about what to invest in.
|
| > And the problem you mention is equally solve by people
| taking on bigger loans and paying more interest instead of
| paying for gas.
|
| Poor people get the worst rates and the least options,
| including in some cases no option to get loans.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The electrolysis boom that is being talked about now is mainly
| about replacing fossil-fuel derived hydrogen with green hydrogen
| for industrial processes, not about using hydrogen to store
| energy or replace fuels other than special cases such as very
| high temperature flames.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| H2 Science Coalition is a good source of information on where and
| how hydrogen makes sense as part of net zero goals:
|
| https://h2sciencecoalition.com/principles/
|
| Green Hydrogen is just about to take off, and make lots of money
| and headlines, so it'll be important to not let that success be
| hijacked and diverted into areas where it's not helpful.
| ksidudwbw wrote:
| Goes back to stockmarket shenanigans. Wether it's Pump and Dump
| (Nikola), or Short and Tort (Tesla)
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| We crack heavy fractions of oil apart to make more useful ones
| for plastics and other chemical feedstocks and that leaves us so
| much ethane, propane, and butane that we flare it off as waste
| gas.
|
| You can run vehicles on that, and extract useful work from that
| heat.
|
| We're not going to slow down the amount of plastic we make any
| time soon.
| lob_it wrote:
| Underhyping methane emissions already makes junk sciences irony
| someone elses problem. You'll get high blood pressure if you take
| a grain of salt with everything they spew :p
|
| Hydrogen scaled is what makes diversification so much fun in the
| 21st century. Scale up or scale down?
|
| If we look at the excess energy generation with solar when
| batteries are full, that excess can be converted to hydrogen
| production with very little additional cost.
|
| On a timeline, it may take a few months to stockpile enough
| hydrogen to install new hydrogen powered equipment to take
| advantage of it, but nobody has hyped what to do with excess
| solar power production.
|
| Wind turbines have their dump load too. Same concept with after a
| few months of stockpiling hydrogen with excess power generation,
| a usable amount of hydrogen becomes available.
|
| We expect most renewables such as solar and wind to produce for
| decades. All of that excess solves a lot of the energy equation.
|
| Hydrogen scales perfectly with some applications outside of
| metropolitan areas. They indicated that it was only $8 million
| for this project. That ROI happens fast.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-14/regional-wa-town-in-l...
|
| Hype is not sustainable :)
| hacknat wrote:
| "nature.com" made me look because I assumed there was a paper
| behind this. There isn't. This is an editorial. No thanks.
|
| Would the submitter care to put "Editorial:" as a prefix on this
| submission?
| jansan wrote:
| We need technologies to store electricity generated by
| renewables. If anyone has a better idea than hydrogen to do this
| in a scalable way, congratulations, you made the world a better
| place.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean the simplest one is gravity; the most scalable version
| of that is pumping water up into a reservoir behind a
| hydroelectric power plant. There's others that propose heavy
| trains going uphill or weights down a hole, but that doesn't
| scale very well and has additional maintenance costs.
|
| But yeah, that would be electrical into mechanical energy
| (pumps), the cost would be flowing water up against gravity. Of
| course, it also requires a source of water downhill and a
| reservoir uphill. I was going to quip about Lake Mead being
| empty, but that would be huge distances to cover. Maybe
| something close to sea, or else a purpose built closed loop
| system.
| bluGill wrote:
| Pumped hydro is great where it works, but we have used most
| of the best places for it. We also know it is an
| environmental disaster for the local area which needs to be
| balanced against the gain.
|
| Even if you ignore that, it takes a lot of space.
| jansan wrote:
| And you think that isn't done already? If every country was
| like Norway, this would be the way to go. But good look doing
| this in the Netherlands.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| There are plenty of "battery" technologies that are not
| perfect, but substantially better than Hydrogen(in terms of
| round trip efficiency) though. Several startups with sound
| ideas. If only Governments picked them up in war like
| emergency and threw their capital at it to progress. 1.
| https://energydome.com 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
| environment-61996520 3.
| https://newatlas.com/energy/china-100mw-compressed-air/ 4.
| https://www.hydrostor.ca
| panick21_ wrote:
| Rust battery pretty interesting.
|
| https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/
|
| If you are gone make hydrogen, just right there turn it into
| methanol and use and transport that around.
|
| Or just make airplane fuel right on sight.
|
| But the problem with all those theories is that investing in
| electricity consuming plants that will only have a very low
| utilization is generally not a great plan.
|
| Maybe not trying to build your whole grid out of renewables
| would be the better plan.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Given how annoying H+ ions are to handle, rather than sticking
| them together as H2 it may be easier to leave them in the
| electrolyte from whence they came, in the form of a "battery".
|
| Unless there's some magic breakthrough in catalytic chemistry
| for water electrolysis, the capital cost of all the platinum
| required is going to be a problem.
| mberning wrote:
| Oh no, are wealth transfer schemes are foiled. Can't have that.
| varispeed wrote:
| WEF hires over 100k propagandists. No wonder you can't say
| anything exposing the scheme without fear of being cancelled.
| The bullying net-zero brigade don't sleep.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Eh, it's moreso people that have built their persona around
| some cause and will remain dogmatic about it, not unlike
| sports fans.
|
| For 1980s "environmentalists", nuclear will be always bad,
| and for 2000s "environmentalists" battery electric vehicles
| will aways be good ... and actual circumstances are
| irrelevant.
| gadders wrote:
| Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
| y04nn wrote:
| The only advantage of hydrogen is that contrary to electricity,
| you can't easily produce and store it by yourself, and thus is
| more easily taxable. Also, because all the infrastructure need to
| be created from scratch, there is no big player yet and there is
| potential to make a lot of money.
| glogla wrote:
| A lot of the infrastructure isn't there, but there for sure are
| big players - most of currently available hydrogen is made as
| natural gas and oil byproduct, so oil and gas companies have a
| lot of it.
|
| Selling hydrogen as green is a way for them to stay relevant.
| ben_w wrote:
| Hydrogen is so incredibly easy to make yourself that I bet the
| ancient Greeks managed it by accident without knowing what
| they'd done.
|
| This is in part because the actual scientific production of it
| via electrolysis predates batteries and dynamos, and instead
| involved generating electricity by rubbing things together, and
| the ancient Greeks doing this is why electricity is named after
| their word for amber.
|
| Personally, I made it myself at single-digit-years-old with a
| battery, some wire, two pencils, two jam jars, and two yoghurt
| pots to stand the jam jars on.
|
| Making _hydrogen storage_ systems might not be a DIY option,
| but making the stuff itself certainly is.
| y04nn wrote:
| I know, but your are not going to produce significant amount
| of hydrogen to do anything, and it will not be practical nor
| efficient anytime soon.
| ben_w wrote:
| The only single reason that I won't "produce significant
| amount of hydrogen to do anything" is because I don't need
| to.
|
| It's already available in convenient and practical forms
| for people who do have a use for the stuff, and production
| is _sufficiently_ efficient for it to not be an obviously
| bad idea for energy storage.
| Diggsey wrote:
| It also has higher energy density. Which is important for some
| applications.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Indeed, it's the only viable electrification path for
| aviation.
| pydry wrote:
| This and windgas (synthesized methane) seem to be the best
| candidates for seasonal storage although both still with major
| issues - embrittlememt/needing CO2.
|
| We have cheap green power (solar/wind), cheap green short to
| medium term storage (pumped hydro and lithium batteries) but this
| only gets us to 97%:
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
| Proven wrote:
| Pxtl wrote:
| I've heard it said that electric cars weren't invented to save
| the world, but to save the automotive industry.
|
| Likewise, hydrogen tech exists to save the natural gas industry.
| pg_bot wrote:
| You would need several scientific breakthroughs to make hydrogen
| economically viable for transportation. It's expensive to
| generate, it embrittles storage containers, is highly flammable,
| and there's no existing infrastructure that you can piggy back
| off of. Right now it is a dead end.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It won't be for long.
|
| Remember, TSMC do chip lithography with a light source that is
| generated by firing a laser at in flight drips of molten tin
| metal. The metal releases a wavelength of light that is then
| able to etc ultra precise lines on wafers for chips. That
| technology really didn't exist anywhere 40 years ago.
|
| In many ways the plumbing problems of hydrogen are lower bars
| to get over. And worrying about a lack of infrastructure is
| also not a big issue. There's lots of engineer's who'll easily
| transition out of the LNG industry into great jobs working on
| these problems.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _lithography with a light source that is generated by
| firing a laser at in flight drips of molten tin_
|
| What does EUV lithography have to do with hydrogen's
| generation expense, embrittlement of metals, flammability and
| lack of infrastructure?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Those are all engineering challenges that are broadly
| constrained by money. I was pointing out that it's pretty
| common that those types of problems get solved when there's
| a will. the tide is turning, there's active research into
| everything you've listed. I'd bet on these problems getting
| solved.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not all problems are solvable. I don't know enough about
| physics/chemistry to know if the problem is solvable, but
| I do know there are other unsolvable problems. (faster
| than light travel is a common one that people think more
| engineering can solve)
|
| I'm sure people are working on the problem, but the laws
| of physics limit them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _engineering challenges that are broadly constrained by
| money_
|
| You're comparing semiconductor manufacturing, a domain so
| concentrated one firm (ASML) produces the world's
| cutting-edge instrumentation, and so quick-moving our
| modern paradigms for growth (Moore's law to venture
| capital) emerge from it, to building an international
| piping and shipping system for a novel fuel that
| speculatively competes with batteries. Nobody is asking
| if, given infinite time and resources, these problems
| could be solved. It's whether the solution would be
| competitive with what we have. Unfortunately, this blind
| optimism is baseline for I've seen for hydrogen.
| debacle wrote:
| The chemical reactivity problems of hydrogen are unsolvable
| in a competitive fashion with other types of energy
| transport.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The world produces 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of
| hydrogen every year. I assure you there are materials
| compatible with hydrogen, or else this would not be
| possible.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| When something is hyped like fusion for 40 years plus and
| does not see the light of day, the problems that constrain
| it, be hard and fruitful.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| The problem that constraints fusion is investment capital.
| You can't expect results while resting below the "fusion
| never" track: https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, actually what constrains (DT) fusion is that even if
| a reactor is produced, no one will want it.
|
| http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-
| Trou...
| panick21_ wrote:
| Hydrogen is not really an engineering problem, its an
| investment problem. And its simply put a gigantic amount
| investment for a minimal amount of gain.
|
| There are so many, way, way, way more useful investments you
| can make. How about doing useful simple things that we are
| sure can be done successfully and we know for sure will save
| a lot of CO2 and emission.
|
| Stuff like railway electrification.
|
| If you want to have long range trucks be a thing, electrify
| the highway with trolley wires.
|
| Hydrogen trains have already shown that they can't compete
| with electrification traditional or with battery. In trucks
| they are currently getting their ass kicked by battery
| trucks. So neither for trucks nor for trains does hydrogen
| really make much sense.
|
| So why exactly should we invest in a gigantic hydrogen
| infrastructure. For the maybe 1% market share in trains and
| trucks?
|
| And its not actually easy to reuse LNG infrastructure.
|
| > And worrying about a lack of infrastructure is also not a
| big issue.
|
| This is disproved by literally 5000 years of human history
| where huge infrastructure investments are always a big
| political problem. And even if projects are clearly of huge
| benefits they are difficult.
|
| In terms of hydrogen infrastructure, nobody can make a case
| that it is actually worth it in the first place.
|
| > There's lots of engineer's who'll easily transition out of
| the LNG industry into great jobs working on these problems.
|
| Or we could make those engineers work on useful stuff like
| batteries, railway electrification, nuclear, metros and so
| on.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Hydrogen is not really an engineering problem, its an
| investment problem.
|
| The problems stated by the OP are mostly maintenance
| problems. What is even worse, because you don't just pay
| once and they go away; you have to keep paying and they
| will come back if you ever lose focus on handling them.
| himinlomax wrote:
| It's absolutely essential to deal with renewables'
| intermittency.
|
| Of course this wouldn't be a thing if people wisened up and
| built nuclear plant instead of wasting it on feel-good project
| with less than 20% of actual capacity (solar in Germany ...
| lol).
| pg_bot wrote:
| It's more efficient to cool and liquify air than to generate
| hydrogen. Store it in a container and let it expand later and
| you can turn a turbine. There's no issue from an
| environmental standpoint since you are converting air to air.
| You can build a cryobattery literally anywhere on earth with
| off the shelf components.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > It's more efficient to cool and liquify air than to
| generate hydrogen.
|
| I dispute this claim.
| himinlomax wrote:
| You're assuming that compressing and decompressing air can
| be done at greater efficiency. That's not that obvious,
| considering for example that compressing air generates heat
| that is always lost in the process.
| bamboozled wrote:
| So what's going on here:
|
| Hydrogen Powered Train in Germany:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hydrogen-powered-p...
|
| and here:
|
| Hydrogen Powered Toyota: https://www.toyota.com/mirai/
| pg_bot wrote:
| Malinvestment
| parkingrift wrote:
| We will need many scientific breakthroughs for battery to be
| viable for non-personal transportation. Then there's industry,
| construction, agriculture, etc. These areas of the economy are
| responsible for about 50% of emissions. We need hydrogen. Not
| for cars, but for everything else.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The only thing we need hydrogen for is for chemical industry.
| And that is enough demand already for hydrogen production
| plans.
|
| Beyond that you don't need it. Not needed for the waste
| majority of the things you suggest.
|
| And often there are better solution then using hydrogen
| directly. For remote construction sites, just turn your
| hydrogen into anther syn fuel like methanol and run a
| conventional generator to power electric construction
| methods.
|
| Hydrogen will be a niche use-case in all the areas you
| mentioned. And there are so many more important things to do.
|
| For example, for construction, electrified railroads
| transporting all that gravel around rather then diesel.
| antoinexp wrote:
| "Not for cars, but for everything else." While I agree with
| you there are some usages where it does make sense and
| shouldn't be neglected, it is also worth noticing that the
| current consensus on Metaculus is an estimate of 6% market
| shares for those usages in 2030:
| https://www.metaculus.com/questions/552/fcevs-vs-bevs-
| what-p...
|
| [Edit] consensus established in February 2020
| namro wrote:
| Sustainable transportation is not about which fuel is greener.
| It's about replacing private with public transportation options
| as much as possible e.g. planning urban areas prioritizing
| public transit systems and discouraging private transportation
| bluGill wrote:
| That would be nice, but in the US the people leading public
| transit don't care about good transit. I know they have
| limited budgets, but they do too many bad and over prices
| projects to assume anything else.
| grogers wrote:
| You don't need to use it directly for it to play an important
| role. If you have the green hydrogen you can convert it to
| methane or ammonia, which have less issues in storage and
| transport. Methane is already widely used for bus
| transportation, although extracting CO2 from the air
| efficiently enough to create methane from the hydrogen is its
| own issue.
| melling wrote:
| Only 8500 coal power plants in the world producing 20% of
| emissions. No miracles needed to replace them.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station
|
| Replacing a billion gasoline cars is going to take decades
| mavhc wrote:
| We should start by not making new gasoline cars, or new coal
| power stations
| [deleted]
| melling wrote:
| Electric cars aren't ready. And absolutely everyone knows
| that, so why are we bringing it up?
|
| We could've replaced coal plants two decades ago, however,
| and reduced emissions by 20% globally
| goodcanadian wrote:
| _Electric cars aren't ready. And absolutely everyone
| knows that, so why are we bringing it up?_
|
| I have been driving an electric car for 4 years, and it
| serves my needs beautifully. So, no, I strongly disagree.
| Electric cars are ready for most use cases and many
| people agree.
| melling wrote:
| how much did you pay for that electric car? They aren't
| comparable in price.
|
| It's weird how we have to have these silly discussions
| where people must know that they're obviously wrong
| before commenting.
|
| Replacing 1.3 billion cars is going to take decades.
| bluGill wrote:
| The average car lasts about 12 years. Sure some
| collectors cars will be kept running for decades, but it
| will take about less than 2 decades to replace
| essentially all cars if we only made EVs. Only selling
| EVs is the law set to take effect in a few years.
|
| I'm sure that the law will be rolled back a little when
| one of the 5-10% usecases where EVs don't work screams
| loud enough (probably shipping and remote areas), but it
| will become hard to find fuel for your gas car in a
| couple decades.
| melling wrote:
| Yes, in the year 2035 the internal combustion engine no
| longer be sold. Unless we have to push back a few years.
|
| That gets us to around 2050.
|
| 27 years from now.
| bluGill wrote:
| Electric cars are ready for gasoline car use cases,
| leaving 5-10% or so where EV is not ready. (the places
| where electric cars ready are not are places where diesel
| is better than gasoline, though some people do use
| gasoline anyway). Currently EVs are in the phase of
| scaling production, but that will take a bit of time.
|
| > We could've replaced coal plants two decades ago,
| however, and reduced emissions by 20% globally
|
| What we would have replaced coal with 20 years ago (and
| in fact what we did starting more than 20 years ago) is
| mostly natural gas, which itself pollutes, just less.
| (depending on what pollution you measure you will get
| different numbers for how much less) Wind and solar is
| coming along fast, and is also replacing coal plants (for
| nearly zero pollution) but we are already scaling those
| as fast as possible so to claim we could have done more
| 20 years ago is false.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Electric cars aren't ready_
|
| The scaling problems facing battery electrics are dwarfed
| by those facing hydrogen. They're also being aggressively
| solved in America, the EU and China.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| >They're also being aggressively solved in America, the
| EU and China.
|
| Challenge. Where and how are these problems being
| addressed, other than hoping that people voluntary reduce
| demand when asked?
| [deleted]
| panick21_ wrote:
| Not sure what we are talking about.
|
| There are an absolute shit ton of battery factories being
| build. A huge ramp up in science and research.
|
| There is also a huge ramp up in cathode and anode
| production facilities.
|
| All major lithium companies have announced major build
| out of existing facilities and building new once as well.
|
| A major expansion of both natural and synthetic graphite
| is being done.
|
| Cobalt is not expanding as quickly but its getting
| systematically kicked out from the batteries anyway.
|
| In addition to that, LFP batteries reduced the projected
| demand for nickel from batteries.
|
| In addition to that CATL is introducing Sodium batteries
| as well.
|
| So maybe you were not paying attention but there is a
| gigantic explosion in every part of the battery supply
| chain happening right now. With major private and public
| investment. There will still be some shortages of
| important materials, specially lithium however its
| certainty being worked on.
|
| Of course there are also improvements in safety,
| reliability and so on. A huge amount of research and
| development.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| The gating factor for the scaling issue isn't the battery
| production (mining externalities notwithstanding), but
| the infrastructure to support them.
|
| Wave your magic wand to will everyone a Tesla, and watch
| the grid collapse the same instant.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The grid has _plenty_ of spare room in the evening "bath
| tub" (daytime peak is very different from nighttime
| peak). If you wave that magic wand and everyone has a
| Tesla today and everyone charges at wall outlet at off-
| peak times, _the grid wouldn 't hardly notice_.
| bluGill wrote:
| The grid operators are not stupid, they are also building
| generation to handle this.
|
| While it remains to be seen if they build enough, they
| are planning for EVs. Where local laws allow it anyway.
| They see big $$$ from EVs replacing gas, and they want
| that money.
| waselighis wrote:
| You can try to be as rational and logical, but in the end, it's
| not going to matter. The problem is hydrogen as a fuel is
| marketable, so it's going to be very overhyped because it's going
| to make a lot of money for investors. You only have to look at
| what happened with cryptocurrencies to get an idea of what's
| coming, maybe not as extreme, but no doubt it's going to happen.
| Furthermore, with the tech industry entering a recession with
| mass layoffs, investors are looking for their next target, which
| appears to be green and renewable energy technologies. This is
| even more true thank to the many government grants and tax breaks
| for renewable energy.
|
| So sit back and enjoy the s%$#show while startups and
| entrepreneurs pitch the most ridiculous applications for hydrogen
| fuel and get flooded with billions of dollars.
| elil17 wrote:
| >The EU is also under pressure from industry to water down the
| definition of green hydrogen
|
| This is the key issue. There is nothing wrong with truly green
| hydrogen made with truly excess electricity. The article rightly
| praises the Biden administrations sensible policies which
| incentivize zero-emissions hydrogen.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Not a very useful article, and it's weak on technical details.
|
| Hydrogen is a poor storage medium for energy for numerous
| reasons, such as steel embrittlement (it requires expensive
| special alloys for storage or transport under pressure).
|
| Hence, hydrogen-from-water is applicable where it can be
| generated and used immediately. There are three obvious
| industrial applications in cleantech:
|
| Ammonia production for fertilizer using atmospheric N2.
|
| Direct iron reduction for steel production, i.e. reduction of
| iron ore.
|
| Methane and jet fuel production utilizing atmospheric CO2 as the
| carbon source.
|
| In particular, steam reformation of natural gas to produce
| hydrogen should be eliminated as a hydrogen source, as the fossil
| CO2 produced is then released to the atmosphere.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Is this Toyota Mirai (hyped)? https://www.toyota.com/mirai/, I
| mean it's a production car for sale today.
|
| Same for these hyrdogen powered trains in Germany:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hydrogen-powered-p...
|
| Both those things are in production, so is hydrogen really hyped?
| Just beginning ?
|
| Edit: How does this car get around "the storage problem" of
| Hydrogen?
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Hydrogen has potential to be better than BEV. Do you know how
| much money went to BEV and it might be written away if hydrogen
| fuel cells turns out to be viable?
|
| Better make some negative PR towards hydrogen.
| megaman821 wrote:
| So hydrogen isn't popular in cars because of some conspiracy
| theory, and not the blatantly obvious fact that it takes much
| more electricity to separate hydrogen from water, super-cool
| that hydrogen for transport, and turn that hydrogen back to
| electricity in a fuel cell, than to just transmit the
| electricity to a battery.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| No conspiracy, hydrogen is slowly getting acceptance
| because people can't charge their BEVs at home (50% of
| people in EU lives in apartments) and does not want to wait
| hours in a queue for public DC chargers.
|
| Simply hydrogen will more expensive, but convenient. And
| people LOVES to pay for convenience. Just look at Apple.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Does it need to be a conspiracy theory though ? I don't
| think it's required.
|
| I mean smoking is bad for people, smoking is good ads
| happened but it want a conspiracy ?
| 10241024 wrote:
| Could someone explain to me why cars running on natural gas
| aren't popular in the US like they are in South America / Europe?
|
| Converting a car to also run on natural gas costs a few hundred
| dollars in South America / Europe but after that the benefits
| are:
|
| - x2 cheaper travel expenses
|
| - less harmful emissions
|
| Since the US is rich in natural gas wouldn't it have been more
| environmentally conscious to convert the hundreds of millions of
| petrol cars to also run on natural gas instead of digging up tons
| of minerals for brand-new electric cars?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On lose power and internal space on the conversion.
|
| The US car market does not seem very concerned with economical
| ROI, so any argument based on costs is useless. The emissions
| part seems to hold for some people, but electric cars already
| won here.
|
| Even here on South America gas is getting out of fashion,
| replaced by electricity. The costs are still high enough that
| there is a large market remaining, but it is constantly
| decreasing.
| axiolite wrote:
| > Could someone explain to me why cars running on natural gas
| aren't popular in the US like they are in South America /
| Europe?
|
| There are many fleets which use natural gas. Municipal buses,
| city garbage trucks, etc. There, they only need to build up one
| (private) CNG refueling station in the city.
|
| With a passenger car, you need to plan your trip to find public
| CNG fueling stations along the route where you need them.
|
| The boom in natural gas production is a recent occurrence. Go
| back a couple decades and natural gas was far more expensive.
| Back then, propane was the obvious alternative to gasoline for
| vehicles, until the price for propane spiked and natural gas
| fell.
|
| But more importantly, CNG is only a half-step forward, still
| leaving us dependent on a single fossil fuel. Battery electric
| vehicles are far more practical thanks to being easy to
| (slow-)charge almost anywhere, getting us off of fossil fuels
| entirely, reducing mechanical complexity/maintenance, and being
| far more efficient (burning the same amount of natural gas in a
| power plant to charge your BEV will give you far more range
| than burning it in your converted car engine).
| bluGill wrote:
| There are not enough places to fill a natural gas car. I know
| of a few, if you buy a natural gas car you plan all trips
| around filling up - and a lot of trips you have to reject.
|
| For every public natural gas pump I know of, I know of 50
| public EV chargers. Plus in the worst case you can plug an EV
| into a regular outlet (overnight you can get enough range to
| get someplace with a faster charger).
| MrMan wrote:
| natural gas emissions are not less harmful
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Can you explain your reasoning? There are a number of reasons
| that natural gas emissions (after burning) are less harmful.
| Not least that there is a higher proportion of hydrogen so
| for a given energy output there are less carbon dioxide
| emissions.
| hannob wrote:
| Methane emissions from incomplete burning, and also from
| upstream.
|
| Methane emissions are an issue with basically all uses of
| gas that has been underestimated in the past and only in
| recent years it's more widely recognized how problematic
| that is. A lot of the "gas is greener than X" messaging
| from the past is simply no longer true if you consider
| methane emissions.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Methane emissions from oil extraction aren't negligible
| either so it depends on your point of reference. It's
| almost certainly better to burn methane in a power plant
| and use BEVs where possible but that's a long way from
| possible in heavy goods vehicles for example (they will
| need batteries measured in MWh for a start).
|
| There are also many dimensions to emissions, global
| warming potential is important but from a personal point
| of view I worry more about the impact on my children's
| health from the other emissions like particulates, NOx
| and aromatic hydrocarbons.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Not true, there's way less NOX and particulates, all the
| stuff that's bad for people in urban environments.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| but they are less. You can half the co2 emissions with very
| little investment. However, this cannot be ultimate solution
| and is probably too little too late.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are a number of issues:
|
| - First of all, there is no natural gas fuel standard
|
| - Safety, there are no safety standards. If there were, tanks
| often used in other places, such an upgraded would be more
| expensive
|
| - Rolling out refueling over the whole of the US/Europe would
| be difficult. Most places in Europe don't have these cars.
|
| A better and safer alternative to natural gas would be
| methanol. And because of the US ethanol policy, the US already
| has a surprising amount of Flex Fuel Vehicles.
|
| If you could have a bunch of fuel standards for
| ethanol/methanol and a vehicle standard for those fuels,
| depending on the price, people could buy different mixes.
|
| Converting gas to methanol is fairly efficient and can be done
| directly at gas production sites, sometimes with gas that would
| be vented instead. But there isn't a big market for methanol
| right now.
|
| In China such standards do exist M20 and so on. However sadly
| there methanol vehicles usually use methanol made by coal.
|
| The US would have had much lower fuel cost if they had a
| strategy of methanol and ethanol at the same time, and require
| all vehicle to be FFV. Standardizing M20/E20, M50/E50 fuels for
| example.
|
| However all of this is now no longer very useful as car market
| is rapidly switching to electric.
|
| For some trucks using generated fuel might be useful. Dimethyl
| ether would be great for long range trucks and ships rather
| then hydrogen.
| 0xblood wrote:
| >But they are a distraction when it comes to personal vehicles,
| for which efficient batteries are already available.
|
| Stopped reading there
| jkingsbery wrote:
| Right... I can't say I'm extremely well read in this (so I'd
| appreciate correction if someone knows better), but it sounds
| pretty uncontroversial that (1) batteries take a long time to
| charge, which is not convenient for many applications, (2) the
| batteries themselves require a lot of minerals whose extraction
| isn't great for the environment either, but in a different way.
| patall wrote:
| Once again, I think the hydrogen ladder [0] gives a very clear
| and simple picture of where priorities with regard to hydrogen
| are.
|
| [0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-
| ladder-v40-mic...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| That comes from a person named Michael Liebreich who is a
| British conservative politician that also founded Bloomberg's
| New Energy Finance. I listen to his podcast where he interviews
| people in the industry. He also has a nuclear physics
| background. In other word, he knows a thing or two about both
| the science and economics in this space; very well informed
| person.
|
| He's been very critical of the mindless arguing for a hydrogen
| economy making the point that there are a few very fundamental
| issues with hydrogen in terms of cost and physics (e.g. second
| law of thermo dynamics) that you can't just wave away that
| people tend to gloss over.
|
| Not that he's against hydrogen per se. It's just that burning
| it is a pretty dumb idea from a cost and efficiency point of
| view.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Here's another group saying much the same thing in a different
| way:
|
| https://h2sciencecoalition.com/principles/
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Off-road vehicles
|
| I don't understand why this is under B while cars are under G.
| Is that not a type of car? Or are we talking building sized
| mining dumptrucks?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| He explains what those mean.
|
| It's vehicles specialized on site-diverse way out of the city
| activities, like forest management and mining.
|
| Well, I personally disagree on mining, but yes, those exist,
| and it's very likely they will not be electric.
| bluGill wrote:
| Mining is actually planning on switching to electric. Mines
| often have underground areas where air at all is a problem,
| so running an engine requires extra ventilation and air
| quality control. Mines tend to cover limited areas, so it
| is feasible to have wires (either like a train where a
| phantograph, or drag the wire). Much of the equipment is
| semi-permanent so you can run fixed wires. The rest tends
| to run a fixed route so battery swap can be done often on
| schedule.
|
| Not all mines operate in that way, but a significant number
| do. And of course nobody said that they had to switch 100%,
| some equipment can switch where it makes sense while others
| remain diesel.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I came here to pose that same thing.
|
| Hydrogen in the creation of fertilizer? An absolute necessity,
| we need a good source of green hydrogen to run the Haber-Bosch
| process.
|
| Hydrogen production for grid power storage? Absolutely terrible
| idea, don't even think about it.
|
| Hydrogen for long-haul trucking? Maybe, maybe not.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The problem with that image is it gives no reasoning for its
| categorization. Putting the use cases on a specific energy
| and energy density plot would convey that more naturally.
| sidpatil wrote:
| Fair point. He does describe his reasoning within the
| accompanying article though.
| hannob wrote:
| > Hydrogen production for grid power storage? Absolutely
| terrible idea, don't even think about it.
|
| Liebreich has that as a B in the Hydrogen Ladder (for long-
| term storage).
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Hydrogen production for grid power storage? Absolutely
| terrible idea, don't even think about it.
|
| For DIURNAL storage, certainly. For seasonal storage? For
| backup against rare extended dark/calm periods? There it can
| make much more sense.
| Animats wrote:
| _Nature_ must have noticed that they 've become a joke on energy
| subjects.
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