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After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

economist.com

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Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#41

Post by postingawayonhn »

jakozaur wrote: post #9

Main points: 1. The only hydrogen produced from electricity is ecological. Carbon capture doesn’t work today. 2. The hydrogen from electricity is expensive, though as wind and solar get exponential cheaper, we will end up with spikes excess cheap electricity (negative prices today or disconnecting plants). It makes sense to produce hydrogen during those spikes. 3. Cars on hydrogen don’t make sense at all. The massive…

> It makes sense to produce hydrogen during those spikes.

I'm not sure that it necessarily does. If you're only producing during those peak periods of electrical output then your you're going to have a lot of hydrogen producing equipment sitting idle at other times.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#42

Post by Xylakant »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #35
speedgoose wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transporting hydrogen is expensive. It also has a tendency to leak.

> It also has a tendency to leak. But I mean, that has to be a limitation of current technology, right? There has to be engineering solutions that we can devise to make it as safe statistically as for example gasoline transport?

Hydrogen has the nasty property of leaking through many materials, including metals. It also needs to be kept extremely cold. Both properties make it much harder to transport and store. It’s not clear that technology must exist that makes transporting and storing hydrogen as safe and economically viable as gasoline.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#43

Post by jitendrac »

threatripper wrote: post #23
jitendrac wrote: post #16

I think article missed a really large sector which uses coal and produces millions of tons of co2 each year, That is cement industry. Heating clinker to produce cement is energy intensive long process, where big investments towards technology for using Hydrogen can be fruitful.

Why not use electricity or natural gas for heating? Both would be more efficient than using hydrogen as an intermediate step.

For current circumstances this makes sense, Natural gas is not carbon neutral.

For electricity, as the renewable energy generation capacity will increase, Storage of excess will be essentially required. when in near future we develop viable tech to generate hydrogen from electricity with low or no carbon impact at reasonable efficiency,we can save them in underground reserves(Safest way in my view) and use existing piping infrastructure of natural gas for its transportation. we need to do research and wait for appropriate tech to be available.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#44

Post by jiofih »

bogdanu wrote: post #40
Dumblydorr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue of charging was also there with BEVs, until Tesla straight up built a huge network of superchargers. The players in hydrogen say they will do the same. But for personal vehicles, hydrogen won't math out, it's greatest advantage is its energy density for trucks. It's for long range trucks that we will see hydrogen first. Green hydrogen will act as energy storage, big renewables grids can dump excess into gre…

You can't charge your hydrogen car at home, not to mention without any special and expensive equipment.

It pays off to read the comment fully before replying to it.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#45

Post by chefandy »

bogdanu wrote: post #40
Dumblydorr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue of charging was also there with BEVs, until Tesla straight up built a huge network of superchargers. The players in hydrogen say they will do the same. But for personal vehicles, hydrogen won't math out, it's greatest advantage is its energy density for trucks. It's for long range trucks that we will see hydrogen first. Green hydrogen will act as energy storage, big renewables grids can dump excess into gre…

You can't charge your hydrogen car at home, not to mention without any special and expensive equipment.

Can't gas up at home either. By my reckoning, if there was a huge network of hydrogen stations that should do the trick.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#46

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

goda90 wrote: post #22

The article didn't touch on this at all, so has anyone heard updates on attempts at doing in-vehicle hydrogen production from water and some sort of reactant? It's been years since I saw something on it, but if I recall, it used some pellets made of certain metals that react with the water to produce hydrogen. You'd fill the tank with water, and after some number of fill ups you'd also need to replenish the pellets w…

A theory like that ignores most of known basic physics.

What would the energy source be? It does not matter what chemical or electrochemical reactions are possible in general, what matters is where does the energy come from. Water does not contain any energy. (Not any chemical energy that can easily be extracted. Of course it contains energy in the sense that E=MC^2, but in that sense we have about the same chance to run a car on sand, or rocks or oreos.)

On the other hand, if you do have an energy source, then why would you need water at all?? You would just use the energy to drive the car (like EVs do), you wouldn't waste half of it to hydrolysis of water into hydrogen first to use that hydrogen...

A theory about a "car running on water" (which, at least in my experience is often followed by conversations about how Nicola Tesla could transfer energy through the air, or about how government has all the technology for infinite energy, but they block it from being used because they are evil) - is a pipe dream which is heavily based on ignorance about physics and gross underestimation of the difficulty of real engineering problems.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#47

Post by marcosdumay »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #35
speedgoose wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transporting hydrogen is expensive. It also has a tendency to leak.

> It also has a tendency to leak. But I mean, that has to be a limitation of current technology, right? There has to be engineering solutions that we can devise to make it as safe statistically as for example gasoline transport?

> But I mean, that has to be a limitation of current technology, right?

Not much. Hydrogen has a tendency of assuming a form that no material can hold.

People have been working on chemical storage, but the efficiency always suffer.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#48

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

kumarski wrote: post #5

Okay, going to chime in here because this is categorically wrong on so many fronts. Tldr: Impossible for civilization to make an instantaneous non-gradual switch to hydrogen fuel cells. People like Hydrogen because they're hyped about how it is: - Clean - Plentiful - Emission-less Hydrogen is difficult to handle. - Unwieldy as a gas - Boils at 20 degrees F/ - 6 degrees C / ~420 Kelvins - Tough to maintain at a high p…

Why does it need to be instantaneous? Who is even asking for instantaneous?

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#49

Post by amelius »

speedgoose wrote: post #6

I used to drive a hydrogen car once in a while a few years ago. It was nice to fill the car in a few minutes and get about 300km of range, but that was it. With the hydrogen you have so few refueling stations, they are very expensive, that range anxiety is a thing. To not improve things, reliability is very poor. My work had a hydrogen refueling station on its parking. It was often broken and actually a bit scary to…

> Electric cars with large batteries are a much better solution to hydrogen cars IMHO.

Electric cars are still very dangerous when they catch fire though. And the fires are very difficult to control. Especially in multistorey (or underground) car parks. And even more so if there are multiple EVs parked next to eachother.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#50

Post by postingawayonhn »

threatripper wrote: post #15
kumarski wrote: post #5

Okay, going to chime in here because this is categorically wrong on so many fronts. Tldr: Impossible for civilization to make an instantaneous non-gradual switch to hydrogen fuel cells. People like Hydrogen because they're hyped about how it is: - Clean - Plentiful - Emission-less Hydrogen is difficult to handle. - Unwieldy as a gas - Boils at 20 degrees F/ - 6 degrees C / ~420 Kelvins - Tough to maintain at a high p…

Hydrogen might make some sense for long haul trucks. Then you need fewer refueling stations on only the major routes. You could also generate the hydrogen locally by using electricity. Alternatively you could equip the trucks with batteries and connect them to the electrical grid via overhead lines similar to trains for recharging. Combined with autonomous driving those trucks could go non-stop and leave the highway…

Do we really need to convert long distance trucks to fully electric? Why not just work on hybrid trucks to increase efficiency and allow them to operate with zero emissions while in urban areas.
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