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Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

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Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#21

Post by ben_w »

fbdab103 wrote: post #19

I am waiting for the day when there is an affordable ( Is anything like that on the horizon? Or do all of these liquid fuel synthesis options require industrial pressures/volumes/input electricity so as to forever be out of reach from residential synthesis?

> combustible fuel from excess electricity. Round trip efficiency can be horrible

If that's really all you want, you can get a 9 year old to put together some kitchen waste and art supplies to achieve this.

That's how I did it at that age.

I did use a battery though, so you might want to check the wiring and add a voltage divider, but those are also easy to build even without understanding.

And I have no idea if you even can, let alone should, just pour gaseous hydrogen into, for example, a gas heater's fuel input pipe.

But actually making hydrogen is utterly trivial.

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#22

Post by asien »

fbdab103 wrote: post #19

I am waiting for the day when there is an affordable ( Is anything like that on the horizon? Or do all of these liquid fuel synthesis options require industrial pressures/volumes/input electricity so as to forever be out of reach from residential synthesis?

In my opinion you are mistaken , affordability does not mean home appliance.

Hydro is pretty cheap , does not mean it’s fit for home.

Here the best scenario is similar to Singapore - Australia or UK - Morocco remote solar grid.

This innovation is very interesting compared to Water- Hydrogene electrolysis that is a bit expensive and needs metals that are going to become difficult to source in the coming decades.

Gallium is quiet abundant from my understanding.

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#23

Post by fsh »

defrost wrote: post #12
fsh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is not at all hard to contain. Just put it in a gas bottle. The real issue is the very low density which makes the tanks rather large.

> Just put it in a gas bottle. is a bit of an understatement. Consider that a household LNG gas cyclinder (propane if you're central north american I guess) is typically built to contain between 100 and 200 psi whereas hydrogen requires high pressure tanks to contain between 5,000–10,000 psi. That's a factor of 50 difference in required containment pressure capability.

Standard industrial gas bottles are 200 or 300 bar (2900 or 4350 psi for the metrically challenged). They work just fine for storing hydrogen [1].

[1] https://www.lindedirect.com/resources/gases/hydrogen

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#24

Post by slow_typist »

defrost wrote: post #12
fsh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is not at all hard to contain. Just put it in a gas bottle. The real issue is the very low density which makes the tanks rather large.

> Just put it in a gas bottle. is a bit of an understatement. Consider that a household LNG gas cyclinder (propane if you're central north american I guess) is typically built to contain between 100 and 200 psi whereas hydrogen requires high pressure tanks to contain between 5,000–10,000 psi. That's a factor of 50 difference in required containment pressure capability.

And the hydrogen will still diffuse into the steel. And make it brittle so all bottles, pipelines etc have a limited lifespan compared to infrastructure for methane. And you always need pumps to get it from one containment into another because it stays gaseous all the time. Don‘t get me wrong, all these problems are technically manageable. But from the economic perspective the H2-hype is not reasonable at all. H2-application will stay niche application. Getting iron ore reduction away from coal would be a huge accomplishment given the economics of H2.

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#25

Post by Schroedingersat »

ben_w wrote: post #21
fbdab103 wrote: post #19

I am waiting for the day when there is an affordable ( Is anything like that on the horizon? Or do all of these liquid fuel synthesis options require industrial pressures/volumes/input electricity so as to forever be out of reach from residential synthesis?

> combustible fuel from excess electricity. Round trip efficiency can be horrible If that's really all you want, you can get a 9 year old to put together some kitchen waste and art supplies to achieve this. That's how I did it at that age. I did use a battery though, so you might want to check the wiring and add a voltage divider, but those are also easy to build even without understanding. And I have no idea if you…

Low maintenance, safe, compact, and high enough output is a different story.

For the second, you probably want a methanol, methane or ammonia output and they all require high temperatures or exotic materials.

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#26

Post by 35mm »

fbdab103 wrote: post #19

I am waiting for the day when there is an affordable ( Is anything like that on the horizon? Or do all of these liquid fuel synthesis options require industrial pressures/volumes/input electricity so as to forever be out of reach from residential synthesis?

This is currently the Lavo hydrogen electrolysis product for home use [1]

However the storage tanks are quite small. I would prefer if they made the hydrogen production and storage separate, so you could save up hydrogen in the summer to use in the winter.

[1] https://www.lavo.com.au/

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#27

Post by Schroedingersat »

defrost wrote: post #15
Animats wrote: post #10

"The catalyst is made of indium gallium nitride nanostructures, grown onto a silicon surface." World gallium production is 400 tons a year. World indum production is 70 tons a year. How did "cheap" get into this?

Production is driven by demand and will very likely expand now that prices are rising again, just as production doubled back between 2011-2014 when last the price/kg rose [2] as it has in recent times. Annual Gallium usage includes a substantial amount of reclaimed material from electronics which isn't counted as production against reserve. > World primary low-purity gallium production capacity in 2021 was estimated…

Most rare elements are extracted primarily as side products. Scaling production directly is very difficult without demand for the co-occuring minerals.

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#28

Post by viraptor »

adrianN wrote: post #17
kennywinker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this doesn’t have to go into cars / be distributed widely… it could just used to time-shift solar energy to night time by burning it on-site. Which means you only need to solve the storage problem.

Which is already solved: salt caverns work well.

I checked and: "Salt caverns are artificial cavities in underground salt formations, which are created by the controlled dissolution of rock salt by injection of water during the solution mining process."

Yeah, I don't have one of those in the garage unfortunately. I do have space for one of these though https://newatlas.com/energy/lavo-home-hydrogen-battery-stora...

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#29

Post by miahi »

35mm wrote: post #26
fbdab103 wrote: post #19

I am waiting for the day when there is an affordable ( Is anything like that on the horizon? Or do all of these liquid fuel synthesis options require industrial pressures/volumes/input electricity so as to forever be out of reach from residential synthesis?

This is currently the Lavo hydrogen electrolysis product for home use [1] However the storage tanks are quite small. I would prefer if they made the hydrogen production and storage separate, so you could save up hydrogen in the summer to use in the winter. [1] https://www.lavo.com.au/

Hydrogen storage is not something that you really want to do at home, especially in "saving up" quantities. It is quite happy to explode, you need tremendous pressures and low temperatures for efficient storage, and also hard to contain (many "normal" materials are permeable to hydrogen). [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety

Re: Cheap, sustainable hydrogen through solar power

#30

Post by youngtaff »

thomasmg wrote: post #6
natch wrote: post #3

Is hydrogen cheap to transport, cheap to store, and cheap to use though? I thought making it was only a small part of the problems with hydrogen.

You can add hydrogen to natural gas (using existing pipelines and storage), and so slowly replace that. No changes to existing infrastructure needed up to maybe 20% I think.

You can but there are concerns about hydrogen being a smaller molecule so we’d get increased leakage (with knock on effects)

No one really knows how our existing natural gas infrastructure will cope with hydrogen

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