New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater • Hacker News Board

Re: New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater

#151

Post by lazide » Thu, May 14, 2026, 10:32 AM UTC

leonidasrup wrote: post #27

pjc50 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen Yes, but I think this the most likely outcome. Natural gas is only cheap in certain areas, and the past few years have made everyone very, very aware of the geopolitics involved in getting hold of it. While global warming is not going away, and I question the extent to which CCS actually happens with blue hydrogen. Batteries are capital eq…

With CO2 emitting option is priced out or banned, direct hydrogen production using high temperature sulfur–iodine cycle without H2 electrolysers could be economic option. The heat could be supplied from high temperature nuclear reactor.

When would that ever make sense over solar?

Re: New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater

#152

Post by nyeah » Thu, May 14, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #140

nyeah wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methyl radicals will also react directly with the chlorine. If anyone else is reading along, please do not attempt to use chlorine gas to "destroy" methane in air that anybody's going to be breathing. That would be very dangerous.

I already addressed that point. The chlorine concentration is quite low, so the reactive methyl radicals will react with oxygen first. This is unlike the industrial synthesis of chlorinated derivatives of methane, where methane and chlorine are present at high concentration and oxygen is excluded.

I see what you're saying about dilution. Each methyl radical will run into an O2 much more often than a Cl2. But that doesn't mean the latter doesn't happen at all. There are rate equations and (so far as I can see) you get a long menu of reaction products, at decreasing concentrations.

Even ignoring toxic organics and organochlorides ... the proposal to release chlorine gas seems to demand very careful thought. Similar programs were tried during World War I, with negative effects on human subjects.

Not loving the HCl either, though I've read your comments on that.

Re: New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater

#153

Post by spauldo » Thu, May 14, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

briandw wrote: post #67

I truly do not understand the fixation with hydrogen as a fuel. Compressing H2 to store it requires around half of the total energy that you can expect to get from its final application. Add in production losses and the difficulty in storage and handing, its always much worse than batteries. I can see the argument for use in industrial processes like steel manufacturing as a reducing agent, but not as a power source.

I seem to remember Iceland was looking hard into hydrogen for their fishing fleets. They have to import Diesel fuel but they've got geothermal running out of their ears.

I haven't checked to see how that went, but it sounded like the perfect test case for hydrogen's viability.