“Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough • Hacker News Board

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#11

Post by defrost » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #7

h0l0cube wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone know what the catch is here? Scaling up could be limited by the availability of Boron: > Boron is synthesized entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovae and not by stellar nucleosynthesis, so it is a low-abundance element in the Solar System and in the Earth's crust.[12] It constitutes about 0.001 percent by weight of Earth's crust.[13] > Global proven boron mineral mining reserves exceed one billion m…

Once the boron nitride powder is heated to release the captured hydrogen, can it be reused to capture again?

Yes.

Of note:

> All up, the process consumes 76.8 KJ/s to store and separate 1000L of gases, which means it uses at least 90 per cent less than the current gas separation process commonly used in the petroluem industry.

> Even more significantly, once the gas is absorbed into the powder it gas can be transported safely and easily. When the gas is needed, the powder can be simply heated in a vacuum to release the gas unchanged.

Sadly, this doesn't put much of a dent in the larger issues around blue hydrogen.

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#12

Post by cbmuser » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #5

s_Hogg wrote: post #2

Anyone know what the catch is here? Very exciting if real, but sometimes these things don't scale/aren't commercial/something else I'm ill-equipped to perceive. Not trying to knock this by any means, I hope it works wonderfully!

The catch is that hydrogen storage is the smallest of the problems facing the nascent hydrogen economy. Energy losses in electrolysis and in the conversion from hydrogen to electricity are by far the biggest piece of the efficiency-loss pie.

Electrolysis is only one method to make hydrogen. Another one is using high-temperature reactors which have a much higher efficiency and don’t need as much energy.

Research on the matter is being made in Japan, see:

> https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#13

Post by xt00 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

They do need to do a bit of heating to extract the hydrogen, but probably not a huge deal as compressed H2 gas when expanded out and burned would pull energy from the environment — so there is energy being used there as well.

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#14

Post by gene-h » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:23 AM UTC

This article is complete BS. The abstract of the publication does not mention hydrogen at all, and in fact concerns storage and separation of acetylene and ethylene gas, which are hydrocarbons, not hydrogen.

This petrochemical storage and separation technique is about as far as it gets from green hydrogen

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#15

Post by causality0 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #12

causality0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The catch is that hydrogen storage is the smallest of the problems facing the nascent hydrogen economy. Energy losses in electrolysis and in the conversion from hydrogen to electricity are by far the biggest piece of the efficiency-loss pie.

Electrolysis is only one method to make hydrogen. Another one is using high-temperature reactors which have a much higher efficiency and don’t need as much energy. Research on the matter is being made in Japan, see: > https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...

Electrolysis efficiency is 76%. What sort of numbers are they getting with this high-temp reactor doohickey?

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#16

Post by pmontra » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

> the process consumes 76.8 KJ/s to store and separate 1000L of gases,

In which volume? The public abstract of the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13697... states

> The mechanochemical process produces extremely high uptake capacities of alkyne and olefin gases in the BN (708 cm3/g for acetylene (C2H2) and 1048 cm3/g for ethylene (C2H4)) respectively.

I assume that is the volume of gas per cm3 of Boron Nitrate.

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#17

Post by defrost » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:27 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #6

How in the world does a process for hydrocarbon separation becomes an article about green hydrogen storage?

reneweconomy.com.au is more of a greenwishing alternative energy uptalking site than a scientific site.

It's a good catch, they're essentially using the hydrocarbon gas article from Materials Today to waffle into "a glass and a half of milk makes this relate to hydrogen"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwBceIbh5qc

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#18

Post by Blammar » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:30 AM UTC

There's no actual storage density information, is there? Nothing in KJ/m^3 units.

Ball milling to shove gas into nanoparticles seems counterintuitive, as ball milling is typically used to grind particles smaller.

I could imagine if we really had nanodust of BN+20H2 (or whatever) that it'd be (a) potentially very combustible (b) potentially dangerous to lungs when inhaled. (Presumably, at some temperature, hydrogen begins to be released, and if you then ignite that hydrogen, I could imagine a runaway reaction.)

I really want this or something similar to work.

Maybe the simpler thing to do is to develop a solar cell that produces methanol (or ethanol) directly from sunlight, CO2, and water, and then just have a methanol engine. Should be able to burn methanol and produce CO2/water exhaust only.

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#19

Post by pengaru » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:30 AM UTC

gene-h wrote: post #14

This article is complete BS. The abstract of the publication does not mention hydrogen at all, and in fact concerns storage and separation of acetylene and ethylene gas, which are hydrocarbons, not hydrogen. This petrochemical storage and separation technique is about as far as it gets from green hydrogen

Except the lead researcher is quoted as saying hydrogen:

“We were so surprised to see this happen, but each time we kept getting the exact same result, it was a eureka moment,” said lead researcher Dr Srikanth Mateti.

“There is no waste, the process requires no harsh chemicals and creates no by-products. …This means you could store hydrogen anywhere and use it whenever it’s needed.”

“The current way of storing hydrogen is in a high-pressure tank, or by cooling the gas down to a liquid form. Both require large amounts of energy, as well as dangerous processes and chemicals,” said Professor Chen.

Re: “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

#20

Post by scythe » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

This is a very stark misrepresentation of the research. The actual study is about reducing the energy consumption of natural gas refining:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13697...

Apparently this process accounts for a large fraction of energy consumed in the overall petrochemical economy, but it's got little to do with hydrogen storage.

In fact, boron nitride, the key material here, has been extensively considered for hydrogen storage due to the stability of the compound NH3BH3, hence attempts to perform the reaction BN + 3 H2 >> NH3BH3, but these are very difficult and it's unlikely a simple technique would have been missed. The use of BN to adsorb ethylene is much less "obvious".