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New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater

sciencedaily.com

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

#101

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

craftkiller wrote: post #97
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is already free energy. In 2024, California curtailed 3400 GWh of solar. Hydrogen is one of the easier ways to load shift that to winter or processes which need something denser than batteries. I actually prefer synthetic methane (worse efficiency) because it is more immediately usable. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65364

Looking at the charts[0], load shifting all the way to winter seems unnecessary. You only need to load shift until ~6pm, in which case there are plenty of better options out there like grid-scale batteries, flywheels, pumped storage hydro, etc. [0] The 2nd chart on https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2025.05.28/chart2.s...

It depends on your energy mix. The more solar you go, more load shifting is required. Winter solar production is relatively crummy and you need to offset that loss somehow for the entire season.

That chart is showing some curtailment in winter because the grid knows to expect less production. It is already tuned to spin up more gas because solar will underperform relative to Summer.

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

#102

Post by MSFT_Edging »

wnevets wrote: post #92
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science The three stooges effect I see. Too many corrosive elements, they stop each other from getting through the door.

I was thinking of the Mr Burns sickness bit which references the stooges [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8

I think people are taking this seriously but in reality I'm just referencing this bit.

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

#103

Post by IAmBroom »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #41
londons_explore wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the efficiency or longevity of electrolysis equipment is the limiting factor... The limiting factor is that natural gas is very cheap and cracking it to make blue hydrogen is really easy at scale, and gives off CO2 which is useful for injection into wells to increase production. That sets a price ceiling of hydrogen. At the other end of the scale, there are batteries to store 'free' electricity and rese…

With solar sometimes producing a lot of energy when you don't need it or can't store it, having a cheap hardware to produce hydrogen from it is quite nice. Natural gaz may be cheap, but you can't beat free. For this setup, the price of the hardware was a limiting factor.

As always, the question is not "do this for solar, or not?". The question is, "Is this a valuable & efficient way to store energy?".

It has to compete with pumped weight (usually water), pumped heat (salt, water, or underground), electric batteries, and so on.

So, as always, it's complicated.

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

#104

Post by IAmBroom »

kansface wrote: post #94
lukeinator42 wrote: post #90

This would be great for other use cases too like climbing bolts and anchors in coastal areas. Lots of areas are switching to titanium glue-ins which are expensive, but I wonder if this could enable more affordable option. A climber recently died in Greece after multiple bolts failed: https://gripped.com/news/rock-climber-dies-in-kalymnos-after...

3 10mm bolts failing simultaneously after two decades (on direct it seems) is unexpected! If it were an installation problem, I can’t imagine it would take that long and that they’d all go at the same time. Ditto for corrosion… people take victory whips all the time.

All three bolts at critical level. A massive strain happens along. They pop: one, two, three!

It's not that unexpected.

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

#105

Post by IAmBroom »

pfdietz wrote: post #74
NortySpock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking seawater already, why not dilute it with seawater down near the ocean floor and have it react with some rocks or something? Why put chlorine gas directly into the atmosphere?

To destroy methane, which is a strong greenhouse gas.

And because pumping gas to the ocean floor bites into efficiency.

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

#106

Post by alwa »

nradov wrote: post #98
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will be interesting to see if, in hindsight, there are clues to this in the preexisting literature that we just hadn't quite recognized.

This is one of the areas where AI will accelerate scientific research, by scanning through the journal archives to make connections that no one had noticed before.

See, my thought would have been the opposite: in a situation like this—where nobody tries the thing because “everybody knows” it’s counterproductive—I’d expect AI literature surveys to confidently assert received wisdom.

It sounds from the quote like even the researchers thought it was a mistake at first… and that on the basis of the literature PLUS their collective professional wisdom. Now, obviously, they did in fact try the thing, so maybe the idea was not quite so wacky as they paint it for the article.

But the point feels similar here as with LLMs and writing: they can do what’s come before pretty well, and they can exhaust a well-specified problem space through sheer muscle; but they seem to be less good at evolving the frontiers of the domain, and I see no mechanism by which to expect that to change.

So I tend to take the opposite lesson: surprises like this renew my hope that there will remain a place in science long into the AI era for meatbags and serendipity and the spirit of curiosity.

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

#107

Post by IAmBroom »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #85
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot of places in the world, the marginal cost of electricity is zero, if your capital costs are low enough to only purchase when there is excess wind. The cost of batteries for long-term storage is still prohibitively high. In contrast, large hydrogen (or methanol, etc further products) are relatively cheap to store. Those two things put together is pretty much it. There is massive room for additional wind capac…

How strange utility grids are spending on BSS and not hydrogen infrastructure. How strange utility grids are spending on HVDC transmission and not hydrogen infrastructure. HN commenters should ring up their local electrical grid operators and set them straight /s Also, if you have extremely low cost of electricity: you build manufacturing nearby that needs massive amounts of energy, like metal refineries. Or you subs…

So, do you have a materials science degree, or are you claiming you know more than the trained experts already tackling these issues IRL?

I'm tired of Internet Experts(tm) announcing how dumb the specialists are for not seeing the Obvious Facts.

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

#108

Post by nradov »

alwa wrote: post #106
nradov wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the areas where AI will accelerate scientific research, by scanning through the journal archives to make connections that no one had noticed before.

See, my thought would have been the opposite: in a situation like this—where nobody tries the thing because “everybody knows” it’s counterproductive—I’d expect AI literature surveys to confidently assert received wisdom. It sounds from the quote like even the researchers thought it was a mistake at first… and that on the basis of the literature PLUS their collective professional wisdom. Now, obviously, they did in fa…

LLMs don't rely completely on received wisdom. The training process works in a higher dimensional space so some data points that might seem unrelated to humans end up being clustered close together if there is a hidden or unrecognized relationship.

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

#109

Post by inasio »

Stayed a few times in a place exposed to constant breeze from a tropical Pacific coast beach, and learned that stainless steel doesn't really last very long there. Everything stainless steel-based (fixtures, fridges, handles) rusts in a few years. I'd bet there's a market for upscale alloys

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

#110

Post by 1970-01-01 »

chupasaurus wrote: post #72
hobofan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not delusional. Japanese car manufacturers were late to EVs, and in order to prevent a gap in the market where EV-first competitors can steal market share from them, they lobby the government to subsidize and create a new market segment in the form of hydrogen cars. There they have a head start via some latent research and more reuse of ICE car platforms. I'm sure the hydrogen division is well aware that the…

> Japanese car manufacturers were late to EVs ... they lobby the government to subsidize and create a new market segment in the form of hydrogen cars Production of Toyota Prius started 28 years ago.

The Prius is a hybrid. Did you mean the Nissan Leaf in 2009?
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