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

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

#31

Post by jerome-jh » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:23 PM 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.

Hydrogen storage is certainly not the smallest problem we face with hydrogen fuel. Di-hydrogen is a very small molecule that is hard to contain. It requires very tight seals. Not technically impossible, but very costly at large scale.

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

#32

Post by supernova87a » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #27

supernova87a wrote: post #26

> " the process consumes 76.8 KJ/s to store and separate 1000L of gases " I have a feeling this reporter doesn't quite know what she's talking about.

If correct, what would this mean? Storing requires energy input?

If the letters/words in the quote are correctly kilojoules, seconds, and liters, then it doesn't make sense.

You would want to know how much energy (J) it takes to separate a given volume of gas. The quoted statement talks about power (rate, J/s), not energy. It doesn't make sense. I don't know the experiment in detail, but even I can see that mismatch.

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

#33

Post by einpoklum » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

scythe wrote: post #20

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 e…

So, the abstract says:

> Light hydrocarbon olefin and paraffin gas mixtures are produced during natural gas or petrochemical processing.

You seem to be a bit more knowledgeable about the subject matter, so - can you tell use what exactly are those gas mixtures used for? What industrial process will benefit from these energy savings and transport safety?