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

#41

Post by BiteCode_dev » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #11

pjc50 wrote: post #5

So apart from the clickbait, the reason why this is interesting is because it's a limiter for the often cited idea of clean green hydrogen from electrolyis. The current use of titanium and precious metals is, obviously, really expensive, so it's uneconomical to build something that only runs on "spare" electricity.

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.

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

#42

Post by abduhl » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

smusamashah wrote: post #3

> That is what makes the finding so striking. Manganese is usually not viewed as a friend of stainless steel corrosion resistance. In fact, the prevailing view has been that manganese weakens it. > "Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current know…

>> Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science.

This statement sounds like the type of language one uses when trying to get a patent.

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

#43

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #11

pjc50 wrote: post #5

So apart from the clickbait, the reason why this is interesting is because it's a limiter for the often cited idea of clean green hydrogen from electrolyis. The current use of titanium and precious metals is, obviously, really expensive, so it's uneconomical to build something that only runs on "spare" electricity.

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…

Even without natural gas, hydrogen as a general energy storage medium competes against thermal storage. The round trip for this (electrical energy back to electrical energy) can be as good as hydrogen, and the storage medium can be literally dirt cheap, cheap enough that seasonal storage looks like it makes sense, if the design is brutally focused on cost optimization.

Here, corrosion of steel is also part of the problem, as you are burying steel pipes in piles of hot dirt.

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

#44

Post by pjc50 » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:09 PM 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.

Back to the corrosion discussion from the original article: when handling sulphuric acid at 800C, what kind of piping material do you need?

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

#45

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:10 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #15

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…

There's one case, rural areas often have abundant energy sources (hydro, wind,etc) but few consumers, in Northern Sweden f.ex. a lot is produced but there's a lot of losses in transporting the energy south. Now, yes, as long as natural gas is cheap(inbetween US or Soviet wars) it'll probably be the core for hydrogen, however batteries won't help much in the north since the transmission rather than usage is the cap ev…

If solar continues to plummet in cost we may see distributed industry in rural areas, to take advantage of energy that is essentially stranded by transmission cost. Storage becomes even more important in this scenario.

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

#46

Post by UltraSane » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #35

voxadam wrote: post #13

You just know that engineers and management in Toyota's delusional hydrogen division are salivating.

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…

Hydrogen is simply a really bad fuel for cars. It is hard to transport and store liquid hydrogen

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

#47

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #35

voxadam wrote: post #13

You just know that engineers and management in Toyota's delusional hydrogen division are salivating.

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…

You're explaining the practical consequences of their delusion, but delusion it remains. Hydrogen for cars isn't going to work to save them, even with the lobbying. Granted, they were probably screwed anyway, so they had no good options.

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

#48

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #46

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…

Hydrogen is simply a really bad fuel for cars. It is hard to transport and store liquid hydrogen

They'd use compressed gaseous hydrogen, but that has its own problems.

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

#49

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

RugnirViking wrote: post #4

this kind of headline is bad for our collective souls; I know raging against the clickbait is old hat but seriously, this is ridiculous. Materials science is surely interesting enough to a reader of science direct without being SHOCKED and APPALLED all the time

Hacker News readers hate this one weird trick!

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

#50

Post by pfdietz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

A problem I'd have with seawater electrolysis is production of undesirable chlorine compounds: hypochlorite or elemental chlorine.

Or maybe there are uses for these? Releasing chlorine (diluted!) into the atmosphere might be a way to accelerate the scrubbing out of methane. Chlorine is photolysed by sunlight into chlorine atoms, which immediately react with methane.