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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

#61

Post by pfdietz »

pjc50 wrote: post #51
pfdietz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, unless all the planned datacentres get built, using more electricity than some small countries.

The blockage of connecting those to the grid will encourage self-generation, which will mean putting them off in the boondocks where land is cheap. Taking that to the logical limit is where space data centers come from.

I think we're going to see a repurposing of remote coal-fired plants with renewable stored heat. The Four Corners plant, perhaps? It's supposed to stop operating in 2031, I believe.

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

#63

Post by pfdietz »

nyeah wrote: post #57
pfdietz wrote: post #50

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.

Unfortunately, some products of methane-chlorine reaction are much less desirable than methane.

If you react large amounts of methane and chlorine, the methyl radicals will react with molecular chlorine to make methyl chloride. But if the methane and chlorine are dilute, as they would be here, the methyl radicals with react with something else (like oxygen) first.

Destruction of methane by chlorine has been observed naturally, for example after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption in 2022 (although the chlorine-mediated destruction there was less than methane injected by the volcano itself.)

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-massive-volcano-destroyed-met...

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

#64

Post by chamomeal »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #60
janderson215 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. Any other dynamics in which The Stooges Effect is present?

High entropy alloys come to mind. There are so many possible metallic combinations when you mix 5 o 6 metals in equal proportions that they all end up being in a single, homogeneous combinantion with about one atom of each per crystal molecule.

Oh wow I thought this was a simpsons reference to when Mr. Burns has too many diseases, that none of them can take him down. Cool that it's a real thing

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

#66

Post by adrian_b »

abduhl wrote: post #42
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.

The part with "cannot be explained by current knowledge" is an exaggeration, because the abstract of the research article explains it very well, based on the current knowledge.

However, "a counter-intuitive discovery" is true. Manganese is frequently used in stainless steels, but only as a cheap substitute for nickel, when this is considered as giving up the superior resistance to corrosion provided by nickel in exchange for the low cost provided by manganese.

The counter-intuitive result of the research is that there are circumstances when manganese provides improved corrosion protection, not only a lower cost.

The reason why this has not been discovered earlier is that manganese alone does not protect against corrosion, but only in an appropriate combination with chromium, when chromium protects both the steel and the manganese at lower electric potential differences, while manganese protects both the steel and the chromium at higher electric potential differences.

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

#67

Post by briandw »

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.

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

#68

Post by toast0 »

voakbasda wrote: post #55
pfdietz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, this will never happen due to NIMBY zoning laws.

Most rural areas have pretty permissive zoning.

But also, other than Texas, I don't hear about a lot of regional over production. There's pretty good interconnection within and between the two major grids.

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

#69

Post by NortySpock »

pfdietz wrote: post #50

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.

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?

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

#70

Post by benj111 »

While interesting is this ever going to be actually needed? Unless hydrogen is going to be used in a decentralised fashion, which seems unlikely, water can simply be saved from recombining hydrogen and oxygen. So you only ever need a finite amount of water.

Plus there's also futures where harvesting salt / lithium from seawater leaves clean ish water as a by product, or a future where when it's sunny, just boil water to evaporate it with nearly free solar, then electrolyse it. And you'd need near free electricity to make this economic.

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