Wind-to-hydrogen production reaches deep water
Comments
goethes_kind
api
Grid scale storage and aviation are the two areas where hydrogen seems to make sense to me. With the former you get around the problem of having to build absurd numbers of batteries and the material cost of that by using water as a far cheaper working material. With the latter you have an application where unlike cars minimizing weight per kWh is absolutely critical. The fact that there aren’t all that many airports would also make deployment of hydrogen filling infrastructure much easier.
I don’t see hydrogen for cars unless we got a gigantic Eisenhower scale infrastructure build out commitment. There is already a power grid so the infrastructure problem for EVs is way easier to solve.
goethes_kind
I agree that those are the two and the many industrial use cases that use hydrogen directly are the most promising areas. I think it might be plausible to see hydrogen creep into other market sectors once it already serves a purpose and the infrastructure is already built for use in grid/aviation/steel...etc. Because it is so scalable, we might find it easy to ramp up production and then end up using it other markets sectors.
eric-hu
I’m not following your reason with aviation. Isn’t weight per kWh of hydrogen bad?
Valgrim
Compared to other fuels, what are the advantages of hydrogen?
rawgabbit
From https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/climate-cha....
"Heavy-duty road vehicles Hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen-derived fuels offer a low-carbon alternative for heavy-duty vehicles, for which batteries do not currently have the energy density to offer a long-range solution. "
"One niche market for hydrogen fuel cells is forklift trucks. These currently outnumber hydrogen cars, with around 30,000 in use. Fuel cell forklifts are suited to warehouse use because refuelling is simple, and the vehicles emit no air pollutants32"
"Synthetic fuels. A range of synthetic fuels for multiple uses can be made via the Fischer Tropsch process, reacting captured CO2 with hydrogen. These could potentially provide a lower carbon drop-in fuel alternative for the aviation fleet as well as an option for trucks or ships"
"Ammonia is denser and only requires compression to 10 times atmospheric pressure or chilling to -33°C6 . Ammonia storage is mature because of its widespread use as a feedstock for mineral fertilisers. "
"For transport, China is aiming to produce one million hydrogen fuelled vehicles and 1,000 refuelling stations by 2030, the same goals as California3, 55. South Korea’s roadmap is aiming to produce six million FCEVs and roll out 1,200 refilling stations by 2040."
dmbche
Easy to produce, doesn't go bad, somewhat light, can be produced on site.
You lose quite a bit of energy making the hydrogen (around 50% I think) but the claimed positives make this not that problematic. If it's possible to create a lot of energy somewhere remote, making hydrogen there and shipping the hydrogen out can be a good idea. Also making hydrogen when there is unused electricity and storing it for further use when energy is not available (night, winter)
There are many other drawbacks - I'm no expert.
goethes_kind
The drawbacks are as follows. To convert hydrogen back into electricity you need to either use a gas turbine or a fuel cell.
Fuel cells are expensive, so you have capital cost problems. Additionally fuel cells have problems providing variable power output. For this reason you often couple the system with a battery.
Gas turbines running on hydrogen have some engineering challenges. In particular the gas turbine technology needs to be re-engineered because hydrogen burns differently from natural gas. Secondly NOx emissions are an issue that needs to be addressed.
Moreover, if one is to store and transport hydrogen as a gas or a liquid, the infrastructure is more challenging than with a natural gas pipeline. If one is to further convert hydrogen into a synthetic fuel, you get additional conversion losses.
_aavaa_
Don’t forget:
- it has an abysmal energy density per unit volume, even as a liquid. E.g. if you used to need 1 tanker or gasoline, you’ll need 18 tankers of compressed hydrogen for the same energy content.
- compressing and liquifying it is much more expensive and challanging that natural gas. See this fun little challange [0]
- there are currently no odorants available for use in hydrogen (the thing that gives natural gas it’s smell). All the available ones either react with hydrogen or poison your fuel cell
- it’s flame is essentially invisible and incredibly hot
- it has an explosive range from 4-75% (natural gas for example is 5-17%)
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_isomers_of_hydrogen
somewhat_drunk
I was a project engineer in a hydrogen fuel cell research lab for a few years.
To add to this, hydrogen also:
- is the smallest molecule; as such is very difficult to contain
- embrittles and degrades most steels
- is ignited by a miniscule amount of energy, such as static sparks
- has a terribly rapid flame front, which means big boom when it does ignite
Everyone has seen the consequences of pilot lights going out while owners are on vacation. House fills with natural gas, fridge compressor kicks on, ignites gas, house explodes. A house filled with hydrogen would not only destroy the house containing it, but the houses next to it as well, and it would be much more likely to ignite due to its much lower ignition energy.
I do not trust contractors to install hydrogen piping, and I do not trust homeowners to maintain their hydrogen sensors. I would NEVER live in a building that had hydrogen stored (as in a vehicle tank) or piped inside. There are simply too many ways for that scenario to go wrong, and if it does go wrong, it goes wrong in a very bad way.
senectus1
>Everyone has seen the consequences of pilot lights going out while owners are on vacation. House fills with natural gas, fridge compressor kicks on, ignites gas, house explodes. A house filled with hydrogen would not only destroy the house containing it, but the houses next to it as well, and it would be much more likely to ignite due to its much lower ignition energy.
So Its molecule is so tiny it's hard to contain even in specially constructed containers, but in a house leak it'll hang around and build up enough in a house to level a suburb block?
You can't have it both ways.
dmbche
To clarify with the false equivalence : when pressurized at more than atmosphere, the pressure pushes the hydrogen through containement easily. This is problematic, as we would need hermetic containement.
If leaked into a house, the pressure remains 1 atm - the issue is not with the pressure, but with the amount of atoms of hydrogen being close enough that, if one catches fire, it will spread to enough atoms to cause an explosion that will raise a block.
The atoms are not moving quickly to escape the house, they observe light motion as particles in the still-ish air of the house, so after some time they overcrowd the house without even having to reach the outside wall, they could all hang around the pipe.
somewhat_drunk
An obvious false equivalence. The difference is pressure.
rstuart4133
I always thought the nightmare scenario was hydrogen powered cars. Keeping hydrogen contained while being rattled and banged every day would be a challenge in the best of scenarios, but some of these cars will end up being be 20 years old, with the absolute minimum spent of maintenance.
Now park 1000 of those cars in a multi story parking station, or under a block of housing units.
somewhat_drunk
Indeed. It's not a feasible solution on that basis alone.
dmbche
Would it be reasonable to reserve hydrogen for electric plants then? Bringing power from far away and burning the hydrogen to power locals?
bjowen
Has there been any serious proposal for hydrogen to replace reticulated gas in domestic supply? The cost to refit existing infra would surely make it less attractive than something like power-to-methane.
_aavaa_
It's talked about a lot in the UK and Germany.
In the UK, British Gas and Cadet tried to force 2,000 some homes to change to hydrogen by cutting of their natural gas supply in order to run a trial project [0].
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/30/people-ches...
_hypx
> A liquid hydrogen tanker can carry nearly the same amount of energy as a liquid diesel tanker, noted Mike Roeth, NACFE executive director
https://www.trucknews.com/sustainability/nacfe-takes-fresh-l...
_aavaa_
A) Liquid hydrogen is stored at 20K, 20 degrees above absolute zero. Compressing and cooling hydrogen gas to 20K consumes ~30% of the energy content of the hydrogen.
That tanker has a boil off rate of 0.3-0.6%. The thing you're storing it in is going to have a similar boil off range.
B) "No hydrogen option will fully displace BEVs, noted Roeth"
_hypx
You don’t consume any of the hydrogen to liquefy hydrogen. That comes from an external energy source. Smartly, it would just be the renewable energy used to make the hydrogen in the first place, making it potentially nearly free.
BEVs will still exist as short-ranged urban vehicles. That is a niche, and in trucking that is a very small one too.
_aavaa_
Wherever you get the energy to compress it from, you still need to spend ~30% of the energy content of the hydrogen to compress it to a liquid.
There is no evidence to support the idea that BEVs (cars or trucks) will remain short-ranged urban vehicle. Even the "entry" level BEVs in NA, like the leaf, have gotten to EPA ranges of 360 km, a number that is only ever going to go up.
Even trucking is slowly getting there as the battery tech improves. In Europe Mercedes is testing trucks, today, which hit 200-400 km before needing to charge [0]. That's not enough for long distance, but that doesn't matter. They can serve this market and when they're ready they can expand to longer ranges.
Further, there is even less evidence that in applications where BEVs don't (and won't) work that hydrogen is the winning solution. What is hydrogen's go to market strategy? Introduce trucks for long range that have higher up front costs and higher total cost of ownership that diesel trucks, plus severely limit where you can drive since you depend on a (non-existent) hydrogen network?
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/11/electric-semi-truck-dri...
_hypx
> The minimum theoretical energy to liquefy hydrogen from ambient (300 K, 1.01 bar) conditions is 3.3 kWh/kg LH2 or 3.9 kWh/kg LH2 with conversion to para-LH2 (which is standard practice) [1].
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirement...
It is not guaranteed to be 30%. And you're entirely basing your argument on the idea that batteries will get radically more advanced, while hydrogen technology will not. What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost and the fuel is basically free (made from excess green energy)? Will BEVs really have much of a future in that scenario?
_aavaa_
That's the theoretical limit and it's still ~10%.
It's not guaranteed to be 30% no, but that's what they are now.
> Actual liquefaction energy requirements are substantially higher, typically 10-13 kWh/kg LH2, depending on the size of the liquefaction operation [5,6].
> What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost
Pigs will fly.
Toyota currently sells the Mirai, and it costs more than a model 3. The Mirai uses ~3x more electricity at the source to drive the same amount (assuming very optimistic efficiencies) and costs ~5x more to drive per mile.
So I ask you, who will buy the Mirai instead of a model 3?
The answer, based on sales data, is not many people.
Because the Mirai is not even better for the environment unless you mange to source pure green energy hydrogen.
So how will Toyota sell enough to bring down the cost of production?
How long with it take for the hydrogen network to expand outside of california? A decade? And when that's happened, how will you convince the BEV drivers to sell their 10th gen BEV for a 3rd gen Hydrogen car?
> and the fuel is basically free
That is an absurd thing to claim.
- Green electricity is not free since there's a Capex associated with it.
- wind/solar does not suffer negative electricity rates in the same way that coal/gas/nuclear since they can be turned off on a whim. They do not have to generate excess energy if they don't want to.
- Creating hydrogen from water is not free since there is expensive Capex associated with electrolyzers and other equipment required.
- Combine the above 3 together and you'll find the idea of running your electrolyzers intermittenly for only a few hours when there's excess energy to be a laughable proposition from an economic point of view.
- Compressing, storing, and transporting hydrogen is not free
For reference, hydrogen from methane in the US currently sells for ~1.5$/kg. The idea that green hydrogren will get cheaper than that, much less free, is laughable.
_hypx
10% is pretty what the losses of long distance HVDC will be. You are at the point of diminishing returns in terms of efficiency at that point.
Not to mention that this is recoverable energy. Liquid hydrogen is literally cryogenic energy storage. You can easily find methods of shrinking losses ever further.
Considering Toyota is literally making a hydrogen powered Corolla to go racing, your claim about cost is pure Ludditism. It time for you to stop living in the past. Hydrogen cars will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Perhaps its time you ask yourself a simple question: Once all of the facilities have been built, what is the margin cost of further production? It is in fact basically zero. This is for both wind and solar, but also anything made exclusively from it like green hydrogen. In fact, hydrogen could be the cheapest of them all, since it is not limited by the problems of intermittency and long-duration storage.
As a result, it is a matter of when, not if you'll see hydrogen for $1.5/kg. And eventually even less than that.
PS: Your post is just pure anti-progress. Imagine being so offended by the idea of advancements in green energy. So many of your type are just brainwashed BEV fanatics. It's pure short-sightedness.
_aavaa_
I hope I don’t have to describe the chasm that exists between a 10% real loss in the whole of a process, versus a theoretic minimal loss of one step in a process.
It is not anti-progress to point out obviously impossible things.
> will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Please explain to the luddites in the room how it will cost the same. How it could ever cost the same. Both would start with electricity. The BEV would charge directly on that. The hydrogen car would require an electrolyzer, cleaning of the gas, compressing it, transmission, distribution, refueling stations, then a fuel cell. Each step along the way being costly and not 100% efficient. Hint: you can’t.
Even if you hook up a perfect fuel cell to a perfect electrolyzer, for each kW you put into the electrolyzer you’ll be getting less than 1 kW from the fuel cell.
Except the marginal costs is not zero. The marginal cost of the next kg of hydrogen is not zero. Electricity is not free, and each kg of hydrogen requires the same amount of electricity as the previous.
Toyota making one car for their racing circuit is very different from them making it cheaply and people buying it on mass. Again, real operating costs of the vehicle they sell on the market today are 5x higher the BEVs, so why would anyone buy it?
The only way you’ll reach green hydrogen for less 1.5$/kg is if you have an army of volunteers working on donated equipment for >0.02$/kWh. There are few of any places that even have electricity that cheap.
It is not me that’s living in the past, it’s the hydrogen hype that has come back for its third crack at things. On the hope that maybe this time around thermodynamics will be different.
_hypx
A fuel cell has far less raw material needs than a li-ion battery. All of those things you described are less expensive than the comparable grid infrastructure. It is ten times cheaper to move hydrogen around than electricity: https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...
It is pure Ludditism because you are refusing to accept the possibility of technological progress. Some of which already exist. As renewable energy scales up, it will approach the marginal cost of zero. We even see negative price electricity at times. As a result, hydrogen could also approach zero cost.
$0.02/kWh is fully possible and is already realistic now: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/30/new-record-low-solar-pr...
You are the one living in the past. Imagine thinking that a fuel made from water can never catch on. This is so deep into BEV brainwashing it will be eventually talked about in the same way as bloodletting.
_aavaa_
Pure fantasy.
Look at how people use hydrogen now, all 90 million tones a year. Do they produce it at central facility where economies of scale help them? No. They all produce it in small and expensive plants less than a 1km from where it’s used. Strange. Perhaps they simply haven’t heard the good word.
Negative prices exist because power plants cannot curb their production quickly enough to match falling demand. These are not a thing for solar and wind operations since you can shut them off much faster.
If their electricity is soo incredibly cheap, why in the world would we bother with all this hydrogen problems, then simply overbuilding solar and wind like crazy? It does my matter how cheap you think hydrogen is, it doesn’t produce electricity at the end of the process cheaper than what went in.
Hydrogen can be made from water. But not for anywhere near the prices you discuss. Again, this is predatory detail by the fossil fuel companies. As long as they can make people believe that eventually green hydrogen will be cheap, they can build out their methane- based hydrogen infrastructure.
Go read some sources which do not have a direct conflict of interest in hydrogen: https://h2sciencecoalition.com/
_hypx
You are just showing more of your backwards thinking and closemindedness.
For starters, most hydrogen today is made from natural gas, so all infrastructure is just natural gas based. If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure. This story resembles the rise of LNG and how people dismissed it as impossible for multiple years.
Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. Your dreams of overbuilding wind and solar makes this even more self-evident that green hydrogen will be nearly free. Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production. This is so obvious that only people brainwashed by BEV propaganda can refuse to accept it.
PS: H2 Science Coalition is a anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
_aavaa_
The only close mindedness going around is your apperant fixation on Hydrogen as a goal in and of itself, rather than on producing and providng clean energy.
You are seeing what you want to see. And what I see is someone showing a complete lack of knowledge about material science.
> If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure.
The existing natural gas infrastructure will not simply "switch over" because it fundamentally is incapable of safely transporting hydrogen. You need different material properties in your metal to handle hydrogen (see hydrogen embritlement as one reason), to say nothing of the other equipment involved. These cannot be "switched over", they must be completely replaced.
This in fact is the thinking that's backwards: continue to think about chemical energy carriers and moving them around in pipes. This made sense when we started with chemicals (fossil fuels), but it makes no sense when our starting point is electricity. Simply store and more that electriicty around.
> Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. > Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production.
No it won't. It doesn't matter how many times you say it.
Further, if you're buying electricity for a negative price, you're getting it from a coal/gas plant which is decidedly not green. Or if you're lucky from a nuclear plant.
Very cheap electricity is a necessary condition for cheap green hydrogen, not an incentive for it.
Again, cheap is not free, and at the energy requirements needed per kg of H2, even cheap adds up quickly. Further, the equipment to produce, store, and transport it are not cheap, and are certainly not free.
> Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
All together now: the sun shines and wind blows even if you turn off your solar panels and wind turbines. Nothing is wasted.
> anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
As for the H2 Science Coalition, they clearly are not. They are very clear that hydrogen has it's uses (and its own major decarbonization problems). But that it's simply very poorly suited to be "an energy carrier".
_hypx
How is that any different than anyone with an obsession with green energy? In reality, it is a necessary component of a sustainable society. Something that you failed to realize.
What I know is that your position on hydrogen is pure FUD. I know as a matter of fact that your views on the material science side of things are false.
You can send hydrogen via natural gas pipelines. It is fully possible to "switch over." At worst, you will have to line the insides with some kind of coating: https://www.ul.com/sites/g/files/qbfpbp251/files/2023-02/Hyd...
And yet a pipeline is 10x cheaper than sending electricity. As it turns, basic physics does not change no matter how strongly you describe it as "backwards": https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...
You are continuing to deny reality with this post: If you are talking about massive overprovisioning, then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
And you can beat around the bush all you want; it does not change the fact that practically free electricity is happening right now, and it will lead to practically free hydrogen. Again, the only necessary resource is water. The cost floor is far lower than any other idea you can conceive of. And since it is cheaper to store and move hydrogen around that electricity, you will eventually abandon an all electricity-based solution in favor of one that moves energy around with hydrogen.
> Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
No one is fixated on hydrogen. It is the anti-hydrogen Luddites that are fixated on stopping it. This inevitably causes a conflict where rational and non-brainwashed people come out and say "No, you really do have to accept this that this is a necessary part of the solution."
_aavaa_
There's little point of rehashing things a 6th time, but I'll leave this for people who come back later and ever read this:
> then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
Solar and wind do not have negative electricity rates. Negative electricity rates are caused by a fixed/hard to ramp down source (nuclear/coal/gas) whose electricity is not needed. These plant cannot be turned on and off quickly ebnough to not produce this excess electricity, and because the grid must remain balanced (all the production must be immediately met by demand) they have to pay people to take the electricity off their hands because it's the cheapest option for them.
Solar and wind you can simply turn off, they do not have to pay peopel to take excess energy off their hands since they can simply choose not to make it.
Adding solar and wind will cause negative rates to occur, but it is not the solar and wind that are paying those negative values, it is the gas/coal/nuclear.
If you are buying electricity at a negative rate you are helping out a fossil fuel plant (or if your lucky a nuclear one).
> it will lead to practically free hydrogen.
Nope. Equipment still has a cost, no matter how many times you ignore it.
As for who is fixated, and/or brainwashed. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
_hypx
> Solar and wind do not have negative electricity rates. Negative electricity rates are caused by a fixed/hard to ramp down source (nuclear/coal/gas) whose electricity is not needed.
Funny how that never happened until recently. Only with the introduction of renewables did such things happen.
I agree that there's no point in continuing to talk to you. Your mind is made up.
I will leave it up to history to debunk your argument. It is a repeat of anti-wind and anti-solar rhetoric, that something made from free electricity and water cannot ever be cheap. It is obvious that that cannot be true, but for some it will take more than words to convince them otherwise.
dmbche
Very enlightening writeup - thanks for being thorough.
I'd like to mention that Toyota is playing with syntetic fuels as well, and that some in the car market see this more as an option for car enthusiasts to keep running their cars when gas will be "obsolete". Much of the marketing of the corolla is about how "the engine is not not-green, it's the fuel that's the issue".
Seeing how gas powered engines are much less efficient (just from the heat waste) than electric ones, I have a hard time expecting hydrogen to become a normal fuel for cars - especially with the risks associated. Can you imagine a transparent flame in your car?
This seems more like rnd into syntetic fuels and alternatives for enthusiasts than their actual horse in the race.
_aavaa_
Toyota has also pitched actually burning the hydrogen, but that’s even stupider. For starters you still get NOx formation by burning it, plus your efficiency is even lower.
The problem with synthetic fuels isn’t the technology, it’s the economics.
Synthetic fuels, to be remeotely green, need hydrogen created from electrolyzing water. That need to be done with 100% green energy (and new green energy, not simply pull from the grid to cause fossil fuel plants in o come online).
Then you need carbon from someone here other than fossil fuels. Direct air capture is what many look at, and that’s very expensive because of the chemistry and thermodynamics. (You’re trying to pull co2 out of the air, something in concentrations in the parts per million).
At the end of this Rube Goldberg operation you’re left with a fuel that’s going to cost 10x the price.
And the only way the price goes down is if people buy a lot of it so that the technology can improve and so the plants increase to get economies of scale.
Porsche is building a plant for this. But idk about you, but I doubt there are enough people who care enough about their car, and could afford, to pay >40$/gallon for gasoline.
_hypx
Fuel cells are not combustion engines. They are electrochemical systems. Their theoretical efficiency is the same as li-ion batteries.
And this is why it is a 100% guarantee that they will displace li-ion batteries. Why on Earth would anyone choose a very expensive and unsustainable battery technology when there is another system that is just as good but does not have any of those weaknesses? It's pure BEV brainwashing that people even think that way. So my advice to you is stop believing in these lies and accept that cars of the future will be hydrogen powered.
_aavaa_
This is highly misleading.
The theoretical efficiency for a fuel cell car and a battery electric car are absolutely not the same when you look at well-to-wheel. Not even close.
As for unsustainable. People make a big deal about cobalt in the batteries. Fine, the cobalt is being removed, all that’s left is abundant minerals.
Can you say the same about the platinum-group metals in electrolyzers and fuel cells?
_hypx
But the fact that they are the same should mean something to you. It also helps not to spam FUD about efficiency, and in the real-world they are much closer than you are thinking. In fact, hydrogen cars are the second most efficient form of transportation possible, and far less resource dependent than batteries.
You do not need platinum in a fuel cell. There are several types of them, and only one of them require platinum. Also, the amount required is comparable to a catalytic converter and only grams per fuel cell is needed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-platinum-week-bosch-fuelc...
_aavaa_
> But the fact that they are the same should mean something to you.
Yeah, it means i'd love a refence, and one that includes actual effiency too.
> It also helps not to spam FUD about efficiency, and in the real-world they are much closer than you are thinking.
BEV well to wheel is 77% while hydrogen is 33% [0]. A 2x is what I have in mind.
> In fact, hydrogen cars are the second most efficient form of transportation possible
Yes, a far far second behind electric and far far ahead petrol, which is not particularly hard to do.
[0]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020...
_hypx
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03603...
The maximum possible efficiency of a fuel cell is 100%. It follows directly from the realization that they are not limited by Carnot's cycle. Hence why in the long run, it is pretty much a guarantee that a hydrogen based solution will win out. If two solutions are equally efficiency, than the only that is vastly cheaper will be the solution.
These types of comparisons of efficiency comparisons are ultimately just nonsense. Most of them are all over the place, from 2x difference to sometimes 10x or worse. That's because they are just cherry-pick numbers in order to create a narrative. It is not really based on any sort of real analysis.
In reality, a large portion of renewable energy is lost or never utilized, largely due to its intermittency. Without any way of storing it, renewable energy is very inefficient overall. They pretty much always have to be backed up by fossil fuels today. Adding a way to store vast amounts of it, such as hydrogen, makes renewable energy significantly more efficient and eliminates the need for fossil fuels.
But if you make that realization, then it also becomes obvious that running cars off of hydrogen does not imply any kind of major loss of efficiency. The problem basically becomes irrelevant, since you are running cars off of energy that would've been lost anyways.
Schroedingersat
The mirai has worse range, has less power, is heavier, has less internal space, is bigger, requires more mining if rare minerals for fuel cells, lasts fewer miles before replacing the storage/fuel cell system, refuelling for daily use is much more cumbersome and it costs ten times as much to fuel as current gen EVs.
The supposed overwhelming advantage results in saving 20 minutes on a 1000km trip (if nobody else used the hydrogen station before you, otherwise fuelling times are the same).
With current state of the art batteries being put into next model cars that last bit goes away too.
In what possible world do hydrogen passenger cars have a future?
dmbche
I hadn't realised the flame was invisible. It's terrifying to me, after seeing ethanol fires on racecars.
_aavaa_
It is! NASA and firefighters had the broom test [0].
Walk with a broom in front of them if they thought there might be a hydrogen fire. If the broom suddenly burst into flames, they knew they had a problem.
bwanab
Wouldn't the cost of fuel cells come down, as happened with PV, once they are mass produced? Or, is there some inherent high cost to them?
_aavaa_
There isn't an inherent cost, just an inherent inefficiency in the electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity process.
So the price would come down if they were massed produced.
Except you would need a market that is willing to pay the high cost until it comes down. Such a market segment has yet to materialise.
If you build satellite you need a source of energy that doesn't depend on your bringing fuel for it. So you're willing to pay the obscene starting price of PV. If you needed/wanted clean electricity made off-grid you're willing to pay for PV since it had many benefits over the alternatives (if they even existed in your situation).
What is the same starting market for fuel cells? It would have to:
1. Not care that the hydrogen is difficult to transport to that location, or be willing to invest in the costly equipment to make and store it on site.
2. It would have to be willing to put up with the poor end-to-end efficiency, both in absolute and relative terms.
3. It would need to be isolated from a grid such that you would require storage in the first place.
4. It would need to be long term and isolated enough such that batteries, pumped hydro, connection to the grid, and overbuilding of renewable are not a viable/cheaper alternative.
jgamman
currently use a lot of rare metals like platinum. inc vol of fuel cells will drive up price of fairly inelastic supply of rare metals. or require step change in anode/cathode catalysts to cheaper metals
_hypx
Not all fuel cells use platinum, and those that do use very small amounts of it: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/bosch-ev-fuel-cells-less-...
> The major auto supplier, which recently partnered with Sweden's Powercell, is working on a new fuel cell architecture that, according to Reuters' report, will "use only as much platinum as a diesel catalytic converter."
dmbche
I think it's inherent from the danger of hydrogen and I imagine it's extremely reactive, it might interact with most materials used to hold it.
_hypx
That is what is happening now. Critics of this idea are just repeating the same arguments that where used against PV too.
ikekkdcjkfke
If you have an accident at a filling station it will go boom real loud
dmbche
Thanks for the explanation, clear and to the point.
Etrnl_President
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analog31
In addition to its use as a fuel, it's also a chemical feedstock, perhaps notably for the production of ammonia. In fact, wind-to-ammonia production would be a cool thing. Synthetic ammonia for fertilizer, produced via the Haber-Bosch process, sustains more than half of the world's animal population.
A lot of ideas for reducing our carbon footprint depend on the dream of getting methane out of the fertilizer business.
goethes_kind
What other fuels? All green/synthetic fuels depend on hydrogen and as such I consider them the same technology.
ianai
Pulls oxygen in from the atmosphere and outputs energy plus water. Just have to make the hydrogen generation/transport emission free.
My question is whether storing hydrogen and the complications therein are mitigated. I just don’t know my modern material science/manufacturing enough.
funnymony
If you have some time: https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE (Sabine Hossenfelder)
If I remember video correctly, summary would be: not yet
ianai
Seen it, she’s taking pot shots at hydrogen. I’d be more interested in hearing how it works in established applications now and relevant to the article.
_aavaa_
Why do we need fuels? We have electricity that we need to use later. Going electricity -> fuel -> electricity is a necessarily lossy process.
allannienhuis
As an example: transportation. More specifically, airplanes. Energy density is a bigger factor for some uses than others.
ianburrell
Another good example is cargo ships. Making those electric would be expensive and use a lot of cargo space. Hydrogen is lower density than bunker fuel but better than batteries. It should be possible to retrofit hydrogen engines to existing ships unlike using kites.
uncertainrhymes
I don't have first-hand knowledge of this, but my understanding is most cargo ships already have electric engines to drive the propellers. The fuel is only there to run the generators.
Fuel aside, might be less of a retrofit than we think.
Gwypaas
Not true. They use hyper optimized two stroke diesel engines.
Cruise ships, RORO, off-shore supply ships and vessels with similarly dynamic operating profiles have started to use diesel electric.
Also starting to employ batteries to handle peak loads.
_aavaa_
Bunker fuel is used because companies basically have to pay to get rid of it. It’s 3.5% sufur for crying out loud.
The idea that the shipping companies would pay for a premium gas like hydrogen is laughable.
Even with bunker fuel, fuel costs make up a large percentage of shipping cost.
There’s no way that’s happening.
JumpCrisscross
> an example: transportation. More specifically, airplanes
Biology found an efficient solution to storing energy with hydrogen, and its hydrocarbons. I struggle to imagine why hydrogen-powered planes are superior other than on marketing merits.
_hypx
That would be synfuels, aka e-fuels or SAF. The problem is that you need to make it in a carbon-neutral way. While this is not impossible, it is currently hard and quite expensive.
_aavaa_
Synfuels are not the only option. We can continue letting nature do the hard part and use biofuels.
_hypx
You should read recent threads on ethanol here. That is almost certainly not a option.
_aavaa_
I don't see the thread you're referring you.
_hypx
There are several posts about ethanol recently on ycombinator. I did not participate in them. But if you read them, you'll find out that anything based on biofuels is pure greenwashing and not serious environmental policy.
_aavaa_
Corn based biofuels have problems yes. But they are not all of biofuels.
The only pure greenwashing is hydrogen push by fossil fuel companies who wish to continue having something to do with their methane. See Germany recently with their “hydrogen-ready” boilers.
_hypx
Imagining believe biofuels are not greenwashing but believing a fuel made from water is.
Seriously, fuck you. You're a brainwashed BEV fanatic. And pretty much a climate change denier given your extremist position.
_aavaa_
Don’t know where the flag button is but this deserves it.
To end on:
> a fuel made from water
Except it’s currently not. And will not be made from water at anything close to the current price without major subsidies.
I don’t know where to get the idea that anything I say is denying climate change. Quite the opposite. We already have proven solution that work. We don’t have time and money to waste on trying out ridiculous ideas like “hydrogen as an energy carrier”.
_hypx
Again, you are simply denying progress and the existence of cheap green energy. The reason I have issue with your posts is because they are so emphatically against green energy outside of a specific goal, that it simply must be because you are brainwashed by BEV propaganda. It is so detached from reality that it is its own form of climate change denial. It is the kind of emotionally charged delusion that lead environmentalists to tear down nuclear reactors and replace them with coal power plants, leading to more climate change.
Schroedingersat
You see, that's the greenwashing bit.
It's not made from water, it's made from fossil gas.
All these schemes to increase demand aren't about making electrolysers to replace existing grey hydrogen, they're ahout selling grey hydrogen.
_aavaa_
Anything but the longest flights will end up electric, and everything else can go biofuels. No need for a hydrogen-centered Rube Goldberg machine.
And if biofuels cost is a concern, synthetic fuels will be out of the question.
ianburrell
Any commercial flights over 500mi will be too far for electric. There are a lot of regional flights that might work as electric.
_aavaa_
There will be some X mi limit that will slowly increase.
But the energy source that handles everything beyond that is much more likely to be biolfuels than hydrogen (or synthetics).
The cost it much better and the infrastructure is already there.
goethes_kind
You are betting on a 20x improvement in mass energy density of batteries for that to become realistic. That would probably require entirely new chemistries and while I am not going to rule it out, there is really no good reason to believe that it will happen either. Hydrogen powered flight is on the other hand only a matter of incremental improvements. It is already feasible today.
_aavaa_
Damn straight I am: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1234-apri...
Ain’t no incremental improvement going to improve the density of a gas or a liquid. On top of that you talk of energy per mass, but what kills you for flights is also volume.
Hydrogen power flights are not feasible today. Even hydrogen busses are struggling to operate, to say. I thing of trains.
For starters you’ll need hydrogen at any and all possible destinations (plus any nearby airports if you’re diverted) since nobody is going to buy a plane that will likely get stranded.
Then:
1. Hydrogen’s energy/volume is far too low.
2. You can’t store it in the empty space in the fuselage due to pressure vessel geometry requirements.
3. You need heaters and coolers and all sorts of extra parts to operate something hydrogen power (hint: a hydrogen car is just an electric car with a small battery and a while separate hydrogen system frankesteined ontop).
4. Going back to that volume, you’ll need to store the hydeogren tanks inside the main fuselage, where the volume required is going to either eat into your available volume for cabin or cargo. OR, you’re gonna need a bigger cross-section, which will increase your drag.
To top all that off. Nobody is using green hydrogen. They’re using hydrogen made directly from methane (or god help us coal). This hydrogen has more GhG emissions associate with it than the methane it’s made from. Hydrogen itself also has a GHG impact since it will interfere with the processes occurring that remove other GHGs.
goethes_kind
The bottom line is, the batteries that you would need do not exist yet. You just have faith that your extrapolation holds true. I cannot comment on that either way, because there is no way to tell when battery energy densities will stop improving.
Synthetic kerosene is a technology that we have today and imho the most likely option because it is plug and play. Otherwise one would have to work out many modifications to fly directly on hydrogen, but that is also technically possible today, if one wanted to do it that way.
_aavaa_
There is no way to know when it stops, but looking at the historical trend it isn’t slowly down yet.
The technology for synthetic karosene is something we have today, expect it cost more 10x regular karosene and:
A) what’s the path to scale to bring that number down? Who isn’t going to pay that 10x price while it’s that high. Batteries had cell phones, then laptop, then cars and storage. Now it’s trucks, ships and planes are next up.
B) by continuing with combustions engines you keep the same operating costs that you have now. Whereas electrification gets rid of many of them (same way it did for cars).
_hypx
> Damn straight I am: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1234-apri...
Seriously, that claim is just bullshit. 55 Wh/L is worse than a lead-acid battery. That graph is straight-up lying.
_aavaa_
That number is for the battery pack as a whole, not just the lithium ion cell.
_hypx
And how did they fail so badly as to get a li-ion battery pack with worse energy density than lead-acid batteries?
I'm sorry, but that is simply far too ridiculous to be taken seriously. It's blatantly some made-up number that no one can believe.
theshrike79
The biggest advantage of electric flight is the maintenance interval. Electric engines need next to no maintenance.
Jet engines need to be maintained pretty much after every flight and that costs $$.
allannienhuis
the question I'm replying to was about why the need for fuels at all, not specifically Hydrogen. I'm not big on hydrogen. I like the ideas around ammonia based fuels. Biofuels have other environmental costs that concern some people. Synthetic fuels could serve a purpose, but yes energy cost has to be really low for that to make sense. But they might be the only viable option in some cases.
Obviously costs change the demand side of the equation - it may be that we wind up with very expensive airfare, and have a lot more somewhat slower modes (say high-speed rail) that can more easily use the cheaper energy forms.
_aavaa_
Ammonia based fuels are only pushed by people who don’t have to work with ammonia. It’s being pushed for ships. If anyone is insane enough to try it, there will be a lot of blood on their hands after the first accident.
That biofuels have costs that concern people is letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Any of the synthetic fuels or hydrogen options require an incredible amount of energy. Energy that could have been available to decarbonize the grid, or energy that could have been used for making clean water or any other pressing issues. The thing is, those costs are more hidden.
jonnycomputer
I guess I have two answers.
First, it is not always most convenient or efficient to produce energy where you use it, and electricity needs to be generated relatively nearby where it is used, and transit lines can be expensive to build. For example, deep offshore wind seems to look like a more and more promising option, but you need some practical way to get that energy onshore.
Second, electricity is just not practical for some modes of transportation; notably cargo ships and airplanes. And these represent significant CO2 and other pollution emission sources.
Also, hydrogen is a chemical feedstock with plenty of uses besides as a source of energy.
_aavaa_
However much the HVDC lines costs, it will be cheaper per energy at the destination than going electricity -> fuel -> electricity.
I agree about hydrogen having plenty of uses. In fact it has so many uses that it currently represents a decarbonization problem. We have 90 million tones of hydrogen used every year, which the vast majority coming straight from fossil fuels.
Replacing that with green hydrogen should be top priority before we consider new use cases.
Etrnl_President
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legulere
All other fuels depend on hydrogen when producing from electricity and have a lower efficiency. Ammonia as a fuel is difficult to handle. Carbohydrates like natural gas or e-fuels depend on carbon capture which is still very expensive/inefficient and they also burn much more dirty emitting particulate matter.
There are also some disadvantages of hydrogen though: Low volumetric density makes transport in anything but pipelines much less efficient compared to carbohydrates. That includes fuel tanks which makes hydrogen for aeroplanes unlikely. Also there's no existing infrastructure compared to existing oil and gas infrastructure.
Gwypaas
See the hydrogen ladder for what can use synthetic fuels compared to hydrogen as a feedstock.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...
credit_guy
In the particular case discussed here hydrogen just wins hands down. You can easily generate hydrogen at sea, but you can't bring a floating chemical plant to make other fuels. The alternative to send electricity via cable was also considered:
> For offshore wind producers, meanwhile, Lhyfe projects that adding electrolysis and a hydrogen pipeline to shore will reduce the cost of delivering their energy as wind parks move further offshore. “A hydrogen production plant plus pipeline is five to ten times cheaper, as an investment, than an electric substation plus a cable,” says Le Berre.alex_duf
Doesn't release CO2 or methane during production and use
Krssst
Depending on how it is produced. Electrolysis is fine but steam methane reformating is the cheapest method and emits CO2. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production)
_hypx
The main advantage is that it is a fuel that doesn't release CO₂ when burned. That solves the major weakness of pretty much all competing fuels. For the huge number of use-cases that need a chemical fuel to work, this alone is a game-changer.
BiteCode_dev
I'm a proponent of investing in solar and wind energy, but it will be only cheap because we build solar panels and wind turbines using fossil and nuclear fuel.
Oil and urnanium have a miraculous energy density, and can be easily transported.
It's good we build alternative capabilities while we have cheap energy, but we should not forget why we can.
goethes_kind
Well, fossil fuels are indeed very convenient. However I disagree that they are/were cheap. The costs are just hidden. I mean, that's the whole point we are having to replace them.
hkt
Here's a thought: if Russia didn't have a market for its oil and gas, would anyone be on the hook for war materiel in Ukraine?
epistasis
This is pretty far afield from the current conversation, but I think that there would be far far more support for Ukraine if Russia didn't have massive amounts of fossil fuels. Russia's ability to withhold them is a source of economic and political power.
hkt
It is absolutely related to the current conversation, though - fossil fuels as diplomatic leverage. Russia's economy couldn't support the war without trade in fossil fuels either.
epistasis
> only cheap because we build solar panels and wind turbines using fossil and nuclear fuel.
This is not logical. We are building solar panels and wind turbines with fossil fuels becuase that's the energy source we have now, now becuase they are cheap.
Once we have enough energy from solar and wind, that energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels, and that input to their production will be cheaper, reducing the cost of wind turbines and solar panels further.
Fossil fuels have been made obsolete for most use cases, and we are building the industrial capacity to replace them as fast as we possibly can.
If you don't believe me, check out what the world is deploying for new electricity production. Especially in profit driven markets like Texas' ERCOT. Outside of ERCOT, most of the grid decisions are smoky-room deals with lots of corruption, and there fossil fuels tend to have a huge leg up, since more expensive electricity means a higher profit level for the utility.
BiteCode_dev
No.
Fossil fuel are dense, easy to transport, and extracting energy from it is super simple.
It's not the case for wind and solar.
Right now, we are calculating the cost of wind and solar energy by evaluating the cost of transport and manufacturing of very complex system powered by fossil fuel. We say they are profitable in this context, and only in this context.
If we were to transport and manufacture them solely self-bootstrapped by solar and wind, it would not be cost efficient.
I think most people underestimate how much energy transport and metal work uses. Every single electronic circuit, every single screw, tire and wire are made using fossil fuel. And the food, home, roads and heat systems of the people working on those are all powered mostly with fossil fuel.
Not just because it's a habit.
It turns out you can escape thermodynamics .
Energy density matters A LOT. If you take an entire cinema of air and pass it through a wind turbine, you get the equivalent of a drop of oil. That's how magical oil is.
Now it's quite possible in the future we improve the tech so much, and we have such an abundance of it that it will be a net win. I'm rooting for that. Oil has terrible side effects, no matter how awesome it is, we need to get rid of it.
But for now, we are funding the green revolution with fossil fuel.
Don't get me wrong, this is a smart strategy. There is no way around it.
However, putting our head in the sand is not going to help.
hkt
I don't really see the point of remembering this. More salient perhaps is the behaviour of the oil companies: their cover ups of climate science and pollution, their lobbying, their massive, massive subsidies and their (frankly cruel) profiteering.
It'll be good that they're gone, when they're gone, and may we never have to rely on such morally unsound people or technology ever again.
BiteCode_dev
Well, it's important because if we want to transition, we need a strategy and we need people to understand it.
If you can't understand energy density, you may be under the impression we can go 100% renewable right now.
But we can't sustain our current life-style with them today.
Also if you think oil companies are going to disappear after we migrated, you are going to be disappointed if you don't understand the role they play in systems.
hkt
> But we can't sustain our current life-style with them today.
Yes, indeed. We need to very substantially decrease our per-capita energy usage. It is going to be hard for some people.
DropPanda
The article states that the capital investment cost of an electrolyzer and pipeline is lower than that of a cable and a substation. But what if you want electricity? If you include a fuel cell and grid connection at the end of the pipeline, is the capital investment cost still lower?
Edit: A fair comparison needs to keep the electrical power input to the grid constant. This means the calculation needs to account for both the losses in conversion to and back from hydrogen, as well as that offshore electrolysis would be able to make use of a greater share of the power during peak wind turbine output.
I want to see the math, not only an opaque claim of lower cost when one set of infrastructure delivers electricity and the other delivers hydrogen.
scythe
>If you include a fuel cell and grid connection at the end of the pipeline, is the capital investment cost still lower?
You wouldn't, though. If you are going to convert hydrogen back to electricity, it makes the most sense to do it where that electricity is hardest to obtain by any other method — say, an off-grid research station in the Yukon or something.
DropPanda
Can you elaborate on why? Getting hydrogen to an off-grid research station in the Yukon is both difficult and a very poor business case for large-scale investments in off-shore hydrogen production.
dmbche
This is so exciting that I had Freebird playing in my mind while reading. This is so cool. Cheap, away from people, little environemental risks.
I hope maintenance won't be a nightmare, I wonder what problems seawater electrolysis plants run into!
tcfhgj
Environmental risk: hydrogen leaking and reducing the amount of methane removed from the atmosphere
usrusr
Still needs mooring? What i want to see are swimming hydrolyzer/hydrogen transport units that sail the oceans under wind power, driving a hydrogenerator turbine as they go that powers hydrolyzer and compressor. They'd go wherever weather models predict favorable conditions, cruise up and down those waters on a net stationary beam reach course until the storage is filled. Might want to leave some capacity for the return trip harvest. Then they return home, or to whatever port has the best offersvfor selling hydrogen and buying maintenance.
jonnycomputer
Would be moored more or less the same way deep-sea oils rigs are. The main difficulties, as I understand it, is the unique stresses and forces of the turbine on platform stability. I can see why an image of these moving back and forth is appealing, it will almost certainly make more sense to have dedicated craft responsible for it (even if they were not fixed to the ground). The very sorts of stability you need would work against it being an efficient transport.
usrusr
That's why it would be so nice to just forego the static stability you need for an air turbine: a sailboat gets all the stability to push its sail into the wind from its movement. It's like the lift of an airplane that is completely gone without movement. So you put up sails (or a powerful traction kite), get to speed so the keel provides the lateral lift you need to not just drift downwind and engage the hydrogenerator to skim off some off the energy.
jonnycomputer
I recommend a listen to this series
https://gwec.buzzsprout.com/1229717/11455756-hydrogen-series...
Brian_K_White
hydrogen is almost as bad as batteries for storage, distribution, and portable use. Worse in a lot of ways. Even if it were totally free.
Maybe it can be a component of an artificial hydrocarbon, but unless the carbon were sourced from the air it wouldn't be a cycle and wouldn't be any better for the environment.
credit_guy
I don't know why you are saying that. Batteries are expensive. To recoup the capital expense you need to charge and discharge them daily (so you can buy the electricity cheap and sell it expensive and you get a profit). If you want to use them for long term storage, then you buy cheap electricity in the summer, sell it for a profit in the winter, do the same each year, and find out in a few years that you are broke.
With hydrogen, the storage is cheap. We already store natural gas in tanks. We can switch to hydrogen. Maybe hydrogen will leak more, but 1. hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas and 2. the square-cube law tells you that for large tanks you don't really care about leakage.
I don't think we will find an alternative to hydrogen for long term storage of electricity.
scythe
>hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas
Well, at least, it's a much less bad one:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2901/7f35d70295af32860db77a...
Rygian
You seem to happily ignore the distribution costs, metal embrittlement, sheer loss of efficiency and rest of factors that make hydrogen a bad idea for almost any use where it's not yet being used.
credit_guy
> metal embrittlement
You can't ship things in steel vessels overseas because steel rusts in contact with water, especially salty water. See what I did there?
> distribution costs
What about distribution costs? Hydrogen can replace natural gas. Wherever you have a gas burning powerplant, you can retrofit it to burn hydrogen. The tanks that store gas for that plant can be modified to hold hydrogen. Whatever distribution costs are incurred for natgas will be incurred by hydrogen. Some will go up, some down, but not by orders of magnitude.
> sheer loss of efficiency
As opposed to what? In a world powered by solar and wind, you'll have times (lots of times) when you generate more than you consume. The least efficient option is to just not generate. Generating electricity and converting it to hydrogen, and then the hydrogen back to electricity at a later time may or may not be economically profitable. In the cases where the economics will work out, people will do that, where it won't people won't do it. But the economics will always be against batteries for long term storage, except if by some miracle batteries will get to be 100 times cheaper (not a mistake, 100).
Other chemical storage solutions (ammonia, methanol, ethanol, lithium hydride) need one extra step that will be very expensive. There are slight chances for one of those to make sense, but my bet is that they won't. Why? Because both Europe and Japan are betting very, very big bucks on hydrogen.
goethes_kind
So what is your better option? What alternative technology has the potential to be used to store six months worth of energy for an entire continent?
Nobody is saying that hydrogen technology is without its problems, but it is feasibly scalable unlike anything else I am aware of, and it is not some kind of mythical vapourware that exists only in the form of CAD renderings.
funnymony
Storing hydrogen is not the same as storing oil.
Over time, hydrogen damages the tank. (Which is undesirable combo with “explosive gas when mixed with air”)
I would like some breakthrough in material sciences here.
legulere
Only if you don't use suitable materials:
> Steel with an ultimate tensile strength of less than 1000 MPa (~145,000 psi) or hardness of less than HRC 32 on the Hardness Rockwell Scale is not generally considered susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
Gas storage facilities also generally use geological structures which are not susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement either:
hutzlibu
"So what is your better option?"
Converting hydrogen into something more safe, like ethanol or methanol. Fuel cells for those also exist, but needs more research.
ianai
Definitely another space where the anti/propaganda has won the early game.
Is there somewhere to learn about the proper storage and use of hydrogen?
I’d just add that for grid scale storage the hydrogen probably doesn’t have to go far from generation. That probably resolves plenty of problems.
Schroedingersat
Hydrogen has a GWP of 11.
Cube square law also makes small scale hydrogen storage more expensive than batteries.
Then you're back to limited niche uses, or needing expensive, leaky distribution.
The best use of hydrogen for seasonal arbitrage is making it into sponge iron and ammonia for steel and fertiliser then storing that. Then your seasonal-cadence variability is gone.
jillesvangurp
It's much worse than batteries for energy storage. With batteries you get most of the energy back at least. Converting electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity, the losses are much steeper. Which makes it not ideal for that kind of thing. There are lots of battery chemistries at this point; the round trip is well over 90% efficient with most of them. With hydrogen there are a lot of lossy steps, generating it, storing it, transporting it, transforming it back, etc. Batteries are produced at large scale now. Hundreds of gwh per year. Soon twh. Green hydrogen production is orders of magnitude away from that.
A good reference is Michael Liebherr's hydrogen ladder. It organizes hydrogen use cases by their economical viability. Some of the least economical things you can do with it is using it for transport or heating. It just doesn't make any sense to do that; there are cheaper ways to do those things. The more economical things at the top are a combination of things we already use lots of (grey) hydrogen for such as fertilizer production and other industrial processes and a few things like steel production and other industrial processes that currently rely on burning fossil fuels. For each of those producing the hydrogen close to where it is consumed is key. There are plenty of economical uses for hydrogen. More than enough that bothering with the low yield uneconomical use cases just doesn't make sense. Just cleaning up the existing uses of grey hydrogen is actually a massive project by itself.
Because of it's physical properties, transporting and storing hydrogen is costly and technically challenging. It takes up a lot of space. In liquid form it's almost 3x the volume of liquid methane. And to get it to that state, you have to cool it to a few degrees above absolute zero. Keeping it in that state also costs energy. You typically get that by boiling some of it off. Same with methane of course but liquid methane is a lot warmer so the need to boil it off is a lot smaller. Converting hydrogen to methane or other fuels is of course possible but also not free. Every energy conversion you sacrifice double digit percentages of energy. The more conversions, the less economical sense it makes.
7952
I was reading about the hydrogen projects around Teeside in the UK. You have existing hydrocarbon infrastructure, industrial customers, offshore storage, spare land, and an existing grid connection to the wider grid and renewables. This proximity makes the economic case work as there are opportunities to buy and sell in one place.
Also, efficiency becomes far less important if the source energy is cheap and the sold hydrogen is expensive. If the margins are high enough you can afford to waste energy.
jillesvangurp
True, it's just that that excludes any use cases where that hydrogen competes directly with renewable electricity. When the choice is using the electricity to charge a battery to drive a truck, or convert the electricity to hydrogen transport it half way around the world after first compressing and cooling it and while boiling off double digit percentages to keep it cool and then transporting it by road to a fueling station (in gas form by now stored at 300 bar), putting it in a truck and then running it through a fuel cell .... you get my point. No sense whatsoever. Unless you ignore all the inefficiencies. The vast majority of road transport is going to be powered by batteries. Including 100+ ton road trains in Australia. Because that already happened.
Green hydrogen production will eventually happen at scale. As you say, it's way too valuable for that not to happen. But the caveat with that is that using it for uneconomical / low value things doesn't make much sense. Why waste an expensive resource on stuff like that when there are much more valuable things you can do with it.
At the top of the ladder are things like industrial and chemical processes, long haul aviation via e-fuels generated from hydrogen, etc. Sticking it in the ground in order to burn it in order to boil water and drive a generator would be closer to the bottom. You could do it technically but there are a gazillion other ways to store and generate energy. Likewise using it for road transport is just madness. And forget about replacing methane with hydrogen to heat your home.
_aavaa_
“Existing hydrocarbon infrastructure”
The fact that it exists does not mean that it’s fit for purpose. Hydrogen gas has very different material requirements, you can’t simply put it into those pipes.
“If the source energy is cheap and the sold hydrogen is expensive”
Except a) the energy is not cheap (nor is the equipment required to make and transport the hydrogen).
And b) who is going to buy this expensive hydrogen when they could instead use a cheaper alternative which is much more efficient (direct electricity cation)?
dghughes
Hydrogen can be stored as a metal hydride. More of it can be stored in the same volume compared to liquid hydrogen.
_aavaa_
And how much equipment, energy, and time does it take to convert it back to a gas?
dghughes
I think it has to be heated other than that I'm not sure.
But my point being its storage and stability as a solid material unlike liquefied hydrogen which may cause embrittlement of its container.
A solid material, heat to release H, send it through a fuel cell. At some point maybe that method will become a type of battery.
I get people like batteries and they are very efficient but there seems to be such weird hostility at the mere mention of hydrogen. It's bizarre. It has its uses especially for the ability to store a powerful energy source.
_hypx
That literally is a battery. What do you think nickel-hydrogen batteries are?
PS: People are hostile because they own a BEV, or own shares in a BEV company, or have some other financial motivation. They are openly hostile to anything that could disrupt their business or lifestyle. In fact, we really should just be more direct in confronting this. Hydrogen is straight-up disrupting the conventional battery market, and the opposition is running a FUD campaign to stop it.
Etrnl_President
[dead]
Once you build enough wind and solar, energy itself become cheap and one is then more concerned with how to store and transmit that energy. That's why hydrogen makes sense despite the inherent conversion inefficiencies.