5 ms·

Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I were a billionaire I'd pour money o

Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I were a billionaire I'd pour money on super capacitors, for instance. Much more exciting and the payoff is potentially huge. Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. We have a problem that needs to be solved now. From a risk assessment point of view, it's the best call.

masklinn 7y ago
> Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green. Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which need very pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is unsuitable for some applications). I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you mentioned.
- philwelch 7y ago
  It’s perfectly feasible to capture carbon from a natural gas refinery producing liquid H2 and sequester it safely. Doing that safely and consistently is going to be an engineering challenge, but so are the advances in battery technology and the need to scale lithium production in clean, safe ways that batteries would require. If anyone’s done the work on which approach is better, I’d be interested to see it.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Perhaps, but the refining companies would much rather lobby the US Senate to ignore Global Warming treaties, it's their modus operandi. If you want to get off of carbon, you have to get away from the people making trillions off of carbon.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      You make an interesting point but I think it actually works the opposite way from what you think. If the only alternative to oil and gas is battery-electric power, oil and gas companies will use their political power to obstruct climate change mitigation altogether. If there’s an alternative that not only includes them as partners but opens up new lines of business for them (eg carbon capture and sequestering), then they will apply their political power in favor of that alternative out of self-preservation. Of course, the kind of argument you’re making doesn’t really seem to stem from trying to solve the problem in the first place—it stems from viewing the world in terms of conspiracy theories and making black-and-white judgments of who are the good guys who deserve to be supported and who are the bad guys who deserve to be destroyed. But even then, if you have enough power to achieve your fantasies of destroying the oil and gas companies, you also have the power to force them to move into the hydrogen and carbon-capture-and-sequestration industry.
      - Gibbon1 7y ago
        I think what's going to happen, is happening is governments that have no stake in the oil economy are going to head for the exits. Oil producing countries are powerful but not powerful enough to stop that from happening.
- darksaints 7y ago
  > Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive Solid oxide electrolysis cells have been producing hydrogen at >93% efficiency (LHV) for over a decade now. Some research cells have reached 99%. It is still considered expensive but only because hydrogen derived from natural gas is cheaper. I personally have produced hydrogen via electrolysis at a cost of $2.72/kg. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that's $0.116/kWh.
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    You might know: why do large electrolytic hydrogen projects being built or planned today still use alkaline or PEM electrolyzers? I haven't seen any announcements where projects are using solid oxide cells. I assumed that the technology wasn't commercially available yet.
    - darksaints 7y ago
      I'm not aware of any large electrolysis projects using PEMs, unless the purpose is for research and development. I know of a few using alkaline cells, but those are quite efficient. At least as efficient as solid oxide cells, just a bit harder to work with. Most of the research and development for solid oxide cells is for fuel cell usage, with a focus on usage of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon fuels, due to the easier technological transition (I'm working on a project like this). Without subsidies or carbon taxes, electrolysis is likely to be done only on a small scale. At large scales, hydrogen from methane is still cheaper, and there is no penalty for carbon emissions, and consumers typically buy in large quantities at limited endpoints. However, if fuel cell vehicles (more likely to be commercial vehicles than personal vehicles at this point, as the economics are more in their favor) become more common, there will be growing benefits to electrolysis because the logistics are so much simpler for a large amount of end points.
      - philipkglass 7y ago
        As in this recent story: "World's largest green-hydrogen plant begins operation in Austria" https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green-hydrogen-plant-begins-operation-in-austria/2-1-708381 https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green... It's using PEM technology from Siemens. It reports that an even larger PEM project should finish construction next year. It mentions one other project, even larger but further out, using alkaline electrolyzers. They are all part of decarbonization research projects, but operating at megawatts to tens of megawatts scales.
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
Well he started off working on super capacitors I think in college. Or he said he wanted to, I forget. More recently, Tesla has purchased a super capacitor company (Maxwell). I’m using some supercapacitors in a project at work. For $500 we get a super capacitor with the capacity of a $12 battery. For the time being, batteries are way, way ahead on cost.
- darksaints 7y ago
  I don't know much about costs, but papers like this make me pretty giddy at the prospect of supercapacitor-only cars. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6409971/#sec1-nanomaterials-09-00148title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6409971/#sec1-n... That energy density is at least as high as current generation lithium ion, which is obviously already feasible for production cars.
- madengr 7y ago
  Sure, but what’s the short circuit current rating from a super capacitor vs a battery. We have used them in thermal battery powered supplies for pulsed electronics. They’ed be useful in cars for acceleration and regenerative breaking, allowing the use of lower current batteries.
ethbro 7y ago
> Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. Ironically, this is Musk being more SoftBank than SoftBank. Given our current and near term technology level, what industries have attainable new local maxima/minima, for want of only capital? Nobody thought lithium ion batteries were a bad idea, they just weren't willing to pour crazy money into them.
- larnmar 7y ago
  In classic “Innovator’s Dilemma” style, Tesla spotted an opportunity to sell a technology slightly before it was ready for the mass market, by focusing on a small and undemanding (in price-performance terms) group of consumers that the big players couldn’t be bothered with.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I don't think electric cars are the product: they're the consumer-funded demand.
hutzlibu 7y ago
If storing H2 really cannot be solved (but I think it was claimed they did), there is allways methan as an alternative.
- perilunar 7y ago
  or ammonia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel
stefan_ 7y ago
What do you mean? Lithium is not 20th century tech, it's a major driving force behind much of technological innovation since 2000.

masklinn 7y ago

> Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green. Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which need very pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is unsuitable for some applications). I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you mentioned.

philwelch 7y ago
It’s perfectly feasible to capture carbon from a natural gas refinery producing liquid H2 and sequester it safely. Doing that safely and consistently is going to be an engineering challenge, but so are the advances in battery technology and the need to scale lithium production in clean, safe ways that batteries would require. If anyone’s done the work on which approach is better, I’d be interested to see it.
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  Perhaps, but the refining companies would much rather lobby the US Senate to ignore Global Warming treaties, it's their modus operandi. If you want to get off of carbon, you have to get away from the people making trillions off of carbon.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    You make an interesting point but I think it actually works the opposite way from what you think. If the only alternative to oil and gas is battery-electric power, oil and gas companies will use their political power to obstruct climate change mitigation altogether. If there’s an alternative that not only includes them as partners but opens up new lines of business for them (eg carbon capture and sequestering), then they will apply their political power in favor of that alternative out of self-preservation. Of course, the kind of argument you’re making doesn’t really seem to stem from trying to solve the problem in the first place—it stems from viewing the world in terms of conspiracy theories and making black-and-white judgments of who are the good guys who deserve to be supported and who are the bad guys who deserve to be destroyed. But even then, if you have enough power to achieve your fantasies of destroying the oil and gas companies, you also have the power to force them to move into the hydrogen and carbon-capture-and-sequestration industry.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      I think what's going to happen, is happening is governments that have no stake in the oil economy are going to head for the exits. Oil producing countries are powerful but not powerful enough to stop that from happening.
darksaints 7y ago
> Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive Solid oxide electrolysis cells have been producing hydrogen at >93% efficiency (LHV) for over a decade now. Some research cells have reached 99%. It is still considered expensive but only because hydrogen derived from natural gas is cheaper. I personally have produced hydrogen via electrolysis at a cost of $2.72/kg. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that's $0.116/kWh.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  You might know: why do large electrolytic hydrogen projects being built or planned today still use alkaline or PEM electrolyzers? I haven't seen any announcements where projects are using solid oxide cells. I assumed that the technology wasn't commercially available yet.
  - darksaints 7y ago
    I'm not aware of any large electrolysis projects using PEMs, unless the purpose is for research and development. I know of a few using alkaline cells, but those are quite efficient. At least as efficient as solid oxide cells, just a bit harder to work with. Most of the research and development for solid oxide cells is for fuel cell usage, with a focus on usage of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon fuels, due to the easier technological transition (I'm working on a project like this). Without subsidies or carbon taxes, electrolysis is likely to be done only on a small scale. At large scales, hydrogen from methane is still cheaper, and there is no penalty for carbon emissions, and consumers typically buy in large quantities at limited endpoints. However, if fuel cell vehicles (more likely to be commercial vehicles than personal vehicles at this point, as the economics are more in their favor) become more common, there will be growing benefits to electrolysis because the logistics are so much simpler for a large amount of end points.
    - philipkglass 7y ago
      As in this recent story: "World's largest green-hydrogen plant begins operation in Austria" https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green-hydrogen-plant-begins-operation-in-austria/2-1-708381 https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green... It's using PEM technology from Siemens. It reports that an even larger PEM project should finish construction next year. It mentions one other project, even larger but further out, using alkaline electrolyzers. They are all part of decarbonization research projects, but operating at megawatts to tens of megawatts scales.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

Well he started off working on super capacitors I think in college. Or he said he wanted to, I forget. More recently, Tesla has purchased a super capacitor company (Maxwell). I’m using some supercapacitors in a project at work. For $500 we get a super capacitor with the capacity of a $12 battery. For the time being, batteries are way, way ahead on cost.

darksaints 7y ago
I don't know much about costs, but papers like this make me pretty giddy at the prospect of supercapacitor-only cars. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6409971/#sec1-nanomaterials-09-00148title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6409971/#sec1-n... That energy density is at least as high as current generation lithium ion, which is obviously already feasible for production cars.
madengr 7y ago
Sure, but what’s the short circuit current rating from a super capacitor vs a battery. We have used them in thermal battery powered supplies for pulsed electronics. They’ed be useful in cars for acceleration and regenerative breaking, allowing the use of lower current batteries.

ethbro 7y ago

> Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. Ironically, this is Musk being more SoftBank than SoftBank. Given our current and near term technology level, what industries have attainable new local maxima/minima, for want of only capital? Nobody thought lithium ion batteries were a bad idea, they just weren't willing to pour crazy money into them.

larnmar 7y ago
In classic “Innovator’s Dilemma” style, Tesla spotted an opportunity to sell a technology slightly before it was ready for the mass market, by focusing on a small and undemanding (in price-performance terms) group of consumers that the big players couldn’t be bothered with.
- ethbro 7y ago
  I don't think electric cars are the product: they're the consumer-funded demand.

hutzlibu 7y ago

If storing H2 really cannot be solved (but I think it was claimed they did), there is allways methan as an alternative.

perilunar 7y ago
or ammonia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel

stefan_ 7y ago

What do you mean? Lithium is not 20th century tech, it's a major driving force behind much of technological innovation since 2000.