6 ms·

Green Hydrogen: Could It Be Key to a Carbon-Free Economy?

27 points by thread_id 6y ago

thread_id 6y ago
Search on "Green Hydrogen" yields an impressive list of articles on this subject. The science and economics do not appear to weigh substantially in favor of hydrogen as fuel. This article, amongst others, argues an interesting opposing view: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoa...
- Hypx 6y ago
  That viewpoint is comically out of date. It's unaware of 10,000 psi carbon fiber tanks for one thing. There are many other things wrong with it.
- bjarneh 6y ago
  Not too many of those arguments have become invalid since the article was written. Still incredibly hard to make Hydrogen work economically. No real breakthrough in terms of how we store it, creating huge problems for any type of Hydrogen infrastructure.
DrBazza 6y ago
Maybe? But unlikely. Hydrogen energy density is pretty poor considering the alternatives [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
- kitd 6y ago
  They measure energy density by unit volume though. So a gas is always going to look poor by that measure. I think hydrogen fuel will really become viable when it can be safely and easily stored in solid or liquid form, when I suspect it's energy density will look a lot better.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Having to compress it to 10,000psi to get a useful amount of energy, hydrogen embrittlement of steel, very wide upper and lower explosive limits, burns with a clear flame. I can't imagine hydrogen ever being used by consumers, it's just a complete liability.
  - nomad543 6y ago
    Modern direct fuel injection systems today can compress fuel at almost 30,000psi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_rail), so 10,000psi is nothing. Hydrogen is much safer than batteries, this is a fact.
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      Compressing a liquid to 30,000psi is nothing like compressing a gas. It's why hydrodynamic testing is done with water rather than air.
    - jiggawatts 6y ago
      That's just plain false. Any significant amount of Hydrogen gas is crazy dangerous to work with because it has such a wide explosive range. Reading through the Saturn V manual (as you do), the design aspect that surprised me the most was just how much of the hardware was dedicated to hydrogen gas leak detection! It was everywhere. Even the skin of the thing was a two layer affair in places, deliberately designed with channels and helium pressurisation in a complicated way to flush even the tiniest leak through long channels to the nearest sensor. It sounds crazy until you realise that even a pinhole leak would release gas that rises up and concentrates in spaces between bulkheads and tanks where it can rapidly reach an explosive mixture ratio. Hydrogen is not safe at all.
      - nomad543 6y ago
        So explain the never ending cases of batteries catching fire. This is actually a big scandal, shows that the NHTSA has an agenda and no credibility at all.
mhandley 6y ago
One thing the article misses is that green hydrogen may in many cases be better used as the feedstock for other products such as green ammonia. Other than its use in fertilizer, ammonia can also be burned as a fuel. Using green ammonia as a fuel is one of our best bets for decarbonizing shipping, for example. And it has the additional advantage that we already have a fairly large scale distribution infrastructure for ammonia, so there's less of a chicken-and-egg bootstrap problem for early adopters. This Royal Society report is a pretty good introduction to the subject: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammonia/green-ammonia-policy-briefing.pdf https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammon...
- Reason077 6y ago
  A significant problem with ammonia-as-fuel is that it combusts to produce NOx, already a major pollutant and public health issue in many parts of the world. As with diesel engines, the exhaust can be scrubbed with AdBlue selective catalytic reduction, but this adds to the cost and complexity.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    This is exactly wrong. Ammonia and its precursor urea are the chemicals used in SCR to reduce NOx.
    - Reason077 6y ago
      4 NH3 + 5 O2 → 4 NO + 6 H2O A subsequent reaction leads to NO2: 2 NO + O2 → 2 NO2
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Per wikipedia [0], the combustion equation is: 4 NH3 + 3 O2 → 2 N2 + 6 H2O That's nitrogen and water. Apparently, your scary equation requires the presence of appropriate catalysts, which catalysts could certainly be excluded from any particular engine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
More than 90% of hydrogen produced today comes from fossil fuels. If your intent is to reduce CO2, hydrogen is not the path you want to go. Also quite hilarious that to produce hydrogen(inefficiently)you must first produce electricity. You know what you could have done instead? Skip the hydrogen step and just use the electricity.
- simion314 6y ago
  I think you can have both technologies used for different things, you know the best tool for the job. Maybe you have a ton of electricity that you just have to throw it away or pay people to take it because batteries are still not as good, if you have too much electricity you could attempt to transform it in chemical energy and store that. I am not sure why some people think there is a Hydrogen conspiracy that is attempting to sabotage electric energy, the issue is with batteries and storage.
  - nickik 6y ago
    The issue with storage is being addressed and being fixed rapidly with battery and other technologies while hydrogen has been promised and invested in by governments for 50 years with very little results. Some technologies with far more promise see almost no investment because the continues dream of hydrogen is always being hyped up and then governments give money to the fossil fuel or car industry to work on hydrogen. Its far more sensible along every dimension invest money into battery and other grid storage system compared to making the highly inefficient transformation to hydrogen and back. Not only is in inefficient, its also inherently expensive and inherently dangerous. Hydrogen sucks as a storage system and the only reason we pursue it so much is that it has been the intellectual darling since 'the hydrogen economy' came out. Liquid Air, Liquid Metal, Redux Flow Batteries, LFP, traditional Li-Ion, Compressed air are all better technologies to invest in.
    - simion314 6y ago
      Governments put also a lot of money in green energy too so it makes sense to for them to put money in more "green" storage. >Not only is in inefficient, its also inherently expensive and inherently dangerous. Use best tool for the job. The natural gas I use to heat my home is dangerous too so I had to use approved professionals to install it, and I have to have approved professional come and check my installation every 2 years. When electricity would be better for my job I will use it. Isn't a failure in logic to believe that batteries will get better and greener over time but for some reason hydrogen related stuff won't get better as well? Maybe chemists will find some efficient way to make a denser liquid fuel if we would invest enough in research.
tim333 6y ago
The trouble with solar -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity and the like is that normal lithium ion batteries seem to do the job cheaper and better for most applications.
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  Yes - often, if you're starting from scratch. But for replacing natural gas (for example in domestic piped domestic heating) or coal (steel production) in the short term, hydrogen may be more cost effective.
  - JulianMorrison 6y ago
    They'd probably have to convert it into methane or something for domestic gas heating. It's not really safe to have in houses.
    - MLR 6y ago
      The plan in the UK IIRC is to mix hydrogen (10-20% I think) into the existing mains gas supply to lower the carbon intensity somewhat, in the long term though we're trying to replace boilers with heat pumps for domestic housing.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    To replace natural gas you're probably much better off using that hydrogen along with some CO2 and electricity to produce methane.
- the8472 6y ago
  Batteries (except flow batteries) must be scaled linearly with the desired storage capacity. Hydrogen storage on the other hand only requires a container to be scaled with the desired capacity (square-cube law) while the conversion machinery, i.e. the power rating of the storage, can be scaled independently. Building batteries for seasonal energy storage would require huge amounts of raw materials. Building hydrogen storage requires nothing because you can reuse salt dome caverns previously used for natural gas.
spodek 6y ago
> wind and solar energy can provide the electricity to power homes and electric cars, green hydrogen could be an ideal power source for energy-intensive industries like concrete and steel manufacturing It's not a power source. It's a different battery. The sun is still the source in these cases. Nothing works as well as reducing consumption and demand. While we'll always need power, we should always at least mention the higher goal of reducing demand.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I don't think any government has reducing demand on its radar. They all promise a green future without consumers having to change their behaviour one iota.
  - rswskg 6y ago
    The british government has had many energy saving initiatives by increasing home insulation, energy saving light bulbs and their ilk, which have been pushed for at least 20 years.
    - Qwertious 6y ago
      That's energy efficiency, which is not the same as reducing demand - it's Jevon's paradox all over again. Decreasing the cost of various energy uses results in people being less worried about using them, and using them more as a result. Plus, saving money and improving the economy increases energy use in general (not to imply that improving the economy is in itself a bad that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- Qwertious 6y ago
  >It's not a power source. It's a different battery. It's also (sort of) equivalent to exporting oil, in a sense. Some country recieves it by ship, pumps it into a tank, and uses it as a source of energy. Obviously it's generated from cheap electricity rather than pumping geological deposits, but I suspect that hydrogen will displace LNG.
extropy 6y ago
Hydrogen starts to make sense when we have 200% overproduction of solar/wind energy. Assuming energy is essentially free Methane synthesis would be a more viable option IMHO.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I was shocked to learn that natural gas pipelines are more efficient than high tension power lines. Near natural gas infrastructure you may well be right.
  - Hypx 6y ago
    Conductive metals have resistance, so they must lose a portion of their energy as heat. A pipeline only has to overcome friction on the inner surface of the pipe, which is easily reduced by having a wider pipe. So this isn't a surprise. Hydrogen pipes will have the same benefits, albeit you will want a wider pipe due to the lower density.
    - JulianMorrison 6y ago
      Hydrogen has problems of leaking out, and damaging materials, in both cases because very small molecules can easily insert themselves where they don't belong.
      - Hypx 6y ago
        This is close to becoming a FUD argument. Hydrogen does not leak out of properly designed pipes and containers in appreciable quantities. Embrittlement doesn't not happen either except for specific cases or where an incorrect alloy was used. These are mostly solved problems in modern times.
        TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
        If you have hundreds or thousands of miles of pipes installed by third-party contractors, the existence of improperly designed pipes, incorrect alloys, and corner cutting becomes virtually inevitable.
JulianMorrison 6y ago
I can see Hydrogen as having uses for industrial chemistry. I can also see it having uses for jet fuel, and for vehicles that must travel a long way away from charging points, assuming batteries never reach the same energy density as gasoline. But for civilian cars, it's a bad battery. It's hard to store and hard to use, and it explodes. The only reason fuel companies love it is that it keeps people coming to the pumps, rather than plugging in any damn place like with battery-electric.
- rswskg 6y ago
  Anywhere with water and electric can produce it. It's why Japan has long favoured it with the their (now previous) abundance of nuclear.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    AFAICT Japan favours hydrogen as a replacement for LNG.
  - JulianMorrison 6y ago
    Anywhere with electricity can charge a battery. You only need H2 if you need to go where batteries can't, or if you're doing actual chemistry.
plaidfuji 6y ago
> The energy density of green hydrogen is three times that of jet fuel, making it a promising zero-emissions technology for aircraft I assume this is on a per-mass (as opposed to per volume) basis, which is misleading due to the storage challenges associated with hydrogen. The practical reason we calculate energy density is because weight matters for transportation purposes. I think at this point in the discussion, we should be including the mass of the storage medium (tank) in the denominator of the energy density calculation, particularly given that cutting-edge solutions involve capturing hydrogen in metal hydrides or porous materials. Also, given that the discussion is centered specifically around energy storage for long-haul transportation, shouldn’t the investment be evaluated relative to the potential cost of fully electrifying long-haul trucking, shipping and air transport (ie developing next gen batteries and electric motors for these apps)?
- wannabag 6y ago
  That's a fair reminder but it's also worth noting that there are on-going research in the field of improving storage density for hydrogen. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c8ee02499e#!divAbstract https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c8ee0...
nickik 6y ago
No. Green hydrogen might have some application, specially in creating some other greenly produced chemicals. But in terms of transportation, heating and grid storage its not the right solution. The price is still incredibly high so far we have seen no consistent cost curve on hydrogen production. While we have batteries declining in cost like crazy and lots of new battery approaches being developed as well.
Zenst 6y ago
I've seen some interesting Hydrogen generation using aluminium and gallium, the alloy they make oxidisers so well that it will pull the O2 out of water and release hydrogen. Now how much energy is used to reclaim the aluminium/gallium alloy and rid of the extra oxygen is something I'm not sure of. But certainly pulling hydrogen from water efficiently is one area of interest.

27 points by thread_id 6y ago

Search on "Green Hydrogen" yields an impressive list of articles on this subject. The science and economics do not appear to weigh substantially in favor of hydrogen as fuel. This article, amongst others, argues an interesting opposing view: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoa...

Hypx 6y ago
That viewpoint is comically out of date. It's unaware of 10,000 psi carbon fiber tanks for one thing. There are many other things wrong with it.
bjarneh 6y ago
Not too many of those arguments have become invalid since the article was written. Still incredibly hard to make Hydrogen work economically. No real breakthrough in terms of how we store it, creating huge problems for any type of Hydrogen infrastructure.

DrBazza 6y ago

Maybe? But unlikely. Hydrogen energy density is pretty poor considering the alternatives [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

kitd 6y ago
They measure energy density by unit volume though. So a gas is always going to look poor by that measure. I think hydrogen fuel will really become viable when it can be safely and easily stored in solid or liquid form, when I suspect it's energy density will look a lot better.
VBprogrammer 6y ago
Having to compress it to 10,000psi to get a useful amount of energy, hydrogen embrittlement of steel, very wide upper and lower explosive limits, burns with a clear flame. I can't imagine hydrogen ever being used by consumers, it's just a complete liability.
- nomad543 6y ago
  Modern direct fuel injection systems today can compress fuel at almost 30,000psi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_rail), so 10,000psi is nothing. Hydrogen is much safer than batteries, this is a fact.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    Compressing a liquid to 30,000psi is nothing like compressing a gas. It's why hydrodynamic testing is done with water rather than air.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    That's just plain false. Any significant amount of Hydrogen gas is crazy dangerous to work with because it has such a wide explosive range. Reading through the Saturn V manual (as you do), the design aspect that surprised me the most was just how much of the hardware was dedicated to hydrogen gas leak detection! It was everywhere. Even the skin of the thing was a two layer affair in places, deliberately designed with channels and helium pressurisation in a complicated way to flush even the tiniest leak through long channels to the nearest sensor. It sounds crazy until you realise that even a pinhole leak would release gas that rises up and concentrates in spaces between bulkheads and tanks where it can rapidly reach an explosive mixture ratio. Hydrogen is not safe at all.
    - nomad543 6y ago
      So explain the never ending cases of batteries catching fire. This is actually a big scandal, shows that the NHTSA has an agenda and no credibility at all.

mhandley 6y ago

One thing the article misses is that green hydrogen may in many cases be better used as the feedstock for other products such as green ammonia. Other than its use in fertilizer, ammonia can also be burned as a fuel. Using green ammonia as a fuel is one of our best bets for decarbonizing shipping, for example. And it has the additional advantage that we already have a fairly large scale distribution infrastructure for ammonia, so there's less of a chicken-and-egg bootstrap problem for early adopters. This Royal Society report is a pretty good introduction to the subject: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammonia/green-ammonia-policy-briefing.pdf https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammon...

Reason077 6y ago
A significant problem with ammonia-as-fuel is that it combusts to produce NOx, already a major pollutant and public health issue in many parts of the world. As with diesel engines, the exhaust can be scrubbed with AdBlue selective catalytic reduction, but this adds to the cost and complexity.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  This is exactly wrong. Ammonia and its precursor urea are the chemicals used in SCR to reduce NOx.
  - Reason077 6y ago
    4 NH3 + 5 O2 → 4 NO + 6 H2O A subsequent reaction leads to NO2: 2 NO + O2 → 2 NO2
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Per wikipedia [0], the combustion equation is: 4 NH3 + 3 O2 → 2 N2 + 6 H2O That's nitrogen and water. Apparently, your scary equation requires the presence of appropriate catalysts, which catalysts could certainly be excluded from any particular engine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

More than 90% of hydrogen produced today comes from fossil fuels. If your intent is to reduce CO2, hydrogen is not the path you want to go. Also quite hilarious that to produce hydrogen(inefficiently)you must first produce electricity. You know what you could have done instead? Skip the hydrogen step and just use the electricity.

simion314 6y ago
I think you can have both technologies used for different things, you know the best tool for the job. Maybe you have a ton of electricity that you just have to throw it away or pay people to take it because batteries are still not as good, if you have too much electricity you could attempt to transform it in chemical energy and store that. I am not sure why some people think there is a Hydrogen conspiracy that is attempting to sabotage electric energy, the issue is with batteries and storage.
- nickik 6y ago
  The issue with storage is being addressed and being fixed rapidly with battery and other technologies while hydrogen has been promised and invested in by governments for 50 years with very little results. Some technologies with far more promise see almost no investment because the continues dream of hydrogen is always being hyped up and then governments give money to the fossil fuel or car industry to work on hydrogen. Its far more sensible along every dimension invest money into battery and other grid storage system compared to making the highly inefficient transformation to hydrogen and back. Not only is in inefficient, its also inherently expensive and inherently dangerous. Hydrogen sucks as a storage system and the only reason we pursue it so much is that it has been the intellectual darling since 'the hydrogen economy' came out. Liquid Air, Liquid Metal, Redux Flow Batteries, LFP, traditional Li-Ion, Compressed air are all better technologies to invest in.
  - simion314 6y ago
    Governments put also a lot of money in green energy too so it makes sense to for them to put money in more "green" storage. >Not only is in inefficient, its also inherently expensive and inherently dangerous. Use best tool for the job. The natural gas I use to heat my home is dangerous too so I had to use approved professionals to install it, and I have to have approved professional come and check my installation every 2 years. When electricity would be better for my job I will use it. Isn't a failure in logic to believe that batteries will get better and greener over time but for some reason hydrogen related stuff won't get better as well? Maybe chemists will find some efficient way to make a denser liquid fuel if we would invest enough in research.

tim333 6y ago

The trouble with solar -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity and the like is that normal lithium ion batteries seem to do the job cheaper and better for most applications.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago
Yes - often, if you're starting from scratch. But for replacing natural gas (for example in domestic piped domestic heating) or coal (steel production) in the short term, hydrogen may be more cost effective.
- JulianMorrison 6y ago
  They'd probably have to convert it into methane or something for domestic gas heating. It's not really safe to have in houses.
  - MLR 6y ago
    The plan in the UK IIRC is to mix hydrogen (10-20% I think) into the existing mains gas supply to lower the carbon intensity somewhat, in the long term though we're trying to replace boilers with heat pumps for domestic housing.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  To replace natural gas you're probably much better off using that hydrogen along with some CO2 and electricity to produce methane.
the8472 6y ago
Batteries (except flow batteries) must be scaled linearly with the desired storage capacity. Hydrogen storage on the other hand only requires a container to be scaled with the desired capacity (square-cube law) while the conversion machinery, i.e. the power rating of the storage, can be scaled independently. Building batteries for seasonal energy storage would require huge amounts of raw materials. Building hydrogen storage requires nothing because you can reuse salt dome caverns previously used for natural gas.

spodek 6y ago

> wind and solar energy can provide the electricity to power homes and electric cars, green hydrogen could be an ideal power source for energy-intensive industries like concrete and steel manufacturing It's not a power source. It's a different battery. The sun is still the source in these cases. Nothing works as well as reducing consumption and demand. While we'll always need power, we should always at least mention the higher goal of reducing demand.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I don't think any government has reducing demand on its radar. They all promise a green future without consumers having to change their behaviour one iota.
- rswskg 6y ago
  The british government has had many energy saving initiatives by increasing home insulation, energy saving light bulbs and their ilk, which have been pushed for at least 20 years.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    That's energy efficiency, which is not the same as reducing demand - it's Jevon's paradox all over again. Decreasing the cost of various energy uses results in people being less worried about using them, and using them more as a result. Plus, saving money and improving the economy increases energy use in general (not to imply that improving the economy is in itself a bad that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Qwertious 6y ago
>It's not a power source. It's a different battery. It's also (sort of) equivalent to exporting oil, in a sense. Some country recieves it by ship, pumps it into a tank, and uses it as a source of energy. Obviously it's generated from cheap electricity rather than pumping geological deposits, but I suspect that hydrogen will displace LNG.

extropy 6y ago

Hydrogen starts to make sense when we have 200% overproduction of solar/wind energy. Assuming energy is essentially free Methane synthesis would be a more viable option IMHO.

hinkley 6y ago
I was shocked to learn that natural gas pipelines are more efficient than high tension power lines. Near natural gas infrastructure you may well be right.
- Hypx 6y ago
  Conductive metals have resistance, so they must lose a portion of their energy as heat. A pipeline only has to overcome friction on the inner surface of the pipe, which is easily reduced by having a wider pipe. So this isn't a surprise. Hydrogen pipes will have the same benefits, albeit you will want a wider pipe due to the lower density.
  - JulianMorrison 6y ago
    Hydrogen has problems of leaking out, and damaging materials, in both cases because very small molecules can easily insert themselves where they don't belong.
    - Hypx 6y ago
      This is close to becoming a FUD argument. Hydrogen does not leak out of properly designed pipes and containers in appreciable quantities. Embrittlement doesn't not happen either except for specific cases or where an incorrect alloy was used. These are mostly solved problems in modern times.
      - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
        If you have hundreds or thousands of miles of pipes installed by third-party contractors, the existence of improperly designed pipes, incorrect alloys, and corner cutting becomes virtually inevitable.

JulianMorrison 6y ago

I can see Hydrogen as having uses for industrial chemistry. I can also see it having uses for jet fuel, and for vehicles that must travel a long way away from charging points, assuming batteries never reach the same energy density as gasoline. But for civilian cars, it's a bad battery. It's hard to store and hard to use, and it explodes. The only reason fuel companies love it is that it keeps people coming to the pumps, rather than plugging in any damn place like with battery-electric.

rswskg 6y ago
Anywhere with water and electric can produce it. It's why Japan has long favoured it with the their (now previous) abundance of nuclear.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  AFAICT Japan favours hydrogen as a replacement for LNG.
- JulianMorrison 6y ago
  Anywhere with electricity can charge a battery. You only need H2 if you need to go where batteries can't, or if you're doing actual chemistry.

plaidfuji 6y ago

> The energy density of green hydrogen is three times that of jet fuel, making it a promising zero-emissions technology for aircraft I assume this is on a per-mass (as opposed to per volume) basis, which is misleading due to the storage challenges associated with hydrogen. The practical reason we calculate energy density is because weight matters for transportation purposes. I think at this point in the discussion, we should be including the mass of the storage medium (tank) in the denominator of the energy density calculation, particularly given that cutting-edge solutions involve capturing hydrogen in metal hydrides or porous materials. Also, given that the discussion is centered specifically around energy storage for long-haul transportation, shouldn’t the investment be evaluated relative to the potential cost of fully electrifying long-haul trucking, shipping and air transport (ie developing next gen batteries and electric motors for these apps)?

wannabag 6y ago
That's a fair reminder but it's also worth noting that there are on-going research in the field of improving storage density for hydrogen. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c8ee02499e#!divAbstract https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c8ee0...

nickik 6y ago

No. Green hydrogen might have some application, specially in creating some other greenly produced chemicals. But in terms of transportation, heating and grid storage its not the right solution. The price is still incredibly high so far we have seen no consistent cost curve on hydrogen production. While we have batteries declining in cost like crazy and lots of new battery approaches being developed as well.

Zenst 6y ago

I've seen some interesting Hydrogen generation using aluminium and gallium, the alloy they make oxidisers so well that it will pull the O2 out of water and release hydrogen. Now how much energy is used to reclaim the aluminium/gallium alloy and rid of the extra oxygen is something I'm not sure of. But certainly pulling hydrogen from water efficiently is one area of interest.