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That's some very impressive news. Hope this will make hydrogen cheap.

ehnto 6y ago
I am excited because hydrogen can be used in steelmaking for a much more carbon friendly process than burning coals. Cheap hydrogen will be a game changer for emissions regardless of if anyone uses it to power vehicles.
- jtriangle 6y ago
  The real application here is power plants. Use hydrogen to heat water to turn a turbine to turn a genset to produce electricity, in the same way that we've been doing for ages now. The real question is, say you have a natural gas power plant that's been retooled (minimally) to run on hydrogen that they create on site. Now you're producing a ton of water vapor and tossing it into the air. If all power plants run this way, that water vapor is going to be problematic as water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas, so, if you'd like to avoid that, you'll need to recondense the water and put it back into the cycle, which will harm efficiency if done in a 100% closed cycle. That's probably not a huge obstacle to overcome, because the water will likely have to be pure anyway in order to be usable, so, you could likely recapture waste heat and use it to distill water to a high purity and because your exhaust is likely full of higher purity water than you could otherwise get, it makes sense to recapture it. Additionally, you could solve in part, the main issue with renewables, which is energy storage, by converting excess capacity to hydrogen made by electrolysis that you can then burn in traditional power plants. Sure it's 70-80% efficient, and burning hydrogen is likely not going to beat ~62% efficient in a combined cycle plant (the current record for natural gas), it's much better to take that efficiency hit than it is to waste power, or further complicate the grid, and you'll get to keep ~40% of that energy based on my napkin math, which is better than 0% and you can put it anywhere, likely on the solar farm directly.
  - pm90 6y ago
    Can’t you just release the hot steam into a nearby river/large water body?
  - ehnto 6y ago
    Whilst a greenhouse gas H20 does have the difference that it comes back down relatively quickly, potentially even right away. I also think we would only be using hydrogen plants to stabalize renewables like we do now with natural gas turbines. I wonder if there is any research into the lifecycle of emitted water vapour? Pipe dreaming now, but I wonder if there is a potential cycle that could help drought stricken areas, even if perhaps supplemented with renewables for desalination. Desalination of coastal water > hydrogen production > power generation with hydrogen > captured purified water. Thinking about this now my state is in the perfect position and often effected by drought. We have green hydrogen production, a gas turbine supplemented solar grid, and a desalination plant the government put in to safeguard drinking water supplies. This may come about as a natural evolution of the market.
- timwaagh 6y ago
  That's what my dad said. Personally i like the vehicles too. I think there will continue to be a sizeable market for petrol vehicles as long as bevs are difficult to charge. Hydrogen would be more easy to refill. Hydrogen could fill that market in time.

I am excited because hydrogen can be used in steelmaking for a much more carbon friendly process than burning coals. Cheap hydrogen will be a game changer for emissions regardless of if anyone uses it to power vehicles.

jtriangle 6y ago
The real application here is power plants. Use hydrogen to heat water to turn a turbine to turn a genset to produce electricity, in the same way that we've been doing for ages now. The real question is, say you have a natural gas power plant that's been retooled (minimally) to run on hydrogen that they create on site. Now you're producing a ton of water vapor and tossing it into the air. If all power plants run this way, that water vapor is going to be problematic as water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas, so, if you'd like to avoid that, you'll need to recondense the water and put it back into the cycle, which will harm efficiency if done in a 100% closed cycle. That's probably not a huge obstacle to overcome, because the water will likely have to be pure anyway in order to be usable, so, you could likely recapture waste heat and use it to distill water to a high purity and because your exhaust is likely full of higher purity water than you could otherwise get, it makes sense to recapture it. Additionally, you could solve in part, the main issue with renewables, which is energy storage, by converting excess capacity to hydrogen made by electrolysis that you can then burn in traditional power plants. Sure it's 70-80% efficient, and burning hydrogen is likely not going to beat ~62% efficient in a combined cycle plant (the current record for natural gas), it's much better to take that efficiency hit than it is to waste power, or further complicate the grid, and you'll get to keep ~40% of that energy based on my napkin math, which is better than 0% and you can put it anywhere, likely on the solar farm directly.
- pm90 6y ago
  Can’t you just release the hot steam into a nearby river/large water body?
- ehnto 6y ago
  Whilst a greenhouse gas H20 does have the difference that it comes back down relatively quickly, potentially even right away. I also think we would only be using hydrogen plants to stabalize renewables like we do now with natural gas turbines. I wonder if there is any research into the lifecycle of emitted water vapour? Pipe dreaming now, but I wonder if there is a potential cycle that could help drought stricken areas, even if perhaps supplemented with renewables for desalination. Desalination of coastal water > hydrogen production > power generation with hydrogen > captured purified water. Thinking about this now my state is in the perfect position and often effected by drought. We have green hydrogen production, a gas turbine supplemented solar grid, and a desalination plant the government put in to safeguard drinking water supplies. This may come about as a natural evolution of the market.
timwaagh 6y ago
That's what my dad said. Personally i like the vehicles too. I think there will continue to be a sizeable market for petrol vehicles as long as bevs are difficult to charge. Hydrogen would be more easy to refill. Hydrogen could fill that market in time.