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There are some applications where energy density is far more important than energy efficiency. Airplanes come to mind. You would accept the pumping losses when
by ashtonkem 6y ago
There are some applications where energy density is far more important than energy efficiency. Airplanes come to mind. You would accept the pumping losses when it comes to filling a 737 with hydrogen, because you literally can’t make that plane work with batteries at this point in time.
- kjaftaedi 6y agoGlad to find this in the responses. Air transport is quite possibly the best use case for hydrogen fuel that I can think of, and likely the only way we'll get sustainable air travel in the near future.
- rootusrootus 6y agoWouldn't it be easier to just work on efficient synthesis of jet fuel? Then we could just keep the rest of the infrastructure the same. Sometimes I wonder if that would end up being a solution for cars, too. It would certainly solve a few difficult edge cases that electrification will have a hard time overcoming.
- mr_toad 6y ago> Wouldn't it be easier to just work on efficient synthesis of jet fuel? Some synthetic fuel production processes require hydrogen, so a cheap hydrogen source would still be useful.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> when it comes to filling a 737 That brings up an interesting point. I wonder how much of a factor fuel is in dictating the preferred size for an airliner. Maybe if the fuel economics and physics change, we'll see an evolution towards larger numbers of smaller point-to-point airliners.