3 ms·
iirc one main difficulty besides electricity is the cathode or anode material, as on industrial scale I think they may need to be replaced due to corrosion or s
by _huayra_ 5y ago
iirc one main difficulty besides electricity is the cathode or anode material, as on industrial scale I think they may need to be replaced due to corrosion or something (again, not entirely sure).
However, we really ought to solve that problem and then put hydrogen stations in sunny / windy places that just make the gas when electricity is available there. Seems like a no-brainer for the middle east with copious amounts of sun year round.
- dogma1138 5y agoThere are many other challenges, like the fact that you need very pure water which if you use salt water you need to desalinate it first and make sure it has little to no impurities. Then you need to both select and engineer the structure of your electrodes to maximize surface area whilst allowing for easy H2 extraction, you need to match your electrolyte material to your electrodes as well as figure out how to extract the other byproducts without them gunking your setup until something goes boom. There is some research into autoionization of water but that has its own massive engineering challenges you need quite high temperatures or pressure to make that even remotely feasible and that process needs to be very controlled because you don’t want free hydrogen and oxygen floating around.
- rob_c 5y agoA lot of which we can do at scale for H3 extraction. Is just the economics of it on the private sector.