5 ms·

I'm no expert on hydrogen, but the paragraph before the paywall kicks in doesn't sound great: > Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy like oil or coal. It

by hughes 5y ago

I'm no expert on hydrogen, but the paragraph before the paywall kicks in doesn't sound great: > Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy like oil or coal. It is best thought of as an energy carrier, akin to electricity, and as a means of storage, like a battery. It has to be manufactured. Low-carbon energy sources such as renewables and nuclear power can be used to separate water (H2O) into its constituents of oxygen and hydrogen. This is inefficient and expensive, but costs are falling. Hydrogen can also be made from dirty fossil fuels but this emits a lot of pollution unless it is coupled with technologies that capture carbon and sequester it. Hydrogen is flammable and bulky compared with many fuels. The implacable laws of thermodynamics mean that converting primary energy into hydrogen and then hydrogen into usable power leads to waste. Does it get any better below the fold?

yuppie_scum 5y ago
The Economist is excellent.
jessaustin 5y ago
If you want to read the whole thing, just turn off javascript and reload the page. TFA is pretty silly, without much in the way of convincing detail. I laughed out loud when they proposed piping hydrogen directly into homes. Hydrogen enthusiasts pretend like they're just months away from solving the various threats that hydrogen poses to safety. Those problems will never be solved, but it doesn't matter. The real barrier to hydrogen energy storage and transport is that we don't yet have the capacity to create hydrogen in sufficient quantity from renewable energy. As soon as that capacity issue is solved, serious people will start using hydrogen in its safer, well-understood form: liquid anhydrous ammonia. Pieces like TFA that don't mention that are just fluff.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Isn't it trivial to turn water into hydrogen via electrolysis? Why not just store excess renewable electricity that way, local to wherever that power is being generated in underground pressure vessels or something, venting the oxygen produced to the atmosphere? Then when the wind isn't blowing, or sun isn't shining, burn the hydrogen to run something resembling a conventional natural gas generator... Don't bother transporting this stuff anywhere, produce it onsite, burn it onsite. Couldn't you also capture the exhaust of the hydrogen combustion to recharge the input electrolysis water?
  - zizee 5y ago
    It's less about the difficulty of the process, more about efficiencies. I don't have time to find numbers, but I believe it's a pretty lossy process to split water, and then turn it back into electricity in a fuel cell type device. There are also (probably) a lot of costs involved with trying to contain the hydrogen, and making and industrial sized fuel cells. Maybe quite a few unsolved problems as well e.g. do fuel cells eventually wear our like batteries? Basically, we could do it, but the current techniques are possibly more expensive and too lossy compared to other options, like molten salt, pumped hydro etc.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > trivial to turn water into hydrogen via electrolysis The platinum catalyst is expensive, and as others point out, you need special piping for hydrogen. More promising is direct ammonia synthesis: https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/ammonia-synthesis-goes-electric/4012190.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/ammonia-synthesis-go...
    - abdupattoh 5y ago
      The Middle East / GCC oil countries are looking seriously into ammonia as energy transport to Europe for blue hydrogen. (produced from petrocarbons with sequestering.)
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    The biggest problem right now is the cost of the electrolysers (they need to be cheap to be driven with intermittently available renewable power), but their cost has been coming down and should continue to come down as production scales up, just as happened with wind turbines and PV.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  It feels like burning oil forever is also dangerous too though?

by hughes 5y ago

yuppie_scum 5y ago

The Economist is excellent.

jessaustin 5y ago

If you want to read the whole thing, just turn off javascript and reload the page. TFA is pretty silly, without much in the way of convincing detail. I laughed out loud when they proposed piping hydrogen directly into homes. Hydrogen enthusiasts pretend like they're just months away from solving the various threats that hydrogen poses to safety. Those problems will never be solved, but it doesn't matter. The real barrier to hydrogen energy storage and transport is that we don't yet have the capacity to create hydrogen in sufficient quantity from renewable energy. As soon as that capacity issue is solved, serious people will start using hydrogen in its safer, well-understood form: liquid anhydrous ammonia. Pieces like TFA that don't mention that are just fluff.

pengaru 5y ago
Isn't it trivial to turn water into hydrogen via electrolysis? Why not just store excess renewable electricity that way, local to wherever that power is being generated in underground pressure vessels or something, venting the oxygen produced to the atmosphere? Then when the wind isn't blowing, or sun isn't shining, burn the hydrogen to run something resembling a conventional natural gas generator... Don't bother transporting this stuff anywhere, produce it onsite, burn it onsite. Couldn't you also capture the exhaust of the hydrogen combustion to recharge the input electrolysis water?
- zizee 5y ago
  It's less about the difficulty of the process, more about efficiencies. I don't have time to find numbers, but I believe it's a pretty lossy process to split water, and then turn it back into electricity in a fuel cell type device. There are also (probably) a lot of costs involved with trying to contain the hydrogen, and making and industrial sized fuel cells. Maybe quite a few unsolved problems as well e.g. do fuel cells eventually wear our like batteries? Basically, we could do it, but the current techniques are possibly more expensive and too lossy compared to other options, like molten salt, pumped hydro etc.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > trivial to turn water into hydrogen via electrolysis The platinum catalyst is expensive, and as others point out, you need special piping for hydrogen. More promising is direct ammonia synthesis: https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/ammonia-synthesis-goes-electric/4012190.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/ammonia-synthesis-go...
  - abdupattoh 5y ago
    The Middle East / GCC oil countries are looking seriously into ammonia as energy transport to Europe for blue hydrogen. (produced from petrocarbons with sequestering.)
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The biggest problem right now is the cost of the electrolysers (they need to be cheap to be driven with intermittently available renewable power), but their cost has been coming down and should continue to come down as production scales up, just as happened with wind turbines and PV.
bamboozled 5y ago
It feels like burning oil forever is also dangerous too though?