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Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult tha

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

raverbashing 4y ago
> Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery Less energy dense, but not less efficient
Mikeb85 4y ago
Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc... So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost. I'd wager that hydrogen is more energy efficient over the entire lifespan of a vehicle. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium-mining-decarbonasation-salt-flats-chile https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr... Lithium mining is expensive and you need to move a lot of dirt to get a little lithium... 100 billion tons of waste and never mind the waste aspect, it takes a lot of energy to move a ton of dirt.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  Most of the mining waste you refer to is related to COAL. They produce roughly 5 billion tons a year of coal for which many times of that is waste rocks. 5 billion tons of coal gets mostly burned up. Meanwhile 50 THOUSAND tons of lithium is produced per year. For which maybe millions tons of waste gets created.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium Hmmm, 500,000 litres of water per ton of lithium. Electrolysis required to create lithium metal. Plus the required dirt being moved, water being moved, energy for electrolysis, etc... Sounds very energy efficient... /s
    - jnsaff2 4y ago
      I know you are a sarcastic troll. But still, that 5 billion tons of coal gets mined, transported and then burned to produce energy once. A kg of coal contains about 8kWh of energy which it can release once. This is the best kind of coal. Also you only get about 40% of it as electricity. A kg of lithium will store about 1.1kWh energy in a battery .. thousands of times before it needs to be RECYCLED. Your efficiency is off by many orders of magnitude.
      - Mikeb85 4y ago
        Who's comparing coal to batteries? We're talking the lifetime energy cost of producing batteries from the ground to the recycling depot. Coal production is terrible and I'll never support it.
        jnsaff2 4y ago
        You compared them to coal. You put out 100 Billion tons of waste number. Biggest share of that is from mining coal. So why are you attributing the coal mining waste to lithium then? If you actually look at the numbers the benefits of mining for lithium FAR outweigh its downsides.
      - landemva 4y ago
        That just compared coal 'to produce energy once' to batteries which have no inherent energy. These are different things. Coal is an existing form of energy reserve which has stable long-term storage and can be consumed once. Batteries are not native energy, though batteries can be manufactured and then charged to temporarily time-shift energy.
  - jnsaff2 4y ago
    More context here: https://twitter.com/visaskn/status/1616813002547773444 https://twitter.com/visaskn/status/1616813002547773444
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost. This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher. Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar. Your fud about rare earths is also a lie for any chemistry proposed for grid storage. None of them involve rare earths in any measurable quantity (nanoscale films on semiconductors for controllers and such are insignificant) Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda. Hydrogen cars are worse than BEVs and much worse than transit or active transport.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    > This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher. Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery. > Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar. Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles. > Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda. Greenwash gas? The whole point of hydrogen is to create it using renewable sources of energy... The whole problem with renewables is storing the energy since they don't produce reliable baseline energy. Hydrogen accomplishes that.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery. Are you sure you are reading the study right 'manufacturing' in standard LCA methodology also includes embodied enery/carbon of the ingredients? You can also fermi analyse it. The absolute cheapest form of energy is lignite burnt at the mine front which is about $5/MWh. Before shortage induced price hikes, the 100 or so grams of lithium in a 1kWh battery was worth $1-2. The battery can store around 5MWh in its lifetime. This puts a fairly hard upper bound of 4-8% of the cycled energy. Phosphorus and iron are less scarce, copper might be significant. Any cost that isn't the cheapest possible energy pushes the lower bound down. Green hydrogen is fine in niches where it's suited, but most of the hydrogen-for-everything schemes rely heavily on fossil fuel derived hydrogen whenyou look under the hood and ignore the amount of methane, CO2, and H2 that will escape at various stages. H2 is not a greenhouse gas on its own, but it makes methane much worse. > Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles. And if you look at the quantities required to replace the role of BEVs rather than as an adjunct, it's worse.
- Tade0 4y ago
  Li-ion batteries don't contain rare earths. Recycling li-ion is currently a booming business because it requires much less energy than processing raw ores - see Redwood Materials for more info. Everyone takes these calculations into account because batteries come under intense scrutiny from people with ulterior motives.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    I can't wrap my head around how much lithium or other rare earth metals will need to be mined to transition entirely to solar, wind, and electric cars. What countries are these mined in? What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? Like 10%?
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      Here is a nice infographic of one years mining output for perspective https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/All-the-Metals-We-Mined.jpg https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
    - tuatoru 4y ago
      > What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? That question needs to be qualified with a date and time. It's a moving target. Generally: number go up.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      No lithium or "rare earths" (which are not anyway at all rare) are needed for a transition to solar and wind for power. Electric cars use lithium, just now, and a bit of rare-earths. (They are used in wiper and window motors.) Cars are their own thing, which we would be better off with less of. Obviously before you have built out wind and solar, you don't have much yet. It is a vacuous observation. Instead, look at the rate of deployment, which follows a classic exponential curve.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      26% of electricity generated in Texas in 2021 was from wind. Installed wind and solar capacity has grown quite a bit since 2021.
hatmatrix 4y ago
My impression was that it's possibly acceptable for on-site storage but less for transport or transportation applications.
KSteffensen 4y ago
> requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive Is this different in some way from natural gas? Why can't we use the existing storage and distribution infrastructure for natural gas for handling hydrogen?
- kibwen 4y ago
  Natural gas distribution infrastructure is far leakier than you expect. It's a massive problem. We really need to get away from solutions that involve pushing gas through pipes.
  - pif 4y ago
    > We really need to get away from solutions that involve ... Halt! Propose a working alternative first, we'll talk about banning later.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      Electricity. It doesn't leak from cables. Now: we need to get away from solutions that involve pressurised gas being piped or transported around the world. =)
      - cesarb 4y ago
        > Electricity. It doesn't leak from cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge "[...] Corona discharge from high voltage electric power transmission lines constitutes an economically significant waste of energy for utilities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_power_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_power_line "Transmission higher than 132 kV poses the problem of corona discharge, which causes significant power loss and interference with communication circuits. [...]" It might be unexpected and surprising, but yes, electricity does leak from cables!
- mastax 4y ago
  Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule, so it leaks out of much smaller holes. It leeches into metals and causes hydrogen embrittlement. It is about 1/3 the energy density per volume of natural gas.

raverbashing 4y ago

> Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery Less energy dense, but not less efficient

Mikeb85 4y ago

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc... So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost. I'd wager that hydrogen is more energy efficient over the entire lifespan of a vehicle. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium-mining-decarbonasation-salt-flats-chile https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr... Lithium mining is expensive and you need to move a lot of dirt to get a little lithium... 100 billion tons of waste and never mind the waste aspect, it takes a lot of energy to move a ton of dirt.

jnsaff2 4y ago
Most of the mining waste you refer to is related to COAL. They produce roughly 5 billion tons a year of coal for which many times of that is waste rocks. 5 billion tons of coal gets mostly burned up. Meanwhile 50 THOUSAND tons of lithium is produced per year. For which maybe millions tons of waste gets created.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium Hmmm, 500,000 litres of water per ton of lithium. Electrolysis required to create lithium metal. Plus the required dirt being moved, water being moved, energy for electrolysis, etc... Sounds very energy efficient... /s
  - jnsaff2 4y ago
    I know you are a sarcastic troll. But still, that 5 billion tons of coal gets mined, transported and then burned to produce energy once. A kg of coal contains about 8kWh of energy which it can release once. This is the best kind of coal. Also you only get about 40% of it as electricity. A kg of lithium will store about 1.1kWh energy in a battery .. thousands of times before it needs to be RECYCLED. Your efficiency is off by many orders of magnitude.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      Who's comparing coal to batteries? We're talking the lifetime energy cost of producing batteries from the ground to the recycling depot. Coal production is terrible and I'll never support it.
      - jnsaff2 4y ago
        You compared them to coal. You put out 100 Billion tons of waste number. Biggest share of that is from mining coal. So why are you attributing the coal mining waste to lithium then? If you actually look at the numbers the benefits of mining for lithium FAR outweigh its downsides.
    - landemva 4y ago
      That just compared coal 'to produce energy once' to batteries which have no inherent energy. These are different things. Coal is an existing form of energy reserve which has stable long-term storage and can be consumed once. Batteries are not native energy, though batteries can be manufactured and then charged to temporarily time-shift energy.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  More context here: https://twitter.com/visaskn/status/1616813002547773444 https://twitter.com/visaskn/status/1616813002547773444
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost. This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher. Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar. Your fud about rare earths is also a lie for any chemistry proposed for grid storage. None of them involve rare earths in any measurable quantity (nanoscale films on semiconductors for controllers and such are insignificant) Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda. Hydrogen cars are worse than BEVs and much worse than transit or active transport.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  > This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher. Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery. > Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar. Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles. > Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda. Greenwash gas? The whole point of hydrogen is to create it using renewable sources of energy... The whole problem with renewables is storing the energy since they don't produce reliable baseline energy. Hydrogen accomplishes that.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery. Are you sure you are reading the study right 'manufacturing' in standard LCA methodology also includes embodied enery/carbon of the ingredients? You can also fermi analyse it. The absolute cheapest form of energy is lignite burnt at the mine front which is about $5/MWh. Before shortage induced price hikes, the 100 or so grams of lithium in a 1kWh battery was worth $1-2. The battery can store around 5MWh in its lifetime. This puts a fairly hard upper bound of 4-8% of the cycled energy. Phosphorus and iron are less scarce, copper might be significant. Any cost that isn't the cheapest possible energy pushes the lower bound down. Green hydrogen is fine in niches where it's suited, but most of the hydrogen-for-everything schemes rely heavily on fossil fuel derived hydrogen whenyou look under the hood and ignore the amount of methane, CO2, and H2 that will escape at various stages. H2 is not a greenhouse gas on its own, but it makes methane much worse. > Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles. And if you look at the quantities required to replace the role of BEVs rather than as an adjunct, it's worse.
Tade0 4y ago
Li-ion batteries don't contain rare earths. Recycling li-ion is currently a booming business because it requires much less energy than processing raw ores - see Redwood Materials for more info. Everyone takes these calculations into account because batteries come under intense scrutiny from people with ulterior motives.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I can't wrap my head around how much lithium or other rare earth metals will need to be mined to transition entirely to solar, wind, and electric cars. What countries are these mined in? What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? Like 10%?
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    Here is a nice infographic of one years mining output for perspective https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/All-the-Metals-We-Mined.jpg https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    > What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? That question needs to be qualified with a date and time. It's a moving target. Generally: number go up.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    No lithium or "rare earths" (which are not anyway at all rare) are needed for a transition to solar and wind for power. Electric cars use lithium, just now, and a bit of rare-earths. (They are used in wiper and window motors.) Cars are their own thing, which we would be better off with less of. Obviously before you have built out wind and solar, you don't have much yet. It is a vacuous observation. Instead, look at the rate of deployment, which follows a classic exponential curve.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    26% of electricity generated in Texas in 2021 was from wind. Installed wind and solar capacity has grown quite a bit since 2021.

hatmatrix 4y ago

My impression was that it's possibly acceptable for on-site storage but less for transport or transportation applications.

KSteffensen 4y ago

> requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive Is this different in some way from natural gas? Why can't we use the existing storage and distribution infrastructure for natural gas for handling hydrogen?

kibwen 4y ago
Natural gas distribution infrastructure is far leakier than you expect. It's a massive problem. We really need to get away from solutions that involve pushing gas through pipes.
- pif 4y ago
  > We really need to get away from solutions that involve ... Halt! Propose a working alternative first, we'll talk about banning later.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Electricity. It doesn't leak from cables. Now: we need to get away from solutions that involve pressurised gas being piped or transported around the world. =)
    - cesarb 4y ago
      > Electricity. It doesn't leak from cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge "[...] Corona discharge from high voltage electric power transmission lines constitutes an economically significant waste of energy for utilities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_power_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_power_line "Transmission higher than 132 kV poses the problem of corona discharge, which causes significant power loss and interference with communication circuits. [...]" It might be unexpected and surprising, but yes, electricity does leak from cables!
mastax 4y ago
Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule, so it leaks out of much smaller holes. It leeches into metals and causes hydrogen embrittlement. It is about 1/3 the energy density per volume of natural gas.