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Splitting water molecules is too energy intensive generally, but that is not the problem this solves. The problem this solves is that splitting water molecules
by mapt 2y ago
Splitting water molecules is too energy intensive generally, but that is not the problem this solves. The problem this solves is that splitting water molecules is a process as old as chemistry, for which there are no private excludable rights like patents, which means no incentive to create an initial investment with the expectation of future returns on a monopoly / market-leading position. If the hydrogen is in the ground, then somebody can own that ground. Without a huge, irrational investment in hydrogen, nobody has any incentive to build hydrogen infrastructure.
As for "applications" - basically the only application for hydrogen that has big engineering advantages with current tech is in longrange aviation, where it grants a bit more than double the range, and we're going to have to wait for China to launch a liquid hydrogen combustion scramjet bomber for anyone in the industry to actually care about that capacity enough to overcome the logistical hurdles of airports supplying a deep cryogenic gas and the innate conservatism of aerospace design. I believe we'll have standardized regional lithium ion aviation long before we build antipodal liquid hydrogen planes.
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago> anyone in the industry to actually care about that capacity enough to overcome the logistical hurdles of airports supplying a deep cryogenic gas and the innate conservatism of aerospace design https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2024-09-developing-a-global-ecosystem-to-support-hydrogen-powered-flight https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2024-09-developin... TL;DR Airbus is confident that they will have solved the technology development and logistical hurdles and will have commercially available hydrogen airplanes with ~100 passengers before 2035. There are serious R&D programs working on this across Europe. Cryogenic engineering is not some voodoo that nobody understands.
- mapt 2y agoThis is hype. Anybody that presents terms like "green hydrogen", "blue hydrogen", emphasizing the renewable nature of hydrogen, is BSing you. The case will never close on these merits. The case can't even close on a prototype basis unless we're using liquid hydrogen. Gaseous pressure vessels are orders of magnitude too heavy. What liquid hydrogen combustion does in the short term is gives you a fuel that's difficult to produce & distribute but more than twice as effective gravimetrically as fossil fuels, so long as you design a plane around the fuel tank rather than the other way around. Twice the range. Any other merit of hydrogen combustion, you can beat with biofuels that are (comparatively) cheap to produce and far easier to distribute. Or just use fossil fuels directly. We don't know if there will ever be hydrogen fuel cells (giving you ten, twenty, thirty percent more percent range over combustion) that are power-dense enough to function; A few companies claim they've made advances but haven't brought anything to market.