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Hydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas. The concept hasn’t really evolved much during the last 30 years. When I was in elementary school I was suppo

Hydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas. The concept hasn’t really evolved much during the last 30 years. When I was in elementary school I was supposed to write a paper for science my science ‘class’ and was encouraged by my uncle, who was in the oil industry, to write about this miracle fuel. Even with the primitive technology available to me at the time (Alta vista?), it did not take long to shoot holes in the hydrogen fuels narrative: It’s difficult to store; there is no infrastructure to support it; said infrastructure is expensive; it is almost exclusively produced from hydrocarbons (which is fine, but that’s typically antithetical to the values of the audience that it is ostensibly marketed as an alternative fuel to).. the list goes on. And now Hyundai has invested in building this into a niche (wheeled excavators) of a niche (excavators) product. I don't get it, what am I missing? Does this help them at trade shows?

londons_explore 2y ago
Governments offer incentives for green tech. The oil industry likes green tech which still uses oil and gas. Hydrogen fills both niches. Hydrogen is perfect, because it can theoretically be made fully green, but practically it never will be due to the terrible economics of electrolysis. But the fact it theoretically could be means it can qualify for all those tax breaks and grants. Some tax breaks are contingent on investing in 'green' stuff - so for the oil industry it makes perfect sense to invest in the only green tech which will never not use oil and gas.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  It's particularly bad because the steam reforming process starts with one unit of methane, then throws away 25-35% of the energy it contains to make hydrogen. You're literally starting with a usable fuel, then throwing away a bunch of energy to make a much nastier fuel.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    That steam reforming process also produces a lot of CO2 which is great for injecting into old oil wells to increase production levels. Win Win (except the environment of course).
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Oh, and as a bonus, injecting CO2 into oil wells can count as "carbon capture and storage", which is another thing that gets big government grants!
- foobazgt 2y ago
  There are other problems besides just being inefficient. In a world where energy is cheap and abundant, you still have to deal with leaks (hydrogen is small, so tends to escape everything over relatively small periods of time) and embrittlement (again, hydrogen is small, so it tends to fuse into other materials and destroy them). I don't know if these limitations are fundamental, or if we'll eventually come across some breakthroughs that make them economical to deal with, but it's something we've struggled with for a very long time so far.
hdbxbdb 2y ago
How are wheeled excavators a niche? I would bet most excavators in Germany by far are wheeled
- 7thpower 2y ago
  Thank you for the datapoint. I have not noticed them in the states or in my travels but I also haven’t been looking. A quick google search says 70% of global market share as of 2022?! Even if that is off it still tells me my perception is incorrect. Thanks again!
legitster 2y ago
Once the grid moves to mostly renewable, you would need do something with excess energy (usually sold at a loss). Converting excess electricity to hydrogen is not the worst energy storage technology.
- cduzz 2y ago
  Converting the excess energy into hydrogen is a really inefficient way to store the energy. Hydrogen ruins whatever it's stored in, it requires a huge amount of energy to store the hydrogen in a space efficient manner, etc. Heat some sand, pump some water, compress some gas. "I'm gonna go split up some waters to get some hydrogens" is fun as an experiment but ultimately not a practical way to store energy.
  - hnaccount_rng 2y ago
    None of your suggestions allow for a movement in space. I haven't actually ran the calculations^ myself, but most of your "complaints" are wrt to energy efficiency. And that won't matter (too much), if we overbuild production capacity. Upthread someone claims that mines could benefit from hydrogen simply because they are not permitted to produce any more CO2. That would make this niche a realistic target, where you need to move energy. And yes, in that scenario I would absolutely expect all your alternative suggestions to be deployed already. But we are also just starting to have excess production at all. ^ I also don't think those are possible right now, as the number of electrolysis apertures would need to increase by orders of magnitudes (plural)
    - cduzz 2y ago
      A cryogenic pressure vessel that's not affected by hydrogen embrittlement is hardly portable, cheap, or energy dense. Maybe if you're using a vehicle that's otherwise going to use bunker fuel, sure, you've got space for a reasonable hydrogen tank. If we're speaking from a practical perspective not green-washing, using a methane fueled engine in an electric motor / generator setup is going to be way more efficient and flexible than some insane setup where you've got cryogenic hydrogen tanks hanging out a rock quarry. [edited to add this:] Let's distinguish between "pull more carbon from the ground and put it in the air" and "pull carbon from the air and make methane with it". Any H2 system today is going to use a hydrocarbon feedstock. Any "we'll crack water and save the H2" story is a pure fiction. Any process that relies on some theoretical "we've got spare energy so we're going to use that to crack water, then compress the everloving hell out of those H2s and then chill the crap out of that" could just as easily be "make methane using spare energy and spare CO2" likely with substantially less "spare" energy. [edit]
mschuster91 2y ago
> Hydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas. The problem is, there are some applications that reasonably cannot be made to run on electric anywhere near soon (i.e. at least 20 years from now): oceangoing ships, planes larger than a Cessna and heavy machinery that runs for longer than a few hours every day. For both environmental reasons and the foreseeable peak oil, these applications need to shift off from fossil fuel - and for that in turn, it's either biofuel (which is ethically questionable because it takes so much space) or hydrogen.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  The problem is that they are unlikely to run on hydrogen either. Hydrogen requires heavy storage containers that make it inappropriate for flight (among other uses.) We're much better off going to ammonia or some other e-fuel.
- fpoling 2y ago
  Those can run on methanol or synthetic fuels. For the source of carbon atmospheric carbon capture can be used.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Isn’t atmospheric carbon capture far less inefficient and more expensive than hydrogen production?
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > Those can run on methanol or synthetic fuels. And how are these synthfuels made? They all (except of biofuel, which as I said is ethically questionable) require hydrogen as precursor, and that's my point. It's all carbohydrates, which means you need hydrogen and oxygen (these you can get from water electrolysis) and carbon (these you can get from e.g. CO2 sequestration).
    - fpoling 2y ago
      Even if hydrogen is required as a precursor for methanol production, transportation and storage (especially long-term) of methanol is vastly cheaper than hydrogen.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Well the concept hasn’t received the same amount of government investment or subsidies or private capital either. So I think it’s unfair to compare it to the more mature state of battery electric vehicles. Infrastructure could be built at cost, hydrogen production could be enabled by nuclear energy sources, etc. I think it is too early to write it off, especially because it does come with advantages over batteries like faster refueling.
- 7thpower 2y ago
  No it hasn’t, because it’s not viable. The first hydrogen car was built in the 1800s. There is nothing ‘early’ about this concept.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Are you saying that the effort over that time period and the funding is comparable to battery tech? A lot of things start off looking not viable.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Almondsetat 2y ago
The point I don't understand is this: why are you so invested in Hyunday? I think it's fantastic that a big company is exploring and innovating in one direction. The world needs diversification in research because you never know what you'll find.
- 7thpower 2y ago
  Automotive companies have been building PoCs like this for the past 30 years. They are not doing anything new here.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    It's only significant if they sell in big numbers, preferably on a level playing field.
    - 7thpower 2y ago
      There is no way to level the distribution and storage problem. If there was, the time to do that was before the world had invested trillions in capex. If all of the subsidies and regulations incentivizing adoption of BEVs and hybrids were to end tomorrow, they would still continue to grow market share. Hydrogen will never be able to say that.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    CS has been fruitlessly researching perceptrons for decades, and yet many years later...
    - 7thpower 2y ago
      And? Are you aware of some hydrogen storage technology that is becoming exponentially better year over year? Why are you anchoring to Hydrogen specifically, instead of a broader category of fuels where that argument would make more sense? The problem for Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is that there are many superior alternatives. I’m not knocking hydrogen in general. In fact: I appreciate what you have done for humanity, Hydrogen. I think the sun is great. I appreciate that you upgrade Canadian crude into premium transportation fuels for the US market. I’m sure you also do a lot of other great things for me that I don’t even care about.. but you suck as a transportation fuel, and the sooner you quit pretending to be something you are not, the sooner you can really get out there and be the Hydrogen we always knew you could be. I’ve got your back, Hydrogen.
codr7 2y ago
Didn't someone recently report finding huge deposits of natural hydrogen? Doesn't solve all problems, but no technology is perfect. I'm a bit skeptic about the source for this article, they're saying exactly what I would expect them to say.
bilsbie 2y ago
Btw why didn’t fuel cells catch on? Just same issue with h2?

londons_explore 2y ago

Governments offer incentives for green tech. The oil industry likes green tech which still uses oil and gas. Hydrogen fills both niches. Hydrogen is perfect, because it can theoretically be made fully green, but practically it never will be due to the terrible economics of electrolysis. But the fact it theoretically could be means it can qualify for all those tax breaks and grants. Some tax breaks are contingent on investing in 'green' stuff - so for the oil industry it makes perfect sense to invest in the only green tech which will never not use oil and gas.

matthewdgreen 2y ago
It's particularly bad because the steam reforming process starts with one unit of methane, then throws away 25-35% of the energy it contains to make hydrogen. You're literally starting with a usable fuel, then throwing away a bunch of energy to make a much nastier fuel.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  That steam reforming process also produces a lot of CO2 which is great for injecting into old oil wells to increase production levels. Win Win (except the environment of course).
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Oh, and as a bonus, injecting CO2 into oil wells can count as "carbon capture and storage", which is another thing that gets big government grants!
foobazgt 2y ago
There are other problems besides just being inefficient. In a world where energy is cheap and abundant, you still have to deal with leaks (hydrogen is small, so tends to escape everything over relatively small periods of time) and embrittlement (again, hydrogen is small, so it tends to fuse into other materials and destroy them). I don't know if these limitations are fundamental, or if we'll eventually come across some breakthroughs that make them economical to deal with, but it's something we've struggled with for a very long time so far.

hdbxbdb 2y ago

How are wheeled excavators a niche? I would bet most excavators in Germany by far are wheeled

7thpower 2y ago
Thank you for the datapoint. I have not noticed them in the states or in my travels but I also haven’t been looking. A quick google search says 70% of global market share as of 2022?! Even if that is off it still tells me my perception is incorrect. Thanks again!

legitster 2y ago

Once the grid moves to mostly renewable, you would need do something with excess energy (usually sold at a loss). Converting excess electricity to hydrogen is not the worst energy storage technology.

cduzz 2y ago
Converting the excess energy into hydrogen is a really inefficient way to store the energy. Hydrogen ruins whatever it's stored in, it requires a huge amount of energy to store the hydrogen in a space efficient manner, etc. Heat some sand, pump some water, compress some gas. "I'm gonna go split up some waters to get some hydrogens" is fun as an experiment but ultimately not a practical way to store energy.
- hnaccount_rng 2y ago
  None of your suggestions allow for a movement in space. I haven't actually ran the calculations^ myself, but most of your "complaints" are wrt to energy efficiency. And that won't matter (too much), if we overbuild production capacity. Upthread someone claims that mines could benefit from hydrogen simply because they are not permitted to produce any more CO2. That would make this niche a realistic target, where you need to move energy. And yes, in that scenario I would absolutely expect all your alternative suggestions to be deployed already. But we are also just starting to have excess production at all. ^ I also don't think those are possible right now, as the number of electrolysis apertures would need to increase by orders of magnitudes (plural)
  - cduzz 2y ago
    A cryogenic pressure vessel that's not affected by hydrogen embrittlement is hardly portable, cheap, or energy dense. Maybe if you're using a vehicle that's otherwise going to use bunker fuel, sure, you've got space for a reasonable hydrogen tank. If we're speaking from a practical perspective not green-washing, using a methane fueled engine in an electric motor / generator setup is going to be way more efficient and flexible than some insane setup where you've got cryogenic hydrogen tanks hanging out a rock quarry. [edited to add this:] Let's distinguish between "pull more carbon from the ground and put it in the air" and "pull carbon from the air and make methane with it". Any H2 system today is going to use a hydrocarbon feedstock. Any "we'll crack water and save the H2" story is a pure fiction. Any process that relies on some theoretical "we've got spare energy so we're going to use that to crack water, then compress the everloving hell out of those H2s and then chill the crap out of that" could just as easily be "make methane using spare energy and spare CO2" likely with substantially less "spare" energy. [edit]

mschuster91 2y ago

> Hydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas. The problem is, there are some applications that reasonably cannot be made to run on electric anywhere near soon (i.e. at least 20 years from now): oceangoing ships, planes larger than a Cessna and heavy machinery that runs for longer than a few hours every day. For both environmental reasons and the foreseeable peak oil, these applications need to shift off from fossil fuel - and for that in turn, it's either biofuel (which is ethically questionable because it takes so much space) or hydrogen.

matthewdgreen 2y ago
The problem is that they are unlikely to run on hydrogen either. Hydrogen requires heavy storage containers that make it inappropriate for flight (among other uses.) We're much better off going to ammonia or some other e-fuel.
fpoling 2y ago
Those can run on methanol or synthetic fuels. For the source of carbon atmospheric carbon capture can be used.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Isn’t atmospheric carbon capture far less inefficient and more expensive than hydrogen production?
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > Those can run on methanol or synthetic fuels. And how are these synthfuels made? They all (except of biofuel, which as I said is ethically questionable) require hydrogen as precursor, and that's my point. It's all carbohydrates, which means you need hydrogen and oxygen (these you can get from water electrolysis) and carbon (these you can get from e.g. CO2 sequestration).
  - fpoling 2y ago
    Even if hydrogen is required as a precursor for methanol production, transportation and storage (especially long-term) of methanol is vastly cheaper than hydrogen.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Well the concept hasn’t received the same amount of government investment or subsidies or private capital either. So I think it’s unfair to compare it to the more mature state of battery electric vehicles. Infrastructure could be built at cost, hydrogen production could be enabled by nuclear energy sources, etc. I think it is too early to write it off, especially because it does come with advantages over batteries like faster refueling.

7thpower 2y ago
No it hasn’t, because it’s not viable. The first hydrogen car was built in the 1800s. There is nothing ‘early’ about this concept.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Are you saying that the effort over that time period and the funding is comparable to battery tech? A lot of things start off looking not viable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Almondsetat 2y ago

The point I don't understand is this: why are you so invested in Hyunday? I think it's fantastic that a big company is exploring and innovating in one direction. The world needs diversification in research because you never know what you'll find.

7thpower 2y ago
Automotive companies have been building PoCs like this for the past 30 years. They are not doing anything new here.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's only significant if they sell in big numbers, preferably on a level playing field.
  - 7thpower 2y ago
    There is no way to level the distribution and storage problem. If there was, the time to do that was before the world had invested trillions in capex. If all of the subsidies and regulations incentivizing adoption of BEVs and hybrids were to end tomorrow, they would still continue to grow market share. Hydrogen will never be able to say that.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  CS has been fruitlessly researching perceptrons for decades, and yet many years later...
  - 7thpower 2y ago
    And? Are you aware of some hydrogen storage technology that is becoming exponentially better year over year? Why are you anchoring to Hydrogen specifically, instead of a broader category of fuels where that argument would make more sense? The problem for Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is that there are many superior alternatives. I’m not knocking hydrogen in general. In fact: I appreciate what you have done for humanity, Hydrogen. I think the sun is great. I appreciate that you upgrade Canadian crude into premium transportation fuels for the US market. I’m sure you also do a lot of other great things for me that I don’t even care about.. but you suck as a transportation fuel, and the sooner you quit pretending to be something you are not, the sooner you can really get out there and be the Hydrogen we always knew you could be. I’ve got your back, Hydrogen.

codr7 2y ago

Didn't someone recently report finding huge deposits of natural hydrogen? Doesn't solve all problems, but no technology is perfect. I'm a bit skeptic about the source for this article, they're saying exactly what I would expect them to say.

bilsbie 2y ago

Btw why didn’t fuel cells catch on? Just same issue with h2?