It won’t be. You’d be expecting to eat like 30% losses if you were to generate hydrogen from electrolysis, then that’s combined with 40 to 60% efficiency in fuel cells, then that’s combined with a pretty low energy density, even if it has a relatively high specific energy. You’re also dealing with hydrogen tending to make everything it touches pretty brittle, since it’s reactive, and liking to leak out because it has such a small particle size, in combination with your tanks all having to be like multiple times the size of a propane tank to offset the losses. Either way, the sheer tank size tends to offset the gains in practice, and piping that shit would fucking blow, maybe literally.
Right, but that’s all current conditions, and the field is changing quickly. Legislation, technology, and increased market efficiency will resolve some of those problems.
I doubt many experts in the late 19th century would have predicted our current energy infrastructure, and they werent dealing with an urgent global need to reverse environmental damage.
The cost of inaction is very high, and humanity will be forced off of fossil fuels eventually anyway. Maybe we’ll use batteries for most portable electricity, but hydrogen will have a role.
I mean I kind of doubt that most of those problems are really surmountable in the longer term, unless maybe cryo cooling and storage becomes way cheaper in terms of price, they’re not really things that you can just like, really market innovate your way out of. Not in the same way as batteries, which we might see gain a lot in the next decade or so from solid state. Everyone banks on future technology to solve current problems to court venture capital, but we can already solve most of the problems that we’d need hydrogen for right now. We have trains, we know how to build way more, we don’t really need it for cars, and if you’re not getting your hydrogen from a “free” source like natural gas, there’s not really a reason to produce it in large quantities.
Yeah agreed, but still it seems better than what we’re doing now.
Most hydrogen tech is going to be generated from fossil fuels…
Greenwashing
https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Hydrogen#:~:text=As at the end of,around 4%25 comes from electrolysis.
Seems like a big assumption. It could be generated in a remote area by a nuclear reactor or a renewable source.
It won’t be. You’d be expecting to eat like 30% losses if you were to generate hydrogen from electrolysis, then that’s combined with 40 to 60% efficiency in fuel cells, then that’s combined with a pretty low energy density, even if it has a relatively high specific energy. You’re also dealing with hydrogen tending to make everything it touches pretty brittle, since it’s reactive, and liking to leak out because it has such a small particle size, in combination with your tanks all having to be like multiple times the size of a propane tank to offset the losses. Either way, the sheer tank size tends to offset the gains in practice, and piping that shit would fucking blow, maybe literally.
Right, but that’s all current conditions, and the field is changing quickly. Legislation, technology, and increased market efficiency will resolve some of those problems.
I doubt many experts in the late 19th century would have predicted our current energy infrastructure, and they werent dealing with an urgent global need to reverse environmental damage.
The cost of inaction is very high, and humanity will be forced off of fossil fuels eventually anyway. Maybe we’ll use batteries for most portable electricity, but hydrogen will have a role.
I mean I kind of doubt that most of those problems are really surmountable in the longer term, unless maybe cryo cooling and storage becomes way cheaper in terms of price, they’re not really things that you can just like, really market innovate your way out of. Not in the same way as batteries, which we might see gain a lot in the next decade or so from solid state. Everyone banks on future technology to solve current problems to court venture capital, but we can already solve most of the problems that we’d need hydrogen for right now. We have trains, we know how to build way more, we don’t really need it for cars, and if you’re not getting your hydrogen from a “free” source like natural gas, there’s not really a reason to produce it in large quantities.
Fair enough, I appreciate the informed perspective. Regardless of how, I hope we can revolutionize our energy systems soon.