this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
45 points (95.9% liked)
Science
3187 readers
56 users here now
General discussions about "science" itself
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Storing hydrogen is a bitch. It readily ionizes and the H+ ion is just a single proton. It gets inside metal lattices easily, finds a stray atom to combine there and boom - suddenly it's 100 times the size it was. That's what's called hydrogen pitting.
So right now, if hydrogen storage was good and cheap, we could use hydrogen as a battery for supply regulated energy sources (solar, wind) and burn it in a turbine to generate electricity and water. You don't even need the storage to be mobile or miniaturized for that. And even that isn't a reality.
So I'll perk up when news of a cheap reliable hydrogen storage technology comes around.
Personally, I think methanation may be promising, since you can use the existing infrastructure.
Just leave it as water, then drop small pellets of lithium in as necessary. Sodium works, too, and is more abundant/available than lithium, but maybe tougher to control safely. (The rest of that group is just too reactive, unless you can find a way to use the exothermic reaction for something other than an uncontrolled fire or even explosion.)
Mostly kidding, but only because I can't imagine smarter people than I haven't ruled it out for very good reasons. And while I'm on the topic, running a condenser on the exhaust will capture the water vapour, which is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas.
Hmmm. I've seen a few references to Toyota supposedly having a prototype system for generating hydrogen from water on board cars. I've dismissed that as just the latest water powered flavour of the month. You don't suppose...