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A comment on After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit. Parent comment

Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by dredmorbius on Saturday July 04, 2020 @12:50PM (#23733444)
No, it's not just a matter of technology, or at least not in ways that are readily addressable. Hydrogen molecules are so small that the simply pass through solid matter as if it were loose-weave cloth. Worse, it embrittles most metals.

And the leaked gas, especially if in an enclosed space, is flammable or explosive over a very wide range of concentrations.

Long-term storage, transport, and use, at scale, is hugely problematic.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/hydrogen-mo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/hydrogen-ex...

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by Erlich_Bachman on Monday July 06, 2020 @05:38AM (#23746137)
> And the leaked gas, especially if in an enclosed space, is flammable or explosive over a very wide range of concentrations.

So just have a small fan that constantly flows air around the container to remove all the leaked gas? They do it with heat from the batteries in EVs (which if heat up too much can explode). What is such a big deal?

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by dehrmann on Saturday July 04, 2020 @03:40PM (#23734428)
If you have cheap enough energy that you're making hydrogen, can't you also make hydrocarbons? Granted, at the efficiencies we're talking, their only real use would be air travel (and petrochemicals, I suppose).
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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by dredmorbius on Saturday July 04, 2020 @06:38PM (#23735395)
Yes. That's remarkable more sensible than futzing with naked hydrogen molecules, though the challenges here have been great as well.

I covered the topic in a series of posts based on then-new research about six years ago. That's ... not developed much further:

Primary article: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy...

Others: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=fischer-tropsc...

The main development since has been Foghorn, a Google (Alphabet) project attempting to develop the technology. It failed.

https://x.company/projects/foghorn/

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by algo_trader on Sunday July 05, 2020 @11:12AM (#23739259)
What is the oil-cost-equivalent of existing synfuel technology?

(for uses such as air travel)

IIRC at $150 oil these synfuels were already competitive?

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by dredmorbius on Sunday July 05, 2020 @01:22PM (#23740270)
Varies by study, though upshot of the USNRL study wss that for net cost point-of-use (deployed carrier task force) it is competitive now (roughly $50-60/bbl cost of oil).

I'd argue that fossil fuel oil is grossly underpriced, by an order of about 10^6, but that's a longer discussion.

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by Erlich_Bachman on Monday July 06, 2020 @05:39AM (#23746144)
That seems to have the added benefit of removing CO2 from the atmosphere (many potential processes, according to wikipedia get carbon from the air).
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