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Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by zz865 on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:28PM (#28806183)
I love the idea of hydrogen, batteries seem toxic to me, to be able to crack water and then burn it later (or use in a fuel cell) seems much more natural.

One thing though if released Hydrogen will escape the earth's atmosphere right? Seems kinda risky to slowly lose all our water...

Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by simonh on Saturday October 09, 2021 @06:41AM (#28808654)
Hydrogen escape from our atmosphere is diffusion limited, so this isn't a concern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-limited_escape

Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by pfdietz on Saturday October 09, 2021 @07:39AM (#28808997)
Hydrogen released into the atmosphere will mostly be turned to water by oxidation with OH radicals before it can escape. This is not entirely a good thing, as an OH radical consumed by reaction with hydrogen will not be available to react with methane -- and we want that methane scrubbed out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by fphhotchips on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:46PM (#28806278)
Some quick research indicates that while we won't lose our water per se, there are potentially other issues along that line of thinking: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/hydrogen-economy-might-im... (2003)

Edit: you might be thinking of helium, which is inert, and so I believe does escape the atmosphere more easily.

Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by Ratalala on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:57PM (#28806320)
Hydrogen escapes the atmosphere because it is extremely light and the planet's gravity cannot hold on to it.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by jhgb on Friday October 08, 2021 @10:04PM (#28806358)
That just means you've invented a new fancy way to combat rising oceans!

(No, in reality, we have nowhere near the power to make appreciable amounts of hydrogen escape. Even if you electrolyzed water continuously with 2.5 TW of power, which is roughly global average electricity generation, you'd lose something like 4 cubic kilometers of water per year. The Earth meanwhile has over a billion cubic kilometers of water in its oceans, so you'd need over 250 million years to make them disappear.)

Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by pfdietz on Saturday October 09, 2021 @07:43AM (#28809024)
Only if the hydrogen is very high up. Hydrogen released at ground level will almost entirely be oxidized before it can get that high.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by zz865 on Friday October 08, 2021 @10:24PM (#28806460)
Yes Helium is the other gas that does this too - but Hydrogen is lighter than Helium.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by elihu on Saturday October 09, 2021 @12:32AM (#28807077)
Batteries vary a lot. Lithium iron phosphate seems pretty reasonable to me: they're made of lithium, iron, copper, aluminum, plastic, fertilizer, carbon, and probably a few more things I'm not aware of. Nothing particularly toxic or hard to recycle, and they tend to have very good longevity.

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

Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by jvanderbot on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:44PM (#28806269)
Escaped hydrogen will probably turn to water fairly rapidly. And by that I mean it will explode.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by fphhotchips on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:51PM (#28806304)
Depends on the environment that you're in. In an enclosed space: yeah. In open air, unlikely, because the density difference means it rises (and disperses) quickly.
Re:Hydrogen’s moment is here at last? by pfdietz on Saturday October 09, 2021 @07:41AM (#28809013)
In open air the halflife of hydrogen to oxidation is just a few years, which is much faster than the timescale for hydrogen to be convected up to the homopause.